Free Republic

MATTERS OF LIFE AND DEATH 131,000 Coloradans endorse 'personhood' plan Ballot initiative would extend constitution's protections to pre-born Posted: May 13, 2008 9:41 pm Eastern © 2008 WorldNetDaily Kristi Burton, spokeswoman for Colorado for Equal Rights, and her mother announcing more than 131,000 Coloradans want a personhood amendment on the 2008 election ballot More than 131,000 Coloradans have endorsed a plan to put an initiative on the fall 2008 election ballot that would allow voters to extend the U.S. Constitution's protections to those who haven't been born yet, something supporters say the U.S. founders intended all along. In a campaign...

Fusion protein could be targeted to stop parasites from reproducing. When two become one: the mysterious process of fertilisation.Getty Boy meets girl. Sperm meets egg. Now, scientists are a step closer to understanding the climax of this eternal love story: how sperm and egg merge to create a brand new individual. “It’s really the defining moment in an organism,” says William Snell, a biologist at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, Texas, who headed one of the teams that made the find. Snell, along with a group in Britain, discovered that a protein called HAP2 is involved...

Commentary by Rev. Thomas J. Euteneuer, President, Human Life International On September 28th the Connecticut bishops issued an unfortunate statement allowing the Plan B abortion-causing drug to be used in cases of rape in Catholic hospitals. I have written respectfully and urgently to the Connecticut Catholic Conference (CCC) and to each bishop individually to ask them to withdraw this potentially precedent-setting statement, and I pray that they do so. I am extremely concerned that this statement will begin to have a domino effect on other Catholic hospitals and healthcare institutions, and I write to you today to ask your...

U.S. Catholic Health Association Giving Flawed Advice on Morning After Pill to Catholic Hospitals Commentary republished with permission by Matt Bowman of Alliance Defense FundExcerpted from http://www.constitutionallycorrect.com/archive/2007/10/03/553.aspx WASHINGTON, DC, October 3, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The Connecticut Catholic hospitals' spokesman Barry Feldman, in statements discussing the new policy allowing emergency contraception for rape victims even though embryos might not implant as a result, listed the Catholic Health Association as support for the new policy. The position of the Catholic Health Association on "emergency contraception" is well known and seriously flawed.  It basically presents "emergency contraception" as permissible even after a positive ovulation...

DUBLIN -- Female sharks can fertilize their own eggs and give birth without sperm from males, according to a new study of the asexual reproduction of a hammerhead in a US zoo. The joint Northern Ireland-US research, published today in the Royal Society's Biology Letter journal, analyzed the DNA of a shark born in 2001 in the Henry Doorly Zoo in Omaha . The shark was born in a tank with three potential mothers, none of whom had had contact with a male hammerhead for at least three years. Analysis of the baby shark's DNA found no trace of any...

Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- A new study reported in a prestigious medical journal confirms that the morning after pill does not reduce either abortion or pregnancy rates. The survey, published this month in the Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology, covers the use of the Plan B drug in 10 countries. Authors Elizabeth Raymond and James Trussell, advocates of the morning after pill, conducted a meta-analysis of studies conducted in 10 countries. They conclude that “increased access to emergency contraception pills enhance use but has not been shown to reduce unintended pregnancy rates." The authors note that “no study has shown...

This article reports on a 1993 lecture the late French geneticist and pro-life pioneer Dr. Jerome Lejeune delivered at the Pontifical John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family in Washington, D.C. This story originally appeared in the January 1994 Columbia and is a companion article to the January 2007 "By Their Works" profile of Knight and pro-life entrepreneur Bill Schneeberger. Dr. Jerome Lejeune, the French geneticist, still marvels at the circumstances that caused him to travel from his laboratory in Paris to a Tennessee courtroom to give expert testimony about when life begins. The 1989 case involved...

Vatican City, Apr. 20, 2006 (CNA) - Italian Vatican analyst Sandro Magister is releasing a long dialogue Cardinal  Martini sustained with Ignazio Marino, famous Italian bio-ethicist, and director of the Center of transplants of the Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia, about abortion, in-vitro fecundation and contraceptionAnd the answer is: “not immediatly with conception, but after” said Cardinal Martini, about when life starts, “with the consequences that derive from it,” added Magister. The long dialogue between the two men will be released in the next issue of the weekly “L’espresso,” a center-left weekly tomorrow,  it will be made available by Sandro...

Mammalian sperm must reside in the female reproductive tract before they are able to undergo the acrosome reaction. This maturation process is called capacitation. The mammalian egg is surrounded by an extracellular envelope called the zona pellucida, to which sperm must bind and penetrate before they can make contact with the surface of the egg itself. The zona pellucida of the mouse egg contains three glycoproteins called ZP-1, ZP-2 and ZP-3 that polymerize to form a gel. The zona of newly-ovulated eggs is also surrounded by a constellation of follicle cells in a matrix of hyaluronic acid. Figure 1 shows...

COPENHAGEN, Denmark, JUNE 25, 2005 (Zenit.org).- A flurry of news stories on in vitro fertilization techniques emanated from the 21st Annual Meeting of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology. The conference, held from Sunday to Wednesday in Copenhagen, heard from speakers about the latest research developments. A press release posted Monday on the conference Web site explained that scientists in the United Kingdom have proved that human embryonic stem cells can develop in the laboratory into the early forms of cells that eventually become eggs or sperm. This opens up the possibility that eggs and sperm could be...

Copenhagen, Denmark: Scientists in the UK have proved that human embryonic stem cells can develop in the laboratory into the early forms of cells that eventually become eggs or sperm. Their work opens up the possibility that eggs and sperm could be grown from stem cells and used for assisted reproduction, therapeutic cloning and the creation of more stem cells for further research and for the improved treatments for patients suffering from a range of diseases. Behrouz Aflatoonian will tell the 21st annual conference of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology today (Monday 20 June) that the research...

Human stem cells trigger immune attackJessica Ebert Doubt cast on therapeutic use of embryonic cell lines. Exposure to molecules from animals might have made human stem cells unacceptable.© ANDREW LEONARD / SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY Most human embryonic stem-cell lines, including those available to federally funded researchers in the United States, may be useless for therapeutic applications. The body's immune defences would probably attack the cells, say US researchers. When embryonic stem cells are added to serum from human blood, antibodies stick to the cells. This suggests the cells are seen as foreign, and that transplanting them into the body would...

Link post: Geology Picture of the Week, October 20-27, 2002

See my comment. Click on the image above for a larger, O.5 MB image. Read the article below for detailed explanation. Iron Enrichment Experiment

LONDON (Reuters) - A mix-up at a British clinic that left a white couple with black twins has sparked fears about the reliability of fertility treatment and left the law scrambling to catch up with science. While there are strict injunctions on identifying the twins and their sets of vying "parents," the case has thrown a spotlight on how medicine can mess with nature, leaving courts to pick up the pieces. "Embryos all look the same," Sonya Jerkovic, in charge of the London Fertility Center's laboratory, told Reuters after the latest blunder at an unnamed clinic. "It's our worst...