Free Republic

Wichita, KS (LifeNews.com) -- A person who was a member of the Kansas grand jury that investigated the abortion death of a disabled Texas teenager has told a pro-life group about what happened during the investigation. The source revealed the bizarre chain of events that led up to the death of Christin Gilbert.Gilbert was killed in a failed late-term abortion in January 2005 at the abortion facility of George Tiller, one of the few abortion practitioners in the country to still do abortions in the very late stages of pregnancy.After Gilbert's death, a complaint was filed with the Kansas State...

Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- A pro-life law firm has filed a brief with the Supreme Court in the case concerning the Congressional-approved ban on partial-birth abortions. The American Center for Law and Justice told the court to reject the argument made by abortion advocates that abortion is safer than childbirth.After President Bush signed the partial-birth abortion ban, pro-abortion groups launched three lawsuits against it and federal appeals courts in Nebraska, New York and California declared the ban unconstitutional.The ACLJ has already filed a brief in the Nebraska case and submitted papers in the California case on Thursday.“Yet again we see...

KITCHENER, ON, July 4, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) - LifeSiteNews.com has learned that former US President Bill Clinton is to speak at a fundraiser for the Catholic Family Counselling Centre in Kitchener Ontario.  His scheduled November 8 address will mark the second time Clinton has been employed by a Catholic institution for a fundraiser in the same diocese.Andrew Wilding, the Director of Resource Development for the Catholic Family Counselling Centre told LifeSiteNews.com that while the speaking engagement has been confirmed, they have not yet secured a location for the event.  Wilding also confirmed that the Counselling Centre was founded by the...

LONDON, June 21, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – England’s Catholic primate, Cormac Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor, has called upon the British Parliament to re-examine the 1967 act that made abortion legal in nearly all cases. The BBC reports that he is supporting a Commons motion by 31 MPs who are calling for a review of the law and specifically a reduction in the time limit for gestational age for legal abortion. In a meeting with the health minister, Murphy-O’Connor said today, “This is not primarily a religious issue. It is a human issue.” The Cardinal agreed with the 31 MP’s that the gestational age...

WASHINGTON, D.C., June 19, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The Supreme Court is set to revisit a second Bush Administration appeal that seeks to reinstate a ban on partial birth abortion, reports the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ). The ACLJ, which specializes in constitutional law, said it is pleased the Supreme Court has decided to hear the case, which involves the constitutionality of the national ban on partial-birth abortion. “The Supreme Court took a significant step today that clearly puts the issue of partial-birth abortion front-and-center,” said Jay Sekulow, Chief Counsel of the ACLJ, which litigates pro-life issues. “By taking...

(AgapePress) - The U.S. Supreme Court is hearing from those who survived abortions as it decides whether to uphold a ban on partial-birth abortions.Texas-based Liberty Legal Institute has filed a brief on behalf of two victims who survived late-term abortions and who now speak out on the partial-birth abortion case. The case, Gonzales v. Carhart, was picked up by the high court when the Eighth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals struck down the federal abortion ban, also known as the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003.Hiram Sasser, director of litigation at Liberty Legal, says his firm's brief is unique....

QUEENSLAND prison authorities transferred a female inmate who was 23 weeks pregnant across the NSW border to Tweed Heads to have a late-term abortion. Corrective Services Minister Judy Spence confirmed the abortion move in the Queensland Parliament yesterday, but declined to give details about the prisoner. "This event took place on doctor's orders," Ms Spence said. "The prisoner had counselling. A number of professionals had spoken to the prisoner and given the recommendation that the abortion proceed." After receiving the abortion, the woman was brought back to a suburban Brisbane hospital at Greenslopes for further medical treatment. Ms Spence gave...

PENSACOLA, Florida, April 19, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A free video demonstration of a partial birth abortion has been posted online by a pro-life doctor and R.A.G.E. Media. The short clip uses dramatization to show the viewer the basic technique involved in a partial birth abortion. A chair, a sheet, a baby doll and the actual instruments of an abortionist are used in the demonstration—the simplicity of the props enhances the absolute horror of the procedure, even though there is no blood or disturbing images.   “Seeing the actual procedure’s steps, even so simply demonstrated, strips away the arguments of why...

WICHITA, Kansas, April 19, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) - George R. Tiller, one of the most notorious late-term abortionists in the U.S. is to face a Grand Jury investigation over the death of a girl following a botched abortion at his abortion mill.  A petition drive secured nearly three times the required signatures to proceed with an investigation.  The signatures were certified yesterday. Operation Rescue, the pro-life group which first exposed the death and led the way for an investigation, rejoiced that a Grand Jury would investigate the case.  Nineteen-year-old Texas teen, Christin A. Gilbert, died in January after a botched...

Pro-life Americans are cheering the U.S. Supreme Court's decision to hear an important abortion case. The Court announced it would hear the appeal in Gonzales v. Carhart, which involves a challenge to the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act (PABA). The significant part of this news is that the Court's new makeup – influenced by President Bush's two nominees (Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito) – offers fresh hope to supporters of life. The federal partial-birth abortion law, passed by Congress and signed into law by President Bush in 2003, has been the target of a stream of court challenges...

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court said Tuesday it will consider the constitutionality of banning a type of late-term abortion, teeing up a contentious issue for a newly-constituted court already in a state of flux over privacy rights. The Bush administration has pressed the high court to reinstate the federal law, passed in 2003 but never put in effect because it was struck down by judges in California, Nebraska and New York. The outcome will likely rest with the two men that President Bush has recently installed on the court. Justices had been split 5-4 in 2000 in striking down a...

Review of A Distant Thunder Film takes a provocative look at the moral implications of partial-birth abortion December 14, 2005 RenewAmerica staff Disney producer Jonathan Flora's new film, A Distant Thunder, is a must-see for anyone interested in the subject of partial-birth abortion. Reminiscent of supernatural thrillers by M. Night Shyamalan (The Sixth Sense, Signs, The Village) and reflecting the best in cinematic courtroom and horror dramas, A Distant Thunder takes viewers through a maze of disturbing hints, twists, symbols, and flashbacks until at the end they are stunned and surprised at what they've been watching. With first-rate acting by...

As two vacancies on the Supreme Court opened up last year, a series of polls found that people in the U.S. approve of the Roe v. Wade decision by a significant margin – but these polls distort Americans’ real feelings regarding abortion. That’s the view of Mark Stricherz, a contributing editor to Crisis magazine, who takes an in-depth look behind the polls in an article titled "A Terrible Misunderstanding.” The 1973 Roe v. Wade decision declared that no restrictions can be placed on abortion in the first trimester; in the second trimester, the state can regulate abortion "in ways that...

With three federal appellate courts now ruling the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2004 unconstitutional, the issue likely will be decided by the newly configured Supreme Court, with two conservative justices recently appointed by President Bush. Jordan Lorence, an attorney with the public-interest legal group Alliance Defense Fund, told WND he believes it's probable that one of the three cases will be heard by the high court his fall, with a decision coming in June 2007. A ruling last year by the 8th Circuit already has been appealed. On Tuesday, the 9th Circuit Court in San Francisco and the...

Two federal appeals courts yesterday upheld rulings that the Partial Birth Abortion Act, passed by Congress in 2003 but barred by the courts, is unconstitutional because it does not include an exception when the health of a pregnant woman is at risk. The rulings, which came on the same day from three-judge panels in the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, in New York, and the Ninth Circuit, in San Francisco, were substantially based on a United States Supreme Court decision in a Nebraska case in 2000. In that case, the Supreme Court found that any abortion ban must...

An award-winning new movie seeks to convey the "terrible truth” behind partial-birth abortion. "A Distant Thunder,” now available on DVD, was written and directed by Jonathan Flora, a producer for Disney. His wife Deborah plays the lead role of Ann Brown. Brown is a pro-choice attorney serving as the prosecutor in a murder case involving an unborn child. While preparing for the trial, she feels threatened by mysterious men and suffers from repeated nightmares. At the trial, the main witness is a woman who had undergone a partial-birth abortion. "The story is resolved in a surprise ending that makes a...

Two federal appeals courts on opposite sides of the country declared the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act unconstitutional Tuesday, saying the measure lacks an exception for cases in which a woman's health is at stake. The first ruling came from a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Hours later, a three-judge panel of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan issued a similar decision in a 2-1 ruling. The New York decision affirmed a 2004 ruling by a judge who upheld the right to perform the procedure even as he described the procedure as...

WASHINGTON, January 5, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) - On Friday, January 6, 2006, the U.S. Supreme Court is scheduled to decide whether to review a lower-court ruling that has blocked enforcement of the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act, a bill signed into law by President George W. Bush on November 5, 2003. The Court may announce its decision on whether to accept the case on January 6, or on Monday, January 9. In 2000, five justices of the Supreme Court, including soon-to-retire Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, ruled that the abortion right originally created in Roe v. Wade allows an abortionist to perform a...

A DOCTOR who has performed almost 10,000 abortions in Australia will stand trial for manslaughter after she allegedly induced a late-term abortion in which the fetus died hours after birth. Suman Sood will become the first doctor in NSW to go on trial for the manslaughter of a fetus and will be the first doctor in the state charged over a termination since the early 1970s. Dr Sood, 56, allegedly gave a 20-year-old woman - who was about 23 weeks pregnant - an abortion drug in May 2002 and asked her to come back to her clinic the next day....

The Bush administration has asked the Supreme Court to reinstate a ban on a procedure that critics call "partial birth" abortions, setting up a showdown that could be decided by the president's new choice for the court. The appeal, which had been expected, follows a two-year, cross-country legal fight over the federal law. An appeals court in St. Louis said this summer that the ban on late term abortion is unconstitutional because it makes no exception for the health of the woman. The Supreme Court has already scheduled arguments in November in another abortion case, involving New Hampshire's parental notification...