Couples Have Babies to ‘Save’ Other Siblings

THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE, May 5 — Doctors in Chicago reporting in the Journal of the American Medical Association announced the births of five babies for the use of their umbilical cord blood or bone marrow to save the lives of severely ill siblings.

Embr yos are created in vitro and then DNA removed from them to test for antigen genes that are compatible to those of the sibling, the newspaper reported. The embr yos with matches are then placed in the mother with the hopes they will implant and grow into a baby.

The study the doctors reported on required creation of 199 eight-celled embr yos, “many of which lost the luck of the draw merely because they weren't compatible,” the Tribune reported.

Pope John Paul II, in his 2000 address to the 18th International Congress of the Transplantation Society, said of such procedures: “Any procedure that tends to commercialize human organs or to consider them as items of exchange or trade must be considered morally unacceptable, because use of the body as an object is to violate the dignity of the human person.”

Pelosi Says She'll Take Communion

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS, April 29 — House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., a Catholic who supports abortion, says she'll take Communion regardless of what some bishops and Church leaders have said on the topic.

“I fully intend to receive Communion, one way or another. That's ver y important to me,” she told reporters at her April 29 weekly press conference, the wire ser vice reported.

Pelosi said she believed her support of abortion was “one that is consistent with [her] Catholic upbringing, which said that ever y person has a free will and has the responsibility to live their lives in a way that they would have to account for in the end.”

Missouri Republicans Oppose Catholic Conference

THE KANSAS CITY STAR, May 4 — Some Missouri Catholic Republicans are at odds with the Missouri Catholic Conference on its position against Republicans’ proposals to cut Medicaid.

Republicans are particularly incensed at the conference's main lobbyist, Larr y Weber.

They accuse him of distorting figures in a letter from the conference signed by the bishops that said the cuts would hinder access to health care for the state's poorest citizens. Republicans argue that the 20,000 figure in the letter would actually be closer to 2,400, the newspaper reported.

“We felt it was obvious the figures before the House understated the effect of the bill,” Weber told the paper. “To deprive state assistance from families like this we just thought is unconscionable.”

Rep. Jodi Stefanick, R-St. Louis, a Catholic who said she follows Church teachings, said it was frustrating to be on the opposite side of the Church on the issue.