sanctity of life

Read below and you’ll see one reason why we need a unified Orthodox Church in America. Wesley J. Smith, human rights activist and occasional contributor to AOI Observer, warns about a bill winding through congress that will surreptitiously fund human cloning. We could have something to say about that.

A friend of mine, an Orthodox priest who studied under Leon J. Kass, one of the great public thinkers in America today (see: Smith on Kass), was asked by Dr. Kass when the Orthodox are going to make their contribution. The Orthodox, he said, have the most developed anthropology of any religious tradition in the world.

We’re Americans. The debates will be raucous — it’s the American way, but they will substantive, fruitful, and when they are done something better will emerge from it — that’s the great promise of America and it is still fulfilled for those who understand freedom and are willing to take responsibility for it. And when unity comes (it can and it will), the important words will ring with more clarity — especially on the great questions of human value and purpose.

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Stealth Legislation to Federally Fund Human Cloning

The Center for Bioethics and Culture Network

By Wesley J. Smith

Wesley J. Smith

Embryonic stem cells aren’t much in the news these days. President Bush’s embryonic stem cell funding restrictions are history and the invention of induced pluripotent stem cells may allow scientists to obtain the benefits of embryonic stem cells without destroying embryos.

But that doesn’t mean the struggle over our biotechnological future is over. To the contrary, the current relative quiet is merely a pregnant pause before the real storm descends that will decide—in the CBC’s pithy phrase—whether we will allow doctors and scientists to “take, make, and fake” human life.

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This is the next stage in the great abortion debates.

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Mark A. Theissen Washington Post

Can an unborn child feel pain?

That question will dominate the abortion debate in America for the next several years thanks to Gov. Dave Heineman of Nebraska. Last week, Heineman signed the Pain Capable Unborn Child Protection Act into law, banning abortions in Nebraska at and after 20 weeks based on growing scientific evidence that an unborn child at that age can feel pain.
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When our hierarchs proclaim that clergy have no place in the bedroom (a facile and sophomoric distinction drawn from the tawdriest corners of pro-abortion polemics) because they have no courage and refuse to uphold the moral tradition regarding abortion, what do they say when confronted with Gianna Jessen? Bravo Gianna!

Gianna Jessen from LMF CAM on Vimeo.