NURSES FIRST, DOCTORS
DISTANT SECOND IN HEALTHCARE PROVIDER RATINGS
WASHINGTON,
D.C. -- At the end of a year when Gallup
found Americans’ confidence in the U.S.
medical system at its lowest in a decade, a
new survey reveals that some prominent
players in the system are still widely
acclaimed while others are not.
Nurses receive the best rating by far, with
82% saying they provide excellent or good
medical care, and doctors rank second at
69%. Smaller majorities feel positive about
the care provided by hospitals (58%),
walk-in or urgent care clinics (56%), and
telemedicine or virtual doctor visits (52%).
Meanwhile, less than half of Americans give
positive ratings to the four remaining
healthcare entities measured: hospital
emergency rooms (47%), pharmaceutical or
drug companies (33%), health insurance
companies (31%), and nursing homes (25%).
Read more here...
OBGYN CONFIRMS
“ABORTION HARMS WOMEN”
If
President Biden wins reelection, his top
priority on Day One would be codifying
abortion protections in federal law, his
deputy campaign manager Quentin Fulks said
Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” Host
Kristen Welker asked, “What would on day one
President Biden’s top priority be?” Fulks
responded, “First of all, Roe. The president
has been adamant that we need to restore
Roe. It is unfathomable that women today
wake up in a country with less rights than
their ancestors had years ago.”
“Constitutionally speaking, abortion is not
a right,” responded Joseph Backholm, senior
fellow for Biblical Worldview and Strategic
Engagement at Family Research Council.
“Believing it is a right under the
constitution is the mistake the Supreme
Court fixed in the Dobbs decision. It should
not be a right because no one should have
the right to end someone else’s life, except
in the cases of self-defense, when that
would be a proportionate response.”
Read more here...
ABORTION WAS THE
LEADING CAUSE OF DEATHS WORLDWIDE IN 2023,
KILLING 73 MILLION PEOPLE
More human beings died in abortions than any
other cause of death in 2023.
A
heartbreaking reminder about the prevalence
of abortion, statistics compiled by
Worldometers indicate that there were over
73 million abortions world-wide in 2023. The
independent site collects data from
governments and other organizations and then
reports the data, along with estimates and
projections, based on those numbers.
Worldometers bases its daily abortion
figures on a fact sheet from the World
Health Organization, which estimates an even
higher figure for abortions per year than
Worldometers. ...
Read more here...
SUPREME COURT WILL HEAR
CASE TO BAN MAIL-ORDER ABORTIONS, SAVE BABIES
FROM DANGEROUS ABORTION PILLS
The
Supreme Court on Wednesday said it will hear
a case on whether to uphold the ruling from
a federal appeals court that banned
mail-order abortions and protects women from
dangerous abortion pills.
As LifeNews reported previously, in April
the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals issued a
ruling that banned mail-order abortions that
put women’s lives at risk, condemned the
improper FDA approval process for the drug
and restored strict limits on the drug meant
to protect women’s health that the Biden
administration removed.
By illegally approving chemical abortion
drugs, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration
failed to abide by its legal obligations to
protect the health, safety, and welfare of
girls and women. ...
Read more here...
SURROGACY TURNS BABIES
IN COMMODITIES TO BE BOUGHT AND SOLD, AND
THAT’S WRONG
In
the 22nd week of surrogate Brittney
Pearson’s pregnancy, she was diagnosed with
an aggressive form of breast cancer. Because
the necessary treatment could harm the baby,
her doctors recommended inducing labor early
and allowing the baby to be cared for in
neonatal intensive care while she started
chemo. However, the gay couple paying
Brittney Pearson to serve as their surrogate
did not want a premature baby with potential
developmental or health problems. They
wanted her instead to have an abortion.
Pearson offered to put the baby up for
adoption, but the men refused because,
according to Pearson, they did not want a
child who was genetically related to one of
them somewhere “out there.” According to
Pearson, the men threatened both her and her
doctors with a lawsuit if she did not abort
her child. Because of California’s radical
surrogacy laws, which allow financiers of a
surrogacy arrangement to be granted legal
parental rights of the baby before he or she
is born, they likely would have prevailed.
Read more here...
NO, ABORTIOON PILLS
AREN’T SAFER THAN TYLENOL
Abortion
activists have repeatedly claimed that
abortion pills are safer than Tylenol. As
far as I can tell, by that they mean that
annually there are more ER visits related to
Tylenol (acetaminophen toxicity) than to
abortion pills. If more people each year are
going to the ER because of Tylenol than
because of abortion pills, abortion pills
must be safer, right? (No, not right. Read
on.)
The above comparison ignores the fact that
60 million Americans take acetaminophen at
least weekly, meaning there are at least
3.12 billion doses taken per year. There are
an estimated 56,000 ER visits per year for
acetaminophen toxicity, so out of 3.12
billion doses that’s a 0.002% ER visit rate.
Read more here...
STUDY SHOWS
AMERICANS ARE CONFUSED ABOUT WHAT ‘ABORTION’
IS. HERE’S WHY THAT MATTERS
How
Americans feel about abortion continues to
be a complicated issue. While polling has
long found that Americans grapple with the
morality of abortion, regardless of whether
they feel it should be legal, the abortion
industry continues to push for abortion to
be legal across the country, for any reason,
at any time, with no restrictions or
safeguards. This has long been an unpopular
position, which is perhaps why abortion
activists have so frequently misrepresented
the reality of what abortion is.
Now, a new poll shows that there is
widespread confusion about what constitutes
an “abortion.”
Read more here...
AMERICAN MEDICAL
ASSOCIATION (AMA) IS DEBATING ASSISTED SUICIDE
AND EUTHANASIA
The American Medical Association Policy 5.7
on assisted suicide currently states:
Physician-assisted
suicide is fundamentally incompatible with
the physician’s role as healer, would be
difficult or impossible to control, and
would pose serious societal risks.
Instead of engaging in assisted suicide,
physicians must aggressively respond to the
needs of patients at the end of life.
Read more here...
COLORADO NURSING
BOARDING BREAKS WITH COLORADO MEDICAL BOARD
OVER ABORTION REVERSAL TREATMENT
Breaking
with the state medical board, the Colorado
Nursing Board refused to classify “abortion
reversal” treatment as unprofessional
conduct.
“The nursing board passed a rule declaring
it will not treat abortion reversal as a
‘per se act subjecting a licensee to
discipline’ for providing the treatment, but
will instead review individual complaints of
abortion reversal treatment on a
case-by-case basis,” Hannah Metzger reported
for Colorado Politics.
“The (nursing) board, historically, has
pretty much treated everything case-by-case
for review and discipline,” said Joe Franta,
president of the nursing board, during
Wednesday’s vote. “We don’t make general
standards of care. We don’t create those. …
I don’t think we have the basis to do that.”
Read more here...
SEX TRAFFICKING VICTIM
SAYS TRAFFICKER “TOOK ALL HIS GIRLS TO PLANNED
PARENTHOOD” FOR ABORTIONS
Ann” visited Planned Parenthood often with
her human trafficker for birth control and,
when it failed, abortions.
A survivor of sex trafficking, Ann told
researchers in a 2019 study how her abuser
befriended staffers at Planned Parenthood so
they would not ask questions about the many
girls he brought there.
“I went to Planned Parenthood. I went there
a lot for birth control. He took all his
girls there,” she said. “They knew him by
Benny, but they didn’t know who he was. He
just kept saying that they were sisters or
friends.”
According to Live Action News, Ann’s story
is just one of many linking human
trafficking victims to Planned Parenthood, a
billion-dollar abortion chain that receives
hundreds of millions of tax dollars every
year.
Read more here...
FORCED EMPLOYER
ABORTION BENEFIT (ELCRA) - RIGHT TO LIFE OF
MICHIGAN
Current Status
S.B. 147
was signed into law by Governor Whitmer on
May 17, 2023 and will go into effect 90 days
after the close of the 2023 session.
...
Description
S.B. 147 amends the Elliott Larsen Civil
Rights Act by changing the definition of
“sex” to include elective abortion. This
change makes it illegal to discriminate
against an employee for pregnancy,
childbirth, or elective abortions, and
forces employers to treat pregnancy,
childbirth, and abortion equally for the
purposes of employer benefits including
health insurance, paid leave, and work
accommodations. There is no religious or
conscience exception to this bill.
Read more here...
WORLD MEDICAL ASSOCIATION
DESTROYS CONSCIENCE RIGHTS, WOULD FORCE
DOCTORS TO KILL BABIES IN ABORTION
The
World Medical Association has published a
revised “International Code of Medical
Ethics” that is intended as “a canon of
ethical principles for the members of the
medical profession worldwide.” Most of it is
fine. For example, the code states that “the
physician must provide care with the utmost
respect for human life and dignity, and for
the autonomy and rights of the patient,” and
that doctors are not to have sexual
relations with their current patients.
But, problematically, the WMA has
eviscerated medical conscience rights in a
way that would compel doctors to engage in
interventions and actions to which they are
morally or religiously opposed. It doesn’t
do this blatantly, but subtly. From the code
(my emphasis):
29. This Code represents the physician’s
ethical duties. However, on some issues
there are profound moral dilemmas concerning
which physicians and patients may hold
deeply considered but conflicting
conscientious beliefs.
Read more here...
NEW RESEARCH ON
ABORTION PILL REVERSAL’S EFFECTIVENESS
Abortion pill reversal saves unborn babies
when their mothers have a change of heart
part way through a chemical abortion pill
procedure.
A new study demonstrates
an impressive success rate which translates
into legitimate hope for tens of thousands
of women who want to save their babies.
Chemical abortion consists of taking two
different pills, mifepristone, followed by
misoprostol to effectively kill an unborn
child early in pregnancy. The first drug, …
Read more here...
90% OF BABIES WITH DOWN
SYNDROME ARE KILLED IN ABORTIONS, WE MUST
FIGHT FOR THEM
Children
with Down syndrome face discrimination
before they are even born.
Researchers estimate between 60 percent and
90 percent of unborn babies diagnosed with
Down syndrome are aborted in the United
States. In other countries, the deadly
discrimination rate is nearly 100 percent,
and many families say they felt pressured to
abort their unborn babies by doctors and
genetic counselors.
But parents, disability and pro-life
advocates, and Christians are fighting back,
working to create a society that values and
cherishes every child’s life.
Read more here...
CHILDREN SURVIVE
TRISOMY 18, THEY SHOULD NOT BE KILLED IN
ABORTIONS
risomy
18 returned to headlines recently as a
pregnant Texas woman carrying a child,
living with Trisomy 18, fought in the courts
to procure an abortion. Thankfully the Texas
Supreme Court ruled against the abortion,
but sadly Kate Cox traveled out of state to
end the life of her baby.
Contrary to much of what you read in the
media; Trisomy 18 (T-18) is not an automatic
death sentence. It is true that most babies
with this condition do not survive, but we
are becoming aware of more and more children
who do – some into adulthood. The longevity
of individuals with T-18 has gotten the
attention of the research world. A case
report was published in the National Library
of Medicine.
Read more here...
CRANKY OLD MAN
When an old man died in the geriatric
ward of a nursing home in an Australian
country town, it was believed that he had
nothing left of any value. Later, when the
nurses were going through his meager
possessions, they found this poem. Its
quality and content so impressed the staff
that copies were made and distributed to
every nurse in the hospital.
Read
the poem here...
ASSISTED SUICIDE BILLS
Assisted
suicide bills have currently been introduced
in 10 US states including: Florida, Indiana,
Iowa, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, New
Hampshire, New York, Pennsylvania,
Wisconsin. We expect several more states to
introduce an assisted suicide bill in 2024.
Some of the assisted suicide bills are being
debated in states that are not likely to
legalized assisted suicide, while other
states are more concerning. All of these
bills should be treated seriously
No new state has legalized assisted suicide
in the past two years but the assisted
suicide lobby remains relectless.
Read more here...
IS HOSPICE AN ANTIDOTE
TO ASSISTED SUICIDE
The
goal of palliative care is to relieve
symptoms—including pain and stress—at any
stage in a serious illness. Palliative care
can be provided in conjunction with curative
or life-prolonging treatment. Hospice is a
subset of palliative care. Hospice provides
comfort care when a person no longer has
curative options or has chosen to forgo
treatment because the burdens of treatment
outweigh the benefits. The founding
principles of hospice were to maintain
dignity, to increase quality of life, and to
provide comfort and pain control. When these
principles are followed and staff members
are trained in proper pain management,
hospice can be a blessing for people in need
of expert end-of-life care.
Unfortunately, there is a growing
trend to misapply palliative medications to
make people die, particularly in the hospice
care setting. (emphasis added)
Read more here...
“FETAL CONTAINER’S”:
BIOETHICIST PROPOSES USING WOMEN IN VEGATATIVE
STATES AS SURROGATES
A
bioethicist has argued for using women in a
persistent vegetative state (PVS) as
surrogates, calling it “whole body
gestational donation.”
Anna Smajdor, of the University of Olso,
wrote in the journal Theoretical Medicine
and Bioethics that women who are brain dead
shouldn’t have their wombs going to waste,
when people who want children can use them.
“We already know that pregnancies can be
successfully carried to term in brain-dead
women,” she said. “There is no obvious
medical reason why initiating such
pregnancies would not be possible.
But the ethics of such a decision seems to
have overlooked by Smajdor.
Read more here...
A HEALTH PROVIDER’S
ROLE IN FIGHTING HUMAN TRAFFICKING
Human trafficking, a form of modern slavery
that exploits people for labor and sex,
affects about 24.9 million victims
worldwideExternal link:open_in_new, the U.S.
State Department estimates. And the majority
of victims will encounter the health care
system during their time being trafficked.
Health care providers are uniquely
positioned to identify and help human
trafficking victims because of the
likelihood they will come into contact with
victims—particularly in urgent care
settings, said forensic nurse Diana Faugno,
MSN, RN, CPN.
“They’re coming into the emergency rooms,
the urgent care [facilities] and the
clinics,” said Faugno, ...
Read more here...
Nancy Valko’s comment:
After writing my April 1,2023 blog, I agree
with Dr. DeCock’s conclusions below.
PROPOSED UDDA CHANGES
CONFLATE DEATH WITH BEING “DEAD ENOUGH”
In episode 109 of Bioethics on Air,
“Redefining Death by Revising the UDDA,” Joe
Zalot interviews Christopher DeCock, MD,
about how proposed changes to the Uniform
Determination of Death Act (UDDA) shift the
focus from obtaining prudential certitude
that someone is dead to establishing that he
or she is “dead enough” to remove
life-sustaining treatment. DeCock works as a
pediatric neurologist in Fargo, North
Dakota. As an observer for the Uniform
Law Commission—the legal body tasked with
proposing changes to the UDDA—he is
specially suited to explain the controversy
surrounding the proposed changes.
According to DeCock, the UDDA emerged during
the late 1970s and early 1980s in the wake
of the Harvard Ad Hoc Committee that defined
irreversible coma, or brain death. Because
of rising interest in determining death, the
UDDA standardized a definition of death for
medical and legal purposes. It states that
“an individual who has sustained either (1)
irreversible cessation of circulatory and
respiratory functions, or (2) irreversible
cessation of all functions of the entire
brain, including the brain stem, is dead.”
DeCock refers to the President’s Commission
1981 report, Defining Death: Medical, Legal,
and Ethical Issues in the Determination of
Death, as being especially important for
this definition. He paraphrases the
commission’s finding that “when the brain
dies the body very quickly thereafter
disintegrates.”
Read more here...
DEA PROPOSAL WOULD STOP
ASSISTED SUICIDE VIA TELEHEALTH
The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA)
has proposed a new rule for prescribing
drugs via telehealth. The rule states that
when a person has not seen a medical
practitioner and requires a Schedule II
medication or narcotic that the prescription
cannot be prescribed via telehealth. The
patient would be required to see the medical
practitioner in person before receiving the
prescription.
This is an important rule in the assisted
suicide debate. The assisted suicide lobby
wants to provide lethal assisted suicide
drugs to people via telehealth and then ship
those drugs to the person via courier.
Read more here...
ABORTIONIST DEFINES
“MEDICALLY NECESSARY” ABORTIONS
“A medically necessary abortion is any
abortion a woman asks for.”
— Abortionist Jane Hodgson, quoted in Human
Life International Special Report Number 83,
August 1991, pages 6 and 7.
Editor’s note: This appeared at
"Clinic
Quotes"
and is reposted with permission.
Read more here...
FBI DIRECTOR: 70% OF
ABORTION-RELATED THREATS AND VIOLENCE ARE
AGAINST PRO-LIFERS
Testifying
before the Senate Homeland Security
Committee, FBI Director Christopher Wray
stated last week that about 70% of
abortion-related violence and threats since
the Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v.
Jackson Women’s Health Organization have
been perpetrated against pro-life groups.
On November 17th, Senator Rick Scott
(R-Fla.) questioned Wray about recent
allegations that the Department of Justice
(DOJ) and FBI under the Biden administration
have been unfairly targeting pro-life
individuals for prosecution when, in fact,
the actual surge in violence has been
against pro-lifers at the hands of abortion
advocates – crimes the FBI has seemed to
ignore.
Wray replied, “My view — plainly expressed
to all of our people, including in the
context of abortion-related violence — is
that I don’t care what side of the issue
you’re on, you don’t get to engage in
violence, and we are equal-opportunity when
it comes to that.”
Wray continued, “Now, we have quite a number
of investigations — as we speak — into
attacks or threats against pregnancy
resource centers, faith-based organizations,
and other pro-life organizations.
Read more here...
Answering a question from a
legislator as to why so few arrests of
people who spray paint and firebomb
pregnancy help centers and desecrate
churches, United States Attorney Merrick
Garland replied that those who do such
things do them at night and they are hard to
see.
HERE FOR A REASON:
PLANNED PARENTHOOD PERFORMS ALMOST 200
ABORTIONS FOR EVERY ONE ADOPTION REFERRAL
Annual Report Shows Abortions Are Nearly
100% of Planned Parenthood’s Pregnancy
Resolution Activities
Planned Parenthood performed 383,460
abortions in 2019-2020 according to their
latest annual report, performing almost 200
abortions for every one adoption referral.
Nichole C. Wilson, executive director of
Charlotte Lozier Institute (CLI), said:
“Planned Parenthood’s annual report is
titled ‘Here for a Reason’ and their own
data shows that reason is abortion. Planned
Parenthood’s callous disregard for those
less fortunate is evident when you consider
they performed fewer than 3,000 cases of
miscarriage care and fewer than 2,000
adoption referrals in an entire year but
performed almost 400,000 abortions on
vulnerable women and girls.”
Read more here...
WORLDWIDE DIRECTORY OF
PREGNANCY HELP HITS MAJOR MILESTONE WITH 7,000
LISTINGS
Heartbeat International’s Worldwide
Directory of Pregnancy Help has surpassed
7,000 listings, boosting the celebration of
the pregnancy help network’s half-century of
service.
Heartbeat is the first network of pro-life
pregnancy resource centers founded in the
U.S. and it the most extensive network in
the world, with more than 2,900 affiliated
pregnancy help locations in more than 60
countries around the world working to
provide alternatives to abortion.
Heartbeat’s Worldwide Directory, an online
directory of life affirming service
providers around the world, is the leading
comprehensive list of pregnancy help
organizations (PHOs). Heartbeat is observing
its 50th anniversary this year.
Read more here...