The Mary Schmich battle continues in the Chicago Tribune Letters to the Editors section. Three on Wednesday are pro-life and even Steve Ansul’s sketch of a baby and adult hand drawn together is somewhat positive.
Letters Take Schmich to Task
Brendan Fitzpatrick of Naperville asks what is to stop Schmich from deciding in favor of infanticide if she has tragic conflicts of life with life? Susan McGrew of Lake Forest says Schmich’s column sank to a new low in the argument supporting abortion, and Leonard St. Peters, also of Naperville, calls Schmich’s belief in a common ground on abortion a pipe dream. No way! Perhaps tomorrow there will be a raft of pro-Schmich letters.
We couldn’t help but make an entry, alluding to the Spirit of Christmas Present who tells Ebenezer Scrooge that “Perhaps in the eyes of Heaven you are more worthless than this poor man’s child.” We pointed out some of the advantages the unborn child has over adult women like Schmich—younger, has more potential, probably healthier, and doesn’t write dumb columns comparing the relative value of lives. It won’t get in, but it was fun to write.
Judge To Decide Terri’s Fate
Speaking of lives and their value, a judge will rule in a few hours whether Terri Schiavo must have her feeding tube removed and allowed to die a slow, painful death by starvation and dehydration, at the behest of her loving husband, while her parents are begging to take her home and care for her. We suspect the judge will let loving hubby pull the feeding tube, but we hope we’re wrong.
Please pray for Bob and Mary Schindler, Terri’s parents. They’ve been through a lot.
Update: The judge has put a 48-hour stay on the removal of Terri’s feeding tube to allow time for last minute appeals. Keep praying . . .
Embryonic Stem Cell Debate Rages
Ann is doing a television debate on the embryonic stem cell controversy for the Total Living Network in Aurora. This program will be on in Chicago this Thursday evening at 8:30. Tune in. Ann’s general arguments are that good ends can never justify disordered or intrinsically evil means.
An editorial in the Chicago Sun-Times said we are aware of the ethical challenge that scientific advancement often brings to our basic beliefs and value systems. A Chicago Tribune article said laboratories are looking into private funding, but that if this research was so promising there would be pharmaceutical companies and private investors trying to cash in on the success.
Sen. Rick Santorum said all the political hype over embryonic stem cells is diverting our attention from the really promising progress being made with adult stem cells and umbilical cord stem cells. Dennis Byrne reported a South Korean woman who walked again after 20 years of paralysis from a spinal cord injury, as a result of treatment with stem cells from the umbilical cord.
Those who support embryonic stem cell research think those of us who don’t want to destroy human life are holding back science, though they have no proof that it works, and they call the embryo a potential life, which is a nonsense term the Supreme Court used in speaking of actual human life in the womb.
While Ronald Reagan’s death spurred a lot of interest in use of embryonic stem cells to cure Alzheimer’s, research has shown for years that Alzheimer’s can’t be cured this way, being a whole brain disease and not a cellular disorder. Many scientists agree.
Recently Judge Jeffrey Lawrence called a frozen embryo destroyed in a Chicago fertility clinic a human being and a person entitled to a wrongful death lawsuit against the clinic. Even the Illinois legislature had declared that a human life begins at conception.
Dr. Douglas Losordo of Tufts University believes the embryonic stem cells craze is going to fade into the rearview mirror of adult stem cells, from which many cures have been reported, while none from embryonic stem cells.
But even if embryonic stem cells should be found to work, their use would still be immoral, for as Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney has said: “My wife has M.S., and we would love for there to be a cure for her disease and for the diseases of others. But there is an ethical boundary that should not be crossed.”
