Of all of these tips for looking, feeling—really, just being younger -the most important thing you should remember is this: don’t eat junk, don’t inhale junk, don’t drink junk, and don’t put junk on your skin.

Allow yourself to have beautiful, young looking, vibrant skin, a full head of hair with no or very little gray, perfect teeth without cavities, and clear eyes. You’ll feel sharp, alert, and young. This is how we at OLM enjoy life.

Eat Right

That means eating a lot of fresh raw fruits and vegetables. A wide variety of organic raw vegetables should be your staple. There is no vitamin tablet, green smoothie, or serum that results in better health than a diet primarily consisting of fresh raw produce. If you can find a local farm that practices crop rotation, buy as many of their vegetables as you can. You will notice a huge difference in your health almost immediately. Eating right is the best way to get phytonutrients, micro minerals, antioxidants, enzymes, and other nutrients we don’t even know about. If you want tips on incorporating more raw foods into your diet, check out our Raw Food Diet article in this issue.

Eliminate Toxins

Obviously, don’t smoke. And don’t eat refined sugar or drink alcohol, and do everything you can to reduce your body’s toxic
load. Looking younger and feeling younger is all about health, and health is primarily about your body’s nutrition to toxins ratio.

Take Care of Your Skin

This is where most ‘experts” tell you to moisturize and use sunscreen. Not us. Healthy skin comes from within. If you are eating well and exercising and you still have bad skin, you need to detox. Collagen and enzymes can help give you healthy skin as well (see below). We don’t recommend makeup, we don’t recommend moisturizers, and we don’t recommend washing your face on a regular basis. But if you do need to have a face regimen you can do no better than Terressentials (click to read our review). We are in love with this skin care company. They are absolutely phenomenal.

Conventional skin products, including those that entice you because they claim to include a few organic ingredients, make your skin feel tight, refreshed, clean, and invigorated. But they also toxify your skin as they strip important oils. A day later your skin feels worse than before. You use the product again and it feels a bit better. The addiction cycle begins, though many people don’t realize their skin was actually better off before they tried the product.

Take Care of You Hair

Losing your hair and/ or going gray certainly make you look older. The best way to slow this process is to be as healthy as possible. Gray hair is a sign of mineral deficiency (copper and possibly others). Hair loss is a sign of an overall toxic lifestyle. If your diet is unhealthy (and/or you smoke or use other drugs) your blood is too thick. This is what causes high blood pressure. Your heart beats harder to get your blood where it needs to go. It doesn’t get to do its job at the hair follicles.

Don’t use conventional shampoos and conditioners on your head. The best hair care products we have tried so far are from Morrocco Method (click to read our review).

Workout the Right Way

Don’t just lift heavy weights, or run, or do the same aerobics class every time you go to the gym. Mix it up. Practice developing real world fitness with lots of different exercises and routines. Recovery time is vital. Mixing up your routine and eating right can allow you to exercise every day and still allow your body to recover and not become over worked. A good exercise program simulates an active lifestyle and develops “real world” strength.

Our chief editor lifts weights, practices yoga and martial arts, does lots of body weight exercises, rides bicycles, and uses different cardio equipment at the gym. He also works out anywhere between 1 and 3 times a day 4 to 7 days a week. “I listen to my body, but I also push it hard,” says Michael. Some of his workouts consist of as many pushups and body weight squats as he can do as fast as he can do them. Other workouts consist of a 60 mile bike ride or a 90 minute routine at the gym.

Hot and Cold Hydro Therapy

Second to eating a healthy diet, hot-cold hydrotherapy is the best thing you can do to clean your blood and restore vitality. It can cure so many ailments. See our article in issue 3 and read why this is so important and how to do this regime.

Enzymes

The best way to get lots of enzymes in your diet is to follow the first
tip, eat fresh and raw. Also, eat pineapple and papaya to get lots of enzymes (both have to be fresh and raw or there will be no enzymes). You can also take a systemic enzyme such as Vitalzym which will help your body rid itself of foreign proteins. Keep digestive enzymes handy for when you aren’t eating so healthy.

For more on enzymes, checkout our enzyme articles in this issue.

Collagen

Dr. Tim O’Shea, one of our contributors, offers a collagen supplement at his website that he assures us is of the highest quality. We are told by some doctors that if you are taking a systemic enzyme such as Vitalzym you should alternate between the enzyme supplement and collagen on a weekly basis as the enzymes would consider the collagen a foreign protein and render the collagen useless. We’re not sure if this is true, but it seems plausible.

Calm Down

Don’t let little issues bring you down or get you riled up. Don’t even let big things upset you too much. If you have a bad temper, learn to let things roll off of you. If someone is trying to “get to you” then don’t let them win. If someone unintentionally upsets you, why be upset? Rage is very bad for us. Hate is very bad for us. Life is too short.

Relax

Learn to stop and smell the roses. Enjoy and appreciate life. Relax. Meditate. Contemplate. Even if this doesn’t help you live longer, what’s the point of living a long and healthy life if you don’t enjoy it?

Do What Makes You Happy

Again, life is too short.

One of the most commonly asked questions we receive at OLM is, “What one thing can I do to be healthier?” A diet of primarily raw fresh vegetables and fruits is the foundation for good health. If you are not as healthy as you would like to be, there is nothing more important. Even if you smoke, or don’t eat organic, and/or don’t exercise, adopting a raw food diet is still our first recommendation. We even recommend eating a raw food diet before we recommend supplements.

This takes people by surprise, especially since I own a supplement store. I have plenty of supplements on hand for acute health issues and first aid, but I only take Total Nutrition Formula, SF722, and systemic enzymes regularly.

There is a lot of controversy as to whether or not eating 100% raw is healthy. We do believe that a 100% raw food diet can be very healthy if done right with enough variety. If you are interested in eating 100% raw this article can help you get started. We also recommend you get to know Raw Chef Dan (see next article). But we recommend going at least 80% raw for practical reasons. And, if you cut out junk food completely (this includes “organic” junk food) and make sure that two of your three daily meals as well as any and all snacks are raw fresh fruits and vegetables (1:4 ratio), you will achieve a significantly higher level of health. For many people, eating this way rids the body of disease and ailments. For individuals who have led a toxic lifestyle for too long, more help is needed to restore the body to health.

People often point to the fact that there is not enough variety in a raw food diet to maintain good health. If a raw food diet to you means carrot sticks, celery and apples, then you’re right. My daily routine consists of a salad for breakfast and sometimes for lunch and/or dinner. On the days I do not have two salads, I have a smoothie. How do I get variety if I eat almost the same thing every day? Each of my salads contains at least 10 different kinds of vegetables. I get more nutrition in one salad than most people get in a whole week, maybe a month. My smoothies are nothing to scoff at, either. One salad and/or smoothie and I know I am set for the day. I must admit I do still love to eat, so I actually eat too much. Though I also work out pretty heavily on a regular basis, I imagine I could do better with about half the calories I consume.

My Daily Salad

Want to know how to make an incredible salad? Here are the main ingredients for my salad:

• Spinach
• Arugula
• Collard Greens
• Spring mix
• Dandelion
• Leeks
• Red onions
• Red cabbage
• Red bell pepper
• Rainbow chard
• Beet greens
• Grated beet root
• Graded carrots
• Graded zucchini
• Cucumbers
• Cilantro
• Pomegranate (seed)
• Raisins
• Sesame seeds
• Ground papaya seeds
• Avocado

I also throw in chick peas, a three bean salad combination, and/or some raw sheep cheese I get at my local farmers’ market. I always put two to three soft boiled eggs in my salad. Obviously I am not a vegan, but if you are, this salad is good enough without the cheese and eggs. The salad is also great with chicken or steak.

Update: Now I don’t do the cheese. I don’t do meat either. I still eat eggs, but am very considerate of where and how they are sourced. The avocado makes it so I don’t miss the cheese. But, for those who are not vegan, and concerned about getting enough calories, add what you want. Just please make sure all animal products were as humanely treated and healthy as possible.

There are tons of recipes for raw and healthy salad dressings. I love my own creation.

My Balsamic Salad Dressing Recipe

To make my salad dressing, I start with equal parts oil and vinegar (keep in mind that both olive oil and balsamic vinegar have a lot of imitators).

• 3/4 cup of flax seed oil
• 1/4 cup of coconut oil
• 1/2 cup of balsamic vinegar
• 1/2 cup of apple cider vinegar
• 6 tablespoons turmeric
• 1 table spoon basil
• Two teaspoons unrefined sea salt
• Two teaspoons fresh ground pepper
• Two tablespoons Dijon mustard

Do it all to taste if you want, but stay heavy on the turmeric; it’s very good for you, and it’s the most important ingredient to this recipe.

This salad dressing will have even the pickiest kids eating vegetables. It’s very versatile. Use it as a dip, a marinade, or whatever. It’s amazing.

Obviously this is not a 100% raw salad. But it’s mostly raw and very healthy. If you want to adopt a 100% raw food diet then find a great raw salad dressing and skip the peas, beans, eggs, and cheese. It’ll be healthier that way too.

Super Antioxidant Smoothie

I don’t have a smoothie every day. For health, nothing beats a great salad. But I do crave smoothies a few times a week.

• 1 cup apple juice
• 1 cup fresh berries
• ½ pomegranate (seeds)
• 1 raw egg (organic only!)
• ½ banana
• 1 large kale leaf
• 2 tablespoons nutrition powder (see below)
• 1 tablespoon Udo’s Oil with DHA

Nutrition Powder

Total Nutrition Formula, is the best nutritional support available. You can also make your own.  I don’t do smoothies everyday (salads are better), but when ever I do, I add my nutrition powder.

Conclusion

It takes time to adapt to a healthy lifestyle. I don’t spend much on groceries, but that’s because I’ve learned where and how to shop for the best deals. Local organic farmers’ markets are the best places to get the healthiest produce for a fraction of the cost you would spend at a conventional grocery store. It used to take me a lot of time to make smoothies and salads but I’ve learned to make them very quickly. I still spend more time than most preparing food, but health is my priority, my hobby, my most important investment. I’ll take the time.

There is no doubt that lentils are one of the most versatile of all the legume family. Indeed it is not only their culinary usefulness that they are well known for.

In Egyptian times they were used as bubble packing for ancient artefacts and sculptures for shipping. The word lens is the Latin for lentil and derives its name from the shape of these little nutrition packed wonders.

The cultivation of lentils as a food goes back to well before the Egyptians, to Neolithic times (roughly 10.000 years ago). It was during this time that farming came about and lentils were one of the earliest crops to be cultivated, originating in the Middle East. It is no surprise then that there are so many references to the lentil in the Bible. The French dish Esau potage is a lentil broth named after Esau. In the Old Testament, Jacob bought the birthright from Esau with a dish of stewed lentils. Then there is the arguable notion that Lent was named after the lentil as the majority of people were too poor to be able to afford fish at this religious time and therefore had to rely on lentils for sustenance.

But it is for their culinary uniqueness that we are looking to this humble legume. There are few foods that are so versatile. They can be made into anything from pates, dressings, soups, dhals, fritters and salads.

They are packed full of beneficial nutrients as well as being a very rich source of soluble fibre, and being the third richest vegetable source of protein there is.

A study of dietry patterns and risk of heart disease following 16,000 middle aged men in the U.S., Finland, Netherlands, Italy, former Yugoslavia, Greece and Japan over a period of 25 years, found that after analysing the data, diets with a high legume content were associated with a huge 82% reduction in risk of heart disease!

Another study published in the ‘Archives of Internal Medicine’ confirms that a diet high in soluble fibre, such as lentils, helps prevent heart disease. Out of 10,000 adults, those eating the most fibre (21 grams a
day or more) had a 12% reduction in coronary heart disease and 11% less cardiovascular disease. Those that ate the most water soluble fibre fared even better.

The fact that lentils are excellent for heart health is not only in the fibre content, but also the significant amounts of folate (folic acid) and magnesium they supply. Folate has long been associated with heart health as it helps to lower levels of homocysteine. This is an amino acid that damages artery walls and is a serious risk factor for heart disease. When folate is present it converts homocysteine into cysteine or methionine, both of which are benign. Folate is also a crucial nutrient for pregnant women. Up to 70% of birth defects such as, spina bifida and  neural tube defects have been shown to be due to a lack of folate in the diet. Most doctors advise women of child bearing age to increase their intake of folate as it is not just during pregnancy but also prior to conceiving that there is a great need for folate.

The magnesium content in lentils adds another heart helping dimension. Magnesium is known to help the arteries and veins ‘relax’ which lessens resistance and improves the flow of blood, oxygen and nutrients throughout the body. Studies have shown that not only are low levels of magnesium associated with heart disease, but that after a heart attack low levels promote free radical injury to the heart.

It doesn’t stop there either. Lentils are an important source of B vitamins, particularly B-3. They are also high in iron, zinc and calcium, which is why they are so popular as a substitute for red meat. The iron is better absorbed by the body when eaten with vitamin C rich foods such as dark green vegetables. One of my favourite dishes is Indian spiced lentils, or dhal, with spinach stirred in at the last minute. A bowl of that with a hot naan bread makes a substantial and very healthy lunch for about a $1.00 a portion! Frugal food needn’t be bland and boring. It is high in protein too, being as good a source as some cheaper cuts of meat. Whilst they are deficient in only two amino acids, this is not the case once they have sprouted. When sprouted they contain sufficient amounts of all amino acids. In addition to this, their nutritional value goes up in sprouted form too.

Apart from the fact that they get a bad rap as being boring ‘hippy’ food, there is not a lot that you can say bad about the humble lentil.

Packed with goodness, nutrition and incredibly versatile as you will see in the following recipes. As with the acorn and mighty oak parable, these little guys should not be underestimated……

Lentil Varieties

There are numerous varieties of lentils but some of the most common are:

RED SPLIT (CHIEF)

These are perhaps the most common of all. They are good for soups and purees as they tend to puree when cooked and don’t hold their shape. A good use for them is to thicken stews or casseroles. Instead of reaching for the gravy granules or artificial thickener, try adding a good handful towards the end of cooking when making your next casserole. You’ll find it absorbs the excess liquid and provides a good protein boost to your meal.

BROWN LENTIL

Again these break down and become mushy if over cooked, but if cooked carefully they will retain their shape. They are good added to sauces or broths.

YELLOW LENTILS

These are actually split mung beans and are very similar to red lentils except they are a bit firmer.

BELUGA LENTILS

These are an incredibly attractive lentil, so called because when they are cooked they glisten like caviar. They retain their shape and remain firm when cooked. Excellent as an accompaniment to meals and also in sauces or dressings.

PUY LENTILS (FRENCH GREEN)

These to my mind are the king of lentils. Small and robust, they too keep their shape after cooking and are adaptable to a whole host of uses from pates to stuffing’s for vegetables to sauces and dressings. Green and brown lentils are also higher in nutrients than their red and yellow cousins.

BKACK LENTILS (URAD DHAL)

Again these are actually a bean and if they are shelled and split they become white lentils. These are widely used in Indian cooking. It is no surprise that India is the biggest producer of lentils in the world. But it may come as a shock to know that Canada is the second highest producer!

A few years ago there was an outbreak of salmonella from tainted almonds. This outbreak led to new laws causing the pasteurization of almonds. OLM talked to Seth Leaf at Living Nutz about pasteurization. Seth, what can you tell us about the reason why almonds are now pasteurized? The FDA in conjunction with the Almond Board of California and the USDA passed a mandate declaring that all almonds in the United States must be pasteurized.  During the comment period, when citizens are invited to give their input before a decision is reached and a law is passed, there were only 18 responses, and those were just from people on the Almond Board. No one in the public knew about it. In September the new law was passed. During the salmonella outbreak, Trader Joe’s and some of the more commercially based health food stores had to pull a lot of product off their shelves. But the contamination was in the conventional almonds, not the organic almonds. There was a whole lot of misinformation given out. How can almonds get salmonella? Almonds cannot get salmonella naturally. The way these almonds became tainted with salmonella was due to processing—to what’s called stockpiling.  That’s when these giant commercial farmers who are growing tons of different kinds of produce, meat, and whatever will put big giant loads of almonds near chicken droppings or something. Almonds don’t get salmonella without that kind of really sloppy big business agriculture.

McDonalds had a salmonella outbreak where people died, where children actually died. The government didn’t do a thing, really. But a few people get sick from eating almonds and it’s a bigger deal to the government somehow. Maybe they feel that McDonalds was doing everything they could, I don’t know. But it’s sad really, and it doesn’t make sense. Why are they targeting Almonds and not McDonalds? It’s the politics behind this. There are a couple of different motivation factors. A lot of people think that big business is shutting out the smaller business and that may be true to a certain degree. But what’s really going on is what’s called the Codex Treaty. What is the Codex Treaty? The Codex Treaty is a ban passed in Europe which will put big pharmaceutical companies in control of supplements. Of course supplements will be watered down, weakened, and/or made in a lab and basically be ineffective. Big pharmaceuticals want people to remain sick. They want a massive chain of codependence. They want to get rid of the life force, the healing properties in our food. That’s really what the almond pasteurization is all about. Almonds were becoming the most famous nut. They were so good for you before they were pasteurized. Right now in Canada they are trying to pass a bill stating that 60% of all supplements are banned. They’ve already banned a lot of them there. People are trying to prevent it, but they aren’t too successfully so far. And it’s going to happen here too. More people are learning about the power of the right kinds of supplements and healthy food, and these companies will put a stop to it if they can. It’s not a question of if, but when. It’s going to happen here. These are big players. Pharmaceutical companies are bigger then oil companies. And they only care about the bottom line, and nothing else. What can we do? People need to wake up and learn what’s really going on. This is such a brainwashed nation, it’s just unreal. This stuff is going right now. Mainstream media is not going to tell the truth about this. They are in the pockets of big Pharm. We have got to wake up! Go to naturalnews.com for the best source of alternative, honest, knowledgeable and true information about what’s really going on. Check out The Health Ranger, Mike Adams. He goes after any information that disempowers us. He’s not worried about a lawsuit, maybe because he’s not selling anything. The way this country works is that if you are selling something, no matter how honest you are, you can get into trouble. But he is not selling anything so he just goes for it. No holds barred. They went after almonds first, but this is just the beginning. No other nuts or seeds must be pasteurized, yet. They don’t want live, living organic food. Even our organic food is losing its nutrition now that big business is involved. People think it’s great because now organic foods are so much more readily available, but with the continued weakening of organic standards and things like monocropping, the organic food we purchase from big business doesn’t have the same nutrition. It’s all demineralized. It’s really just more expensive and has fewer chemicals than the conventional counterparts. Plants thrive on minerals; everything does. Plants transmutate minerals from the soil into bio-available nutrition; they turn non-assimable minerals into nutrition we can assimilate. Nut in order for crops to be well mineralized and to have a lot of life force in them, you need crop rotation. You have to grow different crops in the same soil to replenish the minerals. Big agricultural companies are growing organic food in mineral depleted, bland, lifeless soil. Tell us about your products. We have 19 different flavors right now. We germinate all of our nuts for at least 12 hours.  Then we add the flavorings—all organic ingredients. When you germinate nuts and seeds, you release enzyme inhibitors. But if you were to eat nuts or seeds that have not been germinated and you chewed them up really well, with lots of your own saliva, you would also deactivate the enzyme inhibitors. But germinating is a process that essentially starts the nuts and seeds growing. We “wake up” the nut or seed in this manner, like Mother Nature does only we do it faster. They become living foods and the nutrients are easier to assimilate. Anything else you’d like to tell us? This pasteurization of almonds ruling really shook us up. It’s our biggest seller. We started a petition. We are asking you to sign the petition but don’t stop there, bombard these sources; the Almond board of California, the FDA, and the USDA with emails, or even better, letters. We need to empower ourselves and self educate. We can stop this stuff, but it will take a lot of people educating themselves and speaking out. We are loosing our rights. We need to wake up, and educate ourselves. On his deathbed, Louis Pasteur said he was wrong about pasteurization. He fought to promote it most of his life, but he realized later that when you kill all of the bacteria, the bad bacteria comes back and you’ve killed the life of the food. It is all making us so sick. Seth Leaf is co-founder and co-owner of Living Nutz. OLM endorses and recommends Living Nutz. They are delicious and nutritious snacks from a small company with the highest integrity. www.livingnutz.com

I find it both humorous and sad when people cite studies that allow them to justify their toxic lifestyles. Do you really need a study to tell you smoking is bad for you? Back in the 1950s and 1960s we did. It seems silly now that people didn’t realize inhaling smoke is unhealthy. Now we need studies to tell us whether or not an obscene number of vaccinations containing mercury, aluminum, antifreeze, and/or other toxins are dangerous. Apparently, many people need studies to prove eating organic is healthier. Where’s their common sense? Food laced with poison versus food without poison. Which is healthier?

People love to quote studies that claim coffee is a strong antioxidant so they can justify their coffee habits. If I developed cocaine that had vitamin D, zinc, and vitamin C, would you snort a few lines to combat the common cold? I have studies that will show you how important those three nutrients are for fighting a virus, so, what’s the problem?

We’re out of touch and not at all in tune with our bodies. Diseases that are said to be genetic are on the rise, spiraling out of control, increasing much more rapidly than population growth, and yet we need studies to tell us what we can and can’t do. But when we read about a study that tells us to stop doing whatever we consider convenient or normal, we’re quick to find flaws in it and we do everything we can to debunk it. Meanwhile some major corporation secretly funds a bogus study, gets all the peer reviews it wants, and we then use that study to show why we don’t need to change our habits.

The problem with studies is that they too often look for one correlation. It’s not solely vaccinations that are causing autism. It’s not only cell phones that are causing cancer. It’s not just high fructose corn syrup that’s causing diabetes. You can’t point a finger at any one thing. It’s the whole package, the blatant disregard for common sense in the name of profit and convenience.

If you accept the fact that our lifestyles are leading us down a road of poor health and medications, then the next step is to do something about it. This is where most people can get pretty overwhelmed.

We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again: eat 80% fresh raw fruits and vegetables (more veggies than fruit). That’s step one. That’s your foundation. See how much better you feel. Keep learning. Keep an open mind. You decide what’s step two. You don’t need a study to tell you that this is a good move.

Michael Edwards

Editor in Chief

You may be thinking that OLM is “beating a dead horse” with this vaccine issue. But it’s a battle; one that we won’t quit fighting any time soon. I’m going to say something here that is going to piss off a lot of people: If you don’t think the vaccine industry is out of control, you are a brainwashed pawn, or better yet, a guinea pig. Until we have independent studies that are not funded by Big Pharma, that are published in scientific journals not funded by Big Pharma, that are conducted by scientists who do not rely on grants from Big Pharma to finance their university program or their next research project, we will not trust studies that tell us vaccinations are safe. So when you hear about a study that says there is no correlation between vaccines and neurological disorders, remember the swine flu shots given in 1976 and the thousands who contracted Guillain-Barre Syndrome (GBS). In little more than 2 months, 1/3 of the adult population was vaccinated for the swine flu. The following is from a court case resulting from a 1976 swine flu vaccination injury. Doesn’t this sound familiar? “So monumental and effective were the urgings of the government that it resulted in an unprecedented nearly 40 million citizens responding to the call. Both this plaintiff and untold others relied on the government’s assurances that the vaccine was both safe and necessary. A barrage of publicity aimed at overcoming the reluctance of citizens to participate included the unprecedented appearance of the President of the United States on national television to plead for a positive response. Against that background, it would be a travesty to suggest that people who hurriedly signed the standardized form presented to them were adequately informed of the risks.” [VERLIN G. UNTHANK, PLAINTIFF-APPELLEE, v. UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, DEFENDANT-APPELLANT]1 With each report of a death from H1N1, we must remember that the severity of H1N1 is significantly lower than that of seasonal flu. The news does not tell us each time a man, woman, or child dies from complications of seasonal flu, which claims the life of 35,000 Americans each year. Don’t let swine flu hysteria and the media frenzy affect your health decisions regarding vaccination.

Many have blogged about the New Jersey mother who lost her parental rights for refusing a C-section and acting erratically during labor. What is unclear is whether she refused to sign permission for a C-section in the event one was indicated or if she refused when the baby was in distress and doctors wanted to perform one. It may be a moot point, considering the child was born vaginally and without complications, but still there is a clear distinction between signing a cart blanche permission to allow doctors to do whatever they want before the need arises, and refusing care when an unborn child is experiencing fetal distress.

The parents’ rights have now been terminated and the court cites chronic mental illness on both their parts as the reason. (The mother had received mental health care for 12 years prior to the incident.) Many blogs make the point that if the mother had not refused a C-section, her mental health would not have been in question. We don’t necessarily agree.

If this couple was receiving on-going care for chronic mental illness, Child Protective Services likely would have been notified about their case by their mental health worker. But so little is known about the actual facts in this case (and the links to the court ruling are broken on multiple sites), most of what is posted is assumption.

In another case in 2004, a mother was charged with murder for refusing a C-section for her twins. One was stillborn. This mother also had drug and alcohol issues. The case was plea bargained and the murder charge was dropped.

While both of these cases have extenuating circumstances, it is still quite clear that a woman no longer has the right to refuse an invasive procedure without facing parental termination or, in the case of a child’s death, murder charges.