It’s been five years since Terri Schiavo was starved and dehydrated to death by court order in America. Some of us will never forget that terrible two-week period. This week’s panel at Family Research Council movingly re-told the story—so familiar to pro-lifers, so distorted and suppressed for millions of our fellow citizens.

Terri was a medically-dependent young woman who had suffered severe brain damage in the early 90s. She might have recovered the facility of speech. She might have been able to use computers to indicate her thoughts and wishes—had she received the proper rehabilitation in time. But she didn’t. Civil Rights advocate Bob Destro, a law professor at Catholic University, said the real story of Terri Schiavo was America’s inability to come to grips—even today—with disability. “Our fears, prejudices, and lack of knowledge strongly influence the medical, legal, and, yes, political judgments we make.”

Terri’s fearless attorney, David Gibbs, has written the story of that lonely fight to save an unoffending woman’s life. Fighting for Dear Life is his testament to that struggle. We still need to understand more about disability, Gibbs said, because these cases are not going away. Today, in Afghanistan and Iraq, many more young Americans are suffering traumatic brain injury due to IEDs. In previous wars, such wounded warriors might not have made it off the battlefield.

Gibbs laid out six principles we should have learned to uphold:

1. Food and water, even if administered by intra-venous tube feeding—are never extraordinary care.
2. No court should allow someone to die without something in writing on that person’s wishes.
3. We need greater skill and safeguards in testing before a diagnosis of “persistent vegetative state” (PVS) is made.
4. A spouse who enters into “other relationships” should be disqualified from making life-ending decisions for his/her legal spouse.
5. Federal courts get to review all death sentences for convicted killers; no less should be granted to medically fragile persons.
6. Immediate family members should have standing in court to challenge hospitals or their “ethics committees” when a futile care judgment has been rendered.

FRC’s Cathy Ruse, our senior legal analyst, pointed out that Terri’s long and drawn out death was, in the words of Nat Hentoff, the “longest public execution in U.S. history.” Terri was not dying. She had no disease. Her life was simply inconvenient to her husband, who had, as they say, “moved on.” (He had also moved in. See point No. 4 above.) And, most appropriately in this Holy Week, Cathy pointed to those words of Jesus on the Cross: “I thirst.”

Terri’s brother, Bobby Schindler, spoke of the terrible toll on the Schindler family of their daughter’s cruel death. Bobby is Terri’s brother. He said their father’s death was surely hastened by the trauma of not being able to protect his daughter in her agonizing death. Agonizing it was, too. The family was not allowed even to give her cracked ice.

Nor Holy Communion.

David Gibbs brought hopeful messages of heroes of that dark period. He praised President George W. Bush for rushing back to Washington to sign legislation that permitted the Terri Schiavo case to be heard in federal court. Gov. J.E.B. Bush also labored on the side of the angels in this case. David Gibbs gave kudos to the Congress of 2005 that passed emergency legislation to try to save Terri’s civil rights.

There was one U.S. Senator at the time who agreed that Terri’s case might at least be heard in federal court. That senator, a former constitutional law professor, acted in accord with ninety and nine others in that body. But he later said he wished he had not concurred in the Unanimous Consent decree. He said it was “the one thing he regretted” in his Senate career. That senator is now the President of the United States.

Terri’s case is not forgotten. Each year on March 31^st, there is a memorial Mass at Ave Maria University, in Florida. Fr. Frank Pavone, head of Priests for Life, was present as Terri was dying. He will celebrate the Mass.

Terri will also be remembered in my family. At that time, our daughter was dating a young man at Calvin College. She related to me his reaction to Terri’s plight:

“I thought a husband was supposed to lay down his life for his wife.” When that same young man, six months later, asked for our daughter’s hand in marriage, I had no hesitation in saying yes. Would you?

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She called in to Sean Hannity’s radio show yesterday. Sean gave her extra time. Good thing.

The lady identified herself as “Bridget,” and what a story she told. She is a medical speech pathologist, one who works with stroke victims and those who, for one reason or another, have speech impairment. She is also a military wife, familiar with TriCare, the military’s health care system (which, of course, is government-run).

Most interestingly, she described her two years working in the British National Health System. There, the doctors’ and nurses’ education is completely underwritten by the taxpayers. With free medical education, young people with a desire to serve others pursue their studies just as any other college students elect their majors. For them, free education and job security afterwards are not a bad deal.

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New York Times columnists Charles M. Blow (“Whose Country Is It?”, March 27) and Frank Rich (“The Rage is Not About Health Care,” March 28, 2010) are denouncing with smug delight and stentorian admonition the “bullying, threats, and acts of violence” (Blow) following the passage of the Obama health care bill.

“Small-scale mimicry of Kristallnacht” is what Rich calls the apparent excesses of a tiny minority of anti-Democratic health care bill protestors.  His own crypto-racist presuppositions are apparent in Blow’s evisceration of those he terms “extremists:”

Even the optics must be irritating. A woman (Nancy Pelosi) pushed the health care bill through the House. The bill’s most visible and vocal proponents included a gay man (Barney Frank) and a Jew (Anthony Weiner). And the black man in the White House signed the bill into law. It’s enough to make a good old boy go crazy.

Let me posit for Mr. Blow an alternative scenario: For the Left,

Even the optics must be disturbing.  A (nationally recognized) woman (Sarah Palin) opposed the health care bill that passed the House.  The bill’s most visible and vocal opponents included a practicing Catholic (John Boehner) and a Jew (Eric Cantor).  And prominent black men (former Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell, Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele and former Godfathers Pizza chairman Herman Cain) didn’t want the black man in the White House to sign the bill into law.  It’s enough to make a New York secular liberal go crazy.

Frank Rich., fueled by the same reactionary unction as Mr. Blow, writes something eerily similar in his piece:

The conjunction of a black president and a female speaker of the House — topped off by a wise Latina on the Supreme Court and a powerful gay Congressional committee chairman — would sow fears of disenfranchisement among a dwindling and threatened minority in the country no matter what policies were in play.

Again, allow me to rephrase:

The conjunction of a black Republican National Committee Chairman and a female conservative vice-presidential candidate – topped off by a wise African-American conservative on the Supreme Court and a powerful evangelical committee chairman – would sow fears of disenfranchisement among the tiny self-anointed secular elite in the media and the academy no matter what policies were in play.

However, unsatisfied with smarmily tarring all conservatives with the base brush of bigotry, Rich returns to the 1964 Civil Rights Act as further evidence of the Right’s calumny (apparently ignorant of the fact that more House Republicans voted for it than Democrats).  Blow goes one better, asserting that Tea Partiers, per a Quinnipiac University Poll, shows them to be “disproportionately white, evangelical Christians and ‘less educated … than the average Joe and Jane Six-Pack’.”

Ah, the Evangelical Slur rears its head: conservative Christians just don’t have the smarts the rest of society possesses.  This assertion is to intellectual credibility what the Big Mac is to nutrition.  The tired asseveration that evangelicals are pear-headed ignoramuses fails the test of serious scrutiny.  According to a comprehensive poll done in 2004 by GreenbergQuinlanRosner Research for the PBS program “Religion and Ethics,” “About 22 percent of white evangelicals hold 4-year college degrees, compared with 27 percent of the general population. (One) quarter (27 percent) of white evangelicals have some sort of post-secondary education, compared to 26 percent of the general population.”

Sadly, Blow and Rich were silent when images of a decapitated George W. Bush, of guns being placed to his head, and tee-shirts bearing the message, “Kill Bush” were rampant among the Left.  Throughout most of the 2000s, the blogosphere was flooded by horrible messages of hate and vileness and violence directed at the 43^rd President.  Most of us on the Right attributed these sickening things to a minority of political opinion, yet remained troubled that MoveOn.org, Michael Moore, Arianna Huffington and other pop culture “acceptables” accepted and encouraged Bush hatred as though it were merely boisterous patriotism.  Jonah Goldberg correctly calls this “liberal fascism.”  Now that a handful of people go too far, suddenly conservatives (both Tea Partiers and Republicans) are (I derive this list from exactly two op-eds over a three day period in the New York Times):

• Frothing
• Copper-faced
• Apoplectic
• Goons
• Vigilantes
• Unglued
• Homicidal (at least rhetorically)
• Apocalyptic (not to be confused with apoplectic – see above)
• Petulant
• Hysterical
• Bullies
• Desperate
• Extremists
• Angry
• Frustrated
• Nefarious
• Mad (Tea Partiers)
• Anemic (Republicans)
• Bigoted (Tea Partiers)
• Violent (Tea Partiers)
• Anachronistic

And most are, I suppose, bad dressers, to boot.

Both Blow and Rich conclude triumphantly that white conservatives are a dying breed and that the demographics of America doom the (overwhelmingly white) Tea Party movement to failure.  Here, to borrow a phrase from the late Israeli diplomat Abba Eban, Blow and Rich experience “an isolated spasm of lucidity.”

America’s racial and ethnic composition is indeed changing.  Conservatives need to take seriously the reality that sometime in the mid- to late-century, American whites will become merely the largest plurality in a multi-ethnic nation.  We have to do a far better job of winsomely and thoughtfully engaging people of color and persuading them that the conservative vision of personal responsibility, limited government, lower taxes and true social justice (for the born and the unborn) is the best course for our – and I emphasize, our – nation.

But Blow and Rich should consider the wisdom of America’s greatest President, Abraham Lincoln (a Republican, no less!): The hen is the wisest of all the animals because she never cackles until her eggs are hatched.

The battle over the ideas and convictions that should shape our country should never include in its ranks those pathetic souls on either extreme whose malevolence, whether racial, ethnic or ideological, inspires their political conduct.  But Charles Blow and Frank Rich should beware of cackling too soon.

Whose country is it?  All of ours.  Of “We, the people,” who lived not under a whimsical state manipulated by a Leftist bourgeoisie elite, but a constituted political order grounded in a written text and the unwritten but palpable virtue of an informed citizenry.  Conservatives are fighting to keep it.  And we’ve just begun to fight.

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In February, the NIH proposed to redefine the meaning of “embryonic stem cells” in their Guidelines. The primary purpose is to make more embryos, including younger embryos, available for research. The move continues the Administration’s and NIH’s aim to spend more taxpayer dollars on embryonic stem cells while ignoring the patients and successful adult stem cells.

FRC has submitted our comments on the proposed redefinition. It seems obvious that NIH is not interested in substantive consideration of their political move, limiting comments to 6,000 characters (including spaces.) They ignored 30,000 of the 49,000 comments received on the original draft of the guidelines. (FRC’s submission on original draft guidelines) Hopefully this round they’ll actually read and consider.

FRC comments on proposed NIH redefinition of embryonic stem cells

(includes hyperlinks to references)

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Men who choose to engage in sexual relations with other men place their health in serious jeopardy—and thereby endanger the public health as well.

Unfortunately, like the nakedness of the Emperor in the children’s story of the “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” this is a truth that is so obvious—yet so politically incorrect—that it is rarely spoken aloud.

When those of us who disapprove of and seek to discourage homosexual conduct speak this truth, we are routinely vilified as “hateful.” So let me step aside altogether, and let the secular, scientific, non-political experts speak for themselves. Below is a recent press release from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. I reproduce it here, verbatim, in full, and unedited—except that I have highlighted in bold what are, in my opinion, the key findings.

I offer only one editorial comment. The CDC spokesman is cited as saying, “There is no single or simple solution for reducing HIV and syphilis rates among gay and bisexual men.” This is plainly false. There is, for example, a single and simple solution for smoking-related illnesses, and we have all heard it—“If you don’t smoke, don’t start. If you do smoke, quit.”

It’s long past time for public health authorities to say the same about men having sex with men.

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According to Reuters, White House Secretary Robert Gibbs is unconcerned with the reports today by two leading American manufacturers that the newly enacted Democratic health system legislation will hit them hard financially.

John Deere and Caterpillar report a combined anticipated earnings loss of $250 million given the new tax provisions of President Obama’s just-imposed regime of federal health care management.  This will affect their ability to hire, promote and provide benefits.  It will affect the cost of the goods they sell and their ability to compete in domestic and international markets.  It will hurt their ability to work with subcontractors and pay for retirement benefits.

In fact, Business Week notes the business consultancy of Towers Watson estimates a loss of $14 billion in corporate profits due to the Obama health regime-change (“Obama Tax’s $14 Billion Charge Starts at Caterpillar,” March 25, 2010).

But, hey – to Robert Gibbs, all of this is worth one modest shrugging of his shoulders.  Here’s what he said on Air Force One when asked about the hit Deere and Cat will have to take due to his boss’s new medical system overhaul:

So basically, they get a subsidy and what amounts to two deductions.  They get the subsidy that’s not counted as income, then they get to write off the spending. This bill, our bill, simply closes the loophole.

Similarly, Commerce Secretary Gary Locke responded, “The rules…and a lot of the regulations on how this will affect large businesses haven’t even been published yet.  So for them to come out, I think, is premature and irresponsible.”

I see: The Obama people are just closing tax “loopholes,” but it’s irresponsible for companies to estimate what the de facto taxes will cost them.  How silly – a company ponders the affects of a tax hike and it’s irresponsible for letting its investors know its cost estimates.  Guess I missed that lucid economic principle somewhere along the way.

Ask the families of people who are about to lose their jobs because President Obama and his congressional allies couldn’t care less about the private sector.  Many of the President’s senior aides and appointees (including Mr. Gibbs) have never held jobs in the open market.  They have never actually created a job, met a payroll, worried about opening a new store or burned the midnight oil experimenting with a new product.

In showing contempt for individual and corporate taxpayers, Robert Gibbs and Gary Locke reveal the true heart of the current Administration: Elitist, dismissive, arrogant and fundamentally ignorant of the American system of entrepreneurship, enterprise and market-based competition.

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Congressman Paul Ryan, a respected Wisconsin Republican and self-described “numbers guy,” writes the following in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel:

Premiums in the individual market would rise from 10% to 13% for families. Our debt and deficit crisis —- driven by $76 trillion in unfunded liabilities —- would accelerate from the creation of a brand new entitlement and an increase in the federal deficit by $662 billion, when the true costs are factored in. National health expenditures will increase by an additional $222 billion over the next decade, according the president’s own chief actuary, and $2.4 trillion in the decade after the new entitlement is up and running.

Ryan himself calls these “mind-numbing numbers,” but their vastness only emphasizes how serious they are. To bring it down to family level, what the Obama-Democratic plan means is that you and your loved ones will obtain poorer quality of care at higher cost. Medical innovations generated by private sector research will contract as companies have fewer financial resources with which to make them. Market-driven competition will decline as the number of insurance companies shrinks due to heavy new mandates and regulations. The ripple effect on the broader economy will mean that there will be fewer jobs in the private-sector as companies lay-off employees to pay for both higher taxes and cost of newly imposed health insurance rules.

The world works in a certain way. The shortest distance between two points is a straight line. The world turns from east to west. And the more centralized political power becomes and the greater the mandates and costs imposed on those governed, the less freedom and prosperity there will be.

These propositions are axiomatic because they are immutable. And it is difficult to believe that whatever their protestations, President Obama and his allies — intelligent men and women, all — did not understand them very well from before the start of their health care “reform” campaign.

Less quality, high cost health care. Fewer jobs. Lost freedom. That’s change I’d rather not believe in, but it’s here. And conservatives will keep fighting it as long as our liberty endures.

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From FRC Action’s press release:

Washington, D.C. – Today the House of Representatives passed the Senate health care bill with a multitude of abortion funding provisions and passed the reconciliation bill to increase funding for one abortion funding program. Neither contained conscience protections previously approved by the House.

Family Research Council Action President Tony Perkins responded with the following comments:

“Passage of this partisan government takeover of health care with all of its Medicare cuts, tax increases, a continued marriage penalty, individual mandates, and abortion funding shows the extreme leftist orientation of this Congress.

“The American people, regardless of their view of its legality, should not be forced to pay for someone’s abortion. Those who voted for this legislation cannot legitimately claim to be even neutral on the issue of abortion. This legislation accomplishes this abortion mandate in spades.

Read the whole release here.

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Abortion is mandated over a dozen times in the healthcare bill. For more, read this.

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Amnesty International released a report today on Maternal Mortality in the United States. I was enthusiastic to see a subheading for a “right to life” until a little further into the report I read that abortion (the procedure that destroys innocent little lives) was included as part of a woman’s “right to life.”

From page 14 of the report:

“The right to life is protected in a number of international human rights treaties including the ICCPR, which states that every human being has the inherent right to life and that no one shall be arbitrarily deprived of their right to life…the need to employ a broad interpretation of the right to life, which includes public health measures, and has called on states to reduce preventable maternal mortality, including by ensuring access to family planning and abortion, as part of their obligation to protect the right to life under the ICCPR.33 Like all human rights, the right to life must also be guaranteed without discrimination.”

Sadly, Amnesty International defies their own words by discriminating against those who are in the womb.

To put the “right to life” issue in context, approximately ½ million women die worldwide each year from complications in childbirth (i.e., maternal mortality). In comparison, approximately 42 million children are denied the inherent right to life through abortion every year worldwide.

Additionally, according to the WHO, Maternal Mortality is not listed among the top ten health causes of death anywhere in the world – in developing or developed countries.

While we can all agree that expectant mothers should have access to good health care, the issue of “maternal mortality” should not be a cover for abortion.

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As we sit at this cultural crossroads with the grave possibility of government funded abortion looming should the health care bill pass, it is hard to believe that it has been only five years since another battle for life and the dignity of the human person was waged.  Unfortunately, that battle was lost and Terri Schiavo died of starvation and dehydration.

Family Research Council will be hosting a panel on Monday, March 29, at 11am, to commemorate the fifth anniversary of Terri’s Schiavo’s death. Panelists will include Bobby Schiavo, brother of Terri; David Gibbs, lead attorney in the fight for Terri’s life; Cathy Ruse, Senior Fellow at FRC; and Bob Destro, Prof. of Law at Catholic University.  The panel is free and a complimentary lunch will be served. Please click here for more information and to register.

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“War is God’s way of teaching Americans history,” goes a cynical old European taunt. I don’t agree with that, entirely. But they have a point. Who among us knew where Fallujah was before 2003? Or where Kandahar was before 2001? Who among us does not know where Gettysburg is and what it means. Or, at least, what it used to mean.

Living through history has a way of making an impact on our lives. We are living through a great moment in our history. Glenn Beck regales Americans nightly with stories and quotes from the Founding Fathers. It’s as if this eager, emotional fellow has just discovered them. He’s that enthusiastic. Legal writer Mark Levin holds forth nightly as well. His book, Liberty and Tyranny, rocketed to the top of the bestseller lists. It’s an essential primer in the theory and practice of limited government.

Liberals are, predictably, horrified by the likes of Beck and Levin. But they would have been horrified by Thomas Paine, too. Paine was a hard-drinking, failed tax collector and corset maker from England who came to America with no money and even fewer prospects. His book, Common Sense, sold hundreds of thousands of copies. It electrified the American colonists and helped mightily to move them to demand independence. His Excellency General George Washington had Common Sense distributed to his ragged soldiers.

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In response to George Washington’s Farewell Address to the nation of which he was Founding Father, James Madison affirmed the first President’s claim that morality was essential to liberty: “If individuals be not influenced by moral principles, it is in vain to look for public virtue.”

Put another way, if virtue is not the companion of our private doings, it will be absent from our public lives, and the larger cultural life of our country.  This is logical deduction, of course, and leads to inevitable consequences for our society at large.

Consider former Senator John Edwards (D-NC), who had an adulterous affair with filmmaker Reille Hunter.  It occurred while he was a credible candidate for the presidency of the United States and married to a woman suffering from an incurable recurrence of cancer.  Yet Ms. Hunter now effuses about their torrid relationship as if it were a thing of rare beauty:

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Remember all the whining and complaining that those old 21 approved “Bush lines” of human embryonic stem cells (hESC) were tired, contaminated, aging, and useless (despite facts to the contrary), and the cry for more and newer lines? And the celebration when President Obama’s new Executive Order and NIH guidelines opened the door to use of many more hESC lines? No more having to deal with those old hESC lines, bring on as many new lines as you can make from destroyed embryos, a cornucopia of hESC lines available from which to choose. NIH approved the first new lines in December 2009, and 44 lines are now available for taxpayer-funded research (a new line, UCSF4 derived in April 2009, was approved on 12 March 2010), and over 100 more lines have been submitted to qualify for funding. Along with an increase in funds for human embryonic stem cell research, all seemed well for wide-open ESC science.

OOPS! Turns out those tired old useless hESC lines were… extremely valuable! They were, and are, the gold standard for human embryonic stem cells. They’re what almost every hESC scientist has studied. They’re thoroughly characterized and familiar cells.

Now, a number of scientists are realizing just how valuable are those well-characterized hESC lines. Despite the increased funding and many more lines from which to choose, many hESC scientists want… those tired old “Bush” lines. They are complaining that so far the new policy is more of a burden than a boon to their work. Some of the scientists say they’re stunned by the irony. Apparently ideology and desire trumped science.

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Today is James Madison’s birthday, his 259^th. This small man (5 feet 4 inches, less than 100 pounds) had a huge impact on our country. Not only is he credited with being the “Father of the Constitution,” he is also known as the “Author of the Bill of Rights.” Some scholars have even argued that Madison used the process of drafting and ratifying the first ten amendments to the Constitution in order to save the Constitution.

That’s because many anti-Federalists, who had failed to block adoption of the Constitution, were gathering strength to radically overhaul the Framers’ work in 1789. They sought to amend away some of the newly adopted Constitution’s provisions, ones that had been so carefully crafted at Philadelphia.

James Madison had to fight to get elected to the First Congress. Virginia anti-Federalists like Patrick Henry and George Mason—revered patriot leaders—were working to defeat Madison. They carved out a district for the U.S. House of Representatives in which it would be harder for Madison to be elected. Today we call this practice “gerrymandering.” The word came from Massachusetts anti-Federalist leader Elbridge Gerry, who carved out some districts that looked like salamanders. Gerrymanders, they were and still are.

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Last week, I had the opportunity to attend part of the 54^th Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) at the United Nations in New York. The CSW is a UN body with power for global policy-making on issues related to women and gender. Every year delegates from member states meet at UN headquarters in NY to evaluate progress and draft policies to promote women and gender equality. The question of abortion is always hotly debated and presented in a variety of creative forms from anti-life advocates.

With the memory still fresh from my first CSW (five years ago) I was much encouraged this year with the number of pro-life lobbyists present. Most lobbyists fell into two categories: generous college students on Spring Break or fed up pro-life moms from the Midwest! Both groups “made their presence felt;” there was no question that they were a viable force. There were also a significant number of pro-life, pro-family side-sessions, with speakers including Miriam Grossman and Pam Stencil, as well as researchers, MDs, and ObGyns. In particular, one session about the importance of motherhood was attended by approximately 500 persons.

Unfortunately, though not surprisingly, representatives of the Obama Administration weren’t tuned into the pro-life U.S. citizens present (you know, the American people whom they represent). They were more concerned about advocating for things like the Convention to Eliminate Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) Ratification, among other things.

CEDAW is a women’s rights international agreement of the UN that was first adopted in 1979. Worthy of mention is the fact that this agreement would also advance such policy areas as abortion rights; same-sex marriage; legalization of prostitution; gender re-education; and would negate parental rights. Out of 192 member countries, the U.S. is one of eight not to ratify; ratification would require 67 senators to vote affirmatively.

Despite efforts from previous Democrat Administrations, proponents have not been successful in achieving ratification. But the Obama Administration is actively working to change that. In her remarks to the CSW, Secretary Clinton named CEDAW ratification as a major priority for the Obama Administration. Karen Richardson, Senior Advisor on International Organizations to State Department Ambassador for the Global Women’s Issues Bureau Melanne Verveer, spoke at a number of CSW workshops and affirmed that the Obama Administration and in particular Amb. Verveer are working actively with the Hill to ratify CEDAW.

Interestingly, Secretary Clinton also noted in her remarks to the CSW the recent issue article on Gendercide in The Economist, noting that sex selection abortion has left the world with 100 million fewer girls than it should have. While I appreciated the fact the Secretary noted this tragedy in her remarks, I only wish she would make the necessary connection between the abortion rights she so aggressively advocates and the societal ramifications that follow, such as this appalling gendercide reality. Abortion never has been — and never will be good for women.

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Our friends at C–Fam, the pro-life watch dogs at the United Nations helmed by my husband Austin, issued a blockbuster last week when they revealed that the Girl Scouts had a meeting for girls only at the UN last week which included a Planned Parenthood guide for sex. It was a no-adults-allowed affair; any adult not associated with the Girl Scouts was kicked out.

The Girl Scouts have been officially “pro-choice” for years. Now they’re pushing promiscuous sex on the girls. Here’s an excerpt from page 11 of the Planned Parenthood guide offered at the secret meeting:

Some people have sex when they have been drinking alcohol or using drugs. This is your choice. Being drunk or high can affect the decisions you might make about sex or safer sex. If you want to have sex and think you might get drunk or high, plan ahead by bringing condoms and lube or putting them close to where you usually have sex.

Apparently Planned Parenthood does advocate some limits to sex: “It is not okay to have sex with someone who is so drunk or high that they are staggering, incoherent or have passed out.” (What prudes!)

C-Fam’s report has rocketed around the Girl Scout world. Girl Scout officials have issued denials that the brochure was even present at the meeting while faith-filled Girl Scout leaders are up in arms and threatening to leave. C-Fam stands by its report: the Planned Parenthood sex guide was at the meeting.

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You’ve gotta love Bart Stupak, the brave Democrat from Michigan who is standing athwart the Obama-Abortion-Care Juggernaut, yelling, “Stop!”

Here are some choice quotes (to use a pun) from Representative Stupak from a recent interview with the Weekly Standard:

When the reporter mentioned speculation that Stupak was ready to cave and vote for a health care bill that would force taxpayers to fund abortion, his response was clear: “Obviously they don’t know me,” he said.  “If I didn’t cave in November, why would I do it now after all the crap I’ve been through?”

President Obama’s attempt to get Stupak’s vote is both ridiculous and revealing:  Apparently the President invited Stupak to the Russian opera last week.  (This is reminiscent of candidate Nelson Rockefeller at the working man’s bar ordering beers all around and a Courvoisier for himself.)  The Weekly Standard writes:  “Asked if he was a big fan of the opera, Stupak, who represents a district encompassing the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, laughed and said:  ‘No, I’m not a fan of opera, especially not Russian opera because I wouldn’t understand a thing.’”

Stupak isn’t afraid to call out his own Party, saying that White House officials are “trying to get face time with members to convince them to vote for a bill that no one has seen in writing.”

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Scientific dogma has long held that a single stem cell is responsible for all of the components of the blood system. Now in a paper published in the journal Cell Stem Cell, a group at Baylor College of Medicine is challenging that dogma. The group found that there were different, distinct adult stem cell subtypes that contribute to different components of the blood system. They verified the “stem cell nature” of these different subtypes by transplanting single stem cells into individual mice, and were able to confirm that these subtypes exist, can maintain a stable population of the stem cells over time, and behave as expected. Senior author Dr. Margaret Goodell said:

“From a scientific point of view, it’s making us re-evaluate the view of the stem cells that come from adults. It challenges the dogma that there is one type of stem cell.”

The study has significance for stem cell patient treatments as well. According to Goodell:

“People have been looking for purer and purer stem cell types. In doing that, they may not be getting all the stem cell types they need. Maybe in the clinic, it is better to have less pure types.”

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Growing lots of adult stem cells in the lab, for study or for a patient treatment, has been difficult in the past. While some groups have successfully grown large numbers of adult stem cells, many labs have difficulties keeping the cells growing for more than a few days. Now scientists at Weill Cornell have shown that culturing adult stem cells with endothelial cells, the cells that compose the innermost linings of blood vessels, is the key to growing unlimited amounts of adult stem cells. The research group reasoned that because endothelial cells line blood vessels and are often in contact with adult stem cells, these cells might play a significant role in the growth and maintenance of stem cells. Using a mouse model, the scientists were able to grow adult stem cells for weeks at a time and increase the number of cells over 400-fold. They also showed that even after one year, there was no indication of tumor formation from the adult stem cells. Senior author, Dr. Shahin Rafii, noted:

“This study will have a major impact on the treatment of any blood-related disorder that requires a stem cell transplant.”

Previous work from Dr. Rafii’s lab had demonstrated that endothelial cells are not “passive conduits”
for delivery of oxygen and nutrients but also produce novel stem-cell-active growth factors.

The breakthrough promises broad clinical benefits, from bone marrow transplantation to therapies for heart, brain, skin and lungs. If the system continues to be validated, physicians could use any source of hematopoietic (blood-forming) stem cells, grow large numbers, and bank the adult stem cells for transplantation into patients.

The paper is published in the journal Cell Stem Cell.

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