Free Republic

BERKLEY — Stacie Chapman’s heart skipped when she answered the phone at home and her doctor — rather than a nurse — was on the line. More worrisome was the doctor’s gentle tone as she asked, “Where are you?” On that spring day in 2013, Dr. Jayme Sloan had bad news for Chapman, who was nearly three months pregnant. Her unborn child had tested positive for Edwards syndrome, a genetic condition associated with severe birth defects. If her baby — a boy, the screening test had shown — was born alive, he probably would not live long. Sloan explained that...

"This is not a selfie. This is an act of war," writes one Australian blogger in response to the image — just one of many blogs, news outlets, body-image experts and social-media commenters around the world to weigh in on the matter in the past few days, putting the photo at the center of a major online body-image controversy. "This whole situation has become ludicrous. The competition for women to give birth and then immediately remove any trace from their their bodies that they ever carried a child is OBSCENE. There is no other word for it." Another blogger calls...

An image of a very pregnant Mary, the mother of Jesus, looks down on Old Town from a billboard on West Burnside Street and Northwest Third Avenue. In the weeks before Christmas, she is a reminder of the approaching celebration of her son's birth. She's also a testament to a Milwaukie woman's deeply held beliefs. "I'm not political," says Valerie Aschbacher, who commissioned the sculpture that was photographed for the billboard. "Mary's not political. She's an image of the gospel of life." Many people would not agree. They see life -- when it begins and how it ends -- as...

Breast cancer and abortion: the facts February 17 2003 When I first heard of the link between abortion and breast cancer, in 1993, I thought it was a pro-life fantasy. "That's crazy," was my initial response. However, out of curiosity I changed the history form I used in my work as a breast surgeon, asking each woman the order and outcome of all pregnancies. The results surprised me.In the first six months I had two patients in their 30s with breast cancer; one had had seven pregnancies and six abortions, the other five pregnancies and three abortions. I continued to...