Recently in Fetal Americans Category

Breitbart:

LONDON (AP) - Giving contraceptives to people in developing countries could help fight climate change by slowing population growth, experts said Friday. More than 200 million women worldwide want contraceptives, but don't have access to them, according to an editorial published in the British medical journal, Lancet. That results in 76 million unintended pregnancies every year. If those women had access to free condoms or other birth control methods, that could slow rates of population growth, possibly easing the pressure on the environment, the editors say.

First, here's the original Lancet article (reg req). (Where did they get the "76 million unintended pregnancies" number?)

Huge progress has been made since 1950 in both contraception and service delivery, but much remains to be done, especially in Africa. Worldwide, around 200 million women wish to delay or prevent pregnancy, but are not using effective contraception. Meeting their needs would cost about $3·9 billion a year, and could prevent 23 million unplanned births, 22 million induced abortions, 142 000 pregnancy-related deaths (including 53 000 from unsafe abortions) and 1·4 million infant deaths.135

Anna wants to know what Christians should be so afraid of about climate change agendas. Well, does one really need to put a fine point on what are "other birth control methods" and "contraception and service delivery"?

And then there's this pesky problem: Population control doesn't equate to greenhouse gas reduction.

Climatists roundly criticize industrialized nations, not the developing world, for contributing to excess atmospheric CO2. As the World Bank chart at right declares, "Individuals' emission in high-income countries overwhelm those in developing countries." At the same time most of these same countries allegedly contributing most to climate change are actually seeing a decrease in either growth rates or actual population.

And then there's China, famous for it's one-child policy. It currently holds the title of world's worst greenhouse gas emitter. With such a policy in place for the past 40 years shouldn't China be on the bottom of the list?

Dean Ohlman lays out - correctly, I think - the real issue which is not how many but where and what we're up to. Again, I agree with Anna and Ed and others that encourage us to all walk with much smaller footprints, including a smaller carbon footprint. But the population control and climate change agendas are quickly becoming indistinguishable. Even Rome is struggling with this.

Finally there's this whole matter of "unintended pregnancies." Other than the thousands of couples out there diligently trying to overcome childlessness, who defines when a baby is "unintended?" Be honest here - how many of you parents out there weren't surprised at the arrival of you kids? If they were unintended to you and your spouse, how about to their Creator?

Christians are being drawn into believing that every additional baby boy or girl born on earth is not a life created in God's image, but an unforgivable carbon spewing burden on the planet. The one spreading that belief is not a friend of mankind.

If there's anything I fear, Anna, that's it.

 National Review:

Scientists don’t claim to have all the answers; as Sims says, “all over the planet, human beings are amassing . . . facts and doing the best they can to interpret them. When nature reminds us that our explanations are approximate, we tweak them again.” This work of observing and theorizing is thrilling. “How exciting,” Sims writes, “to decipher old mysteries and discover new ones in previously uncharted territory — inside molecules, at the bottom of the sea, beyond our galaxy, and in the womb.”

And how awesome it is to recognize that human beings have evolved to find this knowledge exciting. As G. K. Chesterton said, the simplest lesson of the ancient cave drawings is that an observer has now “dug very deep and found the place where a man had drawn the picture of a reindeer. But he would dig a good deal deeper before he found a place where a reindeer had drawn a picture of a man.” This beautiful record of animal life in the womb is not produced by cats or crocodiles but by members of our own human race, the most curious (in all senses of the word) creature of them all.

How awesome indeed. Yet I believe Chesterton would also think it a tragedy that the unborn members of our own human race don't garner as much respect these days.

There is no mystery surrounding abortion.  [National Geographic photo]

NewsMax:

On five occasions during the last eight weeks of their pregnancies, the women received a series of one-second buzzes on their bellies with a "fetal vibroacoustic stimulator," a hand-held diagnostic device used to gauge an unborn baby's heart rate and general well-being.

The baby's responses - primarily eye, mouth and body movements - were closely monitored over the weeks with ultrasound imaging to gauge "fetal learning" patterns. The researchers found that the babies acclimated themselves to the sounds and vibrations to the point that they no longer bothered to respond - a process known as "habituation."

"The stimulus is then accepted as 'safe' " by the babies, the study said.

The team also found that the tiny test subjects actually improved these skills as they grew older, with those who were 34- or 36-weeks old clearly showing that they had become familiar with the hum outside the womb.

"The fetus 'remembers' the stimulus and the number of stimuli needed for the fetus to habituate is then much smaller," the study said.

"It seems like every day we find out marvelous new things about the development of unborn children. We hope that this latest information helps people realize more clearly that the unborn are members of the human family with amazing capabilities and capacities like these built in from the moment of conception," said Randall K. O'Bannon, director of education and research for the National Right to Life Educational Trust Fund.

"A call to NARAL Pro-Choice America for comment on the implications of the research were not returned." Silence is consent.

Michelle Malkin:

My syndicated column below contrasts the Left’s “unease” over the evangelical Christian faith of NIH director-designate Francis Collins with its radio silence on the eco-zealotry of Obama science czar John Holdren. But first, some late-breaking developments: As Zombie notes, the White House has responded to rising blogosphere unease with Holdren’s cultish ideas by pooh-poohing Holdren’s co-authorship of the nutball manifesto, Ecoscience. Team Obama told the Washington Times that Holdren “never has been an advocate for policies of forced sterilization.” Never? Whom do you believe: the White House or your own eyes?

Lots more links there for your eyes to enjoy.

Collins was not just NIH director, but he was picked as the head of the NIH's Human Genome Project. Before Wordpress ate it I'd transcribed Collin's speech-slash-testimony on Christian faith, NIH and the HGP.

When his book came out I thought it was important to dig into Collins a bit and see where his faith and science intersected. It should give him creds to alot of you that I was a little disappointed in what I heard. I wanted him to define how his understanding of evolution and genetics substantiated his faith. Only got a few squishy platitudes. Still, he holds science comfortably in one hand and God comfortably in the other.

Holdren shouldn't be a surprise either. His perspective on "natural selection" among homo sapiens is the same Sanger-esque, anti-minority, anti-life Malthusian misanthropy we've come to expect from the Planned Parenthood bloodline. Give him credit for being honest enough to publish it.

Will the glorious, broad-minded humanitarian universalist that is Obama back up both men? Or is that a bus I hear chugging up the street...

MORE: Christians Need Not Apply (to NIH)?

Associated Baptist Press:

Hunter said there is both good news and bad news for supporters of creation care.

"The bad news is that this movement honestly is going very slowly in the church," he said. "By now we would have hoped to be meeting with multitudes, and you see what's here. There's a gathering of leaders."

Despite that, Hunter said "the time is growing in its ripeness from several aspects," so environmentally conscious evangelicals should not be discouraged.

Along with new technologies that allow humans to cultivate the earth in new ways, Hunter said "there is a ripeness in the church" in form of an expanding moral agenda.

"There is now an unstoppable expansion of what it means to be an evangelical Christian," he said. "We are no longer going to be stuck on one or two major issues."

Hunter added that evangelicals must not abandon concern for the unborn in order to embrace a broader agenda. "Frankly, if you cannot protect a baby in its mother's womb, that is the paradigm of all vulnerable life," he said. "If we don't continue to lift that up as central, then woe be unto us."

But Hunter said evangelicals need to understand "that 'pro-life' means a whole lot of things."

"It's not just inside the womb, it's outside the womb," he said. "Life outside the womb is just as important as life inside the womb to God."

Take on social issues, yes. But don't supplant the Great Commission. Always concerns me that winning souls for Jesus Christ never seems to get a hearing in these interviews, especially when rescuing babies and the planet are both acts of love which could transform lives if Jesus got the credit.

The Christian Environmentalist Blog's Lisa Baker has a terrific post up on a novel solution to a real plague: diapers.

My biggest environmental concern when I was pregnant was, without a doubt, the diaper question. I searched endlessly for an answer to the debate of cloth vs. disposable. No matter how many life-cycle studies I saw (most of them funded by Proctor and Gamble, who owns Pampers) claiming that "compostable" disposable diapers are actually better for the environment than cloth, I didn't believe it. I just couldn't bring myself to buy the argument that something that's meant to be thrown away was better for the environment than something that could be endlessly reused. And besides, cloth is cheaper. But the idea of actually washing poopy diapers myself for the next three years was intimidating at best, and in the midst of Atlanta's water crisis, I couldn't help but wonder whether maybe disposables might be better in our situation, after all. And the studies did say that energy and water use is more efficient with a diaper service than with home washing--but there were no diapers services in Atlanta at the time I was pregnant. Believe me. I looked. (Now that I'm an accomplished cloth diapering mom who loves washing diapers, of course this has started up.)

Her solution will surprise you! And I completely agree with her encouragement to look at all of our humanity - poopies and all - from God's perspective. [pic: photobucket.com]

Hey Church:

I totally respect your buying into climate change doctrine. I agree with you that reducing carbon fuel pollution is a good thing, as is switching over to renewable resources. I agree that waste is wasteful and stewardship of creation is a loving act.

But, my Climatist brothers and sisters in Christ, we are human beings created in the image of God. And we worship a God who made us with his own hands. He has an individual, infinite love for each and every person on this earth, including those yet to be born.

Many of you promoting a faith-based response to climate change have also been willing to accept the labeling of unborn babies as a "choice." Do you now want to be a party to those who are looking at our children, God's precious gifts, as a "carbon legacy" to be eliminated in lieu of a CO2 offset? 

I pray with all my strength that you'll come to your senses as to what's going on. And may God have mercy on us until then.

"The word of the Lord came to [Jeremiah], saying: "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you; Before you were born I sanctified you."

-- Jeremiah 1:4-5

Excerpt:

Writing for the scientific journal Global Environmental Change, two academics at Oregon State University - Paul Murtaugh and Michael Schlax - identify this lifestyle change in a paper entitled "Reproduction and the Carbon Legacies of Individuals." In this treatise they attempt to quantify, in their words, "the carbon legacy of an individual," and to examine "how it is affected by the individual's reproductive choices," based on the premise that "a person is responsible for the carbon emissions of his descendants, weighted by their relatedness to him." So what did they find?

The two researchers calculated that a woman in the United States would reduce her lifetime CO2 emissions by about 486 tons if she implemented the green-approved household and transportation activities mentioned previously. But they estimate that if she were to have just one child, that child, over its lifetime, would eventually release nearly 20 times more CO2 to the atmosphere than the reductions achieved by its mother via her more mundane green activities.

In light of these calculations, Murtaugh and Schlax conclude that "the potential savings from reduced reproduction are huge compared to the savings that can be achieved by changes in lifestyle," adding that "enormous [our italics] future benefits can be gained by immediate changes [our italics] in reproductive behavior," and, therefore, that "an individual's reproductive choices can have a dramatic effect on the total carbon emissions ultimately attributable to his or her genetic lineage."

Man puts "Abort Obama, not the unborn" sign in his car window and gets pulled over by OKC policeman named Steve McCool.

It gets better worse.

After talking to his attorney, Harrison went home where he met the Secret Service. ''When I was on my way there, the Secret Service called me and said they weren't going to ransack my house or anything ... they just wanted to (walk through the house) and make sure I wasn't a part of any hate groups."

I don't countenance any threats to the CinC. But this comment sums up my feelings exactly:

So let me get this straight, the police/government are now telling us that abort/abortion only means "killing or murder" when used in context with Obama in a casual statement or conversation and that is not okay but when actually performed on an unborn child it simply means a "woman's choice" and this is okay! Got it!!

More here.