Under Title 9 abortion is the moral equivalent of giving birth

Proverbs 6:16-19 “There are six things that the Lord hates, seven that are an abomination to him: haughty eyes, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked plans, feet that make haste to run to evil, a false witness who breathes out lies, and one who sows discord among brothers.

Important Takeaways:

  • The Morning Briefing: ‘Good Catholic’ Biden Wants to Normalize Abortion in a Sinister Way
  • Under Title IX the Daily Signal found
  • “The Biden administration wants to redefine pregnancy to include childbirth, lactation, and ‘termination of pregnancy’—that is, abortion,” explains Melanie Israel of the Daily Signal. “The administration’s three-pronged definition of pregnancy makes a notable departure from previous ones. Under Title IX now, women are protected from discrimination if they get an abortion. This means that with a doctor’s note, women receive medical leave from class or a sports team to recover.”
  • “Abortion currently is a distinct issue that falls under ‘sex discrimination,’ but under the Biden administration’s change, abortion would be included as an aspect of pregnancy,” Israel continues.
  • And the distinction is extremely consequential. Under Biden’s revised definition, abortion would be morally equivalent to carrying a child to term, giving birth, and breastfeeding.

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World’s first baby born via womb transplant from dead donor

Medical team hold the first baby born via uterus transplant from a deceased donor at the hospital in Sao Paulo, Brazil December 15, 2017 in this picture handout obtained on December 4, 2018. Hospital das Clinicas da FMUSP/via REUTERS

By Kate Kelland

LONDON, Dec 4 (Reuters) – A woman in Brazil who received a womb transplanted from a deceased donor has given birth to a baby girl in the first successful case of its kind, doctors reported.

The case, published in The Lancet medical journal, involved connecting veins from the donor uterus with the recipient’s veins, as well as linking arteries, ligaments and vaginal canals.

It comes after 10 previously known cases of uterus transplants from deceased donors – in the United States, the Czech Republic and Turkey – failed to produce a live birth.

The girl born in the Brazilian case was delivered via cesarean section at 35 weeks and three days, and weighed 2,550 grams (nearly 6 lbs), the case study said.

Dani Ejzenberg, a doctor at Brazil’s Sao Paulo University hospital who led the research, said the transplant – carried out in September 2016 when the recipient was 32 – shows the technique is feasible and could offer women with uterine infertility access to a larger pool of potential donors.

The current norm for receiving a womb transplant is that the organ would come from a live family member willing to donate it.

“The numbers of people willing and committed to donate organs upon their own deaths are far larger than those of live donors, offering a much wider potential donor population,” Ejzenberg said in a statement about the results.

She added, however, that the outcomes and effects of womb donations from live and deceased donors have yet to be compared, and said the technique could still be refined and optimized.

The first baby born after a live donor womb transplant was in Sweden in 2013. Scientists have so far reported a total of 39 procedures of this kind, resulting in 11 live births.

Experts estimate that infertility affects around 10 to 15 percent of couples of reproductive age worldwide. Of this group, around one in 500 women have uterine problems.

Before uterus transplants became possible, the only options to have a child were adoption or surrogacy.

In the Brazilian case, the recipient had been born without a uterus due to a condition called Mayer-Rokitansky-Küster-Hauser syndrome. The donor was 45 and died of a stroke.

Five months after the transplant, Ejzenberg’s team wrote, the uterus showed no signs of rejection, ultrasound scans were normal, and the recipient was having regular menstruation. The woman’s previously fertilized and frozen eggs were implanted after seven months and 10 days later she was confirmed pregnant.

At seven months and 20 days – when the case study report was submitted to The Lancet – the baby girl was continuing to breastfeed and weighed 7.2 kg (16 lb).

(Reporting by Kate Kelland; Editing by Andrew Cawthorne)

British official urges more protection for children ‘datafied from birth’

A girl views a new iPad tablet computer at an Apple store during its UK launch in central London May 28, 2010. Diehard fans mobbed Apple Inc stores in Asia and Europe as the iPad tablet computer went on sale outside the United States for the first time on Friday. The device, a little smaller than a letter-size sheet and with a colour touchscreen, is designed for surfing the Web, watching movies and reading. It has been hailed by the publishing industry as a potential life-saver. REUTERS/Luke MacGregor (BRITAIN - Tags: BUSINESS SOCIETY SCI TECH) - LM1E65S12UK01

By Adela Suliman

LONDON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – British children are having vast quantities of personal data collected from birth, according to a report released on Thursday that calls for more transparency and greater legal protection.

From proud parents sharing a photo of their newborn baby online to internet-based toys, smart speakers and location tracking gadgets, children’s every move is being tracked, the Children’s Commissioner for England warned in the report.

“We’re all datafied but the difference for children is … they’re datafied from birth,” the report’s author Simone Vibert, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

“I think we should be concerned because we don’t know what the consequences of all this information about children will be in the future.”

Vibert said parents should stop and think before sharing information online about their children, whose online data footprints could one day put them at greater risk of identity theft or limit their job and university prospects.

Last year, a popular children’s toy, CloudPets, was found to have breached data laws after gathering and storing online about two million personal messages shared between children and their family members.

About 79 percent of five to seven year olds in Britain go online every week, mostly using a tablet, this jumps to 99 percent of 12 to 15 years olds, according to a 2017 report by Britain’s communications regulator, Ofcom.

Children aged 11 to 16 post on social media on average 26 times a day, which means by the age of 18 they are likely to have posted 70,000 times, the report found.

It said that while personal information in the wrong hands could pose an immediate threat to children’s safety, there is less understanding of how personal data gathered in childhood shape people’s prospects in the long term.

Children’s Commissioner Anne Longfield called on the government to urgently refine existing data protection legislation.

The report said her office would draft a law outlining the statutory duty of care governing the relationship between social media companies and their audiences.

It also urged companies to be more transparent about their collection and use of children’s data and recommended safeguards including improved education in schools on social media use.

Asked to respond, the government said it was “determined to make Britain the safest place to be online”.

“Parents need to have confidence their children are protected,” a spokeswoman for Britain’s Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

(Reporting by Adela Suliman; Editing by Claire Cozens. Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women’s rights, trafficking, property rights, climate change and resilience. Visit http://news.trust.org)

Baby traffickers thriving in Nigeria as recession bites

baby grasps hand

By Anamesere Igboeroteonwu and Tom Esslemont

ENUGU, Nigeria/LONDON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – As 16-year-old Maria strained under the anguish of labor in southeastern Nigeria, a midwife repeatedly slapped her across the face – but the real ordeal began minutes after birth.

“The nurse took my child away to be washed. She never brought her back,” the teenager said, gazing down at her feet.

Maria said she learned her newborn daughter had been given up for adoption for which she received 20,000 naira ($65.79) – the same price as a 50 kilogram bag of rice.

And Maria is far from alone.

A Thomson Reuters Foundation investigative team spoke to more than 10 Nigerian women duped into giving up their newborns to strangers in houses known as “baby factories” in the past two years or offered babies whose origins were unknown.

Five women did not want to be interviewed, despite the guarantee of anonymity, fearing for their own safety with criminal gangs involved in the baby trade, while two men spoke of being paid to act as “studs” to get women pregnant.

Although statistics are hard to come by, campaigners say the sale of newborns is widespread – and they fear the illegal trade is becoming more prevalent with Nigeria heading into recession this year amid ongoing political turbulence.

“The government is too overstretched by other issues to focus on baby trafficking,” said Arinze Orakwue, head of public enlightenment at the National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP).

Record numbers of baby factories were raided or closed down in the southeastern states of Abia, Anambra, Ebonyi, Enugu and Imo this year, NAPTIP said.

A total of 14 were discovered in the first nine months of 2016, up from six in 2015 and 10 in 2014, the data showed.

But despite the growing number of raids, the scam exploiting couples desperate for a baby and young, pregnant, single women continues with newborns sold for up to $5,000 in Africa’s most populous nation where most people live on less than $2 a day.

Cultural barriers are also a factor in the West African nation, with teenage girls fearing they will be publicly shamed by strict fathers or partners over unwanted pregnancies if they do not give up their children, experts say.

“In southeastern Nigeria a woman is deemed a failure if she fails to conceive. But it is also taboo for a teenager to fall pregnant out of wedlock,” said Orakwue.

Maria said in the home in Imo state where she gave birth pregnant teenagers were welcomed by a maternal nurse who liked to be called “mama” but went on to sell the babies they delivered.

“(After I gave birth) somebody told me that mama collected big money from people before giving them other people’s babies,” Maria told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in the grounds of a school compound in her village.

“I do not know where my baby is now,” said Maria, using a false name for her own protection.

A lot of the trade is carried out in Nigeria but authorities suspect babies are also sold to people from Europe and the United States because many foreigners continue to seek infants there despite the controversy around Nigerian adoptions.

HIDDEN PROBLEM

The U.S. Department of State alerted prospective adoptive parents to the issue of child buying from Nigeria in June 2014 after Nigerian media warned that people were posing as owners of orphanages or homes for unwed mothers to make money.

“The State Department is aware of a growing number of adoption scams,” an alert on its website read.

Over 1,600 children have been adopted from Nigeria by U.S. citizens since 1999, according to the State Department website, about a third of them aged between one and two years old.

A U.S. official said the State Department facilitates contact between foreign officials and U.S. authorities when foreign governments raise any concerns regarding the welfare of an adopted child.

“To date, we are not aware of any concerns regarding the welfare of a child adopted from Nigeria,” a State Department official told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in a statement.

In Britain a couple was found by the High Court to have “fallen under the spell” of an elaborate fraud after paying 4,500 pounds ($5,600) for herbal treatment in Nigeria that caused the woman’s stomach to swell, media reported in 2014.

The couple only realized they had been duped nine months later when presented with a baby in Nigeria that actually was not theirs, the Daily Mail newspaper reported.

Babies, whose biological parents or backgrounds are unknown, are offered to women who have not been able to conceive naturally, according to NAPTIP and interviews with three women.

The British government said it was committed to stamping out what it calls the “miracle babies” phenomenon.

“Specially-trained teams are working at the UK border to identify and safeguard babies and children who may be at risk of trafficking,” said a spokesman for the Home Office (UK interior ministry) in a statement.

Denmark suspended adoptions from Nigeria in 2014 citing concerns over forgery, corruption and lack of control by the authorities.

Apart from the illicit trade in babies, Nigeria also faces the problem of domestic and international trafficking in women and children.

Human trafficking, including selling children, is illegal in Nigeria, but almost 10 years ago a UNESCO report identified the industry as the country’s third most common crime after financial fraud and drug trafficking – and the situation appears to be getting worse, according to campaigners.

The Nigerian government has not ratified an internationally recognized set of rules known as the Hague Adoption Convention which meant the laws governing adoptions remain murky and complicated, campaigners said.

“There is corruption in the adoption process and that is the individual (Nigerian) states’ responsibility,” said NAPTIP’s Orakwue in a phone interview

“But central government should step up its funding to NAPTIP so we can increase support to victims,” Orakwue said.

HERBAL TREATMENT

Sophie, who was not able to conceive, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation she started to develop the symptoms of pregnancy after visiting a herbalist in Enugu state in 2014.

However the traditional doctor told Sophie her swollen stomach contained gas resulting from the herbal treatment rather than a fetus – but she could arrange to buy a baby.

“(The herbalist) said that she would bring me a newborn baby, girl or boy, depending on which one I wanted,” she said in the grimy sitting room of her apartment in southeastern Nigeria.

The woman said a girl would cost 380,000 naira ($1,250) while a boy would cost 500,000 naira ($1,645), said Sophie who opted for a girl.

But a sense of obligation to the woman who brought her a child prevented her from reporting the crime, she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

“I considered everything and thought to myself ‘why should I report (the herbalist) to the police?’ She had helped me,” she said.

NAPTIP does not have data on the number of domestic adoptions that have taken place, a figure it says is not held by central government.

“In the southeastern states, the sale of babies is unarguably very prevalent as recorded by the agency,” said Cordelia Ebiringa, NAPTIP’s commander in Enugu state.

DEADLY GAME

Men are also involved in the process of illicit baby trafficking, with sperm donors impregnating surrogate mothers who then sell their babies, according to two Nigerian men.

Surrogacy is illegal in Nigeria.

Jonathan, 33, said he was paid 25,000 naira ($82) by his boss or “madam” every time he helped a client to become pregnant.

“I don’t see it as somebody exploiting me. The madams pay me for my work,” said Jonathan, who withheld his full name.

Jonathan said he did not know whether the women gave their babies away or went on to sell them although he was concerned what he was doing could be illegal.

“I often think ‘what if the police catch me?'”

Nigeria’s anti-human trafficking agency said it did not have data or information on the role of sperm donors, but many women they spoke to did not want to reveal how they fell pregnant.

“NAPTIP has no records of studs that impregnate the women at the baby factories as most of the pregnant women rescued and interviewed in such cases claimed unplanned pregnancies,” said Ebiringa.

Little information was made available by the Nigerian police or authorities in southeastern states about the number or identity of the people who run the “baby factories”.

No data was provided on the number of arrests by police in southern states of Enugu and Abia on baby trafficking offences despite repeated requests by the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

But the dangers involved, both from the law and from trafficking gangs, are palpable, according to Jonathan, who estimates he has fathered about 15 children as a “stud”.

“These (baby traffickers) can be dangerous,” said Jonathan, who was once threatened by a group of thugs who found out what he was doing. “They are ready to kill anybody if you stand in their way.”

($1 = 304.00 naira)($1 = 0.8042 pounds)

(Reporting By Tom Esslemont and Anamesere Igboeroteonwu, Editing by Belinda Goldsmith; Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women’s rights, corruption and climate change. Visit news.trust.org)

Precious New Addition to Lori’s House!

Lori holds the newest baby to be born at Lori's House

True smiles and hearts full of thankfulness are shining at Morningside as we welcome a brand new addition to Lori’s House! Baby Daniel was born this month! Both he and his Mom are healthy and happy! We are certain that Daniel will be getting lots of attention by the staff as his amazing and loving Mother continues to work hard at bettering her life for the both of them. It is such a blessing to see the vision of Lori’s House come to life!

Lori’s House is a place of ministry, love and healing with it’s main goal to save babies by providing an alternative to abortion and caring for their mothers. This beautiful home sits alongside a lovely stream, and is snuggled in the Ozark Mountains’ Peaceful Valley, just outside of Branson, Missouri.

We are happy to say that Lori’s House has been built debt free through generous and loving donations. There is no charge for a young woman who have been accepted to live at Lori’s house throughout her entire pregnancy. The ministry, through donations, will provide assistance for food, clothing counseling and medical care. Educational classes and job training are also provided.

This home opens its doors with hope for life! Welcome to the world little Daniel!

Baby Of Stranded Couple Delivered During Buffalo Snowstorm

The parents of a baby girl in Buffalo are praising God for sending who they called “two angels” after the massive snowstorms stranded them before they could reach a hospital.

Bethany and Jared Hojnacki tried to rush to a hospital when Bethany went into labor early Tuesday morning.  She and her husband ended up stranded on the highway when the snow became too heavy.

The couple ended up being stranded near a woman who was a labor and delivery nurse.  Jared told CNN the nurse stayed with his wife throughout her labor and delivered the baby girl at a nearby firehouse.

Stranded at the firehouse was a maternity nurse who was able to take care of the new baby.

“It was kind of incredible,” Hojnacki said on Wednesday. “God really put the people who needed to be in the right spot for us at the right time.”

The baby was named Lucy Grace Johnacki.

Meriam Ibrahim Asks Prayer For Daughter’s Ultrasound

Persecuted Christian Meriam Ibrahim has asked the world to pray for her daughter who will be undergoing an ultrasound to see if the injury from her birth will cause permanent disability.

Doctors are telling Ibrahim that it’s possible the injuries suffered at birth are not as severe as initially feared and that it’s possible the child will be able to walk on her own.  Ibrahim was forced to give birth with her legs tied together with chains because the prison guards would not release her for the birth.

Ibrahim and her family have been taking refuge in the U.S. embassy after being released from prison on charges related to her Christian faith.  The family has been hoping to leave the country but the Sudanese government continues to refuse to allow the family passage out of the nation.

The family has been especially sensitive to the possibility of the child being confined to a wheelchair for life because her father, Daniel Wani, is wheelchair bound because of multiple sclerosis.

Christian Mother In Sudan Chained During Childbirth

A Sudanese woman who was sentenced to death because she refuses to deny Christ gave birth to her daughter while chained to the wall.

Meriam Ibrahim’s American husband Daniel Wani said that while she was actually birthing their daughter Maya her legs were shackled to the wall.  The guards refused to allow her to be unchained to make the birth safer for her or the child.

However, Wani said after days of refusing to allow him to see the child, the head of the prison not only allowed him in to see the child but released his wife so they could have a moment as a family together.

The local courts say they are going to delay her 100 lashes for two years to coincide with her execution.  Initially, the courts ruled she was to be lashed as soon as she gave birth to her child.

Wani told the London Daily Telegraph that the moment was bittersweet knowing that she likely won’t live to see Maya live past age 2.

“I refuse to change. I am not giving up Christianity just so that I can live. I know I could stay alive by becoming a Muslim and I would be able to look after our family, but I need to be true to myself,” Ibrahim said.