in this issue:
hot button issues: PLANNED PARENTHOOD / SIGN THE PETITION / SOUTH DAKOTA / STEM CELL RESEARCH / WORK AT ALL
abortion: PINE RIDGE RESERVATION
culture of death: BABY SLAYINGS
ethics: DUBIOUS JUSTIFICATION FOR HUMAN CLONING
euthanasia: KEVORKIAN SORRY? / NEVADA / NEW HAMPSHIRE
personhood: RIGHT TO LIFE ACT
stem cell research / ethical: HAIR FOLLICLE / HUMAN HEART / KANSAS / TREATING INCONTINENCE
stem cell research / unethical: WISCONSIN
reflection for prayer: VOCATION
hot button issues
PLANNED PARENTHOOD: A new clinic targeting upscale suburbanites opened this week in a St. Paul, Minnesota suburb. ALL’s Jim Sedlak said the facility “will refuse to provide services for the poor.” He said Planned Parenthood is using government subsidies “to underwrite the opening of this upscale clinic that has one purpose – to make money.” The new location will not offer surgical abortions.
(Reading: “Planned Parenthood uses tax dollars to open posh clinic,” American Life League news release, 5/31/06)
SIGN THE PETITION: Stop the flow of your tax dollars to Planned Parenthood! Planned Parenthood received more than $265 million from federal, state and local government sources in its most recently reported fiscal year. Please sign American Life League’s online petition and forward the link to others.
SOUTH DAKOTA: Opponents of South Dakota’s law banning medical and surgical abortions have filed petitions, seeking a referendum to overturn the legislation. American Life League’s Judie Brown said, “Despite these abortion proponents’ efforts to undermine the state’s elected legislature and governor, South Dakotans stand strongly behind this law that will save an untold number of lives.”
(Reading: “South Dakotans will protect strong new abortion law,” American Life League news release, 5/30/06)
STEM CELL RESEARCH: Senator Bill Frist has promised debate on the stem cell bills currently before Congress, including the Santorum/Specter bill (SB 2754), which supports questionable research commonly referred to as Altered Nuclear Transfer. For a moral analysis of the problems with this technique, see “Concerns about the moral implications” from American Life League.
WORK AT ALL: American Life League currently has an opening for an editorial associate at ALL’s national headquarters in Virginia. Details are posted online.
abortion
PINE RIDGE RESERVATION: The Oglala Sioux tribal council has voted to ban abortion on South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Reservation. The council also suspended its president, Cecelia Fire Thunder. She was accused of raising money to build an abortion facility on the reservation without the council’s authorization.
(Reading: “Tribal council outlaws abortion; president suspended for alleged donations,” Sioux Falls Argus-Leader, 5/31/06)
culture of death
BABY SLAYING: A newborn baby girl was wrapped in two plastic grocery bags and thrown over a railroad overpass in Alhambra, California. The baby dropped 53 feet and died of “blunt force trauma.” No one knows the identity of her mother.
(Reading: “Baby’s slaying shakes Alhambra,” Los Angeles Times, 5/22/06)
ethics
DUBIOUS JUSTIFICATION FOR HUMAN CLONING: Professor Dianne Irving has prepared an analysis of the article by N. Cobbe, “Why the apparent haste to clone humans?” published in the British Medical Journal.
(Reading: “Review of critical article,” Life Issues, 5/10/06)
euthanasia
KEVORKIAN SORRY? Recent news reports indicate that Jack Kevorkian is dying because his liver enzyme levels are increasing. His doctor has said he has less than a year to live. Kevorkian’s lawyer is saying that if he had it to do over again, Kevorkian “now realizes that having performed it [assisted suicide] when it was against the law wasn’t the, probably, appropriate way to go about it.”
(Reading: “Dying ‘Dr. Death’ has second thoughts about assisting suicides,” ABC News, 5/26/06)
NEVADA: Dr. Kenneth Mower, who gave morphine to a 72-year-old woman suffering from depression, has lost his license. The woman was admitted to the hospital in 2002 after taking 200 pills containing narcotics and tranquilizers. Mower treated the woman with ten milligrams of morphine. When that did not calm her, he upped the dose to 100 milligrams and the woman died.
(Reading: “Doctor loses license after giving morphine to woman,” Las Vegas Sun, 5/23/06)
NEW HAMPSHIRE: State legislators have okayed a revision of New Hampshire’s living will laws. The Manchester Union Leader reports, “The bill, HB 656, defines when hospitals, doctors or families can decide when an individual is permanently unconscious and hydration and nutrition can be removed.” Ron Panzer of the Hospice Patients Alliance asks, “Why is it that we now feel it’s OK to kill people who are in a coma?” He calls it “a sad day for New Hampshire, and a warning to everyone.”
(Reading: “House, Senate approve end-of-life care bill,” Manchester [N.H.] Union Leader, 5/25/06; “New Hampshire legislature end-of-life bill,” Hospice Patients Alliance, 5/30/06)
personhood
RIGHT TO LIFE ACT: This bill (HR 552) states, “The terms ‘human person’ and ‘human being’ include each and every member of the species homo sapiens at all stages of life, including, but not limited to, the moment of fertilization, cloning, or other moment at which an individual member of the human species comes into being.” See RightToLifeAct.org for details.
COMMENT: Is your member of Congress a co-sponsor? If not, ask!
stem cell research / ethical
HAIR FOLLICLE: Researchers used human embryonic stem cell culture medium conditions to isolate adult stem cells from human hair follicles and are of the opinion that the differentiated cells may be a source for research that would have therapeutic benefit. The culture medium is the same nutrient broth that is used when human embryonic stem cells are being studied.
(Reading: “Isolation of a novel population of multipotent adult stem cells from human hair follicles,” American Journal of Pathology, 6/06, pp. 1879-1888)
(Background on culture medium: “Stem cell information,” National Institutes of Health)
HUMAN HEART: An overview of the advances and remaining questions associated with using stem cells to treat a variety of heart conditions suggests the possibility that stem cells can regenerate into heart cells.
(Reading: “Cloning the heart,” Pharma Express, 5/25/06)
KANSAS: State Rep. Mary Pilcher Cook was victorious in her quest to have $150,000 included in the state’s current appropriations bill. The funds will be used for umbilical cord research at Kansas University.
(Reading: “Umbilical cord research receives last-minute funding,” Lawrence [Kansas] Journal-World, 5/22/06)
TREATING INCONTINENCE: The first clinical study using a woman’s muscle stem cells in an injection designed to treat stress urinary incontinence has provided encouraging results.
(Reading: “Injecting stem cells from a woman’s own muscle may effectively treat urinary incontinence,” Sunnybrook Health Sciences Center, 5/21/06)
stem cell research / unethical
WISCONSIN: Pro-Life Wisconsin blasted Gov. James Doyle, a Catholic, for publicly dissenting from Catholic teachings on destructive human embryonic stem cell research and for pointedly stating his disagreement with Archbishop Timothy Dolan and Bishop Robert Morlino, both of whom had asked the governor to reject state funding of the lethal research.
(Reading: “Governor’s defiance of bishops ‘scandalous’ says Pro-Life Wisconsin,” Pro-Life Wisconsin news release, 5/25/06)
reflection for prayer
VOCATION: From St. Jose Maria Escriva: “There is ‘something holy,’ something divine hidden in the most ordinary situations, and it is up to each one of you to discover it. When a Christian carries out with love the most insignificant everyday action, that action overflows with the transcendence of God. That is why I have told you repeatedly, and hammered away once and again at the idea, that the Christian vocation consists in making heroic verse out of the prose of each day.”
(Reading: “In Conversation with God,” Vol. 2, p. 546)