Congress has passed a law prohibiting the use of federal funds for stem cell research that involves the killing of human embryos. The NIH has drafted guidelines that interpret the law to allow such research, as long as the embryonic human lives were taken in non-federally-funded laboratories by privately funded scientists and then transferred to government run facilities. Calling the situation a little murky, Thompson said, I m very strongly involved with research and research is important, but there also are legal and ethical questions that have got to be resolved.

William Kristol addressed human embryo stem cell research and other biomedical issues such as cloning and genetic manipulation in an editorial published in the February 12, 2001 issue of The Weekly Standard magazine. In it, he quoted from The Abolition of Man by C.S. Lewis:

What we call Man's power over Nature turns out to be a power exercised by some men over other men with Nature as its instrument. . . . [T]he man-moulders of the new age will be armed with the powers of an omnicompetent state and an irresistible scientific technique: we shall get at last a race of conditioners who really can cut out posterity in what shape they please . . . It is not that they are bad men. They are not men at all. . . . [T]hey have stepped into the void. Nor are their subjects necessarily unhappy men. They are not men at all: they are artifacts. Man s final conquest has proved to be the abolition of man.

Before this prospect, Mr. Kristol wrote, every other issue pales not into insignificance, for many other issues are significant, but at least into lesser significance. The challenge of the scientific revolution in genetics and biotechnology, of scientific progress loosed from natural, human, or religious moorings, he said, is the challenge we face. Isn t it time to start drawing some lines?

Yes, it is time for President Bush to draw some lines. It is time for him and Secretary Thompson to come to grips with the enormity of the responsibility they carry, indeed the responsibility for the fate of humanity. It is past time for our government to put a stop to the killing and instead, focus on the great good that is coming from experiments using stem cells derived from umbilical cord blood and adult organs and tissues that do not involve killing anyone.

Please let President Bush know that you expect him to do the right thing and issue an Executive Order banning federal funding of stem cell research that involves the killing of embryonic human beings. In addition, we should urge him to send to Congress a bill that would criminalize such privately funded research. It is time to draw some lines.

President George W. Bush - Fax: 202/456-2461; E-Mail: president@whitehouse.gov

British Study Cites Abortion as Cause of Breast Cancer Time Bomb 
A study about to be released by the Royal Statistical Society (RSS) in England reports that British women are harboring a breast cancer time bomb because of the high abortion rate and low number of children. The Observer reported on February 26 that the RSS paper, Legally Induced Abortion, Fertility and Age at First Birth as Risk Factors in Female Breast Cancer notes that by 2030 the number of women diagnosed with breast cancer each year will have risen from 30,000 to 50,000. The paper quotes a study showing that having an abortion before a child, rather than the other way around, increases the chance of breast cancer by up to four times.
(Lifesite News, 2/27/01; www.lifesite.net.)

Target Ends Support of Planned Parenthood 
After years of corporate donations to Planned Parenthood, Target Corp. has finally agreed to end its sponsorship of America s most ubiquitous abortion chain, reports Douglas Scott of Life Decisions International, which maintains the pro-life movement s Planned Parenthood boycott list. Mr. Scott called the removal of Target from the list, indeed a miracle and thanked boycott participants for your prayers, commitment and hard work. We echo pro-life voices around the country that are thanking Doug Scott and LDI for their steadfast dedication to the task of removing corporate funding from Planned Parenthood.

ABA Continues Anti-Life Stance 
By a vote of 376-47, the policy-making arm of the American Bar Association, the House of Delegates, at its midyear meeting in San Diego on February 20, rejected a resolution calling for the enactment of laws that protect human life at all stages from intentional acts of harm or termination. All the comments in opposition to the resolution dealt with support of the ABA s earlier positions favoring abortion and an individual s right to refuse life-sustaining treatment. [Thanks to the subscriber who sent in this report.]

Mexico City Policy Only a Start 
Population Research Institute president Steve Mosher s January 26, 2001 PRI Weekly Briefing had this to say: With the news of President Bush reinstating the Mexico City Policy, pro-abortion activists are claiming it is a gag rule, unduly restricting their prerogative to fund and promote the practice of abortion in developing countries. It is, rather, a modest attempt to insure that the families and traditions of the Third World not be unduly undermined by Western anti-natalists whose sole aim is to deny women of color their progeny. It will also save lives. But it is only a beginning.

The massive promotion of abortion, contraception, and sterilization by the U.S. and its surrogates has not helped the developing world rid itself of poverty and disease. Rather, it has offended traditional values and customs, wasted taxpayer dollars, and undermined primary health care. There is evidence that these programs actually promote the spread of disease, such as AIDS in Africa.

The way to end the cycle of illiteracy, poverty and disease that still grips much of the world is by empowering people to become the agents of their own development, not by trying to reduce their number.

The U.S. needs to get out of the business of telling couples in the developing world how many children they should or shouldn t have. Compassionate conservative foreign aid should mean providing safe drinking water not sterilizations, schoolbooks not birth control pills, penicillin not IUDs, roads not condoms. This would be foreign aid we could be proud of. (Population Research Institute - www.pop.org)

A Pro-Life Plea 
An embryonic baby is a tiny boy or girl. A human embryo is not an it. Yet, even pro-lifers use that term when referring to the human embryo. Please don t do that. Please refer to the human embryo as he or she. Pro-lifers also often refer to the destruction of human embryos in research. We destroy inanimate objects, but we kill people. Embryonic human beings are being killed in scientific experiments. Let s try to remember that.

Contact: Colleen Parro — Phone: 972/387-4160 * Fax: 972/387-3830 * E-mail - rnclife@swbell.net