Life Links 2/4/09

This is not good. It appears Judd Gregg's replacement in the U.S. Senate is pro-choice.


Rebecca Taylor on Advanced Cell Technology's attempts to create hybrid cloned embryos using animal eggs.

Read that again. Thousands of attempts to grow cow-human or rabbit-human or mouse-human embryos. Excuse me while I lose my breakfast. Small consolation that Lanza reports that these hybrids are not good for any medical reason. So can we stop making them now?

BBC News has what I would consider a very convoluted piece by a Kenyan woman who had an illegal abortion in a Kenyan hospital at 15 weeks when she was a teenager. After describing how horrible and painful her abortion experience was and how she "would have kept the baby" if she knew how traumatic abortion would be, she says,

"The best thing would be if abortion were made legal in this country.
Abortion should be the last option, but if it were legal at least it would be done properly."

This mindset is always so strange to me. Abortions in developing countries aren't magically going to be "done properly" if they become legal. South Africa (which is more developed than Kenya) is a perfect example of this. They legalized abortion yet there are still individuals who perform abortions in unsanitary conditions and women who suffer because of it.


Michael Stokes Paulsen has a very, very, very long piece about the ramifactions of the Freedom of Choice Act, if passed. I didn't read the whole thing but somebody might want to.