Life Links 11/17/08

Ross Douhat and Matthew Franck both comment on Ronald Bailey’s recent piece which provides suggestions for Obama’s embryonic stem cell funding policy. Franck writes,

By contrast, the many embryos Green now wants to exploit, with federal funding authorized by President Obama, are still alive. When he says that it "is true" of these embryos as well that "the life and death decision" has already been made in their cases, he is stating the exact opposite of the truth. A decision has not been made, but must be made, and Green knows how he wants it made. He wants them destroyed, if we can only talk people into the decision.

The government of China has ordered a woman who is currently 6 months pregnant to have an abortion. If she doesn’t, they’re threatening to take her home. The woman has 2 born children.

According to the Washington-based Uyghur Human Rights Project, Arzigul and her husband, Nurmemet, fled their village when she became pregnant, but returned after officials warned their house and property would be seized if Arzigul did not have an abortion.

"We considered our two girls," said Nurmemet. "If the house and properties were taken away, how would they live? So my wife came back and went to the hospital."

ABC News has an article on the story with this chilling quote.

A nurse at the Gulja's Water Gate Hospital told RFA that Tursun is at the hospital: "We will give an injection first. Then she will experience abdominal pain, and the baby will come out by itself. But we haven't given her any injection yet—we are waiting for instructions from the doctors."

Peter Suderman suggests prolifers could make headway on the public opinion on Roe v. Wade by working harder to frame Roe as a “barrier to compromise.”


I love it when embryonic stem cell researchers make comments about how the public doesn’t understand that any treatments from embryonic stem cells are a long ways away. Here’s Theresa Gratsch from the University of Michigan’s Center for Embryonic Stem Cell Research.

"I don't think the public realizes that basic research that leads to cures takes a heck of a long time. Until now we've been working with at least one hand tied behind our back," said Gratsch. "I'm not going to say it's going to happen overnight, but it will happen. Maybe not in five years but, yes, in their lifetimes, at least certainly for my niece.

Well, the reason the public doesn’t realize it’s going to take a long time (if it happens at all) is because for the last 8 years greedy scientists have been claiming cures from embryonic stem cells are right around the corner or will happen in 5-10 years.


Reporter Mimi Hall of USA Today can’t get President Bush’s embryonic stem cell funding policy correct. She calls the policy (where about $40 million a year of federal tax dollars are spent on human embryonic stem cell research) a “a ban on government funding for research using embryonic stem cells” and writes that President Bush “imposed the funding ban during his first prime-time televised address to the nation.” One would hope Ms. Hall would have learned something about embryonic stem cell research and its funding before having this story go to print.