Sanctity of Life

Parents keep mentally disabled daughter child-size for easier care

Seattle Post-Intelligencer January 4, 2007

The parents of a mentally disabled girl have had a Seattle hospital give her treatments to keep her child-size so that she’ll be easier to care for.

Nine-year-old named Ashley recently completed 2 1/2 years of treatments.

The treatments included a hysterectomy, the removal of her breast buds, and a course of estrogen.

KING-TV reports the treatment was approved by the ethics board at Children’s Hospital. Dr. Benjamin Wilfond said the hospital agreed to the treatment to benefit the child.

She has a severe brain impairment called static encephalopathy. She can’t walk or talk. She’s fed through a tube and has the developmental ability of a baby.

Ashley’s parents bring her to Children’s Hospital every three months so that doctors can monitor her height, weight and estrogen levels.

Read the rest of this entry>>

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedintumblrmail

All the abortion lies fit to print

Jewish World Review Michelle Malkin January 3, 2007

It’s official: The editors of The New York Times have no shame. Don’t take my word for it. Listen to the Times’ own ombudsman, Byron Calame.

On Sunday, Calame wrote a stunning column debunking an April 9 New York Times Magazine cover story on abortion in El Salvador. The sensational piece by freelance writer Jack Hitt alleged that women there had been thrown in prison for 30-year terms for having had abortions. Hitt described his visit to one of them, inmate Carmen Climaco. “She is now 26 years old, four years into her 30-year sentence” for aborting an 18-week-old fetus, Hitt reported.

[Read more…]

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedintumblrmail

“Vegetative” Patient May Have Awareness

From Wesley Smith Blog:

Sophisticated brain scans of a woman diagnosed to be in a persistent vegetative state has revealed startling levels of activity. Indeed, it may indicate that she is aware.

The description of the patient in question is startlingly similar to Terri Schiavo: “Scientists don’t even agree on whether the woman had some real awareness–she seemed to follow, mentally, certain commands–or if her brain was responding more automatically to speech.”

[Read more…]

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedintumblrmail

Teen Suicide Epidemic Puzzles the Netherlands: It Shouldn’t

From Wesley Smith email:

This is an excellent column by Colleen Carroll Campbell, a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center (EPPC). Apparently, a teenage “suicide craze” has hit the Netherlands and the government wonders why. But Campbell knows. The Dutch do “not seem to grasp the obvious,” she writes. “The law is a teacher and Dutch law has taught its young citizens well. The radical and sweeping embrace of suicide as an answer to the problem of human suffering, and the elevation of euthanasia to the status of a basic human right, has convinced Dutch teenagers that suicide must be a noble act, the kind that wins plaudits, prestige, and even legal protection.

[Read more…]

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedintumblrmail

Docs: Comatose Man’s Brain Rewired Itself

Ed. This is the reason why we have to keep the euthansia crowd away from the infirm. They would argue that Terry Wallis should be dead. Note too how quickly the reporter points out the same cannot be hoped for someone like Terri Schaivo; clearly an implicit defense of her killing given how early it appears in the piece.

Brietbart.com Marilynn Marchione July 3, 2006

Man wakes from coma after 20 years.Doctors have their first proof that a man who was barely conscious for nearly 20 years regained speech and movement because his brain spontaneously rewired itself by growing tiny new nerve connections to replace the ones sheared apart in a car crash.

Terry Wallis, 42, is one of the few people known to have recovered so dramatically so long after a serious brain injury. He still needs help eating and cannot walk, but his speech continues to improve and he can count to 25 without interruption.

Wallis’ sudden recovery happened three years ago at a rehabilitation center in Mountain View, Ark., but doctors said the same cannot be hoped for people in a persistent vegetative state, such as Terri Schiavo, the Florida woman who died last year after a fierce right-to- die court battle. Nor do they know how to make others with less serious damage, like Wallis, recover.

[Read more…]

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedintumblrmail

Sex Education Bait and Switch

Illinois Right to Life Committee William Beckman May, 2006

The push by Planned Parenthood for “comprehensive sex education” in Illinois has generated recent media coverage. Their web site to promote this push (www.responsiblesexed.org) states, “Teaching a strong abstinence message in concert with information on contraception is considered a ‘best practice’ in teen pregnancy prevention.”

[Read more…]

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedintumblrmail

Euthanasia: doctors aid 3,000 deaths

The Guardian Sarah Boseley Wednesday January 18, 2006

First UK study provokes furore

Doctors in the UK were responsible for the deaths, through euthanasia, of nearly 3,000 people last year, it was revealed yesterday in the first authoritative study of the decisions they take when faced with terminally-ill patients. More than 170,000 patients, almost a third of all deaths, had treatment withdrawn or withheld which would have hastened their demise.

The figures, extrapolated from the study, show rates of euthanasia and doctor-assisted suicide which are significantly lower than anywhere else in Europe, Australia and New Zealand, where similar studies have been done. The numbers immediately provoked controversy.

. . . more

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedintumblrmail