An Update on Politics, RU486, and the Powerfully Pro-Life Observations of Pope Benedict XVI -- Part One of Two

Editor's note. Please send your thoughts to me at daveandrusko@hotmail.com.

There is so much going on right now that Part One of Thursday's TN&V will combine a brief look at a number of topics. And please read Part Two--"Press On"--which is must reading for grassroots pro-lifers.

As you know, pro-abortion former Democratic Senator John Edwards dropped out yesterday. It's interesting to speculate where his supporters might go. More interesting yet--and easier to predict--is that his absence means the bad blood that already exists between pro-abortion Sen. Hillary Clinton and pro-abortion Sen. Barack Obama can only worsen.

Former New York Mayor Republican Rudy Giuliani also called it a day on Wednesday. He took the occasion to endorse Sen. John McCain, who prevailed in the critically important Florida primary over former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, 36% to 31

Last night's debate at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library featured a lively exchange between the four remaining GOP presidential contenders: McCain, Romney, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, and Congressman Ron Paul. Moderator Anderson Cooper asked the foursome if former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor was "the right choice." You can read their responses at www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/01/30/GOPdebate.transcript/index.html.

The New York Times reports this morning that "A huge state-owned Chinese pharmaceutical company that exports to dozens of countries, including the United States, is at the center of a nationwide drug scandal after nearly 200 Chinese cancer patients were paralyzed or otherwise harmed last summer by contaminated leukemia drugs." Shanghai Hualian, the drug maker, "is the sole supplier to the United States of the abortion pill, mifepristone, known as RU-486," the Times reports.

The Times hastily adds, "It is made at a factory different from the one that produced the tainted cancer drugs, about an hour's drive away." However, as you read the rest of the story--a tale of cover-ups and gross incompetence-- that reassurance rings hollow. (www.nytimes.com/2008/01/31/world/asia/31pharma.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=abortion&st=nyt&oref=slogin)

For example, the Times reports that it asked the FDA last week "whether the Shanghai Pharmaceutical Group exported to the United States any drugs or pharmaceutical ingredients other than the abortion pill." Seems fair, given that "scores of people around the world have died after ingesting contaminated drugs and drug ingredients produced in China."

The FDA's response? After repeated requests, "the agency declined to provide that information; it did not cite a reason."

As you may remember, the Clinton Administration couldn't wait to get RU486 on the American market. But if you go to  http://www.nrlc.org/RU486/ru486info.html, you will find background material on the Hualian pharmaceutical firm. Even then, it was having seriously difficulties with high contamination levels in a number of its products and was accused of false or misleading labeling.

"The safety of women who might take RU486 was obviously never the number one concern for any of these people--the Chinese pharmaceutical company, the drug's American distributor, or the Clinton Administration-- which should not be surprising when the drug you're pushing isn't designed to heal or cure people, but to take human lives," said Randall K. O'Bannon, NRLC Director of Education. "When profit or pro-abortion ideology take precedence over people's personal welfare, you can expect to see things like hundreds of Chinese being paralyzed by tainted drugs or American women dying from rare infections that may be associated with yet not fully studied properties of a Chinese made abortion drug."

And finally, Pope Benedict XVI "strongly defended Church involvement in the field of bioethics in a January 31 address to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith," according to published reports. "When human beings in the weakest and most defenseless stage of their existence are selected, abandoned, killed or used as pure biological matter, how can it be denied that they are no longer being treated as 'someone' but as 'something,' thus placing the very concept of human dignity in doubt," he said.

According to the Associated Press, the Pontiff "singled out as 'new problems' the freezing of embryos, selecting which embryos should be implanted after testing them for defects, research on embryonic stem cells and attempts at human cloning."

Pope Benedict XVI "decried them as proof that 'the barrier protecting human dignity has been broken,'" the AP reported.

As I say, please read Part Two--"Press On."

Part Two