Some euphemisms speak a thousand words...

A recent article in the New York Times Magazine explores a little talked about trend in the abortion industry - baby reduction. It is the practice of aborting one or more babies of a multiple pregnancy. It is difficult to find words to describe such wickedness. This dastardly practice is wrapped up in the most banal language of consumerism. It is truly chilling. I am reminded of Robert J. Lifton's disturbing book The Nazi Doctors.

Al Mohler comments:

As Ruth Padawer reports, obstetricians were at first reluctant to reduce twins to a single pregnancy on moral grounds, and many doctors who perform reductions refuse to reduce below twins. But the practice is growing, reflecting a shift in medical practice. She profiles Dr. Mark Evans, who at first refused to reduce twins on moral grounds. In 1988 he co-authored ethical guidelines for reducing pregnancies that declared reductions below twins to be unethical. Evans wrote that doctors should not allow themselves to become “technicians to our patients’ desires.”

And yet, in 2004 Dr. Evans reversed his position on the issue. Padawer explains his rationale:

For one thing, as more women in their 40s and 50s became pregnant (often thanks to donor eggs), they pushed for two-to-one reductions for social reasons. Evans understood why these women didn’t want to be in their 60s worrying about two tempestuous teenagers or two college-tuition bills. He noted that many of the women were in second marriages, and while they wanted to create a child with their new spouse, they did not want two, especially if they had children from a previous marriage. Others had deferred child rearing for careers or education, or were single women tired of waiting for the right partner. Whatever the particulars, these patients concluded that they lacked the resources to deal with the chaos, stereophonic screaming and exhaustion of raising twins.

Note carefully that the justification offered for killing an unborn baby is clearly identified as “social reasons.” The medical rationale he cited cannot be taken seriously, even as he cites “recent studies” that “revealed that the risks of twin pregnancies were greater than previously thought.” As this article makes abundantly clear, the main risk of a twin pregnancy these days is the risk that one of the twins will be intentionally aborted.

“Ethics,” Dr. Evans told Padawer, “evolve with technology.” That is a foundation for murderous medical ethics. The Culture of Death has worked its way into the logic of modern medical ethics to the extent that these obstetricians justify killing healthy babies just because the parents do not want the burden of twins.

Read the entire article HERE.

What your doctor believes about God may matter more than you think...

As it turns out believers and atheists have different ideas about the dignity of human life. Of course, this should not be any surprise. Apart from a biblical worldview, what reason is there, other than sentiment, to invest human life with any dignity?

An article in the Daily Mail comments on a study published in the Journal of Medical Ethics which found that doctors who do not believe in God are twice as likely to kill their patients, er, help them die.

Atheist doctors are almost twice as likely to take decisions that speed up death for very ill patients as those who are deeply religious, research has found.

Those with a strong faith are also less willing to discuss treatments that hasten the end, according to a poll of nearly 4,000 British doctors. Medics from a wide range of specialities were asked about their religious views, their care for their last patient who died and any decisions they had taken that were expected, or partly intended to, end life.

The findings, published in the Journal of Medical Ethics, showed that doctors who described themselves as non-religious were more likely than any other group to have given continuous deep sedation until death, having made a decision that they knew could or would end life. Those who described themselves as ‘extremely’ or ‘very’ non-religious were almost twice as likely to have taken these kinds of decisions as those with a strong religious belief.

Having Conscience in a Culture of Death

From an article by Wesley J. Smith in the December 2009 issue of First Things:

Over the past fifty years, the purposes and practices of medicine have changed radically. Where medical ethics was once life-affirming, today’s treatments and medical procedures increasingly involve the legal taking of human life. The litany is familiar: More than one million pregnancies are extinguished each year in the United States, thousands late-term. Physician-assisted suicide is legal in Oregon, Washington, and, as this is written, Montana via a court ruling (currently on appeal to the state supreme court). One day, doctors may be authorized to kill patients with active euthanasia, as they do already in the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg.

The trend toward accepting the termination of some human lives as a normal part of medicine is accelerating. For example, ten or twenty years from now, the physician’s tools may include embryonic stem cells or products obtained from cloned embryos and fetuses gestated for that purpose, making physicians who provide such treatments complicit in the life destruction required to obtain the modalities. Medical and bioethics journals energetically advocate a redefinition of death to include a diagnosis of persistent vegetative state so that these living patients—redefined as dead—may be used for organ harvesting and medical ­experimentation. More radical bioethicists and mental-health professionals even suggest that patients suffering from BIID (body-integrity identity disorder), a terrible compulsion to become an amputee, should be treated by having healthy limbs removed, just as transsexuals today receive surgical sexual reassignment.

The ongoing transformation in the methods and ethics of medicine raises profound moral questions for doctors, nurses, pharmacists, and others who believe in the traditional virtues of Hippocratic medicine that proscribe abortion and assisted suicide and compel physicians to “do no harm.” To date, this hasn’t been much of a problem, as society generally accommodates medical conscientious objection. The assisted-suicide laws of Oregon and Washington, for example, permit doctors to refuse to participate in hastening patient deaths. Similarly, no doctor in the United States is forced to perform abortions. Indeed, when New York mayor Michael Bloomberg sought to increase accessibility to abortion by requiring that all residents in obstetrics and gynecology in New York’s public hospitals receive training in pregnancy termination, the law specifically allowed doctors with religious or moral objections to opt out through a conscience clause.

Read the entire article HERE.

Downs Syndrome and Abortion

In 1993 my wife and I received the glad news that we would be welcoming our first child into our family. We were delighted and anxious at the same time. We knew that having a baby would change everything. But we were excited about who this little one would be. We were taken of guard however when one of the standard prenatal tests showed an increased chance that our child would be born with Downs Syndrome. The news shook us. As part of the process we consulted with a geneticist who told us more about the test results.

The geneticist, assuming Karen would undergo an amniocentesis to determine if our baby had DS, calmly informed us that at that time we could "choose to abort" if the tests were positive. Well, he said the wrong thing to the wrong pregnant woman. While I sat there dismayed my wife leaned forward, fixed her eyes firmly on the doctor and with her best "now you listen and listen good" tone of voice said, "This is our baby and we will love her no matter what is wrong." The conviction in her words and across her face made his nonchalance all the more profane. Her words may well have bounced off the doctor but they resonated in my troubled mind. I knew in that moment it would be alright regardless of the outcome.

Interestingly (providentially?) that same evening we attended a Michael Card concert in Kansas City. At one point Michael shared about a child with Downs Syndrome in the church to which he belonged in Tennessee. He told of the joys that child gave not only to his parents but to those within the fellowship of believers. He lamented the reality that because of abortion fewer of those beloved little ones would be given life outside the womb. What is more, sitting in the row directly in front of Karen and I was family that had a young child with Downs Syndrome. It made for a profound evening and God comforted us with the truth that He was the author of life and would give us a fearfully and wonderfully made child.

We chose not to have an amniocentesis because of the risk of miscarriage. So until that afternoon in April of 1994 we did not know exactly what the outcome would be. All we knew is that we would treat the child God gave us with love and dignity.

In His wisdom God gave us a perfectly healthy little girl. We are thankful for that. But we also know that had she had Downs Syndrome she would have been no less loved or valued.

Al Mohler has written an important post on the disappearance of children with Downs Syndrome due to the abominable practice of abortion.

The new research is based on work by Dr. Brian Skotko, a clinical genetics fellow at Children's Hospital Boston. Skotko, who has a sister with Down syndrome, asks this haunting question: "As new tests become available, will babies with Down syndrome slowly disappear?"

His research reveals deeply troubling trends. Between 1989 and 2005, births of babies with Down syndrome decreased by 15 percent. As Science Daily explains, "In the absence of prenatal testing, researchers would have expected the opposite -- a 34 percent increase in births -- due to the trend of women waiting longer to have children; known to increase the chances of having a baby with Down syndrome."

In an article published in 2005, Skotko argued that doctors are often ill-prepared to discuss the diagnosis of Down syndrome with their pregnant patients. Chillingly, he also revealed that a significant percentage of the doctors "reported that they 'emphasize' the negative aspects of DS so that patients would favor a termination."

With the new technologies of prenatal diagnosis so close on the horizon, Skotko now sees a "true collision" on its way. "More women will be going through the testing process, which could lead to a lot of difficult, uncomfortable conversations between physicians and expectant patients."

The reason for the decrease in the number of babies born with Down syndrome comes into clearer focus when The Washington Post cites Skotko's research indicating that 92 percent of women who learn they are carrying a baby with Down syndrome choose to abort the pregnancy. That is more than nine out of ten.

Read the entire post HERE.

A Brave New World Coming?

Remember that the philosophy of the classroom in one generation becomes the philosophy of society in the next.

10. Planetary control…
“Perhaps those agencies, combined with UNEP and the United Nations population agencies, might eventually be developed into a Planetary Regime—sort of an international superagency for population, resources, and environment. Such a comprehensive Planetary Regime could control the development, administration, conservation, and distribution of all natural resources, renewable or nonrenewable, at least insofar as international implications exist. Thus the Regime could have the power to control pollution not only in the atmosphere and oceans, but also in such freshwater bodies as rivers and lakes that cross international boundaries or that discharge into the oceans. The Regime might also be a logical central agency for regulating all international trade, perhaps including assistance from DCs to LDCs, and including all food on the international market.

The Planetary Regime might be given responsibility for determining the optimum population for the world and for each region and for arbitrating various countries’ shares within their regional limits. Control of population size might remain the responsibility of each government, but the Regime would have some power to enforce the agreed limits.”

9. Regulating the number of children…
“Individual rights must be balanced against the power of the government to control human reproduction. Some people—respected legislators, judges, and lawyers included—have viewed the right to have children as a fundamental and inalienable right. Yet neither the Declaration of Independence nor the Constitution mentions a right to reproduce. Nor does the UN Charter describe such a right, although a resolution of the United Nations affirms the “right responsibly to choose” the number and spacing of children (our emphasis). In the United States, individuals have a constitutional right to privacy and it has been held that the right to privacy includes the right to choose whether or not to have children, at least to the extent that a woman has a right to choose not to have children. But the right is not unlimited. Where the society has a “compelling, subordinating interest” in regulating population size, the right of the individual may be curtailed. If society’s survival depended on having more children, women could he required to bear children, just as men can constitutionally be required to serve in the armed forces. Similarly, given a crisis caused by overpopulation, reasonably necessary laws to control excessive reproduction could be enacted.

It is often argued that the right to have children is so personal that the government should not regulate it. In an ideal society, no doubt the state should leave family size and composition solely to the desires of the parents. In today’s world, however, the number of children in a family is a matter of profound public concern. The law regulates other highly personal matters. For example, no one may lawfully have more than one spouse at a time. Why should the law not be able to prevent a person from having more than two children?”

8. Forced abortions…
“Indeed, it has been concluded that compulsory population-control laws, even including laws requiring compulsory abortion, could be sustained under the existing Constitution if the population crisis became sufficiently severe to endanger the society.”

7. Forced marriage, forced adoptions, and more forced abortions…
“One way to carry out this disapproval might be to insist that all illegitimate babies be put up for adoption—especially those born to minors, who generally are not capable of caring properly for a child alone. If a single mother really wished to keep her baby, she might be obliged to go through adoption proceedings and demonstrate her ability to support and care for it. Adoption proceedings probably should remain more difficult for single people than for married couples, in recognition of the relative difficulty of raising children alone. It would even be possible to require pregnant single women to marry or have abortions, perhaps as an alternative to placement for adoption, depending on the society.”

6. And it could be legal…
“Indeed, it has been concluded that compulsory population-control laws, even including laws requiring compulsory abortion, could be sustained under the existing Constitution if the population crisis became sufficiently severe to endanger the society.”

5. Involuntary fertility control…
“A program of sterilizing women after their second or third child, despite the relatively greater difficulty of the operation than vasectomy, might be easier to implement than trying to sterilize men.…The development of a long-term sterilizing capsule that could be implanted under the skin and removed when pregnancy is desired opens additional possibilities for coercive fertility control. The capsule could be implanted at puberty and might be removable, with official permission, for a limited number of births.”

4. Not quite human…
“The fetus, given the opportunity to develop properly before birth, and given the essential early socializing experiences and sufficient nourishing food during the crucial early years after birth, will ultimately develop into a human being.”

3. ZEG…

“Why should we not strive for zero economic growth (ZEG) as well as zero population growth?”

2. De-development…
“A massive campaign must be launched to restore a high-quality environment in North America and to de-develop the United States…De-development means bringing our economic system (especially patterns of consumption) into line with the realities of ecology and the global resource situation.

…The need for de-development presents our economists with a major challenge They must design a stable, low-consumption economy in which there is a much more equitable distribution of wealth than in the present one. Redistribution of wealth both within and among nations is absolutely essential, if a decent life is to be provided to every human being.”

1. Sterilants in your drinking supply…
“Adding a sterilant to drinking water or staple foods is a suggestion that seems to horrify people more than most proposals for involuntary fertility control. Indeed, this would pose some very difficult political, legal, and social questions, to say nothing of the technical problems. No such sterilant exists today, nor does one appear to be under development. To be acceptable, such a substance would have to meet some rather stiff requirements: it must be uniformly effective, despite widely varying doses received by individuals, and despite varying degrees of fertility and sensitivity among individuals; it must be free of dangerous or unpleasant side effects; and it must have no effect on members of the opposite sex, children, old people, pets, or livestock.”

These statements were made by John Holdren the Obama administration's Science Czar in his book "Ecoscience: Population, Resources, Environment".

Will we be a culture of dignity or death?

Al Mohler raises some very important questions concerning the fate of fertilized human embryos:

For most Americans, the moral status of the human embryo is a question that seems quite remote. Even as hundreds of thousands of "excess" human embryos are now stored in American fertility clinics and laboratories, to most Americans these frozen embryos are out of sight and out of mind. Thus, one of the most important moral challenges of our day remains largely off the screen of our national discourse. The issue cannot remain out of sight or out of mind for long.

Indeed, for hundreds of thousands of couples (and in many cases, just individuals) this crucial moral question grows more difficult to ignore by the day. For those whose progeny are now frozen in fertility clinics, the "disposition decision" will eventually have to be made. The decision about the eventual disposition of these human embryos will reveal what these couples truly believe about human dignity and the sanctity of human life. On the larger landscape, the pattern of these decisions and the policies adopted by medical practitioners will reveal the soul of our culture as well.

Read the entire post HERE.

Also, check out Choosing Thomas. It is the deeply moving story of how T.K. and Deidrea Laux decided to treat their unborn child Thomas with dignity after discovering he had a fatal genetic anomaly. You can also read Deidrea's journal which helps explain their journey.

In a related story, the VA website still carries a link to "Your Life, Your Choices" which can realistically be called a "death book." It prompts wounded and elderly veterans to consider whether or not their lives are truly worth living. It also asks them to consider whether or not they are too much of a financial burden. This is truly scandalous. Check out this story from the Wall Street Journal.

More on Stem Cells

Concerning stem cell research there is so much that the public either does not know or about which they are ill informed. Much of this lack of knowledge and disinformation is due to the outrageously slanted coverage in the news media. Politicians have also been typically shameful in their bending of the facts.

Here are some more thoughts on the recent decision by President Obama to begin paying for the destruction of human embryos with taxpayer money:

Obama's False Choice
Science Over All?
Winning Smugly
Obama Also Rescinds Executive Order for Alternatives to ESCR
Stem Cells: A Political History

Many of you may find it interesting that the President rescinded an Executive Order to find alternatives to embryonic stem cell research (4th article). There has been scant if any coverage of this in the main stream media.

"The Case for Adult Stem Cell Research"

A fascinating article from 21st Century Science & Technology Magazine by Dr. Wolfgang Lillge exposes where the real promise in stem cell research resides: Adult stem cells.

Dr. Lillge writes:

Embryonic stem cells are taken from a developing embryo at the blastocyst stage, destroying the embryo, a developing human life. Adult stem cells, on the other hand, are found in all tissues of the growing human being and, according to latest reports, also have the potential to transform themselves into practically all other cell types, or revert to being stem cells with greater reproductive capacity. Embryonic stem cells have not yet been used for even one therapy, while adult stem cells have already been successfully used in numerous patients, including for cardiac infarction (death of some of the heart tissue)...

It is remarkable that in the debate–often carried on with little competence–the potential of embryonic stem cells is exaggerated in a one-sided way, while important moral questions and issues of research strategy are passed over in silence. Generally, advocates of research with embryonic stem cells use as their main argument that such research will enable us to cure all of the diseases that are incurable today–cancer, AIDS, Alzheimers, multiple sclerosis, and so forth. Faced with such a prospect, it is supposed to be "acceptable" to "overlook" a few moral problems.

On closer inspection, however, the much extolled vision of the future turns out to be a case of completely empty promises: Given the elementary state of research today, it is by no means yet foreseeable, whether even one of the hoped-for treatments can be realized. Basically, such promised cures are a deliberate deception, for behind the mirage of a coming medical wonderland, promoted by interested parties, completely other research objectives will be pursued that are to be kept out of public discussion as much as possible.

Read the rest of this important article HERE.