Life Links 11/23/09

Senator Ben Nelson says he’ll vote against health care reform if isn’t amended to his liking. One of his disputes with the bill is it’s language on abortion funding.


Numerous prolifers, evangelicals and Catholics, have signed on to the Manhattan Declaration which is a statement about the sanctity of life, marriage and conscience rights. The statement was drafted by Robert George, Timothy George and Chuck Colson.


In 2007, Bishop Thomas Tobin requested that Representative Patrick Kennedy not present himself for communion. Kennedy recently went public about his conversation and also claimed that Bishop Toobin told me that he had instructed all the priests in his diocese not to give Communion to Kennedy. Toobin is denying Kennedy’s additional claim.


Rebecca Taylor notes some peculiar new ways couples with frozen embryos are dealing with the children they don’t want to let another couple adopt and don’t want to donate for research.

What is most obvious is that infertile couples are not thinking about the consequences of producing extra embryos with IVF. They are then left with a moral dilemma no parent should have to face. It is critical that Catholics, religious and lay alike, remind infertile couples of this impending dilemma BEFORE they get swept up in the IVF machine. It is not politically correct, and they may never speak to you again, but it is so very necessary.

In Europe, doctors discovered that a man who was thought to be unconscious for 23 years was conscious the entire time.

Doctors in Zolder, Belgium, used the internationally accepted Glasgow Coma Scale to assess his eye, verbal and motor responses. But each time he was graded incorrectly.

Only a re-evaluation of his case at the University of Liege discovered that he had lost control of his body but was still fully aware of what was happening.

He is never likely to leave hospital, but as well as his computer he now has a special device above his bed which lets him read books while lying down.

Mr Houben said: 'I shall never forget the day when they discovered what was truly wrong with me - it was my second birth.

'I want to read, talk with my friends via the computer and enjoy my life now that people know I am not dead.'

Dr Laureys's new study claims that patients classed as in a vegetative state are often misdiagnosed.

'Anyone who bears the stamp of "unconscious" just one time hardly ever gets rid of it again,' he said.

HT: The Corner