Friday, November 3, 2017

Newborn Baby Wearing Only a Diaper Found Abandoned Behind a Local Business

 INTERNATIONAL   MICAIAH BILGER   NOV 2, 2017   |   11:02AM    HALIFAX, NOVA SCOTIA
Canadian police still are searching for the parents of an infant who was abandoned Sunday behind a business in a popular Halifax shopping district.
CTV News reports two women found the baby girl wearing a diaper and a onesie and surrounded by dirty blankets on the steps behind a business Sunday evening in the Nova Scotia city. Authorities said the baby is about a month old and is African-Canadian.
The baby girl appears to be doing well. According to authorities, the temperature was unseasonably warm that evening, around 14 C (57 F), and a local hospital that examined the baby said she is healthy. The baby is being placed in foster care.
Constable Dianne Penfound told the Canadian Press that they are interviewing witnesses and looking at surveillance video from the area. She urged the baby’s parents to come forward.
“I don’t know what the circumstances are, but (we want) to find out why they felt that leaving the child where they did was the right thing to do and we’ll go from there,” Penfound said.
Unlike the United States, Canada does not have safe haven laws. All 50 states in America have some type of law that allows women to abandon their newborns at a police station or hospital without fear of prosecution.
The news of the infant abandonment has stirred up renewed calls for safe haven laws in Canada. But one Canadian leader claims the country does not need them.
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“We have a totally different health-care system that helps tremendously,” Grant Wilson, president of the Canadian Children’s Rights Council, told The Canadian Free Press. “We’ve lifted children out of living in poverty to a great degree, with a few exceptions.”
Wilson argued that cases of infant abandonment are extremely rare in Canada, and then used the Halifax baby’s case as a chance to criticize the U.S. healthcare system.
Here’s more from the report:
Wilson said the American model is based on the fact that some low-income women in the United States simply can’t afford to give birth in a hospital, which he said can cost about US$10,000 for those without private health insurance.
“We don’t need (safe haven laws) in Canada,” said Wilson, whose non-profit advocacy group has been around since the early 1990s. “We have very few cases (of child abandonment) because we’re not in the same social system.”
Ellen Campbell of Abuse Hurts, an organization that helps abuse victims, disagrees. She told CTV News that she buried six abandoned babies in Ontario. Campbell said safe haven laws would help vulnerable infants and mothers who are struggling, for whatever reason, to care for their child.
And Elisa Romano, a psychology professor at the University of Ottawa, told the Press that there is no way to know for sure the parents’ reasons for abandoning their baby girl. She said they may be struggling with mental health issues or cultural or religious stigma.
“We can guess that this mom must have been in a lot of distress and must have been feeling quite desperate to give up her baby in such a manner,” Romano said. “She could have been overwhelmed at the prospect of caring for a child.”
The United States does not keep statistics about the number of babies saved through safe haven laws, but experts have estimated the number to be in the thousands. Between 2004 and 2011, about 50 infants in Texas alone were surrendered under its safe haven law, according to the Dallas Morning News.
If you or someone you know would like more information about relinquishing a newborn baby, please call 1-866-99BABY1 or go to www.SafeHavenLaw.com.

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Abortion Advocate on Pro-Life People: “Only Religious Zealots” Oppose Abortion

 OPINION   PAUL STARK   NOV 2, 2017   |   6:30PM    ST. PAUL, MINNESOTA
In a [Minneapolis] Star Tribune opinion piece, local writer Bonnie Blodgett attributes the pro-life view to “only religious zealots.” Other pro-choice advocates routinely dismiss the pro-life position on the grounds that it is a mere religious belief and therefore may not be “imposed” on our pluralistic society.
No appeal to religion
This claim is mistaken in two ways. First, the pro-life position is not inherently religious. Pro-lifers contend that abortion takes the life of an intrinsically valuable human being and should be prohibited by law as a matter of basic justice. This view is supported by empirical facts of biology (which show that the unborn, the human fetus or embryo, is a bona fide member of our species) and a foundational moral principle (namely, the equal dignity and right to life of every human being). Thus pro-lifers offer serious moral arguments using science and philosophy; they need not appeal to God, religious authority or sacred texts.
Killing unborn human beings is unjust for the same reason as killing five-year-old human beings. Since one need not be religious to recognize and argue against the wrong of killing five-year-old children, one need not be religious to oppose the killing of abortion. Indeed, many non-religious people are pro-life, such as the atheist writer Nat Hentoff and the members of SecularProLife.org.
Dr. Bernard Nathanson, the prominent abortion doctor and co-founder of NARAL, was an atheist when he famously changed his mind and became a pro-life advocate (though years later he converted to Catholicism). Nathanson switched sides on the basis of the scientific evidence, not religious teaching.
Religious influence legitimate
Second, many pro-lifers do hold a religiously-informed and/or religiously-motivated pro-life position. But that fact does not render it illegitimate or unworthy of public consideration. Religion has played a central role in the work of social reformers throughout history. William Wilberforce passionately and tirelessly led the effort to abolish the British slave trade—and he did so with distinctly biblical motivation. Martin Luther King Jr. was a Christian minister who grounded his civil rights efforts in his religious perspective. Both Wilberforce and King successfully fought to change the law to reflect their religiously-informed moral views.
But those views—that slavery and racial discrimination are morally wrong—are not exclusively religious beliefs. And they should not be ruled out-of-bounds because they have deep ties to religion and religious people.
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Ironically, some pro-choice advocates, such as the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, argue for their position on explicitly religious grounds. In an extraordinary bit of both ignorance and poor reasoning, U.S. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi has defended her support for unfettered abortion on demand by appealing to the teachings of her Catholic faith.
If pro-life religious views are not a legitimate basis for public policy, then neither is Pelosi’s pro-choice position. Many other pro-choice politicians, including former President Barack Obama, frequently offer religious references in support of their preferred public policies.
Separation of church and state?
Some people claim that religiously-informed policy positions violate the “separation of church and state” contained in the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. But the Constitution only prohibits establishment of a national religion or interference with religious belief or practice. It protects religion from government, not the other way around. People of faith, and people of no faith, are free to propose and defend their views in the public square.
Hostility toward religion—or the nebulous fear of certain religious groups forcing their beliefs on others—is really just an excuse to reject the pro-life position without due consideration. The pro-life view is indeed supported and taught by numerous religious traditions. But it is also a moral truth accessible to people of any or no theological persuasion.
And pro-choice advocates will have to deal with it.
LifeNews.com Note: Paul Stark is a member of the staff of Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life, a statewide pro-life group.

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Doctors Say This Man is Brain Dead and Want to Remove Life Support, His Parents Say He’s Still Alive

 INTERNATIONAL   ALEX SCHADENBERG   NOV 2, 2017   |   11:53AM    TORONTO, CANADA
The Canadian Press reported that the family of a Toronto man is challenging Ontario’s brain death guidelines because based on the Jewish faith, their son is not dead, but alive. The Canadian Press reported:
Shalom Ouanounou’s family is asking the court for an injunction to keep him on a ventilator and feeding tube while it pushes to have his death certificate revoked.
A notice of application filed by Ouanounou’s father and substitute decision-maker shows he seeks to challenge the Canadian guidelines on brain death on grounds that they do not accommodate religious beliefs.
The document says those guidelines define death as the irreversible cessation of brain function and of the capacity to breathe.
It says that Orthodox Judaism, the faith Ouanounou practises, considers death to be complete cardiac and respiratory failure.
The application argues that disregarding those beliefs would represent a serious assault on Ouanounou’s human dignity and religious liberty.
It says the matter raises a “serious constitutional issue.”
Shalom Ouanounou, 25, had an asthma attack at home on September 27 and was taken by ambulance to Humber River Hospital, where he was intubated and placed on a respirator. Three days later doctors declared Ouanounou as brain dead and issued his death certificate.
The case is being heard in a Toronto court today. The Euthanasia Prevention Coalition is considering intervenor standing in this case.
LifeNews.com Note: Alex Schadenberg is the executive director of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition and you can read his blog here.
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Abortion Activists Sue to Overturn Texas Law Banning Dismemberment Abortions

 STATE   MICAIAH BILGER   NOV 2, 2017   |   12:17PM    AUSTIN, TX
Abortion activists are suing Texas again, this time to be allowed to continue aborting unborn babies through a brutal dismemberment technique.
The Texas abortion chain Whole Woman’s Health, Planned Parenthood and other abortion groups are scheduled to begin arguing their case in court Thursday, Dallas News reports.
Signed into law earlier this summer, Texas Senate Bill 8 prohibits dismemberment abortions, a method typically used in the second trimester to kill nearly fully-formed, living unborn babies. It is a barbaric and dangerous procedure in which the unborn baby is ripped apart in the womb and pulled out in pieces while his or her heart is still beating.
Liberal U.S. District Judge Lee Yeakel temporarily blocked the state from enforcing the lawin late August until the case could go to trial. He also is presiding over the hearing this week.
The abortion industry’s case is based on the claim that the law will outlaw the most common second-trimester abortion procedure (dilation and evacuation or D&E) and put an undue burden on women’s access to abortion.
Texas Right to Life explains more details about the case:
The plaintiffs allege in their filing with the court that the ban “threatens the health of Plaintiff’s patients and their access to abortion care, subjects Plaintiffs to criminal penalties, and violates Plaintiffs’ patients’ constitutional rights.”
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s team, the leading defendants in the case, has clarified that not all D&E abortions are banned by the measure, but rather those procedures that dismember a living preborn child, defined as “Dismemberment Abortions” in the legislation.  Part of the legal basis for the legislation is the Supreme Court’s 2007 ruling in Gonzales v. Carhart in which the highest court in the United States affirmed that states have a compelling interest in protecting the Life of the preborn child by outlawing particularly gruesome and inhumane procedures.
Yeakel has a history of ruling against life-protecting legislation. However, pro-life leaders said they are not discouraged.
“We welcome the lawsuit,” Texas RTL’s Melissa Conway said in July. “We believe the state has a right to ban this gruesome procedure. The lawsuit just moves us one step closer to overturning Roe vs. Wade.”
The pro-life organization said if Yeakel rules against the law, the state likely will appeal to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, which considers protections for unborn life more fairly.
“Texas Right to Life supports Attorney General Ken Paxton’s efforts to defend the Dismemberment Abortion Ban in the highest court possible to honor Texas’ intent to protect innocent human Life,” the pro-life organization said in a statement.
The legislation received strong support in the Texas legislature this year, and Gov. Greg Abbott signed it into law in June.
The law made Texas the eighth state to protect developing preborn children from such a heinous act. Earlier this year, Arkansas also enacted its Unborn Child Protection from Dismemberment Abortion Act joining Alabama, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma and West Virginia.
The dismemberment abortion ban embodies model legislation from the National Right to Life Committee that would prohibit “dismemberment abortion,” using forceps, clamps, scissors or similar instruments on a living unborn baby to remove him or her from the womb in pieces while their heart still is beating. Such instruments typically are used in dilation and evacuation (D&E) procedures.

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