“The National Organization for Marriage has launched the Reclaim Iowa Project, targeting legislative races in the state in an effort to elect candidates who support putting the issue of gay marriage before voters.

“Iowa is important because the Supreme Court decision was so against the will of the people of Iowa and the Legislature and Gov. (Chet) Culver showed absolutely no backbone in giving the people the right to have their voices heard,” said Brian Brown, the organization’s executive director.”

“Roman Catholic bishops in New Jersey have begun a new campaign opposing same-sex marriage.

The push comes in anticipation of a possible vote on the issue by state lawmakers after the November election.”

” Educators, students and parents continued to debate Wednesday whether youth should learn more about contraception in school, at the latest meeting exploring a proposed change to Utah’s sex education law.

Rep. Lynn Hemingway, D-Salt Lake City, presented a draft of his bill, which would require school districts to offer two tracks of sex education: one that would teach abstinence only and another where teachers would still promote abstinence but also include information on sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) and contraceptives. Parental permission would be required for students to take the second track.”

“The Miss Universe pageant and an AIDS prevention group are under fire for staging a “Condom Olympics” for contestants just three days prior to last Sunday’s competition in the Bahamas.”

“As physicians, we recognize the value of advance planning and counseling and appointing a personal healthcare proxy,” commented Dr. Gene Rudd, senior vice president of the 16,000-member CMA. “The VA manual goes a step further, however, subtly raising with vulnerable patients the possibility that physical impairments might make their lives, in the words of the manual, ‘not worth living.’

The 52-page manual, entitled, “Your Life, Your Choices: Planning for Future Medical Decisions,” lists scenarios such as being in a wheelchair, needing kidney dialysis, or requiring a feeding tube and then asks the patient to consider whether those situations might make his or her life “not worth living.”

“When used in animal research, injections of embryonic stem cells formed tumors afterwards and also prompted the immune system of the intended recipients to reject the cells.

The FDA delayed the trials to review studies of the therapy, called GRNOPC1, in its use with animals.

Now, new reports indicate problems associated with the animals in Geron’s studies prompted the FDA to halt the human trials. Specifically, the animals developed cysts at the injury sites after the injections.”

“A Christian homeschool girl in New Hampshire has been ordered into government-run public school for having “sincerely held” religious beliefs — and the Alliance Defense Fund is troubled by the ruling.”

“Researchers’ significant interest in using stem cells to treat heart failure arises, in part, because the disease is so prevalent. The American Heart Association estimates 5.7 million Americans live with the disease and 670,000 new cases are diagnosed annually. “When you put [stem cells] into a heart, some can differentiate to become blood vessel and others to become heart muscle cells,” explains James Willerson, president of the Texas Heart Institute in Houston and a principal investigator of a separate, National Institutes of Health-sponsored stem cell trial for heart failure. It is important, he says, that stem cells also “have substances that recruit other cells and promote life.” This combination holds incredibly powerful potential for not only rejuvenating but rebuilding organs and tissue and turning back the clock for ailing patients. Willerson is optimistic about the therapeutic future of stem cells, which can be extracted from fat cells, hair cells, and other diverse cell types. “I believe we will be able to regenerate the whole heart of a human being with stem cells,” he says.”

“Des Moines Area Regional Transit confirms a driver refused to drive a bus with an atheist advertisement Monday.”

“The pro-life movement has been working overtime to educate Americans about the fact that the health care bills in Congress would result in massive abortion funding. Despite a slew of mainstream media stories to the contrary, the public appears to have received the message.

A new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll released yesterday shows a majority of Americans agreed that the health care bills “will likely use taxpayer dollars to pay for women to have abortions.”

The poll found 50 percent agreed that is true while 37 percent of Americans don’t believe that is likely.”

“An Oklahoma judge decided Tuesday that doctors do not need to perform ultrasounds and offer women detailed information about the tests before performing abortions, striking down the strictest such law in the country.”

“The Geron Corporation said on Tuesday that regulators had held up its study of a therapy for injured spinal cords before even one patient could be enrolled, delaying the first human trial using embryonic stem cells.”

“The leading proponent of Vermont’s gay marriage bill spent about $294,000 on lobbying and advertising in advance of the Legislature’s vote — more than seven times as much as opponents did, according to disclosure forms filed Monday.

Through its task force and an action committee, Vermont Freedom to Marry spent $65,866 of that in the week before the April 7 vote by the Democrat-controlled Vermont house, which passed the bill in a 100-49 vote to override the veto of Republican Gov. Jim Douglas.”

“Discouraged by stubborn poll numbers and pessimistic political consultants, major financial backers of same-sex marriage are cautioning gay rights groups to delay a campaign to overturn California’s ban on such unions until at least 2012.”

“That’s why this, I believe, is going to be the biggest threat to our religious liberty in our near future,” the Christian attorney remarks. “We are facing a clash of worldviews; a collision between the same-sex agenda and a moral and religious worldview. Those two are incompatible in these kinds of conflicts. If we go down this road of same-sex unions, [it] will continue to escalate.”

“A large part of the horror of abortion lies in the monstrous presumption of liberals declaring that human life begins not at conception, but whenever they say it does. Maybe that’s six weeks, maybe six months. Maybe it’s years. Obama’s Science Czar John Holdren (the guy who wanted to put a sterilizing agent in our drinking water) gives us an idea of how slippery this slope can get. From his book Human Ecology: Problems and Solutions, via Patterico’s Pontifications:

The fetus, given the opportunity to develop properly before birth, and given the essential early socializing experiences and sufficient nourishing food during the crucial early years after birth, will ultimately develop into a human being.”

“The bishops have campaigned long, loudly and clearly against same-sex marriage but the Catholic Church also offers a pervasive message of social justice, an umbrella many liberal Catholics stand under when they argue for marriage equality or life issues such as abortion, contraception and end-of-life decisions.”

“President Obama, who has vowed to find common ground on culture-war issues, finds himself in the middle of a classic Washington dispute over abortion that is further undermining support among conservative Democrats for his ambitious health-care reform efforts.”

“The Obama administration contends the urgent deadline is necessitated by the suffering of American families who have waited too long for Congress to act to address the high cost of health care. But according to the independent Congressional Budget Office (CBO), the bill the president supports won’t lower health-care costs; it will increase them. And as the veteran political operatives in the Obama White House well know, the frantic timetable conveniently leaves precious little time for the American people to know what’s actually in the bill.”

“A top official with the administration of pro-abortion President Barack Obama spoke to gathering of Planned Parenthood activists last week. There, she promised leaders of the abortion business that Obama is a pro-abortion president and urged them to continue their pro-abortion lobbying efforts.”

“According to Open Doors USA, raids against Christians, carried out by the Taliban, have increased throughout Pakistan and Afghanistan. Dr. Carl Moeller, president of Open Doors USA, says the Taliban does not tolerate anyone who thinks or believes differently than they do. Christians are being evicted from their homes, he says, and some are being forced to convert to Islam or pay special taxes in exchange for protection.”

“Two teams of Chinese scientists have made a major advance in mice in the development of a new kind of stem cell that doesn’t involve destroying embryos.

Those cells are derived from ordinary skin cells, and when they were created two years ago from human skin and genetically reprogrammed, it was hailed as a breakthrough. But questions remained whether they could act as chameleon-like as embryonic stem cells and morph into any cell type in the body.”

“Johns Hopkins biomedical engineering students have demonstrated a practical way to embed a patient’s own adult stem cells in the surgical thread that doctors use to repair serious orthopedic injuries such as ruptured tendons. The goal, the students said, is to enhance healing and reduce the likelihood of re-injury without changing the surgical procedure itself.”

“A world-renowned clinic that President Obama held up as an example of good medicine said Monday that the American people would be “losers” under the House’s health care proposal, joining the growing chorus of critics the Obama administration is trying to fend off as the debate intensifies from Capitol Hill to Main Street.”

“If you look at Alzheimer’s, it’s not the plaques and tangles that correlate best with dementia; it’s the loss of synapses – connections between neurons,” Blurton-Jones said. “The neural stem cells were helping the brain form new synapses and nursing the injured neurons back to health.”

“Peter R. Orszag, the White House budget director, asked whether he was prepared to say that “no taxpayer money will go to pay for abortions,” answered: “I am not prepared to say explicitly that right now. It’s obviously a controversial issue, and it’s one of the questions that is playing out in this debate.”

“The American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia in conjunction with several other ally groups, late last week demanded that officials at the Rappahannock Regional Jail immediately cease censoring religious material sent to prisoners.”

“The bishops of the Episcopal Church agreed Wednesday to a compromise measure that stops short of developing an official rite for same-sex unions, but gives latitude to bishops who wish to go ahead and bless such unions, particularly in states that have legalized such marriages.”

“The Quebec College of Physicians is proposing Canada’s Criminal Code be revised to permit medical euthanasia in strictly controlled circumstances.

“The Christian Educators Association International (CEAI), represented by Orlando-based Liberty Counsel, has filed a motion to intervene in a religious liberty case brought by the ACLU against the Santa Rosa County School District. The case stems from allegations made by two Pace High School students that the district and specific school employees were promoting prayer and religion in school.”

“”The routine utilization of human embryonic stem cells for medicine is 20 to 30 years hence,” embryonic stem cell research advocate William Haseltine and then-chief executive officer of Human Genome Sciences ( HGSI – news – people ) told Agence France Presse in 2001. “The timeline to commercialization is so long that I simply would not invest,” he added.”

“The Obama administration’s lifting of Bush-era restrictions on federal funding of human embryonic stem cell research will result in a “massive step forward” in the long term, a Milwaukee-based researcher said today. But the rollout of the new guidelines has harmed research in the short term, he said.”

“Several California ACLU chapters backed up the Prevailing wisdom by saying: “If we were to enter a campaign in either 2010 or 2012 with the people of California where they are now on marriage for same-sex couples, we’d have a tougher time winning than we did in 2008.”

“Lawmakers, legal experts and advocates from both sides met Tuesday to discuss a proposal that would allow West Virginians to vote for a statewide constitutional amendment banning the recognition of same-sex marriages.”

“About 70,000 Mainers are expected to sign a petition calling for a statewide vote to repeal the state’s gay marriage law, and the fight to protect it isn’t exactly raging in the southern and more liberal tip of the state.”

“A federal appeals court breathed new life into an Illinois law that requires teenage girls to notify their parents before having abortions. Lawyers said the law could take effect within weeks.

” Grekos said he and his associates draw blood from a patient in Florida and then send it to a laboratory in Israel that produces what his company calls “regenocytes.” The company defines regenocyte as “a stem cell that has been activated to become a target organ.”

“These procedures work,” he told CNN, standing inside a hospital room at the Clinica Union Medica del Norte in Santiago. “And it’s substantiated by objective data that we are collecting.”