Report from Durango! News on Selective Abortions, Gender Testing

Pro-lifers Protest Durango Hospital, Abortionist

Pro-life protesters arrived at Mercy Hospital in Durango, Colorado last Thursday to voice their opposition to the Catholic hospital’s association with abortionist Richard Grossman. Grossman, who commits abortions at the local Planned Parenthood facility, was granted hospital privileges in 1976—the longest duration of any of the physicians on staff.

Area pro-life group LifeGuard organized the event and launched the website www.mercyprotest.com to raise awareness about the scandal and to give pro-lifers an opportunity to voice their disapproval through a petition. CLICK HERE to sign.

“As you know, Dr. Grossman is an abortionist, and he’s murdered thousands of children. It’s estimated over 400 a year here in Durango,” said LifeGuard Director, Daniel Anguis. “And you are here to represent the lives of those children, that they are not forgotten.”

The event featured speakers Lila Rose, President of Live Action, and Keith Mason, President of Personhood USA. “It’s not just a Catholic issue,” said Mason. “This is terrible for the community--the fact that there would be an abortionist delivering babies one day, and killing them on the next.”

Referencing US Council of Catholic Bishops directives, Rose commented, “Catholic teaching is very clear about collaborating, in any way supporting, or even the appearance of support with abortionists.”

“That’s why we’re demanding that they cease the connection with this abortionist, and that any other hospital in our country that would have any connection to an abortionist would immediately cut that relationship for the protection of the unborn and for the sake of the faithful,” she said.

More on this story from LifeSiteNews.com here.

Trending Now in IVF: Aborting Twins

New York Times Magazine published an article on Wednesday titled “The Two-Minus-One Pregnancy.” In it, author Ruth Padawer examines the increasing prevalence of aborting siblings of twins and triplets.

Referred to by its euphemism, “selective reduction” has, tragically, been commonplace since In Vitro Fertilization became available. In years past, doctors would only abort multiple siblings of more than two or three for medical reasons that endangered the health of the mother—never mind that they were the ones who implanted the babies to begin with and that they are the ones responsible for putting the mothers in danger.

The article cites statistics from Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York. In 1997, 15% of the abortions reduced the number to a single child. By last year, 61 of 101 abortion reductions were to a single child—over half of which were twins (38).

One mother who did so commented, “I don’t wish this on anyone. I’m very grateful that we had this option at our disposal, that it can be done safely and in a legal way, but it was very difficult for both of us. I still wonder, Did we choose the right one? — even though I wasn’t the one who chose. That idea, that one’s gone and one’s here, it’s almost like playing God. I mean, who are we to choose? Even as it was happening, I wondered what the future would have been if the doctor had put the needle into the other one.”

“Almost” like playing God?

Children are not disposable. This is another prime example of the downward slide of medical ethics, and the solution is the restoration of the rights and dignity of every human being through personhood.

Report: Gender Testing Can Be Used for Abortion

Speaking of medical ethics, a report analyzing 57 published studies on the effects of early gender testing was released this week. The report was prompted by the development of a blood test that can determine whether a preborn child is a boy or girl as young as 7 week old.

According to the report, the tests can be used in the discovery and treatment of several gender-specific genetic diseases, but they also warn of abuses in sex selection abortions.

More on this from Fox News here.

Countries such as India have a severe gender imbalance due to cultural preferences of boys over girls. In China, the nation’s One Child Policy encourages couples to abandon or abort baby girls and has resulted in 120 boys born for every 100 girls and 32 million more males than females under the age of 20.

Clearly, the issue is not knowing the sex of the child or using the information to improve the lives and health of children. The problem is that abortion is readily available for those wishing to use the information for that purpose. It never ceases to amaze me how many of these issues could be avoided with personhood--if we were to ensure that the testing is done for ethically sound reasons.