A Maine mother is fighting the state to stop them from letting her baby die.
Six-month-old Aleah Peaslee was shaken so badly by her father Kevin that she initially went into a coma from a severe brain injury. While in the coma, doctors said the baby had little chance of survival and the family agreed to a do not resuscitate order.
The baby was taken off a ventilator and placed in her mother’s arms with everyone expecting her to pass into glory.
Instead, the baby kept breathing and improving in the arms of her 18-year-old mother, Virginia. Days later, the baby came out of the coma. Virginia asked for the DNR to be lifted for her child and the hospital refused saying that the baby still had brain damage. Then the government stepped in.
The Maine Department of Health and Human Services kept going to court until they found a judge that would give them the power to keep the DNR in place. They claimed “neither parent can be counted on to be physically or emotionally available to make the necessary informed decision when needed.”
The Alliance Defending Freedom is standing up with the mother.
“The state is effectively arguing that this mom isn’t fit to make medical decisions for her child simply because she wants the child to live,” ADF Senior Counsel Steven Aden said. “No one has declared this mother an unfit parent, yet the government wants to take her place. The Maine Supreme Judicial Court should reaffirm Mainers’ interest in life, parental rights, and the integrity of the medical profession by reversing the lower court and restoring this mom’s full rights to make medical decisions on her daughter’s behalf.”
Maine’s Governor Paul LePage has said he will defend the life of the baby even if he has to defy the state’s Supreme Court.
A Swedish woman was denied a job with three different medical clinics because she would not perform abortions.
The Alliance Defending Freedom has filed a brief with the court on behalf of Ellinor Grimmark. Grimmark was subjected to verbal harassment because of her beliefs and openly denied employment because of those beliefs.
“No one deserves to be denied a job simply because she is pro-life,” said ADF Senior Legal Counsel Roger Kiska. “International laws to which Sweden is obligated recognize freedom of conscience and make clear that being pro-abortion cannot be a requirement for employment, nor can medical facilities force nurses and midwives with a conscience objection to assist with practices that can lead to an abortion.”
One of the defendants, Varnamo Hospital, had offered a position to Grimmark but withdrew it when they discovered she was pro-life.
The ADF brief points out that the Council of Europe has ruled “no person, hospital or institution shall be coerced, held liable or discriminated against in any manner because of a refusal to perform, accommodate, assist or submit to an abortion, the performance of a human miscarriage, or euthanasia or any act which could cause the death of a human fetus or embryo, for any reason.”
The case is currently pending.
The University of Buffalo decided that a pro-life group having a debate to stand up for the lives of unborn children was so “controversial” that they ordered them to pay for security at their rally. School officials then charged the group more than $150 OVER the student group’s entire Student Association funding after the event.
The officers who were “working” the event included one who sat outside the building and read the newspaper while the debate went on inside. There were no major incidents at the debate. Continue reading →
At least 30 public universities have agreed to make changes to their policies to make sure the First Amendment rights of Christian students will be protected on campus.
The Alliance Defending Freedom has listed a wide variety of violations against Christian students and groups including forcing those groups to allow voting members of the group be people hostile to the group’s beliefs and to prohibit those groups from using facilities that non-religious students groups are free to use. Continue reading →
