Culture of Life II

As a perfect bookend to Bush's threat to veto any stem cell bill sent to him, the Supreme Court last week upheld a law banning partial birth abortions. On the surface, this seems like an arguably reasonable move. After all, partial birth abortions are described by the right-to-life lobby as brutal - I won't give a description, but you can look it up if you are interested. And the court didn't rule on a woman's right to an abortion, just the processes used. But if you dig a little deeper, it starts to look look like this was a terrible decision, to the extent that I can't understand how any of the justices could have voted to support it based on the facts.

The best data I can find is that there are fewer than 3000 partial birth abortions in the U.S. every year. So at most this law would prevent 3000 abortions. But it won't. In most of those cases partial birth abortion is not the only option, but rather the option the doctor has determined is the best one for the mother. So now doctors are left with fewer options for performing safe abortions on women who want them. There may be some small number of abortions that are not performed, but we are in the realm of rounding error. The total number of abortions will stay about the same, so upholding this law essentially did nothing to help save unborn fetuses.

The majority opinion mentioned that some women who have the procedure done may later regret it. That was one of their arguments for upholding the law - that someone may later regret their choice. Thank you for looking out for all the women too stupid, confused, or emotional to make their own, best decisions. You know, some people move their kids to an area where the schools aren't very good, and then later regret it. Perhaps if some city passed a law prohibiting parents from moving the court would uphold that law as well. Some people smoke, and then later regret having done so. Maybe the court will uphold a ban on cigarette sales.

And then there's the issues of partial birth abortions being so brutal. But are they really any more brutal than other abortion procedures? And why does it matter? The fetus is removed and destroyed. Regardless of the procedure, the outcome is the same. Why would a fetus care how it is removed? You know who does care? The doctor performing the procedure, who now can't use his best judgment to perform the task.

So the ban doesn't really lower the number of abortions being performed, it doesn't save any fetuses, it's not better for the women having the procedure performed, it's certainly not better for the doctors. So who exactly does this law benefit, and why would the court choose to uphold it? I can only reach the same conclusion I did in my previous post: this isn't about saving the lives of unborn children. It's all about politics, and controlling the actions of pregnant women, and apparently their doctors. There's no other logic behind spending time and money going to the Supreme Court rather than dealing with 400,000 embryos, or working on birth control education, or helping adoption agencies, all of which would save lives and help ensure a quality of life. This isn't about saving babies or helping people.

Culture of Life

Bush is continuing his threats to veto another stem cell bill that was passed by the Senate earlier this week. He's calling for a culture of life. That sounds nice. You know what else would be nice? A culture of rationality, sanity, a willingness to help stop suffering, and avoiding pointless pandering to special interest groups. Wouldn't that be nice too?

Let's take a look at what we know and don't know: The current bill passed by the Senate deals with the use of frozen human embryos for stem cell research. Nobody knows how many frozen embryos exist in this country, but in 2003 the Rand Corporation estimated the number at 400,000. These embryos are created at fertility clinics for people who want to be artificially inseminated. Because of the risk and complexity of the procedure, many more embryos are created than can actually be implanted, so there is always an excess. All these embryos are frozen, and maintaining them in this frozen state costs money. The Weill-Cornell clinic in New York has stated that 54% of their patients ask that excess embryos be destroyed. They no longer have a use for them, don't want them donated to research, don't wnt them implanted in other women, and they don't want to pay to store them indefinitely. 43% donate them to basic science unrelated to stem cells, and 3% offer them to other infertile couples. Let's assume these numbers extrapolate to the rest of the country. (If anyone has better data, I'll be happy to use it.) That means that 1/2 of these embryos are being thrown away, and only 3% of them are will potentially become viable fetuses.

That means that 97% of these embryos have no chance to become living, breathing, human beings. So Bush, and others opposed to human stem cell lines, appear to be saying that because they value the "culture of life" so much, they'd rather see these embryos end up in the trash than have them cure disease or reduce human suffering. Culture of waste, culture of cruelty, culture of close-mindedness, or culture of disease would all seem to be more apt descriptions.

Bush would rather pander to the position of his base, the religious right, than do what's best for people suffering from terrible diseases. If embryos are in fact little human lives, how is it not far more wasteful to simply discard them than to use them to save other lives? And if the stem cells that could be generated from those embryos can save lives, aren't we also sentencing those with illnesses that won't be cured to shorter lives, and more pain and suffering? Let me ask those who agree with Bush - what is the better use of a an embryo that is destined for the trash can? What would Jesus do? What should Bush do?

And speaking of being pro-life, it's always struck me as odd that pro-life protesters spend all their time picketing family planning clinics who perform abortions but not fertility clinics producing hundreds of thousands of embryos that will be destroyed. If a fertilized embryo really has the same rights as a fetus or a baby, as pro-lifers contend, these discarded embryos represent a huge loss of human life. So why are they not appealing to congress to shut down fertility clinics? Why no demands for federal funding to keep the embryos frozen indefinitely? Why is nobody insisting that the owners/parents of these embryos shouldn't have the right to determine their fate? If they can't toss aside born children, why are they allowed to create excess embryos knowing most of them will be flushed away in the hopes of creating one child? Why aren't pro-life activists focusing their efforts on all the poor frozen embryos?

The reason, I believe, is that the pro-life movement really isn't about saving the lives of unborn children. It's about controlling people's bodies, and determining who has the right to terminate a pregnancy - the mother or the government. It's also about getting other people to think with a similar mindset to theirs. They aren't concerned about parents deciding to throw away a few dozen embryos. But they are very concerned about someone deciding to remove a single embryo from her body.

signed on

Okay, it's me, Dad. I'm now signed on.

Torture Me

I was recently I was engaged in a discussion about the war in Iraq and the question about the U.S. torturing prisoners came up. My take is that torture should be clearly defined by the U.S., and outlawed. Bush has been unwilling to do either of these, and won't even state that the U.S. won't torture as a matter of policy. This is bad for two reasons: firstly, it makes the U.S. no better than other countries that torture people. We're supposed to have the moral high ground. We're supposed to be the good guys. We're the ones who should be setting the standard for how POWs are treated. If we can't treat other POWs well, how should we expect others to treat ours?

The second, and more important reason, I want to see an anti-torture policy is that not having one puts U.S. soldiers at risk. (I'm hoping that our Sr. military officer family member will eventually weigh in on this.) I'm not going to suggest that torture of American POWs will end when we have a an anti-torture policy. But our enemies may be less inclined to torture as freely and willingly an enemy who is known to treat their own POWs compassionately and fairly. It also fans the flames of anti-U.S. hatred, which makes it easier for terrorists to recruit more terrorists. The more terrorists there are, the more U.S. troops are going to get killed. So if you connect the dots, I think Bush is causing harm to U.S. troops by not agreeing to a torture ban. John McCain said that we need to have clear interrogation guidelines, and that by not doing so we are harming, rather than helping, the war on terror, and I agree with him.

"But wait," you say. "Bush signed a bill last year that included the McCain anti-torture language." Yes, he did. But he also didn't. McCain attached language to an appropriations bill that tried to define what torture is, what interrogation
practices the U.S. would use, and made breaking these rules a crime. While McCain was trying to win support for his torture ban, Bush had threatened to veto any legislation that would restrict what interrogation techniques the U.S. could use. And Cheney worked to get the Senate to drop their support for McCain's language. But in the end McCain prevailed and the bill passed with 90 votes in the Senate.

After signing the bill, Bush issued a signing statement that effectively granted him the right to set aside the McCain provisions whenever he wants to. So Bush signed a bill that outlawed torture, but then immediately issued a signing statement saying that he could repeal that law and torture people on an as-needed basis.

The McCain language referenced the Army Field Manual interrogation practices. After Bush signed the bill, the Army issued a new field manual with some of these techniques blacked out as classified information. Did they change the content, or just hide some of it? Bush was clearly not interested in defining torture or in stating that it was not something the U.S. would engage in, and U.S. troops are going to suffer more at the hands of our enemies because of it.

Welcome...

...to the Diverse Family Blog, named so because of our diverse opinions and backgrounds, and because I got to do the naming. The idea is that each of us will be able to post on whatever topics we want. Others (including non-family members) can comment on posts. Once we get settled in I'll get a post or two up to get some discussion rolling, or one of you can do so.

I would like to suggest a few simple ground rules to help keep things civil:

• Please don't use personal attacks, unless absolutely necessary or deserved.
• Keep the profanity to a minimum. You never know who will be reading this, and we don't want to appear as profane as some of you actually are.
• Let's try to be as civil as possible. Remember that we all need to see each other occasionally, and it would be nice to not launch into these discussions/arguments at our next sighting.
• Keep in mind that Andy is usually correct about most things. And when he's not usually correct, he's probably still right. You could save a lot of effort by simply agreeing with him (me) up front.
• Please be respectful of each other's privacy don't "out" them in terms of their full names, work locations, or any other personal details.
  

So there you have it. Happy posting.