Parents kidnapped their daughter and drove her to New Hampshire to have an enforced abortion.

The daughter escaped.

Those extremist liberal Democrats are a real menace.

Stems cells from amniotic fluid.

Scientists reported Sunday they had found a plentiful source of stem cells in the fluid that cushions babies in the womb.

The announcement may make it easier to sidestep the controversy over destroying embryos for research.

Researchers at Wake Forest University and Harvard University reported the stem cells they drew from amniotic fluid donated by pregnant women hold much the same promise as embryonic stem cells.

They reported they were able to extract the stem cells without harm to mother or fetus and turn their discovery into several different tissue cell types, including brain, liver and bone.

"Our hope is that these cells will provide a valuable resource for tissue repair and for engineered organs as well," said Dr. Anthony Atala, head of Wake Forest's regenerative medicine institute and senior researcher on the project.

Some remedial biology:

Embryonic stems cells come from embryos. This type of research is commonly referred to as "promising", while currently insurmountable problems like spontaneous runaway cell division (otherwise known as cancer) are soft-pedaled. Very little private money has been devoted to embryonic stem cell research for that reason, so researchers have cleverly sought federal money and received unqualified support from Democrats who saw the issue as a back door to the abortion issue. Everybody wins--except sick people. I was personally made sick by cynical snake-oil tactics by Democrats exploiting the desperate hope of people like Michael J. Fox.

Adult stem cells are produced by one's own body. There have been several successful procedures developed using adult stem cells and consequently plenty of private research money invests in this line of inquiry.

Amniotic stem cells. May have many or all of the qualities of embryonic stem cells--too early to tell. They may also have many of the same defects--also too early to tell.

The media of course, equivocates between the different types of stem cell research. That is like ignoring the difference between manned and unmanned space flight--ignorance too gross to be accidental.

My view has little to do with the ethical implications of processing foeti for medical treatments, even though I recognize the essential moral dilemma.

I figure if embryonic stem cells could actually cure serious disease, we'd moan and groan, but eventually find a way to grind them up and make a patent medicine. Buying kidneys from third-world donors or worse, just harvesting them from kidnap victims hasn't generated more than token outrage from Americans.

No, the real issue is that, as usual, Democrats and special interests--in this case a number of university research departments, have conspired to exploit the long-suffering American tax-payer so they can line their own pockets. Unable to attract informed private research money, they've gone the traditional political route of rigging the system for their particular benefit.

If there was ever a time to speak truth to power--this would be it.

The silence is deafening.

In what has come as somewhat of a surprise, the Surpreme Court has handed a victory to the Bush administration by reversing a lower court and upholding the ban on what is euphemistically called "partial birth abortion".

The justices, voting 5-4, refused to invalidate the 2003 law even though it lacks an exception for cases posing a risk to the mother's health. The court also rejected claims that the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act is so vaguely worded it would force doctors to forgo a commonly used, constitutionally protected abortion technique for fear of prosecution.

The decision heralds a more receptive approach toward abortion restrictions from a court that in 2000 overturned a similar Nebraska law. Bush's appointees, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito, helped turn the tide in today's case, joining Justices Anthony Kennedy, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas.

The court stopped short of overruling the 2000 case, Stenberg v. Carhart, saying the federal statute was narrower in key respects than the Nebraska law. The majority also left open the possibility that doctors could ask a judge for permission to use the disputed procedure for particular medical conditions that pose a health risk to the mother.

Rudy Giuliani is going to be so disappointed.

Far more important than gun control is abortion control. Today the Supreme Court issued its first ruling against abortion in 35 years by holding that a law banning partial birth abortion is constitutional. Or, to speak plainly, it's now ok to prohibit inducing a baby to be partially born then crushing its skull to kill it. That's pretty controversial. Clinton, Barack and Edwards are vehemently opposed to the ruling. The Republicans are pro, even Giuliani who said in 2000 that he would not vote to oppose a woman's right to undergo the procedure. Of course the Democrats could try Democracy to overturn the ban, but how preferable it is that society should be dismembered by tenured judges.

To paraphrase Lincoln "If partial birth abortion is not wrong, nothing is wrong."

Outside the Supreme Court nobody in America sincerely argues that Roe v Wade is good law as opposed to a desired outcome. Not liberal lawyers, not Justice Blackmun's doting clerk, not Jane Roe, nobody. Shouldn't that lead to something apart from killing 4,000 foetuses each day ?

A man who we estimate has saved a million lives, died early this morning.

He was a 32-year veteran of the House and was known for his soaring speeches and high intellect. But he was also a tough Republican partisan who rose to lead two key House committees, Judiciary and International Relations.

Hyde represented a GOP district in suburban Chicago and cut his teeth on the rough-and-tumble politics of the city. He served in the state legislature before being elected to Congress in 1974. Not long after, he sponsored the Hyde Amendment, which essentially banned federally funded abortions. It passed in 1976.

The Hyde amendment reduced federally-funded abortions from 300,000 a year to zero.

Emma Beck was found hanging at her home in Helston, Cornwall, on Feb 1 2007. She was declared dead early the following day - her 31st birthday. advertisement

Her suicide note read: "I told everyone I didn't want to do it, even at the hospital. I was frightened, now it is too late. I died when my babies died. I want to be with my babies: they need me, no-one else does."

The inquest at Truro City Hall heard that Miss Beck had split up with her boyfriend, referred to as "Ben" after he "reacted badly" to the pregnancy.

There are moments in life when belief is transformed into deep conviction, usually when the abstract is made real by direct experience. I've had a variety of new experiences in the past couple of years that have produced in me new convictions and new insights into human nature. The above story made me sadder than a mundane notice of death of some anonymous person would have normally because of how clear the motive was.

She couldn't live with it.

PLOT GIVEAWAY ALERT

Much praised movie about a pregnant 16yo who arranges to give her baby up for adoption.

- Well shot.
- Anti abortion demonstrator was a mockable caricature and that's a cop-out and cheap. Those who think that the feelings of the mother are more important than the life of the baby are immature at a deep level and that is the premise of the movie. It's like prioritising the feelings of the guards in an extermination camp.
- Jason Bateman husband character was badly written and pathetic.
- Letter device (withholding the text till the end) is a cliche and saves the trouble of tight plotting.
- Both the boy and the girl leads become annoying quickly.

The movie would have been better either darker and deeper or more consistently fluffy.

The happy ending of a mother and father giving away their baby then making music on his stoop is sick, the more so because the gift is made to a single woman.

A feelgood movie for children of an infantile culture.

UPDATE: A friend replies -

ah yes, the Adams moral high ground, in art as in life. the pro-life argument will not be advanced by the likes of you, e.g. likening conflicted young single mothers--who are on the cusp of choosing life--to Nazi death camp guards; but rather by the likes of arguments made in Juno that eschew your brand of absolutism for a more effective and subtle kind of persuasion. if the point is to move the agenda forward and to save more lives, then Juno helps. your point, however, seems to be that how they're saved is as important as whether they're saved--that a rigorous adherence to some ontology about unborn life is more important that saving actual lives. in this case, pro-life Americans should vote for Huckabee because he's more consistently and convincingly pro-life despite the fact his candidacy would fail and thereby facilitate the pro-choice agenda. this, as well as your critique, is short-sighted and counter productive.

In real life the thing that matters is the baby, not because it has finger-nails but because humans have duties founded on more general principles.

In the days when Life demonstrators were seen as religious idiots (as in Juno) they were the moral grown-ups despised by the moral retards who see themselves as sophisticated, knowing and humane.

Abortion is a real holocaust but on a bigger scale with even more vulnerable victims, but my comment as written referred to the movie's priorities. I myself was willing to go along with an abortion and I was a sophisticated moral retard, but not a sadistic guard.

Otherwise you project standard liberal arguments about the motivation of your opponents, arguments which exist to validate liberal psychology rather than discuss ideas.

Abortion art, brought to you by a real feminazi, at one of our leading liberal institutions.

This is what comes of liberal moral relativism--life is trash turned art. Oh, and the only life that's important is your own.

UPDATE: More on this from Taranto.

Obama supporters for sure helping him going after the evangelical vote, dissing Hillary supporters at the same time (and bringing back the hoary old hanger. Maybe you should worry about this.):

So to all you so-called angry fauxminists who are too blind to have seen how horrendously mismanaged was Senator Clinton's presidential campaign, shut the fuck up. If you can't even give the woman the dignity of having been the commander in chief of her own campaign, if you are so stupid you don't understand the actual management and political dynamics that led to her failed bid, then look at that hanger as the symbol of your lost reproductive rights and therefore EQUALITY under the law.

My pro-life post over at BlogHer, "Abortion is Barbaric". Getting some static.

"I have become a symbol of the possibility of America returning to our best traditions."