Another Story of Survival

I know this is a bit old (it’s from June of this year), but let’s just put this together with my last post and call today Survival Wednesday. This is another great story from the UK’s Telegraph about a baby that survived its mother’s attempted abortion.

The 25-year-old mum and her fiance Billy Crampton had already lost one child and their second was born with a serious kidney condition, so they decided they couldn’t cope with the strain of having a third.

So, at eight weeks pregnant, Miss Percival decided to abort the child she had conceived whilst on the contraceptive pill.

But nearly three months later she felt a flutter in her stomach. She visited her doctor who, after giving her a scan, confirmed she was 19 weeks pregnant.

Her first child lived for only 20 minutes after she was forced to deliver him prematurely. Her second, a 20-month son named Lewis, was born with a similar condition and now has just one kidney.

However, doctors told the couple from Sutton-in-Ashfield, Nottinghamshire, that this child was likely to survive.

In November, Finley was born three weeks premature, at 6lb 3oz. He has some damage to one kidney but is expected to lead a normal life.

Miss Percival said: “I just couldn’t believe that this child had got through it all and looked so perfect.

“He may need an operation but as only one of his kidneys is affected he can survive. I still struggle to believe just what he has fought through. Now he’s here I wouldn’t change it for the world.”

I wish more mothers who are considering aborting would hear about stories like these.

A healthy baby despite abortion recommendations

UPDATE:Bob Ellis has a great post on this at Dakota Voice.

This is a great story from the UK’s Telegraph about a couple who twice didn’t give in to the “expert” advice of their doctors to abort their baby because he might have some abnormalities if he was born.

Gaynor Purdy was warned her first child could have a fatal chromosome defect and a life threatening heart condition.

But she rejected two suggestions to terminate the pregnancy and she and her husband Lee are celebrating life with their “perfect” ten-month-old son.

Mrs Purdy, 28, a quality control inspector, said: “We refused to give up on him, and decided throughout the pregnancy that as long as he was fighting, we would continue fighting with him.”

Four months into the pregnancy doctors told them that part of their unborn child’s heart was narrow and underdeveloped and would mean open heart surgery if the baby was born.

They were warned the condition could worsen and around Christmas last year, an immediate termination should be considered.

Further tests conducted a few days later on New Year’s Eve suggested the baby could also have Edwards Syndrome – the presence of an 18th chromosome – with a life expectancy of only up to four months if birth is survived.

Consultants again recommended the couple consider aborting the baby, fearing he would little to no quality of life once he was born.

One side of his heart was slightly bigger than the other which may need an operation to correct in the future, but regular tests have been showing the condition is constantly improving.

Mrs Purdy added: “Doctors told us he was a little miracle baby. They said his heart must have been mending itself.

“Last year we were still on a knife edge thinking things would go wrong. But now he’s out of the woods we are delighted that 2009 will be Kai’s year.”

So when doctors detect something like they did in this case, why don’t they err on the side of life and say, “Hey, the odds might not be the greatest, but there’s a chance he will be okay”? By recommending to end the baby’s life, the doctors are not even giving him a chance. I hate to sound cynical here, but could it be that the hospital’s policy is to err on the side of saving money? To simply abort the baby, the hospital would be avoiding potentially many costly procedures.

If you read the entire article, you get the impression that the doctors in this case really pointed out the “incoveniences” of trying to keep the baby. At the end of the article, the hospital says they try to “offer prospective families the full facts and options”, but if they’re making a recommendation to kill the baby, how much impartiality are they really showing?

Pro-Lifers Flood Obama Website

Dan Gilgoff at U.S. News’ blog posts about the flood of comments that pro-lifers have posted at President-elect Obama’s transition team’s website.

When she [president of Americans United for Life, Charmaine Yoest] sent the E-mail last night, Yoest says, there were fewer than 200 comments responding to a memo titled “Advancing Reproductive Rights and Health in a New Administration,” on the Obama site, change.gov. Now, there are almost 2,000 comments.

Comments areas are notorious for their nastiness, but I’m struck by the respectful tone of these protests. Does it mean pro-lifers see Obama as a different kind of Democrat, more willing to listen to their concerns than has traditionally been the case? In that regard, the civil tone suggests that Obama might be able to make headway with pro-lifers with policies that reduce demand for abortions without restricting abortion rights.

No, Dan, what it means is that pro-lifers are generally much more civil than their counterparts on the pro-abortion side. And don’t be deceived by the “civil tone”–most pro-lifers will not settle for policies that do not restrict abortion rights.

New Link–Susan B. Anthony List

I’ve added a new website to my bloglist. The Susan B. Anthony List is an organization that was “founded by a diverse group of women in 1992 to advance the role of pro-life women in the political process. Today the Susan B. Anthony List is a nationwide network of over 145,000 Americans dedicated to advancing, mobilizing and representing pro-life women in the political process. Its connected Susan B. Anthony List Candidate Fund increases the percentage of pro-life women in the political process.”

You can sign up for their mailing list to stay apprised of pro-life issues and the work that the Susan B. Anthony List is doing to promote the cause of the pro-life movement.

Obama’s Q&A site stifles free speech

In yet another sign of how things might be under the Obama administration, if you go to President-Elect Obama’s Open For Questions website, you’ll see a blatant example of the way that the Left really believes in the freedom of speech.

This website was set up to allow Americans to post questions that they have for Obama. You can vote for questions to help move them up the list. You can also flag questions that you think are inappropriate, and they are then disqualified from being sent to Obama’s team to be answered.

Do a search for “Freedom of Choice Act” or “abortion” and you’ll see many questions about Obama’s promise to make his first legislative act to be signing the Freedom of Choice Act, which would remove all state restrictions on abortion. You’ll also notice that any questions asking if he would rescind that promise have been flagged as inappropriate. The pro-abortion activists have made a concentrated effort to cut pro-lifers out of the discussion.

Here are a few that were flagged as inappropriate:

“Would you consider rescinding your promise to sign the Freedom of Choice Act, given your desire to reduce abortions and to seek common ground, and in light of the fact that it would invalidate every measure and law intended to reduce abortions?”
Justin Taylor, Chicago

This submission was removed because people believe it is inappropriate.

“Will you still follow through with your promise to sign the Freedom of Choice Act, even though Maryland has passed similar legislation and their abortion rates have risen significantly compared to their prior numbers and the rest of the nation?”
Jonathan Baird, Magnolia, AR

This submission was removed because people believe it is inappropriate.

You can register and leave feedback here. They’ve closed the first round of questions, but should be opening again soon. I sent feedback, asking for them to hire a moderator panel to make final decisions on the appropriateness of questions before they’re disqualified from the website. Otherwise, their stated goal of giving Americans unprecedented access to their administration is just a joke.

Hat tip to LifeNews.com

Obama’s Abortion Socialism

Sorry it’s been so long since my last post. My wife and I took a short trip to Hawaii as a mini-honeymoon.

Paul Kengor has an excellent piece in American Thinker about Obama’s plans to make abortion an entitlement for every American woman. Just another part of our life that he wants to socialize.

Obama sees “abortion rights” in several ways, but, principally, he perceives abortion as a matter of economic fairness. For Barack Obama, abortion is not merely a Constitutional right; it is a matter of social justice. He believes it is patently unfair that some women struggle to afford an abortion, or cannot purchase the procedure at all. Consequently, the state — meaning a single federal state — should seize that right and ensure its equitable distribution to every (female) citizen. This is spreading the wealth — on the skin of America’s unborn.

What you have here, remarkably, is a kind of abortion socialism, utterly unprecedented in the history of America.

It is also a testimony to the dark pessimism behind Obama’s sunny rhetoric about “change,” as well as the dark pessimism of the modern liberal-progressive worldview. The undesired child is seen as a burden. For the mother’s alleged financial well-being, she now, apparently, needs the government benefit of an abortion “safety net” to exterminate that child in the womb. That safety net includes the sick, secular left’s utopian dream: federal funding — your tax dollars — of unrestricted abortion.

Barack Obama is ready to take this nation where it has never gone before.

Chuck Colson: From Rhetoric to Deed

Chuck Colson has an excellent piece about how, when faced with the truth of what being pro-choice actually means, those who perform abortions often lose their enthusiasm for being “pro-choice”.

The Nov. 23 issue of the Washington Post magazine told the story of a medical student named Lesley Wojick. She plans to specialize in obstetrics and gynecology and is unapologetically “pro-choice.” She even helped organize a “day-long abortion seminar” at her medical school.
At the seminar, a medical director for Planned Parenthood of Maryland asked the attendees, “How pro-choice are you?” She asked them what their families and neighbors would think of their performing abortions.

Ms. Wojick was determined to “walk the talk,” to make her “actions to be consistent with [her] words.” She thought that if “pro-choice” doctors like her didn’t do this, “the right to abortion might be rendered meaningless.”

Ms. Wojick then attempted to “walk the walk.” But not for long. During her obstetrics rotation, she realized that “vacuuming out a uterus and counting the parts of the fetus” wasn’t for her. “Somebody else … would become an abortion provider. But it wouldn’t be her.”

It’s not surprising. Once you get past the rhetoric of choice, what’s left is a bloody and, for most people, disreputable business. As Ms. Wojick discovered, even people who insist that it’s a right want little to do with the actual practice or the practitioners.

Continue reading Mr. Colson’s article to learn more about the effect of performing abortions. This is a perfect example of why the pro-abortion crowd is so violently opposed to pro-lifers trying to present the images of abortions to the public.

Franklin Graham Speaks Out Against Abortion

The Christian Post is reporting on Franklin Graham’s recent message at Harvest Christian Fellowship in Riverside, California.

During the message, Graham listed a variety of sins, from lying and stealing to bearing false witness.

Most emphasized, however, was the sin of murder, in particular abortion.

“You say, ‘Well come on, Franklin. This is California. We’re kind of a liberal state, but they’ll still put you in jail for murder around here.’ No, they don’t,” Graham said before pointing to abortion as a form of murder.

“There’s some of you here tonight who are guilty, guilty of murder. And there are some of you men … you’re guilty because you’ve approved of what your girlfriend has done or what your wife has done or your sister has done,” he said. “You’ve approved it, and you’re guilty too.”

The evangelist then went on to recall the story of a woman from “one of those liberal New York magazines” who conducted a two-day interview with him some time ago.

After growing a bit tired from the interview, Graham had asked the reporter if he could ask her a few questions.

When she told him to go ahead, Graham asked her where she stood before God.

“All of a sudden her eyes filled up with tears,” he recalled. Graham then went on to share the Gospel with her and prayed with her, though they were at a restaurant at the time.

The ministry leader then recalled how the woman turned to him and said she had to confess something to him at that moment.

“You don’t have to confess anything to me. God is forgiving you,” Graham told her.

“No, I have to tell you,” she responded.

“Twenty years ago, I had an abortion and it has haunted me all the days of my life,” she said. “And there hasn’t been a day that hasn’t gone by that I haven’t asked myself what that child would have looked like.

“Can God forgive me for what I have done?” she asked.

“I said, ‘He just did,’” Graham recalled. “Then she buried her face in her hands and just wept.”

More from Abort73.com: The Facade of Choice

In this post, I’m highlighting another area of the Abort73.com website–the facade of “Choice”. Before I add a snippet from them, let me say that if you want more information on how to persuade friends or family members on what abortion is really about, one of the best websites is Abort73.com. They’ve done their research, have all the facts, and present them in a way that is impactful and creative. It’s especially designed to speak to the Facebook and MySpace generation. Okay, now for a sneak preview of what they have to say about “Choice”…

Since abortion is impossible to justify on the merits (it kills a living human being, remember), “choice” has become the foundation of its political justification. Abortion advocates don’t want to talk about facts or science, but they love to talk about “choice”. “This is America…We’re free to choose…You can’t legislate morality!” Nothing has so clouded and confused the politics of this debate more than the misconstrued application of this one little term. The bottom line is this. Choice is nothing apart from the context to which it is applied. Individual choices are either recognized or restricted based upon the circumstances at hand. That’s how our laws work. You simply cannot talk about choice in isolation.
For thirty years, however, abortion advocates have sought to bestow upon choice a nobility all its own, a nobility it has no claim to. They refuse to be called “pro-abortion”, but they gladly accept the label “pro-choice” (despite the fact that there are countless other issues for which they are decidedly not pro-choice). The fact is, laws against rape, murder, assault, theft, speeding, drunk-driving and even smoking are all “anti-choice”. They take away legal protection from one particular choice in order to protect a more foundational freedom. All such laws are “legislating morality”. That’s the only way society can survive. Personal choices that infringe on the life or livelihood of another human being must be legislated against. Therefore, anyone who defends legal abortion by simply arguing that people must be free to make their own choices is either ignorant or dishonest.

Again, please direct anyone who is undecided on the whole issue of abortion to Abort73.com. Also, if you know of anyone considering getting an abortion, please use this site to educate yourself and them.