Abortion

When Rep. Todd Akin made his outrageous comments about "legitimate rape" it was front page news — and rightly so. But when a representative of Planned Parenthood is caught on camera defending infanticide, it merits barely a mention in the mainstream media. Testifying against a Florida bill that would require abortionists to provide emergency medical care to an infant who survives an abortion, Planned Parenthood lobbyist Alisa LaPolt Snow was asked point blank: "If a baby is born on a table as a result of a botched abortion,...

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — An Arkansas law banning most abortions 12 weeks into a woman's pregnancy won't take effect while a legal challenge is pending, a federal judge ruled Friday. U.S. District Judge Susan Webber Wright granted a request for a preliminary injunction against the ban, which was set to take effect in August. The state's Republican-led Legislature overrode a veto from Democratic Gov. Mike Beebe to enact the law in March. Weeks later, attorneys for the American Civil...

WASHINGTON — An Arizona congressman wants a nationwide ban on abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy. Republican Rep. Trent Franks had introduced a bill that would ban such procedures only in the District of Columbia. But following the Kermit Gosnell case, he plans to amend it so it would apply nationwide. Gosnell is a Philadelphia abortion doctor who was convicted of killing three babies after they were born alive. Several states have banned abortion after 20 weeks of pregnancy.

Mitt Romney describes abortion as an issue more relevant to the legal system than the presidential election. "This is a matter in the courts," the Republican candidate told CBS News on Monday. "It's been settled for some time in the courts. " But the current campaign is replete with evidence that abortion remains a vibrant political issue. Candidates and outside groups have poured at least $16.8 million into abortion-related advertising during the 2012 cycle, more than two-thirds of which has come from the Obama campaign and its...

Here's an example of the "family values" encouraged by the smear campaign that some religious conservatives are waging against the Girl Scouts: A 10-year-old girl offering to sell cookies in Reston around midday on Jan. 14 was stunned and upset when an adult neighbor responded by denouncing abortion. "When the woman answered the door, she looked at my daughter and said, ‘We don't support Girl Scouts because they support abortion, which kills babies,' " recalled Kim Douglas, who's been a troop leader as...

Helen M. Alvaré is a law professor at George Mason University and president of the Chiaroscuro Institute, a nonpartisan, nonprofit think tank that addresses issues of human sexuality, marriage and respect for life. It receives some funding from the the Chiaroscuro Foundation, of which Meg T. McDonnell is the communications director . Pro-choice Americans must wonder from time to time what keeps pro-lifers going. Why don't we lay down our signs, cease our marching and admit that we've been good and beaten for these...

If a Peace Corps volunteer is raped and becomes pregnant as a result, she has to pay for an abortion herself, because the federal government refuses to cover the cost. Yet women on the paid Peace Corps staff, along with other federal employees, federal prisoners, women on Medicaid and Native Americans, have long received insurance coverage for abortions in cases of rape or incest or if their health is in danger. In January, women in the...

Sen. Robert P. Casey Jr.'s endorsement of Barack Obama last week -- "I believe in this guy like I've never believed in a candidate in my life" -- recalled another dramatic moment in Democratic politics. In the summer of 1992, as Bill Clinton solidified his control over the Democratic Party, Robert P. Casey Sr., the senator's father, was banned from speaking to the Democratic convention for the heresy of being pro-life. The elder Casey (now deceased) was then the governor of Pennsylvania -- one of the most prominent elected Democrats in...

The April 21 Outlook article " 5 Myths about abortion " began with the distinction between "a fetus's right to life" and "a woman's right to choose. " That well-known formulation should be amended to reflect a woman's right to life. Many faiths accord priority in various degrees to the fully formed life of the mother over the not-yet-fully formed life of the fetus. In Judaism, the right to life of the mother enjoys such precedence. The codification and interpretation of Jewish religious law over millenniums has generated...

TAMPA, Fla. — The 28-year-old son of a Florida fertility doctor has been charged by federal authorities with tricking his girlfriend into taking a pill used to induce labor and cause an abortion, killing the embryo she was carrying. John Andrew Welden was indicted Tuesday by a federal grand jury on charges of product tampering and first-degree murder and faces up to life in prison if convicted of the murder charge. He's also the defendant in a lawsuit filed in state court by his...

While much of Washington was enthralled by Benghazi e-mails and the IRS scandal, House Republicans began quietly planning their strategy for the next showdown over the debt limit, now thought to be at least four months away. At a two-hour listening session Wednesday afternoon in the basement of the Capitol, rank-and-file lawmakers offered suggestions for handling an event that, in 2011, blew their approval ratings to smithereens. The good news: This time around,...

PHILADELPHIA — One of the last people seated in the witness box at Dr. Kermit Gosnell's murder trial was a character witness for a co-defendant, and had nothing to do with Gosnell's abortion clinic. But the woman happened to be six months pregnant, and nearly waddled to the stand. If the jury had any doubts about the second- or third-trimester abortions Gosnell performed at his west Philadelphia clinic, she offered a stark visual. So, too, did the...

WICHITA, Kan. — The man convicted of killing one of the nation's few late-term abortion providers is now accused of trying to intimidate the woman who reopened his shuttered clinic, prison officials said. The Kansas Department of Corrections said Tuesday it filed an administrative charge against inmate Scott Roeder under a prison regulation which prohibits threatening or intimidating anyone. The 55-year-old abortion opponent is serving a life sentence at the state...

JACKSON, Miss. — It can't meet the mandates of a 2012 state law and the governor wants to shut it down, but Mississippi's only abortion clinic is not about to quietly retreat. The clinic's owners are fighting on a legal front, with a federal lawsuit against the state, and supporters and staff are trying to make inroads on site — urging patients to call elected officials and peppering state-required counseling with their own views and information. Protesters,...

PHILADELPHIA — The trial resumed just before 11:30 a.m. Monday in a downtown courtroom, as Judge Jeffrey P. Minehart entered Courtroom 304. "It's come to my attention that media coverage of this case has increased ," Minehart told the jurors, who could see for themselves how right he was. Reporters from the New York Times, The Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal and Fox News had settled in alongside a handful of local and wire service...

The teaching of the Roman Catholic Church that "abortion is a serious sin" is based on the moral principle that abortion is the wrongful taking of a human life. The church cannot "permit" exceptions to moral principle. The two instances of "indirect abortion," uterine cancer and ectopic pregnancy, that Paul Surlis referred to in his March 4 letter are instances in which the church recognizes the validity of prudent decisions to save the life of the mother when the survival of mother and child is not possible.

FARGO, N.D. — Abortion rights activists on Wednesday filed the first of what they expect will be several legal challenges to laws recently approved in North Dakota that would make that state the most restrictive in the country for women to terminate their pregnancies. The state's lone abortion clinic, backed by the New York-based Center for Reproductive Rights, said it filed a lawsuit in state court that challenges a law that requires doctors who perform abortions to obtain...