To listen, just click on the player below (click on the “Audio MP3″ button if the player doesn’t appear).

Now you may recall that a drug called “Plan B” (levonorgestrel) is already on the market, and is in fact available without a prescription. Many in the pro-life community have expressed concerns that it may interfere with implantation, making it an abortion-causing agent (an abortifacient). This claim is controversial, and not proven either way scientifically.

Here’s the problem: the new drug, ella,  is not related to Plan B at all. It is actually chemically related to the abortion drug RU-486 (mifepristone), so it has a high likelihood of being an abortifacient itself. The FDA is likely to approve the drug for the U.S. market, despite an absence of studies on its possible abortifacient effect.

The Center for Bioethics, along with 19 other American organizations, has signed a letter to the FDA, opposing approval of ella. We have joined such groups as Concerned Women for America, the Family Research Council, the National Right to Life Committee, Americans United for Life, and Life Issues Institute. You can read the letter here.

Researchers in London performed womb transplants in five rabbits, a procedure that was successful in two of them. Similar work has also been done recently in other mammals. The surgical technique involved careful connections of blood vessels to ensure that clots cannot develop.

In another lab, four sheep have become pregnant after an autologous transplant, (where the same uterus was removed, then reconnected).  However, in the rabbit study, the transplanted uteri were from a different animal in each case.

This has actually been attempted once in a human being. In the year 2000, surgeons in Saudi Arabia attempted a live donor transplant of a womb into an infertile woman. The transplanted organ failed after just three months. However, these most recent animal results have led U.K. physicians to predict a successful human womb transplant within the next two years.

BBC World News Article

Appointed in November, 2001 by the Bush Administration, the Council has provided valuable input on some of the most difficult ethical issues in our modern culture. New technologies, both at the beginning and end of life, have challenged our understandings of what it means to be human, and what are the limits of medical science.

The Council was first chaired by Leon Kass of the University of Chicago, followed by Edmund Pelligrino of Georgetown University in 2005. Daniel McConchie (VP for Govt. Affairs with AUL) recently said: “This was the most balanced bioethics council in history, with two leaders . . . who went out of their way to ensure the council was reflective of all the major perspectives on the issues.”

The Obama Administration claims that the President’s Council was “a philosophically leaning advisory group” that tended to focus on extended discussion rather than consensus. Others were even more critical, calling it “more like a public debating society” than an advisory agency.

I have found the President’s Council Web site to be an excellent source of balanced articles on a wide range of subjects (the site is being archived, for which I am thankful). The Council’s outgoing Chair has said this:

To advance human good and avoid harm, biotechnology must be used within ethical constraints. It is the task of bioethics to help society develop those constraints and bioethics, therefore, must be of concern to all of us. (Dr. Edmond Pelligrino)

Granted, each presidential administration has the right to set its own priorities. President Obama has said that he will soon name a new commission that will focus more on “practical policy options.” I suppose that means that this body will be less focused on theory and more on tangible steps. Hmmm.

It has sometimes been said, not without justification, that university and hospital ethics committees are in place to rubber-stamp (and defend to the public) decisions that have already been made, rather than give true, independent ethical guidance. Could this also be said of the new Council under the Obama White House?

Perhaps the former “public debating society” will be replaced by a society where there is no debate at all. Stay tuned.

NY Times Article

That is why I am troubled by her June 5th piece, “The Myth of the Lone Gunman.” Her commentary on the recent shooting of late-term abortionist Dr. George Tiller is mean-spirited, vitriolic, and unfair. Virtually all the pro-life groups in this country have disavowed and repudiated the use of violence to accomplish their aims. Most pro-choice advocates understand this, and have not attempted to use this terrible incident to discredit anti-abortion activism.

Not so with Ms. Goodman. In a subtle way, she casts about widely to find a wider circle of blame. Here are a few excerpts:

It is believed that the shooter acted alone. Surely, that’s true. No one else was standing beside suspect Scott Roeder when it is believed he murdered Dr. George Tiller in the sanctuary of his church.

But Michael Griffin also acted alone when he killed David Gunn in 1993. Paul Hill acted alone when he killed John Britton in 1994. John Salvi acted alone and so did Eric Rudolph and James Kopp. This suspect is hardly lonely in this murderous cast of lone actors . . .

The pro-life community reacted with shock. No doubt. But where was the shock at the fringe groups they forgot to disavow? . . . Were they also shocked by the everyday mainstream rhetoric that casually refers to abortion as murder? Did they worry about the movement strategy designed deliberately to target providers, the weak link of abortion rights, driving clinics out of 87 percent of our counties?

Pro-life leaders denounced the murder . . . [And] as a First Amendment absolutist, I don’t believe that words kill. But this week, I can’t help wondering whether rhetoric can justify a crime in the mind of a fanatic. Can’t words provide the sort of perverse moral platform that jihadists stand on and the alternate universe in which a “lone nut” can find a home?. . .

I don’t blame everyone who checks a pro-life box on the pollster’s chart. I know that ambivalence is the emotion often cast onto the sidelines of this debate. But it is well past time for the antiabortion movement to denounce those who are in the profession of inflaming passions: Those who call Obama the “most pro-abortion president ever.” Those who ratchet up the rhetoric on a Supreme Court nominee. Those who cull doctors from their honored profession by labeling them “abortionists” . . .

You see, this suspect was not such a lone gunman. And no, I am afraid, this was not an isolated incident.

Now, let’s be clear on a few things. The sudden loss of human life is always a terrible tragedy, whether that of a physician shot down by an unbalanced gunman, or that of an unborn child who dies as a result of abortion. Ms. Goodman is obviously more concerned about the former than the latter; that is her right.

I agree that our passions sometimes get carried away, and our rhetoric is sometimes “over-the-top.” That is surely true on both sides of the debate. Ms. Goodman specifically repudiates the use of inflammatory language, e.g., labeling those who perform abortion as “murderers.” She’s got a point.

But what would you have the pro-life movement do, Ms. Goodman? Should they tone down their rhetoric so much that they can no longer call abortion evil? Surely it is not extreme to say that abortion is “morally equivalent to murder,” if one believes that human personhood begins at conception.

The moral indignation of the pro-life movement is based on a passionate defense of the most vulnerable among us, those who cannot defend themselves. Trying to get pro-lifers to tone down their rhetoric will be difficult. Their emotions are understandable in the face of a society that wants to treat human life as a disposable commodity.

I sincerely regret that a few extremists have chosen to take matters into their own hands, rather than respecting the rule of law. Their actions diminish all of us. But Ms. Goodman, you should not blame us for our moral outrage against the evil of abortion.

Today, with the Executive Order I am about to sign, we will bring the change that so many scientists and researchers; doctors and innovators; patients and loved ones have hoped for, and fought for, these past eight years: we will lift the ban on federal funding for promising embryonic stem cell research.

This speech was all about vague promises of medical cures that will come about with the help of stem cells. So what are stem cells? The president doesn’t tell us. Where do these cells come from? The president doesn’t tell us. How are stem cells obtained? The president doesn’t tell us.

There’s an elephant in the room, and the the president is ignoring it. He never talks about the entity that must be destroyed to produce stem cells. These are embryonic stem cells, which means they must come from the destruction of embryos. What are embryos? The earliest stage of human life.

Honest people may differ on the moral issues involved in embryo-destructive research, but to have a meaningful conversation they must understand the issues at stake. Unfortunately, on March 9th, President Barack Obama didn’t tell the American people what he was really talking about.

Sources:

• BBC News Article
• Brave New Families: Biblical Ethics and Reproductive Technologies (by Scott Rae, Baker, 1996)

Theme Music: Gli Uccelli (The Birds), Part I. Prelude (Allegro moderato), by Respighi, courtesy of Shockwave Sound.

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• Hymn to Saint Magnus – Jane Valencia
• Celtic Mystic – Tigertail

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My good friend Dr. Joy Riley, Director of the Tennessee Center for Bioethics and Culture, has produced a short video entitled “Who Am I?” It is a poignant exploration of what it means to be a donor-conceived child.

“Who Am I?” (Video from YouTube)

The Tennessee Center for Bioethics and Culture

Of course, abortion is not even legal in some countries, and Mifeprex is expensive. What if pregnant women could just take misoprostol (the prostaglandin) alone? It is is cheap, readily available, and it can often cause an abortion all by itself.

A recent article in the medical journal The Lancet attempts to study this question (Vol. 369, No. 9577, June 9, 2007). Looking at data from five different countries, misoprostol was effective as the sole agent most of the time. All women were carefully followed by OB-GYN doctors, with follow-up surgical procedures performed where necessary. One Web-based article on the technique states: “In approximately 10% to 35% of cases, aspiration intervention is required.”

So is this a boon for the reproductive rights of poor women? How will this translate into developing countries where medical follow-up is almost nonexistent? Under the guise of ‘easy’ and ‘cheap’ abortions, the many complications from this short-cut technique may never be known. It seems that many women who will die of infection after incomplete induced abortion.

Oh, and by the way, a lot of unborn babies will die as well.

Misoprostol Abortion: Article

Since then, Mosher has become president of the Population Research Institute, a pro-life educational organization “dedicated to protecting and defending human life, ending human rights abuses committed in the name of family planning, and dispelling the myth of overpopulation.” PRI has documented the thousands of forced late-term abortions and millions of coerced sterilizations in China, with important implications for targeted population control measures in other developing countries.

According to Mosher, “Population control encourages domestic tyranny of a very personal and deadly sort.” This is what happens when alarmist views of overpopulation are somehow translated into public policies that view people as pestilence. Rather than focus on the root issues of poverty through education and economic development, coercive population control measures seek to cure the “disease” by killing the patient.

Human Life Review Article

YouTube Video

Now there is a simple blood test, recommended for all pregnancies, that reduces the risk for moms, but may dramatically increase the number of genetic disorders diagnosed prenatally. If past history is any guide, this means that 90% of women whio are told their baby has Down Syndrome will choose to have an abortion (reference).

What will be the results of such selection? Well, for one thing, fewer babies with disabilities – and this has many parents who advocate for them rather worried:

A dwindling Down Syndrome population, which now stands at about 350,000, could mean less institutional support and reduced funds for medical research. It could also mean a lonelier world for those who remain (NY Times).

Parent advocates are worried that doctors don’t know how to handle the genetic information they now so easily obtain with two blood tests and a sonogram. Many physicians agree — the best way to share a genetic diagnosis is not: “Your baby is going to be mentally retarded, you should have a pregnancy termination.”

This does not mean that the future will be easy for parents who decide to carry their diabled child. But parents of the disabled see the new form of testing as one more step towards a society that doesn’t welcome any imperfections. Commentator George F. Will called it a “search and destroy mission” for the handicapped (Will has a grown son, Jon, with Down Syndrome). In complaining about the new recommendations, he adds:

What did Jon Will and the more than 350,000 American citizens like him do to tick off the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists? It seems to want to help eliminate from America almost all of a category of citizens, a category that includes Jon (Newsweek).

Imagine a society where every one of us is genetically perfect, where none of us must strive for the small, daily steps of success that mark our physical, emotional, and mental growth. I, for one, would not want to live there.

New York Times Article

The Court has struck a balance between a woman’s right to choose to terminate her pregnancy and the “legitimate and substantial” federal interest to preserve fetal life. This balance was at the heart of the Planned Parenthood v. Casey decision of 1992.

Last week’s decision is narrowly crafted to line up with Casey, and in no way signals an overturning of Roe v. Wade (1973). On the other hand, it signals a willingness on the part of the Court to consider federal restrictions on abortion for purely moral reasons. The fact that one option for terminating a pregnancy is no longer available does not significantly interfere with women’s rights.

Both sides of the issue agree that this recent ruling will encourage states to craft more restrictions on abortion.

For more analysis, read the commentary by Wesley J. Smith.

Sources and Links:

• Stem Cells in Amniotic Fluid
• Ashley’s Treatment
• NPR Report on Ashley’s Treatment
• Katrina Baby

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Podcast Pickle

Sources:

• Ukraine Babies in Stem Cell Probe (BBC)
• Arthur Caplan Commentary (MSNBC)

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Podcast Pickle

The news article starts out with Chad and David, a gay couple in Fairfax, Virginia, sorting through possible ‘egg donors.’ Chad likes #694, who scores high in academics and music, but David prefers #685, who has the edge in athletic ability and dance.

Here’s the plan: the two men hope to have a child through gestational surrogacy. This will involve paying a carefully-chosen woman to provide the eggs, since they want to “exert some control over the child’s genetic makeup.” These eggs, combined with the men’s own sperm, would produce several embryos by in vitro fertilization. Some of the embryos would be implanted into another woman, also paid for her services, who would carry the baby (or babies) to term. In this way, Chad and David hope to become fathers.

Do you have any questions about this kind of arrangement? Here are some of my concerns:

• Setting aside any moral objections to homosexual relationships, research has shown that children need both male and female role models for proper development.
• According to Chad and David, this “felt more like catalog shopping than human reproduction.” It seems like human beings and their parts have become commodities to be bought and sold on the open market.
• Selecting one person for reproduction over another based on genetics denies the ethical principle of equality of persons. Such eugenics ideas have discriminated against the poor and disadvantaged, and history has taught us we pay a high price.
• Speaking of eugenics, what of the embryos that are not implanted? Surely those with genetic defects will be discarded, violating the sanctity of human life. At the very least, leftover embryos will be frozen, leaving them with an uncertain future.
• What of society at large? Have we so instrumentalized procreation that children are more a ‘product’ than actual sons and daughters?

My thanks to Professor Stephen Grabill (Acton Institute) for bringing this article to my attention.

Original LA Times article:
www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-surrogacy29oct29,0,5016763.story

In an article entitled ‘Reproduction Revolution: Sex for Fun, IVF for Children,’ Jo Whelan marvels at our change in attitude toward reproduction since Louise Brown became the first “test-tube” baby in 1978: “Who would have predicted how common IVF would become back in 1977, when Louise Brown was just a speck in a Petri dish?”

Today many couples are using IVF (in vitro fertilization), with a success rate at least equal to that of natural procreation. In addition, couples are increasingly relying on IVF combined with pre-implantation genetic diagnosis to select embryos that do not have inherited diseases.

Whelan sees in these developments the seeds of a radical shift in the way we view sex and reproduction. Might it be feasible in several decades for most people to bring children into the world through IVF, whether or not they suffer from infertility? Do the reigning attitudes in science and medicine indicate that, should such a possibility become reality, parents would be considered irresponsible not to screen for the best embryos? The rising practice of selecting embryos on the basis of male or female gender might be a clue to where we are headed.

While it may seem cruel or heartless to deny parents the opportunity to prevent having a child with a fatal or debilitating disease, we must ask, “At what cost?” Selection implies that other embryos – other living human beings – are passed over, and then “discarded” or indefinitely frozen. And the more embryos one has to choose from (or discard), the better the chances of finding a “good” one.

In addition, reproductive and contraceptive technologies are bringing about a widening divide between sex and procreation. More and more, we determine the timing and circumstances of child-bearing. By removing conception from the “imprecise” realm of nature, we can decide just what kind of baby we will have.

Surely, neither contraception nor assisted reproduction is illegitimate in all cases. Yet we cannot ignore the ways in which exercising such control can cause us to view our bodies as mere instruments for our pleasure, and our children as the products of our willful, careful choosing – arriving on our terms, fulfilling our hopes, and more or less matching our expectations.

Full article in the New Scientist: http://www.newscientist.com/channel/sex/mg19225741.300

Well, it depends. For one thing, it depends on how you define pregnancy. Science has traditionally taught that pregnancy begins with fertilization, the union of sperm and egg in the reproductive tract of a woman. Except that such a definition of pregnancy has become inconvenient lately. For a number of reasons, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists now describes pregnancy as “beginning with the successful implantation of a fertilized egg.”

Human life begins at conception, but it takes six days for a new embryo to travel down the Fallopian tube to implant in a woman’s womb – long enough for the powerful dose of progestin in Plan B to interfere. In other words, at least part of the time Plan B causes an early abortion.

Supporters of abortion rights have long claimed that widespread availability of Plan B would reduce the number of abortions overall, but a disturbing report from Great Britain indicates otherwise. Plan B has been available without prescription in the U.K. for many years. Yet between 2001 and the present, the number of abortions has actually increased (from 186,000 to 194,000). With full over-the-counter approval of Plan B by the FDA two months ago, such a pattern will likely be repeated in the U.S.

Abortion centers are endorsing a pill that does not live up to its promise of providing an “easy fix” for unplanned sexual activity. In this way, they offer false hope, and may actually increase the numbers of abortions in the process.

Oh, by the way, last year Planned Parenthood made $25 million in profits on Plan B.

Arthur Caplan’s commentary is available at: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14398371/

To those who suffer from it, however, infertility is a wretched curse — a disease that isn’t really a disease, with an outcome that seems to defy nature . . . many infertile couples become consumed with the desire to conceive, and are willing to do whatever it takes to create a child of their own.

The science of assisted reproductive technology (ART) has taken advantage of this desperation-driven market. In some cases, it has resulted in blessings for those who can afford such techniques as in-vitro fertilization or intra-cytoplasmic sperm injection, but at what cost for society as a whole?

Many are concerned about the commodification of reproduction, with the possibility that we will see children more as product than progeny. What are the limits? Do all couples have a right to reproduce, to have a child “of their own?” What about the unintended consequences of the unfettered drive to have a technological baby?

Many couples who engage in ART haven’t really thought through the long-term implications of their decision. That is one reason there are over 400,000 frozen embryos in cryogenic storage in the U.S. alone. The couples who “own” these embryos have created a legal and moral dilemma. Are they persons or property? Should they be destroyed, given over for stem-cell research, or donated to childless couples who wish to adopt them? Most couples have deferred their decision to some later date, even if they have no intention of implanting the embryos themselves.

Sympathetically, Professor Spar recognizes that regulating the fertility industry and its excesses will be difficult: “These decisions will not be easy, since they will inevitably involve drawing thin lines across a slippery slope and subjecting private tragedies to public scrutiny.”

Professor Spar’s has expanded her work into a book, entitled, Baby Business – How Money, Science and Politics Drive the Commerce of Conception (Harvard Business School Press, 2006).