in this issue:
hot button issues: COLLEGE PROTEST / STANFORD CLONING
abortion: ARIZONA
activism: FETAL DEVELOPMENT / MICHIGAN
birth control coverage: DOW JONES EMPLOYEES
catholic universities: HERPES STUDY / LINKS TO PLANNED PARENTHOOD
congress: 2003 “PRO LIFE” AGENDA
culture of death: ILLINOIS
eugenics: CLONING
fetal tissue: USELESS AND DANGEROUS
morning-after abortion: FDA / MIFEPRISTONE or LEVONORGESTREL
population elimination: AUDUBON SOCIETY
vaccines: CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY REFUSES EXEMPTION
violence ? infant homicide: RATE ESCALATING
zinger: PRO FISH LIFE
reflection for prayer: THOMAS DROLESKEY (QUOTING POPE LEO XIII)
commentary: O’REILLY PART II
reflection for prayer: ISAIAH 26:7-8
hot button issues
COLLEGE PROTEST: “We have no choice but to protest when a Christian college brings in a musician such as Aimee Mann who supports abortion,” said Sara McKalips, assistant director of Rock For Life (a project of American Life League) and recent graduate of Messiah College, near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
(Reading: “Rock for Life to protest pro-abortion musician performing at Christian college,” Rock for Life news release, 12/12/02)
STANFORD CLONING: “Dr. Irving Weissman’s claim that somatic cell nuclear transfer is not human cloning is simply false,” said Father Joseph Howard, director of the American Bioethics Advisory Commission (a project of American Life League).
(Reading: “Stanford cloning statements questionable,” American Bioethics Advisory Commission news release, 12/12/02)
abortion
ARIZONA: The Arizona Supreme Court recently agreed with abortionists “that if a state program for the poor pays for any abortions, then it must fund all indigent abortions performed in then name of health.” As the Republican National Coalition for Life notes, “The Arizona law was on the books for nineteen years before the abortionists challenged it and the activist judges rewrote it. This decision illustrates the folly of trying to be pro-life with exceptions.”
(Reading: “Arizona: The exception makes the rule,” Republican National Coalition for Life FaxNotes, 12/3/02; “Abortion contortions,” Slate, 12/2/02)
activism
FETAL DEVELOPMENT: The set of educational posters, “Little One Sweet,” is available from Heritage House ’76. The set is useful in classroom settings in public and private schools. Search for poster title. $35.00 per set.
MICHIGAN: Incoming governor Jennifer Granholm will be inaugurated Jan. 1. An interfaith prayer service is being that day for her and other politicians at St. Mary’s Cathedral in Lansing, Michigan. Cardinal Adam Maida is the reported leader of the service.
(Reading: “Pre-inauguration Mass cancelled; Lansing diocese interfaith prayer service to be held prior to Jennifer Granholm’s inauguration — your urgent response needed,” Stop Granholm, 12/2/02)
birth control coverage
DOW JONES EMPLOYEES: A joint statement issued by Dow Jones & Co., Independent Association of Publishers’ Employees, CWA Local 1096, the United States Equal Opportunity Commission and Planned Parenthood Federation of America announced the settlement in a lawsuit brought by three3 female employees on the grounds that the company was discriminating against women by not covering birth control in its health insurance policies.
(Reading: “Dow Jones employees to receive insurance coverage for contraceptives under settlement terms,” Kaiser Daily Reproductive Health Report, 12/6/02)
catholic universities
HERPES STUDY: St. Louis University is said to be participating in a $37 million study of a new herpes vaccine. The trouble, according to Dr. William Burke, is that the persons who volunteer to be subjects in the study must agree “to repeatedly perform acts that are considered seriously immoral by the Catholic university that sponsors the experiment. This will surely scandalize and seem hypocritical to faithful Catholics.”
The Cardinal Newman Society plans to investigate.
(Reading: “Questionable ethics in herpes vaccine trial,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 12/9/02)
LINKS TO PLANNED PARENTHOOD: LifeSite has broken the news that web sites for seven major Catholic universities provide information about Planned Parenthood, links to the groups and offers of internships with the group. The seven are DePaul University, Georgetown University, Loyola University (Chicago), Santa Clara University, Seattle University, Boston College and John Carroll University. After an earlier LifeSite report, San Francisco University removed a similar link from its web site.
(Reading: “Seven more ‘Catholic’ universities found promoting Planned Parenthood,” LifeSite Daily News, 12/9/02)
congress
2003 ‘PRO-LIFE’ AGENDA: Senator Trent Lott claims the Bush Administration will support:
- the partial birth abortion bill containing an exception,
- the Unborn Victims of Violence Act,
- the Child Custody Protection Act,
- increased funds for abstinence education and
- judicial nominees favoring limitations on abortion.
(Reading: “President Bush, Republican Controlled Congress plan to limit abortion access, increase abstinence-only education funding in coming years,” Kaiser Daily Reproductive Health Report, 11/25/02)
culture of death
ILLINOIS: Elizabeth Ehlert has been convicted twice of murdering her newborn daughter, but on both occasions a higher court judge has reversed the decisions claiming, in the most recent reversal, that there was not “sufficient evidence that her daughter was actually alive when delivered at home in 1990? The court ruled at the time (1995) the prosecution was allowed to present ‘irrelevant and highly prejudicial’ evidence that Ehlert had had two abortions.”
(Reading: “Mother’s second murder conviction also overturned,” Daily Herald, 11/20/02)
eugenics
CLONING: University of Dayton professor Therese Lysaught analyzes the culture: “Hubris may lead some to create a subcategory of humans — exploited, enslaved and destroyed for the convenience and profit of a few.”
(Reading: “The new eugenics: cloning and beyond,” Arlington Catholic Herald, 10/31/02)
fetal tissue
USELESS AND DANGEROUS: A recent study conducted at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York finds that 13 of 23 patients receiving transplants of tissue derived from aborted babies suffered “severe uncontrollable movements.”
(Reading: “Aborted fetal tissue useless and dangerous as Parkinson’s treatment,” LifeSite Daily News, 12/3/02)
morning-after abortion
FDA: Consumer ads for the so-called emergency contraceptive Plan-B came under fire from the FDA for not making it clear that the pill regiment is most effective when used “as soon as possible.”
(Reading: “FDA finds day after contraceptive ads inaccurate,” Ad Age, 11/27/02)
MIFEPRISTONE or LEVONORGESTREL: If taken within FIVE days of “unprotected” intercourse, it is claimed that 10 mg dose of mifepristone, two .75 mg doses of levonorgestrel or a single 1.5 mg dose of levonorgestrel are efficacious in “preventing” pregnancy. For the purposes of this study, clinical pregnancy is defined as commencing at implantation, not when pregnancy actually does begin at conception/fertilization (see definitions).
(Reading: “Low dose mifepristone and two regimens of levonorgestrel for emergency contraception: a WHO multicentre randomised trial,” The Lancet, 12/7/02, pp. 1803-1810)
population elimination
AUDUBON SOCIETY: Legislative alerts from the group focus attention on demanding increased funding for international family planning programs.
(Reading: “We need your help to build Congressional support for family planning,” National Audubon Society legislative alert, 10/11/02)
vaccines
CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY REFUSES EXEMPTION: Duquesne University is refusing to allow a student’s valid state religious exemption to the MMR vaccine that uses aborted fetal cell lines. The Catholic University is ignoring the family’s right to follow moral conscience. This talented, bright, freshman faces losing her spring enrollment and her scholarship. Please contact President Charles Dougherty’s office at Duquesne University, 600 Forbes Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA 15282; phone: 412 396-6000 or 800 456-0590; fax: 412 396-5811.
(Reading: information provided by Children of God for Life)
violence ? infant homicide
RATE ESCALATING: “A new study shows that in 2000, for every 100,000 babies born in the United States, roughly nine of them were murdered — up from 8.4 per 100,000 in 1990 and 4.3 in 1970.”
(Reading: “Infant murder rate increases,” Family News in Focus, 12/6/02)
zinger
PRO FISH LIFE: Some scientists are concerned that when the synthetic-estrogen contraceptive patch is thrown away, it may cause a risk for wildlife. Joakim Larsson of Goteborg University in Sweden calculates that “just a single patch flushed every 3 days into the catchments of a Swedish sewage plant serving 3,500 people would release enough hormone to impair fish downstream.”
COMMENT: The patch is, of course, abortifacient. That fact is disregarded even though human persons die.
(Reading: “Contraceptive-patch worry,” Science News, 10/19/92, p. 245, subscribers only)
reflection for prayer
THOMAS DROLESKEY (QUOTING POPE LEO XIII): We must, as Pope Leo XIII noted in Immortale Dei and Sapientiae Christianae, make use of the civil institutions of government as honestly as we can to plant the seeds for the conversion of hearts and minds to the true Faith, the fundamental precondition for the subordination of men and their laws to the primacy of the Divine positive law and the natural law. As Pope Leo XIII noted in Sapientiae Christianae: “The chief elements of this duty consist in professing openly and unflinchingly the Catholic doctrine, and in propagating it to the utmost of our power. For, as is often said with the greatest truth, there is nothing so hurtful to Christian wisdom as that it should not be known, since it possesses, when loyally received, inherent power to drive away error. So soon as Catholic truth is apprehended by a simple and unprejudiced soul, reason yields assent.”
(Reading: “Of Slaves and Babies,” Seattle Catholic, 12/5/02)
commentary
O’REILLY PART II: It seems that Fox News Channel talk show host Bill O’Reilly has had problems with human embryology for some time. The following is a commentary written on March 29, 2001 in response to the O’Reilly-ism — “a fetus is a potential human being.”
Response to O’Reilly: The O’Reilly Fudge Factor
by Dianne N. Irving, M.A., Ph.D.
Seems conservative stalwart Bill O’Reilly is either frightfully confused, or fudging his facts. Last Friday evening (3/23/01), O’Reilly graciously read to his TV audience some letters received by him from some of his viewers.
One such viewer, Amy Nicholls, from Mansfield, Louisiana, quipped: “Mr. O’Reilly, I am extremely disappointed that you referred to the fetus as ‘a potential human being.’ They are in fact already human.”
To which O’Reilly responded with a straight face: “Ms. Nicholls, I respect your BELIEF, but that is not how the SUPREME COURT does it, and I have to deal with the law here. The abortion discussion will never be advanced until people find common ground. I used the term ‘potential human being’ BECAUSE THAT IS INDISPUTABLE. I hope you understand what I’m trying to do here” [emphases mine].
Well, now, it is a bit difficult to honestly understand just what Mr. O’Reilly IS trying to do here. Really confusing, but not to fear, Ms. Nicholls. Despite the best efforts of such conservative stalwarts as Bill O’Reilly, you are not going nuts, and the “expert” advice given freely here by Mr. O’Reilly to you and to his TV audience is NOT “indisputable”, to put it mildly. Indeed it is not a “belief” but an objective scientific fact that the preborn human fetus IS ALREADY A HUMAN BEING, and has been so since fertilization in his mother’s fallopian tubes (or, with IF, since fertilization in the petri dish). Quoting from several human embryology textbooks, agreed to by a 100% consensus of human embryologists internationally:
BRUCE M. CARLSON, Human Embryology and Developmental Biology (St. Louis, MO: Mosby, 1994): “Human pregnancy begins with the fusion of an egg and a sperm.” (p. 3); ” … finally, the fertilized egg, now properly called an embryo, must make its way into the uterus ….” (p. 3).
KEITH MOORE AND T.V.N. PERSAUD, The Developing Human: Clinically Oriented Embryology (6th ed. only) (Philadelphia: W.B. Saunders Company, 1998): “Human development is a continuous process that begins when an oocyte (ovum) from a female is fertilized by a sperm (or spermatozoon) from a male. (p. 2); ibid.: … but the embryo begins to develop as soon as the oocyte is fertilized. (p. 2); ibid.: Zygote: this cell results from the union of an oocyte and a sperm. A zygote is the beginning of a new human being (i.e., an embryo). (p. 2); ibid.: Human development begins at fertilization, the process during which a male gamete or sperm … unites with a female gamete or oocyte … to form a single cell called a zygote. This highly specialized, totipotent cell marks the beginning of each of us as a unique individual.” (p. 18).
WILLIAM J. LARSEN, Human Embryology (New York: Churchill Livingstone, 1997): “In this text, we begin our description of the developing human with the formation and differentiation of the male and female sex cells or gametes, which will unite at fertilization to initiate the embryonic development of a new individual. … Fertilization takes place in the oviduct … resulting in the formation of a zygote containing a single diploid nucleus. Embryonic development is considered to begin at this point. (p. 1); ibid.: This moment of zygote formation may be taken as the beginning or zero time point of embryonic development.” (p. 17);
RONAN O’RAHILLY AND FABIOLA MULLER, Human Embryology & Teratology (New York: Wiley-Liss, 1994): “Fertilization is an important landmark because, under ordinary circumstances, a new, genetically distinct human organism is thereby formed. (p. 5); ibid.: Fertilization is the procession of events that begins when a spermatozoon makes contact with a secondary oocyte or its investments … (p. 19); ibid.: The zygote … is a unicellular embryo.” (p. 19); ibid: “The ill-defined and inaccurate term pre-embryo, which includes the embryonic disc, is said either to end with the appearance of the primitive streak or … to include neurulation. The term is not used in this book.” (p. 55).”
How really quaint for O’Reilly to depend for his belief on the Supreme Court’s “human embryology” in this matter. After all, it is JUST a question of LAW, isn’t it??? If the Supreme Court says the fetus is “just a potential human being,” then it IS just a “potential human being,” right? End of discussion. And if the Supreme Court said that water boils at 5 degrees Fahrenheit, well, then, that IS when water boils, right? And if by “common ground” O’Reilly means that we must all BELIEVE that water boils at 5 degrees Fahrenheit, then by golly, LET’S DO IT! All together now — one, two, three:
“We all believe that water boils at 5 degrees Fahrenheit!”
Phew. I feel much better now already. At least we are all on the same page — “common ground,” you know. In the Supreme Court and Bill O’Reilly we trust. Right? Those involved in the abortion “discussion” will never find “common ground” as long as the objective scientific facts of human embryology are ignored, fudged or deconstructed for dubious ends.
I might add that both I and Dr. C. Ward Kischer (who has been teaching human embryology for over 30 years now) have been trying to contact Bill O’Reilly for months now so that we could “discuss” this “common ground” with him. There are quite a number of similar “fudgings” O’Reilly has stated on his programs in “discussing” human embryonic stem cell research, human cloning, etc. He has returned all e-mails, phone calls, letters, and various other efforts to “find a common ground” with reality or discuss his fudgings. He refuses to be contacted. Hmmmmmmmmmm. Well, at least he can just go to his local public library and find out the indisputable scientific facts in a good human embryology textbook. I recommend it.
reflection for prayer
ISAIAH 26:7-8: The path of the upright man is straight, you smooth the way of the upright. Following the path of your judgments, we hope in you, Yahweh, your name, your memory are all my soul desires.