International Right to Life Federation, Inc.
Vol. 13 No. 1
(January/February, 2002)

Germany - No Wrongful Birth Damages
In a decision directly contrary to a recent one in France, a federal court in Germany has denied a wrongful birth suit. The parents of identical twin girls had gone to court to seek compensation. The claim was that their obstetrician had not told them that one of their identical twin girls would be born with missing or deformed limbs. They said that if they had known, they would have aborted the child. The judges refused their request. The recent decision in France awarded damages in a similar suit. This one did not.

French Doctors Protest - Law Changed
Encouraged by the German decision barring wrongful birth lawsuits (see above), in the French daily, Le Monde, eleven top prenatal specialists at eight hospitals said that if the French decision was not changed, they would refuse to carry out any ultrasound tests, or other tests that can show whether an unborn baby has any abnormalities. The prenatal doctors stated that this legal ruling encourages doctors to worry about their own protection rather than that of their patients: "It is impossible, therefore, for us now to perform our work which, moreover, will become uninsurable very soon." They noted that the fear of a misdiagnosis would now encourage doctors to recommend an abortion at the smallest hint of a disability. In addition, a lawyer for the medical profession stated that the French ruling means that "the handicapped have no place in our society…there is real risk of this starting a process that ends with the search for a perfect child." A doctor, who is also a member of parliament, Jean-Francois Mattie, drew up a bill to make it impossible for anyone to seek compensation for having been born. Then, on 10 January, the French Parliament overwhelmingly approved this bill which overturned this court decision.

Stem Cell Breakthrough
A new discovery has been reported from the University of Minnesota. A researcher there, Katherine Verfaillie, has reported that she has found an adult stem cell that can turn into every single tissue of the body. Until this time, this was the main claim for the use of embryonic stem cells which can only be obtained by killing a living human at the four or five-day-old stage. If this finding is confirmed, it means that cells from your own body can be turned into perfectly matched replacement tissues, and possibly even organs. This would also obviate the claimed need for the "therapeutic" clone and kill procedure whose sole practical purpose is to provide living human embryos that can be killed for their embryonic stem cells. These cells, dubbed multipotent adult progenitor cells, or MAPCs, have been obtained by this researcher from the bone marrow of mice, rats and from humans. These cells seem to grow indefinitely in culture, much like embryonic stem cells. Some of these cell lines have been growing for almost two years, have kept their characteristics and shown no signs of aging. One other major advantage of these cells is that, unlike embryonic stem cells, they do not seem to form cancerous tumors when injected into adults. Clearly this is an astonishing breakthrough.

Dr. David Stevens of the Christian Medical Association commented: "Cells taken ethically from adults with no loss of life have already shown tremendous potential and proven benefits. This discovery should remove any last vestiges of doubt in the life-saving potential of adult stem cells. As many had predicted, it now appears that adult stem cells are the avenues of providing real cures for real people…if the remarkable results of this study prove consistent with early published reports, then no reasonable person could justly violate ethical barriers to clone and then kill in order to harvest embryonic stem cells from living human embryos".

Irish Referendum
Due to a court challenge, the Irish referendum will not be held in February. It may be held now in late March. The ongoing controversy requires a close look at the statement from the Catholic Bishops. They state (No. 5) that they, "welcome and support the new proposal as a significant improvement on the current unsatisfactory situation. In particular, this proposal would appear to set aside deficient aspects of the "x case" judgment, including the acceptance of the risk of suicide, as a legitimate ground for justifying abortions." They are (No. 6) "satisfied that, on any reasonable interpretation, the new proposal does not weaken protection in the first week of life." But then they go on to hedge this judgment by saying (No. 7), that "even if this is enacted…the existing rights of the unborn from conception, under Article 40.3.3 of The Constitution, need to be reinforced by precise legislative measures. We are concerned in particular (No. 8) that adequate and clear legal protection be offered to the unborn prior to implantation". They go on to judge this (No. 10) to be a "significant anti-abortion measure rather than a comprehensive pro-life amendment." In addition, (No. 11) they "share the concern...that it strengthens legal protection for the unborn only after implantation in the womb," and call it, (No. 12) "A limited or imperfect measure", but that Catholic voters are "free in conscience to support it, even if it is viewed as less than might have been desired."

Clearly this is something far less than a full approval of this by the Catholic Bishops. While approving it in one paragraph, they then go on to shade their approval and hedge it in the next six. They clearly state that this is less than full protection prior to implantation and call for reinforcement of protection "by precise legislative measures (No. 7)". This leaves it up to the voter to judge whether or not the legislative climate in the Republic of Ireland is such that additional protective legislation has any chance at all of passing. Skepticism is obviously in order. On balance, this publication has little confidence that such additional protection will be forthcoming and seriously questions the trade off of eliminating the threat of the x case by opening up the first week of life to probable unlimited exploitation.

Quebec-No Cloning
The Minister of Science and Technology of Canada's Quebec province has announced guidelines banning all destructive research involving human embryos. This would include all human cloning, the creation of animal/human hybrids, and the destructive extraction of embryonic stem cells. It also forbids research on stem cells taken from human embryos left over from in vitro fertilization.

Euthanasia Legalized by Statute
Euthanasia has been legal in the Netherlands for almost twenty years, but only through the mechanism of judicial rulings. As of January, euthanasia has formally become legal under the law. This puts in writing what they have been doing for these past two decades. To quote a recent comment on it: "Strict conditions apply, with regional review committees made up of legal, medical and ethical experts carefully judging each patient's request. A second medical opinion will be needed, and the suffering of the patient must be deemed to be unbearable."

These very same conditions have been required by judges for many years now. In actual practice, however, physicians who do euthanasia have routinely ignored these conditions, and there has been no prosecution. There is no reason to believe that things will change now. These "strict conditions" will probably be as toothless as the judge-made rules have been. For instance, over 50% of those killed by euthanasia or by doctor-assisted suicide in the Netherlands are killed without their knowledge or consent.

America Still Religious
Grant the moral degeneracy noted in the column on the left. Do note, however, that this is what other nations see. They see the rottenness of Hollywood and MTV. They see the moral degeneracy of our news media. They've seen, only too clearly, a President and his administration which scandalized the world. But it is these things that get the publicity. At its core, America is one of the most religious nations in the world. Nine out of ten people believe in God. Three fourths go to church at least part of the time. Almost half attend religious services with some regularity. There is no question that there is a definite religious revival in America. A generation of irreligious people was the product of the '60s. These aging liberals are slowly passing from leadership in the U.S. Perhaps, to many people's surprise, we find a significant percentage of strongly moral and religious young people taking their place. Much of this offers a sharp contrast to Western Europe.

Successful Breast Cancer Litigation
This one may be a first. Strongly pro-life Australian attorney Charles Frances has reached a settlement with an abortionist that may be the first of its kind. This lady sued for not being told about research findings linking abortion with breast cancer. Mr. Frances said that the evidence was fairly strong, certainly strong enough that he thought he had a good chance of winning the case. The lady settled out of court with the stipulation that her name would not be revealed, and that the amount awarded to the injured woman would not be disclosed. This is a victory, and a significant precedent.

China Formalizes Law On One-Child Policy
After two decades of enforcement of this draconian
policy, the Chinese legislature finally went through the motions of formally passing a law regulating that country's family planning policy, and its controversial population control by a one-child mandate. One good aspect of it is that it prohibits abortion due to gender preference and bans the use of ultrasound for prenatal diagnosis of the baby's sex. It contains several positive educational provisions but clearly maintains their ugly one-child policy.

Why Is America "The Great Satan"?
World-wide media has been replete with commentary exploring the above question. Almost without exception, the enmity toward the United States has been held up as being a result of alleged economic exploitation. Without commenting on this and other allied reasons given, your editor would like to call attention to the other reasons not mentioned in our secular press.

Thank God, President Bush has reversed the persistent destructive, immoral policies fostered by President Clinton. But the damage done by delegates from the West has probably gone a long way to inflame radical Islamic sentiment. Many Muslims, while thankful for President Bush's reversal of Clinton's anti-life, anti-family policies, nevertheless do not trust the West, saying that another Clinton could succeed Bush.

Deceased Parent Sperm Equals Legal Heirs
In the state of Massachusetts, the Supreme Judicial Court handed down a unanimous ruling that will affect not just that state, not just America, but possibly the world. It ruled that children conceived after the death of a father, using his frozen sperm, have the same legal inheritance rights as children conceived before the death of the parent. The court stated: "Posthumously conceived children may not come into the world the way the majority of children do, but they are children nonetheless." In order to be eligible for benefits, children conceived after the death of the parent must be 1) genetically related to the deceased parent; 2) the deceased parent must have agreed to the conception before his or her death; 3) the deceased parent must have agreed to support the children.

Embryonic Stem Cells Cause Tumors
Researchers at Harvard Medical School and the McLean Hospital in Massachusetts injected embryonic stem cells from rat embryos into the brains of 19 rats with Parkinson's disease. While there was some alleviation of symptoms, 1 in 4 developed tumors. This demonstrates a major unsolved drawback to the use of embryonic stem cells. On the contrary, adult stem cells taken from and returned to the same individual not only eliminate the danger of organ rejection but also, in experiments so far, have not produced tumors.

Are Twins Human Life?
In the cloning debate, we are hearing that if the human embryo can still split into identical twins, this stage of development is not human yet. They would wait until a single primitive streak can be seen. This beginning of the spinal cord demonstrates conclusively that only one individual is developing. Accordingly, they would allow killing before this time in order to extract embryonic stem cells and do other experiments. As an argument, this is ridiculous. Let's look at nature. Identical twins originate from a single fertilized ovum. This single developing embryo splits into two embryos, which go on to grow as totally unique individual but identical twins. This probably occurs in the first few days of life, exactly at the time or before the time when scientists would kill a human embryo to obtain embryonic stem cells. If in the natural course of events it is obvious that identical twins (fully human each) begin their lives in those first few days, it's really quite stupid to say that a human does not exist in those first few days.

Ireland-Morning-After Pill
Another somber note from the Republic of Ireland. The Irish Medicines Board has approved the morning-after pill; they've declared that it's a contraceptive rather than an abortifacient. Just 18 months ago, the same body refused an application to license the pill because of its "abortive nature." This particular pill, Levonelle, prevents implantation of the one-week-old human embryo in the uterus. Clearly, this is emergency abortion, not emergency contraception. If, however, the Medicines Board has changed its mind and is now permissive of the abortifacient drug, this looks bad for the role it has and will play in the Irish referendum.

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