The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals says Gerardo Flores will spend his life in prison for stomping on his pregnant 16-year-old girlfriend’s belly until she miscarried twins. The court upheld the state’s fetal murder law on Feb. 13.

Flores appealed his conviction because his girlfriend, Erica Basoria, claimed that she begged Flores, now 21, to stomp on her stomach to induce a miscarriage. According to The Austin-American Statesman, Flores argued that the law was unconstitutional because it exempted women seeking an abortion, producing an “absurd and unfair” result: “Even though both actively sought to terminate the pregnancy, Flores could be prosecuted, but his co-conspirator, Basoria, could not.”

Trial prosecutors disregarded Basoria’s testimony, including claims that she beat herself in the stomach for weeks. Due to numerous cuts and bruises on her arms and face after she miscarried, they assumed that as an abuse victim Basoria testified to protect her boyfriend.

The Statesman said the Court of Criminal Appeals agreed: “Only if the acts were consensual could (Flores) argue that the statute treated him and Ms. Basoria unequally.”

Jay Brandon, Flores’ appellate lawyer, believes the court ducked the constitutionality issue. Although the court’s opinion acknowledged that Basoria’s repeated beatings to her stomach might have caused the miscarriage, they based the ruling solely on Flores stomping on her stomach. Flores is considering an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Dr. Joe Pojman, executive director of the Texas Alliance for Life, told WoW that he does not doubt the law’s constitutionality because numerous states have adopted and upheld similar fetal murder laws. Texas upheld the state’s law in November, ruling that a fetus’ death is murder whether or not it could have survived outside the womb.

“This sends a very strong message that anyone who abuses or murders a pregnant woman can be charged with crimes against both the mother and unborn child,” Pojman said.

Women who increase their alcohol consumption during the first year of college boost their risk of falling victim to sexual abuse, according to a recent report. But is it right just to blame their drinking?

The University of Buffalo report found that 22 % of almost 900 women surveyed experienced sexual assaults during their freshman year. Of the 22 %, 13 % suffered severe physical victimization while 38 % suffered severe sexual victimization.

“People blame the alcohol instead of the man who targeted her in the first place,” Dr. Walter DeKeseredy, chair of the American Society of Criminology’s Division on Critical Criminology, told WoW. “The men most likely to abuse college-aged women belong to certain peer groups that motivate members to target women who are drinking because it is easier to work a ‘yes’ out of them.

Because 80 to 90 percent of sexual attack victims know their assailants, assaulted women often don’t report the attacks, according to a 2005 National Institute of Justice report. Students only report five percent of sexual assaults to campus police departments. A woman who reports her assault may face doubt that an actual attack occurred, DeKeseredy said: “It is particularly common on college campuses to ask if a woman was really assaulted because she was drinking.”

“If someone breaks into your car, no one asks why you parked your car there,” DeKeseredy said. “But if a woman is assaulted, we ask what she was wearing and why she was drinking. We wage wars on drugs and crime in this country, but no one screams in outrage at violence against women.”

If Planned Parenthood’s political schemes go according to plan, a pro-abortion candidate will rally to presidential victory in November 2008. Working through Planned Parenthood Action Fund, the world’s largest provider of abortions hopes to bring one million voters to the polls this fall.

Aside from securing a pro-abortion president and one million new abortion activists, the “One Million Strong Campaign” aspires to win key Senate, Congressional and legislative seats on Election Day 2008, creating ideal conditions for the passage of pro-abortion legislation in the future.

In a Jan. 22 press release, Cecile Richards, president of the Planned Parenthood Action Fund, explained that the organization’s venture into the political arena will ensure that women in America continue to receive valuable information and health services.

“Under President Bush, women have seen access to basic health care like birth control become increasingly unaffordable and inaccessible. . . . And they’ve now seen the White House and the state governments pour more than $1.5 billion into ineffective and dangerous abstinence-until-marriage programs that do nothing to prevent unintended pregnancies,” Richards said in the press release.

Jim Sedlak, vice president of American Life League, believes the organization’s campaign may falter. “Planned Parenthood has a bad name around the nation,” Sedlak told WoW. “They raise opposition among both pro-abortion and pro-life supporters and, in our opinion, their support of candidates will not be positive.”

Because of its tax-exempt status, Planned Parenthood is prohibited from endorsing a candidate or being involved in political action. Sedlak said that Planned Parenthood often skirts legality during its political ventures rather than leaving campaign work solely to its Action Fund.

“If Planned Parenthood starts putting up signs in clinics, we will file complaints with the IRS to make sure their tax-exempt status is removed,” Sedlak said. “If I was a candidate and I was getting an endorsement from Planned Parenthood, I would be worried.”

The Institute for Creation Research (ICR) is preparing to defend its Master of Science Education degree program in Texas, a state long recognized for its power to influence national education trends.

Since moving its headquarters to Dallas from El Cajon, Calif., where the ICR has issued graduate degrees since 1981, the institute has faced opposition to its application for a certificate to grant degrees in Texas.

In April, the ICR must provide the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board (THECB) with additional documentation regarding the validity of its Biblically-based educational programs. The institute believes it will satisfy the commission’s standards. “We are encouraged and confident that our program meets the criteria for science education in the state,” ICR Director of Communications Lawrence E. Ford told WoW. “We teach science in a comprehensive manner, fully immersing our students in the theory of evolution with the added benefit of demonstrating how the evidence of science fits within our belief in a personal Creator-God.”

According to a Dec. 14 ICR press release, the THECB was preparing to approve ICR’s application before national media coverage began. Faculty members hold degrees from “well-regarded” universities, and the curriculum includes secular scientific literature like “Nature” and “Science” magazines.

Ford said the ICR was not surprised by the THECB’s request for additional documentation, as their application was under review when Chris Comer, the former Texas Education Agency’s director of science curriculum, resigned after allegations that she was biased towards teaching intelligent design.

Ford remains optimistic: “For us, it is simply a process. We have and will continue to comply with the normal requests by the THECB and we look forward to the commission’s meeting in April.”