COMMENT:  We keep hearing that this administration wants to reduce the need for abortion.  Someone please explain to me how that happens if the funds for abstinence-based education are reduced or eliminated?????  Do you suppose there is an agenda here???

1.  Obama White House Urges Tax-Funded Abortion-on-Demand in D.C.
2.  Conservatives Angered Over Obama's Plan to Eliminate Abstinence-based Sex Education 
3. Obama budget cuts funds for abstinence-only sex education

Laboratory Techniques That Screen for Diseases in Embryos Are Now Being Offered to Create Designer Children

By GAUTAM NAIK

Want a daughter with blond hair, green eyes and pale skin?

While PGD has long been used for the medical purpose of averting life-threatening diseases in children, the science behind it has quietly progressed to the point that it could potentially be used to create designer babies. It isn't clear that Fertility Institutes can yet deliver on its claims of trait selection. But the growth of PGD, unfettered by any state or federal regulations in the U.S., has accelerated genetic knowledge swiftly enough that pre-selecting cosmetic traits in a baby is no longer the stuff of science fiction.

"It's technically feasible and it can be done," says Mark Hughes, a pioneer of the PGD process and director of Genesis Genetics Institute, a large fertility laboratory in Detroit. However, he adds that "no legitimate lab would get into it and, if they did, they'd be ostracized."

But Fertility Institutes disagrees. "This is cosmetic medicine," says Jeff Steinberg, director of the clinic that is advertising gender and physical trait selection on its Web site. "Others are frightened by the criticism but we have no problems with it."

PGD is a technique whereby a three-day-old embryo, consisting of about six cells, is tested in a lab to see if it carries a particular genetic disease. Embryos free of that disease are implanted in the mother's womb. Introduced in the 1990s, it has allowed thousands of parents to avoid passing on deadly disorders to their children.

But PGD is starting to be used to target less-serious disorders or certain characteristics -- such as a baby's gender -- that aren't medical conditions. The next controversial step is to select physical traits for cosmetic reasons.

"If we're going to produce children who are claimed to be superior because of their particular genes, we risk introducing new sources of discrimination" in society, says Marcy Darnovsky, associate executive director of the Center for Genetics and Society, a nonprofit public interest group in Oakland, Calif. If people use the method to select babies who are more likely to be tall, the thinking goes, then people could effectively be enacting their biases against short people.

In a recent U.S. survey of 999 people who sought genetic counseling, a majority said they supported prenatal genetic tests for the elimination of certain serious diseases. The survey found that 56% supported using them to counter blindness and 75% for mental retardation.

More provocatively, about 10% of respondents said they would want genetic testing for athletic ability, while another 10% voted for improved height. Nearly 13% backed the approach to select for superior intelligence, according to the survey conducted by researchers at the New York University School of Medicine.

There are significant hurdles to any form of genetic enhancement. Most human traits are controlled by multiple genetic factors, and knowledge about their complex workings, though accelerating, is incomplete. And traits such as athleticism and intelligence are affected not just by DNA, but by environmental factors that cannot be controlled in a lab.

While many countries have banned the use of PGD for gender selection, it is permitted in the U.S. In 2006, a survey by the Genetics and Public Policy Center at Johns Hopkins University found that 42% of 137 PGD clinics offered a gender-selection service.
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'It is difficult to think of a more tasteless, ghoulish thing to give anyone'

Planned Parenthood, which in past years has promoted a "Choice on Earth" abortion campaign during the Christmas season, has a new outreach, offering Christmas gift certificates to be used for abortions.

"It is difficult to think of a more tasteless, ghoulish thing to give anyone. I refuse to refer to these financial instruments as gifts as they are nothing more than a legal way to put a hit out on someone," said a participant in a forum at the online Lone Star Times, where the plan was reported.

"Planned Parenthood, this generation's King Herod, you know, the guy who ordered the mass slaughter of babies when Jesus was born," added WND columnist Jill Stanek, who also documented the plan on her blog.

According to the Lone Star Times, the nation's leading player in the abortion industry is "celebrating the most important crisis pregnancy of all time by selling gift certificates, perfect for the woman who has everything but moral fiber … And it's so much easier than finding the perfect 'Baby's First Christmas' ornament."

According to WISH-TV in Indianapolis, the controversial plan has people talking.

"People are making really tough decisions about putting gas in their car and food on their table, so we know that many women especially put healthcare at the bottom of their list to do," Chrystal Struben-Hall, an official for the abortion business, told the station.

The report said the certificates come in $25 increments and can be used for everything from birth control to $58 examinations that include breast exams and pap tests.

"They can be seen for sexually transmitted disease screenings, HIV tests and general prostate exams and those kinds of things," said Struben-Hall.

But can they be used for abortions?

Of course, Struben-Hall said. "We decided not to put restrictions on."

Stanek has campaigned to alert the American public of President-elect Barack Obama's extreme pro-abortion position. In fact, Obama considered partial birth abortion a "legitimate medical procedure" and opposed a requirement that abortionists provide life-preserving care for infants who survive abortion attempts, because of the burden it would impose on the abortionist.
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How a Pro-Life Doctor Overcomes Abortion With Truth

 

by Paul Nowak
LifeNews.com Staff Writer
March 24, 2008