See for yourself: That seedy Kansas abortion facility....

For those of you who've not been following the story, Operation Rescue bought the building that housed Central Women's Services in Wichita, Kansas, and evicted the business. OR plans to use the building as a combination memorial site/office.

Before doing anything with the building, OR decided to invite the public and the press to see what they found when they entered the vacated abortion clinic. Here, courtesy of Operation Rescue, are some interesting photos of what reporters saw during the open house today:

It must have been a fun place to work:


The ceiling outside the procedure rooms:


The floor:


A heating vent:


A countertop:


The patient lavatory:


A dead roach:


Evidently roaches were not the only pests:


The procedure room checklist. Note that the mask is only to be wiped down, not replaced. YUCK! If I tried to do that on an ambulance crew I'd not be an EMT for long.


Is that the autoclave in the corner there?


The recovery room:


Patient files left behind:


The area for processing tissue. Why does a sink where nobody should be doing anything but washing their hands have an industrial-grade garbage disposal?


And last but certainly not least:

Roundup from Pro Life Blogs

A doctor in Austria may be forced to pay child support for a baby with Down syndrome. Seems he didn't tell the 31-year-old mother that her baby might have a disability, so the woman didn't have prenatal tests done to spot the imperfection in her child until it was too late to legally abort.

1. I pity the kid not for having Down syndrome, but for having such an unloving and judgmental mother.

2. There are waiting lists of families waiting to adopt kids with DS. Nobody was forcing this woman to parent a "defective" child. Hey, lady, if you're unwilling to love your child, place her with people who will love her!

3. This underscores the need to clearly separate doctors -- especially ob/gyns -- into Hipocratic and "progressive." Parents who know they will want their baby to live no matter what can avoid needless medical tests -- not to mention the misery of being browbeaten by professionals urging them to abort. Parents who have a more, shall we say pragmatic attitude can be sure that their doctor will be looking for every sign that all is not going according to plan and will offer opportunities to abort at every sign of possible imperfection. This certainly will reduce the number of lawsuits.

HT: Birth Story

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Also from Birth Story: Oregon parents are petitioning for a law that would prevent abortionists from assuming a parental role and just vacuuming their daughters out. Of course, abortion advocates are up in arms. The bogus claim that abortionists are just protecting girls from abusive families when they perform secret abortions is being trotted out. If the girl is being abused, she needs to be removed from the home, not suctioned out and returned to her abusers.

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Yet another further different link from Birth Story: The Silent No More movement is starting a campaign in Canda. Somehow I doubt that these women's voices will be welcomed by the "pro-choice" movement. If you can't tell a "My abortion liberated me" story, they want you to remain silent. The sincerely pro-choice, on the other hand, should welcome this move, because it will allow women contemplating abortion to hear from dissatisfied customers, not just from the women satisfied enough with their own abortions to take jobs as counselors at abortion clinics.

The "pro-choice" movement's response to dissatisfied customers is telling, to say the least.

When I was considering oral surgery, part of the informed consent process was to speak to both satisfied and dissatisfied patients. (I never got that far; I opted out after being instructed to sleep on information about possible complications. And this was surgery I knew for ten years that I wanted!) Why should a woman considering abortion only be allowed to hear from women who thinks their lives were improved by their abortions? Wouldn't real choice necessitate the opportunity to hear from both sides? And if abortion is really as harmless -- nay, beneficial -- as its supporters claim, the dissatisfied customers would be few and far between, and they'd only be mildly disgruntled, not outraged or suicidal.

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Here's a link from My Domestic Church: Point/Counterpoint

It's two essays, one for and one against the use of graphic photos of aborted babies.

I'm very much for non-graphic photos (many of which are really pictures of aborted babies; they're just sound, whole babies that don't look dead). A picture paints a thousand words. Information is good.

But graphic mangled baby pictures often shut people off. The observer shuts down to the point where no information is absorbed. This defeats the purpose.

I'd say that they should only be used in limited circumstances, and should always be used with care. After all, you have no idea if the person about to view that photo is post-abortion. If she's not in a supportive environment, the photos might trigger a crisis and leave her to cope with it alone.

From the anti-graphic essay:

[T]he problem for those identifying themselves as Christians is that instead of using the tools of spiritual warfare, i.e., prayer and fasting, these tactics, revulsion and intimidation, co-opt the weapons of the world.

....

[A Catholic pro-life woman] wondered if those bearing the offensive posters were forgetting the positive message of the Gospel and overshadowing it with the hostile message of the Prince of Darkness.

....

Anger, intimidation, ugliness, a hostile attitude and insensitivity may be detrimental to our own souls and those of the people we wish to persuade of the rightness of our cause.

And from the pro-graphic essay:

Not even the most vivid description, in words alone, can adequately convey the horror of this act of violence.

....

Graphic images of abortion have saved lives. One example is a letter I have from [a woman] who went to an abortion facility and found pro-life protesters there. "The posters they displayed, though very graphic, did succeed in bringing me back to reality and in conveying the horrible mutilation and dismemberment inflicted on the unborn child.... I decided to have the baby. It was the best decision I ever will make."

....

We use graphic images to save lives from other kinds of violence .... The anti-war movement in America was given momentum in the early '70's by a famous photo of a napalmed girl.

I find it particularly interesting that the anti-graphic essay focused on issues of faith, whereas the pro-graphic essay, though written by a priest, didn't really address spiritual aspects of the battle at all.

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Woman tells of trauma of birth in toilet: From Australia, a woman's story about giving live birth to a 4-month baby who died five hours later. I have an entire page of live births during abortions here, including links to Baby Hope, Baby Rowan, and Sarah Brown. See also Ana Rosa Rodriguez, whose right arm was torn off at the shoulder in an abortion attempt.

I'm serious about needing uplifting stuff, people

Can we try again, and not let the comments turn into a slugfest on the virtues of pre-emptive strikes?

I need uplifting stories about people doing something good and decent, like achromic's story about the compassionate therapist, or the local news story about the guy who got his neighbors out of a burning building, or the Pepsi alerting Coke to the theft of trade secrets.

Come on, folks. The world can't really be as dark as it seems to me right now, can it?

Anniversary: Discovery of the body of Edith Green

On July 13, 1926, a laborer on his way to work stumbled across a grisly find: the dismembered remains of a young woman, tossed along the side of a lonely road between two cemeteries near Boston. Boston police began their investigation, but had little to go on.

Parts of the body were packed into two cardboard boxes, "tied by window cord in sailor knots." More of the body was in a burlap bag. Other parts of the woman's body were wrapped in Boston newspapers dated June 27. "A pair of nile green hose and a white cotton nightdress, with a pink ribbon, the only clothing found, offered no clew to her identity," the New York Times said.

Dr. Leary, the Boston medical examiner, said that the young woman was approximately 25 years of age, 5'6" tall, weighing 120 pounds, with bobbed black hair and dark brown eyes. She had evidently been dismembered shortly after her death, Leary said. The dismemberment was expertly done, Leary said, indicating that the killer might be a skilled surgeon. Leary estimated that the young woman had been dead from 48 to 72 hours at the time of autopsy. Leary also did not at first release a definitive cause of death. He said that "blood poisoning" was likely and indicted that, as the New York Times said, "evidence pointed to illegal surgery."

"The only indication as to the identity of the murderer came from young men who saw a well-dressed, middle-aged man nervously driving an automobile in the vicinity" the previous night.

Nearly twenty families of missing women contacted the morgue in the first hours after the body was found, but the descriptions of their loved ones did not fit the victim. Police provided pictures of the victim to local papers for publication to aid in identification of the woman.

By July 15, the young woman had been positively identified as 20-year-old Edith Green, who had been an attendant at the Boston Psychopathic Hospital. Another employee, Bessie Landry, identified Edith by photographs of the victim and by describing a mole and her dental work.

Edith had been raised as a ward of the state, along with her two siblings. She got a job at the Boston Psychopathic Hospital as a day attendant on April 26, 1926. But the night of June 23, she left, never to return. She was next tracked to lodgings in Roxbury, where she took a room on July 8 and left her belongings there. "That same night," the New York Times said, "a young man called for her and took her away with him. She was never again seen alive."

Police began a search for the young man, who had obtained a marriage license for himself and Edith on July 3.

"Policeman visited the home of William J. Ford in South Boston," the New York Times said, "and took him and his brother and father to the morgue for questioning. Ford's mother collapsed when the police took her son into custody." Later reports indicate that 21-year-old James V. Ford, evidently William J. Ford's brother, was the "sweetheart" responsible for Edith's pregnancy.

Ford admitted to police that he had arranged for an abortion to be performed on Edith by Dr. Thomas E. Walsh. Ford said that Walsh had asked for his help in disposing of Edith's body, but that he had refused. Walsh and his wife were charged with murder in Edith's death.

The search for culprits in Edith's death also netted a thoroughly intoxicated Dr. John Leo Hanson, who admitted to having been in Boston when Edith vanished, but who denied having any part in her death or dismemberment.

Roundup: Unsafe Haven, Wheel of Fortune, Font of Compassion, and Jesus' Silence

Unsafe haven

A mother dropped her baby off under a Safe Haven law -- then got prosecuted because the child tested positive to exposure to marijuana and cocaine.

Comments are running strong against the sheriff, on the grounds that the woman obviously realized she was unfit and was trying to do right by the child by placing him in more able hands. I'd tend to agree.

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Tonight's Wheel of Fortune features soap opera stars winning money for charity. Usually the celebrities choose non-controversial charities, such as afterschool sports programs for inner city kids, Make A Wish, etc.

But one of tonight's soap opera stars chose a Planned Parenthood as her charity.

That's just fingernails on a chalkboard. The other stars were playing for a dance program for inner city kids and a library for a school. Nice, uncontroversial charities that work to make kids' lives better.

Why did that .... uniquely challenging individual have to choose an organization that is at best highly controversial? Even if you don't consider PP outright evil, you have to admit that choosing it as your celebrity charity is drawing the show needlessly into hot ground.

If she loves PP so much, let her give them money out of her own pocket, and choose something like Big Brothers or Boys and Girls' Clubs as her celebrity charity. She has to know she's spitting in the eyes of half the viewers by choosing a charity they'd rather see abolished..

And no, I'd not be okay with a celebrity choosing, say, National Right to Life or any other equally controversial charity. Wheel of Fortune is not the venue for making political statements.

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We can file Pesky Apostrophe under "Font of Compassion." She has nothing but snarky contempt for post-abortion women. Don't go to work for a suicide hotline, Pesky.

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Random Brown is having some fun with "Jesus never said anything about homosexuality or abortion".

Note to leftists: Jesus never said squat about child molestation, arson, or rape either. And he really stayed away from sexual harassment and second-hand smoke. Since you assume Jesus' silence equalled approval regarding abortion and homosexuality, shall we also assume He was cool with child molesting, arson, rape, sexual harassment, and breathing your stinky cigarette smoke into other people's faces?

Two anniversaries

"Judy" was a 42-year-old mother of four from upstate New York when she chose safe and legal abortion in 1970. She was to have a tubal ligation done at the same time.

Judy underwent the procedure, but went into cardiac arrest. Her heart was started again, but she remained in a coma for six days until her death on July 12.

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This is also the date that Debra Gray underwent the abortion that would claim her life.

More from the blogosphere: The Liberal Bible, PP debate tips, recommended reading

Pro Ecclesia points out that there are only three verses in the Liberal Bible:

* Judge not, lest you be judged.
~Matthew 7:1

* Why do you see the speck that is in your brother's eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye?
~Matthew 7:3

* Let him who is without sin cast the first stone
~John 8:7

I noted among the Scriptures they excised from their Bibles:

* Jeremiah 7:6 "...and do not shed innocent blood in this place..."
* Matthew 25:40 "...whatever you did for the least of one of these my brothers and sisters, you did for me."
* Romans 12:1 "...offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God..."
* 1 Peter 4:9 "Offer hospitality to one another without grumbling."
* Isaiah 49:15 "Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should have no compassion on the son of her womb?"

They also excised The Parable of the Good Samaritan.

They cut out all the Scriptures about the unborn:

* Jeremiah 1:5 - "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart"
* Psalm 139:16 - "Your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in Your book before one of them came to be."

And they really blow off Biblical words on social justice:

* 2 Chronicles 25:3 "...The fathers shall not be put to death for the children, or the children be put to death for the fathers..."
* 1 Corinthians 10:24 "Nobody should seek for his own good, but the good of others."

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LTI Blog gives Planned Parenthood Debate Prep hints. Links are provided to Toddler Tactics and Five Bad Ways to Argue.

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Happy Catholic provided this great link: I Don't Feel Spiritual

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Abortion in Washington recommends three new books on abortion. I'm familiar with two and can recommend them heartily:

Daring women—those who were told not to have their babies due to perceived disabilities in themselves or their unborn children—tell their stories in this controversial book that looks critically at medical eugenics as a contemporary form of social engineering.

Unplanned pregnancies happen to women in every season of life: the newly married, the never-married, the empty-nester, the teenager, the overworked mother, the career woman. Yet we rarely talk about how lonely and confusing this experience can be.