Life Links 4/6/11

Democratic leaders say the Republicans' proposed one-week CR will be rejected because of the prohibition to D.C. abortion funding and the budget cuts.


Here’s a new one: “Diseased goo” is how Darrell Dawsey describes human embryos with genetic diseases who were recently killed at the University of Michigan for their stem cells.

Discarding diseased goo isn't murder. And what could possibly be nobler than turning that discarded goo into a tool for studying and curing debilitating diseases and injuries?

At Slate Taffy Brodesser-Atkins has an interesting piece in which she discusses how her best friend is a prolife Republican.

When you live, say, on a coast or in a very blue state, you grow accustomed to being surrounded by people who believe like you do. You get to thinking that the only people who would dare contradict you are ignoramuses.....

And yet, I think having a Republican friend is making me a better liberal. We need friends who differ from us. It's easy to watch Republican extremism and think, "Wow, they're crazy." But when someone is sitting face to face with us, when someone we admire and respect is telling us they believe differently, it is at this fine point that we find nuance, and we begin to understand exactly how we got to this point in history. We lose something critical when we surround ourselves with people who agree with us all the time. We lose out on the wisdom of seeing the other side.

I read something like this and I understand why the arguments of many feminist pro-choice bloggers don't seem to be very well thought out.


Michael Lisk has been sentenced to 21-41 years in prison after raping a 12-year-old girl and then burying the body of the child she aborted with a lead pencil.

The diabetic girl was at home and on the phone with Lisk when she risked her life by using a lead pencil to abort the baby, which fell into the toilet, authorities said.

The girl was rushed to the hospital after the abortion in June 2010 and told hospital staff and then police what happened.

Police later found the aborted fetus buried in a wooded area in Polk Township and charged Lisk.

Police said Lisk initially lied, claiming to be just a neighbor helping the girl get rid of a baby that wasn't his.