More News on Life...

Forced Abortions:

"Elliot Institute spokesperson Amy Solby tells OneNewsNow that one study found 64 percent of women who had abortions reported they felt pressured to abort by others. "Something like 80 percent of them said that they didn't get the counseling they needed to make a good decision, that often they were not given counseling at all, or that the counseling they had was inadequate," she explains.

Solby also mentions forced abortions, which are not widely discussed in the U.S. An article released from the Institute cites two cases in 2006 in which teenage girls were violently persuaded to have abortions. In Maine, a couple abducted their 19-year-old daughter, bound and gagged her, and drove her to New York for an abortion. However, she escaped from her parents in the parking lot of a store and called police from her cell phone.

That same year, a Georgia mother forced her pregnant 16-year-old daughter to drink turpentine in hopes of aborting her baby. She was later arrested for criminal abortion after her daughter told the school counselor about the incident. The Institute has studied other cases where women are commonly threatened, pressured, or subjected to violence for refusing to abort.

"There's not any necessarily real hard numbers on violent [coercion] but, if you consider that homicide is the leading killer of pregnant women according to several studies, and then the fact that a large number of them have to do with the fact that the woman was killed or assaulted...because she refused to have an abortion or in an attempt to force her to abort," Solby concludes."

More Tax Money for Abortion:

"The Senate majority leader (Harry Reid -D-Nevada) has introduced "The Prevention First Act" -- a measure that would provide billions of taxpayer dollars in part to promote abortion. Jim Sedlak of American Life League reports a large slice of the pie would go to Planned Parenthood -- and the bill would do other things, he adds.

"Including writing Title X into permanent law so that it doesn't have to be reauthorized every year," Sedlak explains. "And Title X right now gives Planned Parenthood over $70 million a year -- and they want to more than double what Title X does."

Jim Sedlak 1Senate Bill 21 would also pump more money into comprehensive sex education, which Sedlak stresses encourages children to begin intimacy. "It provides a massive $10-million program to promote the emergency contraception [Plan B, or the 'morning-after pill']. This is a product that, for every kit that Planned Parenthood sells, they make $25 in profit -- and last year they sold over [1.2 million] kits."

In cases involving minors, those kits were sold without notifying parents or police"....

Illegal activities of well-known Wichita, Kansas, late-term abortionist George Tiller:
(info about Tiller, this abortionist has built his reputation killing babies after 22 weeks gestation. He faces 19 criminal charges of conducting illegal abortions. Operation Rescue released the results of an undercover investigation earlier this week that caught Tiller's abortion clinic altering the results of a sonogram so as to appear to be complying with the law.)

"In Kansas, late-term abortions are illegal except under certain limited circumstances. Operation Rescue president Troy Newman notes that abortions are legal up to 24 weeks gestation. However, an investigation at Women's Health Care Services in Wichita reveals Tiller's employees could be manipulating the numbers.

"Operation Rescue conducted a long-term, three-month undercover investigation of George Tiller's abortion mill and found that he was intentionally underestimating the fetal ages of the babies to circumvent the state law that prohibits post-viability abortions without another concurring physician," he alleges. ...

According to an Operation Rescue release, the information was discovered by a pregnant volunteer who sought an abortion at Tiller's clinic and in subsequent phone calls that were recorded as well as multiple and purposeful misreadings of sonograms."...

Fathers are Important

"A new study by Priscilla Coleman and colleagues has been published in the International Journal of Mental Health Addiction. This study uses data from the Fragile Families and Well-Being Study. The sample was drawn from hospitals in 16 cities around the country, which had high numbers of unmarried births. The final sample consisted of families with one child. The mothers then either aborted or gave birth to a subsequent child. The family characteristics indicated that the families met the requirement of being fragile: 87% were not married, 41% had less than a high school education, and 32% had an annual income under $15,000. Racial breakdown was 24% white, 56% black, 15% Hispanic, 1% Asian and 4% American Indian. The ages of the participants fell into the age range when most abortions now occur, that is, 64% were between 20 and 29 years of age. In this sample, 76.9% of the women with a subsequent pregnancy reported that the same man fathered both the first and second pregnancy. This is a surprisingly high level of stability, given the fragility of the family unit.

This study looked at the reasons women chose childbirth or abortion for their subsequent pregnancy. It is unique, in that, it examined the decision-making process in the context of the relationship with the father of the child. No other research on abortion decision-making has taken the family context into account. This is an especially important issue for our future consideration, since so many abortions are currently performed on women with other living children, implying the presence of the father of the children.

The results of the study indicated that the most important factors in determining the women's choice to abort a second pregnancy were those associated with the father's inability or unwillingness to provide assistance in rearing the first child. Women were significantly more likely to abort if they reported that the father of the child cannot be trusted to "watch the child for a week," "take good care of the child," "watch the child when the mothers needs to do things," "does not support the mother's way of raising the child," "does not respect the schedule and rules" for the child, etc. In addition, it was found that mothers who were married to the father were significantly more likely to deliver the baby.

What is especially interesting are the variables that did not appear to influence the choice of abortion vs. delivery. For example, the difficulty of raising the child, based on poor temperament of the child or the need for frequent medical intervention, did not affect the choice to abort. In addition, financial considerations were not important in the decision. Employment and income did not predict the decision to abort. Surprisingly, aggression directed toward the mother by the father was not a factor in the choice to abort. On the other hand, women who chose to abort the second baby, demonstrated more substance abuse following the abortion; and they were more apt to be physically abused by the father.

The results of this study are counter to the prevailing opinion that women abort because of poverty and financial considerations. Instead, these mothers were more apt to make the decision based on whether or not they would be supported in their role as a mother by a father who had already demonstrated an ability to care for one of his children. Furthermore, marriage was a protective factor in determining the parents' decision to keep and raise their child.

This study supports the idea that abortion occurs in the context of a family. It requires both a committed mother and father to assure the choice to deliver and care for a child. Fathers are, not only important, but possibly decisive in the choice to have an abortion."