Federal Court Strikes Down Arizona’s 20-Week Abortion Ban

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Photo Credit: APA federal court Tuesday struck down Arizona’s ban on abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy absent a medical emergency.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the law violated a woman’s constitutionally protected right to terminate a pregnancy before a fetus is able to survive outside the womb. “Viability” of a fetus is generally considered to start at 24 weeks. Normal pregnancies run about 40 weeks.

Nine other states have enacted similar bans starting at 20 weeks or even earlier. Several of those bans had previously been placed on hold or struck down by other courts.

Judge Marsha Berzon, writing for the unanimous three-judge panel on the San Francisco-based court, said such bans before viability violate a long string of U.S. Supreme Court rulings starting with the seminal Roe v. Wade decision in 1973.

The judge wrote that “a woman has a constitutional right to choose to terminate her pregnancy before the fetus is viable.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Abortionist Who Kept Remains of 35 Aborted Babies Loses License

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The Maryland Board of Physicians has permanently revoked the license of abortionist Nicola I. Riley in a scathing 24-page order issued May 6, 2013, that prohibits her from ever again applying for licensure or reinstatement of her license.

“In view of the fraudulent and deceptive nature of Dr. Riley’s criminal conduct, her demonstrated lack of candor and integrity on her application to the Board and to Utah and Wyoming, and her demonstrated propensity for dishonesty and misrepresentation, Dr. Riley’s unprofessional conduct is not remediable,” stated the Board. “In light of the unprofessional manner in which she treated this critically damaged patient, the Board does not believe that Maryland patients would be safe in the hands of this physician. Dr. Riley’s fraudulent acts and unprofessional treatment of the patient merit the permanent revocation of her medical license in this State.”

Riley’s license was first suspended in September, 2010, after having perforated the uterus and pulled out a bowel of a patient at a secret late-term abortion clinic in Elkton operated by the notorious abortionist Steven Chase Brigham. Complaints were filed by the Elkton Police and a physician at a Baltimore hospital where the patient was air-lifted for emergency surgery that saved her life. Physicians who treated the patient found that part of her fetus had been shoved into her abdominal cavity when Riley ruptured her uterus. Her ability to bear children in the future is in doubt. [Read the full account with links to Board Interview Transcripts]

Police raided the Elkton facility and found the remains of 35 frozen late-term aborted babies. Riley and Brigham were arrested and charged with murder of the babies, but charges were dropped when an expert witness who planned to testify that all the babies died in Maryland withdrew from the case under pressure from the abortion lobby.

Brigham, who has no license in Maryland, operated the clandestine bi-state abortion business that was designed to evade the laws that banned him from doing abortions in New Jersey after 14 weeks. Maryland has no gestational limit on abortions, making it a haven for those who seek quick profits from the lucrative late-term abortion market where fees can range from several thousand to tens of thousands of dollars.

Read more from this story HERE.

Vermont Passes Law Allowing Doctor-Assisted Suicide

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Photo Credit: ReutersVermont on Monday became the fourth U.S. state to end legal penalties for doctors who prescribe medication to terminally ill patients seeking to end their own lives.

The law, which includes a number of safeguards over the next three years as the state adapts, marked the first time a U.S. state has used the legislative process to make assisted suicide legal. Oregon and Washington have similar laws passed through ballot measures and a Montana court authorized the practice in 2009.

“Vermonters who face terminal illness and are in excruciating pain at the end of their lives now have control over their destinies. This is the right thing to do,” said Governor Peter Shumlin, a Democrat, who signed the law on Monday.

Supporters of the practice are hoping Vermont’s law will lend momentum in other states, such as Connecticut and New Jersey, that have considered similar legislation. A bill legalizing the practice failed in Massachusetts last year.

The law allows physicians to prescribe death-inducing medications, which terminally ill patients wishing to commit suicide could then administer to themselves. It limits the prescriptions to residents of the state.

Read more from this story HERE.

Evangelical Weakness in Gay Boy Scouts Debate Could Hurt GOP

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Photo Credit: tedeytanSigns of waning evangelical power in the nation’s culture wars and in Republican policy — and some unexpected challenges for GOP candidates — loom as the 103-year-old Boy Scouts of America gears up for a definitive vote this week on whether to welcome openly gay youths into the organization’s ranks.

If the BSA delegates gathering just outside Dallas vote to admit gays, it will reinforce the growing notion that evangelical Protestants and their conservative Catholic allies no longer can muster their troops as they once did, in such battles as state referendums over same-sex marriage and the 1996 enactment of the federal Defense of Marriage Act.

“There’s no lobby more vicious than the homosexual lobby, and the 65 to 80 million-member evangelical constituency provides no troops for the fight against that lobby,” said David Lane, president of Pastors & Pews and a leading religious right political organizer. “Evangelicals are playing checkers in a chess game.”

A prominent Mormon and board member of a national conservative political organization said privately said that his church, bruised from public relations battles with gay-rights activist groups, has been left holding the financial bag after other denominations failed to come through with promised aid in the fight for Proposition 8, California’s voter initiative against same-sex marriage. The Mormon church has moved on to other battles in the cultural wars rather than take on the gay-rights activists.

After floating a plan to end the 3.9 million-member group’s ban on gays, BSA leaders have crafted a compromise that would allow openly gay Scouts to participate but maintain the ban on adult gay Scout leaders. Even that move sparked adamant opposition from some Christian leaders, especially those who ally with the Republican Party.

Read more from this story HERE.

The Abortion Alternative

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Photo Credit: TownHallWith the convictions in the case against abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell – three counts of murdering live babies and one count of involuntary manslaughter – abortion is back in the national discussion…

The abortion lobby claims that as long as we have tight regulations on abortion, a black market will exist. Abortion, they argue, is like any product or service that consumers want and government prohibits or overregulates. If they can’t get what they want legally, they will get it illegally…

Poor women, according to this reasoning, desperate because of an unwanted pregnancy, pressed because regulations and costs make abortion difficult to get, turn to sleazebag doctors, who will do it cheaply, with no regard for the woman, the law, or safety…

There is another choice, but those who call themselves “pro-choice” don’t want women, particularly poor women, to consider this option.

This option is called birth.

Read more from this story HERE.

She’s Back! Conservative Favorite Mia Love Announces 2014 Bid for Congress

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Photo Credit: Getty ImagesSaratoga Springs mayor and conservative favorite Mia Love, who unsuccessfully ran against Democratic Congressman Jim Matheson in Utah’s 4th Congressional District in 2012, announced over the weekend that she will be running for Congress once again in 2014.

Having lost by fewer than 1,000 votes last time around, Love said at the Republican State Convention that she and the public “some unfinished business with Rep. Jim Matheson.” She’ll be running for the same seat.

Twitter/@MiaBLove

Read more from this story HERE.

Vote Imminent as Boy Scouts Considers Change to Policy Banning Gays

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Photo Credit: APWith its ranks deeply divided, the Boy Scouts of America is asking its local leaders from across the country to decide whether its contentious membership policy should be overhauled so that openly gay boys can participate in Scout units.

The proposal to be put before the roughly 1,400 voting members of the BSA’s National Council on Thursday, at a meeting in Grapevine, Texas, would retain the Scouts’ long-standing ban on gays serving in adult leadership positions.

Nonetheless, some conservatives within and outside the BSA community have denounced the proposal, saying the Scouts’ traditions would be undermined by the presence of openly gay youth. There have been warnings of mass defections if the ban is even partially lifted.

Read more from this story HERE.

Media Ignores Abortion Doc Who Killed Babies With His Bare Hands (+video)

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Photo Credit: Life NewsThe name Kermit Gosnell has become familiar to most Americans because of the gruesome abortions and infanticides that resulted a jury finding him guilty on three counts of first-degree murder. The mainstream media either ignored Gosnell’s murder trial or barely reported on it.

This week, LifeNews exposed a second Kermit Gosnell — Douglas Karpen — who, like the Philadelphia-based abortion practitioner, is also killing babies born alive after botched abortions. Unlike Gosnell, who killed babies by jamming medical scissors into their necks at his Houston abortion clinic, former employees of Karpen testify he goes one shocking step further, he kills the babies wit his bare hands by twisting their necks execution style.

Thus, far, the mainstream media hasn’t touched the Karpen expose’ outside of Texas-based news outlets, according to Google and Yahoo News searches.

Read more from this story HERE.

Oregon Scientists Clone and Kill Human Embryos for Dubious Research

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Photo Credit: LifeNewsBy David Prentice. Scientists in Oregon announced today that they had created cloned human embryos, and then destroyed the embryos to extract embryonic stem cells.

The cloning technique is essentially the same one used to create Dolly the cloned sheep, with some modifications to make cloning work using human eggs and human cells. This is the first claim of growing human embryonic stem cells from cloned human embryos since the fraudulent claims in 2004 and 2005 of Korean scientist Hwang Woo-Suk. The report, published online in the journal Cell, also highlights the fact that women are a target for raw materials for the cloning technique, since “premium quality” eggs are required to make their human cloning technique work.

It’s a grave concern that some scientists are still pursuing human cloning, a technology that will open the door to human engineering and a brave – but highly dangerous – new world. Human cloning by this technique requires the specific creation of a new individual, albeit cloned, at the embryo stage, using human eggs and human tissue cells.

Modern science has passed this by, especially in regards to stem cells. Creating and destroying cloned human embryos to extract their embryonic stem cells is unethical, and the entire faulty concept of using the cloning technique has been superseded by uncontroversial techniques. Read more from this story HERE.

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Study: Scientists Clone Stem Cells From Human Skin Cells

By Michael Allen. Human stem cells were cloned from adult human skin cells by scientists at Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU), according to a study published in the scientific journal Cell today.

According to a press release, OHSU scientists removed the DNA from donated egg cells and replaced it with DNA from an adult’s skin cells.

The researchers hoped that the stem cells would grow in the cloned embryo and would be a match for the skin cell donor. This process could help doctors perform reconstructive surgery on the skin donor.

Lead researcher Dr. Shoukhrat Mitalipo said that the stem cells (that grew in the embryo) were able to change “into several different cell types, including nerve cells, liver cells and heart cells.”

Dr. Mitalipov told NPR that to get the stem cells growing, researchers use some electricity and a small amount of caffeine. Read more from this story HERE.

Study Shows Children Accessing Porn At Age Six, Internet Flirting At Age Eight

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Photo Credit: opposing viewsA study has revealed the Internet habits of young children, and the results are startling.

The study found that many children start watching porn on the Internet at the age of six, and will begin “flirting” online when they are eight.

The study involved a survey of more than 19,000 parents. They compiled data about what sites the parents choose to block and those which the children have access to regularly.

They also found that about a quarter of children had at least one social network account, like Facebook, by the time they were 12 years old, and that they likely lie about their age when they create the profiles.

Around two percent of computer addicts were five years old and 17 percent were social media users by the time they were ten.

Read more from this story HERE.