LIFE DIGEST: Human rights to go to apes in Spain
- Jun 30, 2008 - 1
The Spanish parliament’s move to grant rights previously reserved for human beings to chimpanzees and other apes is a victory for those seeking to minimize the uniqueness of humanity, a bioethics specialist says.
An environmental committee in Spain’s legislature approved a resolution June 25 calling for the government to abide by the Great Apes Project, a 15-year-old campaign to grant the right to life, freedom and no torture to chimps, gorillas, orangutans and bonobos. The measure has the support of both parties and is expected to become law, according to Reuters News Service.
The Great Apes Project (GAP) is the brainchild of philosophers Peter Singer, a controversial ethics professor at Princeton University, and Paola Cavalieri, who founded it in 1993, Reuters reported.
GAP’s goal is not just to improve conditions for apes but “to demote human beings from the uniquely valuable species and into merely another animal in the forest,” Wesley Smith wrote on his weblog, Secondhand Smoke, which he describes as a “24/7 bioethics seminar.”
“Once people accept that premise, Judeo/Christian philosophy goes to the guillotine allowing the utilitarian agenda to proceed unhindered, leading in turn to the moral value of the weak and vulnerable among us becoming archaic, resulting in their loss of the right to life and being used instrumentally for those deemed more valuable.
“In the world being born out of the ashes of the sanctity/equality of human life ethic, value will be subjective and rights temporary – depending on one’s individual capacities rather than humanity,” Smith wrote. “And we will see apes . . . being viewed as more important than some humans.”
The Spanish resolution will prohibit using apes in circuses, television commercials, films and harmful experiments, according to Reuters. It will not ban apes from being housed in zoos, but 70 percent of those facilities will need to be upgraded dramatically, backers of the measure said, Reuters reported.
Pedro Pozas, Spanish director of the Great Apes Project, called it “a historic day in the struggle for animal rights and in defense of our evolutionary comrades.”
And it is only the beginning, Pozas told The Times of London. “We are seeking to break the species barrier — we are just the point of the spear,” he said.
Black pro-lifers urge parties to refuse Planned Parenthood gifts
African-American pro-life leaders marched on the national headquarters of both major political parties June 26 to ask them to refuse donations from Planned Parenthood, the country’s leading abortion provider.
About 60 people gathered outside the offices of the Democratic and Republican national committees to protest Planned Parenthood and to urge the parties and their candidates not to take any of the $10 million the organization has promised to spend on this year’s election campaign, according to The Washington Times. Leaders tore up symbolic, oversized checks for $10 million at both locations.
They also asked Congress to eliminate funding for Planned Parenthood.
The Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA), which recorded nearly 290,000 abortions at its affiliates in 2006, surpassed $1 billion in annual revenue for the first time last year. It received more than $336 million of that total in government grants and contracts.
Demonstrators charged PPFA with targeting blacks for abortion. They cited investigations last year by a UCLA student pro-life organization that uncovered staff members at several Planned Parenthood affiliates accepting racist-motivated donations by telephone.
“We are here to urge Democratic candidates that donations from Planned Parenthood are racist to the very core,” Day Gardner said in front of Democratic headquarters, The Times reported. Gardner is president of the National Black Pro-life Union. “I’m sick of hearing this is a Republican issue. For children killed or maimed by abortion, it’s a life-and-death issue.”
Demonstrators also expressed dissatisfaction with Republicans. The GOP’s “platform says ‘pro-life,’ but I don’t see the follow through,” said Harry Jackson, a Maryland pastor and chairman of the High Impact Leadership Coalition, according to The Times.
Appeals court lifts block on informed consent law
The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis lifted June 27 a lower-court order blocking enforcement of a particularly potent informed consent law enacted by South Dakota in 2005.
Among other requirements, the law calls for a doctor to inform a woman seeking an abortion that the procedure “will terminate the life of a whole, separate, unique, living human being” with whom she has a relationship that is protected by the U.S. Constitution and South Dakota laws.
The joint Planned Parenthood office of Minnesota, North Dakota and South Dakota won a preliminary injunction against the law before a federal judge. After a three-judge panel of the Eighth Circuit upheld the judge’s injunction, the decision was appealed to the entire appeals court.
In its 7-4 decision, the appeals court said Planned Parenthood failed to demonstrate it would be likely to succeed in arguing the law’s “living human being” language “is untruthful, misleading or not relevant to the decision to have an abortion.”
Jordan Lorence, senior counsel of the Alliance Defense Fund, which filed a friend-of-the-court brief for Family Research Council, said, “A woman’s life is worth more than Planned Parenthood’s bottom line. Anyone truly concerned about the interests of women supports making sure they have access to all the information necessary to make a fully informed decision. Planned Parenthood, on the other hand, has argued adamantly to restrict the information women have about the lives of their pre-born babies.”
The case is Planned Parenthood v. Rounds.
Dallas clinic closing, pro-life group reports
A Dallas abortion clinic is closing more than 10 years after pro-lifers began regularly praying and doing sidewalk counseling in front of the facility, according to a Roman Catholic group.
Aaron Women’s Health Center, which performed late-term abortions, becomes the eighth abortion clinic in Dallas to close since 1990, the Catholic Pro-life Committee reported in a June 23 news release. Charles Grahmann became bishop of the Dallas diocese that year and began leading a monthly prayer gathering outside Dallas clinics. He stepped down as bishop in 2007.
“We are overjoyed to hear that this notorious place of death is not relocating, but closing,” said Karen Garnett of the Catholic Pro-life Committee in a written statement. “We thank God that Dallas – and North Texas – will no longer be the home of a late-term abortion facility. [W]e’ll continue to pray and work towards the day when Dallas is an abortion-free city and the blood of innocent unborn children is no longer shed here.”
Louisiana’s Jindal signs ban on funds for cloning
Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, a Republican, has signed into law a bill banning state funding of all human cloning, his office announced June 26.
The measure not only bars human cloning to produce a live birth, typically referred to as reproductive cloning, but cloning to produce an embryo for experimentation, known as research cloning. In the latter, stem cells are extracted typically from a five- or six-day-old embryo, which results in the destruction of the tiny human being.
Stem cells are the body’s master cells that can develop into other cells and tissues, giving hope for the development of cures for a variety of diseases and other ailments. While embryonic stem cells have failed to produce treatments in human beings, stem cells from non-embryonic sources – such as umbilical cord blood, placentas, fat and bone marrow – have produced treatments for at least 73 human ailments, according to Do No Harm, a coalition promoting ethics in research.
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: Family, Parenting, Life, Abortion, Cloning, Citizenship, Human Rights
1 comments (post your own) feed
1 On Jul 2nd, 2008, at 7:53am, E. Ray Luck wrote:
Dr. Land,
I am a DoM serving in Southeast Tennessee. i met you a few years ago when you spoke at FBC, Athens, TN. I thank you for having me on your e-news list. The information is excellent and I appreciate so much the work you are doing to keep us informed and challenged to meet the challenges this world is putting before us as Christians. I try to share information that I feel our Association needs to be aware of, however I, like you probably feel from time to time, feel as if no one is listening. Therefore I want to encourage you to keep on keeping on, people are listening and matbe one day we will stand up and say enough is enough.
May God’s rich and powerful strength and wisdom fill daily for the task He has given to you to fulfill in Kingdom service.
RAY