in this issue:
adolescents: UNDIAGNOSED STDs
bush watch: PRO-ABORT KUDOS TO BUSH
cloning, stem cells and compromise: ACTION, CLONING BILLS NOT BANS, EMBRYONIC STEM CELLS
help wanted: MINNESOTA
hospice patients’ alliance: MONITORING KILLING
morning-after abortion pills: SALON.COM LIES
personhood: HUMAN EMBRYOS, ITALIAN PARLIAMENT
politics: FLIP BENHAM COMMENTARY ON INCREMENTALISM
surgeon general: SATCHER and SEX EDUCATION
web news: MARK PICKUP
zinger: TIMELY OBSERVATION
reflection for prayer: 2 TIMOTHY
adolescents
UNDIAGNOSED STDS: Recent studies indicate that “undiagnosed sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) were found in 18% of teenage girls who provided vaginal samples they collected themselves during a 2-year study.” The students involved were between the ages of 15 and 19.
(Reading: “Study Found Nearly 1 in 5 Teenage Girls Have an Undiagnosed STD,” Medscape Wire, 6/11/01, registration required)
bush watch
PRO-ABORT KUDOS TO BUSH: The U.S. Committee for the United Nations Population Fund congratulates President Bush in a full-page ad in the Washington Times on 6/25/01. The reason is the $25 million funding request earmarked for the group in the Bush Budget.
(Reading: for background on the US committee, see U.S. Committee for the United Nations Population Fund)
cloning
MORE OPPOSITION: The current issue of Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology published an article worthy of note: “Cloning: Past, Present and the Exciting Future,” by Marie A. DiBerardino. And there is the official FASEB statement: “From FASEB’s perspective, cloning human beings is an irresponsible and misguided act.”
cloning, stem cells and compromise
ACTION: The Do No Harm Coalition provides the public with an opportunity to sign a petition aimed at banning federal funding of human embryonic stem cell research; the more direct approach involves communicating with “>President Bush, Secretary of Health and Human Services “>Tommy Thompson, “>Senator Orrin Hatch, “>Senator Sam Brownback, “>Senator John McCain, “>Senator Trent Lott, asserting that a human being is a person at conception/fertilization and that one may NEVER kill one person, even if the intent is to help another person.
COMMENT: How has such a simple, basic moral principle, based on scientific fact and common sense, evaded so many?
CLONING BILLS NOT BANS: The American Bioethics Advisory Commission has advised Senator Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) in a letter, and Congressman Dave Weldon (R-Fla.) during a meeting that the two bills, S. 790 and HR 1644 are “unacceptable in its present form due to significant loopholes. The current legislation does not ban all methods of cloning, e.g., embryo/blastomere splitting, parthenogenesis, etc. or the cloning of human germ cells from living or dead human cadavers.” For background on the problems inherent in inaccurate scientific language, see “Cloning: When Word Games Kill.”
EMBRYONIC STEM CELLS: Confusion reigns in the Congress, and subsequently provides the White House with reason to compromise regarding the question of using stem cells taken from human embryonic persons, resulting in the death of those persons. Unanswered is the question pro-life scientists and ethicists have insisting on asking: “Since the acquisition of a human embryonic stem cell requires the human embryo to become the victim, why doesn’t the current Congressional ban on human embryo research at government expense cover the embryonic stem cell problem too?” No one has the answer. Clearly, the Bush Administration must act to ban all such research, regardless of the source of funding. The reason, which has escaped the politicians thus far, is this: a human embryo is a human being, a human person at conception/fertilization. The destruction of that person is direct killing, it is abortion, it is immoral, and it is a crime.
(Reading: “Medical Potentialities Aren’t Worth Abandoning Scruples,” 6/25/01, Maggie Gallagher; “Bush Mulls Life, Stem Cell Research,” Associated Press, 6/28/01; “Americans Support Stem Cell Research,” Associated Press, 6/26/01)
(Background: “Life for Sale? Embryo Research: Profit vs. Ethics?” The Public I; background information with accurate scientific citations: “Human Embryo Stem Cell Research: Are Official Positions Based on Scientific Fraud?” by Dianne Irving, Ph.D.)
help wanted
MINNESOTA: Human Life Alliance announced an opening for the position of director of campus outreach. Please contact the “>director.
hospice patients’ alliance
MONITORING KILLING: For updates on the acts of euthanasia that are occurring in hospice locations nationwide, see Hospice Patients Alliance. They are currently pursuing a nationwide letter writing campaign to protest the killings.
morning-after abortion pills
SALON.COM LIES: Janelle Brown reports, “If anti-abortion forces succeed in demonizing the morning-after-pill just as it promises to become more widespread, the nation’s great potential weapon against abortion could once again slip into oblivion.” She says the pills prevent “implantation of an egg that has been fertilized.”
COMMENT: And what demon is it who describes chemical assault on an embryonic person as a non-abortion? The morning-after regimen aborts persons whose lives begin at conception/fertilization. Further, a new human being is not a “fertilized egg,” she is a human embryo, a zygote.
(Reading: “High Noon for the Morning-After Pill,” Salon, 6/20/01)
personhood
HUMAN EMBRYOS: In a Crisis magazine article, Stacy Mattingly makes two statements: human embryonic stem cell research is “the most morally problematic to date of all the new reproductive technologies because it involves the destruction of the embryos” and, citing the Vatican document Donum Vitae’s description of in vitro fertilization technologies as “morally illicit,” Mattingly writes, “Even when used with the best of intentions — helping infertile women to conceive — it almost always results in the destruction of embryos.”
COMMENT: A human embryo is a human being who is a person at conception/fertilization. The destruction of an innocent person is always morally problematic because his death is always the result. This is why Pope John Paul II describes such brutal acts as intrinsically evil.
(Reading: “Brave New Genetic World,” Crisis, 4/01; also see follow-up article by Dianne Irving, Ph.D., in the next issue: “The Bioethics Mess,” Crisis, 5/01)
ITALIAN PARLIAMENT: Rocco Buttiglione, Minister for European Affairs in Italian Prime Minister Berlusconi’s government, supports a legislative proposal aimed at changing Article 1 of the Italian civil code. The proposal would recognize “the juridical personality of the fetus” and the embryo by recognizing the right to life of a human embryo at conception/fertilization. Buttiglione said by such a proposal becoming law, the embryo’s right to life “cannot be questioned by multinationals’ interest in genetic manipulation.”
(Reading: “Italian Right and Left Agree on Status for Human Embryo,” Zenit News, 6/21/01)
FLIP BENHAM COMMENTARY: “Incrementalism: A Lie from the Pit of Hell.”
politics
FLIP BENHAM COMMENTARY: “Incrementalism: A Lie from the Pit of Hell.”
surgeon general
SATCHER and SEX EDUCATION: John R. Diggs, M.D. says, “President Bush’s recorded support for abstinence-until-marriage education rather than sex education has frightened sex educators into soliciting an attack on abstinence-until-marriage from the Office of the Surgeon General.” But Stop Planned Parenthood National Director Edward Szymkowiak suggests that Bush replace Satcher immediately based on the “Call to Action” which Satcher’s office prepared, and which has been lauded by Planned Parenthood.
(Reading: “Clinton Report for the Bush Years,” “>Abstinence Clearinghouse e-mail alert, 6/29/01; “Bush Must Replace Satcher,” STOPP, 6/29/01; “Sexuality Report Glance,” Associated Press, 6/28/01; for copies of the documents issued by the surgeon general, in pdf format, contact /”>David Gaines)
web news
MARK PICKUP: You may have missed his compelling presentation at the First Annual Celebration of Life World Family Conference, but you can watch the video. Ask for “To Be or Not to Be — the Human Family (A Disabled Man’s Plea). The price is $24.95 (includes shipping and handling). Write Human Life Matters.com, 4417-51 Street, Beaumont, AB T4X 1C8, Canada.
zinger
TIMELY OBSERVATION: “There has emerged a phenomenon unknown to antiquity that permeates our modern society so completely that its ubiquity scarcely leaves us any room to see it at all: the prohibition of questioning … We are confronted here with persons who know that, and why, their opinions cannot stand up under critical analysis and who therefore make the prohibition of the examination of their premises part of their dogma … The questions of the ‘individual man’ are cut off by the ukase of the speculator who will not permit his construct to be disturbed.”
COMMENT: Sound familiar, President Bush? Secretary Thompson? Senator Hatch? Et cetera, et cetera…
(Reading: Eric Voeglin, “Science, Politics and Gnosticism,” 1968)
reflection for prayer
2 TIMOTHY 2:22-26:
Pursue integrity, faith, love, and peace, along with those who call on the Lord in purity of heart. Have nothing to do with senseless, ignorant disputations. As you well know, they only breed quarrels, and the servant of the Lord must not be quarrelsome, but must be kindly toward all, he must be an apt teacher, patiently and gently correcting those who contradict him, in the hope always that God will enable them to repent and know the truth. Thus, taken captive by God to do his will, they shall escape the devil’s grasp.