The Pro-life Movement and Stem Cell Research

ANOTHER SUCCESS WITH STEM CELL RESEARCH

Science now has proven there are moral and ethical alternatives to using stems cells from human embryos. The most recent success transplanted a new windpipe into a 30-year old woman suffering from tuberculosis. The procedure used tissue from the women’s own stem cells. Adult stem cells have also cured over 70 diseases in other men, women and children. By contrast, research using embryonic stem cell research has not cured a single disease in a single person.

Congress is expected to debate the use of stem cells from human embryos early in the 111th Congress. This is a crucial time to educate President-Elect Obama that it is time to end the debate on funding embryonic stem cell research and put our limited funds toward research that is curing and saving lives. The Obama Transition Team is asking for your vision for the next four years. Please share your views that we must follow science on stem cell research and use the moral and ethical alternatives to embryonic stem cells that have suceeded and do not sacrifice one life to potential save another.

From the Democrats for Life of America:

Democrats For Life of America
DFLA -The pro-life voice within the Democratic Party
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Pro-Science and Pro-Life: The Most Promising Stem Cell Research Does NOT Require the Destruction of Human Embryos

Medical research involving “stem cells” is often presented as a false dilemma. It is a falsehood that one must be either pro-science or pro-life; that in order to advance medical and scientific research, one must push aside ethical issues relating to the creation, cloning, and destruction of human embryos. This common misperception is not just oversimplified and misleading – it is also outdated.

Today, scientists can create the most powerful type of stem cells without destroying embryos. Researchers have generated a new kind of stem cell that shares the helpful characteristics of embryonic cells, while avoiding the many moral and practical problems. The new, non-embryonic cells have shown tremendous promise in clinical studies, and scientists have only begun to explore their potential. They add to an already lengthy roster of medical treatments
utilizing “adult” stem cells.

What are “Stem Cells”?

Stem cells are unspecialized cells that can replicate themselves and produce more specialized cells. The most powerful stem cells are “pluripotent,” which means capable of developing into any type of cell.

Stem cells come from a variety of sources. Embryonic stem cells are those obtained by destroying a human embryo in the early stages of its development. Adult stem cells refer to stem cells from adult tissue, umbilical cord blood, or placenta.

In the past, it was believed that embryonic stem cells were unique in their ability to transform into any type of cell. We now know that this is not the case. Researchers have learned to manipulate the genes of adult cells and convert them into the equivalent of embryonic stem cells.
These breakthrough new cells – known as “induced pluripotent stem cells” or “iPS cells” – were created from adult skin cells. Like embryonic stem cells, they can be transformed into any type of tissue, including lung, brain, heart and muscle.

Proven Benefits of Adult Stem Cells

A flurry of research has followed upon the published discovery of iPS cells in late 2007. Clinical studies in mice have already shown progress in treating symptoms of Parkinson’s disease and sickle cell anemia, and in restoring blood circulation and function to damaged limbs. More studies are underway.

For many years prior to the discovery of iPS cells, the other types of adult stem cells have provided important medical benefits. Blood-forming cells from bone marrow have been used in transplants for 30 years. Adult stem cells are in widespread use treating many types of cancer, heart disease, and spinal cord injury.

Clinical trials have benefitted patients suffering from conditions including corneal damage, sickle-cell anemia, and multiple sclerosis. Adult stem cells, including iPS cells, permit doctors to treat a patient using cells from the patient’s own body. The advantage is that the cells will not be rejected by the immune system, as would be the case with stem cells from an embryo.

Another advantage of adult stem cells is that they are not as likely as embryonic cells to form tumors – and the advantage now extends to iPS cells. In September 2008, Harvard University scientists announced that they had succeeded in engineering iPS cells so they were not prone to causing cancerous tumors. This feat has so far eluded researchers working with embryonic stem
cells, and it raises the possibility that iPS cells may be used in human studies much sooner than once thought.

Problems with Embryonic Stem Cell Research

Embryonic stem cell research requires the destruction of a human embryo. In some cases, an embryo is created for the express purpose of destroying and harvesting its cells. Supporters of embryonic stem cell research seek to avoid the moral and ethical objections by arguing that the end – the possibility of a breakthrough that might advance medicine – justifies the means – destroying human embryos to harvest stem cells. This dubious argument loses all credibility in light of the research developments involving non-embryonic stem cells.

In addition, major practical hurdles continue to confront embryonic stem cell research. Embryonic stem cells are valued for their capacity to grow and reproduce very rapidly, but that growth is difficult to control. In simple terms, embryonic cells are prone to forming cancerous tumors. To date, concern about tumors has prevented studies of embryonic stem cell treatments in human patients. Immune system rejection is another problem with treating patients using
cells from a destroyed embryo. The high risk of the patient’s immune system rejecting tissue grown from the embryo would mean a lifetime course of immunosuppressive drugs. The tissue rejection problem has led some researchers down a worrisome path.

Their “solution” is to create an embryo cloned from a patient’s own cells, terminate the cloned embryo after roughly 5-7 days development, and harvest the embryonic stem cells. The clone’s stem cells could then be used to grow transplant tissues or even whole body parts. They call this process “therapeutic” cloning.

“Therapeutic” cloning has progressed relatively slowly. The cloning process requires large quantities of human eggs and, so far, there is a shortage of donors. This is hardly surprising: egg donation is a time-consuming process that poses medical risks to the donor. She is subject to multiple office visits, daily hormone injections, and a surgical procedure under anesthesia to harvest the eggs. Even under normal doses, the hormone injections can lead to occasional serious (in rare cases, fatal) complications caused by excessive stimulation of the ovaries. To make matters worse, the commercial value of cloning research means that the doctor would have a financial incentive to administer high doses of egg-stimulating drugs, in order to produce as many eggs as possible. Given the health risks to women and the speculative benefits of the research, the National Academy of Science advises against compensation for women who
donate eggs for research purposes, and such compensation has been banned by California and Massachusetts, two large centers of stem cell research.

A shortage of human eggs available for cloning led researchers in the United Kingdom to use cow’s eggs instead, creating a human-animal hybrid embryo. Termed a “chimera,” the hybrid embryo was reportedly destroyed after five days. The “ends” justifying the “means” argument can be stretched very far indeed.

Conclusion

Recent developments may well make embryonic stem cells obsolete. At a minimum, scientists must be encouraged to harness the enormous potential of powerful new stem cells created without destroying human embryos. With limited dollars available for medical research, legislators should ensure that taxpayer dollars fund research that has tremendous potential for breakthrough cures: adult stem cell research.

National Right to Life Exposes Obama

Obama Distorts His Abortion Record In Third Debate

WASHINGTON -- "On partial-birth abortion and on the rights of infants who survive abortions, Barack Obama's answers in the third presidential debate were highly misleading," commented Douglas Johnson, longtime legislative director for the National Right to Life Committee (NRLC), the nation's largest pro-life organization.

-- The Illinois Born-Alive Infants Protection Act (BAIPA) was a simple three-sentence bill to establish that every baby who achieved "complete expulsion or extraction" from the mother, and who showed defined signs of life, was to enjoy the legal protections of a "person." As a state senator, Obama led the opposition to this bill in 2001, 2002, and 2003. On March 13, 2003, Obama killed the bill at a committee meeting over which he presided as chairman. In the October 15 debate, Obama said, "The fact is that there was already a law on the books in Illinois that required providing lifesaving treatment." This claim is highly misleading. The law "on the books," 720 ILCS 510.6, on its face, applies only where an abortionist declares before the abortion that there was "a reasonable likelihood of sustained survival of the fetus outside the womb." But humans are often born alive a month or more before they reach the point where such "sustained survival" – that is, long-term survival – is likely or possible (which is often called the point of "viability"). When Obama spoke against the BAIPA on the Illinois Senate floor in 2001 -- the only senator to do so -- he didn't even claim that the BAIPA was duplicative of existing law. Rather, he objected to defining what he called a "previable fetus" as a legal "person" -- even though the bill clearly applied only to fully born infants. These events are detailed in an August 28, 2008 NRLC White Paper titled "Barack Obama’s Actions and Shifting Claims on the Protection of Born-Alive Aborted Infants -– and What They Tell Us About His Thinking on Abortion," which contains numerous hyperlinks to primary sources.

-- Because 720 ILCS 510.6 gives complete discretion to the abortionist himself, and because a 1993 consent decree issued by a federal court nullified key provisions (such as the definition of "born alive"), the law was so riddled with loopholes as to be virtually unenforceable even with respect to babies who had clearly achieved the capacity for long-term survival. During Obama's time in the state Senate there were bills (other than the BAIPA) to close some of these loopholes in order to provide more effective protections for post-viable abortion survivors. Obama opposed those bills, too. On April 4, 2002, Obama opposed a bill (SB 1663) that would have more strictly defined the circumstances under which the presence of a second physician (to care for a live-born baby) would be required during a post-viability abortion; Obama argued that this would "burden the original decision of the woman and the physician to induce labor and perform an abortion . . . [I]t’s important to understand that this issue ultimately is about abortion and not live births."

-- In the debate, Obama said that the state BAIPA "would have helped to undermine Roe v. Wade." To evaluate this claim, one must examine the actual language of the BAIPAs. The original 2001 bill was only three sentences long; the third sentence was as follows: "(c) A live child born as a result of an abortion shall be fully recognized as a human person and accorded immediate protection under the law." As recently as August 19, 2008, the Obama campaign issued a memo in which it singled out that sentence as "Language Clearly Threatening Roe." This claim is consistent with Obama's 2001 argument that a "previable fetus" should not be regarded as a person, even when born alive.

-- At the March 13, 2003 committee meeting over which Obama presided, the "immediate protection" clause was removed and replaced with the "neutrality clause" copied from the federal BAIPA, which said explicitly that the bill had no bearing on the legal status of any human "prior to being being born alive." Obama then led the committee Democrats in voting down the bill, anyway. For years afterwards, Obama claimed that the state BAIPA had lacked the "neutrality clause," and on August 16, 2008, Obama said that NRLC was "lying" when we said otherwise. This dispute was reviewed by both FactCheck.org and Politifact.org, both of which came down on NRLC's side. To read the original 2001 Illinois BAIPA side-by-side with the amended 2003 version -- both of which Obama voted against -- click here.

-- In the presidential debate, Senator John McCain accurately noted that Obama had opposed Illinois legislation to ban partial-birth abortions. This is true -- indeed, during his primary contest with Hillary Clinton, Obama's supporters presented detailed accounts lauding his leadership in opposing legislation to ban partial-birth abortion, afford legal protection to born-alive babies, and require parental notification for abortion. (Under Article IV, Section 8 of the Illinois Constitution, the effect of voting "present" on the Illinois Senate floor is exactly the same as voting "no.") In his response to McCain in the debate, Obama said, "I am completely supportive of a ban on late-term abortions, partial-birth or otherwise, as long as there's an exception for the mother's health and life, and this did not contain that exception." Here, Obama packed two distortions into a single sentence. First, Obama is using the phrase "late term" to refer to the third trimester of pregnancy. It has long been established that the great majority of partial-birth abortions are performed in the fifth and sixth months; these are babies developed enough to be born alive (hence the term "partial birth"), but are not "late term" in the sense that the phrase is used by pro-abortion advocates. Secondly, the Supreme Court has defined the term "health" to include, in the abortion context, "all factors -- physical, emotional, psychological, familial and the woman's age -- relevant to the well-being of the patient."

-- Obama is a cosponsor of the so-called "Freedom of Choice Act" (FOCA) (S. 1173), which would nullify all state and federal laws that "interfere with" access to abortion before "viability" (as defined by the abortionist). The bill would also nullify all state and federal laws that "interfere with" access to abortion after viability if deemed to enhance "health." Because the term "health" is not qualified in the bill, no state would be allowed to exclude any "health" justification whatever for post-viability abortions, because to do so would impermissibly narrow a federally guaranteed right. In short, the FOCA would establish a federal "abortion right" broader than Roe v. Wade and, in the words of the National Organization for Women, "sweep away hundreds of anti-abortion laws [and] policies." The chief sponsors and advocacy groups backing the legislation have acknowledged that it would make partial-birth abortion legal again, nullify state parental notification laws, and require the state and federal governments to fund abortions.

-- Speaking to the Planned Parenthood Action Fund on July 17, 2007, Obama said, "The first thing I'd do as president is sign the Freedom of Choice Act. That's the first thing that I'd do."

-- In the presidential debate, Obama said, "But there surely is some common ground when both those who believe in choice and those who are opposed to abortion can come together" -- for example, by "helping single mothers if they want to choose to keep the baby." Yet, Obama advocates cutting off all federal aid to crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs). Across the nation, CPCs provide all manner of assistance to women who are experiencing crisis pregnancies, and they save the lives of many children. There is a very modest amount of federal funding going to such centers in some states. Pro-life lawmakers have pushed legislation to greatly expand such funding, but it has been blocked by lawmakers allied with the abortion lobby. Late in 2007, RHrealitycheck.org, a prominent pro-abortion advocacy website (representing the side hostile to such funding), submitted in writing the following question to the Obama campaign: "Does Sen. Obama support continuing federal funding for crisis pregnancy centers?" The Obama campaign's written response was short, but it spoke volumes: "No."

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From 'Reproductive Reality Check' (a pro-choice advocacy group) -- the following questions were answered by the Obama campaign.

How does Sen. Obama's healthcare plan specifically address sexual and reproductive health, family planning, pregnancy, HIV/AIDS, and other STDs?

Senator Obama believes that reproductive health care is basic health care. His health care plan will create a new public plan, which will provide coverage of all essential medical services. Reproductive health care is an essential service -- just like mental health care and disease management and other preventive services under his plan. [In other words, Obama will fund abortion as 'healthcare' undermining the Hyde Amendment]

Does Sen. Obama support the Hyde amendment? Under what circumstances does he believe that Medicaid should cover abortions (all pregnancies, life- or health-threatening pregnancies, pregnancies that are a result of rape or incest, extreme fetal malformation)?

Obama does not support the Hyde amendment (which banned government funding of abortion with tax payer dollars). He believes that the federal government should not use its dollars to intrude on a poor woman's decision whether to carry to term or to terminate her pregnancy and selectively withhold benefits because she seeks to exercise her right of reproductive choice in a manner the government disfavors.

Does Sen. Obama support continuing federal funding for crisis pregnancy centers? Why or why not?

No.

If elected president, would Sen. Obama overturn the Global Gag Rule or reinstate funding for UNFPA?

Yes, Senator Obama would overturn the global gag rule and reinstate funding for UNFPA (funding abortions overseas with American tax dollars).

The Pro-Life Movement On The Left

Most Americans who are pro-life don't experience it from the left side of the political spectrum. Without a doubt, it is terribly difficult to be pro-life on the political left. The current political landscape in America presents a dire problem for "pro-life progressives," even more so if they're Catholic and observe the Church's teachings. Pro-life progressivism is a growing, still voiceless, movement in the Democratic Party. There is a sense of alienation from pro-choice Democrats in regard to "women's issues" (abortion) and "life-saving scientific research" (embryonic stem cell research) as well a sense of being out of place amongst conservative Republicans whom we might agree with on a few issues, but disagree with on a host of others and perhaps fundamentally on political philosophy. This movement (I think) is really reflective of many American youth, who not only oppose abortion and euthanasia, but would like to see "life issues" extend to the 30,000 children who die globally each day from poverty and preventable disease, issues of genocide in places like Darfur, human trafficking, healthcare, foreign policy issues of war and peace, and even to environmental stewardship. Many Catholic Democrats see this as what the late Joseph Cardinal Bernardin coined as the "consistent life ethic."

While I personally hold this view, I think there are two fundamental tendencies of this approach to politics ("the consistent life ethic") that presents a profound challenge, particularly to Catholics. The first is the prevailing tendency to make all political issues morally equal, i.e. fighting abortion is morally equal to providing universal healthcare. This is a tragic intellectual mistake. In the current election season this sort of thinking hasn't gone unnoticed with the wave of pro-life Americans voting for Sen. Barack Obama despite his radical abortion stance because "there are other issues." Indeed, I'm not one to deny that there are other issues that I care deeply about, but not even a monolithic committment to all these other issues in a "pro-life" way can draw attention away from the insurmountable horror of Barack Obama's hyper-liberal abortion agenda.

The second tendency of this group (this is just modern "progressivism" in general) actually causes the first. This tendency is toward moral relativism; the absence of an objective standard of good and evil easily allows for a pro-life individual to see reforming the American healthcare system as "more pressing" than stopping the genocide of 1.2 million unborn children every year. And the tendency toward this kind of thinking is more deep-seated than we like to realize. The American political tradition (and therefore the thinking of American citizens) is deeply rooted in legal positivism, which as a philosophy sees a disconnect between law and morality. This theory fundamentally presupposes moral relativism because allegedly the only way to maintain order in a secular society is not to affirm moral truths, which in itself establishes a false sense of peace, which begins to dissipate into what Princeton law professor Robert P. George calls the "clash of orthodoxies," i.e. secular humanist-moral relativists vs. Judeo-Christian moral conservatives.

It's safe to say then the fundamental problem is our moral thinking. Consider what C.S. Lewis coined as the "abolition of man." If God created us and endowed us with our human nature, then we can be assured that our nature is in harmony with His good purposes. Given that we have a nature, certain things go against it, won't fulfill us, and this is what we Christians call sin. But what if we could alter our nature? We live in a society where we create life in laboratories, can alter genetics, and implant embryos. This invokes to my mind a looming possibility of Huxley's Brave New World. The fundamental question is: is this in accord with our nature? Are humans meant to be created in this way? Whether or not a person believes in God will profoundly shape their conclusion to this question. There is no natural law without God and the fundamental notion that follows the absence of God is that our humanity is not a creation and therefore, there is no reason why we should not create embryos in laboratories for medical research nor for mothers who want a baby as if it were a consumer product.

How is this relevant to "pro-life progressives?" This group sees why abortion is a repugnant evil, which is wonderful. This movement may be key in ending the horror of abortion in America if they are successful in reversing the Democratic Platform and align themselves with pro-life conservatives. However, the mordern notion of "progress" may inevitably be their (and everyone else's) downfall.

In a recent political debate with a friend of mine, who like me, is a pro-life Democrat, except I'm Catholic, the fundamental difference is just as I described. He is voting for Obama and I'm voting for McCain. My friend sees it this way: American healthcare reform, namely universal healthcare is a "pro-life" issue, McCain won't do anything about abortion, and healthcare will help reduce the abortion rate. Perhaps he's right. But what about the fact that Barack Obama said that his worse choice in his senatorial career was his vote to save Terry Schiavo (he doesn't oppose euthanasia) and his expression at the "Compassion Forum" that he thinks people should have the choice to end their lives and their suffering if they choose to (physician-assisted suicide)? Or what of his remarks about funding abortion through his healthcare plan undermining the Hyde Amendment?

It doesn't matter. For my friend, healthcare reform is a pivotal issue that we cannot miss this time around. "Love your neighbor," he cited as his reasoning for voting Obama. But modern, hyper-liberal, pro-sexual revolution thinking doesn't really include God. The notion of the natural law is godless (because we have to include the atheists) because we cannot affirm the existence of God and without God, we cannot recognize our neighbors, whom we're supposed to love, for what they are. To be a person, according to the natural law, is to be a proper subject of absolute regard—a "neighbor"—it is persons whom I must not kill, must not steal from, etc. What is a person? A person is a creature made in the image and likeness of God.

The problem with losing sight of God is this: we don't lose sight of killing our neighbor as wrong, more than we don't recognize our neighbor when we see them (e.g. the unborn). In contemporary secular ethics, the ruling tendency is to concede that there are such things as persons, but to define them in terms of their functions or capacities—not by what they are, the image of God, but by what they can do. Therefore "personhood" is defined in terms of consciousness, reasoning, self–motivated activity, the capacity to communicate about indefinitely many topics, and conceptual self–awareness. If you can do all those things, you're a person; if you can't, you're not. The functional approach to personhood seems plausible at first, just because—at a certain stage of development, and barring misfortune—most persons do have these functions. But to think that they are their functions blows the core right out of the moral code.

This is often used as a justification for abortion. The slogan of pro-choicers is heard loud and clear: "every child a wanted child." But, by this logic, an unwanted child is not a child…so kill it? Obviously, unborn babies are not capable of reasoning, complex communication, and so on. If they cannot perform these functions, then by definition they aren't persons, and if they aren't persons, they have no inherent right to life. The real question is a philosophical one and it's undoubtedly moral. One might say, "surely a collection of tiny cells don't constitute personhood in such a way that trumps a woman's right to personal autonomy."

That's the mindset. But it cannot end with abortion. If unborn babies may be killed because they lack these functions, then a great many other individuals may also be killed for the same reasons—for example the asleep, unconscious, demented, addicted, infants, toddlers, someone in a coma on life-support (euthanasia), not to mention sundry other cases, such as deaf–mutes who have not been taught sign language. In such language, none of these are persons; in theological language, this is clear denial of the human person coming from God.

The cure for such blindness is not to tinker with the list of functions by which we define persons, but to stop confusing what persons are with what they can typically do. Functional definitions are appropriate for things which have no inherent nature, things whose identity is dependent on our own purposes and interests.

If I am a person then I am by nature a rights–bearer, by nature a proper subject of absolute regard—not because of what I can do, but because of what I am. Of course this presupposes that I have a nature, a "what–I–am," which is distinct from my present condition or stage of development, distinct from my abilities in that condition or stage of development, and distinct from how this condition, stage of development, or set of abilities might happen to be valued by other people. In short, a person is by nature someone whom it is wrong to view merely as a means. If you regard me as a person only because I am able to exercise certain capacities that interest you, then you are saying that I am not a person. And so the functional definition of personhood does not even rise to the dignity of being mistaken, it is just irrational and incoherent. With each different criterion of personhood, a different set of beings is welcomed through the gates of others' regard. This is the same rule of all oppression. Those who supported slavery were free and those who support abortion are born. Personhood is defined at our convenience.

It is clear then that moral principles are more important than policies. Moral principles gives us the capacity to priortize our political agendas accordingly and with a sense of how policies should be shaped, i.e. why abortion is a paramount issue. Much more can be said of this, but given the broad set of political issues, the pro-life movement (this is especially true of Catholics) has constantly faced a fundamental question often heatedly debated that I'm not at liberty to answer authoratatively. I have my convictions about if or when a pro-life Catholic could ever (if possible) vote for a pro-choice candidate, but I believe people of good will may disagree with me and I place no judgment on them. Honest disagreement can only lead to a healthy debate.

But we cannot avoid the question that often divides us: Can someone who is pro-life and Catholic vote for candidates who are not only pro-choice, but who promote policies such as universal healthcare that is accompanied by an unquestionably flawed approach to bioethics, which inevitably creates more problems? That is, can we argue "proportionate reasons" when the principles of one side is based on a terribly flawed view of the human person and society? It is striking to me that many pro-life Americans, even Catholics, go to great lengths to defend or qualify a pro-choice candidate's position, or even worse make them out to be more "pro-life" than the person who opposes abortion (Doug Kmiec).

I understand their argument and in all truthfulness, I don't disagree with them entirely, but I do think it gets so casual that one may vote consistently for pro-choice candidates without discerning the issue of abortion. Moreover, I don't think any of these same people would vote for a racist candidate no matter what that candidate said or how good, say, their economic plans are. No one would vote for Hitler because he supported universal healthcare (he did; Germany was the first nation in the world to have it) despite the fact he supported the genocide of 6 million Jews as well as nearly 6 million others who died along side them. Genocide would disqualify him from receiving our votes, period.

Yet when a candidate supports the systematic, public funded genocide of 1.2 million unborn children in America as well as subsidizing abortions overseas (e.g. not giving foreign aid unless they provided abortion facilities as was done under the Clinton administration) and below the border in Mexico, contributing to the over 45 million abortions that occur within 365 days worldwide, there are suddenly "other issues." Sometimes it is argued that overturning Roe v. Wade will not do anything, so we should leave abortion legal. Should we have left slavery legal and only sought to reduce the number of slaves? Such argument is incoherent. It's even argued that social programs will lead to less abortions. I think this is true to an extent, but on some level we (all) should agree that citing evidence from Europe is not convincing because Europeans are contracepting themselves to death and don't have nearly as many children to be carried by the safety net of social programs, hence, less abortions.

I won't objectively say a pro-life American, Catholic or otherwise, cannot (ever) vote for pro-choice candidates. Should they? That's another question and I think good Catholics may come down on both sides. Pro-life progressives, particularly Catholics ones, need to stop accomodating pro-choice candidates. Why should the Democratic Party feel any need to change its position on abortion, if they realize they will receive our uncritical support anyway, even while we disagree?

Abortion and the Healthcare System

The debate over abortion and healthcare has become heated after a White House proposal redefining abortion sparks debate over religious freedom and patients' rights.

In continuing coverage from a previous edition of Health and Life Sciences Law Daily, The Washington Post (7/31, A1, Stein) reports in a front-page story, "A Bush administration proposal aimed at protecting healthcare workers who object to abortion and to birth-control methods...has escalated a bitter debate over the balance between religious freedom and patients' rights." The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is considering a draft of the proposal "that would deny federal funding to any...entity that does not accommodate employees who want to opt out of participating in care that runs counter to their personal convictions."

Proponents of the regulation "are welcoming the initiative as necessary to safeguard...health workers." But, opponents of the proposal "say the regulation would create overwhelming obstacles for women seeking abortions and birth control." The regulation's critics also expressed concern over the way the draft defines abortion, "as anything that affects a fertilized egg," and the possibility that it "could raise questions about a broad spectrum of scientific research and care."

The Wall Street Journal (7/31, A11, Simon) adds that the proposal's broad abortion definition "treats most birth-control pills and intrauterine devices as abortion because they can work by preventing fertilized eggs from implanting in the uterus. The regulation considers that destroying 'the life of a human being.'" But many medical groups contend that anything that disrupts egg fertilization should be deemed as contraception, not abortion. "The draft regulation...would have no immediate effect on the legality of the pill or the IUD if implemented because abortion is legal." Opponents fear, however, that it "would undercut dozens of state laws designed to promote easy access to these methods of birth control, used by more than 12 million women a year."

In addition, the "proposed federal rule change to redefine pregnancy and abortion would override" some state laws "requiring all hospitals to offer rape victims emergency contraception," Minnesota's Star Tribune (7/30, Marcotty) added. "The rule is still being debated within [HHS], and medical organizations, family planning groups, and women's advocates across the country have been up in arms about it." In Minnesota, "women's health advocates and legislators held a news conference at the State Capitol urging lawmakers to resist attempts to make the proposed rule a reality."