Jeffrey Miller

Via Fr Frank Pavone.

I have a marvelous story about an RU-486 reversal. One of our medical advisors at Priests for Life saw a woman recently who came to his office after she had been to an abortion mill and had taken RU-486. Two days after taking the drug, she changed her mind. So she did not take the second dosage (Cytotec), but went to this pro-life doctor instead. He wasn’t sure what to do, but tried a progesterone treatment. And it worked! The baby was born healthy just a matter of weeks ago.

This is a lesson to mothers and doctors alike that we should never jump to the conclusion that “it’s too late.” Whether it’s the removal of laminaria in later abortions, or the reversal of the effects of RU-486 in earlier ones, it is often not as “late” as we think.

Rome (Fides Service)- Yesterday 29 April in thirty capitals all over the world thousands took to the streets calling for an immediate end to violence in the western Sudan region of Darfur since 2003 at the centre of a dramatic conflict, qualified on many sides as genocide.

The largest demonstration was seen in London where at least 3,500 people paraded through Downing Street past the residence of Prime Minister. As an eloquent sign of the necessity to stop the massacre in that part of Sudan the protesters carried a two metre high hourglass containing a blood red liquid to Number 10 and delivered a letter to Prime Minister Tony Blair urging him not to desist: “Time is running out for the people of Darfur. We ask you to maintain pressure on the government of Sudan”.

In Washington demonstrators gathered in front of the White House calling for the immediate deployment of an interposition force in Darfur.
Also yesterday an international conference on Darfur organised in Libya came to an end. The participants called for an “urgent and lasting” solution with the presence of a hybrid peace force in the territory, formed of United Nations and African Union troops.

Present at the conference representatives of the five permanent nation members of the UN Security Council, the European Union, the African Union and the United Nations. While Sudanese government sent a delegation the rebel movements fighting the Khartoum central government in Darfur did not. However it would seem that the rebels will take part in a successive conference to be organised again in Tripoli.

Dawn Eden let me know about the following:

Address: Hilton Chicago, 720 S Michigan Ave, Chicago
Group: Mercy Home for Boys and Girls
Cost: $150
Description:

Senator Hillary Clinton is coming to Chicago to be the Keynote Speaker for a luncheon for Mercy Home for Boys and Girls.

Beth Kaveny is on the Mercy Home Leaders Council, the organizer of the luncheon, and has reserved two tables. Tickets are $150 each. If you are interested in attending email Beth. Additionally, contact Beth immediately if you/your firm would like to purchase your own table. Meet-and-greet and photo opportunities with Senator Clinton are available for sponsors at the $10,000 and $25,000 levels, as is press coverage.

Now if it was a dunking booth (into a saline solution) for Hillary that would be another thing And of course they would be "doing it for the children", except when Hillary’s support of abortion would be "doing in the children"

Matt C Abbott has more:

The Chicago-based Pro-Life Action League, headed by veteran activist Joe Scheidler, will be picketing the event.

Says Mr. Scheidler:

"While we have spoken with the powers that be, it seems nothing can be done to drop her. Seems she was invited before any Catholic in a position of power could do anything about it.

"But still, we must protest her presence at this gala, and we need active, concerned pro-lifers to attend our protest on Monday, May 7 at the Hilton and Towers on South Michigan at 11:00 a.m. Call us for information at 773-777-2900.

"It may take a village to raise a child, as Hillary reminds us, but it doesn’t take a pro-abortion senator from New York."

Update: Welcome NRO’s The Hillary Spot readers.

Update: Father Tom Euteneuer, president of Human Life International has also responded.

"The contradiction of the world’s foremost abortion promoter visiting a Catholic children’s home called ‘Mercy’ is beyond words. Mrs. Clinton’s visit is a scandal of immense proportions for the local church, but it is also sadly typical of church leaders’ unwillingness to draw the line between good and evil in order to protect people’s faith."

Dawn Eden sent me the following story.

For the first time, a Republican in the state Assembly is co-sponsoring a Democratic initiative that would require hospitals to offer emergency contraception to rape victims, considerably improving the bill’s chances of passage.

Significantly, the Wisconsin Catholic Conference, the public arm of Wisconsin’s bishops, is also no longer opposed to the bill.

Rep. Terry Musser, R-Black River Falls, said this morning he would begin circulating the Compassionate Care for Rape Victims bill to his Assembly colleagues today. Musser, who did not support the bill when it was introduced last session, said he changed his mind after hearing testimony from rape victims at a public hearing on the bill last week before a Senate committee.

…The only group lobbying against the bill is Pro-Life Wisconsin. Matt Sande, the group’s director of legislation, was not available for comment this morning, but said in a news release he opposed the bill because emergency contraception can work to prevent implantation of a fertilized egg in the uterus and he considers this "pre-implantation chemical abortion."

Wisconsin Right to Life, which tends to focus more on abortion issues, is not taking a stand on the bill. Sue Armacost of Wisconsin Right to Life said it was important to the group that the Catholic bishops were not opposing the bill.

Groups supporting it include the Wisconsin Public Health Association, American College of Nurse-Midwives, Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin, Wisconsin Coalition Against Domestic Violence and the Wisconsin Coalition Against Sexual Assault.

Kim Wades of the Wisconsin Catholic Conference said many Catholic hospitals are already dispensing emergency contraception to rape victims. She said the group removed its objections to the bill after it was revised to allow hospitals to give women a pregnancy test before providing emergency contraception.

The Catholic Conference’s support might make a big difference to legislators who have opposed the bill in the past, Musser said.

It is not quite true that the Wisconsin Catholic Conference is supporting the bill, only that it has withdrawn objections to it. As a press release from their conference states.

"From our perspective, we believe this bill is not necessary as Catholic health care already provides victims of sexual assault with appropriate and compassionate medical care."

…"As regards SB 129, it must be understood that our lack of opposition is contingent upon two points, said Wadas. "First the language exempting hospitals from providing emergency contraception to a victim known to be pregnant shall be interpreted as allowing Catholic hospitals the flexibility to follow testing protocols that establish with moral certitude that a pregnancy has not occurred. Science is providing medicine with new tools everyday and our Catholic hospitals must retain the freedom to use the latest technology to ensure that treatment does not result in the taking of a human life."

The Church has not spoken definitively on the use of contraception in the case of rape and the language in Humanae Vitae is specific to "conjugal or between married persons" as Jimmy Akin points out. So far in the United States the interpretation has been that it is licit in these circumstances if they women has not become pregnant.

As you would probably guess there are plenty of questions in regards to obtaining the moral certitude that the women is not already pregnant. A good article on the subject can be found at Catholic Insight.

Many Catholic hospitals interpret “appropriate testing” as a hcG pregnancy test, which is accurate only if a woman is at least one week pregnant by the time of the test. …

…The problem is that the test may be falsely negative if the pregnancy is too recent. A further problem is that the woman may have ovulated at the time of the rape or shortly afterwards and there is, at present, no test that can detect this with certainty.

The Catholic Insight article goes over the controversy and surveys the opinions of various moral theologians on this topic, the degree of certitude required, and the varieties of medical tests that might be required to get to that point.

This is an area where doctrine is developing such as the case of to whether embryos can be adopted and implanted. There is also the question to just how diligent Catholic hospitals will be in ascertaining if a women is pregnant first.

Legislation like this is really stupid in the first place though. There is zero need for any legislatures to be mandating what medicines are to be used by hospitals in the first place. It is all about agendas and getting the Catholic Church through her hospitals to knuckle down to their pressure.

Developing doctrine is messy and if anybody has further insights into this I would be glad to hear it, especially if I have mischaracterized anything.

Update: Lifesite also is covering the story.