Pro-life

IN ONE corner the Pope, in the other, a pair of stunning Italian actresses. It sounds like the start of a risqué joke, but what is at stake is the highly serious — and highly contentious — issue of Italian restrictions on fertility treatment.

This week Pope Benedict XVI stepped into politics for the first time since his election six weeks ago, endorsing calls to voters from Italy’s Roman Catholic bishops to boycott a referendum on the country’s fertility laws.

Addressing the bishops, the Pope said that easing restrictions on assisted fertility treatments would pose a threat to life and the family. The present law, passed last year, restricts the provision of fertility treatment to stable heterosexual couples and excludes single women or same-sex couples.

It also restricts surrogacy and research using human embryos, forbids sperm and egg donation, and limits the number of embryos created with in-vitro techniques to three.

The referendum, the work of liberals who regard the law as oppressive and fundamentalist, seeks to lift the ban on embryo research, remove limits on the number of eggs that can be fertilised, lift the ban on egg and sperm donors and remove language giving fertilised eggs full legal rights.

With a week to go to the vote, the walls of Italian cities are plastered with posters for the “yes” campaign, backed by the actresses Monica Bellucci and Sabrina Ferilli.

I guess Monica Bellucci who played Mary Magdalene in The Passion of the Christ is now playing the pre-conversion Mary Magdalene.

Signora Bellucci added: “If I asked a priest or a politician how my body is made, how my ovaries are made or how ovulation works, he wouldn’t know what I was talking about . . . this is an issue for scientists and women.”

Well actually if you ask how your body is made you ask not scientists but God. They can for the most part tell you how some of it works, but not how it was made.

As for the Church, Signora Ferilli said that it had “no business interfering in private griefs and dramas, and certainly does not have the right to impose its rules on an entire country. [Source]

But of course actresses can.

An aggressive attempt to make assisted suicide the law in California is down for the count for this state legislative session and a key strategist predicts it may well founder even if proponents bring it to the voters in an initiative.

This was one of the strongest attempts to legalize assisted suicide this year and its apparent defeat heartened Catholics, disability rights activists, and advocates for poor and uninsured people.

"At the end of the day the proponents couldn’t find even twenty votes to publicly support this bill," Tim Rosales, spokesman for Californians Against Assisted Suicide, said of the eighty-person Assembly. "We had an overwhelming amount of the Assembly oppose this bill. As soon as they realized this was not about the right to die but about doctors killing people, support for this legislation evaporated as it always has."

The bill’s sponsors plan to use a parliamentary maneuver to bring the bill to the Senate but Rosales predicted that is a losing proposition.

"Through the good lobbying efforts of lots of grassroots folks, we have definitely convinced them they do not have the votes to bring it up," said Ned Dolesji, executive director of the California Catholic Conference. [Source Ignatius Insight]

LANSING — All women seeking abortions would be required to submit to ultrasound procedures under legislation being taken up this week in the state Senate.

The bill, pushed by abortion opponents, is the latest test of lawmakers’ personal beliefs on the sensitive issue. It passed the House on a 69-37 vote last week.

Ultrasound would become an additional mandate in Michigan’s informed consent law, which requires women considering abortions to receive medically accurate information before ending their pregnancies. A diagnostic technique, ultrasound produces a fuzzy, TV-like image of the fetus inside the mother’s womb.

Doctors and nurses would have to offer abortion seekers the opportunity to view these images. The expectant mothers, however, would not be required to look at them.

Gov. Jennifer Granholm, whose signature would be required to make the bill law, doesn’t support it as passed by the House.

"It places government in the middle of people’s most personal and intimate medical decisions, a highly inappropriate place for politicians to be," said the governor’s spokeswoman, Liz Boyd. [Source][Via Chateau du Meau]

Well we can’t have people seeing the reality of what they intend to do in an intimate medical decisions can we? A tissue mass can’t be allowed to have identifiable human features. The rhetoric must never be allowed to be balanced by reality. Though even in unlikely event that (Culture of Death Catholic) Gov Granholm signed the bill you can bill you know a judge would rule it unconstitutional faster than you can say "undue burden". Though of course it would be a good idea to send some prayers her way.

TALLAHASSEE (AP) – Gov. Jeb Bush signed a bill today increasing state oversight of abortion clinics that provide second-trimester abortions, saying he did so "gladly, with pride and conviction."

Bush said the new law wasn’t related to his anti-abortion views but he later added that he was motivated, in part, by his desire "to create a culture of life in our state."

Based on a woman’s right to choose, the U.S. Supreme Court has largely shielded first-trimester abortions from state regulation. Most of the nearly 85,000 abortions performed in Florida last year were done during the first trimester – or three months – of pregnancy.

States do have more leeway to regulate abortions later in a woman’s pregnancy. Almost 9,000 of Florida’s abortions are second-trimester abortions.

The new law, which takes effect July 1, will cover any abortion clinic that provides second-trimester abortions. The bill doesn’t spell out the exact regulations but gives the state Agency for Health Care Administration directions on writing new rules covering a clinic’s building, equipment and staffing, the procedure itself and post-abortion care. The agency is drafting regulations.

And of course we have the obligatory statement from someone at Planned Parenthood

She questioned the intent of the law, which is officially named the "Women’s Health and Safety Act."

"I think it’s ironic that it’s called the Women’s Health and Safety Act and the only health care issue it addresses is abortion," Grutman said.

Talk about the pot calling the kettle black when many abortion centers call themselves women’s health centers. That the phrase women’s right to healthcare has become synonymous with abortion. It also includes this interesting passage:

One supporter on hand for Tuesday’s signing was Dr. Randy Armstrong, an obstetrician-gynecologist in Hillsborough County who provides emergency room coverage at University Community Hospital.

Armstrong, who does not perform abortions, said he has seen "and continues to see" the problems that result from lack of regulations of abortion clinics. In the last six months of 2004, nearly three dozen women were admitted into the hospital because of complications from second-trimester abortions. [Source]

This is of course is probably one of the most underreported stories there are the routine medical complications that are hidden from the public and no investigative reported wants to report on.

In the latest Newsweek Eleanor Clift ends an article called stem-cell hypocrisy with this.

If Bush and his allies on the right were completely sincere about their beliefs, they would ban in vitro fertilization. As Bernstein’s story shows, even when a child is born, a lot of embryos died in the process. If they truly believe that a collection of cells no bigger than the dot at the end of a sentence is imbued with personhood, ending the practice of in vitro would be their next frontier. The notion that women could be recruited to carry all the excess embryos to term–or that more than a fraction would survive the thawing and the transfer process–is ludicrous in the extreme. “I think it’s all about the radical right and their anti-abortion agenda,” says Bernstein. “They can’t give an inch to anything that destroys their argument that life begins at conception.

Funny how Newsweek found the alleged flushing of Korans something very serious and newsworthy and yet the purposeful destruction of human life in inconsequential. Though hating to say it Eleanor Clift has a point, though she is right for the wrong reason. IVF is just as scandalous and wrong as the harvesting of humans for supposed cures. We are mainly tempted to do ESCR because of the leftover human embryos because of IVF. People are more squeamish over clone and kill, yet these human embryos are "just going to die anyway" by popular opinion.

This is one of the things I have learned to love about the Catholic faith is that there is a beautiful consistency to its doctrines. Every time I would go to research a Church teaching on some subject I was always awed by the truth that it taught. Before entering the Church I thought for sure at times I would find a ‘gotcha’ – something that would show some inconsistency. I always found the opposite in that it was myself instead who had the inconsistency.

Pope Paul VI was roundly mocked by the world when he published Humanae Vitae. He was also unfortunately mocked by other Christians who by embracing the pill also embraced an abortafacient – a form of chemical abortion. It is a sad fact that to this day that those who are otherwise against abortion and ESCR are still popping the pill. Pope Paul VI’s encyclical was prophetic in what he said would happen and like most prophets he was also ignored. When the Church spoke against methods like IVF again it was ridiculed and yet again look at the results; 40,000 or more human beings frozen till they die of shelf life. Best born before the following date could be stamped on the containers bearing these children. Also unfortunately a large percentage of our Protestant brothers have largely cooperated with the culture of death by the teaching of the various congregations of their ready acceptance of contraception, divorce, and IVF. Of course that can also be said for a large number of Catholic also who don’t follow the truth that the Church teaches.

The other day Jimmy Akin covered the topic on what would be permissible to do with frozen human embryos.

Update: Dev Thakur raises a point in the comments that the charge of hypocrisy of President Bush that "The President doesn’t want to fund IVF either, but where the heck would he get the power to BAN it?" Well I am not so sure that the President is morally against IVF since he has said in the past that it is a "process … which helps so many couples conceive children." Federal health insurance programs are not mandated to allow IVF but are allowed to. Though of course the majority of these same plans also offer abortion and contraception. So even if the President was morally against IVF there really isn’t anything he can do about it since direct Federal money isn’t being used to support it.

There is somewhat a double standard in the pro-life community where abortion is fought, yet IVF is largely ignored. I have not heard of any protests outside of a clinic that offers IVF. Sure aborturaries kill on a much larger scale, but since when is proportionalism the standard?

The larger hypocrisy is though is on Eleanor Clift’s side which talks about helping the little people and those without power to defend themselves, yet encourages the slaughter of children in the womb and the pulling of feeding tubes.

HENRIETTA — There’s no such thing as a guilty embryo, according to Father Tadeusz Pacholczyk, 40, a neuroscientist who is director of education for the National Catholic Bioethics Center in Philadelphia, Pa.

"The embryo is always, always innocent," he said during an interview at a local restaurant.

Yet those arguing that it’s moral to harvest embryonic stem cells are treating embryos — innocent human beings — as if they can be killed and used for any purpose that might benefit humanity, he said.

…Father Pacholczyk, a priest of the Diocese of Fall River, Mass., said scientists who argue for embryonic stem-cell harvesting and research downplay the humanity of the blastocyst, or five-day-old embryo, which has no discernible human features. However, such scientists are being disingenuous, he noted.

"Any scientist worth his salt knows that they were a blastocyst," he said. Pro-choice scientists really believe "in some instances, it should be allowable to destroy another member of the species because of the great good it will do."

He added that the role of scientists’ egos in the stem-cell debate should not be overlooked. Some scientists would love to receive Nobel Prizes for advancing embryonic stem-cell research, he said.

"It’s like splitting the atom," he said. When asked why scientists can’t be content with focusing on adult stem-cell research, which raises no moral objections, Father Pacholcyzk chuckled and said that adult stem cells "just aren’t as glamorous as" embryonic ones.

Scientists "are human like the rest of us," the priest said, adding that today’s society treats scientists as the ancients did their religious high priests. However, he said, many scientists lack the moral tools to tackle the stem-cell debate. Father Pacholcyzk said that scientists need to become grounded in philosophy, bioethics and religious traditions in order to handle the debate.

"These questions do deal with the interface between science and religion and values and technology," he said. "These questions are critical for the future of mankind." [Source]

From Cardinal William H. Keeler.

A bill in Congress would offer federal grants to encourage researchers to destroy new human embryos from fertility clinics for their stem cells.

Such killing in the name of "prgress" crosses a fundamental moral line. Government has no business forcing taxpayers to subsidize the destruction of innocent human life. President Clinton’s National Bioethics Advisory Commission conceded that human embryos "deserve respect as a form of human life." How does it show respect to treat human lives as mere crops for harvesting?

Those who say these embryos "would be discarded anyway" are wrong. Embryos that couples want discarded are barred from being used in research. In fact, many couples who initially chose to discard their "excess" embryos have later changed their minds and let them survive. But now, government-funded researchers would reach in and destroy these young lives before that can happen.

This bill would lead to much killing that would not otherwise happen. And since all the "spare" embryos available for research cannot provide enough stem cells to treat any major disease, the proposed law would inevitably lead to creating human lives in the laboratory solely to destroy them.

That hope of treating disease is the driving force behind this bill. Yet the "promise" of embryonic stem cell research has been exaggerated. The journal Science last week published a warning by Stanford University experts that "it is nearly certain that the clinical benefits of the research are years or maybe decades away." They added: "This is a message that desperate families and patients will not want to hear." But they need to hear it. They were led to support this unethical research by hyped promises of miracle cures.

Stem cells from umbilical-cord blood and adult tissues, posing no moral problem, have advanced quickly toward treating juvenile diabetes, Parkinson’s disease, spinal cord injury, sickle-cell anemia, cardiac damage and other conditions. The fixation on destroying embryos has diverted resources away from more promising therapies, and therefore ill serves suffering patients as well as embryonic human beings. Congress should reject this bill and support promising medical research that all Americans can live with.

WASHINGTON – President Bush on Friday said he would veto legislation that would loosen restrictions on embryonic stem cell research and expressed deep concern about human cloning research in South Korea.

"I’m very concerned about cloning," the president said. "I worry about a world in which cloning becomes accepted."

White House deputy press secretary Trent Duffy said the work in South Korea amounted to human cloning for the sole purpose of scientific research. "The president is opposed to that," Duffy said. "That represents exactly what we’re opposed to."

South Korean researchers, funded by their government, reported producing human embryos through cloning and then extracting their stem cells. It is a major advancement in the quest to grow patients’ own replacement tissue to treat diseases.

The president also threatened a veto of legislation that would clear the way for taxpayer money to be spent on embryonic stem cell research.

A measure by Reps. Mike Castle, R-Del., and Diana DeGette, D-Colo., would lift Bush’s 2001 ban on the use of federal dollars for research using any new embryonic stem cell lines.

"I made very clear to Congress that the use of federal money, taxpayer’s money, to promote science which destroys life in order to save life _ I’m against that," Bush said. "Therefore, if the bill does that, I would veto it." [Source]

Well if it does reach him and he vetoes it this would be, I believe, his first veto since becoming President.

Here is a case happening in my neck of the woods.

JACKSONVILLE, FL — 34-year old Scott Thomas married Liza Thomas in 2001.

They bought a home and had a baby boy.

But one September day, paramedics found Scott on his kitchen floor with several hairline fractures down the left side of his head.

Scott spent two months in a coma.

Scott’s mom, Pamela Patton, says Liza had plans to put Scott in Community Hospice of Northeast Florida, so she filed for temporary guardianship in November and won.

For months, Pamela took care of Scott in her home, and worked with him every day.

"He watches you, he listens, he smiles, he cries," said Patton.

Six weeks ago, Scott’s traech was removed. Now he’s in Brooks Rehabilitation.

Meanwhile, the clock is ticking.

Patton’s guardianship could end in a few weeks.

Patton fears Liza will remove Scott’s feeding tube.

The Terri Schindler-Schiavo Foundation has stepped in.

"They don’t wish to poke their noses into somebody else’s business, but they do want to plead to this woman to please think about what she’s doing," said Pamela Hennessy, spokeswoman for the Terri Schindler-Schiavo Foundation.

The Foundation is urging DCF to investigate the circumstances surrounding Scott’s injuries.

According to Patton, Liza says Scott fell in the kitchen, but doctors tell Scott’s mother his injuries are consistent with a head trauma, not a fall. [Source]

(CNSNews.com) – Pro-life activists say a Catholic college in Baltimore, Md., has no business inviting Rudy Giuliani to speak at its commencement exercises. The former New York City mayor also will receive an honorary degree from Loyola College on Friday, May 20.

"It is unconscionable for Loyola College — a Catholic institution — to host Rudy Giuliani given his outspoken support of abortion-on-demand, which stands in direct opposition to the infallible teachings of the Catholic Church and his own self-proclaimed faith," said Jack Ames, founder of the Maryland group Defend Life.

Loyola’s Interim President David Haddad calls Giuliani a "courageous figure, a man whose leadership and resolute response to the attacks of September 11 represents the ideal of citizenship and public service."

Students in Loyola’s graduating class of 2005 were in the first week of their freshman year when the terrorist attacks happened – and many them are from the New York and Washington areas, the college noted.

"The mayor’s presence will no doubt be both inspirational and meaningful to them and to their families," Haddad said in a statement on the college’s website.

Defend Life said Giuliani’s leadership is not the issue; his support of abortion-on-demand is the problem:

"Loyola’s rationale for inviting Giuliani is exactly why he should be disqualified," Ames said. "While recognizing the impact that 9/11 — which took the lives of over 3,000 innocent Americans — has had on these graduates, Loyola is failing to realize the unmistakable impact that legalized abortion has had on that entire generation."

Ames said every day, more than 3,500 babies are killed by surgical abortion – "meaning a full one-third of this graduating class’s generation has been eliminated because of those who support so-called ‘choice.’" [Source]

Rudy Giuliani has described himself “I’m pro-choice. I’m pro-gay rights,” and when asked about partial-birth abortion ban replied “No, I have not supported that, and I don’t see my position on that changing,” He is more then just a Republican version of John Kerry, he is perhaps worse since he doesn’t even try to dodge behind the ole "personally opposed, but.." line.