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Failing to Ask the Crucial Question

In 1989, the Catholic author Walker Percy described his affinity with a list of “liberal” causes such as battling poverty and extending a hand to minorities. But supporters of abortion and euthanasia, the novelist and medical doctor said, he did not understand even as they espoused the political and social causes he agreed with.

Their “hearts are in the right place,” Percy said, but “they cannot see the paradox of being in favor of these good things and yet not batting an eyelash when it comes to destroying unborn life.”

Bear that quote in mind as we highlight an article posted yesterday on Headline Bistro. Taken from The Washington Post, it is simply entitled “A Hard Choice.”

Basically, the story takes us on an eye-opening tour of the heart of the very world pro-lifers have passionately been fighting against over the past 35 years: the abortionists’ realm of medicine. There, students like 24-year-old Lesley Wojick are faced with the choice of whether they will provide abortions and, in her case, take it upon themselves to learn about the procedure.

The story itself ultimately seems to reflect the skewed, idealistic vision that leads med students like Lesley to practice abortions on papayas for the sake of “women’s lives and health.” But it’s worth a read to the end, even from the pro-lifers who cringe at its matter-of-fact tone.

After all, we just spent a whole campaign season talking about and decrying the hold that abortion has over so many politicians. But rarely are we made privy to the doctors’ feelings.

And honestly, Lesley Wojick is a compelling character in her own story, able to articulate her passion for wanting to help others, albeit in ways completely contrary to upholding a true culture of life. The story constantly backs this up with quotes (“I want to do something meaningful”) and facts (in high school, Lesley started advocating birth control and teaching at-risk teens to sail, in the name of reaching out to troubled youth).

It’s quotes like these that make one realize the attitude of a new generation of abortion-rights advocates:

“I think (abortion is) a necessary evil, no, unpleasant service, we have to provide for the sake of” women’s lives and health, Lesley said. “I feel the obligation to make sure that service is available and not stigmatized.”

With that said, here’s three points to take away from the story:

First: note the mentality of those in the story who advocate, and practice, abortion as a medical procedure in a very matter-of-fact way. The curt descriptions of the procedure itself and Lesley’s training, for example, or the students’ rationale that they would have to educate themselves about abortion. One of the most jarring quotes comes from a doctor demonstrating the abortion procedure on a papaya, which is shaped like a uterus.

‘This is the most important thing and the hardest to learn,’ the doctor said as she pulled out lots of seeds and juice, what in a real abortion she called the ‘products of conception,’ or POC. ‘You put the POC into a bowl, repeat if necessary, and examine them under a microscope to make sure you got everything,’ she advised.

… ‘How do you know when you are done?’ a student asked.

The doctor’s response is gruesome, but completely objective, in the fullest sense of the word – there is a definite distance between the doctor and the patient he is operating on.

This seeming insensitivity and roughness rattles even Lesley.

“This just seems so awful,” she exclaimed as she tried to grab the papaya ... “Do (patients) feel this?”

Her look turned to fright when the nurse practitioner at her station answered that they do.

Second, despite the gruffness – to say the least – of Lesley’s instructors, one is still struck by her own idealism and, what is more, her genuine passion for learning, helping others and getting involved.

“I want my actions to be consistent with my words,” Lesley said. She was explaining why she pursued learning about abortion during med school, but her words themselves are echoed by every person who seeks to defend life, too.

But the story’s conclusion leads one to wonder what, exactly, we are supposed to take away from the lessons of Lesley’s journey. To ruin the ending for you, she veered away from her dream of being an abortion-providing OB/GYN but still passionately holds to her belief in abortion rights.

Is it the moral of the story that those who do resolve to provide abortions are heroic? Or that there is something to be said for Lesley’s realization that “vacuuming out a uterus and counting the parts of the fetus did not seem like a desirable way to spend her work days”? Or – and this seems the most plausible, considering the tone of the entire article – that the lesson is only determined on an individual basis?

A journalistic form of moral relativism, if you will, summed up in a rather horrifying piece of advice from one professor to students thinking of becoming abortion providers.

“The first step is looking into your heart and asking if this is really what you want to do,” she said.

Great words in general, to be sure, but is that all a published academic can offer someone thinking of pursuing a career of taking innocent life? Despite Lesley’s persistent questioning and the story’s descriptions of ethical dilemmas abortionists do face (“What about the woman who comes in for her third abortion and doesn’t want to hear about birth control?”), there is no real confrontation of the ultimate question:

What if you are really killing an innocent, human being?

Lesley never seemed to grasp that, at least not from her description of the first time she witnessed a second-trimester abortion.

“It was definitely gruesome,” she said. “You could make out what a fetus could look like, tiny feet, lungs, but it didn’t look like a person.”

Walker Percy wrote another essay on abortion in 1981 entitled “A View of Abortion, With Something to Offend Everybody” (the title itself is a great hint at Percy’s own writing style).

“To pro-abortionists,” he proclaimed. “According to the opinion polls, it looks as if you may get your way. But you’re not going to have it both ways. You’re going to be told what you’re doing.”

Despite its faults, this story does that.

Uncertainity, Instability and More Bailout Spending

Just a glance at headlines like “Fed Pledges Top $7.4 Trillion” and “U.S. Government Comes to Citigroup’s Aid, Again” will induce winces in any reader the slightest bit aware of the roller coaster that has been the U.S. financial industry for the past couple months.

In the Citigroup bailout (the second in a little over a month, this one at $20 million and the previous at $5 million more), the federal government will get a $7 billion stake in the bank as well as extended control over Citigroup’s operations, including executive pay and stock dividends. In return, it will take on 90% of Citigroup’s losses on a portfolio of bad loans – a burden worth more than $300 billion. 

Still, speaking of a roller coaster stock market, Citigroup’s market value did bounce back by 53% with news of the second rescue, and U.S. stocks in general had the biggest two-day rally in 21 years by the end of yesterday. 

Obama revealed his economic team yesterday in Chicago and took the opportunity to press further for an economic stimulus plan.

“I want to see it enacted right away,” the Wall Street Journal quotes the president-elect as saying. “It is going to be of a size and scope that is necessary to get this economy back on track.”

And no one’s denying that such a plan  – which congressional Democrats say will be on the new President’s desk on Inauguration Day – will have a huge price tag.

“These extraordinary stresses on our financial system require extraordinary policy responses,” Obama said.

In the meanwhile, GM got sent back to the drawing board last week, told to come up with a working plan to prove to Congress why a $25 billion bailout for the auto industry won’t be in vain. The largest U.S. automaker will be back in Washington the first week of December to discuss the company report – and this time, it’s said, they’ll be joining the other Detroit automakers in a caravan to D.C., not the companies’ private jets.

Home builders are also joining the bailout spree, lobbying Congress for a $250 billion “Fix Housing First” stimulus package that would give tax credits to home buyers and offer federally-subsidized mortgage rates. Builders point out that the real estate industry has been at the root of the current financial crisis and that until it’s stabilized, the nation’s financial problems will only snowball. But critics of a housing rescue say such intervention would “rewrite the laws of supply and demand” in the housing market and cause even more uncertainty.

Finally …Pope Benedict XVI may not have a solution to the global financial crisis, but a 1985 presentation he gave to a “Church and Economy symposium” can certainly apply in today’s instability.

It takes a real ethics, sustained by strong religious convictions, to develop an economic system that truly focuses on the common good, he had said. And, “conversely, it has also become obvious that the decline of such discipline can actually cause the laws of the market to collapse.”

Everyone, from media pundits to politicians whose own hands were deeper in the making of the financial crisis than they’d care to admit, lambasts the mentality of greed, corruption and downright hubris that ultimately led to Wall Street’s meltdown. Looking back with then-Cardinal Ratzinger’s words, we can wince again and say hindsight’s 20/20, but 23 years ago, the future pope’s prophetic vision was dead on.

Of course, now the question is, have we learned our lesson?

Weekend Highlights

This weekend brought more news from the Obama transition team, Congress on an economic stimulus plan, the ever-developing tension between Russia and its neighbors and the Church and its stance against affronts to life.

• As Obama rolls out his economic transition team today, the country waits expectantly for more news on his proposed economic stimulus package: a plan he linked on Saturday with the “survival of the American dream” and he said would create 2.5 million more jobs over the next two years. The Washington Post points out that the price tag for such a package, though, could easily rival the $700 federal bailout passed by Congress this fall, surpassing what the U.S. has spent over the last six years and Iraq and, perhaps most noticeably, force Obama to postpone his campaign promise of repealing the Bush tax cuts for families making over $250,000.

• In another Saturday announcement, Obama named Ellen Moran, the current director of EMILY’s List, as his communications director. EMILY’s List is an organization dedicated to electing pro-choice, Democratic women to office, and has even cut funding for members who voted to ban partial birth abortion. The Catholic News Agency sees Ellen Moran’s appointment as another sign of the Obama administration’s high level of comfort with the “pro-abortion lobby.”

• On his last scheduled trip abroad, President Bush continued to champion free trade at an economic summit of Asia-Pacific nations. “One of the enduring lessons of the Great Depression is that global protectionism is a path to global economic ruin,” he said, adding that the current, worldwide financial crisis can open the door to greater unity and eventual prosperity among nations.

• Tension between Russia and Georgia increased yet again on Sunday when Georgian officials accused Russia of firing upon a motorcade that was transporting the Georgian and Polish presidents near the South Ossetian border.  Russia has not only denied the claim but labeled it as yet another “instance of wishful thinking on the part of Georgia.”

• In Church news, tens of thousands of Japanese Catholics turned out in Nagasaki for the massive beatification ceremony of 188 martyrs. The ceremony itself – set apart by women in kimonos arranging candles at the altar and a giant, golden mural depicting the martyrs – was the largest of its kind to ever take place in Asia, said the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Japan.

• Finally, two bishops in the northern U.S. have continued the press against President-elect Obama’s support of the Freedom of Choice Act and pro-abortion legislation in general. In advocating legalized abortion, Bishop Samuel Aquila of Fargo said, Obama “directly opposes the divine law of God concerning the dignity of each human life, and so he strongly disagrees with the position of the Catholic Church.” Bishop Michael Hoeppner of the Crookston Diocese in Minnesota acknowledged that the Church and Her pastors have always taught the sanctity of life, but “some politicians have missed that.” Bishop Aquila referenced Vice President-elect Biden, as well, saying it’s good that “at least his conscience bothers him” when trying to reconcile his Catholic faith with his pro-abortion stance. That discrepancy between faith and politics, the bishops said, is what they seek to correct. 

Wrapping up the Week

Midway through this week, a settlement between the New Jersey attorney general and the popular online dating service eHarmony sent ripples through both religious conservatives and gay rights activists’ circles.

EHarmony was founded in 2000 by a Christian psychologist whose books on love and relationships have been published by Focus on the Family. In the past, it has limited its match-making services to heterosexual couples.

In 2005, however, this policy led to a gay man’s complaint with New Jersey’s attorney general, saying eHarmony had violated the state’s antidiscrimination law. The attorney general agreed, and now the company is retooling its services with a separate website for homosexual match-seekers. And in addition to that, now all gays and lesbians who tried using the site over the past four years can file a class-action lawsuit against the company.

While gay rights advocates have hailed the decision and eHarmony’s proposed new site , frustration has also brewed on both sides of the debate.

A representative of the plaintiffs referred to the eHarmony offshoot – “Compatible Partners” – as a “separate but equal type of situation.”

And conservatives see the settlement as just that – “a settlement” – on what a company founded by an evangelical Christian should recognize as immoral.

Either way, it’s a telling sign that sexual orientation-based discrimination lawsuits are not going away.

Speaking of which, the largest gay and lesbian rights organization in New England called for a push for same-sex marriages in the entire region by 2012. Currently, Massachusetts and Connecticut are the only states in the country to allow same-sex marriage, though Vermont and New Hampshire have legalized civil unions. And even tiny Rhode Island got in with the anti-Proposition 8 protests after Election Day.

Vermont’s governor has already spoken out against a bill that would allow same-sex marriage in the state – legislation at least one state senator is planning on introducing next year.

Pick of the Day

Earlier this week, we featured two stories that stood out as witnesses – whether those involved realized it or not – to the value of every life. The Italian nuns, doctors and government officials defending the life of a comatose woman, and the homicide detectives who mourned the death of an abandoned newborn remind us that life – all life – is worth fighting for when in danger and grieving over when destroyed.

Yesterday's Seattle Times ran another story that reflects that truth, albeit in a different way.

“Embryo adoption gives new life to some couples’ hopes for a child,” the headline proclaims, with the article going on to tell various couples’ stories of their adoption of a frozen embryo.

What makes the story so great is the personal angle: it captures the awe the Lancasters felt when realizing that their adopted daughter – who Maria Lancaster carried in her womb for nine months before giving birth – was her own, unique person, even in her frozen, embryonic stage. The accompanying video is especially powerful in this way.

“It was a demonstration to us that every embryo is a complete, unique and total human being in its tiniest form,” said Maria, whose daughter, Elisha, is now 5-years-old.

And then, after telling the Lancasters’ story, the article explains the implications of Maria’s above statement, focusing on the source of those frozen embryos in the first place: leftover products of in vitro fertilization, which are discarded, donated for research (that inevitably destroys them), indefinitely frozen or, in minority cases such as the Lancasters, offered up for adoption.

While the practice of donating embryos to infertile couples is, in itself, not particularly controversial, the question of what's to be done with some 400,000 frozen embryos in storage nationwide touches on some of the most controversial issues of the day, from abortion to stem-cell research.

… For many fertility clinics, it comes down to letting patients decide for themselves when human life begins. And "from there, they choose the option of what to do with their embryos," said Stephanie Frickleton with Pacific Northwest Fertility in Seattle, which runs its own embryo-donation program.

For the record, Catholic teaching does not allow for in vitro fertilization, as it divorces the unitive and procreative ends of sexual relations, as well as subjects the conceived child “into the power of doctors and biologists and establishes the domination of technology over the origin and destiny of the human person.” Said simply, it gives human beings, not God, rein over the very existence of another human soul.

“Such a relationship of domination is in itself contrary to the dignity and equality that must be common to parents and children,” the Catechism of the Catholic Church continues (2377), quoting the Vatican document Donum vitae.

However, the Church has not issued an official teaching on the morality of embryonic adoptions – a practice some say is saving lives that would otherwise be literally discarded without a second thought.

All that said, the Seattle Times quotes are very telling, as those who don’t share the Lancasters’ views of conception – and don’t want others to share them, either – speak out.

For example, the spokesman for the American Society for Reproductive Medicine says he supports embryonic adoption – but just doesn’t call it that.

That term, he said, is used by groups who want to “elevate the moral status of the embryo to be the equivalent of an existing child."

And if that were the case, the spokesman concludes, “you can't allow freezing of these embryos for later use (because) we don't freeze babies.” He admits it would also rule out abortion and the use of certain contraceptives.

Ironic, isn’t it, how accurate those statements are.

News overview

Looking for a quick glimpse at noteworthy headlines of the past day?

• By now we’ve probably all heard of the increase in pirate attacks of the Somali coast. (This morning, it was reported the pirates had seized their ninth vessel in 12 days). But what’s less known is the pirates’ motivation (money, plain and simple, a “pirate spokesman” told the New York Times earlier this fall) for hijacking oil tankers and other cargo ships. What’s perhaps even more fascinating is the symbiotic relationship between Somalia’s sea brigands and coastal towns, once destitute but now booming, thanks to a pirate economy. 

• With Alaska’s Ted Stevens finally out of the Senate – the remaining votes to be counted cannot defeat his opponent’s tally so far – Democrats are only two seats away from the coveted 60-seat, “filibuster-proof” Senate. Minnesota and Georgia’s Senate races still need to be decided.

• Speaking of the Senate, it’s not looking good for Detroit’s automakers, as that house of Congress grilled their CEOs and union leader on how they plan to salvage the industry with their requested $25 billion in federal aid. Even Detroit-sympathizer Sen. Chris Dodd (D.-Conn.) told the carmakers he didn’t expect the bill to pass, and senators from both parties expressed concern that a bailout would merely amount to delaying the failure of the industry.

• Having nothing to do with politics or the economy, a recent study has revealed a link between birth defects and assisted reproduction procedures. Researchers learned that, compared to babies naturally conceived, babies born to couples who conceived via methods such as in vitro fertilization had twice as many heart defects and cleft lips and up to four times as many gastrointestinal defects.

• Finally, in another move that doesn’t bode well for pro-lifers: former South Dakota senator Tom Daschle has been picked by President-elect Obama to serve as secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services. Daschle has a mixed approval rating from NARAL, having voted to ban partial birth abortion. He is, however, in favor of expanding embryonic stem cell research and signed a letter to President Bush asking that restrictions on the practice be loosened. American Papist connects the dots between Daschle – who is Catholic – and his abortion stance. At stake in HHS? The Freedom of Choice Act and healthcare workers’ conscience protection, for starters. 

No Doubt of the Dignity of Life

There’s a lot of discouraging news out there, but if you were to pick just two stories to read off Headline Bistro today, make it these: they’re beautiful reminders that, even in the battle between the cultures of life and death, the truth is starkly evident to those who choose to see it.

First, in Italy – an increasingly secular country that, despite its Catholic roots, has an ever-dwindling Mass-attending population – we see Catholic hospitals and health workers refusing to take part in the euthanizing of 37-year-old Eluana Englaro.

For those who don’t know, Englaro’s case is reminiscent of Terri Schiavo’s in Florida a few years ago; the Italian woman has been in a car accident-related coma for 16 years, and her father wishes to stop feeding her and allow her to die in her vegetative state.

Last week, Italy’s top court ruled in favor of the father – but, in a situation that’s hard to imagine being imitated in the United States, Englaro’s doctors have so far refused to remove her feeding tube.

“Our hospitals are places of life, not death,” was the bold quote from the head of health of the Englaro family’s region.

The nuns caring for Englaro at the hospital have also pleaded that they be allowed to continue nourishing their patient, for her sake and “others in her condition.”

The president of the Lombardy region in which the hospital is located likewise spoke out, this time as a warning: doctors who assist in a euthanasia procedure will be disciplined for “failing to honor commitments to the well-being of their patients."

An Italian newspaper reported that Englaros’ father might take her abroad to end her life, but as the Italian justice minister said, “Anyone who believes in God is praying for Eluana.”

What’s amazing is that these are not official voices from the Church speaking out in defense of Eluana Englaro’s life – with the exception of the hospital nuns, they are lay people who see the dignity in every man and woman and know where true justice lies in this case. What is more, they are speaking from their positions of authority as government ministers and political leaders, unabashed at the thought of allowing personal convictions and the truth of the dignity of life to guide their work.

Would that more politicians, doctors and other leaders in our country have the courage to do the same – and that our nation, as a whole, would allow them. (The Health and Human Services proposed rule for conscience protection is being fiercely attacked by abortion proponents).

The second story takes place in Maryland and features an unlikely cast in another poignant example of what happens when people recognize the tragedy and horror of the destruction of innocent life: homicide detectives arranging a funeral – and coming as the only mourners – for a newborn baby found abandoned in a park.

The detectives named the baby Maria del Pilar, in homage of her Hispanic ethnicity but also the feast day on which she was born and died: that of the Virgin of El Pilar.

“This was a baby no one loved. This was a child who did absolutely nothing wrong,” said the head of major crimes in Prince George County.

While the baby’s mother was found and charged with murder, no one was coming forward to claim the child’s body and arrange a funeral. So the police department stepped in, a local funeral home donated a tiny coffin and a funeral was held this Monday.

“These are the kinds of victims your heart just breaks for, because they were completely innocent,” said a female detective who had helped organize a funeral for another abandoned newborn.

It’s heartbreakingly clear to all, from the story’s readers to those described in it, that not only was an innocent life taken, but that it was right – indeed, necessary – for Maria del Pilar to be treated with dignity and respect with her burial.

Is this evident in our nation’s abortion laws? Not at all – but it’s a step. When we recognize the humanity of even the tiniest person, we also know that there is something intrinsically wrong when she is left to die in a park by a mother who doesn’t want her child. We call that infanticide. What prevents us from taking the next step: that this crime only parallels an action we do consider legal, in which a mother who doesn’t want her child allows it to be killed in her own womb?

The Washington Post quoted a police chaplain as saying that most people don’t realize the bond formed between investigators and the victims whose murders they’re trying to solve.

That bond – that realization that, no matter her size or age, this baby was a living, human being deserving of dignity and rights – speaks volumes. And perhaps those homicide detectives are closer than so much of our society in recognizing the horror of taking her life: before or after she was born.   

More Obama First Moves, and a Word from the Pope

Rumors are still flying that President-elect Obama will ask former primaries rival Hillary Clinton to serve as Secretary of State, with a British paper reporting that Clinton is set to accept the position.

Yesterday, Obama met with another former rival, Sen. McCain, himself.

ABC reports a successful meeting, at least according to sources close to both former candidates and the leaders’ joint statement after their conversation.

Before the meeting, Obama told reporters he wanted to discuss with McCain “about how he can work together to fix up the country and also to offer thanks … for the outstanding service he’s already rendered.”

Speaking on getting the ball rolling to “fix up the country,” the Washington Post reports that in October, Obama specifically wooed federal employees of seven government agencies with letters detailing how his administration would benefit their programs.

For example, Obama pledged to secure resources needed for Department of Housing and Urban Development programs, advocated for bargaining rights and workplace protections for Transportation Security Administration workers and, in a letter to the Department of Labor, harshly criticized what he called the Bush Administration’s “failure to ensure mine safety.”

The Post noted that Obama offered no high-cost initiatives – indeed, no additional spending at all – to the Defense Department.

In financial news, the legislative battle begins for the beleaguered U.S. auto industry, with the proposal to loan automakers $25 billion out of the $700 billion federal bailout set to be debated in Congress this week.

It’s a tense battle, and Bloomberg reports that, not surprisingly, some of the Republican congressmen who oppose the measure represent states with factories owned by foreign car manufacturers.

“We have a very large and vibrant automobile sector in Alabama,” said Rep. Jeff Sessions, whose state is home to two German-based Daimler plants, as well as Honda and Hyundai ones.

At the Washington Post, Robert Samuelson argues that a bailout can work for General Motors – with strict boundaries enforced.

In the Wall Street Journal, Michael Levine disagrees, saying bankruptcy is “the best option” for GM’s future survival. 

Finally, from the Vatican: Pope Benedict addressed the Pontifical Council for the Laity over the weekend, citing the especial need of educating and assisting Catholic politicians “that they would be coherent with their professed faith.”

 It’s a message sure to resonate over the Atlantic, at least to varying degrees, in the wake of Catholic politicians such as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Vice President-elect Joe Biden misrepresenting Church teaching in the public square.

On a related note, one bishop in North Dakota, Bishop Samuel Aquila of Fargo, wrote in his diocesan paper that he was praying for conversion in the heart of President-elect Obama, that he might “recognize the dignity of human life from the moment of conception until natural death and the truth that no government has the right to legalize abortion.”

Bishop Aquila likewise urged Catholics to integrate faith and politics, lamenting the trend of Catholic politicians to abandon the truth of their faith once in office. This not only goes against what it is to live as a faithful Catholic, he said, but also against the spirit of the Founding Fathers.

He quoted George Washington for emphasis, who said, “"Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports."

Weekend Wrap

Fires continued to ravage Southern California this weekend, although the harsh winds that drove most of the bigger blazes died down on Sunday.

More than 700 homes have been destroyed, though, with nearly 40 people injured.

In a story of interest to American Catholics, Doug Kmiec, the law professor famously connected now with the “pro-Obama, pro-life” argument of this past election season, gave a lecture at a California seminary recently. According to an attendee, Kmiec said he still held to his support of Obama but that if Pope Benedict told him, “Doug, you’re wrong,” he would have stand with the Magisterium and change his position.

Abroad, Russia’s Medvedev called for talks with President-elect Obama as soon as possible after Jan. 20, coming across as less aggressive than his state of the nation address in the wake of America’s election night. Then, the Russian president threatened to deploy missiles within Europe in protest of the planned U.S.-Poland missile shield; this time around, Medvedev insisted that address was not to be taken as “blackmail” against Obama. Russia has likewise backed off on the missile deployment.

At home, this story is unlikely to see much attention, though for some its potential implications may seem troublesome: a 12-year-old boy, the son of Hasidic Jews, died over the weekend in a D.C. children’s hospital.

The boy, named Motl Brody, had severe brain cancer and had been pronounced brain dead by the hospital on Nov. 4. However, his parents’ religious beliefs dictate that a person is not dead until the heart and lungs stop functioning – and their son’s were still working, albeit with the help of drugs and artificial support.

The result was a court battle, with the hospital saying its “scarce resources are being used for the preservation of a deceased body,” and the Jewish parents insisting their son be kept on life support until his heart and lungs ceased to respond.

That finally happened on Saturday, and the boy was buried the next day, making the court action moot – but still, one wonders if it foreshadows more ethics and legal battles concerning religious freedom and hospitals’ takes on end-of-life situations.

And, last but not least, as opponents of embryonic stem cell research brace for an Obama-executive order to loosen restrictions on the practice, Pfizer – the world’s largest drugmaker – announced it will pour $100 million into research of both embryonic and adult stem cells.

The company seeks to research ways stem cells can slow or even reverse the body’s aging process – a seemingly classic case of seeking the Fountain of Youth by means of destroying life, perhaps? Incidentally, Pfizer has fallen 28 percent in the New York Stock Exchange this year.

While the Bloomberg article, at least, cites progress made with non-embryonic stem cells – such as the recent breakthrough of reprogramming adult cells into the equivalent of embryonic ones – the company’s decision to still pursue research that requires the destruction of days-old embryos, hand-in-hand with the near certainty of federal funds also promoting the practice, does not bode well with proponents of a culture of life.

Debating the Bailout

Charles Krauthammer points out that, finally, we have come to a clear debate on the federal bailout.

The fault line of this debate, Krauthammer says, is the bailout of Detroit’s auto industry, although yesterday saw stories of the mayors of Philadelphia, Phoenix and Atlanta writing a joint letter to the Treasury in which they requested a portion of the $700 billion federal bailout fund.

It’s undeniable that the proposed $25 billion – set to be debated in its legislative form in the Senate this Monday – to the Big Three U.S. automakers (GM, Ford and Chrysler) has sparked perhaps the most debate as to the direction of the federal bailout in general.

“Where do you stop?” Krauthammer asks. “Once you’ve gone beyond the financial sector, every struggling industry will make a claim on the federal treasury. What are the grounds for saying yes or no?”

Think he’s stretching it? What about this New York Times article, “Lobbyists Swarm the Treasury for Piece of Bailout Pie”? Talk about mental images. According to the NY Times’ sources within various industries, the Treasury itself “wants to avoid too strict a definition of eligible institutions,” at least until Obama begins his term.

The realization that the bailout package doesn’t even have an oversight panel yet is frustrating to all – one cynical economist takes a stab at changing the bailout’s acronym, TARP (for Troubled Asset Relief Program) to BEAST, Bail out Everyone And Sink the Taxpayer. However, Krauthammer has a point that at least some decent, well-articulated debate is going on, particularly over the auto industry rescue.

(GM, for the record, says a majority of Americans believe the government should intervene and help the industry with loans.)

On The Corner: Jim Manzi acknowledges the “fairness” question poised by supporters of a bailout – “Is this fair, given that you and I are being forced to cough up an immense amount of money to bailout bankers in New York who are far less sympathetic characters than assembly line workers or Assistant Market Research Managers in Warren, Michigan?”

But Manzi holds to his argument against an “exercise of political power to deliver taxpayer funds to one organized group of citizens” at the expense of the country’s taxpayers.

Elsewhere, Tom Piatak says that a government investment in the U.S. auto industry is not irresponsible or a waste of taxpayers’ dollars, particularly taking into account the small-in-comparison amount actually requested (AIG just got an additional $150 billion), the tremendous impact the demise of the Big Three would have on economy (an estimated three million lost jobs, to start with) and the fact that American cars are ranking competitively against, if not better than, foreign models.

It’s a hard debate, to be sure, but, as Krauthammer drives home in his editorial, one that highlights the differences in economic philosophies and begs the question as to which path America will tread in the coming months.