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November 15, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) – In a recent interview with The Telegraph, Italian pop-opera singer Andrea Bocelli, who has in the past revealed that his mother was pressured to abort him, reaffirmed his pro-life views.

“You ask me before of my point of view about religion, and I told you I am very religious,” Bocelli told interviewer Bryony Gordon. “It means that before I fight against something, I try to fight in favour of something.

“It is not Christian to go against someone,” he continued. “I am in favour of life.”

He then clarified that he was speaking directly to the question of abortion. “Of course, personally I do not share the idea of being able to interrupt life arbitrarily,” he said, adding, “But I cannot be the judge of those who decide in a different way. As much as I can, I show them an example and act as a role model, because I believe this is the only way.”

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Bocelli’s pro-life views received a great deal of attention in 2010, when a video was widely circulated showing the blind singer sitting at a piano, telling the story of his own birth. He recounted how doctors had tried to convince his mother to abort him after she suffered an attack of appendicitis. Doctors said that the child would be born with a disability.

Bocelli was born in 1958 to Alessandro and Edi Bocelli and was diagnosed with congenital glaucoma. By age 12 he was completely blind.

“Maybe I am partisan, but I can say it was the right choice,” said Bocelli in the video about his mother’s decision to reject the doctors’ advice, and give birth to him.

In an article in Il Foglio, Bocelli had said the video was made for a priest friend, Father Richard Frechette, a missionary who works with children in Haiti, to raise funds for a new home.

The priest, he said, “asked me to say a few words of hope for mothers in difficulties and I chose to tell the story of my birth. I did it privately, telling the story of my mother without even asking permission, but I was not reprimanded [by her], but I was not prepared for all this fuss and delayed explosion.”

Bocelli said that after the video began to circulate, he received many more phone calls than usual from all over the world, from people wanting to know more about his story.

He said that he had never wanted to talk about his blindness, “because really in my life are much more important things to tell: my life is a fairy tale, the story of a child who could not wait to go to Mass on Sundays because he would eventually be allowed to play a bit of the organ, who followed a dream and at one point that dream has come true.”
 
With the video story of his birth, he said, “I wanted to help, to comfort people who are in difficulties who sometimes just need to not feel abandoned: life is difficult, but you have to listen to them.”

November 15, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Speaking to an international stem cell conference hosted by the Vatican this past Saturday, Pope Benedict XVI lauded the promises of adult stem cell research, and reaffirmed the Catholic Church’s opposition to any form of research that leads to the destruction of human life.

“The potential benefits of adult stem cell research are very considerable, since it opens up possibilities for healing chronic degenerative illnesses by repairing damaged tissue,” said the pontiff.

“The improvement that such therapies promise would constitute a significant step forward in medical science, bringing fresh hope to sufferers and their families alike.”

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Scientific research offers “a unique opportunity to explore the wonder of the universe, the complexity of nature and the distinctive beauty of life, including human life,” said the pope. However, he continued, in an obvious jab at embryonic stem cell research, there are “limits” to what the natural sciences “are competent to determine.”

“If these limits are transgressed, there is a serious risk that the unique dignity and inviolability of human life could be subordinated to purely utilitarian considerations.”

Those who promote embryonic stem cell research as a potential source of medical cures make the “grave mistake of denying the inalienable right to life of all human beings from the moment of conception to natural death,” said the pope.

“The destruction of even one human life can never be justified in terms of the benefit that it might conceivably bring to another.”

The Vatican stem cell conference brought together some of the most eminent stem cell researchers, with the goal of steering the stem cell field in the direction of focusing on research on adult stem cells.

The conference was held in partnership with Neostem, a U.S. based research firm that focuses on adult stem cell research. The Vatican has invested $1 million in Neostem.

Read the pope’s complete remarks here.

NEW YORK, November 15, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A study published in one of the most respected medical journals in the world this month has found that many “vegetative” patients are in fact fully conscious and aware.

Experts at the University of Western Ontario conducted the experiment by applying an electroencephalogram (EEG) machine, a common mechanism for measuring brain waves, to a large group of unresponsive patients suffering from brain injuries.

The New York Times reported that, when researchers asked “vegetative” patients to imagine squeezing their hand into a fist or wiggling their toes on cue, they found the brain waves of about 20 percent of such patients responding in precisely the same way as healthy patients.

The research was anticipated by several smaller-scale studies and anecdotal evidence from experts showing the “vegetative” diagnosis to be unreliable at best. A lengthy article published in Discover Magazine in July followed the years of research by two leading experts who say they have witnessed such patients - some of whom had only a “shadow of fluid” in their skulls where the brain should have been - reconnect with the outside world again and again.

But the hurdles for advancing treatment may be higher than science alone can traverse. Dr. Joseph Giancino, director of rehabilitation neuropsychology at Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital, told Discover of the level of prejudice he witnessed against the most helpless patients at one prestigious hospital where he presented his findings.

“The head of trauma thanks me and in a very jovial manner says, ‘In my day, the term for these patients was jellyfish.’ And he laughs and moves on,” he said. “What do you do with that?”

While one of the researchers of the Lancet study concluded that the experiment was “a strong sign of our inability to correctly diagnose people in the vegetative state,” some disability advocates say the diagnosis should be abandoned altogether, arguing that it is a tool routinely used to discriminate against the cognitively disabled.

Bobby Schindler, brother of Terri Schiavo and founder of the Terri Schiavo Life and Hope Network, said in response to the Discover article that the “[persistent vegetative state] diagnosis needs to be eliminated by the medical community.”

“Not only is it highly flawed and unscientific in its diagnosis (misdiagnosed upwards of 50% of the time), but it is dehumanizing to the individual being labeled as a ‘vegetable,’” said Schindler. “More importantly and most disturbing however, is the PVS is being used as a criteria to kill those with cognitive disabilities as it was used to deliberately kill my sister, Terri.”

Terri Schiavo was diagnosed with PVS in 1991. A court order sparked by her family’s battle to keep Terri alive against her husband’s wishes forbade her food and fluids and led to her infamous death by dehydration in 2005, despite video and photos showing her alert and responsive.

Bioethics commentator Wesley Smith expressed concern that the new testing would likely do little to stop the routine dehydration of minimally conscious patients.

“We’ve known for years that PVS is often misdiagnosed, but don’t expect learning that a patient is conscious to lead many bioethicists to advocate against their dehydration,” he wrote.

“In fact, many of the same bioethicists who once said removing tube-supplied sustenance should be limited to the unconscious, merely pivoted and argued that if someone is ‘minimally’ conscious, it is even more reason to pull the tube because they will be suffering from potential knowledge of their condition or limitations.”

While the test should certainly “become part of the practice of medicine” if it is accurate, Smith said, “we really need to change our values so that all of us are embraced and accepted as moral equals regardless of our cognitive states.”

ROCKFORD, Illinois, November 15, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A second telephone hearing with state officials has left the notoriously bizarre and anti-Christian Rockford abortion facility without a license to practice for at least the next two weeks.

The call was scheduled Monday in hopes of reaching a settlement after Illinois investigators uncovered the Northern Illinois Women’s Center’s filthy and illegal medical practices, leading to the suspension of its license in September.

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Kevin Rilott, a veteran Rockford pro-lifer, said that attorneys on the call said more time was needed to agree on aspects of a potential settlement, and scheduled another hearing for Nov 28.

“As a result, the Northern Illinois Women’s Center will be closed for at least two more weeks, with the possible result being a few dozen children’s lives could be saved!” wrote Rilott on his blog.

If a settlement still is not reached, he said, a full hearing is scheduled for Jan 4.

The report by the Illinois Department of Public Health in August revealed that investigators found not only “a brown substance” staining surgical equipment, some of which are used directly inside patients’ bodies, but evidence that even sterilized equipment had been cleaned with a broken machine that was never satisfactorily repaired. 

In addition to its health violations, the facility is known for routinely displaying anti-Christian symbols, such as a nun in a coffin and a crucified rubber chicken, in its windows.

WASHINGTON, November 15, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) – In a series of emails, former Solicitor General Elena Kagan and another Obama advisor celebrated the passage of the federal health care bill and jeered at the “magic” executive order against abortion funding that sealed the deal. The newly released documents cast new doubt that Kagan, now a Supreme Court Justice, would impartially judge the health bill now that a case challenging it has been accepted by the high court.

“I hear they have the votes, Larry!! Simply amazing,” Kagan wrote in an email obtained by Judicial Watch and addressed to Larry Tribe, who served as “senior counselor for access to justice” in the Department of Justice (DOJ), the day Congress passed the health bill.

Tribe also celebrated the “amazing” fact that the Democrats had gained enough votes, a development that hinged solely upon the decision of a group of pro-life House Democrats led by Rep. Bart Stupak to accept an eleventh-hour compromise after holding out for pro-life protections in the bill. The group accepted placing Hyde-like language restricting abortion in an executive order instead of the legislation itself.

“And with the Stupak group accepting the magic of what amounts to a signing statement on steroids!” Tribe said.

The Supreme Court, where Kagan replaced Justice John Paul Stevens in August 2010, announced on Monday that it would accept a lawsuit advanced by 26 state attorneys general against the bill. The plaintiffs argue that the law is unconstitutional for forcing citizens to purchase health insurance. An appeals court in August 2011 sided with the states.

Critics of the Kagan appointment noted at the time that Kagan was likely closely connected to the administration’s push to pass the a bill that would almost certainly land in the Supreme Court. As Solicitor General, Kagan played the role of the administration’s highest constitutional lawyer, and would have defended the bill on behalf of the administration in the high court.

During her confirmation hearings, Kagan claimed not to have expressed an opinion on the legal merits of the bill, a statement Republican lawmakers called hard to believe.

“Elena Kagan was in the unique role of being the nation’s top lawyer, and the American people have the right to know what role she played in defending this unconstitutional law,” Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah said at the time.

Decried by pro-life leaders as the “biggest expansion of abortion since Roe v. Wade,” the health care bill has been shown to increase funding for abortion by various means since its passage. One recent example came in the form of a mandate by federal health officials this summer that will eventually force all insurance providers to fully cover as “preventive care” all birth control, including abortifacients such as Ella, a drug chemically similar to RU-486.

OTTAWA, ON, November 15, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A report from the Royal Society of Canada (RSC) saying that assisted suicide and voluntary euthanasia should be “legally permitted” is nothing more than a “sham,” according to Alex Schadenberg, executive director of Canada’s Euthanasia Prevention Coalition (EPC).

Schadenberg told LifeSiteNews.com he was “shocked” when the Royal Society of Canada announced last October that it had assembled an expert panel to look into what it called “end-of-life decision making” that was primarily made up of advocates from the euthanasia lobby.

The expert panel consisted of 5 members, 4 of whom were known to be adamant euthanasia advocates.

“When we further investigated the panel members, it was clear that ... this report would be a pro-euthanasia propaganda report,” explained Schadenberg in his blog.

Leading American bioethicist Wesley J. Smith agreed, stating that the RSC panel had “stack[ed] the deck for euthanasia in Canada.”

An October press release from the RSC had said that the report was “designed to be balanced, thorough, independent, free from conflict of interest, and based on a deep knowledge of all of the published research that is pertinent to the questions that have been posed.”

Smith pointed out, however, that the “bias [in the report] isn’t even subtle.”

“‘Expert commissions’ to advise on contentious issues of public policy are usually political tools designed to come to a predetermined conclusion in order to pave the way for a desired policy changes,” he said.

Queen’s Philosophy professor Udo Schuklenk, who headed the panel, is a well-known pro-euthanasia philosopher.

In an essay explaining why he is an atheist, Schuklenk argued that “our end-of-life decision-making” is interfered by “religions” that “stand as one in their rejection of many dying patients’ requests to end their lives in dignity.”

Smith criticized the RSC for selecting Schuklenk to chair the panel when it was evident that he brought with him such a “clear view” that favored assisted suicide. Smith pointed out that the selection of Schuklenk indicated from the start the direction in which the panel’s recommendations were “designed” to go.

Also on the panel was Sheila McClean, who argued in favor of legalizing assisted suicide in her book “The Case for Assisted Suicide,” Jocelyn Downie, author of “Dying Justice,” a book urging the decriminalization of both euthanasia and assisted suicide, and Johannes J. M. van Delden, a Dutch euthanasia researcher.

In its report, titled “End-of-Life Decision Making,” the RSC speaks of human dignity as a “value whose meaning is obscure” and adds that the “concept of dignity cannot provide a sound basis for either supporting or rejecting a permissive regime with respect to voluntary euthanasia or assisted suicide.”

The RSC report argues that legalizing euthanasia and/or assisted suicide does not “result in vulnerable persons being subject to abuse or a slippery slope from voluntary to non-voluntary euthanasia. The evidence does not support claims that decriminalization will have a corrosive effect on access to or the development of palliative care.”

Schadenberg said he was not surprised that the expert panel wrote off a number of studies, including one published last year that revealed that 32% of euthanasia deaths in the Flanders region of Belgium were carried out by doctors without explicit request or consent from the patients.

The report comes just a day after the commencement of a case in British Columbia in which B.C. Civil Liberties Association and Gloria Taylor, a 63-year-old woman suffering from ALS, are challenging Canada’s laws against assisted suicide.

The report also come two days before the release of a “landmark report” from the Parliamentary Committee on Palliative and Compassionate Care, an ad-hoc committee of the House of Commons.

NEWARK, N.J., November 15, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Twelve nurses at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey (UMDNJ) said on Monday that the hospital is continuing to pressure them to perform abortion-related services, despite a restraining order issued by a court Nov. 3.

“In October, we were suddenly confronted with a choice between our faith and our jobs,” said Fe Esperanza-Racpan Vinoya, one of the suing University Hospital nurses, at a press conference held yesterday. “They did this in spite of our repeated efforts to tell them we had religious and moral objections. They said very clearly if we did not assist, we would face termination.”

Federal law prohibits hospitals that receive certain federal funds from forcing employees to participate in abortions. The hospital run by the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey receives approximately $60 million in federal funds annually.

In addition, New Jersey law states, “No person shall be required to perform or assist in the performance of an abortion or sterilization.”

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However, the nurses allege in their lawsuit that in September UMDNJ initiated a policy change and began telling Same Day Surgery Unit nurses that they must participate in abortion-related activities, and required them to undergo training in October that involved assisting in surgical abortions.

The lawsuit charges that when one nurse objected to assisting abortions on the grounds of her religious beliefs, a supervisor responded that UMDNJ has “no regard for religious beliefs.”

At Monday’s press conference, the nurses were accompanied by renowned pro-life Representative Rep. Chris Smith.

Smith told the press conference it was “an honor and privilege to join these courageous ‘nurses of conscience.’”

“UMDNJ’s coercive anti-conscience policy is not only highly unethical but blatantly illegal,” he said.

The congressman charged that the hospital “has not only imposed irreparable harm and suffering on its own nurses, but has willfully and recklessly put federal funding for the institution at risk.”

“The illegal and highly unethical policy of coercion by UMDNJ must cease immediately,” Smith said.

November 14, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) – When Bethany Saros got pregnant shortly after deploying to Iraq, she came face-to-face with what she claims is the military’s “unspoken code”: that “a good soldier will have an abortion, continue the mission, and get some sympathy because she chose duty over motherhood.”

But despite the fact that the father of the child was out of the picture by the time Saros knew she was expecting, abortion simply wasn’t an option for her.

Saros told her story in a recent article published on Salon.com. There she relates that she arrived in Iraq after five tumultuous years: “an abusive marriage, a nasty divorce, an unsuccessful relationship, getting raped by a co-worker, and an alcohol problem.”

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By the time she deployed Saros had been sober for six months, but she recounts that she was “mentally and spiritually exhausted,” and she soon sought consolation through a relationship with a man she refers to only as “J.”

Though Saros was already experiencing pregnancy symptoms by the time J. left for mid-tour leave, it wasn’t until after he left that she connected the dots and took a pregnancy test.

“I rejected the idea [of pregnancy] at first,” she says. “We had been using condoms. We were safe. That couldn’t happen to me.

But the pregnancy test came back positive. And that, she says, is when the shame and the embarrassment set in.

For those soldiers who choose to give birth after becoming pregnant shortly before or while on tour, the implicit assumption by some is that they are trying to “get out of deployment,” says Saros. Pregnant soldiers are automatically sent back home to the United States.

“Instead of being seen as making a responsible parenting decision, you are seen as a faker, a soldier who couldn’t take the pressure and went to extreme lengths to get out.”

“No one ever said to my face that they were disappointed in me, but I could see it in the eyes of my commander, my first sergeant and my boss. They all congratulated me but I sensed I had let them down in some way,” she writes.

After the pregnancy test came back positive, Saros called up the father of the child.

“Are you going to keep it?” he asked.

“Yes,” Saros says she replied. “I can’t do an abortion. I just can’t.”

But though “J.” promised that he would “be there” for Saros and her baby, that promise ultimately proved to be “meaningless.” Abandoned, pregnant, and halfway around the world from home, Saros found herself struggling against feelings that her world had “come crashing down.”

But despite this, Saros never wavered from her resolution to keep her child.

“I had let everyone around me down,” she concludes. “But I wasn’t going to let the little person snuggled up in my belly down.

“One day, my son would be old enough to ask me questions, and I wanted to be able to tell him that I gave him the best life I possibly could. At the end of the day, my son was the only person I would have to explain myself to.”

Read the complete story at Salon.com

November 14,  2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) - During their annual plenary meeting today, the United States bishops elected Cardinal Sean O’Malley of Boston as chairman-elect of the Committee on Pro-Life Activities.

Cardinal O’Malley was elected in a 149-84 vote over Archbishop Allen Vigneron of Detroit. He will take over the office from Cardinal Daniel DiNardo of Houston in the new year.

O’Malley takes the helm of the committee at a critical time, when the U.S. bishops are heavily engaged in the battle to strip Obama’s health care reform law of provisions that open the door to massive increased funding of abortion and an attack on the conscience rights of health care workers.

Immediately after the vote, Fr. Frank Pavone, National Director of Priests for Life, issued a statement congratulating the cardinal.

“For the last 20 years, we have appreciated the collaborative relationship we have had with the US Bishops’ Committee on Pro-life Activities, and we look forward to increasing that collaboration under the leadership of Cardinal O’Malley,” said Pavone.

“There is no issue or challenge facing the Church that carries greater urgency and consequence for the human family than abortion. We thank the bishops for their leadership in making that clear.”

In recent years Cardinal O’Malley has had an at-times strained relationship with the United States’ pro-life movement. While known for his doctrinal orthodoxy on life and family issues, he has also been criticized by pro-life and pro-family leaders for certain prudential decisions. The most notable of these was his decision to permit and participate in an elaborate public funeral for the late pro-abortion, pro-homosexual Sen. Ted Kennedy that included three eulogies.

He has also expressed hesitancy about the idea of denying communion to pro-abortion politicians, telling LifeSiteNews.com in an interview in 2010 that the “only way it would work,” is if the Vatican issues a clear directive on the matter.  However, in 2004, a letter from then Cardinal Ratzinger that was intended to be given to all US bishops, but was withheld from the bishops by Washington Cardinal Theodore McCarrick to whom it was sent, presented very specific direction on the issue. Cardinal Francis Arinze has repeatedly affirmed those directions.

Earlier this year, O’Malley was also involved in two separate controversies relating to homosexuality: one involving his decision to allow the children of homosexual couples to attend Catholic schools, and another about his decision to cancel, and then reschedule a mass in his diocese originally intended to commemorate Boston’s Gay Pride celebrations.

At the same time, the cardinal has been a regular and prominent participant in the annual March for Life in Washington and has been outspoken in defense of the Catholic Church’s pro-life and pro-family teachings.

At the March for Life in 2009 O’Malley told LifeSiteNews.com that if he could only tell President Obama one thing, it would be that “life is the most important value we have to defend.”

Shortly thereafter, when Obama repealed the Mexico City Policy, O’Malley decried the decision, saying: “When we see the numbers of abortions being performed in the developing world - many of which are directed at girls in the womb - it is very disturbing to think that our country is going to be promoting this kind of assault on human life and dignity throughout the world.”

“Abortion is a great evil and anytime restrictions to abortion are lifted it is a tragedy,” he said.

As recently as September the cardinal also came out strongly against efforts to legalize assisted suicide and euthanasia in Massachusetts.

“We are called upon to defend the gospel of life with courage and resolve,” he told the members of the legal profession at the diocesan Red Mass.  “Your very profession invests in all of you a great responsibility to ensure that all laws are just.”

O’Malley also expressed his hope that Massachusetts citizens would not be “seduced by language [such as] dignity and compassion, which are means to disguise the sheer brutality of helping people to kill themselves.”

He added: “Suicide is a tragedy, one that a compassionate society should work to prevent.”