At least 4,000 children were killed in the recent catastrophic earthquake in China. The devastation is compounded by China’s rigid one child per family policy which means that thousands of families lost their only child. The Chinese “big brother” government strictly enforces the one child policy through fines for “illegal” children, and forced abortion and sterilization. China also has a shortage of females as families abort girls to wait for the preferred male heir.
Now, big brother has relented and is allowing families with children killed or severely injured in the earthquake to procreate. Got to have approval by certificate first, of course, so that the government can continue to control breeding.
In an unrelated story, Wisconsin residents were universally appalled by the recent deaths of a pregnant woman and her daughter when their car was rear-ended by one driven by a man high on medications. Prior to enactment of Wisconsin’s fetal homicide law, the man would have been responsible for only two deaths. Wisconsin Right to Life prays that the family’s grief is somewhat alleviated by the law we worked on for six years, successfully enacted in 1998, allowing prosecutors to also charge for the death of the unborn child. Three people, not just two, died in that horrific crash. We feel humbly gratified that the dearly-loved unborn baby has legal recognition for her short life. May God bless the family at this difficult time.
Great news from Minnesota! Governor Tim Pawlenty vetoed a bill which would have legalized human cloning and forced taxpayers to pay for the destruction of human life. Since the legislative session has ended, pro-cloning legislators won’t be able to attempt to override the veto.
Pawlenty said the legislation was “crossing ethical and moral boundaries” and cited the promising progress being made with adult stem cells, which does not involve the destruction of human life.
Pawlenty is strongly pro-research and wants to see major diseases and afflications eradicated just as much as human cloning advocates do. But he draws the line at the kind of research the requires the destruction of human life. On this issue Pawlenty is a rarity among politicians.
Here in Wisconsin, our own governor supports virtually any kind of research that will bring “economic development” to our state. It doesn’t matter to Jim Doyle whether the research involves the destruction of human life or whether the research has been shown to be effective. Whatever will bring money to the state is Doyle’s bottom line.
Tim Pawlenty deserves our thanks for swimming against the tide to promote ethical and promising research that has been used to beneficially treat humans with 73 diseases.
It’s called palliative sedation and is used rarely to relieve pain. When used properly, the patient eventually succumbs to his/her disease. The intent is to relieve suffering, not kill the patient.
In a new twist, a study of euthanasia deaths in the Netherlands finds that the number of deaths from deep sedation is increasing. When used improperly, the patient eventually dies from dehydration instead of the underlying illness. So, there is, in this circumstance, a clear intent to kill the patient.
Why would physicians in the Netherlands turn to this method when it is legal and quicker to simply inject the patient with a lethal substance? Noted author and scholar Wesley J. Smith states the following:
“Demonstrating the subversive nature of the euthanasia/assisted suicide movement on proper medical care, Dutch doctors are switching from lethally injecting patients to sedating them into a permanent coma so they die by dehydration over a period of days or weeks….. I suspect that Dutch doctors are switching euthanasia methods because in formal euthanasia, they have to be present at the bedside at death.” With euthanasia “they watch as the killing actions they take terminate life. With terminal sedation, they don’t have to be present….This intentional co-opting of a proper palliative measure, rarely needed, at the very end of life — known as palliative sedation — in which disease causes death, not dehydration, is scandalous.”
In Vermont and California, there are legislative efforts to sanction palliative sedation intended to cause the death of the patient in “stealth” bills advertised as hospice promotion. This follows failed efforts in both states to directly legalize assisted suicide. How clever they are — and how ever watchful we must be.
Joke as we may about the avant garde viewpoints of those who live on the west coast, what starts there eventually moves inward. There is disturbing news in three states that continue their flirtation with assisted suicide and euthanasia.
In Washington State, work continues to gain over 300,000 signatures by July 3 to put a question on the November 4 ballot asking the citizens to legalize Oregon-style assisted suicide. The promoters have hired people to gather signatures and most think they will succeed. Millions of dollars are flowing into Washington to promote the measure known as Initiative 1000.
Valiantly opposing the initiative is a coalition of medical, disability rights, and religious groups. Underfunded, they are waging an aggressive grassroots campaign to educate and motivate the citizens to vote down Initiative 1000. Recently a bipartisan group of state lawmakers, consisting of four Democrats and 11 Republicans, joined the fight with a statement urging residents not to sign petitions. Governor Chris Gregoire also opposes the measure. Senator Margarita Prentice, a Democrat, succinctly summed up the reasons for opposing the measure: “It has virtually no protection for low-income and vulnerable people from being pressured into prematurely ending their life….physicians can prescribe lethal drugs to patients who are depressed or mentally ill… not one patient in Oregon was referred for psychological counseling.”
Speaking of Oregon, the only state where assisted suicide is legal, several important articles written on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of legalization reveal that supposed safeguards in the law to protect patients indicate they are not working. Of special concern are patients with mental illness or depression who are given lethal drugs rather than referrals for treatment. Drs. Herbert Hendin and Kathleen Foley write in an article to be published in the Michigan Law Review, Volume 10, Issue 8, June, 2008 that “the problem lies primarily with the Oregon Public Health Division (”OPHD”) which is charged with monitoring the law. OPHD does not collect the information it would need to effectively monitor the law and in its actions and publications acts as the defender of the law rather than as the protector of the welfare of terminally ill patients.”
Not to be forgotten is California where efforts stalled in the past two legislative sessions to legalize assisted suicide. The authors of the assisted suicide legislation have switched tactics and are now pushing a “stealth” bill which contains a loophole allowing medical professionals to turn palliative sedation into a treatment which permits assisted suicide.
Read more about palliative sedation in tomorrow’s entry.
On Memorial Day, we pause to remember those we love who have gone before us. Most have good memories of the person(s) we grieve and are at peace with the manner in which we assisted our loved one(s) at the time of our dying.
Three years after her death, Terri Schindler Schiavo’s family is left with the heartache of the excruciating pain endured by Terri — and them — for 13 days as Terri was starved and dehydrated by court order while the nation watched.
At the core of the order which left a helpless Terri in this predicament was the insistence of her husband that Terri told him she did not want to live in an incapacitated state. Terri’s family insisted, to no avail, that Terri’s values were as pro-life as theirs and that she wanted to live.
In a touching new development, Terri’s mother, Mary Schindler, recently found a note written by Terri in 1984 before she married Michael Schiavo. It reads as follows:
“Today I shall begin a life of my own
just as you did some years ago;
With me shall go the values you taught
the caring you’ve shown, the love that has grown;
and the meaning in a home.
And if when I have a child as you did
it will be given the same love and understanding
that was given to me.”
This beautiful note cannot bring Terri back, nor convince a judge that she indeed wanted to live. But, in the words of Terri’s brother, Bobby Schindler, “It comforts us to know that Terri embraced the values my parents taught us as children — the importance of faith, family and unconditional love.”
Lay low on Michelle Obama? Not me. She is out there as fair game – vocal, and as adamantly pro-abortion as her husband.
There is not enough space in this blog to list the numerous ways in which the Barack half of the team supports abortion. Now, it comes to light that the Michelle wing of the dangerous duo thinks money can be made on the backs of unborn children.
In 2004, Michelle penned (or at least signed) a fundraising letter for Barack’s U.S. Senate bid defending, unbelievably, the partial-birth abortion procedure which she called “legitimate” medicine. My whole being approaches sheer hysteria at the thought of a three-day procedure being called “legitimate” which allows a baby almost completely delivered from the mother’s body to be stabbed and have his/her brains sucked out”
Give us bucks and we’ll make sure this travesty continues, Michelle concludes. Is this what defines hope and opportunity for America? Most Americans think not.
For many years, China has held and rigidly enforced a one child per family policy. Inspections, forced abortions and forced sterilizations implement the policy.
When disaster struck China last week in the form of an earthquake, school buildings collapsed on hundreds of children, either burying them alive or killing them outright. Parents with their one child were suddenly left barren with no children. And, that adds another cruel chapter to the incredibly sad tale of China’s one child policy.
They’re called chimeras — hybrids created by combining animal and human DNA for cloning purposes. Hybrid and human cloning have now been overwhelmingly approved by the British Parliament with the passionate support of British Prime Minister Gordon Brown.
By the way, any of these embryos would be destroyed after 14 days, of course. And, the Brits intend to set up rules and standards to control their use. Phew! Those embryos should be relieved that their deaths will be protected by standards that allow them to be killed.
Why go this route? Well, part of it is the rationale used by many of today’s scientists that if we can do it, we should do it, regardless of ethical concerns. Another part is that they want the embryonic stem cells which match a particular person’s DNA for future transplant purposes. And, scientists recognize that a shortage of human female eggs will not allow them to accomplish cloning on the scale envisioned. Seems that there are plenty of cow eggs available so why not use them?
Of course, no embryonic stem cell has been used on a single patient to date. And, the discovery of iPS cells in November of 2007 make both embryonic stem cell research and cloning obsolete. Since iPS cells act the same as embryonic, can be retrieved without killing anyone, and match the DNA of the person to be helped, why go down this unethical road?
And, will the U.S. follow suit? Rep. Chris Smith introduced a bill in late April to prohibit the creation of hybrid clones. The U.S. Congress has yet to pass legislation prohibiting the creation of human clones. Time will tell if the research fanatics will also drag their feet on outlawing hybrid clones.
I was reading today that the Ohio House will be voting on a bill that will help stop women from being forced into a decision to have an abortion. If the bill passes the Ohio House, let’s hope that it doesn’t suffer the same fate as the Wisconsin Coercive Abortion Prevention Act, a similar piece of legislation. The pro-abortion controlled Wisconsin State Senate refused to even hold a public hearing on the bill and it died at the end of the legislative session. It didn’t matter one bit to the State Senate leadership that the measure had passed the Assembly on a strong bi-partisan vote of 65 to 32. Keeping their pro-abortion constituency happy was apparently more important to the State Senate leadership than protecting the lives of women.
After decades of legalized abortion, we now know that many women feel forced by others to have an abortion against their will. Such coercion can escalate into physical violence or even murder, which is the leading cause of death among pregnant woman. Like the Ohio measure, the purpose of the Wisconsin legislation is to protect women who are being coerced into having an abortion.
A woman has a right to refuse to consent to an abortion and her consent is not voluntary if any person is using coercion to compel her to consent to an abortion against her will. In fact, it is against the law for an abortion provider to perform an abortion upon a woman against her will. The Wisconsin bill would act as a deterrent to coerced abortion by requiring the abortion provider to make sure that a woman understands that it is against the law for an abortion to be performed on a her against her will and to offer help to women who are being threatened with physical abuse unless she submits to an abortion.
Isn’t this the least the Wisconsin State Senate could have done to protect the lives of vulnerable women?
The State Senate didn’t think so. After months of the bill languishing in Sen. Jon Erpenbach’s committee, they finally had a chance to protect women from abortion-related coercion and violence on March 11, 2008 when Sen. Mary Lazich made a motion to suspend the rules to remove the Wisconsin Coercive Abortion Prevention Act from Erpenbach’s committee and onto the Senate floor for a vote.
But alas, the vote came down along party lines and the motion failed. Not even the “right-to-life” senators in the majority party, including the Democratic author of the bill, had the courage to buck their leadership and vote to do the right thing.
Unless the makeup of the State Senate changes, this is the sort of thing we can expect to continue in that house of the legislature.
But it could get much, much worse if the leadership changes in the Assembly. The right-to-life majority in that house is extremely slim and the loss of just a few right-to-life representatives will mean no right-to-life legislation will advance and radically pro-abortion measures will be passed by both houses of the legislature and sent to the governor, who will gladly sign them into law.
If the State Senate could not even act in this instance to protect pregnant women from violence, imagine how much worse it will be if the Assembly’s right-to-life majority is lost!
Seems that the national leadership of NARAL Pro-Choice America has made some of their state affiliates hopping mad. The national group endorsed Barack Obama and their state affiliates in Missouri, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Texas and Washington wasted no time in publicly criticizing their national organization.
Why, the affliates wondered, didn’t their national organization remain neutral since both Obama and his Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton support unlimited abortion? Both candidates have each passed the pro-abortion movement’s pro-abortion litmus test with flying colors.
The voting records of Obama and Clinton show there is no unborn child they will vote to protect. It doesn’t matter the gestational age of the child or the reason for the abortion. Obama and Clinton support abortion on demand throughout the full nine months of pregnancy.
In 2003 Clinton voted to keep the gruesome partial-birth abortion procedure legal. Obama was not yet elected to the U.S. Senate when this vote took place. But when he was serving the the Illinois legislature, Obama twice voted against the Illinois Born Alive Infant Protection Act, legislation that required hospitals to provide appropriate medical care to babies born alive after an abortion attempt. Later as chair of the Illinois Health and Human Services Committee, Obama prevented the Illinois Born Alive Infant Protection Act from reaching the Illinois Senate for a vote.
Michele Stranger, director of the NARAL Oregon affiliate reacted to their national organization’s endorsement of Obama by saying, “This decision was not made in consultation with the affiliate network and NARAL Pro-Choice Oregon will not be endorsing a candidate in this race. We are proud to have two strongly pro-choice candidates running for President. And we look forward to supporting whoever the nominee will be and are committed to defeating Senator John McCain in November.”
Michelle Stranger’s words should send a clarion call to right-to-life voters throughout the nation regarding what is at stake in the 2008 presidential election. For right-to-life voters, the choice is already crystal clear. .. John McCain, who has a stellar 25 year right-to-life voting record on abortion, or an individual who has not one iota of compassion or respect for the lives of unborn babies.
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