WASHINGTON (BP)–Three abortion clinics that were responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of unborn children have closed in recent weeks in the United States. The clinics were:
— Women’s Services P.C. in Omaha, Neb.;
— Central Women’s Services in Wichita, Kan.;
— Summit Medical Center in Birmingham, Ala.
The closings continued a trend for abortion providers during the last two decades. The number of abortion providers in the United States has decreased by 37 percent since 1982, according to a 2003 report published by the Alan Guttmacher Institute. That same study showed 87 percent of U.S. counties do not have an abortion provider.
The Women’s Services clinic in Omaha closed June 30 as a result of its building’s purchase by the Child Saving Institute, which operates a daycare and substance abuse program, according to LifeNews.com. The abortion clinic may be relocated in Omaha, but pro-lifers said the owner has had difficulty finding a property owner willing to lease space to his business, according to the report.
Women’s Services was Omaha’s only abortion clinic, LifeNews reported. Pro-life advocates estimated as many as 60,000 abortions were performed at the clinic during its 33 years of operation.
The pro-life activist organization Operation Rescue bought the Wichita clinic and announced its closing June 29. Operation Rescue plans to renovate the building for use as its headquarters, which will include a memorial to unborn abortion victims. O.R. President Troy Newman said the closing of the clinic is “an encouragement to the pro-life movement that, through God’s grace, we are winning the abortion battle one closed mill at a time.”
According to an O.R. estimate, more than 50,000 babies died at the Wichita clinic in its 23 years of business. The number of abortions performed at the Wichita clinic had declined in recent years, according to The Wichita Eagle. Another clinic, Women’s Health Care Services, where George Tiller is recognized as the country’s leading, late-term abortion doctor, has performed most of the abortions in Wichita for several years, the newspaper reported.
The Birmingham clinic surrendered its license June 14 rather than face a hearing six days later in which the state health department planned to press for a license revocation, according to The Birmingham News. Alabama’s State Board of Health suspended Summit’s license May 17 for numerous infractions, including giving RU 486 to a woman late in her pregnancy. Clinic personnel allegedly told a woman in February she was only six weeks pregnant and gave her the abortion-inducing drug, after which she delivered a stillborn child who weighed 6 pounds, 4 ounces, according to The News. RU 486, a two-step regimen, is recommended for use only in the first seven weeks of pregnancy.
KILLING CLONES AT HARVARD -– Harvard University’s recently disclosed plans to clone human embryos in order to perform destructive stem cell research is doubly insulting, says a Southern Baptist bioethicist.
Harvard scientists announced in early June their effort to find treatments for numerous devastating diseases, saying two years of consideration by eight committees had determined the research could be justified ethically, according to The Boston Globe.
Not so, says C. Ben Mitchell, a consultant for the Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission and an associate professor at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in suburban Chicago, Ill.
“First, cloned human embryos will be killed for their stem cells,” Mitchell told Baptist Press. “Second, women will be subjected to unnecessary health risks through harvesting their eggs. Harvard will require tens of thousands of eggs per year to get sufficient numbers of cloned embryos for their experiments.
“The Puritan founders of Harvard would roll over in their graves if they were aware of the human carnage their legatees are causing,” Mitchell said.
Extracting eggs from women can have harmful side-effects on the donors. One of the potential problems is ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome, which is serious in about 1 percent of women receiving fertility treatments and can be life threatening, The Globe reported.
Recruiting egg donors could easily be a problem for Harvard. Advanced Cell Technology in Worcester, Mass., has been trying to sign up egg donors for cloning experiments since December but has been unsuccessful so far, according to The Globe.
In addition to Harvard and ACT, teams in New York City and at the University of California-San Francisco also are performing or planning to perform cloning research, the newspaper reported. Researchers in China, Great Britain, Spain and Sweden also are seeking to do such experiments.
Funding for the cloning research by American teams is only from private sources. While privately funded research on embryonic stem cells is legal in the United States, the federal government does not fund such experimentation because extracting stem cells from embryos results in their destruction.
Stem cells are the body’s master cells that can develop into other cells and tissues, providing hope for the treatment of a host of debilitating diseases. Embryonic stem cell research requires that that the tiny human beings be destroyed. However, stem cells also can be harvested from non-embryonic sources — such as cord blood, fat, bone marrow and placentas (often called adult stem cell research).
Although most scientists believe embryonic stem cells have more potential for providing treatments, so far only non-embryonic stem cells have produced any therapies in humans. Research on stem cells from non-embryonic sources has produced treatments for at least 70 ailments, according to Do No Harm, a coalition promoting ethics in research.
DOLLARS FOR DEATH –- Billionaire investor Warren Buffet’s plan to donate most of his fortune to a foundation headed by Microsoft founder Bill Gates and his wife will result in more money for abortion-promoting organizations, pro-life advocates predict.
Buffett announced June 25 he would donate his Berkshire Hathaway shares in amounts that would increase the giving of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation by about $1.5 billion a year. The Gates Foundation, however, has given nearly $12.5 million to the Planned Parenthood Federation of America and almost $21 million to the International Planned Parenthood Federation since 1998, according to LifeNews.com.
PPFA is the No. 1 abortion provider in the United States, and IPPF is a leading advocate for the liberalization of abortion policies in foreign countries.
“It’s tragic that much of Warren Buffett’s billion dollar attempt to improve the lives of people around the world is actually going to fund organizations that take the lives of unborn children and encourage others to do the same,” said Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the Susan B. Anthony list, which funds pro-life women seeking political office.
Thomas Euteneuer, president of Human Life International, said, according to LifeNews, “The merger of Gates and Buffett may spell doom for the families of the developing world.
Buffett’s own foundation provided $2 million in the 1990s for the clinical trials of the abortion drug RU 486, LifeNews reported.
The Gates Foundation seeks to improve health and reduce poverty in its international efforts.
CHANGED MINDS -– Both Dr. Death and the British Medical Association have changed their minds about physician-assisted suicide, but they have not reached the same conclusions.
Jack Kevorkian, known as Dr. Death for his claim to have helped more than 150 people take their lives, said recently while he still supports assisted suicide he believes he should have tried to change the law rather than assist illegally in their deaths.
Meanwhile, the British Medical Association revised its position on assisted suicide and euthanasia, deciding with a 65 percent majority to oppose helping patients die, the BBC News reported June 29.
In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, Kevorkian said, “I have not changed my views on assisted suicide, but I believe it should be performed legally, and I would do whatever my health permits regarding petitions, speeches, lobbying and writing in support of legislation.”
Kevorkian, who is serving a 10- to 25-year term in a Michigan prison for euthanizing a man in 1999, has hepatitis C and other ailments, according to the report.
Last year, the BMA took a neutral stance on assisted dying.
During this year’s debate in Belfast, according to the BBC, Andrew Davies of Cardiff said in opposition to helping patients take their lives, “My worry is that a right to die will become a duty to die, a duty to unburden their families.”
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