Embryonic life in Perlmutter's sights

By Krista Kafer (krista555@msn.com) Last week an AP headline heralded a remarkable scientific breakthrough: “Swiss scientists grow human heart valves using material taken from amniotic fluid.” Another article spoke of dogs with muscular dystrophy walking again with the help of stem cells.

In both cases, scientists used non-lethal stem cell extractions from amniotic fluid or from adult cells -- rather than from embryos killed for the purpose. The fact is the most promising and successful therapies using stem cells involve those taken from adult, placental, or amniotic sources not from those taken from unborn children. For this reason, private investment capital is focused on adult stem cell research, leaving less successful and unethical research out in the cold – where it belongs.

This may be about to change – enter the new Congress flush with victory and access to the public checkbook.

Some members, including a few from Colorado, are dead set on using taxpayer funding for research that requires the killing of unborn children. As Congressman-elect Ed Perlmutter’s website boasts, “We now can begin to…fight to overturn the President’s veto of stem cell research…”

Presently it is perfectly legal to kill an unborn child from fertilization to just before birth, to extract their tissues and organs, and to allocate private funds for such grim activities. But thanks to President Bush's unyielding policy stance, sustained not long ago by his veto of a pending bill, those who value human life are not complicit in these activities through their tax dollars. This, however, could change.

What if the President’s next veto is overridden, as Perlmutter has pledged to achieve? That will be the last day I pay my federal taxes. Frédéric Bastiat once wrote, “When law and morality contradict each other, the citizen has the cruel alternative of either losing his moral sense or losing his respect for the law.” It would be a cruel choice indeed, and one from which I would certainly face consequences. Even so, it is not enough in life to avoid doing evil; we must act to protect its victims, those who cannot fight for themselves, even at our own peril.

Thankfully the time has not yet come for such a drastic decision. Now is the time to educate our friends and neighbors about the real promise of adult stem cell research, and the cruelty and futility of embryonic stem cell research. We must make a case for the sanctity of human life. In our country, 4,000 unborn children die every day in abortion clinics, while countless others perish in science laboratories. And the road could grow darker still.

Stop with the selective moral outrage

By Krista Kafer (krista555@msn.com) If hypocrisy is “do as I say not as I do” then selective moral outrage is “do as I say not as I do and shame on you!” True moral outrage draws attention to what is wrong and exerts a powerful force for change. Selective moral outrage uses society’s moral expectations as a weapon against specific targets for political gain, while ignoring other comparable ones. Effective in the short run, the tactic’s success will surely wane as the public grows more cynical and apathetic toward moral outrage both real and counterfeit.

If you want to see selective moral outrage in action you have but to open the daily paper or magazine, visit the cinema or go to a political rally. This week the Denver Post is outraged by a government leak revealing that Bill Ritter’s plea bargain of illegal aliens put dangerous people back on the streets.

Let me rephrase, the paper and its Democrat allies are outraged about the leak -- but not about the fact that one of these coddled criminals was later arrested for child molestation. Hmmmm. I don’t recall any outrage last month over the leak revealing portions of the National Intelligence Estimate critical of the Administration. Perhaps the media was too busy hyping the content of the leak and forgot the source.

Consider the case of Mark Foley, the gay Republican congressman who hit on teenage boys in the Congressional Page Program via text messages. Sickening and deplorable, the man left office. Decent people were outraged providing a potential election tool for any opportunist. Democrats attempted to use the scandal to tar the entire Republican Party. Like flipping a switch, they turned on their moral outrage and bemoaned the action that they once condoned for one of their own.

Back in the 1980s, when Massachusetts Democrat Gerry Studds had sexual relations with a 17 year old male page (isn’t that statutory rape?), he kept his committee position, won reelection, and was even publicly applauded by Democrats. His recent death brought new accolades. Studds was lauded by the Washington Post as a gay pioneer who was a “longtime proponent of environmental protection, New England fishermen and human rights…” I don’t recall the Post treating Foley so tenderly.

Liberal politicians aren’t the only ones getting a pass. Where was the outrage when Rosie O’Donnell called Christians terrorists? Would she have kept her job if she’d said the same of Muslims or Jews? Unlikely. Mel Gibson was held to account for the repellent and inexcusable things he said. Why not O’Donnell?

Or how about those wealthy movie stars and politicians who own multiple mansions, fleets of cars, airplanes, and yachts and then chastise ordinary Americans for the energy use? An ordinary consumer like me can get a good browbeating from George Clooney and Al Gore in Vanity Fair’s Green Edition released earlier this year. or I could see the movie "An Inconvenient Truth" if I wanted another serving of shame for the planet’s destruction -- but honestly I don’t think my 1,000 square foot house is the problem, Al. When are reporters going to question the gap between celebrity environmentalists and their lifestyle? I’m not holding my breath.

An example closer to home, the press and school choice foes are quick to point out Hope Online Academy's flaws. The charter school, which recently fired a man with a criminal background, received the Rocky Mountain News’ front page headline Tuesday. A cursory search of the Rocky and the Denver Post also finds articles over the past year about teachers in traditional public schools who molested kids -- these articles are generally tucked away in other parts of the paper. I guess the front page is reserved for charter schools and the church.

In the end, the real trouble with selective moral outrage is that by applying standards unequally it diminishes their legitimacy. Standards need to apply to everyone. Seducing teens, leaking information, smearing religious people, wasting energy, and employing unethical people is wrong -- regardless of who does it.

Headlines evoke biblical echoes

By Dave Petteys (dpetteys@comcast.net) In Ecclesiastes it says somewhere “Nothing is new under the sun”. Reading Scripture and looking at current politics, one can see this is true. For example:

“..the Pharisees began to press him hard, and to provoke him to speak of many things, lying in wait for him, to catch at something he might say.” (Luke 11:53). The Democrats, like the Pharisees, are not willing to embrace the “New Covenant” of free markets and individual responsibility. And like the Pharisees, who thought killing Jesus himself would solve their problem, so do the Democrats and their allies in the media demonize the President and comb the landscape for any scandal.

The Democrats search desperately, hoping to find (or in some cases create) something that will give them the election without having to change their “Old Covenant” of continually trying to build heaven on earth with big government programs.

As for murderous fantasies, the George Soros’s of the world probably would not finance a contract killing of a President of the United States, (though some may have thought about it). They know they could never get away with such an action. But ominously, financing a movie depicting their desire MAY motivate someone somewhere who would try. This would sever any link and give them plausible deniability.

Rep. Foley should have heeded Jesus’ warning in Luke 12: “Nothing is covered up that will not be revealed, or hidden that will not be known. Therefore whatever you have said in the dark will be heard in the light, and what you have whispered in private rooms (these days the IM chat rooms) shall be proclaimed upon the housetops.” Every Republican that holds office should put this passage on a 3x5 card, carry it, and read it often.

But there’s hope, for as the Bible also states: “ A wise man’s heart inclines him toward the right, but a fool’s heart toward the left" (Eccl. 10: 2).

Heartless women proud of their abortions

By Krista Kafer (krista555@msn.com) “I’m glad I had an abortion and I want the world to know it” declare the over 5,000 signers of Ms. Magazine’s new petition. According to the magazine, the purpose of the “We had an Abortion” petition, a repeat of a similar one published by Ms. three decades ago, is to “help eliminate the stigma” of abortion and to demand the repeal of restrictions on abortion.

At present it is legal to kill an unborn child until the point of natural birth. The few restrictions that exist cover issues such as public funding or notification of parents when their teenager seeks an abortion. Presumably, anything short of publicly funded abortion-on-demand would be too restrictive for the signers.

As for the elimination of stigma, abortion proponents are fairly close to their goal. Abortion garners uncomfortable looks in polite company, not sadness or anger -- and the shallow pool of pity evaporates when they’re told that the death of unborn children might produce a future cure for disease. The absence of pity is a sign that the heart of the nation grows ever colder.

Every day 3,500 children die from abortion in America. The profitable $400 million a year industry has claimed the lives of more than 40 million children in three decades. For the vast majority (93%) of these cases abortion served as birth control after the fact. As one signer of the Ms. pledge said, she had other plans and “didn't want to be stopped by anything.” Or anyone, apparently.

When life is easily taken, any reason will do. A few months ago Vincent Carroll of the Rocky Mountain News wrote about late term abortions of children with club feet or webbed fingers problems that are easily fixed through surgery. Without stigma, there is no need to justify.

All of the women I know who have had abortions regret the death of their children and would take back that moment in time if they could. Some cannot have children because of the damage done to their bodies. Abortion has wounded them deeply. Through counseling and the acceptance of God’s love and forgiveness, these women have become courageous advocates for children and vulnerable women. They have not traded shame for pride, but shame for grace and for love.

The nation must follow them on the road towards mercy.

Coerced conversion meets secular tolerance

By Dave Petteys (dpetteys@comcast.net) Mssrs. Olaf Wiig and Steve Centanni of Fox News were recently converted to Islam at gunpoint and released by their captors. To conclude “Piece of cake! They could recant tomorrow” may be an oversimplification. The experiences of prisoners of war in Korea (termed “brainwashing” after the war ended), as well as the famous “Stockholm Syndrome”, where captives formed bizarre attachments to their captors, could come into play here.

The extreme trauma of having your very life hanging by a very slender thread for several days, and coupling this with the immense relief and gratitude for the nightmare’s end may have unintuitive consequences. First of all, these men have been sternly warned that the penalty for recanting Islam is death. Secondly, after returning to their homes, should they begin attending the nearest neighborhood Mosque, the overwhelmingly warm and congratulatory welcome they would receive would be completely disorienting. And as they began their instruction in the Faith, the Imam would apologize for the “harshness that brought them to the correct path” but assure them it has been for their long term greater good. To see a complete and genuine conversion of these captives is not out of the question.

I have long thought that secularism is doomed. The experience of Mssrs. Wiig and Centanni explains why. Any person of faith in a similar situation would merely have been administered the bullet to the brain. The history of Christianity is filled with stories of martyrs who chose death rather than apostasize. But a secularist would see conversion as the better course. It is a perfect example of what happens when “Convert or Die!” confronts “Tolerance and Understanding at all costs”.