Meet Cadance

Adoption News- NC Establishes "Confidential Intermediary" System

A new law in North Carolina (SL2007-262) will permit licensed adoption agencies and county departments of social services to act as "confidential intermediaries" - that is, they will be allowed to provide non-identifying family health information to adopted adults 21 years or older (or their descendents) and to birthparents; if written consent of all parties is provided, they will also be allowed to facilitate contact or provide identifying information. Previously, such information could only be provided if a court order was obtained. The law was signed by Governor Mike Easley on July 23 and does not provide any state funding; agencies will establish fees for services. The law goes into effect on Jan. 1, 2008. To read the law, go to: http://www.ncleg.net/Sessions/2007/Bills/House/PDF/H445v4.pdf

Black Pro-Life Advocates- January Conference

LifeNews.com 1/1/08

Black Pro-Life Advocates Will Address Abortion Issues in January Conference

Berkeley, CA (LifeNews.com) --

Some of the top leaders in the African-American pro-life community will gather next month for a leadership conference in California. They plan to discuss future efforts to address issues relating to lowering the enormously high black abortion rate and getting more blacks involved in stopping abortion. Sponsored by the Issues4Life Foundation, Dr. Alveda King and Dr. Clenard Childress will be the keynote speakers at the Berkeley, California event. The Progressive Missionary Baptist Church, where Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., twice spoke to and rallied the African-American leadership during the civil rights movement, is the site of the January 18 "Leadership for Life" conference. During the civil rights era, Alveda's family home was bombed in Birmingham, Alabama. In the heat of the struggle, "Daddy's house was bombed, then in Louisville, Kentucky his church office was bombed. I was also jailed during the open housing movement," Dr. King recalls. Alveda has continued her long-term work as a civil rights activist, speaking out on issues that face society today -- including abortion.

Spear's Pregnancy Provides Life Lesson

Spears' Pregnancy Provides Life Lesson
By SARA RIMER,
The New York Times

CONCORD Mass. (Dec. 21) -- Talk about teachable moments. In schools and shopping malls and around the dining room table, the subject of teenage pregnancy and sex was suddenly and uncomfortably in the air as mothers and daughters and fathers, too, talked about — or tried not to talk about — the pregnancy of 16-year-old Jamie Lynn Spears, who plays the perfect, well-liked and, it is understood, virginal teenage girl on “Zoey 101” on Nickelodeon.

High school girls were wondering aloud on Thursday why no one was talking about contraception. Parents across the country, on the other hand, commiserated over the Internet about how, thanks to Ms. Spears, they were facing a conversation with their 8-, 9-, and 10-year-olds about sex. “Nowadays, nothing’s safe, not even cartoons,” said Diana Madruga, who has an 11-year-old daughter. Sharon Carruthers said she had used the news as an opportunity to talk about the dangers of teenage pregnancy with her 10-year-old daughter, Yasmine. “I want my daughter’s mind in the real world. But this is not what my daughter is going to do in her life. She knows better. She knows right and wrong.” Yasmine shook her head. “I never expected her, of all people, to do this,” she said, referring to the girl who in her mind is both Zoey and Jamie, the actress who plays her. “She’s supposed to be the good one in the family.”

Perhaps the news of Ms. Spears’s pregnancy should not have been so surprising in what has seemed to be the year of the unwed mother in popular culture. First there was the movie “Knocked Up,” in which a 24-year-old entertainment journalist accidentally gets pregnant in a drunken evening. Now there’s “Juno,” about a 16-year-old who confronts an unplanned pregnancy and decides to have the baby. But Nickelodeon has won wide acclaim as a sanctuary from the hypersexualized youth culture. That is what burned up Matt Younginer of Columbia, S.C., who was shopping with his 9-year-old daughter, Ansley, in Manhattan.“She loves ‘Zoey 101,’ ” Mr. Younginer said. “It’s usually Britney Spears who would do that stuff, not Jamie Lynn. She was supposed to be one of the good, clean actresses for girls to follow after. I think it just sends an awful message for the young girls.”

Dan Martinsen, a spokesman for Nickelodeon, said Thursday that “Zoey 101” was one of its most popular shows among viewers 9 to 14. “Nothing about the content, characters or the storytelling on our air has changed at all,” Mr. Martinsen said. He said that Nickelodeon was discussing a special on the issue with Linda Ellerbee, the television journalist who is the host of “Nick News.” “Whenever an issue becomes so prevalent that it’s inescapable,” Mr. Martinsen said, “her show is where we turn to help kids navigate and interpret and understand it.”

Sharon Otterman contributed reporting from New York.
Copyright © 2007 The New York Times Company
2007-12-21 09:27:15

Abortion Drastically Increases Pregnancy Risks

Abortion Drastically Increases Risk of Pre-Term and Low-Weight Births

Richmond, VA (LifeNews.com)

Women who have one or more abortions face a drastically increased risk of giving birth to a pre-term or low birthweight baby in a subsequent pregnancy. That's the conclusion a team of scientists from Virginia Commonwealth University drew in a new report published in the latest issue of the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.The researchers examined data on over 45,500 mothers giving birth in the United States and found that about 11 percent of all women had low birthweight infants and 14 percent had premature births. But women who reported at least one prior abortion were almost three times as likely to have a low birthweight baby as those who carried the pregnancy to term. This risk increased to five-fold in women who had two previous abortions and to nine-fold in women who had a history of three abortions. Similarly, women with one previous abortion were 70 percent more likely to have a pre-term birth. This risk increased to two-fold in women with a history of two abortions and three-fold in those with three or more abortions. Full story at LifeNews.com.