Baby Joseph Maraachli now in St. Louis

Baby Joseph has been moved to Cardinal Glennon Children’s Medical Center in St. Louis, Missouri where he should receive a tracheotomy this week in the hope that he can be moved into nursing care close to the family’s home in Windsor.

From here:

The London hospital, where Joseph was treated since October, had refused to perform the tracheostomy and sought to remove his ventilator against his parents’ wishes.

Dr. Paul Byrne, a fifty-year veteran in the field of neonatology based in Ohio, however, has said that Joseph should have had a tracheostomy “a long time ago.”  He also insisted that he has never seen a need to remove a child’s ventilator.  “If a baby has a disease process that’s so bad that they’re going to die, then they die on the ventilator anyway,” he explained.

The LHSC continues to denounce the move as being “against medical advice”.

Here is an interview with his father and Fr. Frank Pavone:

[flv:https://www.anglicansamizdat.net/wordpress/videos/babyjosephinterview.flv 640 360]

March for Life Canada Expects Biggest Turnout Ever

From here:

The organizer of Canada’s National March For Life, Campaign Life Coalition, is predicting that, with the help of a massive turnout from Ottawa area Catholic schools, 20,000 people will participate in this year’s annual pro-life march on May 13th, 2010……..

This year’s National March for Life theme is “Abortion – a Crime Against Humanity.” Events will begin on Wednesday, May 12, 2010, with the march beginning with a gathering on Parliament Hill at noon on Thursday, May 13, 2010, followed by the Youth Conference on Friday May 14.

But will the mainstream media notice?

An abortionist who needs a new PR man

LeRoy Carhart, a practitioner and advocate of late term abortions is sprucing up his clinic – a literal example of a whited sepulchre – and is in dire need of rather more articulate and reasonable employees.

Here is an exchange between a pro-life protester and one of Carhart’s minions:

Now you can have a life size model of your unborn child

The model baby:

It’s a defining moment in a parent’s life: Seeing their unborn child’s image on an ultrasound for the first time. Now pregnant women could have the chance to hold a life-size model of their unborn baby.

Here is a life-size model of a 12 week old baby:

Add an Image

The inescapable conclusion from this is something that is obvious to those who think that life has precedence over convenience: foetus = baby.

Heart surgery on a baby inside the womb

From here:

TORONTO — In what’s being called a Canadian first, Toronto doctors have successfully performed a heart procedure on a fetus inside the womb.

A team of doctors at the Hospital for Sick Children and Mount Sinai Hospital expanded one of the baby’s heart valves using a balloon catheter.

The device was inserted through the mother’s abdomen and then into the fetus to reverse heart failure before delivery.

Sick Kids Hospital says the procedure allowed the baby to remain safely in utero for a crucial extra month before her birth on April 15.

Even though this tiny life is called a “fetus” twice, the writer makes a refreshing politically incorrect slip in the last sentence and calls the unborn child what it is: a baby.

The Pope, Aids and Planned Parenthood

This is what Pope Benedict said about the Aids epidemic:

“Aids cannot be overcome through the distribution of condoms, which even aggravates the problems”

Echoing words spoken frequently by Pope John Paul II, Benedict declared that the “traditional teaching of the Church” on chastity outside marriage and fidelity within it had proved to be “the only sure way of preventing the spread of HIV and Aids”.

And here is a response from Planned Parenthood:

Kevin Osborne, HIV adviser at the International Planned Parenthood Federation, said: “All the evidence is that preaching sexual abstinence and fidelity will not solve the problems. We need to work with the reality of where people are, especially in countries he is visiting such as Angola, which is hard-hit by the epidemic.

“The Pope’s message will alienate everybody. It is scary. It spreads stigma and creates a fertile breeding ground for the spread of HIV.”

I’m not a Roman Catholic and I’m not against birth control, but it is easy to spot the diversionary tactic employed in this response by Planned Parenthood. Obviously it’s not the preaching alone that would prevent the spread of Aids, but the preaching and practising of fidelity and abstinence. And there is evidence to suggest that it does work:

Uganda Winning the Battle Against AIDS – Using Abstinence

Uganda may be on its way to wiping out AIDS by using the Biblical values of chastity and fidelity, a new Harvard University study finds. According to the study, abstinence education has shown significant effectiveness in reducing AIDS in Uganda, with the HIV infection rate dropping 50 percent between the years 1992 and 2000.

Pope vs Pelosi

From here:
It would appear from the two statements issued by the Vatican and the speaker’s office that Nancy Pelosi and Pope Benedict did not share the same views during her audience with the pontiff.

U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi met Pope Benedict XVI at the Vatican Wednesday morning, but may not have had a meeting of the minds if the two statements from their offices are any indication.

No journalists were at the 15-minute encounter and the Vatican and the speaker’s offices have not released any photos. However, according to their statements it appears the pope and the politician attended two different get-togethers.

“His Holiness took the opportunity to speak of the requirements of the natural moral law and the Church’s consistent teaching on the dignity of human life from conception to natural death which enjoins all Catholics, and especially legislators, jurists and those responsible for the common good of society, to work in cooperation with all men and women of good will in creating a just system of laws capable of protecting human life at all stages of its development,” the Vatican wrote, having released the statement moments before the two met.

Several hours later, Pelosi’s office gave her take on the tete-a-tete.

“It is with great joy that my husband, Paul, and I met with his Holiness, Pope Benedict XVI today,” Pelosi said in a statement released hours after the meeting. “In our conversation, I had the opportunity to praise the Church’s leadership in fighting poverty, hunger and global warming, as well as the Holy Father’s dedication to religious freedom and his upcoming trip and message to Israel. I was proud to show his Holiness a photograph of my family’s papal visit in the 1950s, as well as a recent picture of our children and grandchildren.”

Nancy Pelosi, pro-abortion Catholic, evidently isn’t interested in the Pope’s views on protecting innocent life and, true to liberal form, is the deaf adder that stoppeth her ear, preferring to talk about less personally demanding topics such as world hunger and global warming. I wonder if she rode a bike to visit the Pope or flew in an aeroplane at taxpayer expense.

The Pope’s reference to “requirements of the natural moral law” as a defence for protecting unborn babies is interesting since it extends the principle of protecting the unborn – quite rightly – beyond Roman Catholicism to all who still believe in right and wrong: almost everyone on the planet with the possible exception of Anglicans.

You shall not murder. Exodus 20:13.

More on botched abortions. Abortions where the baby lives, that is. Read it all here.

When Congress was considering the Born Alive Infants Protection Act (BAIPA), a subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee heard testimony from Jill Stanek and Allison Baker, two nurses at Christ Hospital in Oak Lawn, Ill. They described several instances in which babies who were moving and breathing after induced abortions were left to die. The committee report quoted Jill Stanek: “Mrs. Stanek testified about another aborted baby who was thought to have had spina bifida, but was delivered with an intact spine. On another occasion, an aborted baby was left to die on the counter of the Utility Room wrapped in a disposable towel.” The committee report also quoted Shelly Lowe, a lab technician at Bethesda North Medical Center in Cincinnati. A young woman who had undergone just the first cervix-opening phase of a partial-birth abortion gave birth in the emergency room. The doctor placed the 22-week-old baby in a specimen dish to be taken to the lab. According to the report, when Ms. Lowe “saw the baby girl in the dish she was stunned when she saw the girl gasping for air. ‘I don’t think I can do that,’ Ms. Lowe reportedly said. ‘This baby is alive.’” Lowe asked permission to hold the baby until she died. She wrapped the child she dubbed “Baby Hope” in a blanket and sang to her. Breathing room air without any other supports, Baby Hope lived for three hours.

I’ve received a number of letters from viewers. This one caught my eye: “I am a pediatrician. When I was a pediatric resident on a neonatal intensive care rotation, we were routinely called to … resuscitate infants. In one instance I was called to pronounce a baby dead who had been born an hour earlier after a failed abortion. We were not called to resuscitate the baby immediately after the delivery as the intent was abortion. … I write to attest that babies are sometimes born alive after abortion and then put aside to die.”

The BAIPA was designed to ensure that in those rare cases in which a baby marked for abortion happens to survive — that the child will be immediately accorded full human and constitutional rights. The measure passed the U.S. House by a vote 380 to 15 but was blocked in the Senate. When a “neutrality clause” was inserted to the effect that the law should not be construed to limit the scope of Roe v. Wade, the measure was passed by unanimous consent and signed into law in 2002.

At the time, Barack Obama was an Illinois state senator. An almost exact copy of the federal bill was introduced in 2001. Obama opposed it, saying, “I mean it, it would essentially bar abortions because the equal protection clause does not allow somebody to kill a child, and if this is a child, then this would be an antiabortion statute.” Even though the baby would be completely separated from the mother. In 2003, the Illinois legislature added a neutrality clause to the bill, making it a virtual clone of the federal legislation. As chairman of the committee considering the bill, Obama again opposed it, saying, “… an additional doctor who then has to be called in an emergency situation and make these assessments is really designed simply to burden the original decision of the woman …”

Barack Obama is a charming and intelligent man. But there is no other way to interpret his position on BAIPA than this: A woman who chooses an abortion is entitled to a dead child no matter what. That is an abortion extremist.