A roundup of news from across the interwebs.
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On March 29, the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case of a Kentucky abortion law passed in 2018 banning dismemberment abortions (referred to by most mainstream media outlets as “a standard surgical procedure.”) A federal judge blocked the law shortly after it was signed; a three-judge panel of the 6th US Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed this decision. Attorney General Daniel Cameron has now appealed to the Supreme Court, which has agreed to hear the case next session.
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The Latvian Saeima has rejected a citizens’ initiative to legalize euthanasia by a vote of 49 to 38. According to the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition:
LSM reported that Saeima representatives saw the euthanasia debate as opening the door for better end-of-life care for Latvians. According to the report: “opposition MP Viktors Valainis (Union of Greens and Farmers) said euthanasia would be the easiest way for severely ill people to escape intolerable pain, yet it is ‘absolutely unacceptable’ because it ignores a number of problems in palliative care. At the same time, the Member stated that he was prepared to do everything necessary to improve the medical sector in the country.”
The Baltic News Network (BNN) provided an analysis of the debate. BNN reported:
Saeima deputy Anda Čakša said that the topic of For a Good Death is a call for help from residents. She believes there are two important aspects – the accessibility of analgesia and palliative care and what are the people’s rights to refuse aggressive health treatment. According to Čakša, the topic of euthanasia should not be on the table while the issue of palliative care remains unresolved. The Saeima member said her faction [New Unity] will hold a free vote on this.
If only Canada had made palliative care a priority before legalizing—and then expanding—access to euthanasia.
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According to the Texas Tribune, a number of pro-life laws are winding through the legislature:
The Texas Senate on Tuesday approved five bills restricting access to abortion, including a priority measure that could ban abortions before many women know they are pregnant. The measures, which abortion rights advocates call some of the most “extreme” nationwide, are among the earliest bills to be debated by the full Senate — whose presiding officer, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, has given two abortion proposals top billing this session. The bills were passed 19-12. They must still be approved by the House before becoming law.
These bills include a heartbeat ban as well as a law banning nearly all abortions should Roe v. Wade overturned. Another provision allows people to sue the abortion industry if they believe abortion workers are breaking the law.
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Only a year after abortion was forced on Northern Ireland by Westminster, and already abortion activists are calling for so-called “exclusion zones”—known in North America as “bubble zones”—to prevent pro-lifers from protesting abortion and offering women in crisis alternatives.
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A CNN news writer has actually claimed that there is no way to know if a child is a boy or a girl at birth. Actually. From National Review:
“It’s not possible to know a person’s gender identity at birth, and there is no consensus criteria for assigning sex at birth,” Cole asserted, in a statement better fit for an unhinged opinion article than a news article by a breaking-news reporter.
In fact, as most of us are willing to acknowledge, for all of human history we’ve all relied upon a very simple way of actually knowing sex at birth. The concept of “assigning” sex at birth, far from being based on any “consensus criteria,” is a progressive invention designed to inculcate new parents into believing that a child’s biological sex and gender are sometimes, or even often, misaligned, and that it would be damaging to them to merely accept the reality of their biology at birth.
As I noted in my breakdown of similar insanity in the New York Times, this is what is known as “gaslighting.”
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More soon.
The Supreme Court didn’t agree to hear a case on the merits of the Kentucky ban on dismemberment abortion. They’ve only agreed to consider whether the state attorney general has standing to defend the law in court. If they rule in his favour, he would still have to bring the case through the lower courts (it could eventually end up back at the Supreme Court, but we’re not there yet).