A Potpourri of News to End the Week -- Part Two of Two

* As most of our readers know, I am a big fan of bioethicist Wesley Smith. His latest anti-euthanasia contribution is found on the web page of that sterling magazine First Things. (Its editor in chief is the Rev. Richard John Neuhaus, who will conclude NRLC’s July 3-5 convention with the closing Banquet address.)

I strongly recommend you read Wesley’s short but powerful contribution at www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/?p=1069. Consider Wesley’s conclusion:

“Anyone who cares about the proper practice of medicine should be up in arms about the assisted-suicide movement’s attempt to make hospice and palliative sedation stalking horses for backdoor assisted suicide. Not only do such schemes subvert medicine by transforming legitimate medical interventions into life-terminating protocols, but proposals such as [California’s] AB 2747 effectively deprofessionalize medical practice by reducing physicians to mere order-takers. Alas, this is par for the course for a movement obsessed with transforming killing into a legitimate answer to the problems of human suffering.”

* NRLC’s fine Minnesota affiliate—Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life—sent out a press release yesterday under the headline “Taxpayers forced to pay more than ever for abortions.”

The Minnesota Department of Human Services reported that Minnesota taxpayers were forced to pay $1.6 million for more than 3,900 abortions in 2006. Taxpayer funded abortions now account for 28 percent of all abortions performed in Minnesota, due to the Minnesota Supreme Court’s 1995 Doe v. Gomez decision. To no one’s surprise, Planned Parenthood is responsible for nearly all of these increases, MCCL explained.

There is no end in sight for taxpayer funded abortions in Minnesota,” said MCCL’s executive director Scott Fischbach. “Just last month pro-lifers sought to ban taxpayer funding of needless sex-selection abortions and gruesome saline abortions, but the Legislature’s pro-abortion leaders have given the abortion industry a blank check to perform as many abortions on women as it pleases, and the results are frightening.”

* It’d be hard to imagine a much grimmer situation than the one faced by pro-lifers in Great Britain. As we have talked about often in this space and in National Right to Life News, members of Parliament are taking the first serious look at abortion and related issues in nearly 20 years.

The first vote in the House of Commons on The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill (HFE) Monday was overwhelming. The tally in favor of the HFE was an overwhelming 340 to 78.

As currently constituted the HFE is a nightmare. Among other provisions, it allows for the creation of mixed animal and human embryos. The bill also allows the screening of embryos to select a "savior sibling" to help an existing brother or sister suffering a disease. Needless to say if the embryo doesn’t come equipped with whatever it is the sibling needs, he or she will likely be aborted.

Additionally, according to the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC), during the May 12 debate, Andrew Lansley, the Conservative party health spokesman, “indicated that he would vote to abolish the need for two doctors to authorize an abortion, and to allow nurses to provide drug-induced abortions. These amendments would lead to more abortions than ever.”

In addition to fighting these provisions, pro-lifers will offer amendments of their own as the HFE is more extensively debated next week. One will be to reduce the upper limit at which most abortions can be performed from 24 weeks to 20 weeks or 18 weeks. At this stage, prospects appear bleak.

We will update you next week as the debate proceeds.

Please pass your comments along to daveandrusko@hotmail.com.

Part One -- A Revealing Squabble Between Pro-Abortionists