Adhering to Bedrock Principles.(Life sciences research)

"That attitude [the "loathing of imperfection"] is once again gaining strength. And it speaks in the seductive voices of freedom, compassion, and self-improvement." -- Dr. Leon Kass, "A More Perfect Human: The Promise and the Peril of Modern Science," an address delivered last year as part of a series linked to the Holocaust Museum's exhibit, Deadly Medicine: Creating the Master Race

"No parents will in that future time have a right to burden society with a malformed or a mentally incompetent child." -- Geneticist Bentley Glass, in his 1971 presidential address to the American Association for the Advancement of Science

"And it was when these self-identified liberal and modernist religious men abandoned bedrock principles to seek relevance in modern debates that they were most likely to find themselves endorsing eugenics. Those who clung stubbornly to tradition, to doctrine, and to biblical infallibility opposed eugenics and became, for a time, the objects of derision for their rejection of this most modern science." -- From Preaching Eugenics: Religious Leaders and the American Eugenics Movement, by Christine Rosen

The September edition of the "pro-life newspaper of record" is replete with such encouraging news that even chronic skeptics will smile. The good news covers the waterfront.

After a four-year-long battle, a United Nations ad hoc committee tentatively approved a treaty on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities which include the right to life, food, water, and health care without discrimination. The treaty Preamble also affirms the inherent right to life and the "dignity and worth" of persons with disabilities, as you read in the story that begins on the back cover.

On page one, Political Director Karen Cross gives you the inside story on important wins in September primaries and issues a call for action: no sitting on your hands allowed.

Elsewhere, Dr. Randall K. O'Bannon and Joseph Landrum offer a recipe for writing a well-researched/well-received research paper, using the abundant resources found on the NRLC web page (www.nrlc.org). Further on in the edition we cover the findings of a study in Journal of Medical Ethics that found that women seeking obstetric and gynecological services overwhelmingly wanted to be informed of all known risks associated with elective procedures in general and with abortion in particular. This is enormously important, given how abortionists try to wave off the questions of wavering women.