The board has now responded that such requests and thus abortions can not be refused and that it is not possible to deny a woman an abortion up to the 18th week of pregnancy, even if the foetus's gender is the basis for the request.

NEW YORK (AP) - In a leap forward for stem cell research, three independent teams of scientists reported Wednesday that they have produced the equivalent of embryonic stem cells in mice without the controversial destruction of embryos.

They got ordinary skin cells to behave like stem cells. If the same could be done with human cells - a big if - the procedure could lead to breakthrough medical treatments without the contentious ethical and political debates surrounding the use of embryos.

Planned Parenthood Threatens To Sue Undercover Activist...you'll love reading the quote from the Planned Parenthood official lecturing the student about complying with the law..."we think Lila needs to be more respectful of California laws"

jblaque

It was one of the worst cases of child abuse Warren County Prosecutor Rachel Hutzel has ever seen - and she has seen a few.

"I thought I would get held in contempt of court because I argued it so vigorously in court," she said, still outraged by the case eight months later. "The father was basically treating his daughter like she was his wife."

John Blanks Jr. of Mason was sentenced to five years - one year in prison for every year he molested his daughter, beginning when she was 13. "She had to get up out of his bed in the morning and go to school, if you can imagine what that was like," Hutzel said.

Lila Rose is an 18-year-old student journalist at UCLA. She's editor-in-chief of Live Action's The Advocate. Rose recently went undercover at a local campus Planned Parenthood clinic, posing as a 15-year-old minor seeking an abortion after being impregnated by a 23-year-old man.

• Abortion has been banned or restricted.
  One variant of one procedure has been ruled to be illegal. Access to abortion has not been banned or restricted. The AMA states that there have always been alternatives to this procedure.
  
• The Supreme Court is practicing medicine.
  Funny how this wasn't the charge when they ruled in Roe v. Wade, eh? The fact is that the Supreme Court heard evidence from medical experts in the field and based their decision (in part) on that testimony. The Supreme Court focuses on the law, not medicine.
  
• The decision is flawed because the majority were all men.
  Again, this wasn't the concern in 1973 or the fact that the minority opinion was majority male. The fact is that both men and women have legitimate concerns and input over abortion and as noted above, the Supreme Court is focusing on the law and not gender politics.
  
• The decision ignores precedent.
  This is not the case. In fact, when the Supreme Court last ruled on partial birth abortion bans it spelled out how that law could be modified to conform to the Constitution. That is precisely what was done with the current law. Nor is precedent something that is never overturned. The Supreme Court has for example ruled in the past that people are property (slaves) and that separate but equal education facilities were lawful until other courts overturned those rulings.
  

According to the scientific literature, there does not appear to be any identified situation in which intact D&X is the only appropriate procedure to induce abortion, and ethical concerns have been raised about intact D&X.

The AMA maintains its support for HR 1122 (Partial Birth Abortion Act of 1997) as amended while continuing to work with sponsors, and with state legislators on state bills, to improve the language further, particularly to delete the provision dealing with criminal penalties.

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Supreme Court's conservative majority upheld a nationwide ban Wednesday on a controversial abortion procedure in a decision that sets the stage for additional restrictions on a woman's right to choose.

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Supreme Court on Tuesday turned aside the case of Sandra Cano, one of the women behind the legalization of abortion, who had sought to reverse the victory she won 33 years ago.

Cano says she never wanted an abortion and that her difficult early life resulted in her becoming the anonymous plaintiff in Doe v. Bolton, the lesser-known case which the justices ruled on the same day in 1973 as the landmark Roe v. Wade.

"I am 99 percent certain that I did not sign this affidavit," she said, according to the Insight report. "I do not believe it is my signature on the affidavit, and Margie either forged my signature or slipped this document in with other papers while I was signing divorce papers. I never told Margie that I wanted an abortion. The facts stated in the affidavit in Doe v. Bolton are not true."

New federal guidelines ask all females capable of conceiving a baby to treat themselves -- and to be treated by the health care system -- as pre-pregnant, regardless of whether they plan to get pregnant anytime soon.

While most of these recommendations are well known to women who are pregnant or seeking to get pregnant, experts say it's important that women follow this advice throughout their reproductive lives, because about half of pregnancies are unplanned and so much damage can be done to a fetus between conception and the time the pregnancy is confirmed.

Nearly 28,000 U.S. infants died in 2003, according to the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS). The infant mortality rate increased in 2002 for the first time in more than 40 years to seven deaths per 1,000 live births, but it did not change significantly in 2003. Birth defects, low birthweight and sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) were the leading causes of infant death in 2003, according to NCHS.

The U.S. infant mortality rate is higher than those of most other industrialized nations -- it's three times that of Japan and 2.5 times those of Norway, Finland and Iceland, according to a report released last week by Save the Children, an advocacy group.

Will Roe v. Wade be overturned?

Which is the most likely to happen in the near future?

What are your views on abortion? (Choose nearest match)

To Roberts' Opponents, the Constitution Is About Abortion and Only Abortion

When President Bush interviewed John Roberts last Friday, he told him that any Supreme Court nominee he named would undergo an examination akin to that of a proctologist. That is certainly proving to be the case.

Yesterday, David Leitch and Shannen Coffen, two former colleagues of Judge Roberts, appeared on a conference call with reporters to discuss their friend's background and character. Most of the questions were civil, but the two were also pelted with inquiries about what church Judge Roberts, a Roman Catholic, had attended and who else was in the congregation.

We can safely guess that abortion will be one area of inquiry reporters will spare no effort in examining Judge Roberts on. Within hours of his being named to the high court, the Boston Globe reported that his wife, lawyer Jane Sullivan Roberts, had been involved in a group called Feminists for Life that had filed legal briefs challenging the constitutionality of Roe v. Wade. This morning, the Los Angeles Times weighed in with a front-page story on Ms. Roberts' involvement with the pro-life organization. Jennifer Palmieri, a spokeswoman with the liberal Center for American Progress, explained to the Times why Judge Roberts' wife will inevitably be a subject of interest to administration opponents: "In the absence of information about this guy, people are looking at her and trying to read the tea leaves."

Serrin Foster, the president of Feminists for Life, noted that Judge Roberts had never been involved with her organization and that his wife last held a position in the group in 1999. Since then she has written an article for its newsletter on adoption, a subject of interest since she and her husband have adopted two young children. Don't be surprised, though, if some enterprising reporter tries to unearth the "story behind" their adoption before this confirmation battle is over.

—John Fund

Politicians from Hillary Clinton and John Kerry to Howard Dean have recently contended that abortions have increased since George W. Bush took office in 2001.

This claim is false. It's based on an an opinion piece that used data from only 16 states. A study by the Alan Guttmacher Institute of 43 states found that abortions have actually decreased. Update, May 26: The author of the original claim now concedes that the Guttmacher study is "significantly better" than his own.