[BobbyB]

THE ANTI-CHOICE CROWD IS PUSHING TO GIVE EMBRYOS THE RIGHTS OF A PERSON



THIS MOVE IN SIX STATES, IN FACT, IS AN ATTEMPT TO INFLUENCE THE 2008 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION



THIS NATION HAS TOO MANY “ONE ISSUE VOTERS” WHO HAVE SCREWED UP THE ELECTIONS FOR THE LAST EIGHT YEARS



This is absurd! Do these people who are so obsessed with the problem of abortion that they cannot see beyond the end of their noses at the other more urgent problems facing us in the hour of crisis

Instead of allowing the issues such as the war in Iraq, the deficit which is drowning the economy in red ink, the environment which, indeed, is an “inconvenient truth,” that is killing our home on earth bit by bit, the price of gas, the falling real estate market which is the only real asset most American’s own, as well as corruption, greed and the entire Republican administration’s failure to unite the country.

I am livid with this group of anti-choice citizens who are persistently attempting to force the rest of us to accept and live by their faith. This is nothing more than Nazi tactics as the stem cell patrols want to put doctors who perform abortion in jail, women who have abortions imprisoned, without taking into account the reason for the medical procedure.

I have said for years that nobody is pro-abortion. Women have abortions for medical or psychological reasons and those reasons are personal and private.

The very fact that these zealots think they and they alone knows what the truth is abhorrent to me and in direction contradiction with the teachings of Jesus.

When teaching the young man about prayer, Jesus took him to the temple and reminded him that he should not pray in public like the scribes and Pharisees, but he should go into a closet and, strictly alone, speak to God person to person.

Do not advertise your faith, Jesus seemed to be saying. Don’t force it onto others. Religion is between a man and his God.

And now comes forth a drove of zealots in Colorado, Georgia, Montana, Oregon, Mississippi and Michigan who want to gather enough signatures on a petition that will place on the ballot for the next presidential election a proposition that will legally make an embryo a person.

My God, what a bunch of fools? You have to be an extremist to want to force your faith on to everyone in your state, your nation, your world.

I have no patients with these fanatics who are in a few instances prepared to kill physicians for performing abortions. They take the word of God into their own hands.

I read Michael Kinsley’s column on this subject in Time Magazine the week of December 10, 2007. You should read it too. Michael suffers from Parkinson’s. There is a strong possibility that stem cell research will one day cure his dreadful disease.

However, in the interim, during Bush’s veto of the federal government’s funding of stem cell research has not only severely reduced the amount of research done on stem cell research, but dramatically reduced the amount of stem cell exploration conducted and paid for by private enterprise. In other words, less progress has been made, fewer people have been cured of their ailments and more people are dying in despair and hopelessness.

How these fanatics who oppose this potent and expectant new research including the president have the audacity to call themselves Christians or arable to put their heads down on their pillows at night with a clear conscience is beyond on my imagination.

Kinsley acknowledges that he is ecstatic about the latest news in the stem-cell research coming out of Japan and Wisconsin which is turning ordinary human-skin cells into something like “pluripotent stem cells.”

But he makes some very important points: the embryo is a glob of human protoplasm with absolutely no capacity to survive outside the shield of the womb. It does not deserve the right to be called a person until it is able to function independently, outside the womb and solely on its own. Scientists who have achieved success by turning ordinary human-skin into a new method of generating “pluripotent” stem cells do not know yet if the new method will work in reality or work so well. Therefore, it is the opinion of the larger-scientific community that embryonic research should be pursued aggressively. We need to understand that science is just on the brink of understanding what stem cells can do and how successfully they can be employed as an effective cure for the broader world of disease and orthopedic maladies.

The anti-choice crowd’s move in these six states and others they are attempting to convince to join them in their referendum is one of the most absurd moves they have made, and that is saying a lot.

The moral issue surrounds the amount of good vs. the degree of harm that is inflicted upon a glob of human protoplasm vs. the good that could be accomplished by employing embryos that will ultimately end up in a biological garbage dispenser and destroyed.

There are million of people around the world who could benefit from stem cell research. For these right-wing Catholics, Fundamentalists and Pentecostal Christians who oppose stem cell research and in doing so prolong the suffering and ultimate death of these people, have rightly doomed themselves to eternal suffering for their failure to respond to urgent needs of those who are in desperate need for medical assistance from the unique circumstances that stem cell research produces.

When the truth finally emerges, we will find out that these political shysters are much more interested in electing Republican right-wingers to office than they are in preventing medical research from using stem cells for doing the kind of research that will ultimately provide us with cures for some of the most deleterious diseases in the world.

My mother died four years ago from the dreaded Alzheimer’s. For five years I was her primary care giver and watched helplessly as this beautiful and delightful woman became nothing more than an incapacitated image of her former self. Those who have consistently prevented research from using stem cells as part of their virulent attempt to conquer Alzheimer’s have been the object of my disdain for their selfish and unchristian efforts to prevent the use of stem cells that are about to be destroyed to be used in research for the cure of cancer and hundreds of other dreadful diseases.

I have suffered from diabetes for twenty years. Stem cell research may possibly find the cure for this terribly imposing malady. That a cure for this disease is being marred by a group of people who call themselves Christians when, in fact, they are a part of the same group of Pharisees that Jesus blatantly and overtly called hypocrites.

I think of the millions of people who will suffer and more importantly, die because of the wrong headedness of George Bush and his Evangelicals brethren.

And now to make things worse, members of this cult are attempting to go to greater extremes to brand an embryo a person. This issue should never be put to a vote in a land where freedom of religion and separating of church and state are so deeply ingrained in our political history. Abortion and stem cell research is a matter of faith. The vast majority of Americans understand this very vital point in our constitution.

If the Catholics, Fundamentalists, right-wing Protestants and Pentecostals want to bring on a revolution in this country they are certainly pursuing the right course. I for one will not allow any church to dictate to me and mine what we can and cannot do in the field of faith and medicine.

I saw in today’s (December 4, 2007) Chicago Tribune a picture of Colorado activist, Kristi Burton. With a phony smile her less than attractive face, she insists that “Embryos are human beings, and they deserve equal rights under the law.”

What a fool! What a naïve provocateur. She is a 20 year old law school student who has neither the experience nor the moral under girding to know what is truth and what is not.

I believe, after fifty years of study and meditation that life begins only when the fetus is viable. In other words, when the fetus can survive independent of the mother, is it anything but an embryo. When it is absolutely dependent upon its mother for life, it is nothing more than an extenuating circumstance.

That is so clear to me that when some knuckle head starts talking about defining embryos as persons, I shake my head in total disbelieve.

It is just another ploy to prevent researchers from proceeding with their work to solve some of the world’s most devastating diseases and save millions of the world’s people. How any Christians can entertain an idea contrary to the productive utilization of stem cells about to be discarded is immoral, unconscionably, crass and incurably callous.

Anyone who is even considering voting for this proposal should go to a nursing home and visit with people tormented by Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s, talk to people with diabetes who have lost a leg or their sight, talk to doctors who have not overdosed on their religion (either Catholic or Fundamentalist) and your conscience will be resuscitated

Visit with someone who is dying from Lou Gehrig Disease, Multiple Sclerosis, in the last stages of cancer or dozens of other crippling or killing diseases and you will comprehend what it means when the New Testament says so clearly and so compassionately, “When you have done it unto the least of these my brethren, you have done it unto me.”


THE LIBERAL PERSPECTIVE/Joe Sheridan's Radio Weblog
http://blogs.salon.com/0004320/2007/12/09.html#a281