Cloning by Any Other Name …

CHICAGO SUN-TIMES, Feb. 28 — By properly identifying embryonic stem-cell research as human cloning, Massachusetts Gov. W. Mitt Romney has changed the terms of the debate and has strengthened the prolife position, observed Washington columnist Michael Novak.

Romney announced in February that he would veto a bill to fund a Harvard University program similar to California’s Proposition 71, “which provides $3 billion in state funds for producing human embryos but does not contain the word cloning,” Novak wrote. While derided as out of step with the scientific and medical community, Romney “is not out of step,” noted Novak, “with the ordinary people of Massachusetts, who polls indicate unalterably oppose cloning.”

Necessary Over-reaction

THE NEW YORK POST, Feb. 28 — “Virginia took steps [in February] to become the 18th state to ratify a constitutional gay-marriage ban,” reported columnist Arnold Ahlert, calling the move “a triumph of over-reaction brought about by gay-marriage activists.”

Ahlert argues that, while Americans don’t mind conceding homosexuals the legal means to protect assets, transfer estates and so on, they certainly do “mind overturning 2,000 years of religious tradition — by court order, no less.”

Saving Baby Girls

THE NEW YORK TIMES, Feb.19 — The Chinese city of Guiyang enacted a pioneering ban in January on abortions after the 14th week of pregnancy, part of a campaign to address one of the world’s biggest gaps between male and female births that, though piecemeal, is quickly gathering momentum across China.

National laws already prohibit sonograms for gender detection, which becomes possible after the 14th week, but the law has been spottily enforced. The technology has long been used in China to detect the sex of babies, a prelude to aborting unborn female babies due to the national one-child policy and a cultural bias that favors males.

“The result,” reported The Times, “has been a human and public health disaster: the large-scale abortion of and the routine killing or abandonment of baby girls.”

Hard-Core No More

THE DENVER POST, Feb. 25 — Pro-family groups are declaring victory over Adelphia, the nation’s fifth largest cable provider, which has abruptly pulled the plug on the hard-core pornographic movies it started to offer a month earlier to its Southern California markets.

“Some concern has been expressed over this type of adult programming. Adelphia will remove it from all of its systems,” The Post quoted an Adelphia spokesman saying.

In response to the company’s foray into the most graphic type of pornography, several organizations, including the American Family Association and Concerned Women for America, began campaigns against the company.

“It’s a good start and a reaction to public outcry,” said Robert Knight, director of the Culture & Family Institute. “Now, they should get rid of the other pornography on their system as well.”