Life Links 10/21/2009

The Charlotte Observer reports that 15-year-old pregnant bus stop shooting victim Tiffany Wright was pressured to have an abortion by a person of interest in the case before she was shot. Police believe Royce Mitchell, though not the father of the child, should be charged with statutory rape.

The documents, released Tuesday, say Mitchell took Tiffany – his adopted sister – to a Charlotte abortion clinic in July, but she was turned away because she was too far along at 21 weeks. So Mitchell planned a trip to an Atlanta clinic within days where Tiffany's pregnancy could be terminated.

Tiffany was eight-months pregnant when she was gunned down on Sept. 14 as she waited for her school bus. Doctors delivered her baby girl, but the infant later died.

At Mary Meets Dolly, Rebecca Taylor has a post about a new kind of pre-implantation genetic diagnosis called comparative genomic hybridization. She notes how the article slyly tries to define conception as implantation.

Here is the problem. How can you test an embryo unless it has ALREADY been conceived? If all of the embryos tested with CGH have already been conceived then how can CGH "double conception rates" as the article claims?

I'll tell you how. By changing the definition of conception to mean implantation. See, it is so much easier to toss out something you think hasn't been "conceived" yet. When people think pre-conception they think egg and sperm which is accurate. But by saying the embryos that are being tested haven't been conceived yet, these embryos suddenly carry the moral weight of egg and sperm. Which means practically none. Egg, sperm, pre-conceived embryo? All just biological waste that can be tossed out if defective.

The problem is that embryos have been conceived. They are fundamentally different from egg and sperm. They are full members of the species Homo sapiens and organisms in their own right. No amount of linguistic gymnastics can change that.

One of the writers at the Abortioneers blog (language warning) is upset that prolifers are reading their posts and supposedly taking their words out of context. She also mentions how hard doing abortion work can be.

We know how isolating and hard it can be. We know that when you go home, it’s challenging to tell your partner/friends/parents/pet/whatever about your day, because they just.won’t.get.it. We know it’s not a normal job.