Life Links 7/7/10

Pro-choice blogger Jessica Valenti calls her unborn child "a baby" during a post about how some people can do annoying things (like touching bellies without permission) to pregnant women.

I am an interesting person outside of carrying this baby – I promise!

Rebecca Taylor points out how a Presbyterian columnist at the National Catholic Register named Bill Tammeus seems to be been completely fooled about what human cloning is and what somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT) creates. He says this in an aptly named column entitled, "It's easy to be misled on stem cell research." Below is great quote from someone who thinks SCNT therapies are still in development (amazing considering scientists haven't yet extracted embryonic stem cells from cloned human embryos) and doesn't think a cloned human embryo is a human being.

I also know it's easy to be misled on stem cell research if you don't name and understand things properly.

The Washington Post has published a personal story piece by Gillian St. Lawrence about how her and husband have used IVF to create and freeze embryos, which they may implant if they decide they want children at some point in the future. Both are perfectly fertile.

First, I looked online for clinics that did embryo freezing. Then I called them up and said, "I am 30 and my husband is 32, and we don't have any fertility problems, but we are wondering if your clinic would do IVF for us so we can create embryos and just freeze them; just skip the part where you transfer the fresh embryo into the uterus. We don't want to use any of them right now, but we want to save them for later."

Some doctors seemed to think I was crazy. ("Why don't you just wait a couple years and get pregnant at 32?" one said.).....

Our five frozen embryos, which we call our baby blastocysts, will remain in storage until we are ready to use them. Since study after study has indicated that the age of the uterus at the time the embryo is implanted is almost irrelevant to the success rate of achieving a healthy baby, we can wait 10 or 15 years: The chief consideration may well be how old I want to be when I'm raising a teenager

Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal has signed prolife legislation.

Women getting abortions in Louisiana will be required to get ultrasounds, and doctors who perform elective abortions won’t be covered under medical malpractice laws under bills Gov. Bobby Jindal signed Tuesday.

Also signed by Jindal was a ban on coverage for elective abortions in the insurance purchasing pools set up by the federal health overhaul legislation.

At BioEdge, Michael Cook notes that George Daley, a former embryonic stem cell researcher and proponent has focused his attention on induced pluripotent stem cells. Cook does get something wrong though, Daley certainly didn't "immediately" stop campaigning for embryonic stem cells once iPS cells were created. Daley continued making a variety of silly claims for a while after iPS cells were created.