Life Issues
Black Leaders Appeal to President and Congress
Black pro-life leaders have called on President Obama and Congress to remember unborn children when they seek to revitalize the economy.
"We urge an immediate end to all abortion funding with taxpayer money," Day Gardner, president of the National Black Pro-life Union, said in a September 9 written release. "Let's use our hard earned tax dollars to renew the spirit of our nation by helping [Americans] live — not die!"
Dean Nelson, executive director of the Network of Politically Active Christians, said legislators "who focus on the economy must ensure that their actions encourage the birth and not the termination of the next generation who will have to pay for all the debt we are now incurring."
Since taking office in 2009, Obama has revoked pro-life spending policies that barred federal funds for groups overseas that promote abortion. The federal government also has continued to grant money to abortion providers such as the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.
Planned Parenthood: The Business of Abortion
Planned Parenthood recorded nearly 20,000 more abortions and not even half as many adoption referrals in 2008 compared to 2007, according to a new report.
The fact sheet released from Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA) showed its affiliates performed 324,008 abortions in 2008, the latest year for which statistics have been reported by the organization. PPFA reported doing 305,310 abortions in 2007. The 2007 total was an increase from 2006, when the country's leading abortion provider reported 289,750 of the procedures.
Meanwhile, the latest fact sheet showed PPFA made only 2,405 adoption referrals in 2008. It recorded 4,912 adoption referrals in 2007.
"Keep in mind that Planned Parenthood is a business making a very clear business decision," said Rita Diller, national director of American Life League's Stop Planned Parenthood International project. "Abortion is its most lucrative 'service,' and like all businesses, Planned Parenthood is simply maximizing its profits from its primary moneymaker."
The fact that PPFA "is in the business of killing preborn children" is "macabre," Diller said in a September written release publicizing Planned Parenthood's new statistics. "Each one of those 324,008 abortions took the life of a unique, innocent, and unrepeatable human person."
PPFA received about $350 million in government grants and contracts during the 2007-08 financial year. It has yet to release its financial report for 2008-09.
Planned Parenthood's abortion figures include those performed by surgical means in its clinics, as well as those done by use of the abortion pill RU 486.
PPFA may be responsible for far more abortions, however. For instance, its affiliates distributed about 1.44 million "emergency contraception" kits in 2008. "Emergency contraception," also known as the "morning-after" pill, works to restrict ovulation in a woman, but it also can act after conception, causing an abortion. This mechanism of the drug blocks implantation of a tiny embryo in the uterine wall.
Maryland Suspends Another Doctor
The Maryland Board of Physicians suspended another abortion doctor's medical license in September, soon after it took similar action against three other abortion providers.
The board disciplined Romeo Ferrer, 69, as a result of his failure to care properly for a 21-year-old woman who died after he performed an abortion on her in 2006. She was sixteen weeks pregnant. The board found Ferrer gave her too much anesthesia and failed to monitor her condition according to his own policy.
The Philadelphia Inquirer reported in September that the Maryland board: 1) ordered Steve Brigham, who operates fifteen abortion clinics in four states and is unlicensed to practice medicine in Maryland, to stop performing abortions in the state; 2) suspended the license of George Shepard Jr., part-time director of Brigham's Maryland clinics, for unprofessional conduct and aiding Brigham in defying credentialing mandates; and 3) suspended the license of Nicola Riley, who has been traveling from Utah to Maryland every other week to do abortions in a Brigham clinic, after she injured a woman during an abortion.
An August police raid of one of Brigham's Maryland clinics uncovered frozen aborted babies as much as thirty-six weeks' gestation. Police also raided Brigham's clinic in Voorhees, New Jersey, which is near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Louisiana Penalizes Clinic
The state of Louisiana revoked the abortion facility license of a Shreveport clinic in September, making it the first one to face closure under a law enacted earlier this year.
The Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals (LDHH) ordered the Hope Medical Group for Women to stop performing abortions immediately, according to The Shreveport Times. Under the new law, the abortion clinic must surrender its license in thirty days if it does not appeal the revocation.
At an unannounced survey of the clinic August 11-13, LDHH found the clinic did not perform physicals on women prior to their abortions and did not have qualified personnel to administer anesthesia or monitor patients' conditions while under anesthesia.
"The violations were so egregious and so consistent that we felt it was necessary to order them to cease and desist immediately," said Anthony Keck, LDHH's interim secretary, The Times reported.
Baptist Press
SBC Calendar
JANUARY 2011
January Bible Study – January 2-5
Sanctity of Human Life Sunday – January 16
Day of Prayer for the SBC – January 30
FEBRUARY 2011
"True Love Waits" Emphasis – February 1-28
Racial Reconciliation Sunday – February 13
Focus on WMU – February 14-20
Children's Ministry Day – February 19
