Deception Elevated to an Art Form
Today (January 6) is the first day of the new Congress. The 111th Congress will be characterized by larger, stronger pro-abortion margins in both Houses, which will work in tandem with pro-abortion President-elect Barack Obama.
Chastened by past defeats, pro-abortion Democrats have elevated hiding their real agenda into an art form. As I thought of how best to illustrate our task, I thought of a three-dimensional paintings I saw over the weekend in a portrait gallery.
If you looked straight on, you saw one representation. But if you looked at the same painting from the right and the left side you were amazed to see an entirely different second and third representation, respectively.
Let's take a New York Times piece that ran over the weekend to illustrate my point. Pro-abortionists in Congress are supposedly figuring out the best way to grease the skids for massive federal funding of stem cell research that requires the deaths of human embryos. The particulars need not detain us here.
The Democrats want you to accept their "portrait" of the reasons the pro-life policy of President George W. Bush ought to be overturned and the floodgates to unbridled [and unethical] embryonic stem cell research opened. It includes
* "Democrats also say they hope to reduce the divisiveness of the debate by framing the stem cell policy as more of a health care issue with the potential to provide new treatments, and less of a fight that spills over into the abortion arena," according to Times reporter Carl Hulse.
* "Last year, it seemed that the human embryo dispute was about to become moot," with the results of ethically unobjectionable alternatives far outpacing paltry returns from embryonic stem cells (ESCs). But nonethess ESCs "are the gold standard," according to one researcher, because, well, you never know when you might need them.
But if you look at the stem cell picture from the side, you see a much different--and much more realistic--representation. For example, the nonsense about reframing "stem cell policy" [meaning the use of embryonic stem cells] as health care is as repetitious as it is untrue.
On December 30, reviewing the year in science, USA Today did a fine job pointing out several important (even historic) breakthroughs as well as other promising results. The only problem was that the way the explanation of this "crescendo of discoveries" read, the only conclusion the casual reader could reach is that they all came about from the use of ESCs. In fact none of them were.
All had to do with alternatives that avoided the need for stem cells from human embryos. In a word these are the only stem cell actually treating patients, and the only ones likely to treat patients in the near (or even far) future.
Likewise, it is true (as proponents of ESCs implied to Hulse) that techniques that turn the clock back on ordinary human skin cells so that they go back in time to become embryonic stem cells still have kinks to be worked out. But some of the major obstacles have already been overcome, and there is no reason to believe that what few remain won't be promptly taken care of. If there is a "gold standard," it is techniques that bypass human embryos altogether!
In the months to come we will see a steady litany of pro-abortion trickery. Our task will be to serve as the voice of truth so that the American public is not deceived. Be sure to come here and to National Right to Life News to be kept updated.
Contact: Dave Andrusko
Source: National Right to Life
Source URL: http://www.nrlc.org
Publish Date: January 5, 2009
Link to this article:
http://www.ifrl.org/ifrl/news/090106_6.htm
