Research With Influence

REUTERS, March 22 — Research partly funded by the Australian Church that adds weight to the promise of adult stem cells over embryonic cells has “so excited the Australian scientific community,” reported the wire service, “that the federal health minister indicated it may influence the vote when legislation allowing research on in vitro embryos comes up for review.”

The recently published work of a small team of researchers at Griffith University on cells obtained from the inside of the nose further indicates that adult stem cells can be made to change into any cells in the body without the medical or ethical problems of embryo cells.

A grant of $50,000 from the Australian bishops to support the project was helpful since most research dollars in Australia go to finance embryonic cell research, said the wire service.

Abortion Awareness

LIFESITE.COM, March 23 — Genocide Awareness Project, an educational exhibit that includes graphic images and compares abortion to historical atrocities such as the Holocaust, is having its intended effect in Canada.

“The student pro-life group maintains that pictures are a powerful medium to communicate their message to a visual culture,” said the Canadian pro-life Internet news service.

Despite being barred from protesting on most college campuses, and such events as a recent attack on the exhibit by two men near the University of Calgary, pro-life students are undeterred.

“As bad as it was to see the expensive signs damaged, it doesn’t compare to violently killing the unborn in the womb,” said Theresa Nugent. “And that’s why we’re here: to show society the atrocity of abortion.”

Veto Proof

THE KANSAS CITY STAR, March 25 — A bill sought by anti-abortion activists to strengthen state regulation of abortion clinics has cleared both houses of the legislature with enough support to override a veto from pro-abortion Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius.

The measure would require abortion clinics to obtain an annual license from the state, and would set minimum health and safety standards. It requires the health department to impose other rules, including what equipment is required.

Officials with Kansans for Life, the state’s largest anti-abortion group, are elated by the changes.

Religious Unity

JEWISH TELEGRAPH, March 17 — Britain’s chief rabbi, Dr. Jonathan Sacks, joined Catholic and Anglican leaders in endorsing a Tory proposal to change the time abortion may be permitted from 24 weeks’ gestation to 20.

He said legalized abortion has had “consequences few foresaw. Too often, abortion is being used for convenience.”

Dr. Rowan Williams, the Anglican archbishop of Canterbury, has recently said that, “for a large majority of Christians — not only Roman Catholics, and including [me] — it is impossible to regard abortion as anything other than the deliberate termination of a human life.”