Pro-Life News -- Digest #610

	Pro-life Republican Wins Chairmanship of California Republican Party SACRAMENTO -- Pro-life Republicans crushed a bid by a pro-abortion candidate to take over leadership of the California GOP, Sunday electing a party chairman who believes the right to life "is the issue of the century'' and would withhold party money from Republican nominees who do not oppose partial-birth abortion. The vote in favor of Silicon Valley executive John McGraw was a major victory for pro-life supporters. The Republicans for Life PAC, a national political action committee dedicated to electing pro-life Republicans and proting the right to life in the Republican Party, applauded McGraw's victory. Delegates voted 718 to 457 for McGraw over Nicholas Bavarro, who heads the party in Stanislaus County and said abortion would not be a major issue under his reign as Chairman. Former State Assemblyman Brooks Firestone, who supports abortion, lost to pro-life advocate Shawn Steel in the contest for vice chair. At the state convention this weekend, pro-life Sen. Bob Smith (R-NH), who is seeking the party's presidential nomination, elicited cheers from pro-life supporters but silence from abortion advocates with a ringing endorsement of McGraw. ``John McGraw was absolutely right,'' Smith declared. ``Killing children is the central issue facing our nation today. If we are not willing to stand up for the rights of unborn children, maybe the Republican Party deserves to fall into the ashcan of history ... and it will, if we don't stand up for life.'' In a strong speech, Senator Smith said he refused to be treated like a ``second-class citizen because we stand up for the (anti-abortion) plank in our party.'' Smith and such pro-life presidential aspirants as former diplomat Alan Keyes and former Family Research Council head Gary Bauer received overwhelmingly more applause than pro-life Senator Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), who suggested a tolerance plank in the platform welcoming both pro-life and pro-abortion supporters. Alan Keyes sought to remind Republicans who want to shrink from the abortion fight: ``If you back away from the pro-life plank ... there will be no ground for unity in this party,'' he said to loud applause. Steve Forbes chimed in too, saying: "The first order of compassion is protecting the unborn." Pro-family activist Gary Bauer said the party "should not give one dollar to any candidate" who endorses partial-birth abortion. Bauer called it "the equivalent of infanticide, taking the lives of children while they are in the process of being born. . . . Bigotry and infanticide are beyond the pale." -- For more information about supporting the right to life in the Republican Party, email the Republicans for Life PAC at GOLifePAC@aol.com
	ACTION ALERT: Make Sure AOL Doesn't Support Planned Parenthood Source: David Bunnell (DBunnell@aol.com) America Online, according to the CEO Steve Case's newsletter, is now getting into making grants to organizations that purportedly help people in the inner city by making "health care information and services more widely available to people who don't currently have access to them." AOL is taking suggestions on the issue of whom to fund from members. Planned Parenthood is almost sure to ask for funds from the AOL Foundation, if they haven't already, to fund promotion of abortion in the inner cities of the U.S. If you are associated with a Crisis Pregnancy Center, consider emailing America Online and asking them how you can obtain information on securing a grant for your center. ACTION: Email SocialGood@aol.com (our opinions have been solicited) and ask them to refrain from funding Planned Parenthood or abortion activities. Instead, encourage them to support the work of national crisis pregnancy center organizations, such as Birthright or CareNet. (Contact information for Birthright and CareNet can be found at http://www.prolife.org/cpcs-online) If you hear any responses from America Online, please email them to ertelt@prolife.org so we can keep track of how they respond and alert other pro-life people.
	Trial Begins in Teen Sex-Abortion Lawsuit LINCOLN, Neb. -- A teen-age girl at the center of a lawsuit over her pregnancy said today that she had sex at her boyfriend's house because his mother condoned the activity. ``She said that she was 16 when she had ( her son) and that he should have a child when he was 16,'' Leanne Detmer told jurors. ``I liked being at their house because we could do what we wanted. There were no rules over there.'' Dawn Bixler is being sued by Doug and Sharon Detmer, who allege she was negligent in supervising her son and should pay the costs of the abortion their daughter had. The case is believed to be the first of its kind in this country. Doug Detmer said he and his wife were unaware their daughter was having sex with the boy, Dallas Mills, after the two 16-year-olds began dating in 1996. The girl told them she was pregnant in April 1997 and had an abortion. Sharon Detmer testified the children spent most of their time at Bixler's north Lincoln home. She said her daughter often came home late from the Bixler residence and that the Detmers once had to call police to retrieve their daughter. The Detmers are asking for more than $11,000 in medical expenses and an unspecified amount of general damages. The medical expenses also include cost of the treating the girl's depression, which was aggravated by the abortion, lawyer Brett McArthur said. Ms. Bixler's lawyer, Susan Strong, said the lawsuit borders on frivolous because the sex was consensual. She said Ms. Bixler suspected the two teens were having sex and confronted them. ``They laughed at her,'' Ms. Strong said. Ms. Strong said Detmer drank and was abusive toward his daughter and that she got pregnant to get back at him. ``Leanne Detmer's damages were not caused by my client,'' she said. Earlier, Lancaster County District Judge Jeffre Cheuvront ruled that Mills should be dropped from the lawsuit because the sex was consensual. In his ruling, the judge said teens had sex 15 to 20 times at various locations, including her home, his home and the home of a friend. He ruled there was no legal wrongdoing by the boy but that questions about his mother's responsibility should be decided at trial. ``The issue is whether she had a duty to act,'' Cheuvront wrote. ``Certainly it is foreseeable that harm can result to a person of tender years who finds herself pregnant.''
	`60 Minutes' Follows Up Euthanasia Show DETROIT -- Relatives of a man whose euthanasia at the hands of Jack Kevorkian was aired on ``60 Minutes'' last fall said they were upset with the show's follow-upsegment, which focused on sick people who oppose assisted suicide. The CBS newsmagazine show has come under fire from all sides. Many pro-life viewers spoke out against the November segment, which aired a video of Kevorkian giving a lethal injection to Thomas Youk, a Detroit-area man with Lou Gehrig's disease. Now some are questioning the timing of the Sunday night segment, which came less than a week after ``60 Minutes'' correspondent Mike Wallace said at a symposium that he had second thoughts about airing the euthanasia. During Sunday's story, one patient in a Connecticut hospice responded affirmatively when asked by Wallace whether she thought Youk had ``simply wimped out.'' ``I was just very upset in the way they handled the whole segment of the program,'' Youk's brother, Robert, said in today's editions of the Detroit Free Press. ``I thought they were going to show both sides, not just completely slanted to the other side from what Dr. Kevorkian was trying to do. A man who suffers from the disease said the shows simply laid out both points of view. However, Edgar Sullivan, 55, of St. Clair Shores, said the Kevorkian tape bothered him and that he opposes assisted suicide for himself. ``There are a lot of mood swings, ups and downs, and it gets to the point where you might feel bad all the time. Every patient is different,'' Sullivan said. ``60 Minutes'' executive producer Don Hewitt said the follow-up story was simply a good idea suggested to them by a viewer and is not a sign that the show is backing off the Kevorkian segment. It also doesn't indicate that producers are particularly swayed by public pressure, he said. The tape of Youk's injection death has been the main piece of evidence used to charge Kevorkian with first-degree murder, assisted suicide and illegal use of a controlled substance in Youk's death. His trial is scheduled to begin March 22.

This page is reformatted and published by Christ's Faithful People from the News Letters of Steven Ertelt of Pro-Life InfoNet.