Posted on 06/01/2003 1:16:01 PM PDT by GirlyGirl2003
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| The War Over Fetal Rights
It was nearly Valentine's Day, 1992, when Tracy Marciniak's estranged husband, Glenndale Black, showed up at her Wisconsin apartment. A 28-year-old mother of two, Marciniak was expecting another baby in just five days. But the night was hardly romantic. Within hours, the two argued and Black punched her in the stomach. "IT FELT LIKE IT had gone all the way through me," says Marciniak, now 39. The baby, whom she'd already named Zachariah, had seemed fine on a prenatal visit just the day before, she says. But when she arrived at the hospital that night, doctors couldn't find his heartbeat. Marciniak pulled through, but the baby did not. Because Zachariah was not considered a "born person," prosecutors could not charge Black with homicide. They attempted to try him under an old state law banning illegal abortion, but Black's lawyer argued that the baby would have been stillborn anyway. In the end, a jury convicted Black of reckless injury and sentenced him to 12 years in prison. Though Marciniak has long supported abortion rights, she became furious when she discovered that the law didn't protect her unborn son--and that women's groups wouldn't back her quest for a state law punishing his killer. Now she is allied with the National Right to Life, appearing in an ad for the federal Unborn Victims of Violence Act. "There were two victims," Marciniak says. "He got away with murder." See the rest of the article here: Click |
Dr. Jamie Grifo, a reproductive endocrinologist at New York University who has helped pioneer new infertility techniques such as pre-implantation genetic diagnosis, says the worry over working with embryos has already had a chilling effect. “There are no projects that we’re doing right now because we’re afraid of the politics,” he says angrily. “We’re making people parents who wouldn’t be otherwise. What’s the problem here?”
Indeed, what IS the problem with commoditizing and screening embryos, even before they're implanted into a woman's body for continued life support? Dr. Grifo has already reached the utilitarian conclusion that embryos are not human INDIVIDUALS ... and society is expected to endorse that assumption because Dr. Grifo is an IVF specialist "... making people parent's who wouldn't be otherwise." The dehumanization of the embryo (at that definition will be strictly applied right to the end of the first two months following conception?) has been accepted by society and the entire of IVF is now endorsed in the void of embryological truth ignored.
Is the embryo the first age of a human lifetime begun at conception? ... If the embryo is discarded, will the individual human life of the ORGANISM called embryo, that particular embryo, continue? ... Is the embryo an ORGANISM, or merely a collection of complex pluripotent cells? ... If the embryo is not an ORGANISM, at what stage in the continuum of a particular lifetime begun at conception will that life be defined as an ORGANISM?
The unmitigated truth is, the human embryo IS an ORGANISM, a unique individual human lifetime already running. The embryo, if allowed to continue alive is already a living human ORGANISM. A collection of cells, if an embryo, is an ORGANISM. A collection of cancerous cells will never be an ORGANISM. A gestating ORGANISM builds its own body, its own organs, and continuously struggles to survive as an ORGANISM replicating an already alive member of the species. [Yes, replicating, just as your body will do continuously throughout the vast majority of your lifetime! We are constantly building and re-building our bodies, and the process starts with first cell division following conception, when you were at the age of embryo, then fetus, then neonate, the toddler, etc., as a lifetime of an individual HUMAN ORGANISM.]
Being a human being has many ages, many developmental phases. Embryo is one of those. If folks want to use these individual lives for pregnancies, therapies, research, storage, adoption, or garbage, at least know that the lies dehumanizing the embryos as something less than a HUMAN ORGANISM are just that, lies, lies meant to defend the utilitarian exploitation of human individuals smaller and younger than those doing the manipulations. And men like Dr. Grifo have adopted their brand of alternate truth (a lie by any other name) as it befits their chosen reality, regardless of the greater reality that may be involved.
There are no projects that we’re doing right now because we’re afraid of the politics,” he (Dr. Grifo) says angrily. Yes, I don't wonder that he's angry, for the ethics and morality of IVF and embryo manipulation is suddenly resurfacing, to call into question his brand of exploiting individual human lives.
One last point: watch for the term 'therapeutic cloning' to disappear from the arguments for cloning, to be replaced by the even more ambiguous term 'research cloning', with the full complement of obfuscatory claims and half truths posing that form of cloning as nothing like 'reproductive cloning'. The parsing, dissembling, and deceit (via partial truth) will grow to astonishing proportions in the weeks to come. Too much money is at stake if the cloning programs are banned by law. Too many research programs already doing cloning will have to stop and wait upon the other scientists seeking the secrets of genetic engineering and utilization of a person's own stem cells, without conceiving and killing for harvest the youngest aged individual human ORGANISMS.
IMO-If people can look at these babies with this new technology and read the scientific facts about PEOPLE before birth and continue the abortion holocaust, then they are probably starting their own personal hell right here on earth.
My primary question was, "Is the alive human embryo a human ORGANISM?" Then, "If it is not deemed an ORGANISM, when in the lifetime continuum of the 'thing' would the guests define the alive thing' an individual human ORGANISM?" I also asked, "Is it correct to define organs as the same as an organism?" And I asked, "Which age along the continuum of an individual lifetime is the starting point: embryo, fetus, neonate, toddler, pubescent. ... Which one is the defining age when the ORGANISM begun at conception shall be deemed worthy of protection as a fellow individual human rather than a source for harvesting body parts?"
I have participated in debates such as the above mentioned coming to MS NBC (on local forums), and every one not in a church setting has been tilted to either defend the specious preconceived notions of 'choice' or foster ambiguity regarding the unborn. I don't expect this to any different. If it is, I'll write to Shapiro and thank him, personally!
You are right; it is virtually impossible to override the utilitarian ethic as things are. That is primarily because the pro-life movement has for 30 years been fighting a loosing political battle while ignoring the unstoppable power of thoroughly educating tens of millions of Christian school students on the sanctity of life.
I KNEW that that was indeed the fact after the first Clinton veto on Partial Birth Abortion/Murder Ban. The vast majority of people went back to business as usual, aware of what was/is going on. That’s when I started to get involved and quickly realized that we could not end this holocaust without a new generation of Christians fully educated on the sanctity of life. THE MISSING KEY OF THE PRO-LIFE MOVEMENT
Your FBI file must be a foot thick!
Just teasing!
GirlyGirl
Yes, and think about all the effort that goes into preserving the nests of Bald Eagles and the federal felony that will be slapped on anyone who even touches such a nest. But, the same federal government will help you destroy your unborn child through financial assitance.
GirlyGirl
You can't have it both ways sweetie. Glad she is on our side now.
Is it a "Fetus", or a developing child? The above picture answers that question easily, unless you're twisted.
Open the vaccum jar and pull out the filter bag. Lay its contents on the table for all to see......arms, legs, a headless body, and a small face. This is the evil of abortion that few ever get to see, but its time to change that fact.
GirlyGirl
What most scientists mean by the word "cloning" is the isolation of a single gene from an organism with its subsequent insertion into a piece of carrier DNA for use in research. Cloning as such has been going on since the 1970s, and is a common technique. That other kind of cloning, although newsworthy, is done very rarely in real life.
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