Life Links 12/31/10

Gerard Bradley comments on the Washington Post's article on fetal pain legislation and notes that it is unlikely that the fetal pain legislation would lead to a rethinking of Roe.

That occasion is much more likely to be inspired by someone like Scott Peterson, the California man who killed his wife, Laci, and his unborn son, Connor. I think that someday soon, an angry young man convicted of murdering his unborn child is going to force an appellate court to seriously address the Equal Protection time bomb ticking away in abortion jurisprudence. He will say that he cannot be convicted of murdering a “person” (as the language of the feticide law under which he stands convicted will state) while his wife could not be touched for doing the same thing to the same child. Whatever one’s answer to the question of when a “person” begins, that answer cannot reasonably change depending on whether the man wielding a sharp scalpel is an angry father or the mother’s abortionist. And so, our angry young man will conclude, he is denied constitutional equality when the legislature arbitrarily calls his victim a “person” while hers is just, well, something very decidedly different.

Abortioneer Desembarazarme notes that some abortion clinics don't offer any pre-abortion counseling.

I actually took the counseling portion of the program for granted until I learned that some very compassionate, professional clinics don’t offer counseling to their clients. It could be a trick to save time (clients always complain about how long the process takes) or minimize cost (we ARE in a recession), and it could simply be what has worked and continues to work for individual clinics.

A doctor in favor of embryonic stem cell research admits in an editorial praising embryonic stem cell research that the "greatest effect" of embryonic stem cells won't be in the direct treatment of diseases but rather as a "scientific tool of discovery."

Although this trial is evaluating transplantation of hES cells, the greatest effect of these cells will not be as a direct treatment. It will be from the use of hES cells as a scientific tool of discovery, accelerating progress across multiple fields and leading to effective repair and recovery.

The Nevada Supreme Court has denied an appeal by the group behind Nevada's personhood initiative because they didn't get enough signatures to be placed on the ballot.