Life Links 4/9/08

In First Things, Christopher Kazcor discusses the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists' recent attempt to push prolife doctors into referring women to abortion providers against their consciences.


Stem cell research may not find wonder cures?

Stem cell research, we have long been told, should pave the way for revolutionary new treatments to help millions of patients around the world.

Yet despite the years of study and debate about the potential, therapies have been slow to materialise.

Even the head of the UK National Stem Cell Network has now conceded that stem cell research may never deliver new treatments.

Paul Kengor on Bob Casey Jr., Barack Obama and abortion:

Sen. Barack Obama is so extreme on abortion that he has managed to achieve what I once thought impossible: He is to the left of Hillary Clinton on abortion. I say that as someone who has written a book on Hillary Clinton, with a special focus on her abortion fanaticism.....

Does Casey not understand the threshold upon which he and his nation now stand? Roe v. Wade is at last in peril, but if he achieves his dream of an Obama presidency, Obama can tip the Supreme Court’s balance in a pro-Roe direction for decades to come. There have been 40 million abortions since 1973.

Consequently, Senator Casey’s endorsement of Obama is an undeniable betrayal of his, his father’s, and his church’s pro-life work and commitment.

Michael West, founder of Geron and former head of Advanced Cell Technology, is working on a new way to try to make money off embryonic stem cells. He hopes to "sell lines of cells that he dubs 'human embryonic progenitors'--cells that have inched partway along the continuum from embryonic stem cell to differentiated adult cell" because embryonic stem cells are so difficult to control.