Progressives work at redefining 'prolife'

Here’s the setup: the headline says, “Some Pro-Lifers Like New NIH Guidelines on Embryos.” [Adelle M. Banks, Religion News Service, 4-20-09; NIH - National Institutes of Health]

The pro-lifer reading that is drawn up short. What! Could it be true? Is it possible the guidelines on using human embryos for research aren’t quite so foul as we thought? Is there some question about their ethical use among those who understand the issues?

The article names the “pro-lifers” who “like the new NIH guidelines on embryos” – which, if you came late to this discussion are human embryos that were produced in vitro, that is, outside the mother’s body (already an ethical problem) and are “no longer needed” (which is quite a monstrous way to be thinking about other people). Such human embryos are either “discarded” (can we get any more distant from the crime?) or “kept in a type of frozen limbo.” (Just can’t get away from the uncomfortable theological aspect of this discussion, can we?) The debate has been whether researchers can use these little bodies for experimentation since, obviously, they’re just going to be tossed anyway. Supposedly, the new guidelines that now permit this research are particularly sensitive to the ethical dimension of human experimentation and “would not allow federal funds to be used to create embryos solely for research purposes.”

We’ll save discussion about this barbaric, inhuman wickedness for another time. For the moment, we’re simply examining media manipulation of public opinion. Who are these “pro-lifers” who like the NIH guidelines?

One is Rev. Joel Hunter, pastor of an Orlando-area megachurch and a member of the White House's Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships – and the voice behind several American Values Network ads, targeting conservative Christians with progressive political messages. Rev. Hunter feels the guidelines “have hit the right balance by limiting funding to particular slated-to-be-destroyed IVF cells…” He also thinks rescinding the Mexico City policy and using federal funds for foreign family planning programs, including abortion, “has a pro-life side to it.” Not your usual, run-of-the-mill pro-lifer.

Rev. Samuel Rodriguez, president of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, also happens to be a member of the White House's Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. He is optimistic about the Democrat plan to “reduce abortions” that thinks the NIH regulations “embody caution and care that respect pro-life values.”

Stephen Schneck, director of Catholic University’s Life Cycle Institute called the guidelines “a major step toward the common ground most Americans are now demanding.” Schneck is on the board of directors for Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good and supported the choice of pro-abortion Kathleen Sebelius as the next Secretary of Health and Human Services.

In the interest of presenting something of the other side, we learn that “other” pro-lifers, such as Family Research Council President Tony Perkins, are less sanguine. Perkins says, “The research that President Obama supports is not sound science and will destroy human life.”


Not interviewed were representatives from any major pro-life organization – such as Physicians for Life, which calls Embryonic Stem Cell research “unethical.” “Embryonic Stem Cell Research involves the production of human embryos in the laboratory, and then their destruction to acquire the stem cells from them. Nazi War Crimes included ‘medical research’ on living human beings and is now considered horrific.”


The Center for Bioethics and Human Dignity also calls Embryonic Stem Cell research “unethical.” “If anything is to be gained from the cruel atrocities committed against human beings in the last century and a half, it is the lesson that the utilitarian devaluation of one group of human beings for the alleged benefit of others is a price we simply cannot afford to pay.”

The American Life League is blunter: “These guidelines sanction murder.”

Like it or not, that’s the pro-life position.

Stephanie Block edits the New Mexico-based Los Pequenos newspaper and is a member of the Catholic Media Coalition.