In the debate over physician-assisted suicide, opponents have long argued that legalizing it could lead to disproportionately high suicide rates in vulnerable patients. But a new study published in the October 2007 issue of the Journal of Medical Ethics suggests that this concern is more fear than fact: an analysis of reports of doctor-assisted deaths in Oregon and the Netherlands ”” two areas where the practice is legal ”” found that rates of assisted death were no higher than average in nine of 10 patient groups that could be at risk for coercion, such as the elderly or the poor. In fact, the one group that researchers found sought assisted suicide more frequently was younger white men ”” a generally more privileged few.

“People who tend to take advantage of this tend to be well educated when it comes to their options,” says Russell Korobkin, a professor at UCLA School of Law. In the last 13 years in Oregon, only 292 have died under the law. “Mostly what this is good for is giving people peace of mind. They feel like they have control if they need it.”

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As part of Plan A, its nationwide campaign to foster access to safe and affordable contraception, the National Council of Jewish Women has been encouraging local communities to tackle the topics that stir controversy ”” like religion, emergency contraception, and insurance coverage.

Those will all be up for discussion on Wednesday evening, Oct. 10, at a forum sponsored by NCJW’s Union County Section, and hosted by Congregation Beth Israel in Scotch Plains. The program is open to the community.

The speakers will include two religious leaders known for their willingness to engage in open debate: Beth Israel’s Rabbi George Nudell, who will discuss Jewish perspectives on birth control, and Rev. Geoffrey B. Curtiss of All Saints Episcopal Parish in Hoboken, who will offer a liberal Christian perspective….

Curtiss will represent the New Jersey Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, the state branch of a national interfaith clergy association founded to defend the constitutional right to abortion.

Earlier this year, Curtiss was one of the RCRC experts who developed “In Good Conscience: Guidelines for the Ethical Provision of Health Care in a Pluralistic Society.” The guidelines were in part a rebuttal to what it called “sectarian restrictions imposed on health care,” including the Catholic Church’s directives banning abortion services at Catholic healthcare institutions.

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The Human Fertilisation and Embryology authority last week decided to allow licences to create cytoplasmic hybrid embryos for research purposes. These consist of an animal egg with its nucleus (containing its DNA) removed and the nucleus of a human cell inserted. The embryos are destroyed before they are 14 days old. Scientists want to create them in order to investigate debilitating, untreatable medical conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s and motor neurone disease.

There is fierce opposition to the HFEA’s decision, not least from the Roman Catholic Church. Yet the head of the Authority’s ethics and law committee is a churchman: the former Anglican Bishop of Oxford, Richard Harries – now Lord Harries. He told Sunday what ethical considerations his committee took into account.

Listen to it all from the BBC.

Policy on embryo research continues to zig-zag. Having first said it would outlaw the creation of animal-human hybrids for medical experimentation, the Government then decided to allow it. That position was endorsed last week by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA).

I hope that the Government will change tack yet again. I am deeply uncomfortable with the use of human embryos for research. The HFEA recognised the revulsion many feel at such use of human cells, but insisted that the benefits outweighed such feelings. The recent go-ahead for the creation of ‘cybrid’ embryos – created by the use of a human cell or its nucleus to fertilise an animal egg from which the nucleus has been removed – brings more dilemmas.

If the embryos are human enough to be of use in research, are they not human enough for it to be wrong to experiment on them – whatever the possible benefits?

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Pope Benedict rejected the concept that abortion could be considered a human right on Friday and urged European leaders to do everything possible to raise birth rates and make their countries more child-friendly.

The 80-year-old German Pontiff told diplomats and representatives of international organizations that Europe could not deny its Christian roots because Christianity had played a decisive role in forging its history and culture.

“It was in Europe that the notion of human rights was first formulated. The fundamental human right, the presupposition of every other right, is the right to life itself,” he said in an address at the former imperial Hofburg Palace.

“This is true of life from the moment of conception until its natural end. Abortion, consequently, cannot be a human right — it is the very opposite. It is a deep wound in society.”

Read it all.

Update: The full text of the Pope’s speech is here and it includes the following:

It was in Europe that the notion of human rights was first formulated. The fundamental human right, the presupposition of every other right, is the right to life itself. This is true of life from the moment of conception until its natural end. Abortion, consequently, cannot be a human right ”“ it is the very opposite. It is “a deep wound in society”, as the late Cardinal Franz König never tired of repeating.

In stating this, we are not expressing a specifically ecclesial concern. Rather, we are acting as advocates for a profoundly human need, speaking out on behalf of those unborn children who have no voice. I do not close my eyes to the difficulties and the conflicts which many women are experiencing, and I realize that the credibility of what we say also depends on what the Church herself is doing to help women in trouble.

I appeal, then, to political leaders not to allow children to be considered as a form of illness, nor to abolish in practice your legal system’s acknowledgment that abortion is wrong. I say this out of a concern for humanity. But that is only one side of this disturbing problem. The other is the need to do everything possible to make European countries once again open to welcoming children. Encourage young married couple to establish new families and to become mothers and fathers! You will not only assist them, but you will benefit society as a whole. We also decisively support you in your political efforts to favour conditions enabling young couples to raise children. Yet all this will be pointless, unless we can succeed in creating once again in our countries a climate of joy and confidence in life, a climate in which children are not seen as a burden, but rather as a gift for all.

Another great concern of mine is the debate on what has been termed “actively assisted death”. It is to be feared that at some point the gravely ill or elderly will be subjected to tacit or even explicit pressure to request death or to administer it to themselves. The proper response to end-of-life suffering is loving care and accompaniment on the journey towards death ”“ especially with the help of palliative care ”“ and not “actively assisted death”. But if humane accompaniment on the journey towards death is to prevail, urgent structural reforms are needed in every area of the social and healthcare system, as well as organized structures of palliative care. Concrete steps would also have to be taken: in the psychological and pastoral accompaniment of the seriously ill and dying, their family members, and physicians and healthcare personnel. In this field the hospice movement has done wonders. The totality of these tasks, however, cannot be delegated to it alone. Many other people need to be prepared or encouraged in their willingness to spare neither time nor expense in loving care for the gravely ill and dying.

The decision of British regulators to consider allowing the creation of hybrid embryos for use in medical experiments is “a monstrous act against human dignity,” said the president of the Pontifical Academy for Life.

Bishop Elio Sgreccia said this today in response to the Wednesday ruling of Britain’s Human Fertilization and Embryo Authority that it would in principle allow the creation of human-animal embryos.

“The British government has given in to the requests of a group of scientists absolutely against morality,” Bishop Sgreccia told the Italian daily Il Corriere della Sera. “It is necessary that the scientific community mobilizes itself as soon as possible.”

In a statement, the British agency announced that it will now consider two specific research proposals to create such embryos — which scientists call chimeras, after the mythical Greek creature with a lion’s head, a goat’s body and a serpent’s tail. The agency expects a decision for both cases in November.

The agency added, “This is not a total green light for … hybrid research, but recognition that this area of research can, with caution and careful scrutiny, be permitted.”

Bishop Sgreccia said that Britain’s decision marks a turning point: “That frontier, of the crossroads of distinct species, has been overstepped today with the go-ahead of the British government. Up until today this had been banned in the field of biotechnology, and not only by religious associations.”

Read it all.

Plans to allow British scientists to create human-animal embryos are expected to be approved tomorrow by the government’s fertility regulator. The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority published its long-awaited public consultation on the controversial research yesterday, revealing that a majority of people were “at ease” with scientists creating the hybrid embryos.

Researchers want to create hybrid embryos by merging human cells with animal eggs, in the hope they will be able to extract valuable embryonic stem cells from them. The cells form the basic building blocks of the body and are expected to pave the way for revolutionary therapies for diseases such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and even spinal cord injuries.

The consultation papers were released ahead of the authority’s final decision on the matter, which will mark the end of almost a year of intense lobbying by scientists and a fervent campaign by organisations opposed to research involving embryonic stem cells.

Using animal eggs will allow researchers to push ahead unhindered by the shortage of human eggs. Under existing laws, the embryos must be destroyed after 14 days when they are no bigger than a pinhead, and cannot be implanted into the womb.

Opponents of the research and some religious groups say the work blurs the distinction between humans and animals, and creates embryos that are destined to be destroyed when stem cells are extracted from them.

Read it all.

Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney said this week that as president he would allow individual states to keep abortion legal, two weeks after telling a national television audience that he supports a constitutional amendment to ban the procedure nationwide.

In an interview with a Nevada television station on Tuesday, Romney said Roe. v. Wade should be abolished and vowed to “let states make their own decision in this regard.” On Aug. 6, he told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos that he supports a human life amendment to the Constitution that would protect the unborn.

“I do support the Republican platform, and I do support that being part of the Republican platform, and I’m pro-life,” Romney said in the ABC interview, broadcast days before his victory among conservative Iowa voters in the Ames straw poll.

The two very different statements reflect the challenge for Romney, who has reinvented himself as a champion of the antiabortion movement in recent years and is seeking to become the conservative alternative to former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani in the battle for the Republican presidential nomination.

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One week before a new law imposes stricter regulations on Missouri abortion providers, Planned Parenthood wants a federal judge to keep it from being enforced.

Planned Parenthood on Monday asked for an injunction to stall enforcement until the court decides whether the new law is constitutional. Without the injunction, the law will take effect a week from today.

The requirements for a clinic to be licensed under the new law are so costly that the group may be forced to shut down abortion centers in Kansas City and Columbia, said Peter Brownlie, chief executive officer of Planned Parenthood of Kansas and Mid-Missouri.

Women in central Missouri would be forced to travel to St. Louis for abortions, Brownlie said. Services would also continue to be provided in Overland Park, he said.

“This is a blatant attempt to close down clinics and deny women their right to health care,” Brownlie said at a news conference Monday. “”¦ The regulations would have no impact on family planning services or the quality of care that patients receive.”

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will almost certainly hit the grim total of 400 executions this month, far ahead of any other state, testament to the influence of the state’s conservative evangelical Christians and its cultural mix of Old South and Wild West.

“In Texas you have all the elements lined up. Public support, a governor that supports it and supportive courts,” said Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center.

“If any of those things are hesitant then the process slows down,” said Dieter. “With all cylinders working as in Texas it produces a lot of executions.”

Texas has executed 398 convicts since it resumed the practice in 1982, six years after the U.S. Supreme Court lifted a ban on capital punishment, far exceeding second-place Virginia with 98 executions since the ban was lifted. It has five executions scheduled for August.

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Five times in the last dozen years, bills on medically assisted suicide have risen in the California Assembly, and five times they have failed.

In every instance, a great deal of the credit for their demise goes to a constituency associated with advancing personal choice and civil rights ”” namely, the disability rights movement.

The latest attempt, Assembly Bill 374, which its backers called the California Compassionate Choices Act, failed to make it out of committee in June. Modeled on a statute passed by Oregon voters in 1997, it would have allowed mentally competent patients, whom doctors found had less than six months to live, to legally acquire lethal prescription drugs for self-administration.

Many disability rights activists contend that the increasingly cost-conscious healthcare system, especially health maintenance organizations, inevitably would respond to legalized suicide by withholding expensive care from the disabled and terminally ill until they chose to end their lives.

“HMOs are denying access to healthcare and hastening people’s deaths already,” said Paul Longmore, a history professor at San Francisco State and a pioneer in the historical study of disability. “Our concern is not just how this will affect us. Given the way the U.S. healthcare system is getting increasingly unjust and even savage, I don’t think this system could be trusted to implement such a system equitably, or confine it to people who are immediately terminally ill.”

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A prominent bioethicist says he hopes that the closure of ES Cell International, a leading embryonic stem cell research facility, is a sign of growing realism.

Father Tadeusz Pacholczyk commented on the closure of the biotechnology firm in Singapore, telling ZENIT, “We can only hope that a certain realism may finally be sinking in, as Wall Street types recognize that the timeline for clinical therapies is likely to be quite long.”

The firm closed when investors concluded that “the likelihood of having products in the clinic in the short term was vanishingly small,” Alan Colman, former chief executive of ES Cell International, told Science magazine.

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After a successful series of infertility treatments, Kristen Cohen and her husband, Lee, had two sets of twin boys, now ages 6 and 2. They also had about a dozen embryos that they no longer needed but could not imagine going to waste. “We went through so much to create these embryos,” says Kristen. “This was much more than blood, sweat and tears.” The Cohens had also benefited firsthand from medical research; Lee, who has cystic fibrosis, has been helped by advanced treatments. So in 2006, when Kristen saw an article about the Harvard Stem Cell Institute, she contacted it and began the process of donating their embryos, which could be used to create new lines of embryonic stem cells. After five months of paperwork and counseling for the couple, the Cohen embryos were in the hands of researchers. “We know they might be destroyed without making a single stem-cell line,” Kristen says. “I don’t need to know that my embryo helped save patient X. It’s the greater good.”

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Eight months ago, Missouri seemed well on its way to becoming a national leader in stem cell research.

Voters amended the state’s constitution to protect stem cell research ”” even the controversial form using cells from human embryos. Actor Michael J. Fox appeared in TV ads, visibly shaking from Parkinson’s disease as he sought votes for stem cell supporter Claire McCaskill in her bid for the U.S. Senate.

Now the spotlight is all but gone after a research institute and lawmakers withdrew financial support.

“Things are obviously not moving forward,” said state Sen. Chuck Graham, a Democrat who backed the amendment in November. “Right now, you can’t tell the amendment passed. People are running in the opposite direction. It’s incredibly frustrating.”

Read it all.

From Reuters:

A terminal leukemia patient must have daily blood transfusions or die. A family begs doctors to do everything possible to keep their elderly mother alive. Parents cannot accept their newborn baby will not survive.

End-of-life issues top the list of ethical dilemmas hospitals face as medical progress enables doctors to extend an endangered life to the hard-to-determine point where they may actually only be dragging out death.

Private dramas like these play out in hospitals every day, rarely hitting the headlines as did the family feud over ending life support for Terri Schiavo in the United States in 2005 or a British couple’s fight to save their severely handicapped baby Charlotte Wyatt in 2003 when doctors wanted to give up on her.

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From the Chicago Tribune:

Elizabeth Edwards said Tuesday that her husband’s health-care plan would provide insurance coverage of abortion.

Speaking on behalf of Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards before the family planning and abortion-rights group Planned Parenthood Action Fund, Edwards lauded her husband’s health-care proposal as “a true universal health-care plan” that would cover “all reproductive health services, including pregnancy termination,” referring to abortion.

Edwards was joined by Democratic candidates Sens. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) and Barack Obama (D-Ill.) at the group’s political organizing conference in addressing issues at the core of the political clash between cultural liberals and conservatives, including abortion rights, access to contraception and sex education.

The recent 5-4 Supreme Court decision upholding a federal ban on a late-term abortion procedure that opponents call “partial-birth abortion” has increased anxieties among reproductive-rights advocates over the future of constitutional protections for abortion rights. All three of the Democratic campaigns used the forum to signal their determination to appoint Supreme Court nominees who would uphold the 1973 Roe vs. Wade abortion ruling.

Obama, who earlier gained the endorsement of Washington, D.C., Mayor Adrian Fenty, offered the group a vision of equal opportunity for women, tying a call for improved access to contraceptives for low-income women with a call for an “updated social contract” that includes paid maternity leave and expanded school hours.

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Gov. Kathleen Blanco has signed into law two bills banning a controversial form of late-term abortions, making Louisiana the first state outlaw the procedure after the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a federal ban in April.

Under two bills, which went into effect Friday, anyone convicted of performing “a partial birth abortion … thereby kills a human fetus” and can be imprisoned for one to 10 years, fined from $10,000 to $100,000, or both. Women who have the procedure will not be subjected to fines or jail time under the new laws.

A doctor charged with the crime can seek a hearing before the State Board of Medical Examiners to determine whether the procedure was necessary to save the mother’s life, an exemption under the new laws.

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Two Years ago, when Catherine was in sixth grade, she was given a school assignment that would have been unremarkable for most kids: make a timeline for history class in which half the events occurred before she was born and half after. For a while, she worked quietly at the dining-room table of her family’s rambling Northern California home. Then she looked up.

“Mom?” she asked. “What was the year that you and Dad met our donor?”

Sitting with me in May, Catherine’s mother, Marie, a 59-year-old therapist, smiled wryly, remembering the incident. The crinkling of Marie’s eyes gave her a passing resemblance to the actress Anne Bancroft ”” but not to her own daughter. Marie, who asked me to use only her middle name and a family name for her daughter to protect their privacy, is dark where Catherine is blond, olive-skinned where Catherine is fair, brown-eyed where the girl’s are hazel. There is no similarity to their jaw lines, their cheekbones, the shapes of their faces. Of course, lots of kids don’t look like their mothers; few people would consider that odd, though they might ”” often incessantly ”” comment on it in conversation.

“So, what’s going to happen with this project?” Marie recalled responding to Catherine at the time, being careful to keep her voice neutral. “Is it going to be put up in the hallway? In the classroom?”

Catherine shrugged. “I don’t know,” she said. And later, “Mom, this is my timeline.”

Read it all.

Haven’t seen a lot of coverage of this story. But it might be something to keep an eye on. New Hampshire really likes being first it seems.

U.S. state New Hampshire repeals parental notice abortion law

CONCORD, New Hampshire: New Hampshire on Friday became the first U.S. state to repeal a law requiring parental notification for teenagers to get abortions.

The repeal took effect immediately after New Hampshire Governor John Lynch signed the bill.

“I strongly believe parents should be involved in these decisions, providing important support and guidance,” said Lynch. “Unfortunately that is not possible in every case. The Supreme Court found this law unconstitutional because it fails to protect the health and safety of all women, which is why I am signing its repeal.”

New Hampshire is the first state to repeal a parental notice law, according to Dawn Touzin of Planned Parenthood of Northern New England, whose lawsuit had tied up the law in court.

Here’s the full text.

The Diocese supports freedom of choice in abortion. The Diocesan Council in 1969 endorsed “repeal of all laws governing the performance of an abortion by a licensed physician.” Convention in 1972 gave support to New York’s new law permitting prospective mothers “to choose to give or not to give birth to a child.” Convention in 1974 (reaffirmed in 1986) endorsed the decision of the U.S. Supreme Court “allowing women to exercise their own conscience in the matter of abortions.” The Diocese is an affiliate of the New York State Religious Coalition for Abortion Rights.

—The Episcopal Diocese of New York

from Commonweal:

Toward the end of The Troubled Dream of Life, Callahan warns that it is not enough to provide compelling arguments about the proper understanding of illness, aging, and death in human life; we also need new images of human mortality. We need the right image because in confronting our mortality we are dealing with a level of consciousness that is “deeper than that which can be wholly influenced by our logic and arguments.” This claim-somewhat surprising from someone so deeply committed to the role of reasoned argument in the formulation of public policy-has stuck with me. I’m not sure that Callahan has ever really provided the image we might substitute for that of modern medicine’s supremely powerful researcher overcoming the limitations of human embodiment.

Or maybe he has. Driving me from the Hastings Center to his apartment last fall, Callahan suddenly pulled his car over to the side of the road and parked in front of a church. He wanted to show me something, he said. As it turned out, he was taking me to the Union Church of Pocantico Hills, a church built by the Rockefeller family, where they worshiped for decades. We walked in. Past a simple but elegant exterior, the entranceway opened to a sanctuary of remarkable beauty. At one end of the nave was a stained-glass window designed by Matisse; at the other end, one by Chagall. Eight other stained-glass windows, all by Chagall, flanked the nave.

All these stained-glass windows are strikingly beautiful, but one exceptionally so. Commissioned by the children of John D. Rockefeller Jr. as a memorial to their father, the window sits in the narthex of the church, luminous with the brilliant blues for which Chagall’s windows are famous. The window struck me as providing just the kind of image for which Callahan’s entire work has called. It is not the image that one might associate with the aspirations of modern medicine-say, Lazarus being raised from the dead. Instead, the window depicts the parable of the Good Samaritan from the Gospel of Luke, with its recognition of our common humanity rooted in the fragility of human life. In the intersecting tracery of the window, Chagall has captured both the interdependency and the brokenness of human life. Yet the scene is one of hope, and of confidence in the face of great adversity. One sees both sadness and joy.

In Setting Limits, Callahan agues that by striving for “grace under adversity,” and by embracing a “communal spirit” and an “ethic of service,” the elderly can serve as role models for the rest of us. Perhaps it is this spirit and this care for the other depicted in the Chagall windows that draws Callahan to them. Yet, whatever it is that attracts Callahan to Chagall-two Chagall prints grace the walls of Dan and Sidney’s living room-the depiction of the story of the Good Samaritan in Union Church is in fact a window on Callahan’s whole career. As those who read his books will discover, the complexity, honesty, and beauty of Chagall’s Good Samaritan illuminate Callahan and his life’s work.

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The executive order on stem cells issued by President Bush yesterday seeks to reorient research in new directions that may or may not pay off. But make no mistake, it is no substitute for the bill expanding embryonic stem cell research that Mr. Bush vetoed at the same time because it would involve the destruction of microscopic entities ”” smaller than the period at the end of this sentence ”” that the president deems a nascent form of life.

Both the Senate and the House, which passed the embryonic stem cell bill by comfortable but not veto-proof margins, need to summon the strength to override Mr. Bush’s veto, so that important research into possible cures for Parkinson’s, diabetes and other serious ailments can move ahead.

Mr. Bush knows that most Americans support embryonic stem cell research ”” while his political base does not ”” so yesterday he sought to at least blunt their dismay by touting new scientific studies focused on deriving potent stem cells from amniotic fluid, placentas and the skin of laboratory mice. Some of the alternative work is indeed promising. But almost all scientists in the field consider embryonic stem cell research the most promising. It is foolish to crimp that research by withholding federal funds to placate a minority of religious and social conservatives, including Mr. Bush, who deem the work unethical.

Read it all.

From the front page of Saturday’s Wall Street Journal:

One morning in April, Dr. Donald Landry, the interim chairman of Columbia University’s department of medicine, boarded a 3 a.m. train from New York to Washington, D.C. He was there for an unfamiliar kind of meeting: Though he’s neither a political insider nor a stem-cell specialist, Dr. Landry was in the capital to tell two dozen U.S. Senate staffers how he proposed to sidestep the ethical concerns that have largely blocked stem-cell research. Back at home later that day, Dr. Landry and his two teenage sons watched on C-Span as senators debated the merits of a plan the doctor had hatched during off-hours musing a few years earlier.

“It was surreal,” says Dr. Landry.

Dr. Landry’s unlikely brush with national policy making culminates a personal journey that began years before, when the devout Catholic grappled with an ethical dilemma. As a man of faith, he believed harvesting stem cells from a human embryo was an immoral destruction of life. As a doctor, he believed stem-cell advances could save lives.

His solution — which involved extracting stem cells from dead embryos rather than live ones — turned out to be persuasive, and it has led to a new avenue of research. It will also figure prominently in a conflict that is likely to come to a head in coming weeks: President George W. Bush is expected to veto a bill that would provide government funding for research using stem cells derived from living embryos that are unused by fertility clinics. Instead, the White House has signaled that it prefers legislation that incorporates Dr. Landry’s proposal, among others.

The doctor has been to the White House to discuss his stem-cell approach, and is due for another visit in coming days. The state of New York has provided $1 million to help Dr. Landry, 53, kick-start his own experiments at Columbia. “The destruction of nascent human life is something that society should be wary of,” Dr. Landry says. “I think I’ve found a potentially simple answer to the problem.”

Dr. Landry’s answer has drawn fire from other scientists. Harold Varmus, who won the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1989 and is president of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, says the approach is scientifically dubious. The bill that includes the Landry proposal, he says, is an effort to “provide political cover for people who want it both ways — to say they voted for stem cells, but without offending their political base.”

Read it all.

The chair of Executive Council’s National Concerns Committee has written to the Bishop of Mississippi informing him that while The Episcopal Church does not support every action of the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice (RCRC), Executive Council has no intention of withdrawing its membership.

The Rt. Rev. Duncan M. Gray, III wrote council April 13 noting that at the most recent annual meeting of the Diocese of Mississippi, clergy and lay delegates had approved a resolution objecting to the decision by Executive Council in January 2006 to join RCRC on behalf of The Episcopal Church.

“Its position of advocacy, both in terms of legislative initiatives, and organized opposition to specific Supreme Court nominees, unnecessarily disrupts our Church’s carefully balanced and nuanced position on abortion as articulated by General Convention,” Bishop Gray stated.

Read it all.

First, it is the settled conviction of the Catholic Church that a legislator’s facilitating abortion through a vote to legalize or fund the procedure puts that legislator outside the communion of the Church. The Pope seems content to leave it to moral theologians to determine precisely how this form of cooperation with grave evil touches on legislators (as distinguished, say, from abortionists). But that a public official’s act in facilitating the “killing of an innocent human baby” is “incompatible with being in communion with the body of Christ” is not in doubt. And if one’s communion with the body of Christ that is the Church is radically ruptured, then one must not present onself for Holy Communion — for that is to add a lie to the original offense against justice, the taking of an innocent human life.

Second, Benedict’s answer indicates that he will support the actions of those bishops who deem it a pastoral necessity to order that politicians in this position of estrangement from the Church not be given Holy Communion. Anyone who expects Pope Benedict to distance himself from the American bishops who have taken this stand is likely to be disappointed.

And third, the Pope’s answer suggests that he is prepared to leave the pastoral judgment on these cases to the discretion of the local bishops, who are presumably better-informed about the circumstances than he is: and by “circumstances,” I do not mean “balancing” serious (and, some would argue, canonically required) sanctions against wayward politicians with other prudential considerations, but the specific circumstances of Legislator X. All of which is to say that Pope Benedict seems unlikely to issue a universal edict on the subject.

This may well be good ecclesiology and prudent pastoral practice, but it is very difficult to communicate without appearing to vacillate.

Read it all.

FAW: … even though Benjamin has Down syndrome.

BETH ALLARD: Just like any other child, you give him an opportunity, and work with them, and they can do whatever they aspire to do.

FAW (To Ms. Allard): Even if they’re different?

Ms. ALLARD: Yeah.

FAW: Now Beth Allard marvels at her son. But when she remembers what her pediatrician told her when she was pregnant at 36, she can only shudder.

Ms. ALLARD: She said, “I just want to let you know what your life’s going to be like. He’s going to make your life hell. He won’t be able to read or write or do anything. He may not be able to speak.” The reason I considered terminating the pregnancy was, well, my doctor’s telling me this. And I don’t know much about it, so maybe she’s right and I really need to do this.

FAW: Largely because of her Catholic faith, Beth Allard decided to continue her pregnancy.

ELLEN WIXTED (Talking to Husband): My concern is that if I do that …

FAW: Seven years ago, faced with the prospect of giving birth to a child with Down syndrome and heart defects that often afflict those infants, Ellen Wixted, 35, chose to abort her baby.

Ms. WIXTED: I just couldn’t imagine having all of the normal stresses of being a parent and on top of that, you know, raising a child with really, you know, potentially very severe physical disabilities as well as an unknown degree of mental retardation. All I could envision was a spiral of, sort of not being able to work, not being able to work in the studio, not being able to, you know, have a normal life. What that led to logically was ending the pregnancy, which I felt was morally wrong.

FAW: Now, with two children born later, Ellen Wixted says that decision to abort haunts her as much today as it tormented her then.

Read it all.

In a recent issue of the Rhode Island Catholic, a diocesan newspaper, Bishop Thomas Tobin condemned Rudy Giuliani’s position on abortion: “As Catholics, we are called, indeed required, to be pro-life, to cherish and protect human life as a precious gift of God from the moment of conception until the time of natural death. As a leader, as a public official, Rudy Giuliani has a special obligation in that regard.”

The issue of how the Catholic hierarchy in the U.S. should deal with the problem of pro-choice Catholic politicians came up last during the 2004 presidential election. Some bishops warned Sen. John Kerry, the Democratic nominee, that he should not take Communion in their dioceses because of his support for legalized abortion.

But this problem has been discussed for decades. Most bishops have resisted calls to excommunicate such politicians or even to impose lesser sanctions, including denying them Communion. The very idea of these actions appalls most liberals, both inside and outside the Church. They consider ecclesiastical punishment undemocratic, an attack on personal conscience and a violation of the separation of church and state. “I believe the church has a role in guiding parishioners and people in public life, but I don’t believe the Church should be using the sacrament of Communion as a political weapon,” Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D., Conn.), a pro-choice Catholic, recently told the Connecticut Post. There was a time, however, when most liberals applauded the bishops for disciplining Catholics, including politicians, who opposed the Church’s teachings.

Read the whole piece.

A year after Harvard University scientists began trying to create cloned human embryonic stem cells, they have been stymied by their failure to persuade a single woman to donate her eggs for the groundbreaking but controversial research.

The goal of the work is to create embryonic stem cells — all-purpose formative cells that can develop into virtually any cell in the body — that are genetically matched to a patient with a particular disease, such as diabetes. Studying such cells could give scientists new insights into the diseases and possibly lead to treatments.

“It’s an important experiment and we can’t do it,” Kevin Eggan, an assistant professor of molecular and cellular biology at Harvard.

Without unfertilized eggs, scientists cannot create cloned embryonic stem cells through the conventional method. Called somatic-cell nuclear transfer, the procedure involves replacing the DNA in a donated egg with DNA extracted from a patient’s cells. Scientists coax this new egg to grow for several days in a laboratory dish until it is an early embryo and stem cells can be obtained.

Over the last year, Harvard has spent tens of thousands of dollars on local newspaper ads in an attempt to recruit egg donors. Hundreds of women have responded to the ads, but none has followed through with donations, for a variety of reasons, Eggan said in an interview.

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Scientists in the United States and Japan announced yesterday that they have developed artificial stem cells from adult mouse cells. If the approach can be retooled for humans, they say, it would avoid the ethical quicksand that surrounds the use of stem cells drawn from nascent human embryos.

Current stem-cell extraction methods destroy these embryos, which during the procedure are microscopic, hollow balls of cells only a few days old. For people who hold that human life begins at the moment of conception, destroying an embryo at any stage of development is tantamount to killing humans.

In addition, another group of US scientists says it has derived embryonic stem cells in mice using an approach that, if scaled to humans, would avoid the need for women to donate unfertilized eggs to produce large numbers of embryonic stem-cells for research. Instead, researchers could use non-viable embryos that fertility clinics and their patients would have disposed of anyway.

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Cardinal Pell said all members of parliament should reject the cloning of human embryos for experimentation and destruction.

“No Catholic politician, indeed no Christian or person with respect for human life who has properly informed his conscience about the facts and ethics in this area should vote in favour of this immoral legislation,” he said in a statement.

“If this bill is passed, the enemies of human life will soon be back with further proposals, disguised with sweet words and promises of cures, to roll back the few remaining barriers to the regular destruction of early human life.”

Cardinal Pell said NSW should not simply follow the commonwealth’s lead in overturning the therapeutic cloning ban.

“The Catholic Church in NSW, through grants and through its hospitals and research institutes, is a promoter of ethical stem cell research on adult and umbilical cord stem cells,” he said.

“But allowing scientists open slather on human embryos for unethical research is not the best way forward.”

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