The Detroit Lions have a new coach

Former Tennessee Titans defensive coordinator Jim Schwartz must be a glutton for punishment.

Now all the Lions need to do is replace their entire defense (which currently consists entirely of below average players) with above average players.

Please, please, please do not use your first overall draft pick on a quarterback.

Life Links 1/15/09

The BBC has an article and video regarding Obama’s likely move to change the current human embryonic stem cell funding policy. There are some howlers from Geron chief Thomas Okarma including in the video where he claims that a single embryonic stem cell line could treat every spinal cord patient in North America for 22 years.


Serge at the LTI blog has linked to a paper he wrote for the Christian Research Institute in 2007 focusing on some of the problems in bodily autonomy arguments in favor of legal abortion. The synopsis states in part,

The bodily autonomy argument and their defenses of it fail for at least four reasons. First, the argument fails to account for situations in which a mother harms but does not kill her child; given its logic, it would affirm a mother’s decision to intentionally take a medication that will cause birth defects in her child, for example. Second, the argument assumes that prenatal parental responsibilities are largely voluntary. Third, the analogies used to support the argument fail to take into account the difference between diseased and healthy physiological states. Fourth, the argument results in absurdities if taken to its logical conclusion. Taken as a whole, then, the bodily autonomy argument does not give us justification to jettison our deepest moral intuitions that mothers should not intentionally kill their offspring, whom proponents of this argument concede are rights-bearing individuals. Intentionally killing human fetuses in the act of elective abortion thus remains a great moral wrong.

Color me unimpressed with Third Way latest release entitled, “Come Let Us Reason Together: A Governing Agenda to End the Culture Wars.” I really doubt our government is going to end the culture wars on abortion by doing basically the same thing they’ve been doing to prevent unintended pregnancies, doing slightly more to help poor pregnant women and expanding the adoption tax credit. According to the press release, this short document is “the culmination of two years of work led by the progressive think tank Third Way, Evangelical religious leaders like the Reverend Joel C. Hunter and Dr. David Gushee, religion scholar Dr. Robert P. Jones and the religious group Faith in Public Life.” Is it me or does this seem more like 2 hours worth of work?


The Center for Bioethics and Culture Network has posted Wesley Smith’s predictions for 2009.

They like me, they really like me

Yours truly was recently announced as the 2009 winner of the “Best News and Reporting” by the Pro-Life Blog Awards. The other winners are as follows:

Best Overall Pro-Life Blog - Mommy Life
Pro-Life Unity Award -Causa Nostrae Laetitiae
Pro-Life Whistleblower Award -Catholic Fire
Best Pro-Life Apologetics -Mark's Blog
Pro-Life Instigator Award for Activism -American Papist

When I read the e-mail telling me of this, it was a complete surprise because I was unaware that I was even nominated (I’m not listed as a nominated blog on the side bar). It’s a honor to be given this award and I like to thank Tim at ProlifeBlogs for nominating me, any individuals involved in the judging process and especially my daughter whose ability to play for minutes at a time with a deck of playing cards and window blinds has allowed me the time to post LifeLinks on a regular basis.

Anyway, the prize for this award is two nights at the Liaison Hotel in Washington, D.C. during the March for Life along with being a guest at American Life League’s conference. I wasn’t planning on going to the March this year so I’ve been doing some scrambling over the last 24 hours and have transportation to D.C., time off work and child care taken care.

If you read this blog and will be at the March or at Blogs4Life, I would like to meet you. Let me know and I’ll try to keep an eye out for you.

LifeLinks 1/14/09

Licia Corbella takes down assisted suicide advocate Lady Warnock in the Calgary Herald.

"If you're demented, you're wasting people's lives--your family's lives--and you're wasting the resources of the National Health Service," she said a few months ago.

There was a time when such statements would be described as wicked and the orator as well.

But in Warnock's twisted world of "ethics," doctors who kill are righteous and doctors who refuse to kill are villainous.

Black is white, white is black and wrong is right. Murder is merciful and compassionate care, cruel. Somewhere out there, George Orwell is saying, "I told you so."

Corbella later notes this disturbing trend in Oregon's assisted suicides:

In 1998, 12 per cent of PAS patients in Oregon said they chose this irreversible course of action because they didn't want to burden their family. That rose to 26 per cent in 1999, 42 per cent in 2005 and 45 per cent in 2007, the last year figures are available....

In other words, for the infirm and disabled, the right to die quickly becomes the duty to die. Wanting to live despite being frail or ill increasingly is viewed as selfish in places where euthanasia is the law.

That's not empowerment, it's coercion, guilt for living, pressure to die.

Wesley Smith notes how the whining of cloning scientists (they were denied government funding) in Britain quickly leads to action by members of Parliament. Maybe Britain's science funding organization understands that with iPS cells, there is no good reason to fund human cloning experiments, unfortunately politicians bent on scoring political points don't seem to get this.


Rebecca Taylor comments on the BBC's lame attempt to redefine conception.

So the nearly half a million human embryos that are sitting in the deep freeze have yet to be conceived? What utter rubbish! Conception is when sperm penetrates egg, implantation is when the resulting embryos implants in the womb.

Once again society is being mislead and numbed by language that has no meaning. If the BBC were to acknowledge that PGD occurs after conception then maybe some of us would actually put 2 and 2 together to make 4 and decide that they are very uncomfortable with this technology. Especially when we realize that all of the post conception embryos that failed the genetic test got tossed in the biohazard waste.

A team at Stanford has discovered that stem cells taken from human testes can develop into a wide range of tissues.

Samples from two of the men yielded stem cells, but one of the men dropped out before the experiments could continue. The tissue from the remaining man yielded abundant stem cells that proved able to transform themselves into a variety of other tissue cells when they were injected into mice bred with impaired immune systems, Reijo-Pera said Monday.

Why crisis pregnancy centers shouldn’t have pro-choice counselors?

The above could have been an alternative title to the post “Why I stopped by being a pro-life counselor” at a blog entitled Keep Calm and Carry On.

When I first started reading the post, I had assumed the writer (a woman named Allison) was a prolife individual who volunteered at a CPC and was turned off by some of the CPC’s practices. I quickly wondered what was going on as all of her complaints sounded very familiar to the type of complaints pro-choice individuals typically make about CPCs. Then there were quotes like the following which made me wonder if Allison had done any research at all into the abortion issue.

If an abortion is performed in the second trimester, it is almost always because the woman is pretty darn close to death.

The complaints about the CPC seemed to morph into complaints about people who are prolife (voting decisions are too based on abortion, pictures of aborted fetuses are bad, prolifers are obsessed with fetuses, etc.). Towards the end of the post, we’re let in on why Allison probably shouldn’t have been allowed to be a counselor at a CPC in the first place.

I'm personally pro-life. I am politically and legally pro-choice. I'm not going to discuss this position at length right now, but I will at some point. In a nutshell: government does not belong in my bedroom or doctor's office.

I take this to mean something like “I wouldn’t have an abortion if I became pregnant but I think abortion should be legal.” When someone holds this position, they are not “personally prolife.”

They are pro-choice. That’s the pro-choice position. If you think abortion should be generally legal then you’re pro-choice regardless of what you would do if you became pregnant and regardless of whether you think abortion is right or wrong (I’m still waiting for a response to why Allison believes “abortion is wrong”).

Now why would someone who’s pro-choice and who pretty much disagrees with the basic tenets of the prolife movement volunteer at a CPC?

When I asked her in the comments why she (someone who’s pro-choice) volunteered at a CPC (since her explanation in the post was vague), she responded by saying,

I volunteered precisely because I am pro-choice. I did not feel the other choices - raising a child, adoption - were emphasized enough.

She says this even though in her post she was very positive about counseling at abortion clinics. She wrote (my emphasis),

I've sat in on pregnancy crisis counseling sessions at Planned Parenthood and private clinics. These places did a phenomenal job of providing a balanced and objective overview of abortion. They discussed all choices: abortion, raising a child, open adoption, closed adoption. They discussed regret.....

I've witnessed the abortion process more than once. I never saw or heard anything other than kindness from the staff. Before the procedure starts, the woman sits down with a counselor who takes the time to explain all choices in plain English. And if she changes her mind last minute, she hops down from the table and is sent away with stacks of adoption, healthy pregnancy, and WIC pamphlets.

What’s truly odd is Allison says the CPC she volunteered knew her pro-choice views! I don’t think Allison is lying (I don’t know why she would) but I struggle to imagine why a CPC would allow someone who is pro-choice to counsel women in crisis pregnancies. That’s a little like Planned Parenthood hiring a prolifer. It’s a union where more than a few feathers are going to be ruffled and which is unlikely to end as cordially as Allison’s stint as a counselor.

Life Links 1/12/09

Scott Klusendorf has a long but worthwhile defense of his both/and position on Christians sharing the gospel as well as being involved in prolife politics.


A woman in England has decided to continue her pregnancy after she was urged to have an abortion because she is pregnant with dicephalous twins (twins with two heads and one body).

"Some might think my twins are strange, but to me they're just special," she said. "Everything happens for a reason. Mike and I have spent over seven years trying to have children and we might not get another go."

There’s some silver lining in the Madoff Ponzi scheme. Planned Parenthood has laid off staff because large amounts of their funding comes from the Picower Foundation, whose assets were managed by Madoff.


Wesley Smith notes the latest attempt by Geron to boost their stock prices and how easily the Chicago Tribune fell for it.


Rebecca Taylor asks a good question: Why will more tax payer money be wasted on ESC research in 2009?

So it may be impossible to ensure that ESC cultures have only healthy cells? This means that treating patients with ESC cultures is also "difficult or impossible." As a taxpayer, I do not want my money going to fund research that is "difficult or impossible." You would think our elected officials would feel the same.

Friday Baby Blogging - Birthday Party

My daughter was completely opposed to wearing her birthday tiara



but she certainly didn't mind shoving a fistful of birthday cake into her mouth

LIfe Links 1/9/09

The prolife movement lost an important voice yesterday with the death of Father John Neuhaus. Here's a piece he wrote for the January 2009 issue of First Things entitled, "The Pro-Life Movement as Politics of the 1960s."

In short, pro-life intellectuals, like pro-life activists, insist on talking about the science and moral reasoning pertinent to the moral status of the unborn. So do the more honest of pro-choice intellectuals, which is why they are more hindrance than help to the pro-choice movement....

Again, the pro-choice proponents are the defenders of the status quo. They routinely cite data indicating that a majority of Americans do not want to see Roe overturned. As has often been pointed out, these same Americans believe that Roe created a restrictive abortion policy....It is understandable, however, that pro-choice advocates trumpet popular support for Roe, dependent as they are on the ignorance of “the silent majority.”

In Afghanistan, a mother and brother of a 14-year-old girl are facing prison time after they allegedly cut the girl's unborn child out of her. The girl was 5 months pregnant and had been allegedly raped. She is in critical condition.

The abortion was performed about nine days ago, using no anesthesia. The incisions were then stitched up with a thick string usually used to sew up potato sacks, said Gulam Mohammad Nader, one of the doctors who subsequently treated the girl in the provincial capital. He said the wound became dangerously infected.....

Nader said the girl told him that she had not known her mother and brother's plan when they took her into the cattle shed. She said they wrestled her to the ground and held her down while they cut her stomach open. She blacked out for much of the ordeal, but she said she remembered seeing her brother hold up the fetus.

Police have recovered the body of the fetus, and both the brother and the man accused of raping the girl have been arrested, Khan said. Police also plan to arrest the mother, he said, but are waiting to take her into custody because she is an 11-hour trip away and recovering from recently giving birth herself.

In Britain, the first child who was screened as an embryo for the gene BRCA-1 (which is linked to breast and ovarian cancer) has been born. This, of course, means any of the child's siblings who had the gene were disposed of. The article also contain this pathetic attempt to justify this kind of genetic discrimination from Peter Braude.

In fact, he argues that the procedure actually prevents abortions because it takes place on a three-day old embryo in a lab. Only embryos that lack the defective gene are implanted.

"I don't think you can equate eight cells in a dish to an embryo or a child," said Braude, head of the department of women's health at the King's College London School of Medicine.

So an eight-celled embryo isn't an embryo?


A 16-year-old girl in Washington has been charged with murder after allegedly drowning an infant, whom is believed to be her newborn son, in a toilet.

The baby's body was found Monday by authorities combing 60 tons of trash at a dump site near Tacoma.

An affidavit filed that day said Last "put her baby face down into a toilet and allowed it to drown for several minutes until it died. Then she threw her son into the trash can outside in a plastic garbage bag."

Pro-Choice is the “Compromise” Position?

Or at least that’s what Sam Sedaei claims in an op-ed for the Huffington Post which was also posted at the RH Reality Check Blog. What’s truly interesting about this piece is that Sedaei recognizes (unlike many pro-choicers) what the pivotal question in the abortion debate is. He writes (my emphasis),

But at the heart of these questions and the Supreme Court's decision on Roe v. Wade that started this 3-decade long debate on abortion is a central question: Is a fetus a human being?

We’re off to a good start here. Unfortunately, it doesn’t last long as Sedaei fails to use any kind of relevant biological evidence to determine whether the unborn are human beings. He continues,

If it is, it must possess all the characteristics of a human being, not the least of which is independent biological viability.

Huh? Since when does an organism have to possess “all the characteristics of a human being” to be a human being? Human beings have innumerable characteristics (such as two legs, two arms, 10 fingers, 10 toes, two eyes, two ears, etc., etc.) which some human beings don’t possess. One is left to wonder if Sedaei believes that war veterans who’ve lost limbs to IEDs are human beings.

It should also be noted that many other human beings whom I’d guess Sedaei wouldn’t characterize as non-humans don’t have “independent biological viability” - infants, the severely disabled, individuals on life support, for example.

While there may be other elements on which one can rely to determine the viability of a fetus, the concept of independent viability remains the central characteristic of any living organism, including human beings.

And the evidence for this statement would be????? It remains a “central characteristic” because Sam Sedaei says it does?

Science clearly establishes that an unborn or unhatched vertebrate cannot be considered to be a human even after attaining the basic structural plan of its kind - hence the term "fetus" to refer to all vertebrates at this stage.

Instead of looking to an embryology textbook to figure out if the developing unborn child is a human being, Sedaei claims they are not because scientists use a term to describe unborn organisms at a certain stage of development. This is like someone saying teenagers aren’t human beings because science clearly calls some vertebrates who aren’t yet adults “adolescents.”

Plus, while Sedaei used the Merriam-Webster dictionary to find the definition of viable, he curiously didn’t use that same dictionary to find the definition of fetus, which reads, in part, “a developing human from usually two months after conception to birth.”

However, there continue to be millions of American who -- because of their church's teachings, genuine belief or as an excuse to control women's health decisions - matter-of-factly claim that a fetus is a human being while relying on no scientific or empirical arguments.

This is rich coming from a guy who just defined the unborn as non-human while not relying on scientific or empirical arguments but instead on matter-of-fact assertions.

Here’s how Sedaei tries to argue the pro-choice position in the compromise position:

What's important to note about the ruling is that while it did not declare abortion unconstitutional or force the viewpoint of the anti-choice camp over the pro-choice camp, it also did not force anti-choice Americans to accept the biological and scientific definition of what constitutes a human being. The ruling rather allowed those who believe a fetus is a human being to keep their fetuses and carry their offspring and those who believe a fetus is not a human being to choose whether they are socially, economically and emotionally ready to have a child.

So a ruling which took away every state’s ability to regulate abortion is a compromise position because it didn’t force prolife people to have abortions and believe the unborn aren’t humans? Yeah... Okay... This is kind of like saying Dred Scott v. Sandford was a compromise position because it didn’t force non-slave owners to own slaves and think of slaves as mere property.

But that was not good enough for most ardent anti-choice advocates. Since 1973, they have organized themselves around the ultimate goal of overturning Roe v. Wade and force their nonscientific and subjective definition of human being on everyone else.

Can you imagine the gall of those prolifers? They just can’t accept only being allowed to keep their own unborn children, they want to prevent others from killing unborn children.

There’s so much more to comment on but this post is long enough as it is. The moral of the story is that when pro-choicers recognize the central question in the abortion debate and attempt to argue unborn children aren't human beings, they don't come off looking very competent.

Life Links 1/8/09

First Things has posted a long but well-worth-your-time essay online by Joseph Bottum and Ryan Anderson entitled, “Stem Cells: A Political History.”

President Bush’s mildly complicated policy, how-ever, didn’t fit the narrative that the media wanted to tell. And the question, of course, is why? What was it about stem cells that so agitated the nation for six years?

.....

For six years, from 2001 through 2007, embryonic stem cells were a weapon in a political battle. And, as in all political battles, usefulness trumps truth, even for the scientists who willingly made themselves into partisans during the debate.

The history of the stem-cell debate is a study of what happens when politics and science reach out to each other. The politicians were guilty, but the scientists were more guilty, for they allowed—no, they encouraged—politicians to make stem-cell research a tool in the public fights over abortion, public religion, and high finance.

I disagree with the assertions that the political stem cell wars came to an end in November of 2007 (with the creation of human iPS cells) since the voters in my state just got fooled into allowing researchers a free pass to do whatever they want with IVF embryos donated by their parents. However, this is surely the best compilation of the political history of stem cells I’ve read and really shows how corrupt scientists and politicians became.

HT: Between Two Worlds


Clarke Forsythe has a piece entitled “Prudence in Policymaking: Is incrementalism ethical and effective?”

HT: LTI Blog


Two men who set an abortion clinic in New Mexico on fire have pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit arson.

Prosecutors allege Baca torched the clinic in an effort to prevent his girlfriend from getting an abortion and Altman aided him in the crimes....

Baca's attorney said the deal is fair.

"This was never a political crime," Hanisee said. "It was an emotional crime, he was upset about the planned termination of a pregnancy it was something that happened that he regrets and you'll hear more from him at sentencing."

Here’s another one for the “Mainstream media and leftwing bloggers are too lazy to read the study before commenting on it” file.

This time William McGurn digs a little deeper into that recent “Virginity Pledges Don’t Work” study.

What Dr. Healy was getting at is that the pledge itself is not what distinguishes these kids from most other teenagers. The real difference is their more conservative and religious home and social environment. As she notes, when you compare both groups in this study with teens at large, the behavioral differences are striking. Here are just a few:

- These teens generally have less risky sex, i.e., fewer sexual partners.

- These teens are less likely to have a teenage pregnancy, or to have friends who use drugs.

- These teens have less premarital vaginal sex.

- When these teens lose their virginity they tend to do so at age 21 -- compared to 17 for the typical American teen.

- And very much overlooked, one out of four of these teens do in fact keep the pledge to remain chaste -- amid much cheap ridicule and just about zero support outside their homes or churches.

Let's put this another way. The real headline from this study is this: "Religious Teens Differ Little in Sexual Behavior Whether or Not They Take a Pledge."

What really gets me in the whole abstinence vs. comprehensive sex education debate is how both sides seem to overlook the importance parents and background play in a young person’s decision-making about sex. It's like they both think a week long (or less) course is going to dramatically alter how teens think about sex when that course's influence is incredibly small in comparison to years and years of parental and peer influence.

Life Links 1/7/09

David Freddoso on the bailout the abortion industry desires.

Among the many left-wing interests that have submitted wish lists to the Obama transition team is a conglomeration of 50 abortion-advocacy groups, all of whom want the U.S. taxpayer to stand and deliver. When their 55-page report to Obama calls for an end to “ideologically driven government restrictions,” it really means that the government should be paying more of the bills for groups that advocate and perform abortions.

The University of Wisconsin is planning to provide late second trimester abortions after the area's only second trimester abortion clinic has been taken over by Planned Parenthood, which will only provide abortions up to 18 weeks.


Wesley Smith notes that scientists are still struggling with the problem of embryonic stem cells being pre-cancerous.

The problem, apparently, is that abnormalities are submicroscopic and can't be determined before they transform into specific body tissues (differentiation).

Bonnie Erbe is putting the blame of some Latina women in New York City and elsewhere using off-label prescription drugs and home remedies to induce abortions at the feet of the right wing. Unfortunately, no argument is provided to how the right wing is at fault.

Life Links 1/6/09

The New York Times had an article on how women from the Dominican community in New York use Cytotec (the first drug in the RU-486 cocktail) and various homemade methods to have abortions.


Andrea Mrozek at ProWomanProLife points to a recent comment by Joyce Arthur, one of Canada's prominent pro-choicers.


Steven Clark has a piece in the Wisconsin Technology Network News on iPS cells and some of the advantages they have over embryonic stem cells. I think the last paragraph is a tad bit assumptive and I'm not sure that either iPS cells or embryonic stem cells will ever make it to clinical trials.

Dr. Nancy Snyderman is a coward

During the holidays, I’ve watched portions of the Today Show in the morning and on two separate occasions, Dr. Nancy Snyderman (the Today Show’s chief medical editor) has been brought in to talk about 2009 health trends. On both occasions Snyderman brought up stem cells and intentionally misled viewers regarding the Bush administration’s current policy.

I don’t like to call people cowards but I had trouble coming up with a better term for someone who instead of making an argument in favor of the position which favors allowing federal funds to be spent on research using human embryonic stem cell lines created after 2001, lies about the current policy (“this ridiculous ban on stem cell research”) and then acts like she’s opposed to the current policy because she’s a physician. Snyderman knows that there is no stem cell ban as evidenced by this older Today Show clip regarding stem cells from amniotic fluid in which she notes the 21 human embryonic stem cell lines which can be experimented on with federal funds.

Snyderman goes to say in the recent clip,

“And I say ridiculous as the point of a physician. We have set back research in this country ridiculously because we have tied religion to science. Let’s have the moral and ethical decisions around stem cell research and then let’s move forward. We’ve had a phenomenal brain-drain of great scientists to other countries.”

Talk about incoherent. I’m not sure what being a physician has to do with whether it’s morally proper for our nation to fund research which requires the destruction of human embryos. There is not a hint of evidence that only funding research on embryonic stem cell lines created before August of 2001 has set any kind of research back in this country, especially since the $3 billion Californians are in the midst of paying for embryonic stem cell research has yet to move it forward in any noticeable way. The reality is that Snyderman seems to have no moral qualms with killing human embryos for research and doesn’t think people who have moral qualms should be making the decisions.

The line that really takes the cake is, “Let’s have the moral and ethical decisions around stem cell research and then let’s move forward.” I’m guessing she meant “moral and ethical discussions” but I’m not sure. Either way, what kind of statement is this? Let’s have the decision (or discussion) and then let the scientists do what ever they want with federal tax dollars. My, how generous of you.

The Today Show might consider hiring a chief medical editor who understands the difference between medical and political opinions instead of someone intent on foisting their thoughtless political sentiments on viewers at home and then acting like she does so as a caring physician. I’d prefer not to wake up in the morning to someone who falsely describes a political policy, calls it ridiculous, make a number of other false assertions (brain-drain, set research back ridiculously) and claims to do so as some kind of enlightened physician.

Life Links 1/2/09

Joseph Bottum has a piece in First Things entitled, "Abortion After Obama."


The Wall Street Journal Online has an article by Anne Hendershott in which she describes a 1964 meeting between the Kennedys and some liberal Catholic theologians.

At a meeting at the Kennedy compound in Hyannisport, Mass., on a hot summer day in 1964, the Kennedy family and its advisers and allies were coached by leading theologians and Catholic college professors on how to accept and promote abortion with a "clear conscience."
.....
Father Milhaven later recalled the Hyannisport meeting during a 1984 breakfast briefing of Catholics for a Free Choice: "The theologians worked for a day and a half among ourselves at a nearby hotel. In the evening we answered questions from the Kennedys and the Shrivers. Though the theologians disagreed on many a point, they all concurred on certain basics . . . and that was that a Catholic politician could in good conscience vote in favor of abortion."

World Magazine is featuring two articles on abortion by Martin Olasky. One on abortion's past and another on our present circumstances.

Life Links 12/31/08

A couple in England have a healthy son after twice rejecting doctors suggestions that they abort the child.

Gaynor Purdy was warned her first child could have a fatal chromosome defect and a life threatening heart condition.

But she rejected two suggestions to terminate the pregnancy and she and her husband Lee are celebrating life with their "perfect" ten-month-old son.

Mrs Purdy, 28, a quality control inspector, said: "We refused to give up on him, and decided throughout the pregnancy that as long as he was fighting, we would continue fighting with him."

Melinda Penner discusses a dilemma which doesn't prove anything.


The Hill has an article on how Barack Obama will likely change Bush's embryonic stem cell policy and what effect that change will have on research. I enjoyed this quote from Sean Tipton.

“All we’ve been asking for is: ‘Treat embryonic stem cell research like everything else,’” Tipton said.

In other words, treat ethically problematic research as if it weren't ethically problematic.


The Prime Minister's Office in Canada has stated that "We will not introduce or support legislation on abortion" after the leader of the country's pro-life caucus said they would push for a debate.

Mark Burton can’t stop lying about Proposal 2, even after it passes.

The Detroit Free Press featured this editorial by Mark Burton on December 18 and I’ve been meaning to respond for a while but have been slacking on blogging during the Christmas season.

Most of these editorial puff pieces describing all the awesome or horrible things ballot proposals will supposedly do usually occur before election but in this editorial Mark Burton describes what Proposal 2 will supposedly accomplish more than a month after Michigan voters voted in favor of it.

Burton unfortunately can’t get out of spin mode and makes a number of claims which are demonstratably false. It’s almost like proponents of killing human embryos for research in Michigan have been misleading the public for so long (with the help of papers like the Free Press) they don’t know how to be honest with them even after their proposal passed. Burton writes,

Proposal 2 was about restoring hope for millions of patients, their friends, and families facing debilitating disease. It unshackles Michigan’s talented researchers and physicians, and permits them to finally join the race for cures by utilizing the most promising medical advancement of the 21st Century: embryonic stem cell research.

Finally, Michigan researchers get to do something they’ve been doing since 2002.

Has the 21st century really produced so few medical advancement that cells which have yet to treat or cure anyone and haven’t been approved for a single clinical trials are the “most promising medical advancement?”

President-Elect Barack Obama, in a marked difference from President Bush, campaigned for, and strongly supports, freeing up hundreds of millions of federal dollars for embryonic stem cell research.

Umm.... except for the fact that the federal government's National Institutes of Health has spent about $40 million a year on human embryonic stem cell research for the last number of years. Obama will more than likely support allowing the NIH to fund human embryonic stem cell research on cell lines created after 2001 but I doubt they’ll be spending hundreds of millions on that small sliver of the pluripotent stem cell research pie.

Because of Proposal 2, Michigan’s great institutions can now compete for those funds, which will accelerate the pursuit for cures and treatments to afflictions such as Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, juvenile diabetes, sickle cell anemia and spinal cord injuries.

Except that Michigan researchers have already been competing for federal human embryonic stem cell funding. They even received a sizeable, multi-year federal grant in 2003.

Planned Parenthood double charging for services?

Ahhh.... Planned Parenthood’s abortion work is so thorough they think they might as well charge twice. From the AbortionBlogger, who recently had an RU-486 abortion,

I just got a bill from my insurance company.

Planned Parenthood sent them a bill FOR OVER $1,000. They want me to pay $200.

Since I already payed for my abortion, I believe this means they charged me once and my insurance company TWICE.

When she goes in for her follow-up appointment here’s the response she gets when she brings the issue up.

Yea, you guys sent a $1,000+ bill to my insurance company even though I already payed for the abortion when I was here (and it was $525, not $1000+). Why? Can you un-do that?" but they pretty quickly let me know that this wasn't their problem, and gave me the number to the billing office. I'll tackle that problem later because I have a cold, and am just not feeling up for it.

She also writes,

I thought about my 2 minute doctor appointment that I had waited several hours for, and was generally dissatisfied. I had been given too much time to worry about my "not pregnancy" to just accept that all was fine. And I was still supremely cranky about the insurance mess up, and the combination made me feel generally distrustful of the clinic. So I asked for a copy of the ultrasound, filled out the necessary paperwork to get copies released to me, and left.

Life Links 12/29/08

The Telegraph has an article on Lexie Slater-Folksman, a child who survived after being born at 23 weeks. Abortion is legal in the UK through the 24th week. Sarah Slater, the baby’s mother, is quoted as saying,

“Some mothers-to-be would be able to legally terminate their pregnancy at 23 weeks - yet my Lexie is living proof babies can survive being born so prematurely.

"I never realised a baby would be so well developed at 23 weeks and they do have a chance life. My Lexie is living proof the abortion limit should be lowered.”

Canada’s National Post has a story on frozen embryos which has a number of quotes from fertility doctors regarding the feelings of parents who store their embryonic children.

Also from up north, Rod Bruinooge, the recently elected chair of the Parliamentary Pro-Life Caucus, writes, “Why I am pro-life.”

Most Canadians would agree that you should not be able to remove your kidney and sell it on eBay to the highest bidder. Although it's your body and your kidney, this would not only be a poor bioethical choice, but it is in fact illegal under our laws.

Most Canadians would also agree that an unborn child in the ninth month of gestation, moments away from delivery, should not be eligible for an elective abortion. However, regardless of the fact that this would be an extremely poor bioethical choice, it is in fact legal. As such, Canada has far greater protections for human kidneys than we do for human fetuses.

David Bass describes how the agenda of pro-choice organizations, entitled "Advancing Reproductive Rights and Health in a New Administration" and posted on President-elect Barack Obama’s transition web site, would provide some “hefty handouts” to pro-choice groups in this time of financial uncertainty.

Life Links 12/23/08

Another breakthrough using induced pluripotent stem cells.

A team led by neuroscientist Clive Svendsen used the new stem cells to create a model of spinal muscular atrophy, the most common genetic cause of infant mortality. Researchers at Harvard University and elsewhere have used the cells to simulate other diseases, but Svendsen is the first to do so and show how a disease process works, said a prominent scientist in the field.

In the Weekly Standard, Wesley Smith writes about a district court ruling to legalize assisted suicide in Montana.

Still, McCarter wasn't totally insensitive to the charge that she--like too many judges--would have courts settle all the controversial social questions rather than the people through the democratic process. She just saw no reason to wait for the political branches of government to recognize that the time had come to legalize assisted suicide. "Here, the Court is simply the first in line to deal with the issue," she wrote, "followed by the legislature to implement the right. Thus, both the courts and the legislature are involved."

In a post on the new HHS conscience rules, Jill at Feministe has this unintentionally hilarious quote,

Can you imagine if a pro-choice group decided it just wasn’t going to tell women about the options of birth and adoption? And if instead, it gave women scare-tactic, inaccurate propaganda about how adoption is exploitative and will leave you miserable, and how childbirth is directly linked to depression, and how there is clearly One Best Choice? People would (rightly) throw a fit.

Yes, just imagine if a pro-choice organization did everything it could to sell women on abortion and provided no real services to women who choose to raise the child or choose adoption. And then imagine this organization gets hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars and is the largest abortion provider in America.

Too bad we don't have to imagine.