Adult SCR - 80+++. ESCR - 000

US News &World Report just reported yet another potential success using adult-donated stem cells in research.  Adult stem cells have been induced with antigens to multiply and become neural-like cells, which researchers confirmed resemble mature brain cells.

From the story,

"The cells proliferated, but also started becoming long and thin and attaching to the bottom of the dish," which is reminiscent of behavior of neural cells, Jia Xie, a research associate on Lerner's team, said in a released statement. Further tests confirmed that they were neural progenitor cells, which are very similar to mature brain cells.

Good news on the ethical front.  As more and more successes are seen on the side of ASCR, the need and desire for ESCR becomes fainter and more irrelevant.  Of course, the scientific cannibalism of fetuses for their parts has never been ethically acceptable for those of us with problems with murder or that sort of thing.  With each ASCR success, perhaps scientists and politicians will decide not to give any more public funding to the legacy of Dr. Moreau.  But I'm not holding my breath yet.

Back to the "Super" 70s with Kermit Gosnell

Pro-Life Fridays Radio Monologue - April 19, 2013
Part 2

Onto other news on life and death, Jill Stanek wrote a superb bit of history on the now infamous Kermit Gosnell earlier this week. If you haven't heard of Gosnell, I don't entirely blame you. It's not your fault if all you listen to is ABC, NBC, CBS, MSNBC, or CNN. But, it is your fault if you don't listen to Pro-Life Fridays Radio, because we have been talking about the baby neck-snipping abortionist from Philedelphia since 2012. Well, little do people know that Kermit Gosnell has been killing babies and harming women for longer than the two decades that have been in focus of late. In 1972, before Roe v. Wade, Gosnell participated in a "study," along with a "doctor" by the name of Harvey Karman, sponsored by Planned Parenthood, in which Karman tried to teach a group of doctors in Bangladesh how to perform abortions. Later that year, Karman and Gosnell would work together again, this time inside Gosnell's abortion mill in Philedelphia. 15 young, minority women of limited financial means (poor, black women) were bussed from Chicago to Philly to undergo essentially the same experiment. What was it? Harvey Karman used these women to test his newfangled, wave-of-the-future, nearly hands-free abortion device he invented and cleverly named the "super coil." What's that, you ask? Former Gosnell employee Randy Hutchins testified for the Grand Jury Report on Gosnell, and the report says,


(I'll read the second paragraph before the first)

The problem was that they never tested it. They didn’t test it on any animals. They never did any – any – any other human trials. This was not something that was sanctioned by the FDA. This was just something that he decided – he and this guy decided they were going to use on these women."

(and now the first)

"[T]here was a device that he and a psychologist [Karman] were working on that was supposed to be plastic – basically plastic razors that were formed into a ball. All right. They were coated into a gel, so that they would remain closed. These would be inserted into the woman’s uterus. And after several hours of body temperature, it would then – the gel would melt and these 97 things would spring open, supposedly cutting up the fetus, and the fetus would be expelled.

I want everyone to just take a moment to think about what could possibly happen when 97 spring-loaded razor blades are introduced into a pregnant woman's uterus. I'm tempted to give you more than a moment, because apparently it didn't occur to Gosnell or Karman that anything, I dunno, BLOODY could happen, and since they're the doctors, they should know better, right?

Oh wait, did I mention that I put "doctor" in air quotes? I did. Dr. Karman did not have a medical license. In fact, he didn't even go to medical school. In fact in the 1950s, he was considered a convicted felon, having spent time in prison for killing a woman while giving her an abortion in a California hotel room using a nutcracker...until Gov. Jerry Brown pardoned dear Harvey. Harvey Karman simply attached the letters Ph.D to his name, somehow I assume associated with a diploma he obtained from a Swiss degree mill.

But back to our man Gosnell, who Karman enlisted to insert these brilliant super coils into. He was never charged with anything, even though nine of the 15 women suffered severe injuries, which included punctured uteruses, hemorrhages, infections, and retained fetal remains. Hm, who would have thought? If you'd like to know more about this experiment, and I hope we all do, Jill Stanek has provided us with search terms that could be useful, and those words are "Mother's Day Massacre, 1972." The media dubbed it that name, just so you know, not Jill and not us.

David Sirota Gets His Wish for a White Bomber

Pro-Life Fridays Radio Monologue - April 19, 2013
Part 1

I'm going to take a minute to congratulate David Sirota on his wish that the Boston marathon bomber was a "White American." He got the "white," or nearly-white part, correct. I hope he feels good about that. I really do. But I have to say, though, that his dream of having a white, American bomber was already realized in 1969 in the man who would help launch Barack Obama's political career, Bill Ayers. It was also realized in 1995 when Timothy McVeigh exploded a bomb in Oklahoma City. What's missing in Sirota's half-empty glass at this point is saying how many white Americans he would like to see become bombers and whether or not he would be willing to become one of those white American bombers, since he apparently desires so much after them.

Ah, someone on Facebook apparently took issue with me about talking about the bombing today, asking how we can be talking about the reasons for the bombing when no suspect has been caught yet. Well, I didn't announce that we were going to be discussing reasons for the bombing, but that setting off bombs with the intent and knowledge to maim and murder people is a pro-life issue. I don't know--is that really a tough one? But I will tell you that I'll do this, and that's talk about the reasons why it wasn't a bombing by conservative Tea Party people on Tax Day. April 15th is "Tax Day" like President's Day is every president's birthday. April 15th is the last day you have to file your taxes; it's a deadline (gasp, did I just say "dead?"). April 15th is DEAD DAY, not Tax Day!!! Augh, caught me... A second reason why the Boston bombing isn't a bombing by conservative Tea Party people is that no guns were used. Everyone knows conservatives love and cling to their guns and religion, not bombs. Third reason, everyone knows Tea Partiers are racists, and no black people were killed in the bombing! So there. you. go.

Incidentally, April 15th is Israel's national Memorial Day for victims of terrorism. Just sayin'.

Ann Coulter Says "Don't Blame Romney"

I don't!  I blame Ann Coulter.

I'm going to give just a tiny bit to Ann Coulter and say that I get it. I do, because I once held her self-proclaimed non-idiot position before I became a "pro-life badass" myself. Having stated that, my compliments stop there. See, for all the sharp-eyed political optics Coulter has (and she's got specs for sure), she and many of the GOP self-aggrandizers have one big, black hell-hole of a blind spot when it comes to the issue of abortion, and that is they become useful idiots of the Left.

The first mistake when it comes to the issue of the rape-conceived person is to pit the unborn child against her mother. The Left loves to divide and conquer along lines that should naturally constitute a bond between two equally important people in this world. By conceding the position that two lives cannot coexist just because the Left says that the one life smaller in size should only exist by the consent of the larger (and not the other way around, curiously enough), plays into the elitist trick that their narrative is the only narrative to which we should all prostrate ourselves. I'd like to know why anyone should hog tie himself at the feet of the Legion of Doom. Only the pro-death Left spins the issue into "requir[ing] a woman to bear the child of her rapist" instead of giving justice to every innocent victim of rape, born and unborn.

The second mistake is to blame GOP candidates for saying what they believe. Nowhere in the manufactured debacles of Akin and Mourdock did either of them say that the reason they were running for office was to fictionalize rape or pass legislation prohibiting abortion under any circumstance. Both men answered the obligatory pro-life questions (asked only to Republicans) by stating their positions, nothing more. It was the Left (again!) who responded in predictable fashion with the microphone that they command (only because the GOP is out looking for a spine), practically telling the public that Akin thinks rape is no big deal, and Mourdock is personally going to hold a baby in a mother's womb to prevent her from aborting. Somehow, these GOP talking heads capitulate to the straw men that the Left likes to contruct for target practice, and they all too willingly run out before the first shot to sink a hatchet into the backs of perfectly good candidates, because God forbid the other party should have to prove its accusations.

Since the finger-pointing has begun in the wake of Mitt Romney's disappointing loss, GOP bigwigs should be ready to take it as well as they can dish it out. From where I and my "badass" pro-life compatriots stand, it's mouthpieces like Coulter, Priebus, Rove, and Perino who became the Lucy to Charlie Brown and pulled the ball away just as our duly elected primary winners were about to kick. They fell, naturally, but spare us the schlepped up line that they were toxic players who poisoned the presidential race as well. Puleez.

For all the complaining about how the other party get stuff wrong all the time, the biggest favor Coulter could do for Republicans now is to quit being the unhappy lap dog of the Left when it comes to the pro-life issue of which she admittedly has a 100% flight risk for only a 1% disagreement. If the talking heads spent half as much time focused on winning seats instead of getting distracted by Obama's "lady parts," the Senate could have well been a lot closer to getting flipped today. Anyone can take losing an election if it's one step forward at a time. But there is no consolation for losing when the Party one belongs to actively pushes candidates two steps back and spits on them.

(This is a response to Ann Coulter's post-2012 Election blogpost blaming Senatorial candidates Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock for causing Mitt Romney to lose the Presidential race.)

Abortion's "Sermon on the Operating Table"

The Visible Conservative:  Christians Unleashed Show
Pro-Life Fridays Monologue - March 16, 2012

For the longest time, I’ve questioned how abortion is sold to the American woman as a “difficult but necessary choice” that women need. Pro-death propagandists sell not the abortion itself (that’s the job of Planned Parenthood) but the right and the so-called need for abortion. This is where, on a certain level, I give credit to Jessica DelBalzo for having the balls to be honest.


In her article called “I Love Abortion,” she points out the problem with standard pro-abortion rhetoric that pro-life people have similarly called pro-deathers out on for a long time now. The Clintonian formula, as I call it, of making abortion “safe, legal, and rare” has always been a point of contention, because if abortion is made safe and legal, why should it ever be made rare?  DelBalzo bites the bullet and says that she doesn’t like how abortion supporters softpedal abortion and assume just what we pro-lifers have said all along that there is something wrong with abortion on demand.

She says,

Safe and legal are concepts I fully support, but rare is something I cannot abide…. there is no need to suggest that abortion be rare. To say so implies a value judgement, promoting the idea that abortion is somehow distasteful or immoral and should be avoided…. we must remember that extenuating circumstances like health, contraceptive failure, and rape mean that abortion will always be a normal, necessary, and reasonable choice for many women. As such, we must avoid stigmatizing it in any way. No woman benefits from even the vaguest insinuation that abortion is an immoral or objectionable option. That's the weak argument made by misogynistic, forced-birth advocates, and it has no place in a dialogue about reproductive freedom. Terminating a pregnancy is not an unethical act, yet suggesting that abortion should be rare implies that there is something undesirable about having one…. Suggesting that abortion be “safe, legal, and rare,” and crowing that “no one likes abortion,” accomplishes nothing for women's rights. Pandering to the anti-choice movement by implying that we all find termination distasteful only fuels the fire against it. What good is common ground if it must be achieved at the expense of women who have had or will have abortions? Those women need advocates like us more than we need support from anti-abortionists. Rather than trying to cozy up to the forced-birth camp, women who value their freedom should be proud to say that they like abortion. In fact, they should venerate it whole-heartedly. Abortion is our last refuge, the one final, definitive instrument that secures our bodily autonomy. What's not to love?

I appreciate this woman’s consistency, but she has done something not even Hillary Clinton was willing to do when she uttered “safe, legal, and rare.” DelBalzo has killed the last vestiges of humanity in the dialogue about whether mothers have a right to kill their children in the womb. In the article she talks about abortion as similar to getting a mammogram or chemotherapy, which, I guess she means are all equivalent to each other (except that all other medical procedures in the world don’t end the life of a living, growing human being or even have the intent to harm or kill another human being).

DelBalzo and others who think like her fail to realize that the mindset she’s promoting is exactly the same mindset behind the gladiatorial games in ancient Rome, Tuol Sleng and the killing fields of Cambodia, and the African slave trade. It is a mindset that says some people have a right by some virtue of superiority to oppress, dismember, and execute human beings for the sake of political ideology, religion, economic gain, or entertainment. Just think what made all these atrocities possible—the idea that there are classes among men, gradations of worth, and rights of some that trump the rights of others either by power or diminishing the humanity of those they have power over. Women are property in most of the Islamic world; slaves are property; political adversaries don’t have the right to have a conflicting opinion, and yes, all this is the mindset of liberals that preach tolerance, compassion, and diversity in society. It amazes me how their heads don’t explode! The inhumanity and cruelty of the pro-death position is breathtaking.

For all the ranting about how religious people are misogynistic, I’ve never known a position as misogynistic as pro-death. It’s right up there with Sharia Law. In order to be pro-abortion, you must look at women as nothing but uteruses with arms and legs. No kidding. It says that a woman is not equal in society unless she gets a specific type of on-demand surgery in her uterus. What kind of message is that for women? Do I tell my daughter that at some point early in her life she wasn’t a person with intrinsic rights and that she wouldn’t have intrinsic rights now if abortion weren’t legal? Well, yeah. DelBalzo is really saying that women have to be given our rights from government, which is saying we don’t really have any rights to begin with.

And let me just say one more thing, especially in light of her line about America being “plagued by anti-feminist, religious conservatism” that shames women’s sexuality. When you say that you venerate abortion wholeheartedly, is this not an admission of devotion of a religious caliber to a death cult known as ultra-liberal feminism that demeans and devalues motherhood and children and looks at pregnancy as some kind of STD? Who’s religious now?