LIFE DIGEST: British woman eliminates embryos for one cancer-free child
- Jul 15, 2008 - 5
A London woman is carrying Great Britain’s first baby guaranteed not to inherit breast cancer, but she had to eliminate several of her other embryonic offspring to do so.
Doctors used preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD), a controversial screening method, to determine which of the 11 embryos created by means of in vitro fertilization (IVF) had the gene that would have resulted in a female child having a 50 to 85 percent chance of developing breast cancer, according to The Times of London.
Six of the embryos tested positive for the gene and were rejected. Two embryos without the gene were implanted, producing a pregnancy of 14 weeks as of June 29, and two others were frozen, The Times reported.
The 27-year-old mother, who desires to remain unnamed, and her 28-year-old husband are fertile, but they chose IVF and PGD because of the prevalence of breast cancer on one side of the family. The husband had tested positive for the gene, known as BRCA-1.
“For the past three generations, every single woman in my husband’s family has had breast cancer, as early as 27 and 29,” the mother said, according to The Times. “We felt that, if there was a possibility of eliminating this for our children, then that was a route we had to go down.”
R. Albert Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, said July 1 on his weblog the development again sadly shows some lives are considered unworthy of life.
“The laboratory is now a dangerous place for human embryos,” Mohler wrote. “They can be destroyed for stem cell research, frozen pending sale and rejected after genetic testing. This points to a very sad reality—there is now a search and destroy mission targeting human embryos considered unworthy and unwanted.
“Where does this stop? The designation of any trait—even the negative designation—creates a designer baby. Someone has decided that some trait is unacceptable.
“In this case it was a gene linked to cancer,” he wrote. “What next? We already know that the vast majority of babies diagnosed with Down syndrome are now aborted. How long before there is a preimplantation screen for that syndrome? Couples are now screening embryos for gender. How long before athletic ability or earning potential is linked to a gene? Blond hair? Blue eyes?”
Paul Serhal, the couple’s fertility doctor, said of the development, “Women now have the option of having this treatment to avoid the potential guilty feeling of passing on this genetic abnormality to a child. This gives us the chance to eradicate this problem in families.”
Unfortunately, it also provides the opportunity to eradicate members of families.
NEA endorsement of Obama ironic, pro-lifer says
The National Education Association’s recent endorsement of Democrat Barack Obama for president is sadly ironic, says a pro-life leader.
Nearly 10,000 members voted July 4 to back the U.S. senator from Illinois during the NEA’s Representative Assembly, which is convened yearly during the organization’s convention.
The “tragic irony” of the endorsement “is not lost on millions of pro-lifers across the country,” said Karen Cross, the National Right to Life Committee’s political director. “The NEA has chosen to back a presidential candidate who wants to continue a policy of abortion on demand, which has resulted in nearly 50 million missing students in classrooms from coast to coast since 1973.
“Barack Obama’s extremist pro-abortion agenda is a poison pill for our nation’s classrooms,” he said. “It borders on the incomprehensible that our nation’s educators would get behind a candidate whose agenda will result in more and more missing children.”
Obama has strongly supported abortion rights, even voting against a ban on partial-birth abortion as a member of the Illinois legislature. Partial-birth abortion is a procedure in which a nearly totally delivered child is killed typically in at least the fifth month of pregnancy.
The Democrats’ presumptive nominee has said the first thing would do as president would be to sign the Freedom of Choice Act, which would repeal abortion restrictions permitted under Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court opinion legalizing abortion.
Brazil rejects liberalization of abortion ban
An attempt to liberalize Brazil’s prohibition on abortion went down to a resounding defeat July 9.
The Justice and Constitution Committee of Brazil’s lower house of Congress defeated the legislation 57-4, according to LifeNews.com. The bill would have legalized abortion through the 12th week of pregnancy, LifeNews reported. It also would have allowed abortion through the 20th week in cases of rape or incest, as well as when the mother’s life is threatened or the child is unlikely to serve birth.
Brazil’s law permits abortion only when the mother’s life is directly endangered or when she has been victimized by sexual abuse, according to LifeNews.
The Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission works to protect the sanctity of human life. If you would like to learn more about this issue, additional resources are available here. If your church is interested in purchasing materials on the sanctity of human life, please visit our online bookstore and erlc.com.
Further Learning
Learn more about: Life, Abortion, Stem-Cell Research, Science, Bioethics
5 comments (post your own) feed
1 On Jul 15th, 2008, at 2:06pm, Manny Tomes wrote:
I’m not sure why Karen Cross is so surprised that a majority of the nation’s teachers are more concerned about how a candidates views are going to affect what goes on in the classroom than they are about those that will never get there. My wife is an extremely pro-life teacher who is not sure her school can survive any four years of the Bush approach to public education.
2 On Jul 20th, 2008, at 1:28pm, Mitch wrote:
Tomes: Your wife cannot handle another four years of a teacher and classroom proving they can teach. Our schools are nothing more than a Socialistic indoctrination center under the nea and will not be changed unless Christians unit for real education reform. I feel that Christians have allowed our youth to be indoctrinated and our money to go to those causes. We need to find a way to create our own charity style school systems that allow all to be educated
3 On Jul 21st, 2008, at 7:51am, Scott Beasley wrote:
I think one can’t be any more than mildly pro-life and still endorse a pro-abortion candidate, by definition.
4 On Aug 15th, 2008, at 3:22pm, Manny Tomes wrote:
Scott,
You obviously don’t know my wife. One of the big problems we have today is that many Christians who are pro-life have bought the political rhetoric of the republicans who know that if they just say all the right anti-abortion words they won’t really have to do any thing about it. They have been sucking Christians in with those some empty words since the 70s. If you are really pro-life rather than just pro-birth, you will recognize that the life issues are complicated and require more than lip service.
Mitch, your comments deserve no response.
5 On Aug 22nd, 2008, at 9:28pm, Scott Beasley wrote:
Manny,
You make some valid points about empty rhetoric - but not all of the Republican rhetoric has been empty. They did attempt to fix the partial-birth abortion debacle, over the objections of the Democrats. Meanwhile, as a state senator, Obama vigorously argued against the Born Alive bill in Indiana - effectively by arguing that protecting abortion doctors from legal liability was more important than guaranteeing that living infants had to be treated - how empty must THAT rhetoric have been?
Besides, at the end of the day, there’s still a difference between ‘holding your nose and voting for someone’ and ENDORSING them. Lastly, if you really want to ‘vote your conscience’, there are more than two names on the ballot.