in this issue:
hot button issues: RATING THE MOVIES / STOP PLANNED PARENTHOOD
abortion: FORCED ABORTION EPIDEMIC / RU-486
euthanasia: TERMINAL WITHDRAWAL OF OXYGEN / TEXAS
personhood: RIGHT TO LIFE ACT
preimplantation genetic diagnosis: WEEDING OUT FLAWED EMBRYOS
rhetoric: OH BABY / ULTRASOUND
stem cell research / commentary: ARCHBISHOP RAYMOND BURKE / MICHAEL KINSLEY
stem cell research / ethical: CHILDHOOD BRAIN CANCER
stem cell research / potpourri: NEW ENGLAND JOURNAL OF MEDICINE
targeting: REFINED KILLING
vaccines: CALL TO ACTION / HUMAN PAPILLOMA VIRUS
reflection for prayer: ST. VINCENT DE PAUL
hot button issues
RATING THE MOVIES: ALL’s Judie Brown offers her thoughts about a Planned Parenthood article that demands a change in the movie rating system. The article concerns a film producer who complains that portrayals of human sexuality are graded too harshly.
(Reading: “Rating sex,” American Life League, 10/4/06)
STOP PLANNED PARENTHOOD: Jim Sedlak and David Bereit of American Life League have produced a four-CD set of talks on how Planned Parenthood is harming the nation’s communities and what active pro-lifers can do to stop the organization from achieving its objectives. The package is available online. It can also be ordered by phone at 866-LET-LIVE. The set is $29.95 plus shipping and handling.
abortion
FORCED ABORTION EPIDEMIC: David Reardon, Ph.D., co-authored a Medical Science Monitor study exposing the fact that 64 percent of American mothers who abort their children feel pressured into getting the abortion.
(Reading: “Special report exposes America’s forced abortion epidemic,” Life Site News, 9/29/06)
RU-486: Federal judge Susan Dlott has struck down an Ohio law that made it illegal for doctors to prescribe the abortion drug Mifepristone (RU-486) after the seventh week of pregnancy. The judge ruled that the law was vague and did not contain a health of the mother exception.
COMMENT: The law, described as “sensible and mainstream,” permitted abortion via RU-486 for any reason prior to the end of the seventh week of a preborn child’s life.
(Reading: “Judge finds Ohio law restricting RU-486 ‘unconstitutionally vague,'” Life Site News, 9/29/06)
euthanasia
TERMINAL WITHDRAWAL OF OXYGEN: Two physicians with credentials in bioethics write about the balancing of burdens and benefits of providing supplemental oxygen to patients. The focus of the article is dealing with patients who want to die by having their oxygen removed. The most telling line in the article is: “Even if the practical burdens of oxygen are minimal and the palliative benefits real, the patient’s dissatisfaction with his or her current quality of life may justifiably underline such requests” to have the oxygen removed.
(Reading: “Terminal withdrawal of life-sustaining supplemental oxygen,” Journal of the American Medical Association, 9/20/06)
TEXAS: A recent report on the problems created by a Texas futile-care law outlines the problematic nature of that law. “This law allows doctors and hospitals to abandon patients and provides them safe harbor and immunity to do it.”
(Reading: “Who gets to make decision on end of life?” Chicago Tribune, 9/17/06)
personhood
RIGHT TO LIFE ACT: With the addition of the 100th Congressional sponsor to the Right to Life Act, the pro-life movement has reached an important milestone in its quest to end the slaughter of innocent preborn children by abortion.
COMMENT: Are your members of Congress co-sponsors? If not, ask them to get on board.
preimplantation genetic diagnosis
WEEDING OUT FLAWED EMBRYOS: Well-known abortion-proponent William Saletan has written in support of preimplantation genetic diagnosis, a practice that is used to eliminate [kill] questionable embryonic children. He writes: “If PGD were evil, it would be easy to head off such abuses [as sex selection] by banning it. But it’s not. PGD prevents hellish diseases.”
(Reading: “Better than sex,” Slate, 9/16/06)
rhetoric
OH BABY: A report in the Fort Worth Star Telegram addresses the 22 year-old-man who is being sought in relation to an act that caused the death of a preborn baby. In the report we find the following terms, each used to describe the dead victim: “fetus,” “unborn daughter,” “unborn fetus” and “unborn child.”
(Reading: “Man, 22, is sought in death of fetus,” Fort Worth Star Telegram, 9/28/06)
ULTRASOUND: Pro-lifers who point to high-resolution ultrasound videos as proof for the personhood of preborn children have it all wrong, according to “experts” quoted in the British media. One researcher said: “I worried when I saw those images. These images do not prove that those human qualities can be attributed to a foetus of 12 weeks.”
(Reading: “Foetus scan fuels abortion debate,” The Guardian [U.K.], 10/3/06)
stem cell research / commentary
ARCHBISHOP RAYMOND BURKE: Encouraging his flock to vote against Amendment 2, which he calls “the grave moral crisis,” the archbishop writes, “A great absurdity in the whole initiative to convince the citizens of Missouri to vote for Amendment 2 is the accusation that those who oppose the amendment are religious zealots or fanatics. The characterization deflects attention from the scientific truth that the human embryo is a human life. Opposition to Amendment 2 is not a question of religious fanaticism or zealotry. It is a question of responding to the natural law written upon every human heart, which demands that we safeguard and promote human life at all stages of its development, from the moment of inception to the moment of natural death.”
(Reading: “Be not afraid,” St. Louis Review, 9/29/06)
MICHAEL KINSLEY: An advocate of human embryonic stem cell research, Kinsley recently wrote, “Insects have more human characteristics than a six-cell embryo.”
COMMENT: As Nathanael Blake of American Life League wrote, “A human embryo is far more human than an insect could ever be, because a human embryo is, by definition, human, while an insect is, by definition, not human.”
(Reading: “Bush’s conception conflict,” Washington Post, 9/29/06)
stem cell research / ethical
CHILDHOOD BRAIN CANCER: Researchers at St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis are focused on a new treatment regimen that relies on the patient’s own stem cells to improve outcomes among those children with brain tumors called medulloblastomas.
(Reading: “Study: stem cells may improve outcome of child brain cancer,” Healthday, 9/19/06)
stem cell research / potpourri
NEW ENGLAND JOURNAL OF MEDICINE: A wide array of articles touting the use of human embryos for stem cell research and articles on the ethics of the practice are in the September 21 edition.
targeting
REFINED KILLING: Recent research indicates that first trimester risk-assessment regarding the preborn can result in earlier abortions if an abnormal fetal karyotype is detected.
(Reading: “Gestational age at abortion: the impact of first-trimester risk assessment for aneuploidy,” American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, 9/06, pp. 839-842)
vaccines
CALL TO ACTION: Debi Vinnedge, director of Children of God for Life is appealing to all pro-life Americans and groups such as the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, National Catholic Bioethics Center and the Catholic Medical Association to communicate to the FDA the hope that the Food and Drug Administration will pursue the approval of ethical vaccines that are NOT manufactured using cells from aborted babies.
ACTION: Please comment to the FDA on the reasons why ethical vaccines should be approved.
HUMAN PAPILLOMA VIRUS: Citing a statistic that cervical cancer is the second most common cause of cancer-related death in women worldwide, The Society of Gynecologic Oncologists has touted the approval of the HPV vaccine and recommends that children as young as 9 be inoculated.
(Reading: “Statement on a cervical cancer vaccine,” Society of Gynecologic Oncologists, 6/29/06; “Frequently asked questions: Cervical cancer vaccine,” Society of Gynecologic Oncologists, 6/29/06)
reflection for prayer
ST. VINCENT DE PAUL: God’s works are not regulated by our plans and wishes.