The father of Eluana Englaro, Beppino Englaro, won a ruling in November giving him the go-ahead to remove the feeding tube and stop hydration that keeps his daughter comfortable and alive. The ruling overturns a previous ruling from July in a case that has many similarities to the tragic Terri Schiavo case that ended with her death in 2005. In the Italian case, Eluana has been in a vegetative state for 17 years following a tragic car accident. For ten years Beppino has been in and out of various courts seeking approval for euthanizing his daughter.

In December Italy’s health minister, Maurizio Sacconi, stated that removing the feeding tubes from patients in a vegetative state was “illegal.” But now a regional Italian court ruled that the region of Lombardy will be required to provide a clinic and health workers where the feeding tube of Eluana can be removed and hydration stopped, thereby ending her life.

In Italy, direct euthanasia is forbidden and illegal, however patients do have the right to refuse any and all treatment. But this is the first time a region has been ordered by the courts to directly intervene, forcing them to provide a clinic and health workers to end a human being’s life.

Currently Eluana is being cared for by Misericordine nuns at a hospice in Lecco; they say they will gladly care for Eluana for as long as she naturally lives. They refused to comply with the November sentence to remove the tubes, thereby buying more time for Eluana.

From the Appleton Post Crescent comes a great Thanksgiving story about a local 84 year-old resident who had unknowingly run up a $3,000 water bill, after his pipes burst in freezing weather. As if that isn't bad enough, the gentleman was not home due to an extended bout of sickeness, and thousands of gallons of water spilled from his pipes without his knowledge. After he was billed by the city utility for the spilt water, he pled his case to city officials but the decision was made to not waive the bill.

After his story was told, residents throughout NE Wisconsin lined up donations to more than cover his bill. He plans on donating the rest to the Salvation Army, as it helped the soldiers out in WWII when he served.

It's nice to see folks pulling together to help out those less fortunate. Have a safe and happy Thanksgiving!

The pro-abortion lobby is launching a legal attack on Ireland’s ban on abortion through the European Court of Human Rights.

The Irish Family Planning Association — you can always tell by the name what the nature of the organization’s mission is: “family planning” is almost universally equated with abortion — has found three women who sought abortions outside Ireland, in Great Britain. The IFPA is bringing the cases of these three women known only as A, B, and C, directly to the European Convention on Human Rights, in order to overturn Ireland’s ban on abortion.

The crux of the IFPA’s case is erroneously based on the notion that because these women had to go outside their own country and enter Great Britain — please note that both are part of the United Kingdom — in order to have abortions, their constitutional rights to life and to privacy were violated. They hope to bolster their case by citing discrimination against these women and alleging that the women suffered inhuman and degrading treatment.

Here we have once again an attempt to pervert not only words and their meanings, but the intent of the constitution in Ireland. Sound familiar?

The Irish Constitution specifically recognizes the right to life of the unborn — determined by the will of the people through successive referendums —� a right to murder them simply does not exist. Even the European Convention contains nothing that would diminish the human rights protection built into the Irish Constitution. Furthermore, the domestic law is set at a higher standard than the Convention’s, so it takes precedence, at least up until now.

Article 3 of the Convention does protect against torture and inhumane treatment, but the three women were not tortured or inhumanely treated — only the pre-born babies were, so that charge will probably not hold up.

But Article 8 might present a problem, and the pro-abortion extremists know it. They have repeatedly used the right to privacy clause to win cases. In fact, it was the right to privacy that was used as a pretext for the Roe v. Wade decision. And this is probably why they elected to bring the case to the European Court on Human Rights even though it hasn’t been heard in a domestic court — a risk they were willing to take even though it may be thrown out because “adequate and effective legal remedies” were not sought or taken.

The IFPA has probably been spurred on by an abortion case out of Poland that was brought before the European Court of Human Rights in 2007. Tysiac v Poland involved a Polish woman’s third pregnancy in 2002, which she claimed, if carried to term, would damage her eyesight. Denied an abortion according to the laws of Poland, she gave birth to the baby, and was awarded $52,000 in damages for being denied that abortion, by the European Court of Human Rights. To this day no link has been established between birthing the child via C-section and the woman’s deteriorating eye condition.

Spanish Judge Javier Borrego Borrego, sadly the sole dissenter our of 47 justices hearing the case wrote, “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. Today the court has decided that a human being was born as a result of a violation of the European Convention on Human Rights. According to this reason, there is a Polish child, currently six years old, whose right to be born contradicts the Convention. I would never have thought that the Convention would go so far, and I find it frightening.”

Even though there is no consensus on when life begins among the EU’s members, the precedent now exists for the circumventing of individual countries’ laws and just like the U.S. Supreme Court’s Roe. v Wade ruling has ipso facto granted access to legal abortions regardless of those laws — and that’s pretty firm ground for the IFPA case to be standing on.

But let’s take a more in-depth look at the details of A, B, and C. v. Ireland.

A, B, and C, who are the center of this latest legal challenge, include a woman who claimed she ran a risk of an ectopic pregnancy — a serious life-threatening condition for mother and baby where the baby develops outside the womb usually in the Fallopian tubes. Another of the women received chemotherapy for cancer, while the third was unable to cope with older children who were taken away by the government and placed in alternative care. All three experienced medical complications after returning to England, a not unsurprising turn of events, as many, many women experience problems after abortions — a highly risky procedure that one should be alerted to before going forward with, and one that must be assumed by the recipient in a voluntary situation.

Note that the first woman ran a “risk” of an ectopic pregnancy; there was no confirmation that such a condition existed. And if there was, cases of ectopic pregnancy are treated by removal of the Fallopian tube or other tissue that is essential for the continuation of the baby’s life; the baby will die of course. But this is never categorized as an abortion — unintentional natural death and the deliberate murder of the pre-born are not the same thing.

The other two cases could certainly have been handled without ending the lives of the innocents. Chemotherapy during pregnancy can potentially cause birth defects, or miscarriage, but it all depends on the drugs used, and factors such as how often and how long the drugs were administered; there is no set outcome regarding the life or health of the baby. And unwanted babies can easily be adopted out; waiting lists are quite long for those wishing to adopt.

The bottom line is that the particulars of the three women’s cases don’t match or measure up to the charges brought by them against the government of Ireland.

The Irish state has chosen to contest the case. The court has allowed pro-life organizations to intervene as defendants in the lawsuit. The Family Research Council represented by the Alliance Defense fund has been joined by the society for the Protection of Unborn Children, a top British pro-life group, in filing a joint brief defending their position.

The IFPA is behind the women in the case. They are supported by a background cadre of pro-abortion groups whose agenda is to advance the procurement of abortions globally.

The New York-based Center for Reproductive Rights is one such pro-abort legal advocacy group that has developed plans that use various tactics to secure abortion rights for minors without parental involvement worldwide. They also list their strategy for litigation in order to “develop an international component” toward global reproductive rights on their website.

Of course, “reproductive rights” is nothing but a euphemism for abortion on demand. While there is no evidence to support that their lawyers are specifically involved with this particular case at this point in time, they are behind many such similar international cases and their expertise and strategies are used by pro-abortion agencies.

The case was launched three years ago, and the European court may hold a public hearing early in 2009, or it may decide to issue a binding decision without one. If it declares Ireland’s right to protect the unborn as lawful, similar cases will be hard-pressed to make it through the international court system. If the European court declares Ireland’s right to ban abortion as unlawful, the implications for the rest of the world will be frightening.

Hopefully the Court will respect its own charter that states that it “is intended to guarantee not rights that are theoretical or illusory but rights that are practical and effective.” If ever there is a right that can be categorized as theoretical or illusory, it is the right to murder the unborn.

The international community is already criticizing the Court for declining to hear similar cases that would address pertinent questions concerning abortion, saying this avoidance “helps perpetuate an inequitable patchwork of rules across the region,” so says the Wall Street Journal. It’s easy to see what is being promoted here, and that is the destruction of any and all barriers to regional government, besides universal abortion on demand.

Regional government brings with it its own judicial system that seemingly has no real authority but in actuality has a political-style enforcement. This allows the evolution and expansion of the regional government into an all-powerful and controlling supranational government, regardless of the sovereignty and rights of nations, and the culture, history, faith, and will of its peoples.

I'll bet you didn't see this on the national news. New York Times? Boston Globe? LA Times?

*sound of crickets*