Life Links 3/12/09

Ross Douthat replies to Michael Kinsley’s blog post on Obama’s stem cell decision. Kinsley claims that,

This is good news, to be sure. But let’s be clear: There is NO “medical ethical quandary” involved in the decade-long dispute over stem cells. There is only the appearance of an ethical quandary, created by people who either don’t understand or willfully misrepresent the facts.

Claiming that opponents of embryonic stem cell research are the ones who are “willfully misrepresenting the facts” is rich coming from Kinsley who on a number of occasions has falsely claimed that Bush’s policy on the federal funding of embryonic stem cell banned “almost all federal financing of embryonic-stem-cell research” and was “near-ban on stem-cell research.”

In the recent post Kinsley labels Bush’s funding policy a “ban on federally funded stem-cell research.”

I think it’s quite clear who is willfully misrepresenting the facts.


Jill Stanek points to a video interview by Sanjay Gupta with Bill Clinton in which Clinton doesn’t seem to understand what fertilization is. When referring to frozen embryos he repeatedly says they aren’t fertilized or will never be fertilized. At first I thought he may have confused fertilization with implantation but later comments in the interview wouldn’t make any sense if he really meant implantation. He seems to actually believe that frozen embryos haven’t been fertilized.

Just something to remember when prolifers are accused of being ignorant about science.


One “stem cell expert” in the UK is calling for the organs of aborted children to be used to fix the lack of organ donors.

Calling for studies into the feasibility of transplanting foetal organs, Sir Richard, an advisor to Britain's fertility watchdog and the Royal Society, said he was surprised the possibility had not been considered, and that experiments in mice have shown that foetal kidneys grow extremely quickly when transplanted to adult animals.

Sir Richard said: 'It is probably a more realistic technique in dealing with the shortage of kidney donors than others.'

Orange County Board of Supervisors has unanimously voted to take away Planned Parenthood’s health education grant because they provide abortions.


Michael Gerson on Obama’s anti-life policies:

Taxpayers will now likely fund not only the use of "spare" embryos from in vitro fertilization, but also human lives produced and ended for the sole purpose of scientific exploitation. Biotechnicians have been freed from the vulgar moralism of the masses, so they can operate according to the vulgar utilitarianism of their own social clique -- the belief that some human lives can be planted, plucked and processed for the benefit of others.

It is the incurable itch of prochoice activists to compel everyone's complicity in their agenda. Somehow getting "politics out of science" translates into taxpayer funding for embryo experimentation. "Choice" becomes a demand on doctors and nurses to violate their deepest beliefs or face discrimination.