Understanding Abortion Kills Children: Are We Smarter Than a Fifth Grader?

by Bryan Kemper
March 18, 2007

LifeNews.com Note: Bryan Kemper is the director of Stand True Ministries, a pro-life outreach for young people.

Last night I was sitting on the couch with my 2 year old son after we came home from the gym. I was looking down at him and he looked up and said, "Daddy, I like apples." It's funny how such a simple, little statement can melt your heart as a parent. It was nothing profound, just a smile as he told me he liked apples.

I looked up at the television and saw what triggered that statement. It was a new game show called, Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader? They use apples on the set, and that is what Jaemison saw that made him tell me that he likes apples.

Now the premise of the show is that most adults can't answer simple questions that fifth graders can answer. If you can answer 11 first to fifth grade test questions you win a million dollars. It's hilarious to see college graduates not able to do simple math or answer English questions.

Now I know how real this is because I see it every day--adults not knowing simple truths that are obvious to children. I can take a set of fetal models or pictures of babies in the womb to any first or fifth grade class room in this country.

I can ask the kids to identify what is in the picture, and they will tell me that it is a baby. I see it all summer as parents bring their kids to the booth and, when they see the fetal models, they say, "Baby, baby," as they try to reach down to pick one up.

Now you take these same models and pictures to a group of adults and you will get the most ridiculous answers to the same question: "a blob of tissues," "a potential life," "just a fetus." I have even heard them call the baby "a parasite" many times. It is sad that adults have to cloud a simple truth to justify a horrific action like abortion.

When it comes to something so simple as looking at a baby and knowing that it is a baby, we as a nation are obviously not smarter than a fifth grader. In fact we have killed over 1/3 of the fifth graders before they ever got a chance to go to school.

Terri Schiavo's Brother Endorses Sam Brownback's GOP Presidential Bid

by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
March 13, 2007

Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- Since Terri Schiavo was killed by her former husband via a painful euthanasia death two years ago, her family has largely avoided the political scene and preferred to build their foundation to help other disabled patients like her.

But a presidential race could have a significant effect on how patients like Terri are teated and her brother Bobby Schindler endorsed Kansas Sen. Sam Brownback's bid for the GOP nomination for president on Tuesday.

In a statement he sent to LifeNews.com, Bobby Schindler said “My family will never forget Sam Brownback’s valiant efforts to save my sister’s life."

“Sam Brownback is the pro-life conservative we can trust to stand for all life, regardless of political calculations," he said.

In 2005, Brownback joined the Schindler family to launch the Terri Schindler Schiavo Foundation, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to ensuring the rights of disabled, elderly, and vulnerable citizens against care-rationing, euthanasia, and medical killing.

In response to the endorsement, Brownback talked about the effects of Terri's death.

"Terri's plight highlighted the core question about the protection of human life: does the dignity with which we treat individuals depend on their physical or mental status as human beings?" he said in the statement LifeNews.com received.

"If a person's dignity depends only on his or her physical status, then life and death decisions about the most vulnerable among us become relative matters to be determined by doctors, judges, lawyers, and legislatures," he said.

"Once we go down the path of valuing some lives more than others, of saying that people with disabilities don't have the same dignity and right to life as others, there are very few means not justified by the sinister end of a disability-free society," Brownback explained.

Ironically, the endorsement comes just days after pro-life advocates criticized Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor who said he didn't think the Florida legislature or former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush should have gotten involved in trying to save Terri's life.

"I think it's probably best to leave these kinds of matters in the hands of the courts," Romney said yesterday to Bay News Channel 9 in Florida.

“Mitt Romney’s alleged pro-life conversion evidently does not to apply to all human life,” Schindler said in response. “The pro-life movement needs a leader we can trust in 2008 and I know Sam Brownback is that leader.”

Schindler made it clear that the endorsement was on his own behalf and not related to the foundation.

Related web sites:
Terri Schindler Schiavo Foundation - http://www.terrisfight.org

Italy Doctors Try to Save Baby Boy Who Survived Mistaken Abortion

by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
March 8, 2007

Florence, Italy (LifeNews.com) -- Doctors in Italy are furiously working to save the life of a baby boy who was born alive after he survived an abortion that should never have happened. The boy was slated to become the victim of an abortion but physicians realized they had misdiagnosed a physical deformity.

Doctors at the teaching hospital Careggi performed two ultrasounds on the boy and his mother and they said he had a defective esophagus. That's a disorder that surgery could have corrected after birth in some cases.

However, when they went to abort the baby boy, the discovered he was healthy and desperate tried to resuscitate him.

The baby, born at 22 weeks into pregnancy, weighed 500 grams (less than 18 ounces) at birth but physicians say that he had a brain hemorrhage during the abortion and they doubt he will survive.

According to The Australian newspaper, the boy was transferred to the city's children's hospital because Careggi didn't have room for follow-up care in the intensive care unit.

Hospital officials are defending the doctors saying their physicians advised the mother to have further diagnostic tests but that she opted for the abortion after consulting with a private doctor.

Doctors later said the ultrasound tests did not completely show the baby's body and that an incomplete diagnostic test with an ultrasound happens in one percent of the cases.

The Catholic Church is outraged by the abortion and the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano said a human life had been "thrown away in the horrible bureaucracy of a culture that rejects diversity and disability."

It condemned the physician who suggested the abortion as "not only morally but also ethically censurable."

February SFLA Conference Call Podcast

Listen in on the Feb. conference call. I believe there are 7 schools represented here in Ohio.

http://207.177.49.95/fcc/cgi-bin/play.mp3?id=7127757000:1051872

CEDARVILLE STUDENTS COLLECT SIGNATURES URGING SENATOR BROWN’S SUPPORT ON UNBORN CHILD PAIN AWARENESS ACT

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Tuesday, March 6, 2007

CEDARVILLE STUDENTS COLLECT SIGNATURES URGING SENATOR BROWN’S SUPPORT ON UNBORN CHILD PAIN AWARENESS ACT

CEDARVILLE -- Students for Life of Cedarville University have already acquired more than 1,000 student signatures and counting in support of a petition to U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, requesting his support for the Unborn Child Pain Awareness Act which requires a woman seeking an abortion after the 20th week be told by a physician the pain her unborn child will experience and be given the option of having pain reducing drugs administered to the child.

“We are deeply concerned about the excruciating pain that tens of thousands of unborn children are subjected to every year through abortion. Women have the right to receive full information about the pain their child will experience; it is unconscionable that this is often withheld,” said Murray Vasser, President of Cedarville Students for Life.

Senate Bill 356 was introduced by U.S. Senator Sam Brownback and is strongly opposed by the National Abortion Federation, Planned Parenthood, and the ACLU. The Act acknowledges that an unborn child can feel and even experienced heightened pain. “Consider the D&E abortion. During this procedure, commonly performed after 20-weeks -- when there is medical evidence that the child can experience severe pain -- the child is torn apart limb from limb. Think about how that must feel to a young human. We would never allow a dog to be treated this way. Yet, the creature we are talking about is a young, unborn child," said Senator Brownback.

The full text of the petition can be found on the Cedarville Students for Life website: http://people.cedarville.edu/stuorg/studentsforlife/

For more information please contact Murray Vasser at (937) 605-4017 or studentsforlife@cedarville.edu

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Paid for by Students for Life of Cedarville University • 251 North Main St. • Cedarville, Ohio • 45314 • studentsforlife@cedarville.edu

Sam Brownback Says Wilberforce His Pro-Life Model, Condemns Human Cloning

by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
March 1, 2007

Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- Sam Brownback, the Kansas senator seeking the GOP nomination for president, told LifeNews.com on Thursday that he's upset that the state of Iowa has approved a bill overturning its ban on human cloning. He also explained how anti-slavery advocate William Wilberforce is his model for his pro-life advocacy.

The Iowa legislature has approved a bill that would repeal its ban on all forms of human cloning and Brownback, who has sponsored congressional legislation to ban it, is dismayed by what's happened.

"Unfortunately, we have a bad trend starting and hopefully it's not a permanent trend," Brownback said in a telephone interview with LifeNews.com.

"The creation of human life for research purposes that was supposedly banned has now been overturned," he added. "Unfortunately, it appears [Iowa Gov. Chet Culver] will sign it into law."

Brownback said that, like slavery, human cloning for either research or reproductive purposes turns human beings into property.

"This is the creation of human life specifically for research," he said. "Any time we have done this in human nature, we have always regretted it. Are we going to make the same mistakes today?"

The senator explained that, with advanced in adult stem cell research, "we don't need to do this. We don't need to demean human life this way."

Brownback said the state of Delaware is considering a similar proposal to allow and promote human cloning and he urged lawmakers there to "reconsider what they're doing and think about the message they're sending to society if we can treat human life as property."

"It is not consistent with the values of the people. The science is going the other way and we can work together to find ways to research that are legitimate and morally acceptable," he said.

The Kansas senator responded to a question from LifeNews.com and said William Wilberforce, who is profiled in the recent movie "Amazing Grace," has been a model for his pro-life efforts to stop both abortion and cloning.

"I have modeled much of my work off of what he did," Brownback explained, saying Wilberforce often crossed party lines or other political issues to press his cause. "I will work with anybody on the political spectrum regarding these causes."

Brownback said that Wilberforce would likely be a strong pro-life advocate if he was an elected official now.

"If he were alive today, one of the greatest causes he would take up is the cause of human dignity and that applies to the child in the womb," Brownback said.

Brownback said that, like the British statesman's slavery fight, he thinks the battle against abortion and the mistreatment of unborn children will eventually be won.

"I believe Roe v. Wade will be overturned because it's not the right way to go -- because it treats human life as a piece of property. It was wrong then and it's wrong now."