42 Days for Life: What to do with a bored Member of Congress?

It’s January 22, it is cold outside, it is the 41st anniversary of the horrific Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion and you are an elected Member of Congress.  Instead of staying indoors writing thank you notes to Santa for all the presents he brought here are some ideas for how pro-life elected officials can participate (and if by chance you are not an elected official please forward this to one):

March for Life suggestions for Hill Offices

 

Connecting the hundreds of thousands of pro-life activists who come to Washington, D.C. for the March for Life with their Members of Congress has been a strategic goal of the movement since the first March in 1974.  These Marchers come from every state and represent the growing pro-life majority in the United States.  More importantly, many of the Marchers are young and this is their first exposure to the federal government, and their first experience with the pro-life movement.  Making a connection with these students is investing in our country’s future.

• Record a video or write a blog post or an op-ed on the issue of life
  • The theme for the 2014 March is adoption; however, the theme should not be a limit.  Talk of your accomplishments on the pro-life issue, any aspect of it.  Personal stories are always a good way to connect.
  • We are also encouraging videos and op-eds on the topic of “Why We March” to explain the history behind the March, and what 41 years of Roe v Wade looks like.
  • For an op-ed,  you might even want to look to co-author a piece with the head of a pro-life organization
  • The March for Life will host your message on our website, and we will use all our resources (Twitter, Blog, Facebook, etc.) to share your message with our activists.  For further information, or to send a video, please contact bethanygoodman@marchforlife.org.

 

• Host a reception for Marchers from your state.
  • If you are from a state east of the Mississippi, it is likely that a large contingent of the marchers are from your home state.  When it comes to constituent contacts, nothing beats face to face meetings over hot chocolate after a cold march!

 

• Volunteer at a local pregnancy resource center (PRC) in your state/district.
  • The 2014 March is a work week at home for the House of Representatives.  By drawing positive attention to a PRC that assists pregnant women in need, you can have a long term effect on the organization by raising its profile, which in turn, helps  the PRC with donations.

 

• Go the House or Senate Floor to speak on the issue of life; participate in a Special Order.
  • At any given time, over a million people can be watching C-SPAN.  If you would fly a hundred miles to speak to 100 people, would you walk across the street to speak on the Floor about the life issue?  For more information, please contact the Pro-life Caucus staff.

 

• Tweet a message on life; post a pro-life story on Facebook.
  • Social media is how many Marchers connect with each other.  We will share your postings and encourage further sharing and retweets.  Please tweet with the hashtag: #marchforlife.

 

• Most importantly, support pro-life legislation and insist they get voted on.
  • Actions speak louder than words.  If you are not sponsoring pro-life legislation please do so – and also ask Congressional Leadership to schedule votes on pro-life legislation.

 

Asking if identical twins are cloning might seem odd.  However for years a now retired Member of Congress (who should have known better) would occasionally argue with unsuspecting pro-lifers that identical twins and cloning are similar enough that human cloning should not be as taboo as it is.

 

The word “clone” is not new, for over a century it was used to describe genetic twins it was only in the 1970’s that it was used for describing taking the DNA from an individual and making a new individual.

 

The Congressman was right to a certain extent.  The closest we have to human clones today are monozygotic, or identical, twins.  Their genetic makeup is only very similar, not actually identical.  With identical twins, (or even rarer instances identical triplets) the fertilized egg once split in half and developed as two zygotes instead of one.  Identical twins don’t have the same fingerprints, thanks to minute variations in womb pressures and amniotic fluid.

 

So how do human twins differ from clones?  Curiousity.com has more:

 

Having a clone may seem like having an identical twin, except identical twins are born at the same time and cloning, by definition, would have to be done once a baby is born, if not at a later stage in life. Furthermore, once the clone is conceived, it would start its life as a fetus, not as an adult copy. Therefore, having a clone is more similar to having a child who is exactly like you, not an identical twin.

 

Identical twins’ DNA is not an identical match [source: American Journal of Human Genetics]. Slight genetic changes, called copy number variations, occur in the womb. With these variations, some coding is copied twice or is missing, so deep down at the genetic level, identical twins are not completely identical. Although a human clone would have exactly the same DNA as its host, it would still be capable of independent thoughts, feelings and interests, similar to identical twins. Furthermore, a human clone might grow up differently than the host because a variety of environmental factors and experiences work alongside genetics to mold a person’s development.

 

Sounds cool right?  To have a genetic duplicate to do all your chores? FRC’s Dr. David Prentice has a few reasons why man should be careful playing God.

 

What’s wrong with human reproductive cloning?

The act of cloning in order to produce human beings replaces procreation with production. Human beings are treated as manufactured products rather than created persons. In animal cloning experiments, only 2 to 3 percent of all reproductive cloning attempts have been successful at producing born clones. The clones that are successfully birthed are often born with major disabilities or deformities, or experience problems after birth. For example, cloned mice have been shown to be extremely obese. Cloned cows usually experience lung and heart problems. Dolly the sheep – the first mammal ever to be cloned from an adult cell nucleus – experienced early onset arthritis and had a lung disease. Due to these complications, she was put down only six years after birth. Thus, the few cloned children that might manage to be born would be subjected to disabilities, deformities, and abnormally short lives, all because of the imprudent curiosity of some researchers. Reproductive cloning would allow a woman to clone herself using her own egg, her own somatic cell, and her own womb. Not only would a man be superfluous to the process of creating a child, but a woman would be giving birth to an individual who is both her identical twin sister and her child.

 

Cloning could even allow us to pick and choose desired physical and mental traits for our children. Characteristics such as height and intelligence could be manipulated according to someone else’s likes and dislikes. By purposely choosing desirable characteristics and avoiding undesirable ones for our future generations, scientists employ a method of eugenics. When contemplating the future of cloning, it is especially telling to hear Ian Wilmut, the creator of Dolly the sheep, describe human reproductive cloning as “criminally irresponsible.”

 

And a happy (day after) birthday to the “clones” in my family who celebrated their 51^st birthday yesterday!

No!

 

Well that should settle it, however it is likely it will not. 

 

The pro-abortion lobby, perhaps emboldened by the advances in promoting abortion they achieved through President Obama’s own health care law, are insisting that abortion is an essential part of health care.  During the campaign in 2008 Barack Obama saw abortion as part of health care and in 2009 his then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton reiterated the Obama Administration’s tenet at a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing in April of that year.  Now that the pro-abortion folks were successful in getting abortion and subsidies for abortion in the health care law they are finding other ways to enforce the new Democratic mantra of “abortion IS healthcare.”

 

In New York City the Mayor-elect, Bill De Blasio stated that since crisis pregnancy centers refuse to perform abortions, they do not offer “legitimate health care.”  That is why he has vowed to shut them all down.  The ACLU, who has a history of anti-Catholicism, are suing the Catholic Church in the United States because the Catholic Church, being a pro-life religion, refuses to see abortion as health care.  Even our own U.S. Congress, the perpetrators of Obamacare, are finding as they and their congressional staff approach the December 9^th deadline to select an insurance plan offered through the D.C. Obamacare exchange (D.C. Health Link), that it has become evident that 103 of the 112 plans offered INCLUDE elective abortion.  Just nine plans exclude elective abortion. 

 

That life begins at conception, and that it is a human life, is generally accepted among the scientific community.  As the Association of Pro-life Physicians explains:

 

There is a tremendous consensus in the scientific community about when life begins.  This is hardly controversial.  . . . According to this elementary definition of life, life begins at fertilization, when a sperm unites with an oocyte.  From this moment, the being is highly organized, has the ability to acquire materials and energy, has the ability to respond to his or her environment, has the ability to adapt, and has the ability to reproduce (the cells divide, then divide again, etc., and barring pathology and pending reproductive maturity has the potential to reproduce other members of the species).  Non-living things do not do these things.  Even before the mother is aware that she is pregnant, a distinct, unique life has begun his or her existence inside her.

 

Furthermore, that life is unquestionably human.  A human being is a member of the species homo sapiens.  Human beings are products of conception, which is when a human male sperm unites with a human female oocyte (egg).  When humans procreate, they don’t make non-humans like slugs, monkeys, cactuses, bacteria, or any such thing.  Emperically-verifiable proof is as close as your nearest abortion clinic: send a sample of an aborted fetus to a laboratory and have them test the DNA to see if its human or not.  Genetically, a new human being comes into existence from the earliest moment of conception.

 

Biologically, from the moment of conception this new human being is not a part of the mother’s body.  Since when does a mother’s body have male genitals, two brains, four kidneys?  The preborn human being may be dependent upon the mother for nutrition, however, this does not diminish his or her humanity, but proves it.  Moreover, dependence upon a parent for survival is not a capital crime.

 

So life begins at conception, the very earliest stage of pregnancy.  Abortion is the “termination” of the pregnancy – thus the ending of the human life.  Merriam-Webster defines “health-care” as follows:

 

health care

noun    (Medical Dictionary)

Medical Definition of HEALTH CARE

: the maintaining and restoration of health by the treatment and prevention of disease especially by trained and licensed professionals (as in medicine, dentistry, clinical psychology, and public health)

 

Pregnancy is not considered a disease by a credible doctor (though it is by a few Obama court nominees).  The termination of a human life, at any stage, doesn’t even meet the dictionary test.

 

NOTE: Ironically while trying to claim that abortion is health care the pro-abortion folks, especially in Congress, are doing all they can to make sure that abortion ISN’T regulated or treated like actual medical procedures that are considered health-care.

When it comes to stem cell news you can use the best source is Family Research Council’s resident mad scientist, Dr. David Prentice (actually the only time I’ve ever really seen him mad is when reporters and actual mad scientists neglect to point out the differences between embryonic and ethical forms of research.)  His latest missive is on how states are turning more and more to ethical forms of stem cell research.  This turn is mostly not due to a sudden fit of morality that killing human embryonic stem cells for experimentation is wrong but that over and over its ethical stem cells research, and not human embryonic, is where true treatments and cures are being found.

For decades the left was playing politics with science when it came to stem cells.  In the stem cell debate, claims for human embryonic stem cell research advanced a liberal political agenda — legitimizing and guaranteeing federal funding for ethically contentious research. For the same political reasons, the increasingly strong evidence of actual therapeutic benefits to patients from ethically non-contentious adult stem cell research was distorted or hidden.  

However research by Gene Tarne of the Charlotte Lozier Institute finds that states are looking less to line the pockets of questionable researchers and instead looking for actual results.  It is morally wrong to destroy week-old human embryos for research using their stem cells – and funding such experimentation diverts funds from research and treatments that are providing real therapies today using adult stem cell sources. The Washington Times has more:

In 2007, the newly created California Institute for Regenerative Medicine kept its promise and spent $121 million on human embryonic stem cell research. Of 100 grants the institute issued in its first year, not one went to a project that used adult stem cells, Mr. Tarne said in his July 2012 report for the Lozier institute.

 

By 2012, though, the institute’s funding had shifted course — it gave 15 grants, worth about $50 million, to non-embryonic research projects and six grants, worth $19 million, to embryonic research projects.

 

Mr. Tarne found a similar pattern in Maryland, another state with an active stem cell research community.

 

In 2007, the Maryland Stem Cell Research Commission funded 11 projects that used human embryos and four that used adult stem cells. This year, though, the Maryland commission funded only one embryonic stem cell project and 28 non-embryonic projects.

Maryland’s grants can be seen as “an important bellwether” for the research choices, as the state is home to the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, a leading site for stem cell research, Mr. Tarne said.

 

In fact it is so popular even my favorite Governor is getting in the act:

 

Meanwhile, a Kansas stem cell research center that, by law, won’t use stem cells culled from human embryos also is taking off.

“This is the beginning,” Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback said Nov. 23, when the Midwest Stem Cell Therapy Center held its inaugural conference. “We are catching it right as the field is really starting to burgeon,” he said, according to the Kansas Health Institute News Service.

 

The center — approved in April by the Kansas Legislature and Mr. Brownback — is “a visionary move” to “support science that can actually lead to a lot of new therapies and potentially change the face of medicine,” said Dr. Buddhadeb Dawn, director of the center, which is housed at the University of Kansas Medical Center in Kansas City.

 

Excluding embryonic stem cell research is not an impediment, Dr. Dawn said.

 

“Adult stem cells are the ones that have been shown to be effective for patient treatment,” he said.

 

I love it when science finally catches up to religion.

 

For more on stem cell research that saves lives check out

 

Stem Cell Research Facts

 

Charlotte Lozier Institute