British Doctor Recommends Anesthesia for Babies Doomed to Die 
Abortion involves torture prior to death. During an abortion, the baby is torn apart by various means. He is ripped apart and vacuumed out of his mother’s womb by a powerful aspirator; or, he is burned inside and out by a highly concentrated salt solution which kills him, and causes him to spontaneously abort; or, he is more-or-less neatly cut into pieces - arms, legs, trunk, head - and scraped out of the womb; or, he is pulled out of his mother feet first until only his head remains inside his mother whereupon his brain is suctioned out; or, he is removed via caesarean section (hysterotomy abortion) in which he is smothered while still technically in utero, and once dead, lifted out and disposed of.

Logic tells reasonable people that crushing, burning, and dismemberment are excruciatingly painful. Sonograms and intrauterine photography have clearly shown that a developing baby is sensitive to touch. In the film “The Silent Scream” produced by Dr. Bernard Nathanson, it is clear that the baby was trying to avoid the abortion instruments. Yet, medical professionals have denied the obvious for years, claiming that the fetus cannot feel pain. We believe, and so must they, that mothers might be reluctant to submit their children to abortion if they knew the whole truth.

Now, a prominent British doctor, Professor Vivette Glover of Queen Charlotte’s and Chelsea Hospital in Britain, is calling for anesthesia to be used during the abortion of unborn children between 17-24 weeks in utero because they may feel pain. (Daily Telegraph, 8/30/00) “I think that the evidence is that the nervous system is starting to form by 20 weeks, maybe by 17 weeks.” “Given there is a possibility that an unborn child can feel pain we should give the foetus the benefit of the doubt.” The London-based Society for the Protection of Unborn Children reports: “Meanwhile, Professor Susan Greenfield of Oxford University, who is director of the Royal Institute and described as Britain’s most prominent neuroscientist, has expressed her own concerns. She said: “As soon as something has a nervous system, however primitive, we have to tread more cautiously.”

Recognition of the reality of fetal pain will not dampen the commitment to abortion that exists among its most zealous advocates. Anesthesia or no anesthesia, babies will still be put to death through savagely brutal means. However, efforts by the pro-life movement to widely publicize this knowledge may help mothers facing an abortion to opt out.

Pope Speaks Out on Cloning 
Pope John Paul II personally condemned so-called therapeutic cloning in an address to the Transplants Society Congress in Rome on August 29. The Pope praised organ transplantation and encouraged scientific research into the use of adult stem cells, but said that “attempts at human cloning with a view to obtaining organs for transplants, insofar as these techniques involve the manipulation and destruction of human embryos, are not morally acceptable, even when their goal is good in itself.” Meanwhile, Salvatore Mancuso, director of the Institute of Gynaecology of the Catholic University of Rome, proposed the establishment of placenta banks from which, in the future, one’s own stem cells could be taken and grown into replacement organs. He said that great quantities of stem cells are found in the umbilical cord and placenta, and that if these were systematically collected and stored there would be no medical need to generate cloned embryos in order to obtain such cells. (Society for the Protection of Unborn Children, U.K. Internet Report - August 30, 2000 - spucinfo@cwcom.net)

The Clinton Administration, NIH officials, and scientists who are promoting the use of embryonic stem cells in experiments, continue to ignore the fact that there are other sources for stem cells such as those mentioned in the above article, in addition to adult stem cells found in bone marrow and umbilical cord blood. Instead, they push for obtaining stem cells by killing embryonic babies who are abandoned by their parents in vitro fertilization clinics, or who are created via a cloning process. When Congress returns after Labor Day we will see whether pro-life Republicans and Democrats will move to oppose recent NIH guidelines that allow the unethical, immoral and unnecessary killing of embryonic babies.

China - Newborn Baby Murdered in Front of Parents 
China continues to get away with its vicious “One Child” policy. On August 24, The Times of London reported that Chinese government family planning agents drowned a healthy baby in front of his parents. The baby’s mother, identified by Chinese newspapers as Mrs. Liu, was expecting her fourth child in violation of the notorious “one child” policy. She was forcibly injected with a saline solution to induce labor and kill the child. However, the baby was born healthy. Immediately after the birth, the father was ordered to kill his baby outside the hospital, but he refused. Frightened, he left the baby in an office building and ran away. The baby was found by a Doctor who took him back to the hospital, gave him back to his mother, cut the umbilical cord, administered vaccinations and sent the family home. They were met by five Chinese officials in their living room. The baby was dragged away from the family and drowned in a rice paddy in front of the parents.

When Congress reconvenes on September 5, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee will consider the U.S./China trade bill through which our government will most likely continue to reward China’s behavior with permanent trade relations and pave the way toward China’s membership in the World Trade Organization.

Mark DeYoung, director of World Life League, said in a statement issued on August 25, “China’s brutal one-child-per-family policy — involving murder, torture, arrest without due process, and forced abortion and sterilization — continues unabated. If this politically-motivated U.S./China trade bill is signed into law, America will be complicit in the full-scale brutality and butchery waged against the people of China by the Chinese autocracy. And the killing will only get worse. The trade deal would effectively help fund this ongoing human extermination.” [World Life League]