Only One Child May Live

Steven Mosher paints a horrifying picture of the grim reality of the "One Child" policy in China. As a U.S. State Department representative in Guangdong Province in 1980, Mosher witnessed first-hand the forced abortions of women who committed the "crime" of becoming pregnant for the second time.

Since then, Mosher has become president of the Population Research Institute, a pro-life educational organization "dedicated to protecting and defending human life, ending human rights abuses committed in the name of family planning, and dispelling the myth of overpopulation." PRI has documented the thousands of forced late-term abortions and millions of coerced sterilizations in China, with important implications for targeted population control measures in other developing countries.

According to Mosher, "Population control encourages domestic tyranny of a very personal and deadly sort." This is what happens when alarmist views of overpopulation are somehow translated into public policies that view people as pestilence. Rather than focus on the root issues of poverty through education and economic development, coercive population control measures seek to cure the "disease" by killing the patient.

Human Life Review Article

YouTube Video

Breaking News: Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Upheld

By a narrow 5-4 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court today upheld a federal law banning the late-term abortion procedure called 'intact dilation and extraction,' better-known by the label 'partial-birth abortion.' This is a major victory for the pro-life cause.

Partial-birth abortion (as we have discussed in an earlier post), has been called by one author "constitutionally sanctioned homicide." Praise the Lord it is no longer sanctioned by law, nor by our courts!

This exciting news is an answer to prayer.


Boston Globe Article

Whither Human Dignity?

As anyone who hasn't been living on the planet Mars recently must surely know, there was a big furor last week over remarks by veteran broadcaster Don Imus. His injudicious use of racist and sexist remarks about the Rutgers University Women's Basketball team got him fired from his job. His show, "Imus in the Morning," had been carried on 61 stations and generated $20 million in revenues for CBS last year.

Though I won't repeat Imus' remarks here, it is clear why they generated so much reaction. Anytime a person is negatively labeled because of gender or race, this affronts our shared human dignity. And we should be especially careful here, for this has not always been such an obvious evil. It took the civil rights and women's rights movements to raise our awareness, and the work is not yet finished.

Do we as a culture have other blind spots? I think we do. There is another assault on human dignity at work in our midst, only this one based on geography. A whole class of persons has only provisional rights, all because of where they live. Furthermore, the cost of this affrontery is far greater than the indignities suffered by the Rutgers women. For this group, being second-class citizens threatens their very lives.

I am, of course, referring to the unborn. Why are we so quick to recognize prejudice when we hear it in the voice of a cynical sportscaster, but ignore the taking of life through abortion? In fact, we don't even notice, let alone become outraged.

Just wondering.


CNN News Story

Greeting Cards and Abortion

The latest in the abortion debate seems a bit bizarre. Exhale, a post-abortion counseling group, is now offering a variety of supportive E-cards to send to women who have recently undergone an abortion. The cards include attractive pictures of flowers or mountains. One version expresses the sentiment:

I think you're strong, smart, thoughtful, and caring. I believe in you and your ability to make the best decision. I think you did the right thing.

Another version:

There are no words to express my sympathy for your loss. As you grieve, remember that you are loved. I am thinking of you.

Which version should you send? I guess it depends on however the woman undergoing the abortion regards her actions. It does seem paradoxical to affirm abortion in one card, and yet see it as a great loss in another.

The Web site claims to be "non-judgmental." Links are provided to Planned Parenthood and the National Abortion Federation. I found no direct links to religious or pro-life resources.

Exhale Web site

Aborting the Less-Than-Perfect

During early fetal development, sometimes the esophagus fails to develop normally, a condition known as esophageal atresia. This happens once in about 3500 pregnancies, and doctors can frequently diagnose this condition by ultrasound prior to birth.

Except that sometimes the doctors are wrong.

In a teaching hospital in Florence, Italy, a woman had an abortion 22 weeks into her pregnancy. She chose this course after two separate ultrasound exams failed to detect the stomach, which the physicians interpreted as evidence for esophageal atresia. After the abortion, the baby was born alive, and doctors realized that he was perfectly normal. Weighting just 500 grams, the baby is now fighting for life in a pediatric intensive care unit. Due to a brain hemorrhage from the attempted abortion, the child is not expected to survive.

Dr. Joe DeCook, a pro-life colleague of mine, put it this way:

Doctors should be really careful when they assume God-like wisdom, and intrude into the realm of suggesting preemptive death as a treatment.

Granted, the hospital claims that their doctors advised the woman to seek further diagnostic tests, and she chose additional input from a private clinic. Yet the physicians should have told her two things:

• An ultrasound test can sometimes be misleading (as it was in this case)
• Even if present, a malformed esophgus can be surgically repaired, with a high likelihood of a normal life afterward.

Given the circumstances, the Vatican newspaper said that the child's life had been "thrown away."

Daily Telegraph article

Viable Thinking About Life

Back in 1973, Justice Blackmun in the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision said that states could not prohibit abortion until after "viability." This is the moment when the unborn child could possibly survive outside of the womb. According to Blackmun, "Viability is usually placed at about seven months (28 weeks) but may occur earlier, even at 24 weeks" (Roe v. Wade). Even then, Blackmun acknowledged that such a distinction was arbitrary.

Viability has always been suspect as a measure of the personhood of an unborn child. As Frank Beckwith has said, “Viability measures medical technology, not one’s humanity.” Indeed, advances in medical technology have pushed back the limits. The American Association of Pediatrics now places viability at less than 23 weeks gestation and less than 400 grams weight. According to the AAP, there's no reason to resusitate an infant born before that time.

Amillia Sonja Taylor is breaking all such rules. Born on October 24th, little Amillia weighed 280 grams and was just 240 centimeters long (slightly longer than a ballpoint pen). She arrived just a day less than 22 weeks after conception. Though she has had a few respiratory problems and received careful neonatal care, she is now out of danger, and is going home. It is expected that she will live a normal life.

This miracle story demonstates just how inappropriate the "Blackmun limit" was and is, and should further expose the serious flaws of the Roe v. Wade decision.

What else does tiny Amillia teach us? Perhaps that not all intensive care of preemie newborns is futile. Or perhaps that God is sovereign after all.

AP News Story

The Year in Review

As we enter the new year, a look back at 2006 may give us perspective. Unfortunately, this has not been a particularly good year for the notion that human beings have inherent value. In fact, human personhood as a concept took a downward turn, replaced by a disturbing 'end justifies the means' mentality. A few examples may serve to illustrate.

The beginning of 2006 saw the public discrediting of Hwang Woo-suk, the stem-cell researcher and media darling. In 2005 he became famous as the first to clone a human embryo to produce stem cells, with their supposed promise of curing a variety of human ailments. When it turned out that Hwang had largely fabricated his results, he was fired, and he now faces a variety of criminal charges.

Yet according to Fortune Magazine, "far from discrediting the field of stem-cell research, the scandal has juiced up the race for cloning patents . . ." In California, and most recently in Missouri, stem cell research has received legal protections and large infusions of public money. Much of the excitement about embryo-destructive research is based on hype and misinformation.

In other news from 2006, the recent approval of over-the-counter sales of Plan B, the so-called "morning-after pill," ignores the real possibility that this so-called pregnancy preventative may sometimes cause an early abortion. See my earlier post on this. I have also discussed both of the above stories in recent editions of the CedarEthics Podcast.

Finally, November 8th saw oral arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court in two cases involving the federal ban on partial-birth abortion. Three lower courts have decided that the law does not pass constitutional muster. Partial-birth abortion, morally indistinguishable from outright infanticide, will be the most important issue of the new year, with a court decision due next summer (news article).

In the past year, a vague notion of human dignity was often trumped by utilitarian considerations, making it easy to sacrifice less visible human lives for the "greater good." May God help us in 2007 to reverse this trend.

The Bioethics of Bethlehem

As we enter Advent, it may be worth pausing in our mad seasonal rush to reflect on the significance of Emmanuel, or "God with us," from Matthew 1:23.

For Christians, this means that God sent His Son in human form, to save mankind from sin and condemnation. Yet we seldom consider the amazing detail that Jesus was Himself fully man from the very beginning, which means that He started His earthly life as an embryo.

Doctor Luke records in his gospel (1:26-45) the joyous announcement by the angel Gabriel that Mary would be with child. Just a few weeks later, Mary visits her cousin, six months pregnant with John, who would become the Baptist. When Mary greets Elizabeth, John could not restrain his excitement, though yet unborn. He leaped in his mother's womb in the presence of the embryonic Jesus! Nigel Cameron has said it well:

[He] was not merely the tiniest of humans, he was the cosmic creator, the Word by whom the Godhead has spoken into existence the vastness of time and space. And the One who will one day be our Judge.

The incarnation is the ultimate testimony to the value of of all human beings, even those not yet born. At Christmas, this is truly good news.

Christianity Today article:
http://www.ctlibrary.com/ct/2005/decemberweb-only/42.0b.html

A Papal Pronouncment on Ends and Means

A good result can never justify intrinsically unlawful means. That was the gist of the statement by Pope Benedict XVI on September 16, to participants in a symposium on stem cell research organized in Rome by the Pontifical Academy for Life.

Some other noteworthy excerpts:

May I also point out, in the face of the frequently unjust accusations of insensitivity addressed to the Church, her constant support for research dedicated to the cure of diseases and to the good of humanity throughout her 2,000-year-old history.

If there has been resistance -- and if there still is -- it was and is to those forms of research that provide for the planned suppression of human beings who already exist, even if they have not yet been born. Research, in such cases, irrespective of efficacious therapeutic results is not truly at the service of humanity . . .

The human being is not a disposable object, but every single individual represents God's presence in the world.

The Pope has underlined a view of embryo research informed by a resolute committment to the sanctity of life from conception. Rather than opposing beneficial research, he simply reminds us that we need not destroy other human beings to achieve valuble clinical goals. Such goals can be obtained through adult sources of stem cells, to the furtherment of human flourishing everywhere.

Full text of Papal statement:
http://www.zenit.org/english/visualizza.phtml?sid=95972