Abortion

The push for unlimited abortion access is now advancing beyond the issue of “choice.” A newly published article in Ethics, the University of Chicago Press’s prestigious peer-reviewed journal, argues that pregnant minors must abort — even if that requires coercion and force.

The authors, a University of British Columbia philosophy professor and an aspiring philosopher, emphasize the fact that minors are children. From “Justice for Girls: On Provision of Abortion as Adequate Care” (citations omitted, my emphases):

Both opponents of abortion and liberal defenders of a woman’s right to control her own body make a mistake in relation to impregnated children. They both overlook that an impregnated girl is a child. As such, the adults responsible for her care should never pressure or compel her to continue a pregnancy. Nor should they confront her with the three “options” of abortion, adoption, or mothering, as medical professionals are currently advised to do. Instead, her adult caregivers should view her impregnation as a malady and take steps to terminate it.

On the transgender issue, we are continually told — I don’t know about these particular authors’ views — that a minor girl can decide to have her puberty blocked or breasts removed. Somehow, when it comes to continuing a pregnancy, she can’t?

Do cases of rape, incest, or when the mother’s life is in jeopardy justify abortion? These are the hardest questions in the abortion debate: emotionally charged, deeply tragic, and often used to challenge the pro-life position. But how should we think about these cases from a medical, ethical, and human perspective? In this episode of Bioethics Babe, I sit down with Fr. Tad Pacholczyk, priest, neuroscientist, and Senior Ethicist at the National Catholic Bioethics Center, to take on these difficult questions head-on. We explore: If you’ve ever wondered how to think clearly and compassionately about the hardest cases, tune in to this discussion. For Episode Resources, please visit the episode page here. For more information, the latest episodes, and additional Read More ›

Planned Parenthood is having a rougher time than it once did. Fifty or so clinics have closed due to financial difficulties associated with defunding from the government. Not to worry! As reported in the New York Times — a California clinic is offering cosmetic procedures to help keep the doors open. First, the Times‘ reporter Alisha Haridasani Gupta, describes the core mission of PP clinics. Notice what she leaves out: Nationwide, Planned Parenthood, which provides birth control, preventive sexual health screenings, prenatal care and primary care for millions of patients, many of them on Medicaid, is facing enormous challenges. These include significant cuts to Medicaid reimbursements, increased costs of treatments and staffing, and a “hostile political environment,” said Angela Vasquez-Giroux, Read More ›

After restricting funding for primate research for ethical reasons, the National Institutes of Health has followed up by banning funding of fetal tissue research. From the NIH press release:

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) today announced a new policy ending the use of human fetal tissue in NIH-supported research, marking a significant milestone in the Trump Administration’s efforts to modernize biomedical science and accelerate innovate.

Effective immediately, NIH funds will no longer be used to support research involving human fetal tissue from elective abortions. The policy applies across the NIH Intramural Research Program and all NIH-supported extramural research, including grants, cooperative agreements, other transaction awards, and research and development contracts.

We have to remember the gruesomeness of some of this research: For example, the experiments in which the scalps of 20-week aborted fetuses were grafted onto rodents.

What is the real human cost of abortion—especially chemical abortion? In this powerful and deeply personal conversation, Toni McFadden shares her abortion story with unflinching honesty. As a teenager facing an unplanned pregnancy, Toni had a chemical abortion believing it was the only way out. What followed wasn’t relief—but years of silence, trauma, emotional grief, and spiritual brokenness. Toni recounts what the abortion pill experience was really like, the isolation she felt, the long road of unhealed pain, and how abortion affected not only her—but also the child’s father, her future marriage, and her family. She also shares how a slow, unexpected encounter with faith led to real post-abortion healing, forgiveness, and redemption. This episode confronts the human cost of Read More ›

What’s really happening to women and girls in China? In this episode, I sit down with Reggie Littlejohn, Yale-trained attorney and founder of Women’s Rights Without Frontiers, to expose what many experts call the greatest crime against women in the world. Women’s Rights Without Frontiers is a global coalition fighting to end forced abortion, gendercide, and sexual slavery in China. Reggie is widely recognized as an international expert on China’s One-Child Policy—now the Three-Child Policy. Reggie is also the founder and president of the Anti-Globalist Alliance, an international counterforce to the Great Reset, and the co-founder of the Sovereignty Coalition, a non-partisan movement dedicated to defending U.S. national sovereignty and personal medical freedom against threats both foreign and domestic. For Read More ›

When you hear the word feminism, what comes to mind? This episode launches a multi-part series digging into the real history of feminism: what the early feminists actually believed, how modern feminism drifted, and the bioethical fallout in the realms of sex, contraception, abortion, and women’s place in society. In this powerful conversation, legal scholar, mother of seven, and one of the most compelling voices speaking into women’s rights Erika Bachiochi uncovers the forgotten roots of the early feminist movement. These women understood something our culture has lost: that equality is something deeper than sameness, and freedom isn’t about escaping responsibility. They believed in a moral vision rooted in human dignity, virtue, and the profound responsibilities that emerge from sex, Read More ›

What if everything you’ve heard about the abortion pill isn’t the full story? Nearly two-thirds of all U.S. abortions are chemical abortions. Board-certified OB-GYN Dr. Donna Harrison, Director of Research for the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists (AAPLOG), joins Bioethics Babe to pull back the curtain on chemical abortion — from how mifepristone (RU-486) and misoprostol actually work in a woman’s body, to the hidden complications women face, to the behind-the-scenes schemes at the upper echelons of power that took place to get the abortion pill to America. Did you know that the Population Council created a Cayman Islands shell company called Danco in order to get mifepristone to the U.S.? Did you know that taxpayer dollars helped Read More ›

Fetal personhood is a controversial issue that deserves respectful debate. But the New England Journal of Medicine just published a screed by two Ph.D.s associating its advocates with past slave-holding racists and — by strong implication — devaluing unborn human life as having zero intrinsic value. First, the article claims that pregnancy has been “criminalized.” From, “Fetal Personhood and Reproductive Criminalization” (citations omitted): Fetal personhood ideology is the underlying force behind abortion bans and restrictions, the prosecution of pregnant women because of conduct deemed potentially harmful to the fetus, and fetal homicide laws that allow a fetus to be treated as the victim of a crime. As a result of this ideology being embedded in state laws and judicial decisions, Read More ›

Should men have the right to have their cells manipulated so they can become biological mothers? Should women past child-bearing age have the same right if their own eggs are no longer viable? More to the point, should we all have the right to do whatever it takes to have a baby if that is our desire and also, to obtain the baby we want?

These questions have ceased to be grist for science fiction authors. Researchers recently announced that they have genetically manipulated human skin cells to become eggs, including those of men (the idea being to eventually enable both members of a same sex couple to have a genetic connection with their child). Then, after more genetic tinkering, the eggs were fertilized into embryos via IVF. Finally, the biotechnologists monitored embryonic development until the experiment was stopped, and the embryos destroyed.

No pregnancy has been established with this technique. But that is cold comfort. The researchers plan to keep experimenting and I have little doubt that when they overcome remaining technical difficulties, someone will create a pregnancy using “skin cell” embryos. After all, what beyond self-restraint—currently in little supply in this field—is to stop them?