action alert
The National Institutes of Health has extended the public comment period for its proposed guidelines for stem cell research-guidelines that would allow researchers to kill living human embryos for research purposes. The NIH will now accept your comments through February 22. Send your response to:
Stem Cell Guidelines
NIH Office of Science Policy
1 Center Drive
Building 1, Room 218
Bethesda, MD 20892
Fax: 301-402-0280
E-mail: “>
For information on what to say in your comments, or additional background on the nature of destructive embryonic research involving stem cells see the following papers by Dianne Irving, Ph.D.: Human embryonic stem cell research and When do human beings begin?; also see the Coalition of Americans for Research Ethics. American Life League and the American Bioethics Advisory Commission have responded to the NIH draft.
In addition, Dr. Joel Brind suggests, “Since Feb. 14 is Valentine’s Day, how about a campaign for pro-lifers to send Valentine’s Day cards to the thousands of children frozen in suspended animation in freezers around the country, care of the NIH?” These are children whose lives would be at risk if the proposed guidelines are adopted. Send your cards to the address above.
The NIH draft guidelines are available online.
chemical (medical) abortion
MORNING AFTER PILL: Attorney Nathan Coates, who is defending Colorado Governor Bill Owens in a suit Planned Parenthood has filed against the state’s new parental notice law, says the governor “would not consider it a violation for doctors to give a minor a pill that could kill a fertilized egg to prevent pregnancy.”
COMMENT: The medical evidence confirms that killing the newly conceived baby is abortion. Killing the baby does not “prevent pregnancy,” but rather destroys the evidence.
(Reading: “Morning-After Pill Use for Minors OK’d,” Denver Post, 1/14/00; for detailed information on the mode of action of emergency contraception see Morning After Pill)
century in review: congress
CORRECTION: Communique (1/6/00) misconstrued a Planned Parenthood report on Congressional action dealing with foreign aid dollars earmarked for abortion. We are advised, “The president was not able to waive the pro-life conditions in their entirety; rather, he may only give $15 million (out of $385 million – or four percent) to foreign organizations that perform or lobby for abortion in other countries. If he did give any of the $15 million to pro-abortion groups, then the population control budget of $385 million is reduced by $12.5 million (three percent), which is in turn transferred to the child survival account for high impact, direct and measurable child survival efforts.”
(Reading: e-mail to communique from Maggie Wynne, 1/6/00)
congress
SCHUMER AMENDMENT: GOP Senate leader Trent Lott has agreed to a bankruptcy bill amendment that would “bar the discharge of debts related to judgments against abortion clinic protesters.”
(Reading: “Abortion Protestors: GOP Leaders Allow Schumer’s Amendment to Bankruptcy Bill,” CongressDaily/AM, 1/25/00; CongressDaily is a subscription-only publication)
health care
HEALTHY PEOPLE 2010: U.S. Surgeon General David Satcher has encouraged AMA delegates to join him in promoting his new program. A major focus of the project is “quality of life,” reportedly based on demographic changes in America.
COMMENT: Could this mean government-sanctioned euthanasia for those with poor quality of life?
(Reading: “Dr. Satcher Courts AMA for 2010 Plan,” American Medical News, 12/27/99, pp. 26-27; also see information on Healthy People 2010)
march of dimes
BIRTH DEFECT SURVEILLANCE: The Pennsylvania March of Dimes is promoting a state bill that would mandate reporting of conditions relating to birth defects, not only at birth but whenever such problems are detected. The proposed law cites “average lifetime medical care costs” as a reason for cutting down on birth defects. The bill proposes developing “prevention education and advocacy strategies for reducing the incidence of birth defects.”
COMMENT: With the March of Dimes history of eugenics, Pennsylvanians should be concerned.
(Reading: “March of Dimes Calls for Creation of a Statewide Birth Defects Surveillance System,” March of Dimes press release, 1/21/00; Pennsylvania House Bill #1625; for background on the March of Dimes and eugenics, see Eugenics: Then and Now)
nutrition and hydration
ALZHEIMER’S: Dr. Muriel Gillick writes that it may be time for physicians to rethink the role of tube feeding for those patients with advanced Alzheimer’s disease “and other types of dementia.” She argues that “they have lost the capacity to have relationships with other people” and that family and friends need to make “painful decisions about limiting care.”
COMMENT: And who thought they would stop at starving PVS patients to death?
(Reading: “Rethinking the Role of Tube Feeding in Patients with Advanced Dementia,” The New England Journal of Medicine, 1/20/00, pp. 206-210)
organ transplant
GOLD? Reporting on the AMA delegate debate over organ transplantation Stephanie Stapleton quotes George Fisher, M.D.: “While the practical differences have to be overcome, every policy should be measured against a gold standard of whether it will increase donation.”
(Reading: “Transplant Debate Starts with Organ Procurement,” American Medical News, 12/27/99, pp. 29, 31)
persistent vegetative state
FLORIDA: Terri Schiavo’s husband Michael is at odds with her parents over whether or not the 36-year-old woman, currently in a persistent vegetative state, should be denied nutrition and hydration. She has been in a coma-like state for ten years. Her parents claim that Terri “cries, laughs, understands what is happening around her, and looks their way when they enter her nursing home room.”
(Action: Write to Judge George Greer, Clearwater Courthouse, 315 Court St., Clearwater, FL 33756, and encourage him to choose life for Terri Schiavo.)
(Reading: “Family Battles over Comatose Woman,” 1/26/00)
OKLAHOMA: A woman who had been in a vegetative state for two years has recited all nine of her social security number digits to a “persistent nurse’s technician.”
(Reading: “N.C. Woman’s I.D. Finally Discovered,” 1/19/00, Associated Press)
personhood
KANSAS: House Resolution 6006 finds that a human being – a person – exists at conception/fertilization. The bill would be a direct challenge to any abortion that occurs at any point after a human being’s life begins and was introduced January 20, 2000.
(Reading: Text of HR 6006)
physician-assisted suicide
ETHICAL? Georgetown University bioethicist Tom Beauchamp writes, “The refusal of nutrition and hydration appears to encounter no legal or moral problems in many countries, despite the fact that there is no clear distinction between starving oneself to death and suicide or between a physician’s starving a patient to death at the patient’s request and physician-assisted suicide.” He sees no difference between euthanasia and the provision of better palliative care because such questions are “about increased liberty, not about killing and letting die.”
(Reading: “The Medical Ethics of Physician-Assisted Suicide,” Journal of Medical Ethics, 12/99, pp. 437-439)
politics
PRESIDENTIAL HOPEFULS: Colleen Parro writes, “While there are some differences in style and substance among them, the bottom line is that Bauer, Forbes and Keyes have a winning message and it is our message and it is the message that American moms and dads want to hear.”
(Republican National Coalition for Life FaxNotes, 1/28/00)
reproductive technology
MORAL CONCERNS? Dr. Mark Evans defends new technologies and says, “When you come up with something radically new, it’s going to please some people, offend some others, and most of the people in the middle are going to try to figure out, ‘OK, how does this actually affect me?’ It’s going to take a while.” And in New York state, where public policy on the matter is at issue, the New York State Task Force on Life and the Law says, of the embryonic baby, “regardless of whether embryos are persons, the embryo’s status as a ‘potent symbol of human life’ entitles it to special respect.”
(Reading: “Reproductive Technologies Outpacing Ethical Consideration,” American Medical News, 1/17/00; “Developing Public Policy on Assisted Reproductive Technologies: Reflections on the Work of the New York State Task Force on Life and the Law,” Fertility and Sterility>, 1/00, pp. 21-23)
united nations
SEE CHANGE: Catholics for a Free Choice has mounted a campaign against the continued presence of the Vatican as an independent state at United Nations meetings. There are currently an alleged 400 organizations joining with CFFC. For background on the group see See Change; for ongoing information from pro-life strategists at the U.N. see Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute)
web news
VACCINES AND ABORTED BABY CELLS: Excellent material and background information that is fully documented is available from Karin Schumacher. The two web sites dealing with this topic are National Vaccine Information Center and Vaccine Information and Awareness.
wrongful birth
OHIO: The parents of a six-year-old girl have asked, on behalf of their daughter, for agreement to sue doctors “for allegedly not revealing to them that she would be born with birth defects.”
COMMENT: Essentially the little girl would be arguing that her parents had every right to abort her if only they had known that she was going to be imperfect.
(Reading: “Disabled Child’s Case: Wrongful Life?” Cincinnati Enquirer, 1/27/00; “Wrongful Birth Suit Uncharted Territory,” Cincinnati Enquirer, 1/28/00)
reflection for prayer
For meditation the ear of the soul is more important than the tongue: St. Paul tells us that faith comes from listening. (Most people make the same mistake with God that they do with their friends: they do all the talking.) God has things to tell us which will enlighten us–we must wait for Him to speak. No one would rush into a physician’s office, rattle off all the symptoms, and then dash away without waiting for a diagnosis. It is every bit as stupid to ring God’s doorbell and then run away. The Lord hears us more readily than we suspect; it is our listening to Him that needs to be improved.”
“Lift Up Your Heart”
Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen
(from “Mornings with Fulton Sheen”)