A Day in the Life of a Pregnancy Care Center

What's it like inside a PCC? What goes on behind the scenes? Read Baptists for Life's most recent issue of Life Matters and find out how each day carries potential for great joy and great loss, and every encounter with a client brings a unique challenge. Then download it, copy it, and distribute in your church bulletin.

Cooling Down the Cassandras

Warnings about cataclysmic warming increase in stridency as evidence of warming becomes more elusive. JWR

Post-human Earth: How the planet will recover from us

Whether our species would survive is hard to predict, but what of the fate of the Earth itself? It is often said that when we talk about "saving the planet" we are really talking about saving ourselves: the planet will be just fine without us. But would it? New Scientist

Events in Congress reveal abortion funding is in health care plans

The Senate Finance Committee Wednesday continued a series of meetings to amend the "America's Healthy Future Act," a health care restructuring bill proposed by Chairman Max Baucus (D-MT). The bill has a number of major abortion-related problems. Most of today's abortion-related debate in the committee focused on a proposed new program that would use tax money to help purchase private health insurance for about 19 million Americans. The bill specifically authorizes the use of these federal funds to pay premiums on private plans that cover elective abortions -- a departure from longstanding federal policy. NRLC

Hope for the sanctity of human life

“Planned Parenthood had financial resources to deal with every legal and political challenge imaginable,” says Care Net President Melinda Delahoyde. “But the irony is that their electoral victory last November pushed Care Net pregnancy centers to the front lines of the fight for life. Now, they have to compete for women’s hearts on our terms. To stop abortion, we offer grace, compassion, and unconditional support — reaching one woman at a time, saving one life at a time. When your empire is built on the slaughter of innocent life, you cannot compete in those arenas. Planned Parenthood can only hope our message doesn’t reach too many of their clients.” Care Net

Antiabortion black ministers to endorse Obama's healthcare plan

For weeks, President Obama has tried to combat claims that his healthcare overhaul would mean tax dollars going toward abortions, calling the assertion a "myth." Today, his argument may gain some strength: A group of black church leaders who oppose abortion is set to endorse the president's health plan. LA Times

NIH issues new stem cell research guidelines

The National Institutes of Health released draft guidelines that permit federal funding for research on stem cells from human embryos set to be discarded by fertility clinics. Scientific American

Abortion Fight Complicates Debate on Health Care

As if it were not complicated enough, the debate over health care in Congress is becoming a battlefield in the fight over abortion. NY Times

Shared via AddThis

Why I am Pro-Life

Why am I personally pro-life? There are several reasons in several areas. I will freely admit most of them are firmly set in my faith. With the Bible as my guide I see staunchly defending life at all stages is the only way to go. Carolyn Cavanaugh's blog

7 billion and counting

Overpopulation is often singled out as the planet's root problem. If only it were that simple. Leading thinkers on population can't agree on what the answers – or even the questions – are. New Scientist

A Modest Proposal: How to Stop Aging Entirely

Many people presume that, when we talk about combating aging, we’re only talking about stretching out the grim years of debilitation and disease with which most people’s lives currently end. In fact, the opposite is true. The defeat of aging will entail the elimination of that period, by postponing it to indefinitely greater ages so that people never reach it. There will, quite simply, cease to be a portion of the population that is frail and infirm as a result of age. Discover

Teenage Birth Rates Higher In More Religious States

Rates of births to teenage mothers are strongly predicted by conservative religious beliefs, even after controlling for differences in income and rates of abortion. Researchers writing in BioMed Central's open access journal Reproductive Health have found a strong association between teenage birth rates and state-level measures of religiosity in the U.S. Medical News Today

2009 State Legislative Sessions in Review

Despite Congress and the Obama Administration’s pursuit of an incremental strategy to implement a regime of unregulated and unrestricted abortion-on-demand, fund unethical and destructive biotechnologies, and coerce and undermine the consciences of health care providers, the majority of states continue their pursuit of life-affirming laws and policies. In 2009, approximately 60 pro-life measures were enacted in the states, a marked increase from 2008. This accomplishment is especially notable given that there was a nearly one-third decline in the number of pro-life measures introduced in the states in 2009 (as compared to 2008 activity levels). AUL

Labour aide calls one-child China a success

China's one- child policy - which has resulted in forced abortions, infanticide and compulsory sterilisation - has had a 'positive impact' on the country's economic performance, one of Labour's leading advisers says today. But human rights campaigners criticised Lord Turner for appearing to support the draconian laws, claiming they had led to untold misery for women and children. Daily Mail

Pregnant mum must give up baby after IVF blunder

A pregnant woman has spoken of her anguish at having to give up her IVF baby after being mistakenly implanted with another couple’s embryo. Carolyn Savage and her husband Sean will hand over the baby boy when she gives birth in two weeks. The religious couple decided early in the pregnancy not to have a termination but to return the child who is not genetically theirs. Daily Express

Will Babies with Down Syndrome Just Disappear?

Albert Mohler writes: "The development of prenatal diagnostic technologies presents a constellation of moral issues -- with the diagnosis of Down syndrome front and center. Over the past several years, a marked decrease in the number of babies born with Down syndrome has been both observed and widely reported. This decrease can be traced directly to the decision to abort after prenatal diagnosis. . . . Skotko's research indicating that 92 percent of women who learn they are carrying a baby with Down syndrome choose to abort the pregnancy. That is more than nine out of ten." Christian Post, Washington Post, Science Daily

Economy Makes Women Wait on Children, Could Increase Abortions

A new survey conducted by the pro-abortion Alan Guttmacher Institute has produced the first hard evidence showing that women are waiting to have children because of the economic downturn. Although the poll did not ask women about abortion, abortions could be rising as a result. LifeNews

Minnesota Church's Pro-Life Memorial Vandalized

The monument in memory of "Victims of Abortion" was vandalized late Saturday or early Sunday at Sacred Heart Catholic Church. It was pushed over and the slab containing the memorial broke from its base. Whoever pushed over the nearly 500-pound pro-life memorial must have done so on purpose because massive force would have been needed to topple it. LifeNews

NIH picks stem cell panel

In March of this year, US President Barack Obama issued an executive order to overturn the embryonic stem cell policy implemented by former President George W. Bush, which outlawed federal funding for human embryonic stem cell lines derived after August 9, 2001. The new order allows for federal support of additional cell lines, provided they meet "strict regulations" regarding the embryo procurement process. The Scientist

Sex, lies, and abortion

Why does the pro-choice movement continue to prevail legally and politically? If you're going to have a sexual revolution, you have to be ready to clean up the debris. After 35 years, the debris has become a mountain, and as a society, we are still adding bodies to the heap. No one in the pro-choice camp, of course, wants to admit any of this. It's also painful to one's self-image to acknowledge a willingness to sustain permissive sexual values by killing the unborn. This analysis might explain why otherwise compassionate people fight so tenaciously against the most helpless and vulnerable of all living creatures, unborn persons. It won't be easy, but somehow the case against abortion must include a case against sexual libertinism. Christianity Today

Aborted fetal DNA in vaccines linked to autism?

Just when the pharmaceutical industry thought the vaccine/autism controversy had been resolved, the National Vaccine Advisory Committee has recommended further study of vaccine safety. A perceived fear of the safety of the US vaccination schedule has led increasing numbers of parents to opt out of full compliance. . . . What the NVAC has overlooked, however, in their recommendations, is that epidemic regressive autism is associated with the switch from using animal cells to produce vaccines to the use of aborted human fetal cells for vaccine production. Now when we vaccinate our children, some vaccines also deliver contaminating aborted human fetal DNA. The safety of this has never been tested. Sound Choice Pharmaceutical Institute

Additional resource: Children of God for Life has updated (as of August 12, 2009) its chart showing the various aborted fetal cell lines that serve as the sources of vaccines and whatever alternatives are available. Click 'Vaccine Sources' from the menu.

The church and the PCC: An uneasy marriage

A pregnancy care center needs to partner with the local churches in its area. But when it comes to the relationship between local churches and PCCs around North America, why is it that many churches just don't get it? Why is the marriage such an uneasy one? The mission of the local church and the mission of the PCC are very compatible, and the two organizations should work together. Many churches in the United States and Canada have no interest, understanding, and, in some instances, appreciation for the pro-life movement and the ongoing ministries of PCCs. Why? At the Center

Progressive Christians Less Pro-Life Than Evangelicals

A new poll conducted by an institute at the University of Akron may be unique in that it is the first ever to evaluate the competing political interests of evangelicals and progressive Christians. Conservative and progressive religious activists have markedly different political priorities as evangelicals overwhelmingly identify abortion as one of the most important political issues while fewer than 10 percent of progressive religious activists say it is among the "most important" political issues. LifeNews, the report

One week away from 40 Days for Life

Last fall, on the third day of the 40 Days for Life prayer vigil in Sarasota, Florida, a nervous Hispanic woman went to the local Planned Parenthood abortion center with her mother and brother. The 40 Days for Life prayer volunteers offered her literature, but she didn't understand their English. When a bilingual counselor arrived, she learned that the woman was in her 14th week of pregnancy and she was seeking a second-trimester abortion. The counselor instead offered real help to get her to one of the local pregnancy resource centers. As a result, she chose life for her baby.

One week from today -- Wednesday, September 23 -- the largest 40 Days for Life campaign in history launches in 212 cities across 45 American states, 5 Canadian provinces, and Denmark. For 40 intense days, tens of thousands of faithful volunteers will be praying, fasting, holding peaceful vigils outside abortion facilities, and spreading the pro-life message through community outreach.

The Health Care Debate: Is There a Religious Mandate?

When President Obama used the phrase "bearing false witness" on Aug. 19 to describe opponents of his health care reform plan in an address to religious leaders, it set off a firestorm of religious banter about who really has the moral high ground when it comes to health care. Fox News