The good news about the election results is that the threat of losing all of the abortion restrictions so carefully constructed and fought for throughout the states over the past 35 years is energizing people to get involved.
Stopping FOCA will be a major project for Wisconsin Right to Life in the upcoming months. While pundits act as thought FOCA will not be an Obama priority (one even called it a suicide move for Obama), it is important not to give great credence to this rhetoric. To do so would be “suicide” for babies and mothers we have valiantly protected over the years.
Focusing on Obama is not the right strategy, anyway. Even though he promised Planned Parenthood that signing FOCA is the first thing he’d do as President, the bill has to get to his desk. This means the Congress, headed by ardent pro-abortionist Nancy Pelosi and sometimes right-to-life Harry Reid, will be in charge of when FOCA becomes a priority.
Make no mistake. Planned Parenthood and NARAL have fought abortion restrictions like parental involvement before a minor’s abortion and giving women full information prior to an abortion furiously in the legislatures and the courts for the past three decades. They salivate at the new Congress, viewing it as a means to realize their ultimate goal — abortion with no restrictions whatsoever and burying the right-to-life movement.
Stay tuned as efforts develop to make certain that, whatever we do in the next years, stopping FOCA is the ultimate effort to continue reducing abortions in our state and country.
A Rush Limbaugh caller related his recent heartwarming encounter with the McCain and Palin families. The McCain campaign bus pulled into Washington, Pennsylvania where Kurt (the caller) and his family waited for a glimpse of the famous duo. Kurt and his wife have a five-year-old daughter, Chloe, with Down syndrome and held a sign saying “We Love Kids with Down Syndrome.”
The McCain and Palin families saw the sign and gave a thumbs up. The Secret Service approached Kurt and his family and brought them to the campaign bus where they met the candidates and took lots of photos. I don’t know what touched me more — the photo of Sarah Palin holding little Chloe or Cindy McCain holding her hand over her heart.
To read the complete interview transcript with photos, please click here.
Contrast this incredibly beautiful human story with the continued hate which permeates our airwaves and the Internet. The South Carolina Dem leader who said Palin’s apparent only qualification for office is that she didn’t have an abortion. The Canadian OB-GYN who now worries that abortions will go down since Palin didn’t abort her baby. The posting on eBay to bid on a “prop” Palin kid with Down syndrome. Biden chiding Palin for not caring about her son because she opposes embryonic stem cell research. The rumor that Trig is really the child of Bristol Palin.
It is both our finest and worst hours as Americans. The presence and images of Trig Palin in the American consciousness gives newfound admiration for people with disabilities and the families who raise them. The ugly rhetoric illuminates anew the blatant discrimination against infants with disabilities and the audacity of parents who don’t abort them.
Such a clever title — I wish I had penned it. It belongs to our great friend Dr. David Prentice who recently examined what is going on in the cloning world. And the title aptly sums up the current scenario. Scientists desperate to create human clones are whining that they cannot get enough human female eggs.
Why the eggs, you ask? Well, cloning is so inefficient that it takes many tries, and thus a huge number of eggs, to create a single human clone. To create a human clone, the nucleus of an egg is hollowed out and the DNA of the person who is to be cloned is transferred into the egg. Only one company has verified in a published report that it created a human clone.
Scientists are pushing payments to women to produce the eggs they require. Even in California and Massachusetts where such payments are prohibited. Why the fuss if it’s just eggs that are needed? Because there is significant danger to women who undergo hyperstimulation to produce as many as 30 eggs at one time.
Prentice quotes Stanford professors Magnus and Cho who give these figures:
“Between 0.3 and 5% or up to 10% of women who undergo ovarian stimulation to procure oocytes experience severe ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome, which can cause pain, and occasionally leads to hospitalization, renal failure, potential future infertility, and even death.” The problem is so serious and offensive that a group of women have created a Hands Off Our Ovaries website.
Prentice asks, as do we, why scientists are going through so much trouble and putting women at risk when there are easier, cheaper, and much more successful alternatives to advance research that are ethically impeccable. Why not advance the recent discovery of iPS cells taken from the skin of patients and the use of nasal adult stem cells? Prentice thinks there is an economic interest in cloning. In the end, it may be all about the money.
To read the full Prentice report, click here.
Pity Right to Life of Michigan. For years, it endured the unrelenting serial killing by Jack Kevorkian, known as Dr. Death. Kevorkian assisted in the suicides of 130 patients in his home state of Michigan. Didn’t matter if they were terminally ill. Didn’t matter where they lived. Didn’t matter where the suicide took place. If they wanted death, Dr. Death was happy to oblige. Kevorkian helped people put bags over their heads in vans in parking lots. He hooked them up to machines where the patient could push a button and – voila – death-dealing drugs entered the bloodstream. Even the proponents of euthanasia squirmed at the mention of his name.
Kevorkian deftly defied laws and slipped out of the hands of prosecutors on many occasions. Finally, he overstepped his bounds and created a videotape in which he directly killed a patient. It was aired on national television and they got him. After serving eight years in prison, he was recently paroled. Kevorkian remains a deeply controversial figure as he collects speaking fees of up to $50,000 at universities which, for whatever reason, allow him to spread his message.
Here’s the real kicker. Kevorkian now plans to run for Congress in Michigan. Pity Right to Life of Michigan.
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