The Blog

Missourians Against Human Cloning held a press conference Friday morning criticizing Carnahan and the ballot language she approved for the CWC initiative. You can see video of that here. Now Carnahan’s approved language has drawn dueling lawsuits. That’s right, I said dueling, meaning one from both sides. It was inevitable that CWC was going to have to challenge the language, but the cloning supporters?? You would think that the language was biased and radical enough for them. What more could they possibly want? Well, for one thing, they claim that it understates the potential cost to taxpayers, if voters pass the measure, by saying only vaguely that the amendment could:

have a significant negative fiscal impact on state and local governmental entities due to its prohibition of certain research activities

They want numbers, and big ones. They want it to say that it cost at least $200 million to state government and at least $25 million to local governments, which is just pure fantasy. They also want the title “The Missouri Cures Without Cloning Initiative” stripped from the top of initiative petitions that people would sign because they claim it amounts to a “second summary” and would be illegal. In a statement released by the Missouri Coalition for Lifesaving Cures, the plaintiffs said that it would:

mislead Missouri voters with the inclusion of irrelevant language that is nothing more than a biased advertisement

Wow, is all I can say.

We didn’t have much luck with the judge last year in trying to get Amendment 2’s deceptive ballot language changed. We will need lots of prayers to the Holy Spirit for this judge so that we can have a fair shot at finally banning all human cloning in Missouri.

I forgot to post some pictures I took at the Life Issues Forum I spoke at the other week at St. Anne’s Catholic church in Warsaw Missouri. Our diocesan pro-life committee travels around the diocese organizing these forums to keep parishioners up to date on life issues, especially those which concern our state. In this picture, Dr. Lankford, from Mexico Missouri is explaining partial birth abortion. He always brings fetal development models and actual abortion tools to describe the various kinds of abortion procedures. The PBA example inevitably causes the audience to cringe, to which he says, “yes, it’s brutal, but that’s what they’re doing!” Dr. Lankford is a medical doctor, I believe, though I forget his actual practice. He said he got involved in the pro-life movement, not only because of how harmful it is to the children, but also the harmful effect he has seen it have on the women.

Also on hand for the afternoon was Rev. Mr. Larry Webber, the executive director of the Missouri Catholic Conference, who talked about pro-life legislation. You can read about some of that here. Before I got there, Fr. Phil Niekamp discussed the Theology of the Body and later I offered my own thoughts on the subject – from a “young person’s” perspective. The gist of what I said was that, after attending Ave Maria University a few years ago, I saw a lot of young people soaking in and living this important theological teaching. The opposite of love is not hate, as Christopher West often explains in his TOB talks, but use. Young people (and really all people in general) have an innate desire to be loved, and they know that it is beneath their human dignity to be an object for another person’s physical gratification. TOB answers every person’s desire for love and their unique call to love as God loves.

I really enjoyed the church of St. Anne, and I was most impressed with their great witness for life. They have a couple of memorials for the unborn on their property and worked to get one in two of the main cemeteries in their town. As you approach the church you can see the unborn memorial crosses facing the street and further into the parking lot is a concrete monument declaring: “We as a people are dedicated to preserving all forms of human life conceived in His image.”

My favorite, however, was a picture hung up inside the church with the hands of our Lord reaching out to the hands of a little child. I can’t quite remember what the little plaque underneath says exactly. It’s something like, “God said unto one of his angels, Go and get the unborn who are not wanted, and the children of the earth whose time it is to come home. Bring them home to me.” I’ve never seen anything like it before.