Harsanyi Reconsiders Abortion

Over at Reason.com, David Harsanyi has contributed a piece encouraging a re-examination of the question of abortion. It is entitled Abortion, Religion, and Science. His basic thesis is that one should honestly look at the science as well as the religious issues involved. I have often made the pro-life argument solely on the basis of biology, genetics, and logic. The debate Mr Harsanyi proposes should be taken up on all sides as the impact on the Abortuary Business could be significant.

Here is a snippet to encourage you to read it:

Does life really begin on the say-so of a single person—even the mother? Does her position or mental state change what a fetus is or is not? That kind of elastic calculation grinds against reason. Even our intuitive reaction to motherhood agrees. As Rep. Ron Paul of Texas, who is an ob-gyn, once explained, "people ask an expectant mother how her baby is doing. They do not ask how her fetus is doing, or her blob of tissue, or her parasite."

Read the article here.

Elizabeth Bathory must be dancing in her grave

This from yesterday's Washington Times.

Aborted fetus cells used in beauty creams

Valerie Richardson

A San Francisco cosmetics company has ignited an outcry among pro-lifers for including an unexpected ingredient in its anti-aging creams: skin-cell proteins from an aborted fetus.

Children of God for Life, a watchdog group that monitors the use of fetal material in medical products, called last week for a boycott of all treatments manufactured by Neocutis Inc., which acknowledges that the key ingredient in its product line was developed from an aborted boy.

"There's just no excuse for using aborted babies in skin-care products," said Debi Vinnedge, executive director of Children of God for Life, a 10-year-old organization based in Murfreesboro, Tenn. "The reaction, the shock and anger I've seen is incredible."

In a statement released Friday, in response to a wave of condemnation from pro-life and religious blogs, Neocutis defended the use of its trademarked ingredient, Processed Skin Cell Proteins, or PSP, arguing that the fetal cell line was harvested in a responsible, ethical manner for use in treating severe dermatological injuries.

The company compared its situation to that of researchers who used fetal kidney cells to develop the polio vaccine. {BR notes: Of course, kidney cells do not require the death of a child to provide working 'material' for use in pharmacological development.}

"Our view - which is shared by most medical professionals and patients - is that the limited, prudent and responsible use of donated fetal skin tissue can continue to ease suffering, speed healing, save lives and improve the well-being of many patients around the globe," said the statement.

The ingredient was developed at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland from proteins in the skin tissue of a 14-week-old male baby electively aborted at the university's hospital and donated to the Swiss university. The abortion was deemed medically necessary because the baby could not survive to term, according to Neocutis.

The fetal skin cell line was taken from a piece of skin the size of a postage stamp and donated voluntarily by the parents for medical research. The donation was approved by the hospital's medical ethics committee and in accordance with Swiss laws, said the Neocutis statement.

And comments from the Church Fathers?

Charity is no substitute for justice.
Saint Augustine

Unfortunately, in our time, when spheres of knowledge have greatly multiplied, logic has shaken the very foundations of people's faith, and has filled their hearts with questions and doubts. As a consequence, they have been deprived of miracles, for a miracle is something experienced personally, not something than can be logically explained.
Elder Paisios

Theology without action is the theology of demons.
St. Maximos the Confesso

Thou shalt not murder.
Moses the Lawgiver

Salvo on Sex - Right and Left and Wrong

Salvo Magazine has produced a provocative and bitingly accurate account of the modern relativistic views of sex and its real consequences. Hunter Baker's Facts Evasion: When It Comes to Sex, the Left Hates Science not only rejects the attempts by some to discredit any role for faith and religion in social discourse, particularly when science is involved, but also specifically notes the irrationality of the 'left' in its distorted understanding of sexuality and the consequences of society's championing this view.

As a sample:

Abortions continue to be performed in huge numbers despite the past assurances of some on the left that modern birth control would eliminate the need for the grisly procedure. And of the children who are born, an alarmingly high number
are born to single mothers. As a group, these children are substantially more likely to do poorly in school, abuse drugs, commit crimes, require governmental assistance, and serve time in jail—and to see the cycle repeated when they have children of their own.

Read the entire piece here.

News (that will be denied) supporting the humanity of the fetus

The Washington Times and other sources are reporting that studies have revealed/proven that a fetus (READ: "unborn child") has memory from an early state of development. This should have immense implications in the ongoing pro-life versus pro-abortion debate. We'll have to wait a few days to see how the main stream media handles this news.

Do read the whole article but feast your eyes at the following paragraphs about mid-way through the report:

"It seems like every day we find out marvelous new things about the development of unborn children. We hope that this latest information helps people realize more clearly that the unborn are members of the human family with amazing capabilities and capacities like these built in from the moment of conception," said Randall K. O'Bannon, director of education and research for the National Right to Life Educational Trust Fund.

A call to NARAL Pro-Choice America for comment on the implications of the research were not returned.

Sometimes it is amazing how science actually proves what most people would otherwise rationally consider to be commonly sensible.

As my Grandfather would have said, "Now, there's stem cells and there's stem cells...."

Real Clear Politics has an essay by Kathleen Parker regarding President Obama's recent "lifting" of the stem cell ban by the US Government. Here are a few pertinent excerpts:

Unfortunately, the stem cell debate has been characterized as a conflict between science (as though science is always right) and religious "kooks" (as though religious folk are never right). In choosing sides, it is, indeed, easier to imagine lunch with a researcher who wants to resurrect Christopher Reeve (whom Obama couldn't resist mentioning) and make him walk again, than with the corner protester holding a fetus in a jar. (Note: I don't believe I've ever heard of an abortion protester "holding a fetus in a jar".)

The insistence on using embryonic stem cells always rested on the argument that they were pluripotent, capable of becoming any kind of cell. That superior claim no longer can be made with the spectacular discovery in 2007 of "induced pluripotent stem cells" (iPS), which was the laboratory equivalent of the airplane. Very simply, iPS cells can be produced from a skin cell by injecting genes that force it to revert to its primitive "blank slate" form with all the same pluripotent capabilities of embryonic stem cells.

The iPS discovery even prompted Dr. Ian Wilmut, who cloned Dolly the sheep, to abandon his license to attempt human cloning, saying that the researchers "may have achieved what no politician could: an end to the embryonic stem cell debate." And, just several days ago, Dr. Bernadine Healy, director of the National Institutes of Health under the first President Bush, wrote in U.S. News & World Report that these recent developments "reinforced the notion that embryonic stem cells ... are obsolete."

Many scientists, of course, want to conduct embryonic stem cell research, as they have and always could with private funding. One may agree or disagree with their purposes, but one may also question why taxpayers should have to fund something so ethically charged when alternative methods are available.

Read the entire essay here.

The Doctrine of Darwin

RealClearPolitics has an interesting article by David Warren on Darwin. Amongst highlights the article notes the following:

As Darwin himself realized, the fossil stratum corresponding to the beginning of the Cambrian geological period was potentially inimical to his hypothesis. In a blink of geological time, now dated by various means to 542 million years ago, all of the advanced body types of "modern" multicellular organisms suddenly and simultaneously appear. The event is now known as the "Cambrian Explosion," and Darwin hoped it would be explained away by the later discovery of gradual evolutionary developments through the eons before. Instead, the shock of the transition has been enhanced by all subsequent study.

Likewise, Darwin trusted that the gradual development of such "irreducibly complex" organs as the eye, ear, and heart would be explained in due course (i.e. these organs can't work at all unless and until all their many parts are present and functioning in perfect harmony). Instead, advances in genetics, molecular biology, and biochemistry over the last half-century have revealed a vast world of irreducible complexities within the single living cell, by comparison to which the engineering of an eye would be child's play.

The man himself was very much a product of his age: a bourgeois Victorian adapted to an intellectual environment in which such fatuities as Utilitarianism and Malthusianism were in the air. In retrospect, he is a redundant character, for Wallace already had the theory, and many others could have drudged out Darwin’s specific points.

Read the whole article here.

How Logical is Science regarding Atheism?

Human Rights Watch aids children ... but not ALL children

Recently, I posted a reference to an article from the Human Rights Watch website. I had suspicions that this site might not be exactly consistent in championing all rights. Today, I decided to check what they said related to children's rights.

Below is their statement of purpose on the topic.

The Children's Rights Division monitors human rights abuses against children around the world and works to end them. We investigate all kinds of human rights abuses against children: the use of children as soldiers; the worst forms of child labor; torture of children by police; police violence against street children; conditions in correctional institutions and orphanages; corporal punishment in schools; mistreatment of refugee and migrant children; trafficking of children for labor and prostitution; discrimination in education because of race, gender, sexual orientation, or HIV/AIDS; and physical and sexual violence against girls and boys. Children's physical and intellectual immaturity makes them particularly vulnerable to human rights violations. Their ill-treatment calls for special attention because, for the most part, children cannot speak for themselves, their opinions are seldom taken into account and they can only rarely form their own organizations to work for change.

All of this is commendable. I would not fault them for one thing they mention as a worthy of support.

However, there is a class of children who are entirely absent from their focus. These children are not only treated as property, they are routinely the victims of the ultimate in societal violence - they are murdered, executed and disposed of like garbage. For the vast majority of them, their graves are unmarked. Attempts to recognize them and prevent the barbaric treatment inflicted on them is too often met with condescension, derision, ad hominems, and even out and out aggression.

But Human Rights Watch does make reference to these forgotten children. Apparently, they either don't have rights or have rights that are trumped by the rights of the mother. The result? Abortion.

Note just a few statements from this Q&A page:

Restrictive abortion laws have a devastating impact on women’s right to life.

This ignores the fact that any abortion has a devastating impact on the child's right to life.

Where there is a lack of legal and safe abortion services and pervasive barriers to contraceptives and other reproductive health services, there will be unwanted pregnancies and unsafe abortions.

While unwanted pregnancies are always unfortunate, is this claim based historic fact? Not exactly.

Restrictive abortion laws affect women’s health not only by limiting their access to safe abortion services, but also in other ways. For example, the right to health is violated when women are arbitrarily denied treatment for incomplete abortions or when such treatment is given, but available pain medication is withheld.

Note the red herring "when such treatment is given, but available pain medication is withheld." While needlessly causing a woman pain is certainly immoral, what has that got to do with the question of abortion at all? But, if it must be considered, what about inflicting pain on the child that is being aborted?

Access to legal and safe abortion services is essential to the protection of women’s rights to nondiscrimination and equality. Women are in practice more likely than men to experience personal hardship as well as social disadvantage as a result of economic, career, and other life changes when they have children. Where women are compelled to continue unwanted pregnancies, such consequences forcibly put women at further disadvantage.

The counter to this problem is more compassion in society for the pregnant mother, not the murder of the impregnated child. It is the worst form of evil to claim that the solution to one person's suffering is the extermination of another.

The right to security of person, including the right to physical integrity, is central to the issue of abortion and human rights. When a pregnancy is unwanted, a legal requirement to continue the pregnancy may constitute a government intrusion on a women’s body in violation of this right.

No one has an argument with a woman, or a man, having a right to the physical integrity of their body. The issue is that the child is not the woman's body. Genetically, biologically, psychologically, the child is a different and unique person. Therefore, an abortion is government sanction for one person to decide to kill another person.

Decisions about parenthood are deeply personal, and are precisely the type of interest that privacy rights should protect. A pregnant woman’s right to privacy entitles her to decide whether or not to undergo an abortion. No women should have to make this decision under threat of legal prosecution.

This is a dubious claim. Again, if the child is a unique person, and individual human being, which it is, then the axiom that one's privacy rights end at the property line of public safety. I cannot claim a right to privacy while experimenting with dangerous materials that might explode and injure my neighbour. Similarly, I can't murder my neighbour because he can see me when I mow my lawn. The right to privacy, if admitted into the discourse at all (it is, by all accounts, a disputed concept) cannot be used to justify the killing of another human being.

The U.N. Human Rights Committee has indicated that restrictions on access to safe and legal abortion may give rise to situations that constitute cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment. These situations include forcing a pregnant woman to carry an unwanted or health-threatening pregnancy to term.

What of the cruelty to the child?

Indeed, what about the children?

Dinesh D'Souza is at it again!

Dinesh D'Souza has written an excellent book defending Christianity against the irrationalist pseudo-scientific atheists called, What's So Great About Christianity. In Monday's Townhall, a column by Dinesh highlights the myths behind the Galileo versus the Church arguments. Here is the opening paragraphs:

Many people have uncritically accepted the idea that there is a longstanding war between science and religion. We find this war advertised in many of the leading atheist tracts such as those by Richard Dawkins, Victor Stenger, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens. Every few months one of the leading newsweeklies does a story on this subject. Little do the peddlers of this paradigm realize that they are victims of nineteenth-century atheist propaganda.

About a hundred years ago, two anti-religious bigots named John William Draper and Andrew Dickson White wrote books promoting the idea of an irreconcilable conflict between science and God. The books were full of facts that have now been totally discredited by scholars. But the myths produced by Draper and Dickson continue to be recycled. They are believed by many who consider themselves educated, and they even find their way into the textbooks. In this article I expose several of these myths, focusing especially on the Galileo case, since Galileo is routinely portrayed as a victim of religious persecution and a martyr to the cause of science.

As always, Dinesh is fresh and precise in his research and analysis. I highly recommend the article and the book!

More Interference from Those Pesky Bishops!

In light of the previous post in which scientists argue the merits and dangers of 'irrational' Bishops spreading lies, evidence to support their charges comes from the Diocese of San Francisco. It seems Archbishop Niederauer is preaching ignorance, hate and suspicion of science by decrying the use of the technology that allows people to engage in healthy aesthetic dialogue.

Below are a few highlights as reported in the Catholic San Francisco.

Describing what he sees as an electronic tsunami of pornography, Archbishop George H. Niederauer told a Utah based anti pornography organization that pornography is evil because it debases the priceless worth and dignity of each human being and the gift of human sexuality given by a God who shares his loving, creative power with us....

Every computer terminal is its pipeline, and cell phones and other hand held devices, many of them marketed to children and young people, literally deliver pornography everywhere, to anyone, the Archbishop of San Francisco said in his keynote address....

We have all heard the discouraging numbers, he said, noting research shows there are 68 million Internet search engine requests for porn sites every day, that 70 percent of 18-24 year old men visit porn sites in a typical month, that 90 percent of eight to 16 year olds have viewed porn on line, and that the average age of a childs first exposure to pornography on the Internet is 11....

However, he said, What should motivate us most profoundly is not the amount of pornography there is but the kind of harm it does. Pornography assaults human dignity and commodifies people and human sexuality. Porn starves the human soul in its spiritual dimension....

Archbishop Niederauer pointed out the late Pope John Paul II had observed that the opposite of love is not hate, but use....

The whole article is here. The complete text of Archbishop Niederauer's speech can be downloaded (pdf) here.

Should Science Ally With Religion? Be Reasonable!

Oh those altruistic scientists! This is from the Guardian in the UK.

Speaking at a debate at the Guardian Hay festival, Martin Rees, the Astronomer Royal who heads the Royal Society, said that science needed as many allies as it could find in the current climate. "If we give the impression that science is hostile to even mainstream religion, it will be more difficult to combat the kinds of anti-science sentiments that are really important," he said. "We need people like that as allies in dealing with extreme fundamentalism."

His fellow panellists, evolutionists Richard Dawkins and Steve Jones, disagreed. Prof Dawkins said that, though he had cooperated with the recently-retired Bishop of Oxford, Richard Harries, to complain about allowing creationists to set up schools, he urged a limit. "If we are too friendly to nice, decent bishops, we run the risk of buying into the fiction that there's something virtuous about believing things because of faith rather than because of evidence. We run the risk of betraying scientific enlightenment."

Bishops themselves never killed anybody, but possibly made the world safer for "people who do kill people by extolling the virtues of faith as opposed to reason and evidence".

Prof Jones discussed the problems he comes across when teaching students with Islamic backgrounds. "To a man and to a woman, there are parts of science they will not accept. "That means that, in their early lives, they have been told deliberate lies by people who, I'm sure, know they are deliberate lies. I don't care how charming they are, I don't care how pleasant they are, these people are evil.

"What's true for imams is, more or less, true for bishops."

Read the whole article here.

One wonders where Professors Jones and Dawkins uncovered evidence of "evil" and "virtuous". That Dawkins actually asserts "extolling the virtues of faith" as the impetus driving murders would be ludicrous if not for the many who follow his lead unreflectively (i.e., unreasonably).

I'd love to read their replies to the Holy Father's book, Values in a Time of Upheaval.

Study Reveals Religion's Positive Influence on Kids... Who'd Have Thunk It?

Melinda Wenner at LifeScience .com reports that a study has found that children actually benefit from the environment of faith in a family setting. In a study of more than 16,000 children, Mississippi State University sociologist John Bartkowski and his colleagues asked the parents and teachers of more than 16,000 children to rate them on self control and frequency of poor or unhappy behavior.

Kids with religious parents are better behaved and adjusted than other children, according to a new study that is the first to look at the effects of religion on young child development. ...

The kids whose parents regularly attended religious services—especially when both parents did so frequently—and talked with their kids about religion were rated by both parents and teachers as having better self-control, social skills and approaches to learning than kids with non-religious parents.

Not surprisingly, secularist sociologists and others are perplexed at the findings:

But as for why religious organizations might provide more of a boost to familylife than secular organizations designed to do the same thing, that’s still somewhat of a mystery, said Annette Mahoney, a psychologist at Bowling Green State University in Ohio, also not involved in the research. Mahoney wondered: “Is there anything about religion and spirituality that sets it apart?”

And of course, the old canard that religion is an oppressive and stifling influence is still offered as a counter to the study's findings:

It’s also possible that the correlation between religion and child development is the other way around, he said. In other words, instead of religion having a positive effect on youth, maybe the parents of only the best behaved children feel comfortable in a religious congregation.

“There are certain expectations about children’s behavior within a religious context, particularly within religious worship services,” he said. These expectations might frustrate parents, he said, and make congregational worship “a less viable option if they feel their kids are really poorly behaved.”

The links in the article predictably point to articles arguing for evolution against the creationist views of certain Protestant groups. Another article that discusses the positive effects of religious attendance on health and life-expectancy is replete with provisos and disclaimers. Other articles in the chain of links alternately affirm and reject the power of prayer on health. And of course, the site also has the obligatory 'Shroud of Turin is a Fake' article.

It is not surprising that there should be bewilderment that faith plays a positive impact on children's lives. It seems that many in the scientific community, perhaps mainly in the sociological sciences -- including the fields of psychology and psychiatry, fail in the attempt to consider religion neutrally. Religion has become viewed as the enemy to many in these fields.

After all, religion proposes absolute truths and immutable values that require assent. In a cultural climate that sees any restrictions on hedonistic headlong plunges into the river of licentiousness as oppressive and somewhat perverted, it is natural that a study revealing a positive role for faith should seem illogical and incomprehensible.

The methods of science are not necessarily evil or wrong in and of themselves. Yet the politicalization of science too often leads to the promotion of relativistic goals and attempts to quash systems that accept the existence of real truths and values. As a parallel, consider the effect on law and jurisprudence when all reference to natural law is excised.

In any event, those of you with children can take this study as validation that you can pray in front of your children, go to and take them to church, and even let them see you walk into the confessional. It won't harm them or stunt their intellectual growth.

Who knows? Faith might actually become the foundation that gives coherence and meaning to their lives.

Who'd have thunk it?