The following are pro-life news updates compiled by LifeNews.com:
Romney Loses Lead in Florida to Huckabee in New Poll
Tallahassee, FL (LifeNews.com) — Potential Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney has lost the lead he had over the rest of the potential GIP presidential field in the important state of Florida, which was one of the keys to the primary election in 2008.
The Public Policy Polling institute first polled Florida Republicans in March about who they wanted as their 2012 nominee and 52% of them picked Mitt Romney when given the choices of him, Mike Huckabee (who got 21%), and Sarah Palin (who received 18%).
Then, Romney’s numbers dropped to 31 percent in July when Newt Gingrich was added to the mix and he dropped to 28 percent in October when other Republican candidates were thrown in as well.
Now, Romney’s lead in Florida is completely gone, according to the polling firm:
The poll we did last week found him at only 21%, behind Huckabee’s 23%, with Gingrich at 18%, Palin at 13%, and others combining for a total of 15%.
The firm suggests Romney’s numbers were high because other candidates were not yet in the polling mix and because Republicans who don’t support Sarah Palin went to him but now support other candidates.
Why has Romney fallen so far? I think part of the reason he polled so well earlier in the year is that he was the anti-Palin. Palin’s favorability numbers with GOP voters in Florida are a good deal worse than they are most places and Romney did well in those earlier surveys as one of the few named alternatives to her. As more response options were provided in later polls the anti-Palin sentiment was diffused across several candidates and Romney’s mile wide but inch deep support declined further and further and further to where it is now.
Romney’s chances at the Republican nomination really might be contingent on a small pool of candidates running- the more ‘reasonable’ folks there are in the mix the worse Romney does because he doesn’t have a real solid base of support. If there are 5 ‘competent’ folks who have been Governors or Senators running it may be hard for any of them to break out as a strong alternative to Palin should she make the race.
The firm also polled in North Carolina and found Republicans there support Gingrich and Palin on even margins.
In North Carolina we see a good old log jam with Newt Gingrich and Sarah Palin tied at 21%, Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney tied at 18%, and the rest of the Republicans combining for 12%.
This is another state where Romney’s conservative problem rears its head. He has a strong advantage with moderates as 30% of them say he’s their top choice with none of the other Republicans rising above 15%. But he posts yet another fourth place finish with conservatives at only 14%, with Palin at 24%, Gingrich at 22%, and Huckabee at only 19%.
ACLU Cares for Abortion More Than Conscience of Physicians
Conservative syndicated columnist takes on the issue of the ACLU trying to force Catholic hospitals to do abortions.
Her column responds to the report LifeNews.com issued on the ACLU’s move in response to an Arizona-based Catholic bishop saying an abortion a hospital did in Phoenix makes it so it can no longer refer to itself as a Catholic medical institution.
The ACLU now seeks to unilaterally rewrite a federal emergency medical treatment law passed by Congress in 1986 to mandate that all hospitals provide abortions.
But for more than three decades, under both Republican and Democratic administrations, federal law has firmly established strong conscience protections for individual health care providers and hospitals who are reluctant or unwilling to “counsel, suggest, recommend, assist or in any way participate in the performance of abortions or sterilizations contrary to or consistent with” their “religious beliefs or moral convictions.”
As the Washington-based Becket Fund, a public interest law firm that defends the free expression of all religious traditions, pointed out to the feds: “The ACLU has no business radically re-defining the meaning of emergency health care,’ just as it has no business demanding that religious doctors and nurses violate their faith by performing a procedure they believe is tantamount to murder.”
Forcing religious hospitals to perform abortions not only undermines this nation’s integral commitment to conscience rights, it violates the numerous federal laws that recognize and protect those rights.”
According to the Catholic Health Association, Catholic health care facilities form the largest not-for-profit health service sector in the United States —- serving one out of every six patients in America and providing 15 percent of the hospital bed capacity in the country.
Moreover, Catholic health care institutions employ about 540,000 full-time workers and 240,000 part-time workers.
If the abortion lobby gets its way, faithful Catholic hospitals and Catholic medical professionals who follow their consciences and adhere to canon law could see their federal funding yanked.
And radical social engineers may well force the shutdown of countless Catholic hospitals at a time when Obamacare costs and consequences are already wreaking havoc on the health industry.
Fewer jobs, less access to health care, less freedom and more lives lost: Merry Christmas from the ACLU.
Thailand Looking at Changing Abortion Law After Discovery of Babies
Bangkok, Thailand — After the discovery of thousands of dead unborn children at Bangkok’s Wat Phai Ngern, or Silver Bamboo Temple, some are advocating that abortion be legalized in Thailand. But, as NPR reports, Buddhist monks and the government are resisting the move.
The fact that the fetuses were discovered in a temple was particularly awkward for the Buddhist establishment. More than 95 percent of Thais practice Buddhism, which considers abortion a sin.
The temple’s monks knew there was a mortuary at the back, he explains, but they seldom went there. The temple assigned non-monk caregivers to manage the facility.
The Thai government bans abortions except when the pregnancy results from rape, jeopardizes the mother’s health, or when the fetus is deformed.
Democrat Party lawmaker Satit Pitutacha plans to introduce legislation making it easier to get an abortion. He argues that this will reduce social problems and crime. Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva, however, disagrees. He says Thai abortion laws are adequate and don’t need to be amended. And he has the backing of the mainstream Buddhist establishment.
The better solution appears to be cracking down on illegal abortions:
Police arrested two intermediaries who said they were paid to take aborted fetuses from illegal abortion clinics and deliver them to the temple’s mortuary, where they awaited cremation. Police arrested another woman for running an illegal abortion clinic.
The scandal also has sparked a crackdown on illegal abortion clinics. Thailand has thousands of small private clinics, and Health Ministry official Tares Krasanairawiwong says the government can’t police them all. No reliable figures exist on the number of abortions that take place in Thailand, according to Health Ministry officials.
