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NRL News
Pro-Life
News in Brief China Keeps “One-Child” Policy despite Growing Gender Imbalance Acknowledging that the country has a widening gender imbalance, with 118 boys born for every 100 girls in 2005, Chinese officials nevertheless said they would “unswervingly” enforce the “one-child” policy at least until 2010, according to the South China Morning Post. If the current trends continue, 40 million Chinese men will not be able to find women to marry by 2020, the Morning Post reported. Although some rich people in China are willing to pay stiff fines to have a second child, the coercive birth control and forced abortion policy has prevented 400 million births in 30 years. According to National Population and Family Planning Commission director Zhang Weiqing, 35.9% of the population in cities and some rural areas are only allowed to have one child. An additional 52.9% can have two children, but only if the first one is a girl. Poor farmers, 9.6% of the population, can have two children as well. Ethnic minorities, 1.6%, are allowed at least two, the Morning Post reported. “The policy has led normally law-abiding people to break the law by having abortions after scans revealed a female fetus,” an editorial in the Morning Post stated, “by forging proof of congenital disease in a first child to justify having another or by corruptly buying permission to have another. “The one-child rule is an egregious example of bad law.” Chinese officials deny that unborn girl babies are aborted in large numbers due to the policy—“China does not use abortion as a birth control method,” Zhang told Xinhua. But many reports have shown that it has led to widespread sex selection abortion and other illegal acts. Zhang did concede, “Of course the gender imbalance has something to do with China’s strict family planning policy,” according to the Morning Post. “[The policy] has aggravated the imbalance, but this doesn’t mean the imbalance is a consequence of the policy.” The Communist Party of China Central Committee and State Council released a research report January 23 that called the gender imbalance a “hidden danger” that will “affect social stability,” Xinhua news service reported. Zhang said that while the government plans several measures to solve the problem, “including promoting rural productivity and improving people’s living standards,” according to Xinhua, it will not loosen the birth control policy. Bone Marrow Cells Repair Blood System in Mice According to a study in the Journal of Experimental Medicine, adult stem cells successfully replenished the immune system of mice that had undergone radiation. If this technique can be used in humans, it may provide a breakthrough treatment for blood cancers and damaged immune systems, according to the Washington Times. It could also avoid problems with tissue transplants, since the cells could come from the patient’s own body and would not be rejected. The study was done at the University of Minnesota and Stanford University. Researchers isolated multipotent adult progenitor cells (MAPCs) from the bone marrow of mice and then transplanted them into mice that had no immune system after radiation. “The cells not only survived when transplanted, but they completely repopulated the blood system of the mice,” said Dr. Catherine Verfaillie, director of the University of Minnesota’s Stem Cell Institute, according to the Times. Notably, the cells did not form tumors, which has been a fatal flaw in research involving embryonic stem cells. Beyond the moral bankruptcy of obtaining embryonic stem cells by killing the donor, the use of these cells has never moved past theory in part because of their uncontrollable growth. More research is needed before this successful study can be applied to humans. “Scientists must now understand that mouse MAPCs can make normal blood, and we need to explore how they do it,” Dr. Irving Weissman of Stanford University told the Times. Chinese Activist’s Conviction Upheld Chen Guangcheng, the blind activist who fought on behalf of victims of China’s brutal one-child policy, will remain in jail for his four-year sentence for organizing a mob. After granting him a rare appeal of the August 2006 sentence, the Intermediate People’s Court in Linyi City upheld the conviction January 12, according to Xinhua news service. According to Chen’s lawyers, Chinese officials targeted Chen because he accused Linyi city officials of forcing women with more than one child to be sterilized and have abortions, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported. “This case is about local officials abusing their powers and using illegal methods to implement policy,” Chen’s lawyer Li Jinsong told AFP. Chen was charged with “intentionally damaging property and organising a mob to disrupt traffic,” the South China Morning Post reported. According to his lawyers, Chen, blind since childhood, was under guard at the time of the alleged riot and physically unable to have led a “mob,” according to the New York Times. The retrial was granted only after international attention focused on the case. However, Chen’s lawyers and witnesses on his behalf were kidnapped and beaten before and during both trials, Li told AFP. Human rights activist Hu Jia sharply criticized officials’ handling of Chen’s case. “The so-called charges were not only fabricated but [Communist Party] politics and law departments of Shandong’s Linyi city broke the law and violated human rights every step of the way,” Hu said, according to AFP. Sheriff’s Department Must Transport Inmates for Abortions According to a January 23 Arizona Court of Appeals decision, the sheriff’s department of Maricopa County must transport inmates to an abortion clinic if they request an abortion for any reason, according to the Associated Press (AP). “While we recognize that the county might decline to transport an inmate who presents a particular security or liability concern,” wrote Judge Patrick Irvine for the three-judge appeals court panel, “an indiscriminate ban on all transportation for non-therapeutic abortions does not allow inmates sufficient alternative means to exercise their right to choose to have an abortion.” Until he was sued by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Sheriff Joe Arpaio required a court order before he would use his department’s resources to help inmates get a non-emergency abortion. The ACLU sued Arpaio in 2005 on behalf of an unidentified 19-year-old woman who was in jail for driving under the influence, the Arizona Capitol Times reported. The woman asked for an abortion and waited seven weeks for a court order before she was transported to the abortion clinic. Arpaio spoke out against the court ruling and vowed to appeal. “I’m not going to transport prisoners to an abortion clinic on a voluntary basis to spend government money to run a taxi service,” he told the AP. “This is volunteer. This is no health problem. I don’t believe in this.” Stem Cell Fraud Collaborator Penalized by U.S. Government A colleague of disgraced stem cell scientist Hwang Woo-suk who held a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Pittsburgh has been banned for three years from applying or receiving federal grants, contracts, or loans by the Office of Research Integrity (ORI) of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, The Scientist reported. According to a report in the January 9 Federal Register, OPI found that Park Jong-hyuk “intentionally and knowingly falsified” figures contained in an article on embryonic stem cells he was preparing to submit to the journal Nature. The paper was titled “Rhesus Embryonic Stem Cells Established by Nuclear Transfer: Tetraploid ESCs Differ from Fertilized Ones.” “Park ‘repeatedly misrepresented’ the accuracy of one of the figures to a University of Pittsburgh investigative panel, and deleted prior versions of the figures from his laboratory server to eliminate the record of revisions,” The Scientist reported. Along with Hwang, Pittsburgh professor Gerald Schatten, and others, Park co-authored the fraudulent stem cell paper that had been published in Science in 2005. Park returned to Korea after his Pittsburgh fellowship ended in February 2006, according to The Scientist. “The system worked,” University of Pittsburgh spokeswoman Lisa Rossi told The Scientist. Rossi added that the paper was investigated before it was submitted to the journal, and that other scientists are attempting to determine if any of the research for the manuscript is valid. “They just basically threw out everything that Park had anything to do with,” she said. Illinois May Get “Choose Life” License Plate Stating that Illinois law does not require legislative approval for specialty license plates, U.S. District Judge David Coar ruled January 22 that supporters of the “Choose Life” pro-adoption license plate have garnered enough orders and the state must begin producing the tags. Illinois currently has 60 specialty plates, all of which were approved by the legislature and the governor. However, bills to authorize the “Choose Life” plates never made it to the legislature floor for a vote, despite several attempts. A group called Choose Life Illinois filed a lawsuit in 2004 asking for fair treatment, according to the Chicago Daily Herald. Judge Coar ruled that since the group has obtained more than the required 800 orders, the state has no right to prevent its free speech by refusing to make the plates. “Where the government voluntarily provides a forum for private expression, the government may not discriminate against some speakers because of their viewpoint,” Coar wrote. “It is undisputed that the reason for not approving the plate was because of the politically controversial nature of the message.” Secretary of State Jesse White’s office plans to appeal the ruling. “I think that was part of the attorney general’s defense, that any cause could do it—obnoxious groups, which would be a concern,” Dave Druker, spokesman for the secretary of state, told the State Journal-Register. “Our belief is that we do not have the authority without legislative approval to create specialty license plates.” If the “Choose Life” plates are produced, they would cost drivers $27 in addition to the usual $78 license fee, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. About $25 of the extra fee would go to groups that support adoption. “This means that people who want to adopt a child would be able to receive financial assistance to answer their prayers,” Dan Gura, an Illinois resident and a plaintiff in the case, told the Daily Herald. |