in this issue:
hot button issues: PLAN B / PRO-LIFE MEMORIAL DAY / RIGHT TO LIFE ACT
abortion: ADOLESCENTS / INDIA / PEW FORUM / TRAINING / UNITED NATIONS
birth control: CONTRACEPTIVE NAIVE
health care: PERSECUTING CHRISTIANS
human embryos: MADE TO ORDER
planned parenthood: MONEY IN MISSOURI
stem cell research / ethical: NO MORE INSULIN
stem cell research / unethical: HURLBUT / MISSOURI
vegetative state: BRAIN COOLING
zinger: PRO-LIFE AND PRO-CHOICE TOO?
reflection for prayer: SOCIETY WITHOUT CHRIST
hot button issues
PLAN B: American Life League is calling on President Bush to stop over-the-counter distribution of the “emergency contraceptive” Plan B and withdraw his nomination of Dr. Andrew von Eschenbach as FDA commissioner.
(Reading: “President Bush, dump FDA nominee, Plan B,” American Life League news release, 8/16/06)
PRO-LIFE MEMORIAL DAY: For the second year, American Life League is sponsoring Pro-life Memorial Day on October 2. Please join us as we pause to remember the 47 million innocent lives lost through surgical abortion. Ordering information for the official T-shirt of Pro-life Memorial Day is available online.
RIGHT TO LIFE ACT: With the addition of the 100th Congressional sponsor to the Right to Life Act, the pro-life movement has reached an important milestone in its quest to end the slaughter of innocent preborn children by abortion.
COMMENT: Are your members of Congress co-sponsors? If not, ask them to get on board.
abortion
ADOLESCENTS: According to a new study, “adolescent women who abort unintended pregnancies are five times more likely to seek subsequent help for psychological and emotional problems compared to adolescent women who carry ‘unwanted pregnancies’ to term.”
(Reading: “Abortion riskier for adolescents than pregnancy,” Family Life International news release, 8/16/06)
INDIA: Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has called on parents in India to stop aborting their preborn daughters.
(Reading: “Indian premier calls for end of killing of unborn girls,” Agence France Presse, 8/15/06)
PEW FORUM: A new survey addressing “middle ground” on abortion finds that 31% of Americans believe abortion should be generally available, 20% think it should be allowed but more limited, 35% think it should be illegal with few exceptions and 11% think it should never be permitted.
COMMENT: If Americans truly realized that an act of abortion is an act of murder, would they still be so weak in their moral convictions?
(Reading: “Pragmatic Americans liberal on social issues,” Pew Forum, 8/3/06)
TRAINING: A study finds that where abortion training is available and required versus optional, the residents were more likely to receive instruction in all modalities of abortion provision and performance. That includes the dilation and extraction method (partial-birth abortion).
(Reading: “Abortion training in United States obstetrics and gynecology residency programs,” Obstetrics and Gynecology, 8/1/06, p. 303)
UNITED NATIONS: C-FAM is warning that a new human rights treaty could well be the vehicle for overturning all pro-life laws throughout the world, including the United States, if the next U.S. president is in favor of the treaty.
(Reading: “New UN human rights treaty threatens to include abortion,” Friday Fax, 8/10/06)
birth control
CONTRACEPTIVE NAIVE: That’s a new term coined by researchers to describe those women who are defined as being members of a “high risk” population because they do not practice birth control effectively.
(Reading: “Performance of contraceptive patch compared with oral contraceptive pill in a high-risk population,” Obstetrics and Gynecology, 8/1/06, pp. 378-386)
health care
PERSECUTING CHRISTIANS: In a brilliant editorial, Steve Massey writes that when Christian health-care workers say no to assisting in abortion or helping gay couples via artificial insemination or assisting in suicide, they are “medical workers who are joining the ranks of Christians persecuted for their faith.”
(Reading: “Religious relativity victimizes Christian health-care workers,” Spokane Spokesman Review, 8/12/06)
human embryos
MADE TO ORDER: A human embryo bank in San Antonio, Texas is causing concern in Britain. Some people are questioning the ethics of “ready-made embryos matched to their [would-be parents] specific requirements — even down to choosing what eye and hair color they would like their child to have.”
COMMENT: Described as the absolute commercialization of human life, one can only wonder if such an atrocity would have occurred without the invention and pursuit of in vitro fertilization.
(Reading: “Ethical row over world’s first ‘made to order’ embryos,” Daily Mail, 8/4/06)
planned parenthood
MONEY IN MISSOURI: After a long court battle, Missouri’s supreme court ruled that Planned Parenthood affiliates can receive more than $900,000 in taxpayer dollars even thought he will of the legislature was that the money should be denied.
(Reading: “Planned Parenthood keeps state funding in judgment,” Associated Press, 8/9/06)
stem cell research / ethical
NO MORE INSULIN: Researchers are discovering ways to possibly replace the insulin shots taken by diabetics with injections of the patients’ own stem cells, including those located in the brain and the liver.
(Reading: “Stem cells may end need for insulin shots,” Times of India, 8/11/06)
stem cell research / unethical
HURLBUT: Reporting on advances in stem cell research, Time magazine examines ways scientists are “getting around political roadblocks,” including “‘altered nuclear transfer,’ in which a gene, known as CDX2, would be removed before the cell is fused with the egg. That would ensure that the embryo lives only long enough to produce stem cells and then dies.” In other words there is a living human embryo who is destined to die because he has been “created” with a disability.
COMMENT: This is the process promoted by William Hurlbut of the President’s Council on Bioethics and endorsed by a number of people.
(Reading: “Stem cells: the hope and the hype,” Time, 8/7/06, p. 44)
MISSOURI: The most recent reports on the Missouri Stem Cell Research and Cures Initiative do not bode well for babies or for laws in the state that relate to abortion. For example the new proposal, which would amend the state’s constitution, would change the legal definition of the blastocyst as the “offspring of human beings” to “mass of cells.”
(Reading: “Cloning measure would ax laws regulating abortion, legal experts say,” St. Louis Review, 8/11/06)
vegetative state
BRAIN COOLING: David C. Reardon, Ph.D., has studied the case of a woman who was diagnosed as being in a persistent vegetative state and subsequently improved after an oxygen tube was removed. Reardon said, “Even a small drop in brain temperature can disturb the neurochemistry of the brain, and this could be a factor in keeping or even causing a vegetative state.”
(Reading: “Pumping cold air into lungs of coma patients questioned,” Health Day, 8/11/06)
zinger
PRO-CHOICE AND PRO-LIFE TOO? Connecticut Republican senatorial candidate Alan Schlesinger “describes himself as ‘pro-choice’ and does not support overturning Roe v. Wade. He does oppose partial-birth abortion, however, and supports parental consent for abortion.”
COMMENT: It will be interesting to see which pro-life groups will support a man with such twisted views.
(Reading: “Meet the Republican in Connecticut’s three-way race,” Human Events, 8/14/06)
reflection for prayer
SOCIETY WITHOUT CHRIST: Today we see how frequently Christ is refused entry into the world, and how frequently he is marginalized by so many of those who have great influence in society and culture. He is deliberately excluded from the world of politics, from the world of science, the arts, business, law, medicine…. He is often only treated in the media when it chooses to ridicule him. As followers of Christ, we must bring him and his word of life back into every sphere of human activity, for a world without Christ is a world that knows neither its origin nor its destiny; it is a world that will turn against man himself.
(Reading: “What does it mean for us to welcome Christ into our life?” Regnum Christi, 8/14/06)