Kathryn Jean Lopez has a fine column on just what constitutes a "pro-life Democrat" in the minds of the Party's convention organizers...and in the minds of a fawning press corps. Good stuff here..
Barack Obama is getting downright testy about those ongoing reports of his outlandish support of abortion. Indeed, his latest flare up has him insisting that the National Right to Life Committee and others who have drawn attention to his votes against the Born Alive Infants are liars.
But the evidence is clear, substantial...and all stacked against Obama. If there's lying going on (and there is), it's not coming from the pro-life advocates but from the Democrat nominee himself. And with his intense rhetoric drawing even more attention to the issue, the problem promises to prove even more injurious to his campaign.
That's why one of Obama's spokesman has now admitted to the New York Sun that Obama did vote exactly as the pro-lifers were saying. But the confession only came with "spin" as to why he did it, not with an apology for calling people liars who were, as the facts showed all along, telling the truth.
But Obama is going to learn that he can't spin away from this matter. For even if the MSM wanted to continue to ignore it, his use of the word "lying" elevated it as a news story and doubles his trouble. No, this has now become a story that not only reveals his abortion record to be particularly heinous, but it also shows him as cowardly, duplicitous and arrogant.
You'll be hearing a lot about the new discovery that abortion doesn't have any adverse effects on woman who have undergone the procedure. But that certainly isn't a new claim at all; neither is it actually based upon evidence.
No, the claims come from the American Psychological Association, a group which long ago exchanged its reliance on authentic science for the politically-correct ideologies of materialism, radical feminism, abortion, and sexual perversion.
Here is a trio of corrective stories from LifeNews.com:
* American Psychological Association Ignores Abortion-Mental Health Problem Link;
* Researcher on Abortion-Depression Link Says APA Report Ignores Best Studies; and
* Women Hurting From Abortions Say APA Report Discounts Their Experiences
The boys at Power Line have assembled a terrific collection of responses to the McCain vs Obama vs Warren show at Saddleback Church. I'm only going to list excerpts from a few of my favorites so for the whole lot, be sure to check out this Power Line post.
From Rich Lowry at NRO's The Corner:
...But the starkest contrast came as soon as McCain started his half of the forum. Asked the three people he would listen to as president, McCain said right off the bat Gen. Petraeus (Obama had led with his wife and grandmother). It was an immediate signal that this is a man who is concerned first and foremost with matters of war and peace—just as you expect from someone who wants to be president of the United States. Asked when he had bucked his party at risk to his self-interest, McCain rolled off his greatest hits, and went all the back to differing with Reagan on Lebanon (a reminder of how long he has been immersed in national-security issues). It made Obama's answer about promoting an ethics law with McCain seem incredibly weak in comparison. Then, McCain's answer about the toughest decision he had ever made—refusing early release in Vietnam—was riveting and moving.
In the first fifteen minutes, McCain had established a moral seriousness stemming from his conduct in Vietnam as a POW and his long-time as a national leader that Obama can't match. Throughout the rest of the night, he brought up Iraq, al Qaeda, and the Georgia crisis, when Obama was more inward-looking. McCain sounded like a potential commander-in-chief, Obama more like a potential friend. This is not to say, again, that Obama was not impressive. But the skills he showed tonight—the thoughtfulness and verbal dexterity—were those of a very talented memoirist, which, of course, he is.
From Byron York at NRO:
...This was not your usual political TV show. Warren — Pastor Rick, around here — asked big questions, about big subjects; he wasn’t concerned about what appeared on the front page of that morning’s Washington Post. And his simple, direct, big questions brought out something we don’t usually see in a presidential face-off; in this forum, as opposed to a read-the-prompter speech, or even a debate focused on the issues of the moment, the candidates were forced to call on everything they had — the things they have done and learned throughout their lives. And the fact is, John McCain has lived a much bigger life than Barack Obama. That’s not a slam at Obama; McCain has lived a much bigger life than most people. But it still made Obama look small in comparison. McCain was the clear winner of the night...
The contrast was striking throughout each man’s one-hour time on stage. When Warren asked Obama, “What’s the most gut-wrenching decision you’ve ever had to make?” Obama answered that opposing the war in Iraq was “as tough a decision that I’ve had to make, not only because there were political consequences but also because Saddam Hussein was a bad person and there was no doubt he meant America ill.” But Obama was a state senator in Illinois when Congress authorized the president to use force in Iraq. He didn’t have to make a decision on the war. That fact was a recurring issue in the Democratic primaries, when candidates Hillary Clinton, Joseph Biden, Christopher Dodd, and John Edwards argued that they, as senators, had to make a choice Obama didn’t have to make. And now he says it’s his toughest call.
When McCain got the question, he was able to tell an old story with a sense of gravity and poignancy that he seldom shows in public. He described his time as a prisoner of war, when he was offered a chance for early release because his father was a top naval officer. “I was in rather bad physical shape,” McCain told Warren, but “we had a code of conduct that said you only leave by order of capture.” So McCain refused to go. He made the telling even more forceful when he added that, “in the spirit of full disclosure, I’m very happy I didn’t know the war was going to last for another three years or so.” In one moment, he showed a sense of pride and a hint of regret, too; he came across as a man who did the right thing but not without the temptation to take an easy out. In any event, the message was very clear: John McCain has had to make bigger, more momentous decisions in his life than has Barack Obama...
Finally, there was the question of abortion. In the days leading up to the forum, pro-lifers had been worried that Warren was not going to include a question on the issue, focusing instead on things like poverty, AIDS, and the “new” evangelical agenda. But Warren brought it up, simple and straight. “At what point does a baby get human rights, in your view?” he asked Obama.
“Well, I think that whether you are looking at it from a theological perspective or a scientific perspective, answering that question with specificity, you know, is above my pay grade,” Obama answered. “But let me just speak more generally about the issue of abortion because this is something obviously the country wrestles with. One thing that I’m absolutely convinced of is there is a moral and ethical content to this issue. So I think that anybody who tries to deny the moral difficulties and gravity of the abortion issue, I think, is not paying attention. So that would be point number one.” Obama went on to say that he is pro-choice. Even for people who agreed with him, it wasn’t a terribly impressive answer.
An hour later, when Warren asked McCain the same thing, he got this: “At the moment of conception. I have a 25-year pro-life record in the Congress, in the Senate, and as president of the United States, I will be a pro-life president and this presidency will have pro-life policies.”
“Okay — we don’t have to go longer on that one,” Warren said, quickly moving on...
From Mark Hemingway at The Corner:
When asked "At what point does a baby get human rights, in your view?," McCain answered "At the moment of conception." Obama's answer here was flaming-dirigible bad: "Whether you are looking at it from a theological perspective or a scientific perspective, answering that question with specificity is, you know, above my pay grade."
That spectacularly inept metaphor is going to haunt Obama throughout the rest of the campaign. News flash: There's not a job on the planet above the pay grade of the President of the United States. If you can't solve every problem and are humble about it, that's fine — but you can't get away with being unsure about the most defining moral issue in politics. Of course, he didn't put down the shovel: "But let me speak more generally about the issue of abortion. Because this is something, obviously, the country wrestles with. One thing that I’m absolutely convinced of is that there is a moral and ethical element to this issue. And So I think that anybody who tries to deny the moral difficulties and gravity of the abortion issue is not paying attention."
So after completely hedging on the question and declining to give a specific answer — he wants to speak "more generally" about the issue? And, lo and behold, speak more generally he does: "I’m absolutely convinced of is that there is a moral and ethical element to this issue." In related news, Obama is also "absolutely convinced" that the sky is blue, water is wet and puppies are adorable. None of this, however, tells me a thing about his judgment and moral worldview.
But what bowls me over about how craptacular his answer here is, did no one on his campaign ever anticipate that he would have to talk about abortion, such that he could come up with a better answer than this? Surely they would have had to expect it at this forum in particular...
From Roger Kimball at Pajamas Media:
...I can understand that people who favor “abortion rights” would not like John McCain’s answer. I find it difficult to believe that any candid person could regard Obama’s response as anything but an insulting and mendacious equivocation. It is insulting because it ostentatiously evades the question while giving a little wink to his home team: “Oh, these religious morons and their obsession with abortion! Of course, I could care less about it, but I also know it’s impolitic to say so, so I’ll emit a brief rhetoric fog and hope no one will notice.” And it’s mendacious because when it comes to “pay grades,” no one’s is higher than the President’s. If a man who aspires to the highest office in the land cannot respond to a pointed question about an important moral issue without taking refuge in empty sophistries, how will he deal with the myriad difficult issues with which the President is confronted daily? It seems to me that in claiming that it is “above his pay grade” to answer this question forthrightly, Obama essentially admits that he is unfit for the office he covets...
From Mark R. Levin at The Corner:
Without a doubt, the lowest moment of the night was Obama's smear of Clarence Thomas. He, like Harry Reid, can't simply disagree with Thomas, he has to try to degrade him. On Obama's best day he can't hold a candle to Thomas's intelligence. Obama can barely make it through a press conference and ducks town hall debates with McCain because of his inability to speak in complete sentences when pressed to show his much noted but usually absent brilliance.
Did you catch this LifeNews.com report about the wicked counsel about abortion recently coming from British "advice columnists" from The Sun and Daily Mail? If not, read it.
And after you're through shuddering, launch up a prayer for these dangerous women and for the poor dunces who might actually be influenced by them. And then, before you forget, zip over a couple of e-mails (Steven Ertelt gives you the contact info at the end of the article) giving the columnists some of your own...advice!
The Democrats continue to play word games with the sanctity of life, suggesting that they're seeking "common ground" on the abortion controversy.
But all the while they support as much as ever: 1) the unqualified right to abortion; 2) the elimination of all restrictions on abortion; 3) the promotion of abortion overseas; 4) abortions performed in military hospitals; 5) the funding of abortion through tax dollars; and 6) the insistence of the immoral (and demonstrably counter-productive) Planned Parenthood-style "sex education" programs in schools and government sponsored agencies.
So who is foolish enough to buy into this claptrap?
Perhaps the more accurate question would be -- who is disingenuous enough to join in this sleazy charade, even being sinister enough to try and persuade the naive and gullible that the Democrats really are coming round?
Try the regular crew that's been pushing a liberal agenda among the religious for years including "new evangelicals" like Jim Wallis and Joel Hunter.
Here's a couple of stories about this sad sell-out, one from MediLexicon and the other from the Washington Times.
Wesley J. Smith, who among several valuable services gives us the terrific bioethics blog, Secondhand Smoke, comments on the Independent (U.K.) story about England's National Health Service declaring that the noble "rule of rescue" historically observed by doctors must be abandoned because it's too expensive.
The sad fact is that hospitals and nursing homes in England (and elsewhere) have already begun to jettison the rule, exchanging it for the crasser, less humane belief that some people's lives are just not "cost productive" enough to save. This newspaper report only suggests these folks are feeling bold enough nowadays to say it out loud.
Argues Smith, "The utilitarian bioethicists that exert so much control over NHS medical ethics are tightening the noose around the throats of UK patients once again--this time urging that the lives of expensive patients not be extended...Same thing will happen here too--whether arising from government funded health care or HMOs--if we allow "the bioethicists" to decide our health care public policies and medical ethics for us."
Here's a couple of important stories about Barack Obama from someone who knows him well, Illinois pro-life activist and popular blogger, Jill Stanek. Both stories present Obama in a much different light than which has come from the fawning press corps.
The first article reveals Barack Obama as a coldly calculating politician -- one who served the interests of the pro-abortion feminists in an extremely rude and obscurantist way.
The second and most recent article concerns not only Obama's actions against the “Born-Alive Infants Protection Act,” but about his misrepresenting (that's what lying is called in political circles) the reasons why he did such a callous and mean-spirited thing.
Speaking to the annual convention of the Knights of Columbus earlier this week, Supreme Knight Carl Anderson appealed for an ever-stronger dedication of the organization's members to prayerfully, peacefully and vigorously oppose abortion.
"We have heard a great deal this year about the need for change. But at the same time we are told [by Barack Obama et al] that one thing cannot change - namely, the abortion regime of Roe vs. Wade. It is time that we demand real change, and real change means the end of Roe vs. Wade.
"What political issue could possibly outweigh this human devastation" of nearly 50 million abortion deaths in the US since 1973? The answer, of course, is that there is none. Abortion is different. Abortion is the killing of the innocent on a massive scale. It is time to put away the arguments of political spin masters that only serve to justify abortion killing."
And the members, not surprisingly responded with applause, congratulations and the approval of one of the strongest resolutions of the Knights' history. For instance,
* The resolution opposes "any governmental action or policy that promotes abortion, embryonic stem cell research, human cloning, euthanasia, assisted suicide and other offenses against life."
* The resolution challenges "our fellow Catholics who are elected officials to be true to the faith they claim to profess by acting bravely and publicly in defense of life, affirming with Pope Benedict XVI that 'there can be no room for purely private religion.'"
* The resolution reaffirms the Knights' "commitment to building a culture of life by promoting policies that favor the family."
* The resolution reaffirms the organization's "long standing policy of not inviting to any Knights of Columbus event persons, especially public officials or candidates for public office, who do not support the legal protection of unborn children."
Oh, for an evangelical men's organization that would dedicate itself to these same principles, right?
Even the most encouraging legal advisors didn't hold out much hope for Eileen Smith in her efforts to have abortionist Rapin Osathanondh indicted for his criminal actions in the death of Eileen's daughter, Laura. But the medical board stepped up, an employee of the abortion clinic came forward, and God answered Eileen's prayer.
Justice has a second chance.
Here, in this compelling 8-minute audio interview with Concerned Women for America's Martha Kleder, Eileen tells the whole story, one that she believes has special significance for Christians.
Matthew Warren, "environment writer" for The Australian, finds the time to report on a major story that everyone else in the MSM is ignoring altogether. How come? After all, it involves several elements that the MSM usually loves: leading European intellectuals (including Nobel Prize winners), the impact of science on culture, and hot-button issues like women's rights and the environment.
Oh, I get it. It seems that the conclusions of the story turn out to be politically-incorrect. That's why it's been ignored. Except by The Australian-- so kudos to them for some fair and responsible reporting.
Expensive strategies to cut greenhouse emissions, such as Australia's proposed trading scheme, will do practically nothing to reduce the impact of climate change, and the money would be better used to address malnutrition, disease and the rights of women in developing countries, according to a review by leading economists.
The Copenhagen Consensus Centre co-ordinated by Danish economist Bjorn Lomborg has ranked the pursuit of deep cuts in emissions by countries such as Australia and Europe as one of the least-effective ways of advancing global welfare.
The findings contradict the analysis by Ross Garnaut and Nicholas Stern, who argue that the high cost of mitigating greenhouse gases now is much less than the risk of inaction on climate change.
In prioritising how best to spend $75billion over the next four years to deliver the greatest good to mankind, a panel of eight economists, including five Nobel laureates, did not feature any climate change spending among their 13 priority projects...
Here's news of yet another medical science breakthrough in which nobody is hurt, killed, or morally stained -- because the technique involved uses adult stem cells and not cells from a human embryo.
Roger Highfield, Science Editor for the Telegraph, reports on this significant advance that could substantially help researchers discover treatments for Parkinson’s and numerous other dreaded diseases.
...For the first time a research team has managed to take human skin cells from a patient with a genetic condition and transform them into nerve cells. It means they will now be able to create limitless numbers of the diseased cells to help them carry out research in the hope of finding a way to treat the illness.
The research has been carried out by an American team. They took skin cells from two elderly patients with motor neuron disease and turned them into nerve cells so they could study the cause of their nerve degeneration. The cells can now be used to test drugs to treat the condition.
But scientists also hope if they can find a way of altering the cell to make it healthy they will be able to grow a patient’s cells and tissue, free of disease, to transplant back into their body and fight the condition. Research teams would theoretically be able to use the technique to develop treatments for a range of genetic conditions.
The advance is published in the journal Science by a team led by Prof Kevin Eggan of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute, Cambridge, Massachusetts. Prof Eggan said. “Now we can make limitless supplies of the cells that die in this awful disease.”...
Here's the rest of the story.
Pro-life activists, beginning at least 30 years ago, prophesied that legalizing abortion would lead to a complete disintegration of our nation's regard for the sanctity of human life. They insisted that America could not remove protection from the most innocent and defenseless of human beings without severely damaging the respect for human life itself. Thus, abortion would lead to ever-escalating rates of infanticide, euthanasia, street violence, lethal human experimentation, and the most cruel abuses of the young, the elderly and the disabled.
If you remember, those pro-life activists were vilified by the secularists in the press and elsewhere for those predictions. They were said to be naive, biased fear-mongerers.
But the barbarities have turned out be worse than what, even in our grimmest moods, we ever imagined.
And the tragedy of Danieal Kelly is just one terrible example.
Here's the AP story about Danieal, a 14-year-old girl who was suffering from cerebal palsy -- and much worse -- from the brutality of relatives and the City of Philadelphia's Department of Health Services who let the girl die of neglect, malnutrition and mistreatment. Danieal had wasted away to a mere 42 pounds before she expired and her emaciated body was full of maggot-infested bedsores that delved to the bone.
Yesterday 9 people were charged with various crimes surrounding Danieal's death: murder, involuntary manslaughter, perjury, falsifying documents, and child endangerment. Those charged included Danieal's mother and father, three of the mother's friends, and four social workers whose inept, uncaring actions are worsened only by their dedication to cover up their crimes.
District Attorney Lynne Abraham had scathing words for the city's Department of Human Services, calling its handling of the case "callous, indifferent, unconscionable" — and all too familiar...
The report should "outrage the entire Philadelphia community" and bring about "earth-shattering, cataclysmic changes" at the Department of Human Services, Abraham said.
Abraham said that although at least 55 children have died under the agency's watch, it has given only "lip service to halfhearted corrective action."
"You can't continue to bury these children and say things are getting better when they're not," she said.
"It is important that we speak truth to power. And with the 2008 Olympics in Beijing about to begin, it is important that the people of the United States be heard on our ideals as athletes from around the world and global media descend on China.
"It is important that we say as the late Tom Lantos, chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, said in a hearing last year, a few months before his death: 'China is a police state.'
"I personally believe that the selection of China as the site of the 2008 Olympic Games was a historic error. The Olympics is a symbol of the human spirit and in that regard, a symbol of human freedom, and this police state therefore is precisely the wrong venue for a celebration of human dignity and the human spirit.
"And so I commend my colleagues' support for H. Res. 1370. I am particularly grateful for the call on the government of the People's Republic of China to end the abuses of human rights, to release those imprisoned for political and religious expression, and also challenging China to honor its commitment to freedom of the press of foreign reporters.
"While there is much talk in the media today about the cloud of smog hanging over Beijing as these Games approach, let me say from my heart: the real cloud over the Beijing Olympics is the horror of forced abortion. Therefore I am especially grateful to Congressman Chris Smith for adding an important amendment to this resolution noting that: 'Whereas the Chinese government limits most women to having one child and strictly controls the reproductive lives of Chinese citizens by systematic means that include mandatory monitoring of women's reproductive cycles, mandatory sterilization and contraception, mandatory birth permits, coercive fines for failure to comply,' and the like. This legislation will call on the People's Republic of China to immediately end the practice of forced abortion...
Read more of Indiana's Mike Pence's bold remarks to the Congress here.
For those skeptics who yet argue that CEDAW (the UN's Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women) will not be used as leverage to promote abortion, here's news of how the UN is pressuring Northern Ireland to that very end -- and, yes, doing so under the specific terms of CEDAW.
There's joyful news reports all over the place today describing great news about a new Alzheimer’s drug. But, as you'll see in this Wall Street Journal report, when carefully examined the results of the study are not very impressive after all.
...The companies had already revealed data showing the drug, called bapineuzumab, helped people who were free of a form of a gene that’s a risk factor for Alzheimer’s. But patients with that form, called ApoE4, showed only a trend toward improvement — not a statistically significant one.
Now, in another tough year for Alzheimer’s drugs, the companies presented more detailed data today at a big Alzheimer’s conference. The results showed that none of the patients — with or without the genetic issue — saw more benefit from a higher dose of the drug than they did a lower dose...
WSJ reporter Sarah Rubenstein asked Ronald Petersen, a neurologist at the Mayo Clinic who serves as the chairman of the medical and scientific advisory council of the Alzheimer’s Association, about the news. Responded Petersen, “I can’t tell if the compound’s efficacious or not at this point in time, but (Wyeth and Elan) learned some important information going forward about both the possible efficacy and safety.”
There are several interesting comments appended to the original story, one defending the enthusiasm over the new drug but several reflecting skepticism and even cynicism. For instance, an anonymous physician wrote in, "This will be JUST LIKE ARICEPT - a huge expense to taxpayers (ie. medicare part d) and patients (ie. copays etc.) for NO BENEFIT. Except this will be infinitely more expensive, because it ends in “mab” ie. monoclonal antibody. Any honest physician actually treating patients with dementia will attest to the total lack of efficacy of Aricept."
Most valuable in the comments section, however, was a note from David Hamilton with a link to a pretty compelling piece he had written for Pharma Industry hosted by BNET. Hamilton, by the way, wrote for the WSJ himself for a 14 years but now freelances. He most recently founded the LifeScience section of VentureBeat. Hamilton has covered many issues over his career but specializes in science and technology. He is a two-time winner of the Overseas Press Club award.
I suggest you take a look at Hamilton's review -- it's a quick read -- and you'll see that there are several important reasons to beware the hype about Bapineuzumab. Here are some excerpts:
In what is becoming a sadly common ritual, Wyeth and Elan are pressing forward with an expensive, large-scale “phase III” trial of a risky drug based on wishful thinking and shoddy statistical analysis...
Earlier today, Wyeth and Elan disclosed detailed results of the drug’s phase II trial, which found that bapineuzumab failed to improve cognitive function in a test of 234 Alzheimer’s patients after 18 months of treatment. You could be forgiven for not gleaning that from the companies’ joint press release, however, as Wyeth and Elan chose instead to highlight post-hoc analyses that purported to demonstrate the drug’s efficacy in a subset of patients who don’t have a gene variant called ApoE4, which increases the risk of Alzheimer’s.
To put it bluntly, this is magical thinking on a truly impressive scale...
Hamilton then gives four specific criticisms of the study, four points to remember when evaluating the news story about this "breakthrough."
* Prospective measures of success are the only accurate way to judge trial results. Honest clinical trials require researchers to specify in advance what they’re looking for — and by that measure, the bapineuzumab trial was a failure.
* Post-hoc subgroup analyses amount to lying with statistics. By contrast, a post-hoc analysis involves mining the trial data in order to identify some group of patients who appeared to benefit from the drug. It’s tantamount to moving the finish line after the race is over — or, as FDA’s Richard Pazdur memorably put it, firing an arrow into the wall and then drawing a target around it.
* Such subgroup analyses rarely hold up under further study. Or, as the old computer-science saying goes, “Garbage in, garbage out.”
* Drug companies will do and say almost anything to boost the promise of a potential blockbuster. Wyeth and Elan don’t expect data from the phase III trial in patients without the ApoE4 gene variant until 2010. A lot can happen in that time, including the possibility that the FDA will once again warm to the idea of approving drugs based on marginal evidence. It’s like the old joke in which a prisoner staves off execution by promising to teach the king’s horse to sing within a year, reasoning: “A year is a long time. The king might die. The horse might die. I might die. And maybe the horse will learn to sing.”...
Hamilton concludes his report with this warning, "Whenever companies start talking up after-the-fact subgroup results, it’s time to hold onto your wallet."
Wesley J. Smith over at Secondhand Smoke draws our attention to this Telegraph (U.K.) article with its sad and scary report of Britain's maternity services. It is not only another glaring example of how miserable government controlled health care can get but also of the decreasing value a secular society puts upon human life.
Here's the opening paragraphs of the Telegraph story:
The Healthcare Commission report – the most detailed ever undertaken – has exposed a grim picture of women giving birth in units where there are not enough toilets or showers and women are rushed through so fast that more than one mother gives birth in each bed every day.
Consultants are not present on the wards enough of the time, midwives and doctors do not get on with each other and severe staff shortages mean women are left alone during the birth, the report found.
The investigation into every aspect of antenatal, labour, birth and postnatal care, was prompted after high death rates among new mothers were found in successive hospitals.
Here's a story from Singapore that illustrates both the increasing impact of technology in treating preborn children (a MRI scan that saved a child's life by correcting a misdiagnosis) and yet the decreasing value of human life itself (the parents' desire to abort the baby when they believed him to be handicapped).
Sadly, the marvelous advances of medical technology and scientific knowledge we have seen in recent years cannot make up for the "devolution" in bioethics that has occurred.
Indeed, if society denies the inherent dignity and value of all human lives and instead begins to discriminate due to utilitarian concerns, costs, comfortability, degrees of "wantedness," and so on, even to the point of terminating kids whose problems we refuse to bother with, then those very advances in technology and knowledge that could save lives and dramatically improve our health, fitness and quality of life become used in the service of abortion, euthanasia, lethal embryonic experimentation, genetic manipulation, and other grossly unnatural and immoral activity.
Once the heart goes bad, the hands (and all the nifty tools they use) go bad too.
In a most interesting (and hopeful) development, one of the Labour Party's "safest seats" was just lost in a by-election to John Mason, an accountant/councilor who represents the Scottish National Party, in a contest where Parliament's atrocious embryo experimentation bill was a major issue.
Mason, a member of Easterhouse Baptist Church who describes his faith as being very important to him, opposes abortion on demand and so-called “social abortion” and is “extremely uncomfortable” with the unnatural and lethal experimentation to be performed on human embryos if Parliament's bill holds up.
The Christian Institute reports, "The Glasgow East constituency – which was one of Labour’s safest seats in the UK – has large numbers of Roman Catholics. Ahead of the vote, Roman Catholic Bishops strongly criticised the Government’s embryos Bill as 'monstrous' and a violation of 'moral law'. The embryos Bill was not the only issue during the by-election, but it played a significant role in the campaign."
Fresh from the "You Just Can't Make This Stuff Up" Department comes word that United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is expected to name as the UN's High Commissioner for Human Rights a woman who has throughout her career absolutely and vociferously denied human rights to unborn human children!
As LifeSiteNews reports, "Navanethem 'Navi' Pillay of South Africa is a founding member of the international non-governmental organization Equality Now, a group that has spearheaded campaigns for abortion access in Poland and Nepal. Pillay remains on the board of the organization which receives major funding from pro-abortion foundations, including George Soros' Open Society Institute and the Ford Foundation."
Furthermore, Pillay also supports the "Yogyakarta Principles," which insist that homosexual activities represent natural and binding human rights, including same-sex "marriage," adoption by homosexual couples and state-funded sex change operations.
