Sultan of Brunei Threatens Critics of Sharia Law

Brunei Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah warned online critics of the country's Sharia Law that they could face prosecution once the new penal code takes effect next month:

They can no longer be given the liberty to continue with their mockery and if there is a basis for them to be brought to court, then therefore, the 1st phase of the Syariah (criminal) law this coming April will be relevant to them.

The Sultan issued this statement during the 30th National Day celebration after many Brunei netizens reacted negatively to the decision of the government to implement Sharia criminal laws.

Brunei is a Muslim-majority country. It is a monarchy where the Sultan is also the Prime Minister and wields absolute power in the government and in Brunei society. The Sultan is also one of the wealthiest people in the world.

Sharia is currently implemented in the country but it is limited to personal and family issues. But beginning April 1, the scope of Sharia punishments will be expanded to include stoning to death for adultery, cutting of limbs for theft, and flogging for violations such as abortion, alcohol consumption, and homosexuality. There is also capital punishment for rape and sodomy. Brunei is the first East Asian country to implement the Sharia law at the national level.

The Sultan may have been upset by social media comments which criticized the Sharia laws. In his speech, he cautioned his people to be wary of Internet users who are insulting Brunei's Islamic scholars and leaders of the government:

We must be wise and cautious in reaping its benefits. Otherwise, if we are careless and abuse (this technology), the adverse effects will not just be on the individual but on the nation as a whole.

They are using the new media such as blogs, WhatsApp and so on which are not just accessed by locals but also by those overseas.

Reacting to the sultan's speech, Sam Zarifi of the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) urged Brunei to respect the dissenting views of its citizens:

Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah's statement illustrates that human rights, particularly respect for freedom of opinion and expression, is widely disregarded by the authorities in Brunei.

Free, unhindered debates on issues like the enactment or implementation of a law are important cornerstones of a democratic society.

Earlier, the ICJ criticized the Sharia penal code for being incompatible with Brunei's commitment to adhere to various international human rights agreements. In particular, the ICJ is deeply disappointed over the reintroduction of death penalty in the country:

If implemented, the code would lead to serious human rights violations by reintroducing the death penalty and imposing other cruel and inhuman punishment including stoning, even for conduct that should not even be considered criminal.

The 2013 Penal Code also specifies that a manner by which capital punishment is to be imposed for rape, adultery, sodomy and extramarital sexual relations is stoning to death, a particularly horrific form of torture and execution.

Brunei has not carried out the death penalty since 1957.

The ICJ also submitted a letter to the government asking clarification on provisions that they think would restrict free speech:

...we note, however, that provisions of the 2013 Penal Code, penalise both Muslims and non-Muslims for printing, disseminating, importing, broadcasting, and distributing publications "contrary to Hukum Syara" (Articles 213, 214, and 215). We consider that these provisions constitute undue restrictions on religious freedom and violate of the rights of freedom of expression and opinion.

The Malaysian Insider highlighted a comment from a reader who is worried over the strict implementation of the Sharia next month:

"It is truly frightening to think that we might potentially be stoned to death for being lovers, that we may be fined for being of a different sexual orientation, and that what we wear will be regulated."

But Professor Najibah Mohd Zin, a female Islamic scholar, believes that the proper implementation of the law would not create social problems:

We need to give proper attention to the implementation. We do not want to see discrepancies; otherwise it's not going to be just. We want to achieve justice, but if it's not just then it will be a setback to the Muslim countries.

I think the public should know the law very well. They should learn how it works within the modern context, rather than looking at it from a negative perspective. We don't implement the law in our time, that's why we have a lot of social problems.

What the Sultan's speech revealed is the real danger of using Sharia law not to promote harmony in society but to stifle free expression and open debate in the country.

Source: Global Voice Advocacy, March 5, 2014

Ariel Castro faces 329 charges for Ohio kidnapping

CLEVELAND — Ariel Castro, 52, the former school bus driver accused of holding three women captive in his Cleveland home for a decade, was charged late Friday with murder and more than 300 counts of rape and kidnapping.

The Cuyahoga County grand jury's 329-count indictment charges Castro with one count of aggravated murder for allegedly terminating one of his captives' pregnancies, 139 counts of rape and 177 charges of kidnapping, seven counts of gross sexual imposition, three counts of felony assault and one count of possession of criminal tools dating from the time of the first woman's disappearance until February 2007.

County Prosecutor Timothy McGinty said in a statement that the investigation is still underway. Additional charges could follow in a superseding indictment.

The indictment charges Castro as a "sexually violent predator" who committed the murder and rapes in the course of a kidnapping. Those charges are considered aggravating factors that call for stiffer penalties. The murder charge is tied to one victim's fourth pregnancy, the indictment said.

The County Prosecutor's Capital Review Committee will consider whether prosecutors should seek the death penalty if Castro is convicted. Castro, who was fired last year from his job as a school bus driver, is being held in the Cuyahoga County jail on $8 million bail. A judge will arraign Castro on the new charges next week, McGinty said.

Click here to read the full article

Source: Clarion Ledger, June 9, 2013)

Philadelphia abortion doctor spared death sentence, gets life in prison

(CBS/AP) PHILADELPHIA - A Philadelphia abortion doctor convicted of killing three babies who were born alive in his clinic agreed Tuesday to give up his right to an appeal and faces life in prison but will be spared a death sentence.

Dr. Kermit Gosnell, 72, was convicted Monday of first-degree murder in the deaths of the babies who were delivered alive and killed with scissors.

In a case that became a flashpoint in the nation's abortion debate, former clinic employees testified that Gosnell routinely performed illegal abortions past Pennsylvania's 24-week limit, that he delivered babies who were still moving, whimpering or breathing, and that he and his assistants dispatched the newborns by "snipping" their spines, as he referred to it.

Prosecutors agreed to two life sentences without parole for two of the three first-degree murder convictions, and Gosnell was to be sentenced Wednesday in the death of the third baby, an involuntary manslaughter conviction in the death of a patient and hundreds of lesser counts.

Prosecutors had sought the death penalty because Gosnell killed more than one person, and his victims were especially vulnerable given their age. But Gosnell's own advanced age had made it unlikely he would ever be executed before his appeals ran out.

Gosnell has said he considered himself a pioneering inner-city doctor who helped desperate women get late-term abortions.

The case drew wide attention from anti-abortion activists, for whom it illustrated the need for much tighter regulation of clinics and, more important, what they consider the immorality of all abortion.

Abortion rights groups were equally adamant in condemning Dr. Gosnell. But they drew an opposite conclusion: abortion must be safe and available, they said, or desperate women will be driven to other “back-alley” practitioners like Dr. Gosnell.

Sources: CBS News, The New York Times, AP, May 14-15, 2013

Ohio prosecutors face hurdles in Ariel Castro death penalty pursuit

Ariel Castro

Experts say Ohio laws governing fetal homicides could be open to constitutional challenge as prosecutors look to press charges.

Ohio prosecutors will face a struggle to press death penalty charges against the Cleveland kidnapping suspect in relation to any miscarriages suffered by the three women he allegedly held captive for a decade, legal experts said on Friday.

If Ariel Castro is handed a death sentence for "aggravated murder", he would become the 1st person in the US to be put on death row under the country's proliferating and controversial fetal homicide laws. The provisions extend legal rights to unborn babies, in some cases - including Ohio - as early as conception.

The prosecutor for Cuyahoga County, that covers Cleveland, indicated on Thursday that he would pursue a possible death sentence against Castro, who is being held on $8m bail having been accused of kidnapping 3 young women for 9 to 11 years each. Timothy McGinty said there would be a count for "each act of aggravated murders he committed by terminating pregnancies".

The women escaped from Castro's house in the west side of Cleveland on Monday. Michelle Knight had been missing since 2002, Amanda Berry since 2003 and Gina DeJesus since 2004.

Castro has been charged with kidnapping and raping the 3 women, as well as kidnapping a 6-year-old girl born to Berry in captivity. He was confirmed as the father on Friday. Castro will now go before a grand jury, at which point prosecutors say they will press the more serious death penalty charges relating to the multiple miscarriages that took place within the house.

Ohio is 1 of at least 38 states that have some form of fetal homicide law on their statute books. In Ohio's case, protection for the fetus against violent attack has been incorporated into the state's general criminal laws since 1996, with the fetus being defined as a legal entity right from conception.

Anyone can be prosecuted in Ohio for aggravated murder - which carries the death penalty - if they are proved to have "purposely, and with prior calculation and design, caused...the unlawful termination of another's pregnancy". That could be applied to a miscarriage by any of the 3 women at any stage of pre-natal development - the law states that murder charges can be brought if an "unborn member of the species homo sapiens, who is or was carried in the womb of another" is killed.

Fetal homicide laws are controversial because they are seen by pro-abortion campaigners as a back-door attempt by anti-abortionists to overturn Roe v Wade, the US supreme court judgment that set a constitutional right to a medical termination before the fetus reaches the age of viability. Delivering that ruling, the court defined a "person" as beginning at birth.

Richard Dieter, the director of the Death Penalty Information Center, said that were Castro put on death row for "aggravated murder" of a fetus, the verdict would almost certainly be open to constitutional challenge. "There is no one on death row for fetal homicide, and it raises some fundamental questions about whether a person has been killed. It may be in Ohio statute, but that doesn't make it constitutional."

Legal experts say that a decision to enhance Castro's prosecution into a capital case would pose both the prosecution and defense with large challenges. Katherine Federle, a law professor at Ohio State University, said that the prosecution would have to prove that Castro not only intended to terminate the pregnancies but also that his actions were to blame for the miscarriages - which might be hard to do where incidents occurred several years ago.

"We don't know what evidence the FBI and police have managed to assemble, so it's difficult to assess the case they will bring. But it could be quite a challenge for them to prove that the defendant was the cause of the terminations," Federle said.

Michael Benza, a law professor at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, who has defended several death penalty cases, said Castro's legal team would also face daunting hurdles. "In this case there is certain to be huge sympathy for these 3 young women - they have been a regular part of the public discussion in Cleveland for the past 10 years. So it's going to be hard to get the jury to go past that and pay attention just to what's happening in the courtroom."

McGinty's announcement that prosecutors may seek the death penalty is not an idle threat. Ohio has one of the highest rates of execution outside the south.

Last year, Ohio executed 3 prisoners, more than any other state outside Texas, Arizona and Oklahoma and equal to Florida. Since the reintroduction of the death penalty in the modern era in 1976, Ohio has put to death 51 prisoners; it has the 7th largest death row in the country, with 147 inmates.

Fetal homicide was incorporated into the state's homicide laws in 1996. The 1st case prosecuted under the law was that of Gregory Robbins, a member of the US air force who battered his wife causing her to lose her unborn baby.

Source: The Guardian, May 11, 2013

Saudi Arabia: Man sentenced to death for aborting 40 women

March 25, 2013: A Saudi court sentenced a man to death after he was convicted of aborting more than 40 pregnant women and practicing magic, which is strictly banned in the conservative Moslem Gulf Kingdom, newspapers reported.

The unidentified man, in his 40s, was also accused of practicing sorcery to separate couples with the aim of extorting them, they said.

Members of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, Saudi Arabia’s feared religious police, had arrested the man in the western town of Taif, the papers said, adding that the defendant had confessed to his crimes.

Source: emirates247.com, March 23, 2013

Scalia says death penalty, abortion, gay rights are easy calls

Antonin Scalia

Justice Antonin Scalia says his method of interpreting the Constitution makes some of the most hotly disputed issues that come before the Supreme Court among the easiest to resolve.

Scalia calls himself a "textualist" and, as he related to a few hundred people who came to buy his new book and hear him speak in Washington the other day, that means he applies the words in the Constitution as they were understood by the people who wrote and adopted them.

So Scalia parts company with former colleagues who have come to believe capital punishment is unconstitutional. The framers of the Constitution didn't think so and neither does he.

"The death penalty? Give me a break. It's easy. Abortion? Absolutely easy. Nobody ever thought the Constitution prevented restrictions on abortion. Homosexual sodomy? Come on. For 200 years, it was criminal in every state," Scalia said at the American Enterprise Institute.

He contrasted his style of interpretation with that of a colleague who tries to be true to the values of the Constitution as he applies them to a changing world. This imaginary justice goes home for dinner and tells his wife what a wonderful day he had, Scalia said.

This imaginary justice, Scalia continued, announces that it turns out "`the Constitution means exactly what I think it ought to mean.' No kidding."

As he has said many times before, the justice said the people should turn to their elected lawmakers, not judges, to advocate for abortion rights or an end to the death penalty. Or they should try to change the Constitution, although Scalia said the Constitution makes changing it too hard by requiring 38 states to ratify an amendment for it to take effect.

"It is very difficult to adopt a constitutional amendment," Scalia said. He once calculated that less than 2 percent of the U.S. population, residing in the 13 least populous states, could stop an amendment, he said.

In a lengthy question-and-answer session, Scalia once again emphatically denied there's a rift among the court's conservative justices following Chief Justice John Roberts' vote to uphold President Barack Obama's health care law. Scalia dissented from Roberts' opinion.

"Look it, do not believe anything you read about the internal workings of the Supreme Court," he said. "It is either a lie because the press knows we won't respond - they can say whatever they like and we won't respond - or else it's based on information from someone who has violated his oath of confidentiality, that is to say, a non-reliable source. So one way or another it is not worthy of belief."

"We can disagree with one another on the law without taking it personally," he said.

Source: Associated Press, October 5, 2012

Zimbabwe to scrap death penalty... for women

The final draft constitution spares female murderers from the hangman’s noose as it states that no woman shall face the death penalty.

The draft, completed on Wednesday, partially abolishes the death penalty with the exception being in “cases of aggravated murder”.

It also abolishes the death penalty for those under 21 years of age and those above 70.

Human rights activists and organisations, including Amnesty International have been lobbying government to abolish capital punishment and the exemption of women appears to be a compromise to appease the activists.

Section 4.5 of the new constitution reads in part: “A law may permit the death penalty to be imposed only on a person convicted of murder committed in aggravating circumstances, and the penalty must not be imposed or carried out on a woman.”

But a person sentenced to death will have the right to seek pardon.

The courts will have the discretion over whether or not to impose the penalty.

Abortion remains illegal unless if the pregnancy is terminated in accordance with the law.

Fred Misi, the national chairperson of Varume Svinurai, a men’s representative organisation, said it was unfair for the new constitution to protect women only from the death penalty.

“I think it’s not fair,” he said.

“We are saying all human beings are equal before the law but if you then say a woman who commits murder will be protected and a man who commits murder is hanged, then there is no equality.

“Obviously it’s not fair.

“We were trying to eliminate discrimination against men and women but once you separate the 2, there will be discrimination.”

Source: New Zimbabwe, July 22, 2012

No parliamentary support for abortion law change

Steve Chadwick has confirmed via e-mail to two separate people concerned about her bill to legalise abortion – including a worker in the medical profession whom she appears to know - that there is currently no parliamentary support for her bill.[ update: and it appears the Abortion Law Reform Association of New Zealand have recently found out]

I have seen some of the e-mails. Chadwick apparently wanted to start raising awareness and have abortion raised as both a human rights issue, and a women's health issue. But she hasn’t said why it she thinks it is a women’s health issue – and it is a topic politicians are loathe to touch.

In an earlier e-mail, Chadwick said:

I do not want abortion on demand, that was the Herald headline, not mine. I believe we will have succeeded when all children are wanted children because women are educated to make decisions on their fertility and love their children as they deserve to be love

The health worker responded:

The far better course of action is to love and respect both the woman and her child and to help the mother make decisions that respect the life of both. If we do not respect the life of babies before birth how can we be judgemental about those who ill treat children after birth? I believe humans should be loved and respected from conception until natural death. I fail to see how having an abortion helps women to "love their children as they deserve to be loved". Or are they literally loving them to death? And if death is considered a "loving" option for "unwanted" children before birth, isn't it inconsistent to condemn people who "choose" to kill their babies after birth?

You can safely respect my views because I am not in a position of power. You however are in a position of power so it is up to those of us who think your proposed bill will cause even more babies to die before birth, and cause physical and psychological damage to the mothers, to make our views known.

Chadwick then replied:

Thanks xxxx,
You are actually in a position of power called "people power"
There is no parliamentary support for my Bill
Regards
Steve

Chadwick was in contact with another member of the public as well, who she called a “ fabulous parent”.

XXXXX,
You are a fabulous parent and this is a reasoned and compassionate response
There appears to be a lack of parliamentary support for my bill at this stage
I am a midwife and would never pressure parents, nether did any Obstetrician I worked with in NZ for thirty years
Regards
Steve [Chadwick]

I think the politics behind this bill are ill-informed. Getting parliamentary support for a controversial bill is hard work. Sue Bradford found that out with her smacking legislation – but she had the support of her entire party and the Prime Minister right from the outset.

Chadwick doesn’t. Neither did Gerry Brownlee on mining conservation land. So it won't be put in the ballot anytime soon.
Hat tip Sempa Vista

Law to be changed as it is not used as intended

The Government is to change the claim of right defence so it cannot be used the way it was when three activists got off a criminal conviction when they damaged the Waihopai spybase.[Briefing paper [PDF]]. It intends to do this because the law, although applied correctly in the case, was not used as originally intended by Parliament.

So, to be consistent, lets change abortion laws to reflect the original intent of Parliament. And if it is clear that the abortion laws are not used as intended by Parliament, but the intent of Parliament has since changed, then the Government should put up the bill to change the law, as in the case of the claim of right defence.

Additionally, I note that Labour has publicised two bills recently, which have yet to be put into the parliamentary ballot. One is Clare Curran's Kiwi Jobs Bill, which has been widely publicised [and is here as a PDF], the other one, as Chris Trotter notes is one from former Womens Affairs and former associate Health Minister Steve Chadwick that seeks to amend our abortion laws. The bil has been drafted, and the Minister has discussed the bill with groups such as Family Planning,and the media.

But, like Phil Goff's comments on the bill, the bill itself, is nowhere to be seen.

Phil Goff said he hadn't given the matter much thought.Phil Goff was the spokesperson for Young Labour in 1977 when it actively opposed the current abortion law. Phil Goff got a reasonable amount of publicity on it back then.

Fast forward 21 years later for much thought.

As legislation relating to abortion is a conscience issue for Members of Parliament, it would be for individual parliamentarians to determine whether and in what form legislative amendments would be passed

President Obama nominates Solicitor General Elena Kagan as the nation’s 112th justice

WASHINGTON — President Obama has nominated Solicitor General Elena Kagan (left) as the nation’s 112th justice, choosing his own chief advocate before the Supreme Court to join it in ruling on cases critical to his view of the country’s future.

After a monthlong search, Mr. Obama informed Ms. Kagan and his advisers on Sunday of his choice to succeed the retiring Justice John Paul Stevens.

In settling on Ms. Kagan, the president chose a well-regarded 50-year-old lawyer who served as a staff member in all three branches of government and was the first woman to be dean of Harvard Law School. If confirmed, she would be the youngest member and the third woman on the current court, but the first justice in nearly four decades without any prior judicial experience.

That lack of time on the bench may both help and hurt her confirmation prospects, allowing critics to question whether she is truly qualified while denying them a lengthy judicial paper trail filled with ammunition for attacks. As solicitor general, Ms. Kagan has represented the government before the Supreme Court for the past year, but her own views are to a large extent a matter of supposition.

Replacing Justice Stevens with Ms. Kagan presumably would not alter the broad ideological balance on the court, but her relative youth means that she could have an influence on the court for decades to come, underscoring the stakes involved.

Ms. Kagan defended her experience during confirmation hearings as solicitor general last year. “I bring up a lifetime of learning and study of the law, and particularly of the constitutional and administrative law issues that form the core of the court’s docket,” she testified. “I think I bring up some of the communications skills that has made me — I’m just going to say it — a famously excellent teacher.”

Ms. Kagan was one of Mr. Obama’s runners-up last year when he nominated Sonia Sotomayor to the court, and she was always considered the front-runner this year.

Ms. Kagan had several advantages from the beginning that made her the most obvious choice. For one, she works for Mr. Obama, who has been impressed with her intelligence and legal capacity, aides said, and she worked for Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. when he was a senator. For another, she is the youngest of the four finalists, meaning she would most likely have the longest tenure as a justice. Read more>>>

Source: The New York Times, May 10, 2010

Kagan’s Notable Statements and Writings

Constitutional Theory

In her testimony during her confirmation for solicitor general, Elena Kagan wrote: “I think a judge should try to the greatest extent possible to separate constitutional interpretation from his or her own values and beliefs. In order to accomplish this result, the judge should look to constitutional text, history, structure and precedent. Relating these views to the position for which I am nominated, I think these kinds of arguments also are most successful in advocacy before the courts in constitutional cases. ... The Constitution generally imposes limitations on government rather than establishes affirmative rights and thus has what might be thought of as a libertarian slant. I fully accept this traditional understanding, and if I am confirmed as solicitor general, I would expect to make arguments consistent with it.”

Judicial Activism

In Ms. Kagan’s written responses to Senate questions during her confirmation for solicitor general, she disagreed with the view that the courts should take the lead in creating a more just society.

Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell

Ms. Kagan opposes the ban on gays serving openly in the military. As dean of Harvard Law School, she barred military recruiters from using the law school’s Office of Career Services. She reversed her decision after the government threatened to enforce the Solomon Amendment, which allows the federal government to withhold money from universities that do not extend the same welcome to military recruiters as they do to other recruiters. In a message to the school, she wrote, “The importance of the military to our society — and the extraordinary service that members of the military provide to all the rest of us — makes this discrimination more, not less, repugnant.” However, during her confirmation for solicitor general, she wrote that because the Supreme Court has upheld the Solomon Amendment, she would “vigorously” defend it against constitutional challenge.

Defining Combatants

During her confirmation hearing for solicitor general, Ms. Kagan agreed with a questioner that someone suspected of helping to finance Al Qaeda should be subject to battlefield law — indefinite detention without a trial — even if he were captured in a place like the Philippines rather than in a physical battle zone.

Presidential Powers

In a 2001 article in The Harvard Law Review that considered the “unitary executive” theory, Ms. Kagan wrote that such presidential control “expanded dramatically during the Clinton presidency,” a development she largely welcomed. But she said Congress, experts and interest groups should also play a role in informing the executive branch’s actions. “I do not espouse the unitarian position,” Ms. Kagan wrote. “President Clinton’s assertion of directive authority over administration, more than President Reagan’s assertion of a general supervisory authority, raises serious constitutional questions.”

The Death Penalty

In Ms. Kagan’s written responses to Senate questions during her confirmation for solicitor general, said she did not believe that international law prevented federal and state governments from broadening the application of the death penalty.

The Second Amendment

In response to questions about District of Columbia v. Heller, which struck down parts of the District of Columbia’s gun control law and ruled that the Second Amendment protects an individual's right to own guns, Ms. Kagan cited the court’s analogy to the First Amendment, writing that it provided “strong although not unlimited protection.”

Abortion

During her confirmation for solicitor general, Ms. Kagan said she would respect laws and precedent regarding abortion rights.

Financing for Faith-Based Groups

During her confirmation hearings, Ms. Kagan denounced a memo she wrote while serving as a clerk for Justice Thurgood Marshall in 1989. That memo suggested that faith-based groups should not receive money for certain activities. Pregnancy care centers, she thought at the time, would not be able to counsel pregnant teenagers without injecting their religious beliefs. At her hearing, she said presuming a religious organization would use money in an impermissible manner was incorrect.

Same-Sex Marriage

As part of her confirmation for Solicitor General, Ms. Kagan was asked whether she would defend the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act, which said that states need not recognize same-sex marriages performed in other states. Ms. Kagan’s said, as solicitor general, she would defend any acts “if there is any reasonable basis to do so.” She noted this was “a low bar for a statute to climb over.”

Source: The New York Times, May 10, 2010

Elena Kagan picked to replace Justice Stevens

Kagan is the former dean of Harvard Law School, worked in the Clinton administration and was a colleague of Obama's at the University of Chicago law school. He chose her to be the government's top appellate lawyer and representative at the Supreme Court, the first woman to hold the job. Republicans complained during her confirmation for that job about her lack of courtroom experience — her first argument at the Supreme Court last September was her first in any court—and that she refused to answer questions on specific constitutional questions and cases. Conservative legal activists denounced her decision to forbid military recruiters on the law school campus because the ban on military service by gays violated the university's antidiscrimination policies. She was confirmed on a 61-31 vote. Read more>>>

Source: The Washington Post, May 10, 2010

Statements of Elena Kagan on the Death Penalty

“I am fully prepared to argue, consistent with Supreme Court precedents, that the death penalty is constitutional.”

"I can say that nothing about my personal views regarding the death penalty (relating either to policy or law) would make it difficult for me to carry out the Solicitor General’s responsibilities in this area." Elena Kagan, SOLICITOR GENERAL CONFIRMATION HEARING, 2009.

Read more here.

Source: Texas Moratorium Network, May 10, 2010

Former foetus fights for foetuses against former foetus killer

Pro life activist and former foetus Andy Moore has recently come out the other end of a scrap with the Abortion Law Reform Association of New Zealand. It is headed by Margaret Sparrow, herself a former foetus killer. Moore obtained the domain www.alranz.org.nz. Sparrow's site is www.alranz.org and so she objected to Moore's site, through her lawyer. In addition she purchased similar domain names, and spent more than $2000 to have an independent expert hired by the Domain Name Commission to decide on the case.This commission is appointed by Internet NZ to manage and administer the .nz domain space on its behalf.

Moore walked away from the dispute, and although he will no longer have the site due to the decision of the Domain Name Commission, he now has ExposingALRANZ.org.nz.

Which, as you can see here has exactly the same content as the offending site, claiming to expose the ALRANZ, which, I guess, was the whole point of the initial exercise.But if you click through the link on Moore's site that says "ALRANZ supports late-term abortions for disabled babies" you get this page which is an Abortion Law Reform Association of New Zealand Newsletter that mentions "foetal abnormalities".

update And a little bird told me (no it wasn't a sparrow, neither was it Moore) that Sparrow is using the letters of the editor columns to attack pro-lifers, claiming that prolifers have abused her. She claimed that Andy Moore repeated comments of another blogger that "Margaret Sparrow should be hung, drawn, and quartered for what she has done.” Although that statement did appear on Moore's blog, it was a comment by someone - probably not a blogger- who had an abortion, and who added the comment herself.

Lech Kaczynski stood alone in opposing plans to hold a “European day against the death penalty"; said "homosexuality would destroy the human race"

Kaczynski’s conservative views and forthright comments made waves in other spheres too, and he occasionally clashed with E.U. partners over what some Poles saw as attempts to foist liberal “European values” on the predominantly Roman Catholic country.

In 2007 Poland angered its European partners when it stood alone in opposing plans to hold a symbolic “European day against the death penalty,” denying the 27-member union the consensus it needed to go ahead with the event.

Warsaw argued that Europe should instead mark a “right to life” day, with abortion and euthanasia on the agenda along with capital punishment.

When Poland had earlier gone through the E.U. accession process it ratified a protocol to the European Charter on Human Rights declaring that “the death penalty shall be abolished,” but Lech Kaczynski (pictured) argued that giving up the death penalty would give the criminal relative advantage over the victim. He predicted that the E.U., in time, would come to realize that capital punishment was justified in the case of murder.

Even before he became president, Kaczynski was upsetting liberal interests.

"Normality Parade"

As mayor of Warsaw in 2005, he refused to issue a permit for a homosexual rights parade, but when a pro-family conservative group applied for a permit for a “normality parade,” he gave the green light.

The stance drew strong protests from the International Lesbian and Gay Association and other advocacy groups, and later brought a rebuke from the European Court of Human Rights, which said the decision to ban the first event discriminated against sexual minorities and violated the right to assembly.

Lech Kaczynski and his twin brother Jarosław Kaczyński are major figures in right wing, homophobic Polish politics. Jaroslaw was until recently the prime minister of Poland. Lech had previously been the Mayor of Warsaw and reached international notoriety because of repeatedly banning gay pride marches from taking place in the city.

Kaczynski was accused of homophobia when in 2007 as President he was challenged over this decision, and said: "If that kind of approach to sexual life were to be promoted on a grand scale, the human race would disappear."

Whilst on a visit to Britain, The President of Poland, Lech Kaczyński has spoken out against "gay culture," warning that it may cause the death of heterosexuality within Europe.

Quizzed on his stance on gay rights by Pink News reporter Kirsty Wark, Mr Kaczyński said: "I haven't changed my position at all." Adding: "There always have been and always will be homosexuals in Poland, they forge careers for themselves, they are active in society."

Controversially, he went on to say: "That's one thing, but as for what's called 'gay culture', it can never be seen as an alternative to heterosexual culture.

"If a 'gay culture' were to be an accepted alternative it could mean that especially here in Europe, our heterosexual culture would disappear."

When he was Mayor of Warsaw, he, refused to issue a permit "for a Gay Pride parade. A short while later he issued a permit for a normality parade," which was denounced by the International Lesbian and Gay Association as a "demonstration whose main objective was an incitement to hate and intolerance toward LGBT people."

Sources: CNSNews.com, PinkNews, November 12, 2010

U.S. Supreme Court's Justice John Paul Stevens says he will retire during Obama presidency

Justice John Paul Stevens (pictured), the leader of the U.S. Supreme Court's liberal wing, told the New Yorker in an interview that he will decide in early April whether he will retire at the end of the court's current term.

Stevens, the court's oldest justice at 89, told the magazine he has his "options open." Although he has hired only one law clerk for the nine-month term that will start in October, Stevens said three former clerks had agreed to work for him again should he decide to stay on the court for another term.

He said he will certainly step down before President Barack Obama's term expires in January 2013. Stevens told the New Yorker's Jeffrey Toobin that he has "great admiration" for the president.

"You can say I will retire within the next 3 years," Stevens said. "I'm sure of that."

Interviewed on March 8, Stevens said he would make up his mind in about a month.

The 9-member court's current term is scheduled to end in late June. Justices typically announce their retirement near the end of a term so that a successor can be seated by October.

Stevens was appointed to the court in 1975 by President Gerald Ford. He supports gay and abortion rights and limits on government support for religion. He is the only justice to say the death penalty was unconstitutional.

He has shown few signs of slowing down, playing tennis regularly and writing a 90-page dissent when the court in January struck down restrictions on corporate campaign spending.

Source: Bloomberg News, March 16, 2010

If you are on a visitors permit, pregnant, and want a student visa, have an abortion first

Last week a heavily pregnant woman graduated from university. I witnessed her graduation. She must have got pregnant while studying.

If she was pregnant now, as is this Korean woman, intended to give birth and was studying on a visitors permit she would be refused a student visa as, according to the Minister, the express purpose of a student permit is to enable study. Also, for such a student to give birth would put a strain on services.

Is that the reason we have that policy? I.Don't.Think.So. So why doesn't the Minster tell us what the real reason is - ie: we don't want all and sundry coming in for a holiday and have kids who become citizens the instant their parents do,and collect family support as soon as they become residents, instead of all this tosh about students and overloaded services.

Because the implication the Minister gives is that pregnant students who are immigrants can't study very well and are therefore not entitled to an education unless they have arranged an abortion to minimise the time they are pregnant, yet pregnant refugees and residents can get student allowances and an education.

Isn't that a little discriminatory? Why can't the Minister just be honest, rather than discriminatory.

George Tiller: US abortionist's killer may have links to anti-abortion group

It was not the intention to do two abortion related posts back to back but late term abortionist George Tiller was shot and killed while ushering at his church in the weekend. He was America's most well-known abortionist.

The suspect, Scott Roeder, 51, may have links to Operation Rescue, a conservative US group opposed to abortion. In fact Tiller has been shot before, outside his abortion clinic by Shelley Shannon, who was later jailed. Roeder visited her in prison. You can read more about that here.

The Operation Rescue website is down at the moment , but here's the cache which has this entry:

Scott Roeder Says:
May 19th, 2007 at 4:34 pm

Bleass everyone for attending and praying in May to bring justice to Tiller and the closing of his death camp.
Sometime soon, would it be feasible to organize as many people as possible to attend Tillers church (inside, not just outside) to have much more of a presence and possibly ask questions of the Pastor, Deacons, Elders and members while there? Doesn’t seem like it would hurt anything but bring more attention to Tiller.

Being pro-life and killing someone to prove your point is hardly the way to go, is it.

Entire abortion committee resigns

The Abortion Supervisory Committee has advised that the Abortion Standards Committee has resigned.

The Standards Committee consisted of experts in the fields of obstetrics and gynaecology, women’s health, primary care, nursing and counselling, and was set up under section 15 of the Contraception, Sterilisation, and Abortion Act 1977 to develop standards for the provision of abortion services. The committee was appointed by the Abortion Supervisory Committee, but its membership was never made public. It could well have been some of these people.

Justice Miller in the High Court in Wellington on 9 June
stated that “there is reason to doubt the lawfulness of many abortions authorised by certifying consultants, we have abortion on request.”

Justice Miller confirmed that the Committee does in fact have the power to hold certifying consultants accountable for the lawfulness of abortions they authorise and to question them why they are using mental health grounds to authorise 98 percent of abortions.

In light of the court case, the Standards Committee would have a difficult job developing standards within the law without changing current practices, given that most abortions are done unlawfully. Given that this committee was directed by the Abortion Supervisory Committee, one wondered why it existed in the first place.

Meanwhile Justice Miller will again be hearing the ongoing case between Right To Life and the Abortion Supervisory Committee on 20 July. Right to Life wants to have Justice Miller issue clear declarations to the Abortion Supervisory Committee setting out its statutory powers and duties.

In the past financial year fees amounting to $5,048,096 – excluding GST – were paid to people to kill unborn children.

Some baby killers get paid more than Government Ministers

Some people who work in abortion clinics terminating the lives of the unborn earn more than Government ministers and are "creaming" it. The more abortions they conduct, the more they make.The top three killers of the unborn are each making well over $200,000 a year conducting unlawful abortions, probably making it the biggest state-sanctioned unlawful occupation in this country. Thats because most abortions are conducted unlawfully.

No wonder women and girls are not discouraged from having an abortion.

Abortion can cause harm to mental health

One of the main cited reasons that more than 18,000 women have abortions each year in New Zealand is that to give birth would harm the woman's mental health.

But abortion increases the risk of mental health problems by 30 percent according to a recent Otago University study published in the December issue of the British Journal of Psychiatry. Does this mean that both giving birth and an abortion is harmful to the woman's mental health? Or is it just that giving birth is likely to increases the risk and having an abortion is even more likely to harm the woman's mental health. If so, an abortion is not really the best option, is it?

Perhaps they should compare women who are married and solo women on a benefit or at school and see who is more likely to have mental problems.

Not surprisingly, the study supports international research on the subject which also revealed a link between abortion and mental health. Like this one from the Royal College of Psychiatrists in the UK more than 18 months ago that shows that continuing with an unwanted pregnancy does not outweigh the risks of living with the possible regrets of having an abortion. Their statement is here[PDF].

The nutters from the Abortion Law Reform Association of New Zealand, who would like the law reformed to fit in with current practice - try that with child abuse - have called for more research, that subscribes to their views. This is their view:

Whether or not a woman is more likely to suffer mental health problems as a consequence of having an abortion should not be the determining factor in making a decision about abortion.

The decision is not about abortion. The law states the decision is about whether to give birth or not and whether a woman is more likely to have problems, including mental problems, in giving birth. Abortion is the intended consequence of a decision not to give birth. If a woman was to have greater mental problems after an abortion than she would were she to give birth is exactly the test that should be applied for every abortion in this country.

But isn't. But that's the law. And the group that is paid to supervise this law is advocating that the law be broken for every single abortion in this country. That is why this group should be scrapped.

Abortion Supervisory Committee to appeal abortion decision

The Abortion Supervisory Committee is to appeal the Judicial Review of the Abortion Supervisory Committee that found that the abortion laws were used more liberally than Parliament intended and that there was reason to doubt the lawfulness of many abortions.

Right to Life is to cross appeal and present a case for the legal recognition of the status of the unborn child as a human being and a person endowed by its Creator with human rights.

My view is that both should be thrown out -and the latter is worded in such a way that it can't be upheld. How can an unborn child be a human - even if it is a living being before birth?

Abortion: who is braver, the mother or the aborter?

The latest abortion figures were released today . More are having abortions, and a quarter of them are teens. Abortion is by far the most common medical surgical procedure our young women receive.

There are two things just about everybody agrees on. There's too many abortions and abortion laws are an ass.

Where people disagree is whether, in a case where a baby is unwanted, it is more tragic to have an abortion or to give birth. Those who support a woman's right to have an abortion think both are tragic, those who are pro life think abortion is tragic and an unplanned pregnancy is unfortunate.

Here's a person who had an abortion on mental health grounds, and people say she is brave for speaking out on it. I agree. Yet she says she is pro choice. as well as wanting to see abortion on demand.

The Herald has a piece on a woman who had an illegal abortion this month that was certified as legal. I know this because of her reason for abortion was not on mental health grounds. She had no mental health issues, in fact she was able to write quite a coherent piece for the newspaper a short time after. Her reason for having an abortion:

I don’t believe we could provide for a baby financially or emotionally, let alone give it the stable, loving and positive environment every child deserves to have.
I feel selfish, guilty and sad, but I cannot cope with the prospect of a baby in my life when I’m so young, and so totally unprepared.

Mental health had nothing to do with it. In reality, both these women had abortions because, in their view, the "tragedy" of having an abortion was not as tragic as the tragedy of having a baby. In other words, living with the consequences of abortion is preferable to them than living with the consequences of bearing a child. It doesn't help when many abortion counsellors are telling women that a routine pregnancy carries more risk than an abortion does, which, of course, is utter crap.

While not one to minimise the tragedy of abortion, why is it "brave" to talk about an abortion, but not so 'brave" to talk about an unwanted baby you gave birth to instead of aborting? Why are those who have had an abortion happy to criticise those who haven't had an abortion for commenting on abortion, when these same childless people are quite happy to comment on having a child?.

Just like an atheist needs more proof that God doesn't exist than does a person who believes God does exist, a pregnant woman who doesn't want a baby is braver if she has the baby than if she has an abortion and publically discusses it later on.