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News
E-Alert 2.3.10
Wednesday February 03, 2010 - 01:46 AM
This Week's Topics: Fitchburg does not want Planned Parenthood, options limited; Study: Focus on abstinence delays sexual activity; California's stem cell failure; For Homosexuals, a Sad State of Affairs; David Tuerick: Want a better safety net? Lower taxes. Be sure to click on eForce to receive our MFI eForce E-Alert in your Inbox every Wednesday.
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Fitchburg does not want Planned Parenthood, options limited
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A crowd of nearly 80 pro-life advocates turned out last Thursday to protest a proposed location of a Planned Parenthood clinic at 391 Main Street in Fitchburg. Christine Hanley, who organized the standout, had hoped for a minimum of 20 protesters, so she was pleased to find four times that number, reports the Sentinel and Enterprise.
While Planned Parenthood says that no abortions would be performed at the clinic in Fitchburg, the pro-life activists still do not want the pro-abortion group in their city. They say the staff would just direct women to the clinic in Worcester. The Fitchburg office is to be opened and paid for through a federal grant from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. In other words, taxpayer money will be spent.
The pro-life advocates are also worried about the clinic's proximety to the Longsjo Middle School just down the street. Six members of the City Council had drafted a resolution urging Planned Parenthood to abandon its plan to come to Fitchburg, but the formal petition was abandoned after city lawyers warned that it could put the council on shaky legal ground.
Thanks to Massachusetts Citizens for Life and Catholic Citizenship for their work in getting people to the demonstration last week.
Sources: Sentinal & Enterprise, Associated Press |
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Study: Focus on abstinence delays sexual activity
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Sex education classes that focus on encouraging children to remain abstinent can convince a significant proportion to delay sexual activity, researchers reported Monday in a landmark study. The Washington Post reports that in the first carefully designed study to evaluate the abstinence approach to sex education, researchers found that only about a third of 6th and 7th graders who went through sessions focused on abstinence started having sex in the next two years. In contrast, nearly half of students who got other classes, including those that included information about contraception, became sexually active.
"I think we've written off abstinence-only education without looking closely at the nature of the evidence," said John B. Jemmott III, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, who led the federally funded study. "Our study shows this could be one approach that could be used."
The research was published in the Archives of Pediatric & Adolescent Medicine, and comes as the Obama administration has eliminated more than $150 million in federal funding targeted at abstinence programs. It has chosen instead to launch a new $114 million pregnancy prevention initiative for programs that have been shown scientifically to work.
"This new study is game-changing," said Sarah Brown, who leads the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy. "For the first time, there is strong evidence that an abstinence-only intervention can help very young teens delay sex and reduce their recent sexual activity as well."
More Information: Chad Hills - "Why abstinence? It's right and it works"
Source: Washington Post
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California's stem cell failure
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It was following California's passage of Proposition 71 that Massachusetts felt the need to start funding embryonic stem cell research with taxpayer funding. However, after five years, California's budget-busting $3 billion embryonic stem cell research project has yielded no cures, no therapies and little progress, explains Investors.com.
The backers of Prop 71 are now admitting failure. "The California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, the state agency created to, as some have put it, restore science to its rightful place, is diverting funds from ESCR to research that has produced actual therapies and treatments: adult stem cell research. It not only has treated real people with real results; it also does not come with the moral baggage ESCR does."
The article accuses the backers of Prop 71 of using a classic bait-and-switch tactic by trying to take credit for discoveries and advances achieved by research that they once cavalierly dismissed. The institute is attempting to do this by funding adult stem cell research. Nearly $230 million was handed out this past October to 14 years team, but notably, only four of those projects involved embryonic stem cells.
The article concludes:
Real promise is held in what are called induced pluripotent stem cells. In 2006, researchers led by Dr. Shinya Yamanaka of Japan's Kyoto University were first able to "reprogram" human skin cells to behave like embryonic stem cells. They can do everything stem cells from destroyed embryos can do.
The National Institutes of Health has said that this type of stem cell offers the prospect of having a renewable source of replacement cells and tissues to treat diseases like Parkinson's and Alzheimer's, spinal cord injury, stroke, burns, heart disease, diabetes, osteoarthritis and rheumatoid arthritis, to name a few.
It is ESCR researchers who have politicized science and stood in the way of real progress. We are pleased to see California researchers beginning to put science in its rightful place.
Source: Investors.com
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For Homosexuals, a Sad State of Affairs
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From Tony Perkins' Washington Update
For same-sex couples who "wed" in one of the five states that allow it, many have marriage vows. But according to a stunning New York Times article, "forsaking all others" isn't one of them. Calling infidelity "a gift," several couples are brutally honest about the lack of monogamy in most homosexual "marriages." Just how common is this phenomenon? A study scheduled for release next month from San Francisco State University found that more often than not, "open" marriages aren't the exception to counterfeit marriages; they're the rule.
The Gay Couples Study followed 556 male partners for three years, and half had "sex outside their relationships, with the knowledge and approval of their partners." Some even had the audacity to say that heterosexuals have a lot to learn from this "evolution of marriage." On the contrary, it only exposes the mockery this movement is making of marriage. They want access to marriage only to destroy what should be its defining characteristic: fidelity! For years, FRC has argued against same-sex "marriage" on these very grounds. Now that the New York Times is confirming the trend, maybe even more people will start to listen.
Source: New York Times |
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David Tuerick: Want a better safety net? Lower taxes
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In an op-ed in today's Boston Globe, David Tuerick of the Beacon Hill Institute says that Governor Deval Patrick "now wants to balance the budget on the backs of those few smokers who still enjoy a stogie." He blasts the state for taking part in a "spending binge that swept the country from 2002 to 2007," but that the victory of Scott Brown suggests that "Massachusetts voters no longer want to be led in this direction."
Tuerick encourages candidates running for office to tap into this voter sentiment by challenging the "blue-state attachment to high taxes." He says candidates should dispel the following articles of faith:
- "Although the state spends generously to help the poor, it never spends enough. By this doctrine, the state's safety net is frayed, putting at risk those who depend on welfare spending."
- That the "state's structural deficit makes tax cuts irresponsible"
- The mindset that governs state budgeting: "When the revenue outlook is good, they see an opportunity to spend more. When the outlook is bad, they see a need to raise taxes." He points out that the Legislature refuses to build up sufficient reserves during good years to pay the bills in bad years.
The Beacon Hill Institute did the research that found that the "frayed-safety-net" argument does hold water, and that the real solution is to impose a tax and expenditure limitation on state spending. This, Tuerick says, can be accomplished by a constitutional amendment or by a simple act of self-restraint by the Legislature.
He goes on to point out that had such a limit been in place since 1999, "the state would have come close to meeting its 2010 spending target without the need for $1.32 billion in new taxes that it imposed on state consumers and corporations."
Read Tuerick's full column in the Boston Globe HERE.
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