text:
"Twin reduction": Our pro-death, vanity abortion culture in a nutshell
ST August 10, 2011 Abortion, Disturbing News, Feminism, Right To Life, Social Issues
I've written about the issue of abortion at this blog many times; my opinions on it are crystal clear (if you're a new reader, click here for an overall summary of my pro-life views and how I got there). So it goes without saying that I've read many, many studies, articles, interviews, documentaries, etc on the grotesque practice of the termination of unborn life and oftentimes walk away from the illuminating pieces of information absolutely disgusted with our "me first" "if it feels good do it" casual culture – a culture made fashionable in the 60s by "progressives" who took the women's lib movement way too far to the point that not only was the institution of marriage and a stable two-parent family unit viewed as a symbol of the "repressed, subservient woman", but also that the precious, fragile lives of the unborn were portrayed as a "burdensome inconvenience" for the "modern woman." And as a result, she needed "legal options" to be able to take care of the so-called burden.
As a result, the ultimate pro-death ruling was made thanks to the SCOTUS with the Roe vs. Wade decision, a decision that has led to the termination of over 40 million innocent unborn lives since 1973.
You'd think that with all I've read, heard, and watched on this issue that anything else I read/see/hear at this point will not faze me. But it does. And it has. Case in point: this New York Times Magazine piece about the growing practice of "twin reduction"- which is the fancy, sanitized term for "aborting one of the twins." No, it's not a popular thing to do in America – yet – but it's a growing trend that once again should concern any moral-minded, warm-blooded American who views the little life growing inside a woman's body as a human being rather than an expendable "clump of cells" or "parasite." I'm going to paste a few quotes from the piece as I believe there has never been an article written that has so clearly demonstrated with crystal clarity the abject moral bankruptcy of the pro-abortion crowd by demonstrating their casual, bloodless approach to the process of aborting one of the twins a woman carries for, you guessed it, convenience purposes. My comments are below the quotes and passages I found particularly disturbing (bolded emphasis added by me):
As Jenny lay on the obstetrician's examination table, she was grateful that the ultrasound tech had turned off the overhead screen. She didn't want to see the two shadows floating inside her. Since making her decision, she had tried hard not to think about them, though she could often think of little else. She was 45 and pregnant after six years of fertility bills, ovulation injections, donor eggs and disappointment — and yet here she was, 14 weeks into her pregnancy, choosing to extinguish one of two healthy fetuses, almost as if having half an abortion [Note: There's no "almost" about it! – ST]. As the doctor inserted the needle into Jenny's abdomen, aiming at one of the fetuses, Jenny tried not to flinch, caught between intense relief and intense guilt.
"Things would have been different if we were 15 years younger or if we hadn't had children already or if we were more financially secure," she said later. "If I had conceived these twins naturally, I wouldn't have reduced this pregnancy, because you feel like if there's a natural order, then you don't want to disturb it. But we created this child in such an artificial manner — in a test tube, choosing an egg donor, having the embryo placed in me — and somehow, making a decision about how many to carry seemed to be just another choice. The pregnancy was all so consumerish to begin with, and this became yet another thing we could control."
I'm sure the surviving twin will totally understand once they get older and the decision-making process on the issue of aborting his or her other half is explained to them. / sarc
Continuing:
What is it about terminating half a twin pregnancy that seems more controversial than reducing triplets to twins or aborting a single fetus? After all, the math's the same either way: one fewer fetus. Perhaps it's because twin reduction (unlike abortion) involves selecting one fetus over another, when either one is equally wanted. Perhaps it's our culture's idealized notion of twins as lifelong soul mates, two halves of one whole. Or perhaps it's because the desire for more choices conflicts with our discomfort about meddling with ever more aspects of reproduction.
Or perhaps its the thought that either the parents or the doctor is making the decision as to which one lives and which one dies, knowingly terminating a life while another life is next to it developing – not that it really should be any more disturbing than the parents or the mother of the unborn child making the decision to abort a single fetus. Either way, it's extinguishing the hearbeat of a developing baby, either via medicinal abortion or a vacuum abortion – where the baby is sucked out of the mother's body piece by piece. Or is cut out by the "physician" piece by piece via a hook-type instrument.
I could go on but you get the picture.
That shift has made some doctors in the field uneasy, and many who perform pregnancy reductions refuse to go below twins. After being rebuffed by physicians close to home, Jenny went online and found Dr. Joanne Stone, the highly regarded head of Mount Sinai's maternal-fetal-medicine unit. Jenny traveled thousands of miles to get there. She still resents the first doctor back home who told her she shouldn't reduce twins and another who dismissively told her to just buck up and buy diapers in bulk.
Poor Jenny. Ticked off because some doctors out there apparently had more ethical and moral concerns about aborting one twin than she, the mother of the twins themselves, had. Pass the Kleenex, please. The world's smallest violin is playing.
Even some people who support abortion rights admit to feeling queasy about reduction to a singleton. "I completely respect and support a woman's choice," one commentator wrote on UrbanBaby.com, referring to a woman who said she reduced her pregnancy to protect her marriage and finances. One fetus was male, the other female, and the woman eliminated the male because she already had a son. "Something about that whole situation just seemed unethical to me," the commentator continued. "I just couldn't sleep at night knowing that I terminated my daughter's perfectly healthy twin brother."
In retrospect, loving her daughter as I'm sure she does, she probably couldn't sleep at night knowing that she terminated her own daughter had it been a single child pregnancy, either, but of course I doubt she thought of that dreadful scenario since she "respects" the "right to choose" – it's surprising that some aborts even have a moral compass when it comes to the issue of the unborn. This one, at least, draws the line at twin reduction. Thank goodness.
Stay with me on this next one. It's longish but a must-read as it's about a doctor's "evolving" perspective on twin reduction:
Dr. Mark Evans, an obstetrician and geneticist, was among the first to reduce a pregnancy. He quickly became one of the procedure's most visible and busiest practitioners, as well as one of the most prolific authors on the topic. Early on, Evans decided the industry needed guidelines, and in 1988, he and an ethicist with the National Institutes of Health issued them. One of their central tenets was that most reductions below twins violated ethical principles.
Two years later, as demand for twin reductions climbed, Evans published another journal article, arguing that reduction to singletons "crosses the line between doing a procedure for a medical indication versus one for a social indication." He urged his colleagues to resist becoming "technicians to our patients' desires."
The justification for eliminating some fetuses in a multiple pregnancy was always to increase a woman's chance of bringing home a healthy baby, because medical risks rise with every fetus she carries. The procedure, which is usually performed around Week 12 of a pregnancy, involves a fatal injection of potassium chloride into the fetal chest. The dead fetus shrivels over time and remains in the womb until delivery. Some physicians found reduction unnerving, particularly because the procedure is viewed under ultrasound, making it quite visually explicit, which is not the case with abortion. Still, even some doctors who opposed abortion agreed that it was better to save some fetuses than risk them all.
Through the early 1990s, the medical consensus was that reducing pregnancies of quadruplets or quintuplets clearly improved the health of the woman and her offspring. Doctors disagreed about whether to reduce those to triplets or twins and about whether to reduce triplet gestations at all. But as ultrasound equipment improved and doctors gained technical expertise, the procedure triggered fewer miscarriages, and many doctors concluded that reducing a triplet gestation to twins was safer than a triplet birth. Going below twins, though, was usually out of the question.
In 2004, however, Evans publicly reversed his stance, announcing in a major obstetrics journal that he now endorsed twin reductions. For one thing, as more women in their 40s and 50s became pregnant (often thanks to donor eggs), they pushed for two-to-one reductions for social reasons. Evans understood why these women didn't want to be in their 60s worrying about two tempestuous teenagers or two college-tuition bills. He noted that many of the women were in second marriages, and while they wanted to create a child with their new spouse, they did not want two, especially if they had children from a previous marriage. Others had deferred child rearing for careers or education, or were single women tired of waiting for the right partner. Whatever the particulars, these patients concluded that they lacked the resources to deal with the chaos, stereophonic screaming and exhaustion of raising twins.
Evans's new position wasn't just a reaction to changing demographics. The calculus of risks had also changed. For one thing, he argued, in experienced hands like his, the procedure rarely prompted a miscarriage. For another, recent studies had revealed that the risks of twin pregnancies were greater than previously thought. They carried an increased chance of prematurity, low birth weight and cerebral palsy in the babies and gestational diabetes and pre-eclampsia in the mother. Marking what he called a "juncture in the cultural evolution of human understanding of twins," Evans concluded that "parents who choose to reduce twins to a singleton may have a higher likelihood of taking home a baby than pregnancies remaining with twins." He became convinced that everyone carrying twins, through reproductive technology or not, should at least know that reduction was an option. "Ethics," he said, "evolve with technology."
"Ethics evolve with technology." That single chilling quote says it all when it comes to the mindset of pro-aborts, doesn't it? It's sort of like the concept of a "living, breathing Constitution." "Evolution" clearly is not always a good thing.
Many doctors, including some who do reduction to a singleton, dispute Evans's conclusions, pointing out that while twin pregnancies carry more risks than singleton pregnancies, most twins (especially fraternal) do just fine. Dr. Richard Berkowitz, a perinatologist at Columbia University Medical Center who was an early practitioner of pregnancy reduction, says: "The overwhelming majority of women carrying twins are going to be able to deliver two healthy babies." Though Berkowitz insists that there is no clear medical benefit to reducing below twins, he will do it at a patient's request. "In a society where women can terminate a single pregnancy for any reason — financial, social, emotional — if we have a way to reduce a twin pregnancy with very little risk, isn't it legitimate to offer that service to women with twins who want to reduce to a singleton?"
Indeed – and along with that goes with the ability to abort based on cosmetic reasons as well, such as the baby's sex, race, whether or not it has any health issues and/or deformities, etc. Why, Designer Babies is a good thing in our "evoloving" society where "choice" is so celebrated by elites, is it not?
Moving right along:
Evans estimates that the majority of doctors who perform reductions will not go below twins. [Jane Doe] was pregnant with triplets when she discovered this for herself. After she and her husband tried for three years to get pregnant, they went to a fertility doctor near their home in Savannah, Ga. He put Jane, then 30, on fertility drugs, and when that didn't work, he ramped things up with injections. By then, her husband, a 33-year-old Army officer, had been deployed to Iraq. He left behind three vials of sperm, and she was artificially inseminated. "You do weird things when mortars are flying at your husband's head," she said. She soon found out she was carrying triplets. Frantic, she yelled at the doctor: "This is not an option for us! I want only one!"
Her fertility specialist referred her to a doctor in Atlanta who did reductions. But when Jane called, the office manager told her that she would have to pay extra for temporary staff to assist with the procedure, because the regular staff refused to reduce pregnancies below twins. She contacted three more doctors, and in each case was told: not below two. "It was horrible," she says. "I felt like the pregnancy was a monster, and I just wanted it out, but because we tried for so long, abortion wasn't an option. My No. 1 priority was to be the best mom I could be, but how was I supposed to juggle two newborns or two screaming infants while my husband was away being shot at? We don't have family just sitting around waiting to get called to help me with a baby."
Eventually, she heard about Evans and flew to New York for the procedure. "I said, 'You choose whoever is going to be safe and healthy,' " she says. "I didn't give him any other criteria. I didn't choose gender. None of that was up for grabs, because I had to make it as ethically O.K. for me as I could. But I wanted only one."
She paid $6,500 for the reduction and left Evans's office incredibly relieved. "I went out on that street with my mother and jumped up and down saying: 'I'm pregnant! I'm pregnant!' And then I went and bought baby clothes for the first time."
Today, her daughter is 2½ years old. Jane intends to tell her about the reduction someday, to teach her that women have choices, even if they're sometimes difficult. "I am the mother of a very demanding toddler," she says. "I can't imagine this times two, and not ever knowing if I'd have another person here to help me. This is what I can handle. I'm good with this. But that's all."
What Jane should tell her daughter when she's of age to find out is how only some women have choices – those whose mothers decide to keep them, unlike Jane, who didn't want to bother with the details of which two of her girl triplets were aborted because she supposedly wanted to make it as "ethical" as possible in her mind. In reality, she likely wanted to avoid direct responsiblity for making the decision as to which two of her developing, live babies were going to shrivel up and die inside her body by her doctor's hand because of her "choice." Doesn't sound like she feels too guilty about it, does she?
And here I thought – per pro-aborts – that the decision to terminate the life inside your body was such an "agonizing" one.
Consider the choice of which fetus to eliminate: if both appear healthy (which is typical with twins), doctors aim for whichever one is easier to reach. If both are equally accessible, the decision of who lives and who dies is random. To the relief of patients, it's the doctor who chooses — with one exception. If the fetuses are different sexes, some doctors ask the parents which one they want to keep.
Whew! Isn't that a load off the mind? – knowing that you, who have decided that one is enough and that the other life growing inside your body is expendable – will not have to worry about little things like which life your doctor decides to take? It's sort of like not wanting to look at the ultrasound, which is noted in the article in several places, including this one:
One of [Dr.] Stone's patients, a New York woman, was certain that she wanted to reduce from twins to a singleton. Her husband yielded because she would be the one carrying the pregnancy and would stay at home to raise them. They came up with a compromise. "I asked not to see any of the ultrasounds," he said. "I didn't want to have that image, the image of two. I didn't want to torture myself. And I didn't go in for the procedure either, because less is more for me." His wife was relieved that her husband remained in the waiting room; she, too, didn't want to deal with his feelings.
Not wanting to make the "choice" as to which one lives or dies and/or not wanting to view the ultrasound makes a parent feel less responsible, less guilty for what they've advocated with their deadly decision.
It's a way of avoiding the reality of the "choice" to abort a life growing inside of you or your s/o. "I won't look at the ultrasound because I don't want to have any second thoughts. I won't make the decision as to which baby dies and which one lives because I don't want the choice to make me reconsider my position" seems to be the operative mindset at play here. Disturbing.
That was the thinking of Dr. Naomi Bloomfield, an obstetrician near Albany who found out she was pregnant with twins when her first child was not quite a year old. "I couldn't have imagined reducing twins for nonmedical reasons," she said, "but I had an amnio and would have had an abortion if I found out that one of the babies had an anomaly, even if it wasn't life-threatening. I didn't want to raise a handicapped child. Some people would call that selfish, but I wouldn't. Parents who abort for an anomaly just don't want that life for themselves, and it's their prerogative to fashion their lives how they want. Is terminating two to one really any different morally?"
The indifference to human life in this piece is staggering – almost literally – to me,and I say that as someone who, again, has read/heard/watched a lot of information on this topic. Thank God none of our parents viewed us – twins or not – with the same cold, clinical detachment as these "mothers" (and most pro-aborts in general) viewed the pregnancy process. Once again, the "pro-choice" culture of death is exposed for what it is: bloodless, soulless – and most of all, heartless. Think about these vain, selfish people next time you read about a mother and father who eagerly wanted to carry a twin pregnancy to term but lost one at birth due to delivery issues or unexpected health complications. My heart goes out to them. To pro-twin reduction types, I have nothing but contempt. All you have to do is to look at an ultrasound of week 14 twins to understand why:
So beautiful. So active. And so alive.
Let's hope Jenny and Jane don't see this.
(NYT Magazine link courtesy of Jon P. Sanders.)
40 Responses to ""Twin reduction": Our pro-death, vanity abortion culture in a nutshell"
BK says:
Wait. They have tons of money to spend on the procedure (IVF is NOT CHEAP) but they're not "more financially stable" enough to have twins?
These parents are messed up in more ways than one.
ST says:
Excellent point, BK!
Phineas says:
…the growing practice of "twin reduction"…
Choosing one child over the other? What do they think this is, "Sophie's Choice for the abortion crowd?"
That's just obscene.
"If I had conceived these twins naturally, I wouldn't have reduced this pregnancy, because you feel like if there's a natural order, then you don't want to disturb it………."
As if natural conception makes a difference. I can't understand the logic here. The mere fact that this argument is even used to justify this decision should normally end the need to make this decision. I hate marginalization arguments.
Pregnancy Reduction? | The Lonely Conservative says:
[…] I'm sure I won't sleep well tonight just thinking about this troubling practice. Via Sister Toldjah, who has much more commentary on the subject, here is video of 14 week old twins in the uterus.I […]
joe cioffi says:
i got through a portion of the times piece and i had to stop reading it. It was, plain and simply, disgusting to me. And what callous empty lifeless choices that are routinely applied to the beginning of life will also soon be applied to end of life. How tragic and hopeless.
Man's inhumanity to man is nothing compared to man's inhumanity to the not-yet born.
"The heart is deceitful above all things, and exceedingly wicked; who can know it?"
Yep, that pretty well explains abortion.
Taxpayer says:
When I was pregnant, I was told my kid could have Down Syndrome. My doc sent me off to a geneticist for an amniocentesis to confirm the diagnosis. I knew that amnios could cause miscarriage. I got pregnant 4 years after we quit trying, so I didn't want to do anything to endanger my baby. And at age 35, I knew this would be my one chance to be a mom.
Anyway, I asked the geneticist what would be the purpose of risking a miscarriage to confirm the diagnosis, since Down Syndrome can't be "fixed." She replied, "To decide whether you want to terminate the pregnancy." I said there was no way in hell I would have an abortion.
So, I had no idea until the day she was born whether or not my daughter had Down Syndrome. And I didn't care. So I just can't understand why a woman blessed with twins would want to kill one. Is the live child supposed to assuage her guilt over the dead one? Now that's a setup for a Freudian headcase. I feel sorry for both kids.
Ralph Gizzip says:
Parents who abort for an anomaly just don't want that life for themselves, and it's their prerogative to fashion their lives how they want. Is terminating two to one really any different morally?"
No, both are equally abhorrent and immoral.
The Morning Links (8/11) | From the Desk of Lady Liberty says:
[…] More liberal sickness – "Twin reduction": Our pro-death, vanity abortion culture in a nutshell […]
Smarty says:
Amazing also how many of the Dr.'s doing this area Jewish, themselves culturally victims of eugenics. It is like they are helping advance the Hitler/Mengele experiments and ethics into the 21st century.
Noelie says:
So I can never quite wrap my head around this kind of selfishness. If they are really so bad off, what ever happened to adoption? Why is killing the only choice available? It's unbelievable.
This is a sorry set of facts. How can you callously decide "one" is enough….after you took drastic measures to get pregnant via fertility drugs, etc., you have been consented and fully know the risk of multiple pregnancies. Be a grown up and accept you responsibility woman!
It's all about me! Boo Hoo…I will have to care for two children. How hard! I wonder how my grandmother survived 12 kids….they all seem to have helped each other and my mom was the youngest of them. She has many fine stories to share about her childhood. Grandma always had hands ready to help her. This is the dimension that a self-serving woman forgets. Doctors should go over that consent form with the women and say….you chose this procedure and that trumps your regrets.
And…children are a blessing from God.
@Smarty: If you mean the 21st century B.C., that may be close. Except they get to do their butchering in a sterile environment.
Sterile room. Sterile (im)morality. Sterile mind. Sterile heart.
But a really gobbed-up life.
Tlaloc says:
It's no less rational than the idea that a fetus is a human being from conception or that children are "blessings from god." She obviously has a certain view that distinguishes natural conception from artificial, and since it's her uterus being used as temporary storage it's her view on the matter that… matters.
We deserve the most severe chastisement God can dish out. We have not been dragged into this evil. We've jumped in with glee. Our children are sacrificed on the altar of convenience and selfishness.
Sister Toldjah, I really like your style. God bless you for telling it like it is. Glad to have found you.
As a pro-lifer, I find all abortions to be equally repugnant. But as the mother of twins, I am especially horrified by this article. I became pregnant with twins when my youngest was only 5 months old and it is truly the best thing that ever happened to me. I cannot imagine life without either of my sweet little girls. They are 2 now, and I'm pregnant again. This time it's only one baby and I have to admit the whole family was a little disappointed that we weren't having twins again.
Tlaloc, since a unborn child is not a human being at conception, what is it? Chicken? Horse? Centipede? And what scientific evidence to you have to back up your claim that a newly fertilized human egg is not actually human?
I'm a twin. This whole idea is so personal to me! It takes my breath away! By the way, I was born in 1964 at time when doctors probably just used a stethoscope to listen for multiple heartbeats. My mom did not know she was having twins until she had already given birth to my brother. It seems funny now and we joke about what it must have been like in the delivery room when everyone found put there was one more. Those where days when not knowing everything was a blessing.
Sarah–I'm pregnant now, with 5 in the house and 2 with God (via miscarriage). With that history, my doc has me come in very early for ultrasounds to make sure things are okay.
My 8-year-old son asked this time around, "There's only one?" with obvious disappointment in his voice. No, we've never had twins, but you can rest assured you're not alone in such feelings. :)
What is your hand? It's not a human being (which implies a complete organism) so what is it? A cow? A fish?
See how ridiculous that argument sounds? You can certainly have human cells without having a while human being. Nothing remotely strange about that.
There is no scientific evidence because the term "human being" isn't a scientific term. It's philosophical.
Paul Zummo says:
See how ridiculous that argument sounds?
Are you talking about your own argument, because if so then yes, that is about the dumbest analogy I have ever heard.
It's a direct analogy only changing a couple words. Not my fault if it sounds dumb.
I appreciate so much the personal stories shared here and at my Facebook page on this issue. Thank you. My eyes are still misty …
Livvie M. says:
Thank you ST for such a great response to such a disgusting and disturbing article. Even more disgusting and disturbing is that women and doctors actually think they can come up with reasons to justify this type of procedure! Unbelievable!!! Life is just that…Life…at any stage and any time! To stop that life is murder…plain and simple.
Call it waht you want, vote it what you want, justify it what you want…but you CANNOT change that!
It's like blood…it runs, you can stop it from running, but it's still blood! A life is a baby…you can 'stop' it, but it's still a baby. Call it what you want…it's still murder, you took a life!
I also agree with your statement ST
Thank God none of our parents viewed us – twins or not – with the same cold, clinical detachment as these "mothers" (and most pro-aborts in general) viewed the pregnancy process. Once again, the "pro-choice" culture of death is exposed for what it is: bloodless, soulless – and most of all, heartless.
I have 3 beautiful, grown daughters. Went through some pretty tough times, but aborting was NEVER, let me repeat…NEVER an option! Through the years, what a joy they have been and are, to me!!
Man up…in this case Woman up…if you have sex you run the distinct possibility you are going to get pregnant. If you get pregnant…have your child!!!
You do have 2 very good options: If you don't want children…either get "fixed" since you are acting like an animal anyway if you don't have any feeling for the life you are carrying…OR don't have sex!! Easy "fix" (no pun intended) either way!!
Thanks again, ST! Keep exposing the truth!!
captaingrumpy says:
I am a twin,and I actually feel when my twin brother is in pain or hurting emotionally.He live thousands of miles away,but the link is real. The surviving twin will know and feel the loss all his or her life and only some,will cope.
Great post!! Very informative and disturbing–utterly illustrative of the culture of death, and certainly humorous in parts. I love your comment about a small violin playing.
And my favorite line was from the army wife who said they had tried to have a baby for so long, so abortion was not an option,therefore… reduction!! Dear Knucklehead, reduction IS abortion, calling them different names doesn't make them different!!! Half a dozen v. six.. Same thing, hon!
Tlaloc, when is a plant more than just a seed? In other words, when is a thistle a thistle and not just a collection of cells? Or a tomato a tomato?
Your argument runs into problems when it is extended to its logical conclusion, that a fertilized egg is simply a protoplasmic blob until birth, hence, your argument is nothing more than a red herring designed to deflect from the original question, when is a human first a human?
I can respect you if your belief is that it is not until birth, if you can back that up with facts, but it seems to me the fact is that a fertilized egg is human the instant of fertilization because it cannot, ever, become anything else.
Except dead.
It makes me crazy to hear or read the word "fetus"!!! It is a child…the pro-aborts somehow think this neutralizes the fact they are killing a child(ren). Great article, ST, and I appreciate the loving comments here as well. It is good to know there are so many out there who feel as I do…that a unborn child needs life just a child out of the womb. What are we going to do next? Kill a child when we find out he/she is autistic, has developmental deficiencies, some horrid physical thing that will be "so much work" (or money) to deal with? I shudder to think the punishment due this nation for this culture of death.
ant says:
@Tialoc
"..since it's her uterus being used as a temporary storage.."
Yeah,"her" uterus, for "her" use. I'm sure if it weren't for those damned 'fetuses' always trying to squat rent-free in the wombs of women, she would have so many other uses for it. Maybe women are born with a uterus to carry extra pencils in, or store a bag lunch, or maybe it's supposed to pump blood or digest food? Or, just maybe, it's where the life begins and is sustained and nurtured, hardly a definition of 'storage'. Maybe if some women didn't use their vagina as a "temporary amusement ride" (much to the delight of the patriarchy, BTW) their uterus won't be used as "temporary storage". And maybe if you and your ilk didn't resort to Orwellian terms for everything, you might not all sound as transparently foolish and brainwashed as you are.
Colleen @ inadequate disciple says:
There is such lack of faith and generational desensitization behind this gruesomeness. To take it in reverse order: Gruesome, because all it takes is getting out among the freshly born babies at the amusement park, zoo, aquarium, county fair, church (there all over) and just looking at them for 2 minutes seeing how lovely a baby is, soaking it in, to know how gruesome this is. Generational desensitization: what prior generation tolerated, next generation accepts. Even in New York this article would not have appeared one generation ago. The lack of moral compass within it is alarming. Tolerance of everything, every belief, every opinion no matter how sound, no matter how gruesome the act of cruelty associated with it. Lack of faith because that is what kept coming up for the reasons, total lack of faith in God's providence, God's infinite love for both the twins in the womb and for the mother and the father. God does provide! I have four children and came from a home with four children, also family with parents full of faith and love for God, and God provides! Like the first sin in the garden there is complete lack of trust in God that says we can't take care of both of them. We don't have the money. I don't have the patience, etc. We do need to pray for the parents and the doctors. The main doctor is especially scary. He had a weak ethical stand (no reductions below 2), but once there was a market for it, he swept over his little line in the sand (medical journal) and moved it back. What a hero!
MrsPrimm says:
This is such a horrifying story for its mechanistic, technical view of children. If ever there was an argument against IVF, this has to be it.
The social, spiritual, even environmental consequences of these practices are damaging beyond comprehension.
The women, their remaining children and their doctors featured in this article desperately need our prayers. Ask our Lady to intervene and lift the veil of consumerist thinking about children from these people, to heal the inevitable pain of the remaining twins, and turn their doctors back to healing and away from gross experiments.
If everyone who read this offered a prayer to our Lady, who knows what she might accomplish through our Lord for them?
Not being able to be something else has nothing to do with it. My hand can never be anything but a human hand, so what? The issue is when as you put it the tomato is a tomato. And that's a perfect example. We call the fruit of the tomato *plant* a tomato, but it's not the plant itself. it may someday grow into the plant but unless and until it does it is merely the fruit.
Same thing with a fetus. Unless and until they become capable of living separately and disconnected from mother (or the machines that simulate her presence) it's just a part of the mother. That's my view, and it's no less rational than the view that a divine spirit inhabits the fetus at the moment of conception.
LisaG says:
This article is so heartbreaking and horrible. I read about a couple pregnant with twins, one had downs syndrome. They wanted him aborted, but the doctor aborted the "normal" fetus by accident. The couple aborted the rejected child and sued the doctor. Why are these people having kids at all, if money, lifestyle and status are the main objections. Children created for looks and family photos are only going to disappoint and be troublesome. What will happen when parents of reduced children get old and they become a burden, costly, embarrassing, senile? Are those children going to reduce their parents down to one so they can handle the situation?
Marshall Art says:
What rubbish Tlaloc dishes out. The same old nonsense that is put forth as reason and logic. A hand, even a human hand, is not a person. The human being to which the hand belongs is the person. A hand will never become another human being. A human fetus IS a human being necessarily dependent upon the mother who invited it into existence (along with the biological father). To artificially create a line of demarcation based upon the natural process of development of all creatures is the result of a selfish and immature abdication of responsibility.
A fetus or embryo is not "part" of the mother. It is a separate entity, complete with its own DNA that is different from the mother's. And once again, it exists where it does by the willful choice of the mother and father by virtue of having engaged in the act designed by nature to produce the child whose life is now at risk.
Do not bring up rape. An exception does not mitigate the truth, especially an exception such as this.
And do not try to assert that some have sex without the desire to have children. Without a proven method to prevent conception (such as getting "fixed"), no such desire justifies killing the child should nature ignore that desire.
Steve Monetti says:
Morality is officially dead! It was gunned down by social justice…Morality, an integral part of religious doctrine, was murdered by the rallying cry of an ideology-statism! The ideology has itself become a religion. In the US there are those that would make it the first state sanctioned and promoted religion. Some have even refuted the tenets of their own religion to kneel before the secular humanist religion-social justice. This "state religion" has even appropriated the language of religion having stolen the term "social justice" and made it its own. This ideology has its roots in US style liberalism, US typified statism. Liberalism not only heartily promotes, but demands, the demise of morality. In order to serve the new god-man, we must relinquish the dictates of the true God. If it hadn't been for the fact that even some clergy have "changed sides" and embraced the new religion, we might be able to ignore the neo-religion, however, we are now made to steel ourselves to do battle with this leviathan which now permeates our culture, our institutions, and our homes. There is ample evidence that priests, ministers and rabbis have refuted the teachings of their respective churches so that they can worship at the altar of the new faith. The primary evidence for my contentions is that the cause of the murder of the unborn, abortion, has been downgraded even by our religious leaders, to a simple debate so that the clergy of the new religion will not have to deal with the pesky moralists who still see it as an objective evil. All can be justified in the name of the "common good" in a collectivist society. The end, therefore, will justify the means. Even the Catholic Church in the US, previously a stopgap to immorality and a bastion of pro-life dignity, has succumbed to the moral relativism of these socialist voices. It seems to make so much sense-rob from the rich and give to the poor. God, though infinitely wise, must have at least been mistaken on reproductive issues, right? Wouldn't it be better if some central secular planner decided who should reproduce? If God didn't want us to have contraception, he wouldn't have allowed man to invent it right? If we are going to attribute the invention of contraception to God's intervention, could it not be also that God allowed it to exist as a test of man's free will? If so, man has failed miserably. But I digress. Let's have a look at this historic change. A history that will include the election of the supposedly first black president. (And I thought Bill Clinton was the first black president. I digress yet again. Sorry.) A history that will include the slow slide from an individualistic society to a collectivist society. A history that will witness the Church lose its moral authority and take the side of the ignorant and licentious laity. Liberalism, as defined in the United States, is a process that attempts to solve the ills of mankind through government control and planned distribution of wealth. There is a convenient assumption in liberalism that is likewise attractive and intoxicating to the Christian-if one man is without, someone else must have unjustly taken it away from him. The man without was not paid his fair share, he was charged too much interest, he was simply bamboozled or somehow fooled out of his treasure so that someone else could get rich. This misguided thinking applies to even nations-the US is an evil nation because other nations are not as rich. The supposed poor and oppressed are never made to feel responsible for their lot as that would preclude some liberal relinquishing their guilt by coddling the poor fool. All manner of bad behavior is rewarded today in the name of social justice. There is a gaping hole in this philosophy, especially from a Christian perspective. It is a hole so wide that you can fly a 747 right through it. If you happen upon the one place in the Gospel that Jesus had a chance to talk to a government official, Pontius Pilate, please take note that He didn't say a word about the poor and oppressed even though He was talking to a representative of the most efficient colonizing power in history. His discussion to Pilate is so full of ambiguity that eventually Pilate, who to some extent appears to sympathize with Jesus' situation, starts to show his frustration. Further study of the Gospels will reveal a different villain, as it were. To this villain Jesus preached about arrogance, ill-gotten wealth, and the plight of the poor almost exclusively. This "villain" was the clergy. The clergy were admonished regarding their intellectual arrogance. The clergy were warned about the retribution of God's justice. Could it be that Jesus thought that relief for the poor should come from the religious? I am proud to say that some of the largest charities in the world are funded by Catholics. The Church has taken plenty of heat from the militant homosexual community at the same time that it operates the largest AIDS assistance and outreach on the planet. However, there are voices that would have the government, the benevolent dictator, solve our social problems. There are voices decrying the evils of capitalism-a so called "evil" that's done more to ease the suffering of the masses than any socialist system could ever hope to do.
How do you know it is a separate entity and not a part? Removed from the mother the fetus will, before some stage of development wither and die (unless hooked up to machines that imitate the mother's presence.
The different DNA would be compelling except that as it turns out human chimeras are not all that rare after all, plus it would require us to regard humans with transplants as multiple people.
It's much easier to define a human being as an organism. Prior to a certain point a fetus is not an organism- it cannot engage in all the processes required by a human animal by itself and relies on the mother to do so for it (respiration, digestion, excretion).
By that view the fetus is a part of the mother until at least mid pregnancy.
@Tialoc. "..plus, it would require us to regard humans with transplants as multiple people." Wrong.
A transplanted heart, for example does not have the potential to develop into a separate, sentient being. Does someone really have to explain the difference between a developing fetus and a transplant to you? Whatever school of thought you signed up for, man, they got you good. I bet you didn't even put up a fight. Did they pat your head like a good-little non-analytical thinker as you were drinking from the punch-bowl? Did this libtardedness at least get you laid?
Bill Sr. says:
This is the most telling example of the real issue you could possibly imagine. PEOPLE WANT TO BECOME GODS UNTO THEMSELVES. Total control not only their own life but as many others as possible within their influence.
It's a direct analogy only changing a couple words
Yeah, not so much.


text:
Will the NSA surveillance brouhaha be Obama's Watergate?
William Boardman
Government spying, News
Nixon leaves White House after resigning
Does it matter who's rummaging through our lives? Â National Security Agency (NSA) covertly inspects anyone's private life.
How many people do you know who, hearing that the NSA was busy obliterating privacy, have reacted to the effect of: well, duh, or that's old news, or worse: didn't we make that legal?  It's not as though the NSA is carrying out break-ins, is it?
Forty-one years ago, on June 17, 1972, the break-in at the Democratic Party headquarters in the Watergate Hotel evoked similar reactions along the lines of big deal, or who cares? The Nixon White House officially dubbed it a "third-rate burglary attempt," with a secret irony that Oval Office operatives could enjoy right through the fall election and President Nixon's sweeping, landslide victory.
Secretly (except from himself) taped six days after the break-in, the President asked: "Who was the asshole who ordered it?" Some take this to mean he didn't know about the break-in in advance, others think it means he was aware that he was taping himself and needed to sound innocent. Either way, he ordered a cover-up that was effective for a time.
Like current White House, with its record number of prosecutions under the 1913 Espionage Act, the Nixon White House could also behave obsessively about leaks. In May 1969, when the New York Times revealed the secret bombing of Cambodia (not that it was secret to the Cambodians), Nixon ordered more than a dozen FBI wiretaps, but didn't find the leaker. So the White house created its own secret team, called the Plumbers Unit, to stop leaks by wiretapping, burglarizing, and any means necessary.
Thanks to Congress and 9/11, Obama Doesn't Need to Break the Law Â
But just because the President may not need to break the law, that doesn't mean his administration hasn't broken the law anyway.
The first wave of post-Watergate legislation in the early 1970s did much to make government more accountable and transparent, at least in principle. Â But the second wave of post-Watergate legislation has had a counter-revolutionary effect, expanding the powers of government and curtailing the freedoms of citizens, most notably in the fear-driven and wildly misnamed USA PATRIOT Act, but in many less sweeping but equally freedom-inhibiting bills as well.
Most characteristic of the relationship of Americans and the law over the past three decades is the response to the Bush Administration illegally wiretapping Americans – about which the Congress did nothing but make the activities legal and give the phone companies retroactive immunity from prosecution. This is what is generally referred to in popular demagoguery as "the rule of law."
By Now American Discourse is Deep into Orwellian Obfuscation and Deceit
"Nobody is listening to your telephone calls," President Obama blandly and irrelevantly assured the American people after the NSA sweep of all our meta-data was revealed. The assurance was irrelevant because the issue was the administration's secret interpretation of the law governing the secret workings of a secret court, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court.
According to Obama, in an interview with Charlie Rose, the secret decisions of the secret court operating on the basis of a secret legal opinion all add up to a system that is "transparent."Â Also, it's not eating your lunch.
Obama also said on June 7: "The programs are secret in the sense that they are classified. They are not secret, in that every member of Congress has been briefed"¦. These are programs that have been authored by large bipartisan majorities repeatedly since 2006."
Contrary to Obama's assertion, a number of Congressmen said that they had not been briefed. The White House promptly held a series of congressional briefings.
Obama's claim of "large bipartisan majorities" passing the laws under which the NSA and other spy agencies operate is a true enough description of congressional spinelessness. Obama is deceitful in avoiding his administration's secret interpretation of those laws.
Congressmen, Senators Leap on "Do Something About the NSA" Bandwagon
Senator Ron Wyden has been trying for years to get people's attention about their government's spying on them, but he has been constrained by official secrecy laws.
Now the Oregon Democrat is joining with fellow Democratic Senator Mark Udall of Colorado, to bring forward a bill to "limit the federal government's ability to collect data on Americans without a demonstrated link to terrorism or espionage."
A number of other lawmakers are offering or promising to offer bills dealing with the NSA and even other spy agencies, among them Rep. John Conyers, Democrat, and Rep. Justin Amash, Republican, both of Michigan, as well as the entire Vermont congressional delegation (three members).
Most of the congressional rhetoric so far is about tidying up the situation, but not changing it substantially. Â You can hear their outrage as much as two and three feet away.
An exception is Florida Democrat Rep. Alan Grayson who has introduced a simple and straight-forward solution to the ambiguities and complexities of NSA-related issues: if the NSA acts without probable cause, the NSA loses its funding.
Offered as an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for FY 2014, Grayson's bill states in relevant part:
"None of the funds"¦ may be used to collect any information generated by a citizen of the United States while located in the United States"¦ without probable cause"¦."Â Â
"Probable cause" is a constitutional principle (Fourth Amendment) and implies the need for a warrant before the government rummages through your private things.
Unlike any other member of Congress so far, Grayson is proposing the radical notion that, if the government wants to break the law, at least we won't have to pay them to do it.
Once You Build the Architecture of Oppression, Who Gets to Live in It? Â
The larger point that has yet to take hold of public consciousness is that our government, through the NSA and other agencies, has created what Edward Snowden called the "architecture of oppression."
The architecture of oppression is a phrase that often provokes immediate denial, in the form of a comment about this still being a free country, or saying that Americans are not oppressed. True as that may be, that response misses the reality that an architecture of oppression, once in place, remains benign only as long as it is not widely used.
It's not merely a question of whether Barack Obama can be trusted to spy on us responsibly.
It's a question of whether it's self-preserving, or even sane, to put in place an architecture of oppression that relies on the good faith of this and every future president to preserve anything like traditional American freedoms.
If the real Watergate burglaries of others weren't OK, why should we even consider tolerating the government committing universal virtual burglaries of ourselves?
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.
Previous Post	Sen. Rand Paul: Clapper lied to Congress
Next Post	Statement by Julian Assange after one year in Ecuadorian Embassy

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
WWE: Shawn Michaels: My Journey
2010 TV-PG 1 season
Rent this show
World Wrestling Entertainment superstar Shawn Michaels counts down the 25 greatest matches of his career in this high-action retrospective that puts his signature moves right where they belong -- in the spotlight. Highlights include an early battle against the One Man Gang, the 1998 Casket Match for the WWE Championship against the Undertaker and the 2007 WWE Championship Match against Randy Orton.
Shawn Michaels, One Man Gang, The Midnight Rockers, Buddy Rose, Doug Summers, Nasty Boys, Brain Busters, Rockers, Hart Foundation, Bret Hart, British Bulldog, Sid Vicious, Sean Waltman, Mick Foley, Undertaker, Chris Jericho, Ric Flair, Kurt Angle, Triple H, Randy Orton, Edge, John Cena
Sports & Fitness, Wrestling, Martial Arts, Boxing & Wrestling
Summary of Season 1 (2010) - 3 discs
TV-PG - This program contains material that parents may find unsuitable for younger children.


We expect you enjoy these free printables! You'll Discover plenty of Printable gift tags including birthday gift tags, job graphs, lists, vacation printables, coloring pages, celebration printables and much more. We especially love teacher admiration printables! You may find 100's of ways to thank the teacher for their work. You are able to even start your year off with these free printable calendars.
The free inspirational quotes will create amazing framed gifts and certainly will Be utilized to create amazing home décor. We have an inspirational quote styled inside our family room which functions our family because a excellent reminder of the value of kindness. One of these brilliant 25 beautiful friendship quotes will delight a good friend when written in an candy note or card.
A free printable Is Just really a free PDF record of the design You Could print On your own printer in home or have published in your neighborhood printer. Make certain that you have one of the latest edition of Adobe Reader installed on your own computer to have the ability to print and download.
A printable is simply a picture design That's offered like a Download. Our Favourite Means to utilize printables is to simply print and screen Them onto the bulletin board or fridge. We particularly like to do so with Inspirational sayings or rates. They often serve as reminders or PickMeUps During this dayto day. For the last printable night, Claire from A Little Claireification, shared with a saying about"focus" We told her why we needed to print Tape and it to your own brow!


Africa is no longer the "failed continent." Like the rest of the world, it has become successively more peaceful over the last several decades. Over the longer term, this trend is likely to continue along with its booming economies and populations.
In many ways, Africa is the future—and increasingly relevant on the world stage.
But conflict persists. Piracy is a growing problem along the continent's western coast. There's the aftermath of revolutions in North Africa. Civil wars have erupted in the Central African Republic and the world's newest nation of South Sudan. And an insurgency is raging in Nigeria that could get a lot worse.
From the Sahara to Somalia and down to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, these are the civil wars, conflicts and threats that will shape this part of Africa's narrative in 2014.
Both South Sudan and the Central African Republic were thrown into full-scale civil wars in 2013. In both cases, the conflicts are fought with extraordinary brutality and display signs of ethnic and religious violence.
In South Sudan, Pres. Salva Kiir and his former deputy (now enemy) Riek Machar, seem at least prepared to talk to each other but they're not doing much to stop the violence. The situation in the CAR has spun totally out of control, and both conflicts will continue to dominate the security agenda on the continent for months to come.
South Sudan could see a power-sharing agreement being reached relatively quickly, but like the peace agreement between South and North Sudan, any compromise will be very volatile and will need continuous support from important neighbors and the larger international community to succeed.
Even if a peace agreement is reached, low-intensity hostilities are likely to continue in parts of the country, as all parties will be eager to protect their respective spheres of influence.
In the Central African Republic, nobody is even talking about a serious peace agreement, mostly because the conflict parties are much less well defined. The bulk of the violence in the country is occurring between militias—part of the rebel coalition that brought the current government to power—on the one side, and local self-defense groups on the other. The central state has completely collapsed and is unlikely to recover any time soon.
The most realistic path to stability for the CAR will be the deployment of a substantial peacekeeping force comparable to that in neighboring Democratic Republic of the Congo, but it is unclear if the international community is willing to shoulder the costs and risks of such a mission for a country that is comparatively unimportant.
Even if the current contingent of 1,600 French and 2,500 African troops is augmented, it will take months for these forces to deploy and have a discernible effect on the ground. As was the case with Syria, the media interest in the violence committed in the Central African Republic will likely fade as the year 2014 progresses, but the conflict will stay deadly and unresolved for some time to come.
Both Libya and Egypt are children of the Arab Spring—but their experiences could hardly be more opposed. While Libya descended into civil war which resulted in a U.S.-led intervention and the death of dictator Muammar Gaddafi, Egypt's autocratic former Pres. Hosni Mubarak was ousted more or less peacefully by public protests.
But while Libya has made slow but more or less steady progress on its way out of dictatorship, violence has only increased in Egypt after a standoff between the Muslim Brotherhood, the military and liberal parts of the population led to a de facto military coup.
Mohammed Morsi, elected as president in a generally free and fair election with the support of the Muslim Brotherhood, was removed from office and is under arrest, as are many other members of the Brotherhood's leadership. The organization itself was officially declared a terrorist organization some days ago and all its assets seized. That brings Egypt back in a full circle to outright military rule, with the small change of commander-in-chief Gen. Abdel Fattah El Sisi taking the place of former air force commander Mubarak.
The Brotherhood still has strong support in some parts of the country, though. The last months have seen protests, sometimes violent, and a worrying tendency towards terrorist attacks. 2014 will likely see a continuation of these trends as well as further conflict on the Sinai, where the military government is battling with local nomads and criminal organizations linked to Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
Egypt's return to some semblance of normalcy will greatly depend on the readiness of the military to accept some form of compromise with the Muslim Brotherhood. This looks unlikely at the moment.
Libya will likewise see continued instability. The main sticking point? Armed militias which fought in the civil war and refused to disband, and a shift to increasing autonomy in the eastern part of the country. But considering the decades of brutal dictatorship that the country has emerged from, these are issues to be expected and not insurmountable. If handled correctly and with deft support from the international community, 2014 could turn out to be a positive year for Libya.
Despite being largely absent from international headlines, Africa's most entrenched insurgency can be found in northern Nigeria. Centered around the town of Maiduguri, the loose conglomerate of Islamic fundamentalists known colloquially as Boko Haram fights against the Nigerian state.
Attacks like car bombs, Kalashnikov-wielding assailants on motorcycles and impromptu road blocks—and the army's brutal response to the insurgency—resulted in at least several thousand deaths over the last several years.
In May, the government began its latest offensive against the group, which saw several thousand soldiers supported by tanks and helicopter gunships flood into the states of Borno and Yobe. The army claimed dozens of insurgents killed every week, but the attacks continue. Even army bases are not immune with several large scale attacks reported in recent weeks which killed dozens of soldiers and their relatives.
Boko Haram has been pushed out of population centers to a certain extent, but the organization, which has no discernible central command, has reacted by enlarging its area of operation into neighboring Cameroon, making it a threat to the stability of the entire region.
Despite several earlier offensives comparable to the current one, the Nigerian government has so far proved unable to resolve the conflict by military means. This is unlikely to change. The Nigerian army is overestimating its successes against Boko Haram, and the organization may be too entrenched to be routed out by brute force.
Either way, 2014 will likely see a continuation of the violence and counter-violence with grave cost to civilians.
There's also politics. Nigeria will have presidential elections in 2015 and the incumbent Pres. Goodluck Jonathan, a Christian southerner, plans to run for another term. In doing so, he violates the informal political compromise that the presidency should rotate between a southerner and a northerner. There are well-documented links between some northern politicians and Boko Haram, and these politicians will likely seek to use violence as a leverage against Jonathan in the run up to the elections.
Despite France rapidly drawing down its troops in Mali and claiming success in its fight against Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, many questions remain about the security of the wider region.
After Mali—the "role model" for democracy in West Africa—collapsed, analysts started to look more critically at other states in the region. What they saw was not pretty. Ivory Coast, Guinea-Bissau, Guinea, Burkina Faso, Algeria, Mauritania, Niger—they all struggle with some form of internal political instability. Upcoming presidential elections, like in Burkina Faso and Ivory Coast in 2015, will likely exacerbate tensions.
Continued international attention will also limit the potential for larger scale conflicts in Mali in 2014. Both the Malian government and Tuareg rebels will continue to use military means to further their political goals, but the presence of international troops means that these skirmishes will likely not reach population centers.
Islamist organizations like Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb are also eager to prove their relevance, and could possibly stage at least one attack on a high-value target. The In Amenas attack in Algeria last year is a template for such an attack. In other countries, violence is more likely to be perpetrated by government actors as they strive to strengthen their position amid rising dissent among their populations.
Somali piracy has been reduced to a shadow of its former glory in the face of a well-established international naval presence. Not a single large vessel was successfully captured off the Somali coast, although there were still regular attacks. If the international community continues to devote considerable resources to fighting piracy off Somalia, this positive trend is likely to continue.
The case is a bit different in West Africa. Incidents of piracy have increased in recent years in the Gulf of Guinea and because of its less spectacular nature—vessels are often abducted for just a few days to steal their cargo—the international community has been slow to respond.
Similar to Somalia, the underlying issues involving West African piracy can be found on land, not on sea.
In the case of the mostly Nigerian pirates, corrupt government officials, incapable security forces and rampant poverty make it easy for prospective pirates to justify and execute their plots. But unlike the Horn of Africa, the Gulf of Guinea doesn't lend itself to the kind of massive marine intervention that has all but swept the Somali pirates from the seas.
Here's why. Vessels in West Africa are usually attacked when at anchor with minimal time for crew and law enforcement to respond. Pirates are active across the waters of several sovereign states, all of which are uneasy of foreign navies roaming through their territory.
Under these circumstances, piracy in West Africa will likely remain stable or even increase in 2014. The states bordering the Gulf of Guinea and the international community will continue to hold conferences and launch training missions, but these projects will have little impact on the ground. A concerted effort to tackle piracy in the region is still a few years off and depends largely on domestic political developments in several key states, chief among them Nigeria.
Until then, shipping companies will think hard about deploying private armed security forces aboard their ships.
The year 2013 ended on a hopeful note for the perennial failed state of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The M23, the country's most prolific rebel group was soundly defeated by a newly invigorated army and a force of African peacekeepers.
This had a resounding effect in the eastern part of the country, where some smaller armed groups turned themselves in almost immediately for fear of becoming the next target. For the first time in years there is the real opportunity to transform the conflict and use an improved security situation to make progress on important political and social issues.
This year will show if Congo's politicians and its military are able to grasp it. A range of entrenched rebel groups remain, among them the Rwandan FDLR, the Ugandan ADF-NALU and the secessionist movement Kata Katanga. The leadership of these groups are unwilling to enter negotiations, and they will likely be prepared for any offensive after witnessing the fate of the M23.
The question remains if Congo's notoriously scheming politicians will allow the government to establish order in the east and in Katanga. Already, one of the most important commanders in the offensive against the M23 has been killed under questionable circumstances. The attacks by a religious sect on several targets in Kinshasa and Lubumbashi has been attributed by some analysts to the internal power struggles within the regime.


Check out some of our readers' favorite romantic activities in the East Bay.
"A cool summer evening at the Oakland Coliseum eating a stadium dog watching the A's beat the New York Yankees!"
"We love hiking on many of the beautiful trails in the East Bay, either in the hills or along the water."
"We enjoy going to Bridges for Dinner and then heading over to the Vine for an after dinner drink and a little jazz...."
"My most memorable date night was a cold but dry winter night. My girlfriend (now wife!) reunited after a long breakup. Living close to downtown Pleasant Hill, we walked, hand in hand, possible to keep our hands from freezing. I remember all the white lights and enjoying the silence of the night. We enjoyed a romantic dinner at the now sadly closed Left Bank. It was a wonderful evening as it represents the new beginning of our romance."
"I love to sit in front of fire in the back room at Prima. Cozy, intimate, and quiet."
"My favorite date is packing a picnic lunch & heading out for wine-tasting in Livermore Valley. They have the most spectacular view at Thomas Coyne."
"Going to the Walnut Creek Yacht club for zen martinis and oysters then maybe a movie and then going home and enjoying each others company :)"
"Dancing the night away at Petar's!!!"
"I would say best date night in the East Bay is a candlelit dinner nestled in front of a fire up in Mt. Diablo state park...simply awesome!!"
"My best date, was being surprised by tickets to see the Rolling Stones, and they have been my favorite band for a long, long time."


Gender Stereotypes, Women in the workplace | Shira's Got The Scoop! Gender Stereotypes, Women in the workplace – Shira's Got The Scoop!
#Google: Is the "Images" Platform Reinforcing Gender Stereotypes In the Workplace?
A new study indicates that Google images may be reinforcing gender stereotypes in the work place.
As you can see in the above table, images for a certain profession often align with what people perceive to be prevalent jobs for a specific gender. If you were to, say, type the word "CEO" into Google Images, you would find only 11% of female CEOs represented in the results, as opposed to an actual 28% reported in the US Labor Force Statistics from the Current Population Survey.
The study goes on to show that if you type the word "journalist," females are underrepresented by 28% in the search results. When it comes to "bus drivers," our minds typically conjure up a male image and Google Images represents that in its platform results. Women are underrepresented by 29% in comparison to US Labor Force Statistics data.
AdView analyzed United States Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics data, along with the results of Google Image searches for a range of job roles.
Psychology dictates that we come to know and understand things based on what we are shown. It is perplexing to think that societal perceptions could be so influenced by a popular search engine – when we are not getting accurate representations from that popular search engine!
More astonishing is this fact: After the search giant's most recent annual report was released, it was revealed that Google has had a mere 0.3% growth in the percentage of women employed since 2014.
The misrepresentation of genders within job roles on Google Images is particularly salient because between May 2017 and May 2018, Google held 87% of the search engine market share in the US.
CEO – females are underrepresented by 17% on Google Images.


text:
Help By Cancer Diagnosis
Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia (CLL)
Diffuse Large B-Cell Lymphoma (DLBCL)
Gynecological Cancers
Myeloproliferative Neoplasms (MPNs)
Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma (NHL)
Renal Medullary Carcinoma (RMC)
General Cancer Information
Staff, Board, and Volunteers
The Value of PEN
Volunteer as a Network Manager
Become a Donor or Fundraiser
digital sherpa™
Digitally Empowered™
Does Cannabis Oil Have a Role in Cancer Treatment?
November 13, 2019 /in Acute Myeloid Leukemia, AML Fact or Fiction, AML Newly Diagnosed, AML Research & Internet Claims, AML Video ND, AML Video TC, BC Treatment & Clinical Trials, BC Video TC, Breast Cancer, GNYC Treatment and Clinical Trials, GYNC Newly Diagnosed, GYNC Video ND, GYNC Video TC, Gynecological Cancers, Head & Neck Cancer, Head & Neck Cancer Newly Diagnosed, Head & Neck Cancer Treatment & Clinical Trials, Head & Neck Video ND, Head & Neck Video TC /by Kara Rayburn
Does Cannabis Oil Have a Role in Cancer Treatment? from Patient Empowerment Network on Vimeo.
Is it just a trend or could cannabis oil truly have a role in cancer care and treatment? Dr. Sangmin Lee share his perspective.
Dr. Sangmin Lee is a hematologist-oncologist specializing in blood disorders and blood cancers at Weill Cornell Medicine and New York Presbyterian Hospital. More about Dr. Lee here.
See More From The Fact or Fiction? AML Series
AML Research and Internet Claims Program Resource Guide
Assessing Credible AML Resources and Identifying Research Scams
Understanding and Managing AML Treatment Side Effects
Patricia:
The use of cannabis oil is becoming prevalent. Does this have a role in cancer care and treatment?
Dr. Lee:
Absolutely. So, we use it for a lot of side effect management. So, cannabis can be helpful, in terms of appetite and nausea, for example. So, we often use it in conjunction to manage some of the side effects that patients can have throughout their treatment.
You should consult with your medical team, and of course, I should say that laws differ state by state, so it doesn't apply to every state. But when it's available, it can be a valuable addition.
Sure. Discuss that with your physician.
Tags: AML Fact or Fiction, AML Research and Internet Scams
https://powerfulpatients.org/pen/wp-content/uploads/Does-Cannabis-Oil-Have-a-Role-in-Cancer-Treatment_-1.png 600 600 Kara Rayburn https://www.powerfulpatients.org/pen/wp-content/uploads/New-Logo-300x126.png Kara Rayburn2019-11-13 19:56:502020-01-29 10:53:55Does Cannabis Oil Have a Role in Cancer Treatment?
What Causes a Gene Mutation?
The Truth About Clinical Trials in AML
Advice for Newly Diagnosed AML Patients
Second Opinions in AML: The Importance of Moving Swiftly
Will Clinical Trials Cost You? The Facts.
January 2022 Notable NewsJanuary 20, 2022 - 9:47 am
January 2022 Digital Health Round UpJanuary 19, 2022 - 10:54 am
Patient Advocacy: 6 Tips for Making A Visual Impact on Social MediaJanuary 11, 2022 - 11:12 am
What Role Can Care Partners Play in Advocacy?January 10, 2022 - 10:46 am
Care Partner Tips for Communicating with Healthcare TeamsJanuary 10, 2022 - 10:35 am
© 2021 Patient Empowerment Network, a 501(c)(3) Public Charity
Inclusion Policy | Privacy Policy | Corporate Giving Policy