Oregon-based scientists reported Wednesday (May 15) they had cloned human embryos, reportedly the first successful attempt at such cloning, as a means of producing embryonic stem cells. The researchers extracted stem cells from the clones, destroying the days-old human embryos in the process.

The scientists used basically the same cloning method utilized in 1996 by Scottish researchers to create the first cloned mammal, Dolly the sheep.

News of the successful experiment seemed certain to revive the cloning controversy, which has been dormant in recent years. One of the battlegrounds likely will be in Congress, which could see new efforts to ban human cloning. Those efforts probably will involve debates on the extent of a prohibition — on cloning for reproductive purposes or for both research and reproductive purposes.

Critics — who point out cloning an embryo for experimentation is reproductive by nature because a new human being has been created — criticized the successful research announced in the journal Cell as both unethical and unnecessary. Supporters of the cloning technique sometimes call it “somatic cell nuclear transfer” — which simply is the scientific name for cloning.

“Let’s be clear — what these researchers are doing is creating a cloned human being in order to destroy that human being to harvest its stem cells for the benefit of older and bigger human beings,” Southern Baptist ethicist Richard Land told Baptist Press. “There are words for such activity — barbaric and uncivilized.”

The cloning technique used by scientists at Oregon Health and Science University (OHSU) and the Oregon National Primate Research Center was a version of somatic cell nuclear transfer, the method used to create Dolly. The researchers transferred the nucleus of a cell that contained a person’s DNA into an egg that no longer had its nucleus. After stimulation, some of the embryos developed to a stage where they produced stem cells.

Daniel Sulmasy, a professor of medicine and a bioethicist at the University of Chicago, told National Public Radio (NPR), “This is a case in which one is deliberately setting out to create a human being for the sole purpose of destroying that human being. I’m of the school that thinks that that’s morally wrong no matter how much good could come of it.”

Opponents of cloning and embryonic stem cell research (ESCR), which is lethal for the human embryos, pointed to other stem cell research that has surpassed ESCR in therapies in human beings and is not ethically controversial. Stem cells are the body’s master cells that can develop into other cells and tissues, giving hope for the development of cures for a variety of diseases and other ailments.

Research with adult stem cells in human trials has produced therapies for more than 70 afflictions, including cancer, juvenile diabetes, multiple sclerosis, heart damage, Parkinson’s and sickle cell anemia. Work with induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells also has shown promise. This technique, first used in 2006, involves reprogramming adult skin cells into stem cells virtually identical to those in human embryos. Research with neither adult nor iPS stem cells involves the destruction of embryos, unlike ESCR.

ESCR — though highly touted because of the capacity of embryonic stem cells to transform into any cell or tissue in the body — has yet to treat any disease in human beings and has been plagued by the development of tumors in lab animals.

Land, president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, said iPS cells “make the supposed necessity of embryo-destructive research increasingly unnecessary. I am perplexed as to why we continue to pursue such dehumanizing research when morally preferable alternatives are readily available.”

David Prentice, a stem cell expert and a senior fellow at the Family Research Council, said, “Modern science has passed this by…. [T]he entire faulty concept of using the cloning technique has been superseded by uncontroversial techniques.”

Opponents of cloning and ESCR also warned about a potentially nightmarish future now that the human cloning barrier has been broken.

The cloning technology “will open the door to human engineering and a brave — but highly dangerous — new world,” Prentice said in the written statement.

“Given that science has passed cloning by for stem cell production, this announcement seems simply a justification for making clones, and makes reproductive cloning and birth of human clones more likely.”

Sulmasy, a member of President Obama’s Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues, said, “We already know there are people out there who are itching to be able to be the first to bring a cloned human being to birth. And I think it’s going to happen.”

Shoukhrat Mitalipov, who led the cloning effort by the research team, rejected such fears.

Human cloning “is not our focus, nor do we believe our findings might be used by others to advance the possibility of human reproductive cloning,” Mitalipov said in a written release from OHSU.

There is no federal prohibition on any form of human cloning. The House of Representatives passed legislation to ban cloning for both research and reproductive purposes in 2001 and 2003, but the Senate never voted on a comprehensive ban. Some senators supported the prohibition of cloning to produce a child but not cloning for research.

In a Tuesday (May 14) letter, Richard Land told Judiciary Committee leaders the “issue is a deal-breaker” for the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC).

“On this point we seek to be ‘Waterford’ crystal clear: If [any] same-sex partner reunification provision is included in an immigration reform overhaul, the [ERLC] would not merely hold a neutral position on the broader bill, but would instead actively oppose it,” said Land, the ERLC’s president.

Further reading: Letter to Senate Judiciary Committee sent May 14, 2013.

Sen. Patrick Leahy, D.-Vt., chairman of the Judiciary Committee, has filed amendments supported by homosexual activist organizations to a Senate immigration reform bill. One of Leahy’s amendments would recognize for immigration purposes a same-sex marriage that is legal in a state or foreign country. His other amendment would enable a same-sex partner of an American citizen to gain legal residency in the same way a husband or wife of a citizen does.

Land told Baptist Press, “We felt that it was very important for the Congress to know that as much as we support immigration reform we cannot condone same-sex partnerships and that it would be terribly unwise of Congress to confuse the issue of immigration reform with the issue of so-called gay rights.”

The ERLC’s opposition to same-sex provisions in immigration legislation is nothing new. Land has expressed disfavor with such proposals in recent months as the latest effort at immigration reform has built momentum and efforts to include same-sex measures have been promoted. In the letter to Leahy and lead Republican committee member Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa, Land spoke in stark terms about the ERLC’s opposition and provided three reasons for its stance:

— “First, we have biblical concerns. As a matter of interpretation of Scripture, Southern Baptists do not condone any sexual relationship beyond the sacred bonds of marriage between a man and a woman. Most Southern Baptists, therefore, could not in good conscience support efforts by the government to aid the reunification of same-sex partners.

— “Second, same-sex partner reunification would violate the spirit, if not also the letter, of the law. The Defense of Marriage Act specifies that, for federal purposes, marriage is the union of one man and one woman. While its future remains uncertain, DOMA is currently the law of the land. Immigration reform is not an appropriate place to challenge it.

— “Third, a majority of the American people is ready, even eager, for Congress to break partisan divides and find a workable solution on immigration reform that balances respect for the rule of law and care for the stranger among us. Yet support for a same-sex partner reunification provision remains mixed at best. To ignore this reality is to risk poisoning reform.”

The Judiciary Committee will resume its consideration Thursday (May 16) of amendments to the immigration bill, but it has not publicized if the same-sex proposals will be acted on.

Land and other evangelical supporters of broad immigration reform said upon its mid-April introduction the Senate bill — the Border Security, Economic Opportunity and Immigration Modernization Act, S. 744 — marked a solid, though imperfect, start but did not endorse it. The product of about three months of negotiations among four Democrats and four Republicans, the proposal is the first serious congressional attempt since 2007 to repair what seemingly everyone acknowledges is a broken immigration system.

The lack of enforcement of the current system has resulted in an estimated 11 to 12 million undocumented immigrants living in the United States illegally.

Land and the ERLC actively participated in efforts to reform immigration in 2006-07, and messengers to the 2011 Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) passed a resolution in support of immigration reform with specific guidelines.

That resolution from the SBC meeting in Phoenix, Ariz., called for the advancement of the Gospel of Jesus while pursuing justice and compassion. The measure urged the government to make a priority of border security and holding businesses accountable in their hiring. It also requested public officials establish after securing the borders “a just and compassionate path to legal status, with appropriate restitutionary measures, for those undocumented immigrants already living in our country.” It specified the resolution was not to be interpreted as supporting amnesty.

Land and other supporters of broad immigration reform had urged Leahy before the May 7 filing of his same-sex amendments not to push such measures in the bill. Among the signers with Land on the May 1 letter to Leahy were representatives of the National Association of Evangelicals, U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference and Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod.

The 844-page Senate bill includes a universal employment verification system, as well as border security and fence plans. When the border security plans are in place, undocumented immigrants can seek temporary status. To achieve such provisional status under the bill, each immigrant must, among other requirements, pass a background check, pay taxes and $2,000 in fines, and wait at least 10 years behind legal immigrants who applied before him. He will receive no federal benefits during this provisional period.

Some conservatives have said the border security measures are inadequate, and others have criticized its cost to the government.

A Heritage Foundation study released May 6 predicted the Senate bill would cost taxpayers at least $6.3 trillion. Some advocates of immigration reform disputed that forecast.

Supporters of immigration reform have warned there is only a narrow window of opportunity for passage in this two-year, congressional session, which closes at the end of 2014. Land has predicted approval must happen by the Fourth of July or Labor Day this year.

Further reading: Letter to Senate Judiciary Committee sent May 14, 2013.

Gosnell received three consecutive life terms without parole for the first-degree murders of three babies after their deliveries at his Philadelphia abortion clinic, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported. Judge Jeffrey Minehart sentenced Gosnell to two of the life sentences Tuesday (May 14) and the third Wednesday (May 15).

The longtime abortion doctor, 72, faced the possibility of capital punishment after the May 13 murder convictions. The Philadelphia Common Pleas Court jury that convicted Gosnell was scheduled to begin the sentencing phase of the trial May 21, but his decision to forego his appeal rights for life sentences made those deliberations unnecessary.

The three babies Gosnell was convicted of murdering were only some of hundreds at least six months into gestation who were killed outside the womb after induced delivery at a clinic marked by deplorable, unsanitary conditions, according to a 281-page report issued by a grand jury in 2011. Gosnell, who destroyed the records in most of those deaths, or a co-worker typically killed the living children by a technique he called “snipping” — jabbing scissors into the back of a baby’s neck and cutting the spinal cord.

In a trial that began March 18, jurors also found Gosnell guilty of involuntary manslaughter, instead of third-degree murder, in the 2009 death of Karnamaya Mongar, 41, after an abortion. In addition, the jury convicted him of 21 of 24 counts of violating a state ban on abortions after 24 weeks of pregnancy and of 210 of 227 counts of transgressing the state’s 24-hour waiting period, according to The Inquirer.

Both pro-life and pro-choice advocates applauded Gosnell’s convictions, but pro-lifers — unlike the abortion rights defenders — contended his crimes were not isolated incidents.

Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, said, “The grotesque atmosphere of Doctor Gosnell’s clinic stands as a graphic reminder of what is happening to our unborn and newly born citizens in similar clinics across America.”

Republicans in Congress are calling for investigations of abortion clinics and cooperation from states to prevent the kind of murderous and horrific practices described at the trial by former Gosnell employees and other witnesses.

The 2011 report by the grand jury said a “regulatory collapse” by Pennsylvania and city agencies enabled Gosnell to maintain what was described as a “house of horrors” for more than three decades. The state Department of Health provided only intermittent reviews from the time Gosnell’s West Philadelphia opened in 1979 until 1993. It totally halted inspections of abortion clinics for “political reasons” in 1993 under Gov. Tom Ridge, a pro-choice Republican, the grand jury reported.

A 2010 raid of Gosnell’s clinic in an investigation of prescription drug trafficking led to multiple charges and the closing of the facility. The grand jury’s report said federal and state authorities discovered the following during the raid:

—The remains of 45 babies stored in bags, milk jugs, orange juice cartons and cat-food containers, with some in a refrigerator and others in a freezer.

— The severed feet of babies in jars.

— “Semi-conscious women scheduled for abortions were moaning in the waiting room or the recovery room . . . “

— Conditions in the clinic that were “by far, the worst” the investigators had ever seen, with blood on the floor and on blankets covering dirty recliners, a “stench of urine,” cat excrement on the stairs, “filthy and unsanitary” surgery rooms, dirty instruments and broken equipment.

The Parents Television Council and Morality in Media drafted the letter asking key Congressional committees to oppose the FCC’s effort to allow television and radio stations to broadcast before 10 p.m. Eastern the type of nudity and/or expletives normally reserved for cable TV, according to Dan Isett, PTC director of public policy. Among the signers is Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission.

The FCC is considering permitting “isolated expletives” and isolated “non-sexual nudity” on broadcast TV, something that currently could draw a fine.

“This is one of those issues that brings people together from across the aisle and all the way across the aisle,” Isett told Baptist Press. “I think that there’s an awful lot of people concerned about what’s happened at the FCC both in terms of the simple process of it and the change of policy that seems to have been implemented.”

The FCC has opened the issue for public comment, as required by law, and has extended until June 19 the comment period originally set to expire May 20. Isett encourages concerned citizens to comment.

“If the American people think that standards of decency mean something, that it’s important to protect children at certain times of day on the airwaves that we own, then they must file a public comment, and it’s really easy to do so on the FCC website,” Isett said.

While the FCC is seeking permission to change its standards in judging what is allowable for broadcast during hours targeting child viewership, Isett said the FCC has already invoked a new standard in dismissing about a million backlogged cases between September, 2012 and April.

The FCC dismissed the cases because, according to Isett, it followed the direction of outgoing chairman Julius Genachowski and deemed the cases not “egregious” enough to pursue.

According to an FCC public notice dated April 1, Genachowski “directed the Enforcement Bureau (Bureau) to focus its indecency enforcement resources on egregious cases and to reduce the backlog of pending broadcast indecency complaints.”

Having dismissed complaints that were “beyond the statute of limitations or too stale to pursue, that involved cases outside FCC jurisdiction, that contained insufficient information, or that were foreclosed by settled precedent,” the notice reads, “the Bureau is also actively investigating egregious indecency cases and will continue to do so.”

Isett said pursuing cases based on their “egregious” nature is outside the law and has not been approved by Congress, which has FCC oversight.

“The FCC has made these decisions unilaterally and in this particular case the FCC chairman acted unilaterally and made a policy change without any input from the rest of the FCC, or the public or Congress,” Isett told Baptist Press. “I don’t know if it’s illegal, but it’s certainly outside what the law says. And the law says indecent material can’t be broadcast. … It doesn’t qualify it for a so-called egregious standard.

“There has been a law in place regarding indecent material broadcast over the publicly owned airways since the dawn of the medium, almost 100 years. And now you have a single FCC chairman acting unilaterally … that has made de facto the case that there will be virtually no standard at all,” Isett said.

“That’s why Congress has to get involved to make sure the law they’ve passed, that’s been affirmed by the Supreme Court a number of times now, is in fact implemented,” he said. “It was necessary in this case both to make sure that Congress was aware that this had happened and to make sure that Congress had the ability to act in its oversight role to make sure that the law was enforced.”

PTC President Tim Winter led the list of signatures on the letter addressed to members of the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation and the U.S. House Committee on Energy and Commerce.

“The FCC’s proposal to weaken the law’s enforcement by applying it only to ‘egregious’ violations is absurd, and it must be defeated,” Winter said in a press release. “In American jurisprudence, the scale of egregiousness for a violation of the law serves to determine the consequence for the violation. It does not define whether the law has been broken. The FCC should act consistent with legal doctrine.

“If a broadcaster violates the law, then the egregious nature of that violation should help the FCC to determine an appropriate sanction — period.”

Joining Winter in signing the letter are Land, Morality in Media President Patrick A. Trueman, Family Research Council President Tony Perkins, Alliance Defending Freedom President Alan Sears and Focus on the Family Senior Vice President Tom Minnery, among others.

The letter urges Congress to make sure the FCC takes “seriously its duty to enforce federal law 18 U. S. C. 1464, limiting indecency and profanity on the publicly owned airwaves to times of day when children are much less likely to be in the audience.

“The FCC has been derelict in this regard under the leadership of its current Chairman Julius Genachowski, having executed no enforcement actions during his tenure,” the letter charges. “We strongly urge you to oppose the FCC proposed changes, outlined in a Public Notice of April 1, 2013, GN Docket No. 13-86, to its established indecency enforcement standard.”

Isett said Congress should also include questions regarding enforcement of the broadcast decency law when conducting confirmation hearings for Tom Wheeler, President Obama’s nominee for FCC chairman.

This article, written by Diana Chandler, originally appeared in Baptist Press May 15, 2013. Diana Chandler serves as Baptist Press’ staff writer.

The state’s House of Representatives voted 75-65 May 13 to permit terminally ill Vermont residents to obtain and use a prescription for a lethal drug dose, the Burlington Free Press reported. The Senate had approved the legislation with a 17-13 vote.

Also in this edition: Disabled mother gives birth after threat of forced abortion, Doctor won’t refer for sex-selection abortion; sanctions possible, Indian IVF doctors perform abortion because baby is female, and Nearly 800 unborn babies spared in latest 40 Days campaign.

Gov. Peter Shumlin, a Democrat, is expected the sign the bill into law. When he does, Vermont will join Oregon and Washington as the only states to legalize assisted suicide.

Vermont will become the first state to do so through the legislative process. The other states legalized the practice through voter initiatives.

Legislative opponents criticized the measure’s elimination of government oversight guidelines after three years and the expansive definition possible for a terminal illness.

Rep. Tom Koch, a Republican, called it a “very dangerous bill,” according to the Free Press. “We have facilitated euthanasia.”

Rep. Carolyn Branagan, a Republican, said, “There can never be a dignified death using a handful of pills or a lethal cocktail.”

Disabled mother gives birth after threat of forced abortion

A mentally disabled Nevada woman who faced a possible court-forced abortion last year has given birth to a girl.

Elisa Bauer, 32, gave birth May 2 to Cierra Marie, who weighed 5 pounds, 7 ounces and was 17 inches long, according to LifeSite News.

Judge Egan Walker appeared prepared in early November to order an abortion and sterilization for Bauer, who also has epilepsy, after it was learned she was pregnant under unknown circumstances. A doctor called by Walker recommended an abortion because of Bauer’s medication to prevent epileptic seizures, her health condition and her risky behavior that apparently led to her pregnancy, LifeSite reported. A doctor representing Bauer’s adoptive parents said it would be safe for her to continue the pregnancy.

The parents, William and Amy Bauer, and their daughter are Roman Catholics and opposed an abortion. The Bauers, who adopted Elisa and her five siblings from Costa Rica, contended their daughter wanted to give birth and make an adoption plan for her child. Elisa had been living at a group home for the disabled when she became pregnant.

In mid-November, Walker decided against requiring an abortion.

Cierra “is sweet and good natured. By all measures, she is perfectly healthy and sublimely beautiful,” Bauer family lawyer Jason Guinasso told LifeSite.

Adoptive parents have been chosen for her, Guinasso said.

Doctor won’t refer for sex-selection abortion; sanctions possible

An Australian doctor faces possible penalties for refusing to refer a couple for a sex-selection abortion.

The couple asked Mark Hobart of Melbourne to refer them to a doctor for an abortion after they learned 19 weeks into pregnancy their unborn child was a female, The Melbourne Herald Sun reported April 28. They wanted a boy.

Hobart, who declined on conscience grounds, acknowledged he violated a Victoria state law and could face such sanctions as a suspension of his license.

“But just because it’s the law doesn’t mean it’s right,” he said, according to the Herald Sun.

A 2008 Victorian law requires a doctor with a “conscientious objection” to refer a woman seeking an abortion to a physician who will perform the procedure.

Wesley Smith, an American bioethics specialist, said in a blog post, “In other words, the cost of being a licensed doctor [in Victoria] is being complicit in the taking of human life.

“Here’s the bottom line: The culture of death permits no dissent – even from something as odious as killing a gestating baby because of her sex.”

Indian IVF doctors perform abortion because baby is female

Officials in India closed a fertility clinic after doctors performed an abortion in the fifth month of gestation because the unborn child was a girl.

Doctors at the clinic in Kothapet, a suburb of Hyderabad, reportedly had promised a couple with three daughters they would provide them with a boy by means of in vitro fertilization and embryo screening, according to The Times of India.

When they discovered last year the mother was carrying a boy, the doctors urged an abortion, saying the mother’s health was at risk. The parents agreed to an abortion in June. The mother became critically ill after the abortion and required months to recover, The Times reported.

The clinic’s cover-up became known April 30 when the parents went to local government authorities with their complaint.

Nearly 800 unborn babies spared in latest 40 Days campaign

Nearly 800 unborn children were spared from abortion during the latest 40 Days for Life campaign, according to reports to the pro-life organization.

Leaders of 40 Days said 787 babies reportedly were rescued during the latest semi-annual campaign, which ended March 24. Two days after the campaign closed, 40 Days staff reported 601 children were spared.

The semi-annual outreaches – which focus on peaceful, pro-life prayer vigils outside abortion clinics – have resulted in reports of more than 7,500 unborn babies spared since they began as a nationwide effort in 2007.

Reports from the latest campaign also showed seven abortion centers closed and seven clinic workers quit. Since its 2007 beginning, 40 Days has reported 33 centers have closed and 83 employees have quit.

The next 40 Days campaign will be held Sept. 25 to Nov. 3.

The Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission works to protect the sanctity of human life. If you would like to learn more about this issue, additional resources are available here. Our free, downloadable Impact resource is also available online. If your church is interested in purchasing materials on the sanctity of human life, please visit our online bookstore and erlc.com

Pro-lifers said the case demonstrates the injustice of maintaining legalized abortion, as well as the need for stricter regulations on the practice. Pro-choicers said it shows the injustice of regulating abortion. And in making their case, leading abortion rights defenders failed to mention a whole class of victims in Gosnell’s crimes: The children he killed.

A jury found Gosnell guilty Monday (May 13) of the first-degree murder of three babies who were alive outside the womb at his West Philadelphia abortion clinic. The 12-person jury, which had deliberated since April 30, acquitted the abortion doctor of first-degree murder in the case of one other child.

Those babies were only some of hundreds at least six months into gestation who were killed outside the womb after induced delivery at a clinic described as filthy, according to a 281-page report issued by a grand jury in 2011. Gosnell, who destroyed the records in most of those deaths, or a co-worker typically killed the living children by a technique he called “snipping” — jabbing scissors into the back of a baby’s neck and cutting the spinal cord.

Jurors will begin the sentencing phase of Gosnell’s trial May 21. With the first-degree murder convictions, Gosnell, 72, could receive either the death penalty or life in prison.

The panel also found Gosnell guilty of involuntary manslaughter, instead of third-degree murder, in the 2009 death of Karnamaya Mongar, 41, after an abortion. In addition, the jury convicted Gosnell of 21 of 24 counts of violating a state ban on abortions after 24 weeks of pregnancy and of 210 of 227 counts of transgressing the state’s 24-hour waiting period, according to The Philadelphia Inquirer.

Southern Baptist ethicist Richard Land joined other pro-life leaders in seeing Gosnell’s crimes as more than isolated incidents.

“This verdict is one more step in the direction of an increasingly pro-life America affirming the personhood of the unborn,” said Land, president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission. “The grotesque atmosphere of Dr. Gosnell’s clinic stands as a graphic reminder of what is happening to our unborn and newly born citizens in similar clinics across America.”

Christians “must renew our efforts to stop the wholesale sacrifice of our unborn children to the false gods of social convention, convenience and arbitrary standards of normality,” Land told Baptist Press.

Day Gardner, president of the National Black Pro-life Union, was “elated,” she told BP.

“Kermit Gosnell is a heinous killer of children, and I am so glad that the jury saw him for the murderer that he is,” Gardner said, adding she hopes there will be “more regulations and restrictions in place [on abortion clinics] that will help to save the lives of children and women.”

“Abortion clinics are horrible, bloody places that make money on high volume,” Gardner said. “They shuffle women in and just as hurriedly shuffle them out.”

Gardner, who sat in the courtroom two or three days a week for five weeks of the trial, had criticized Gosnell, also African American, for the way he took advantage of poor, minority women in his clinic. During the trial, she described him as “a racist of the worst kind” and “the poster boy for black-on-black crime.”

Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the Susan B. Anthony List, said the “greatest tragedy” is Gosnell is “not alone.”

“Exploitation of women and complete disregard for their health and well-being are problems endemic to the entire abortion industry,” she said in a written statement.

“Abortion is a brutal, painful procedure, both for the child that it kills and the woman that it wounds,” Dannenfelser said. “We must protect children both inside and outside the womb who experience unspeakable pain from abortion.”

Rep. Diane Black, R.-Tenn., commended the convictions, saying Gosnell’s crimes “stand as a stark reminder that there is no such thing as a safe abortion.”

Black is sponsoring legislation in the U.S. House of Representatives that would bar federal family planning funds from going to the Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA) and other abortion providers.

“While Gosnell’s actions were especially egregious, we should remember this is what happens each time an abortion is performed — a beating heart is stopped and an innocent human life is ended,” Black said in a written statement. “Gosnell’s crimes also are incredibly revealing about the true nature of the big abortion industry that profits daily off the murder of children and willfully even sacrifices women’s health at the altar of choice.”

PPFA and NARAL Pro-choice America — two of the country’s leading abortion rights organizations — commended the jury’s verdicts without commenting on the victims Gosnell was convicted of murdering.

Eric Ferrero, PPFA’s vice president for communications, described Gosnell’s crimes as “appalling,” saying the verdict “will ensure that no woman is victimized by Kermit Gosnell ever again.”

“This case has made clear that we must have and enforce laws that protect access to safe and legal abortion, and we must reject misguided laws that would limit women’s options and force them to seek treatment from criminals like Kermit Gosnell,” Ferrero said.

NARAL President Ilyse Hogue said justice “was served” in the verdicts and Gosnell “will pay the price for the atrocities he committed.”

“Now, let’s make sure these women are vindicated by delivering what all women deserve: access to the full range of health services including safe, high-quality and legal abortion care,” Hogue said in a written release.

“We hope that the lessons of the trial do not fade with the verdict: Anti-choice politicians, and their unrelenting efforts to deny women access to safe and legal abortion care, will only drive more women to back-alley butchers like Kermit Gosnell,” Hogue said.

The 2011 report by the grand jury, however, described a “regulatory collapse” by Pennsylvania and city agencies in monitoring Gosnell’s West Philadelphia clinic under the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion and state regulations. The state Department of Health provided only intermittent reviews from the time Gosnell’s Women’s Medical Society opened in 1979 until 1993. It totally halted inspections of abortion clinics for “political reasons” in 1993 under Gov. Tom Ridge, a pro-choice Republican, the grand jury reported in 2011.

A raid of Gosnell’s clinic in an investigation of prescription drug trafficking in 2010 led to multiple charges and the closing of the facility.

In light of testimony in the Gosnell trial and other reports, Republicans in Congress are calling for investigations of abortion clinics and cooperation from states to prevent the kind of murderous and horrific practices described by former Gosnell employees and other witnesses.

GOP members of both the Senate and House of Representatives have called for Congress to investigate and remedy “abusive, unsanitary, and illegal abortion practices.” Leaders of two House committees, meanwhile, have written attorneys general and health department officials seeking information on the regulation of abortion clinics in all 50 states.

The grand jury’s 2011 report said federal and state authorities discovered the following during their 2010 raid of Gosnell’s clinic:

—The remains of 45 babies stored in bags, milk jugs, orange juice cartons and cat-food containers, with some in a refrigerator and others in a freezer.

— The severed feet of babies in jars.

— “Semi-conscious women scheduled for abortions were moaning in the waiting room or the recovery room….”

— Conditions in the clinic that were “by far, the worst” the investigators had ever seen, with blood on the floor and on blankets covering dirty recliners, a “stench of urine,” cat excrement on the stairs, “filthy and unsanitary” surgery rooms, dirty instruments and broken equipment.

At trial, Gosnell initially faced seven counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of viable babies outside the womb but Judge Jeffrey Minehart of the Philadelphia Common Pleas Court dropped three of the counts after the prosecution rested its case.

The trial began March 18, and the prosecution closed its case April 18 after five weeks of testimony, much of it from former Gosnell employees who recounted the killings of babies struggling for life outside the womb and the horrible conditions at the clinic. Attorney Jack McMahon called no witnesses in Gosnell’s defense.

“Congress might have written the immigration laws to grant a safe haven to people living elsewhere in the world who face government strictures that the United States Constitution prohibits. But it did not,” the judges wrote in releasing their ruling today (May 14).

Instead, asylum laws apply only to those who have a “well-founded fear of persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion,” and the Romeike family did not make a sufficient case, the judges ruled.

The Romeikes fled Germany in 2008 because of mounting fines and the threat of losing custody of their children unless they attended public school in a country where homeschooling is illegal. In 2010 they were granted asylum, but the Obama administration appealed the decision to the Board of Immigration Appeals and won.

The Home School Legal Defense Association, representing the Romeike family, had argued that the right of parents to direct the education of their children, including homeschooling, is a fundamental human right that the government must protect.

“We believe the Sixth Circuit is wrong and we will appeal their decision,” Michael Farris, founder and chairman of HSLDA, said in a statement. “America has room for this family and we will do everything we can to help them.”

Mike Donnelly, HSLDA’s director of international affairs, said Germany continues to persecute homeschoolers.

“The court ignored mountains of evidence that homeschoolers are harshly fined and that custody of their children is gravely threatened — something most people would call persecution. This is what the Romeikes will suffer if they are sent back to Germany,” Donnelly said.

The judges said there is a difference between “the persecution of a discrete group and those who violate a generally applicable law. As the Board of Immigration Appeals permissibly found, the German authorities have not singled out the Romeikes in particular or homeschoolers in general for persecution.”

As stated in the opinion, the Romeikes feared that the public school curriculum in Germany would “influence [their children] against Christian values,” and the government imposed fines for each unexcused absence. At the time they fled Germany, they owed the government roughly $9,000.

The 6th Circuit upheld the Board of Immigration Appeals’ reasoning that homeschoolers are not protected by immigration laws because they “lack the social visibility” and “particularity required to be a cognizable social group.”

Furthermore, the Romeikes, the judges ruled, “have not claimed on appeal that the German government has persecuted them in the past; they claim that the government will persecute them in the future if they return.”

The court agreed with the board that there is no indication that German officials “are motivated by anything other than law enforcement,” which would amount to appropriate administration of the law, not persecution.

The board, the judges wrote, “convincingly showed that the record simply did not support two ‘findings’: that Germany selectively applied the law to faith-based homeschoolers and disproportionately punished them for violations.”

The court pointed out that the United States “has not opened its doors to every victim of unfair treatment, treatment that our laws do not allow. That the United States Constitution protects the rights of ‘parents and guardians to direct the upbringing and education of children under their control’ does not mean that a contrary law in another country establishes persecution on religious or any other protected ground.”

Quoting an earlier opinion by then-Judge Samuel Alito, the judges wrote that “the concept of persecution does not encompass all treatment that our society regards as unfair, unjust, or even unlawful or unconstitutional. If persecution were defined that expansively, a significant percentage of the world’s population would qualify for asylum in this country — and it seems most unlikely that Congress intended such as a result.”

The question is not whether Germany’s policy violates the American constitution, the judges said, or whether it violates the parameters of an international treaty or whether it’s a good idea. The question is whether the Romeikes have established the prerequisites of an asylum claim — a well-founded fear of persecution on account of a protected ground. The Romeikes, they concluded, have not met this burden.

In a separate concurring opinion, one of the judges wrote that their role is not that of an international court adjudicating Germany’s obligations to other countries in respect of its own citizens.

“Instead we sit as a court of the United States, enforcing statutes that implement some of the international obligations of the United States to other countries in respect of asylum applicants,” he wrote.

Two of the panel’s judges were nominated to the appeals court by President George W. Bush, and the third was nominated by President Clinton.

This article originally appeared in Baptist Press May 14, 2013.

The jury returned the verdicts Monday afternoon (May 13) after deliberating for nearly two weeks. Among more than 250 charges, Gosnell faced four counts of first-degree murder of children who were born after induced delivery.

The panel also found Gosnell guilty of involuntary manslaughter in the 2009 death of a Virginia woman during an abortion. Prosecutors had brought a third-degree murder charge against the doctor in the death of Karnamaya Mongar, 41.

Gosnell, 72, could receive the death penalty for first-degree murder.

Pro-life organizations welcomed the verdicts. Anna Higgins, director of the Family Research Council’s Center for Human Dignity, said they bring “a just conclusion to a horrific case.”

The jury returned to the courtroom with the verdicts after informing Philadelphia Common Pleas Court Judge Jeffrey Minehart Monday morning they were deadlocked on two counts. Minehart encouraged the jurors to continue working, according to The Philadelphia Inquirer.

Gosnell initially faced seven counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of viable babies outside the womb, but Minehart dropped three of the counts after the prosecution rested its case.

The trial began March 18, and the prosecution closed its case April 18 after five weeks of testimony, much of it from former Gosnell employees who recounted the killings of babies struggling for life outside the womb and the horrible conditions at the West Philadelphia clinic. Attorney Jack McMahon called no witnesses in Gosnell’s defense.

The babies involved in the first-degree murder charges were only some of hundreds at least six months into gestation who were killed outside the womb after induced delivery at Gosnell’s clinic, according to a 281-page grand jury report in 2011. Gosnell destroyed records for the others, the grand jury reported.

After delivery, Gosnell — or another staff member — would jab scissors into the back of a baby’s neck and cut the spinal cord, witnesses and the grand jury reported. Gosnell called this method of killing “snipping.”

The gruesome details of the death of babies still in the womb are part of Live Action’s undercover investigation of clinics that perform late-term abortions. As part of the investigation, pregnant women wearing hidden cameras and microphones go inside the clinics and ask about obtaining an abortion, although they have no intention of getting one.

The latest videos are the third and fourth ones released as part of a series dubbed “Inhuman.”

In one video, a woman asks late-term abortion doctor LeRoy Carhart — well-known nationally for his defense of late-term procedures — details about the abortion. He explains that a needle is inserted “through your tummy, into the fetus.” The woman is at 26 weeks.

A baby born in Florida at 22 weeks survived in 2007. Infants who go to full term are born between 37 and 40 weeks

“We do a shot into the fetus to end the pregnancy the first day,” Carhart says. “If everything works out,” he explains, “you just deliver” an intact, but dead, baby. But if “for some reason that doesn’t happen, then we have to take them out in pieces.”

He tells the woman, “The heart slows down, and then it just stops.”

“Within an hour of the injection you shouldn’t feel it moving anymore,” he says of the baby.

The woman then asks if a baby at 26 weeks could survive outside the womb, if not given the injection.

“If it came out?” Carhart asks. “Oh yeah, it probably could. It would be a 50/50 thing, probably.”

Only four doctors nationally perform abortions at 26 weeks or later, he tells her. The week the video was made, he had seen four women wanting a late-term abortion.

Carhart then explains that after the baby dies from the injection, the baby “gets soft” and “mushy.”

“So what makes the baby ‘mushy’” the woman asks.

“The fact that it’s not alive for two or three days,” Carhart responds.

“Oh,” the woman says. “So I’ll have a dead baby in me?”

“For three days, yeah,” Carhart says. “It’s like putting meat in a crock pot, OK? … It gets softer.”

When the woman wants reassurance that the baby won’t be delivered alive, he tells her, “I’d have better luck standing in front of a train and getting hit and surviving — [with the train] going 100 miles an hour — than the baby will.”

In Live Action’s other new video, a woman at 23 weeks talks to late-term abortion doctor Laura Mercer in Arizona.

“We do the injection, which is a quick poke through your belly, and that stops the fetal heart, so that makes it so, if you were to deliver, there shouldn’t be movement,” Mercer says, describing a procedure similar to the one done in Carhart’s office that stops the baby’s heart.

The woman asks Mercer if the procedure is “guaranteed.”

“Yes we induce a demise — an intrauterine demise,” Mercer says.

“What does ‘demise’ mean?” the woman asks.

“Death,” Mercer responds.

Asked if the baby will come out whole or in pieces, Mercer says, “It’s more common that it comes out in pieces.”

“We use a combination of suction and then real instruments to, literally, go in and grab and pull pieces out,” Mercer says.

Later in the video, a counselor is seen talking to the woman, who is told she does not have to use the injection, which utilizes a drug known as digoxin.

“If they don’t use the digoxin, they’ll just suction the baby and it’s possible … that there may be movement as they’re taking out the fetus,” the counselor says.

“Like, movement after?” the woman asks.

“Mm-hmm,” the counselor answers affirmatively.

“And then what happens?” the woman asks.

The counselor tells her, “Well, then, usually it stops on its own.”

The counselor explains the procedure: “They use suction, plus they use instruments. And sometimes the fetuses don’t come out — you know, it’s not complete.”

The woman asks, “Will they resuscitate it? Will I have to take care of it?”

“Uh-uh,” the counselor says, shaking her head.

The baby will be pulled out in pieces, with or without an injection that kills it, the counselor says.

“The digoxin is probably the best thing for it,” the counselor says. “That way there’s no suffering, OK?”

This article originally appeared in Baptist Press May 13, 2013.

GOP members of both the Senate and House of Representatives have called for Congress to investigate and remedy “abusive, unsanitary, and illegal abortion practices.” Leaders of two House committees, meanwhile, have written attorneys general and health department officials seeking information on the regulation of abortion clinics in all 50 states.

Both letters refer to Gosnell, the Philadelphia abortion doctor who faces four counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of viable children who were killed after delivery and a count of third-degree murder in the death of a mother during an abortion. A jury began deliberating April 30 after hearing testimony during a six-week trial from witnesses who recounted the killings of babies struggling for life outside the womb and the horrible conditions at the clinic.

Since the trial began, evidence of other United States clinics unwilling to aid infants who survive abortion has surfaced in undercover videos by a pro-life organization.

The videos — and other reports — have heightened concerns that the practice of killing babies who survive abortions or refusing to provide care for them might be far more widespread than just Gosnell’s practice. The Gosnell trial and possibly the reports have prompted the actions by congressional Republicans.

They have a 2002 federal law, the Born-alive Infants Protection Act, as a basis for their calls for investigations and information. That law provides legal protection to fully delivered babies, even if an abortion was intended.

Southern Baptist ethicist Richard Land commended the congressional efforts “to investigate and rectify this scandal.”

“The lack of regulation and lack of prosecution of existing regulations on abortion clinics across the country has been scandalous for years,” said Land, president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission. “I wish that the conditions at Dr. Gosnell’s clinic were isolated, but I know better from persistent reports that come to those inside the pro-life movement. Sadly, most states have more stringent regulations on veterinary clinics than they do on abortion clinics.”

Sen. Mike Lee of Utah and Rep. Stephen Fincher of Tennessee introduced resolutions in their chambers May 6 and 8, respectively, that request Congress and the states to investigate clinic practices and “the interstate referral of women and girls to facilities engaged in dangerous or illegal second- and third-trimester procedures.” The resolutions, which are non-binding, also say Congress has a duty to hold hearings on abortions performed at or after the point of viability for unborn children and on government policies about such abortions.

Virginia Rep. Bob Goodlatte, the House Judiciary Committee’s chairman, wrote attorneys general May 7 to ask for reports on state laws protecting newborns who survive abortions and on prosecutions of alleged violations of such laws, as well as on prosecutions in the deaths of women undergoing abortions. Arizona Rep. Trent Franks, chairman of a Judiciary subcommittee, joined Goodlatte on the letter.

In a May 8 letter, Michigan Rep. Fred Upton, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, and five other panel leaders requested information from state health officials on the licensing, inspection and monitoring of abortion clinics.

Both letters from committee leaders cited what a 2011 Philadelphia grand jury report described as a “regulatory collapse” by Pennsylvania and city agencies in monitoring Gosnell’s West Philadelphia clinic, which opened in 1979. The state Department of Health provided only intermittent reviews until 1993. It totally halted inspections of abortion clinics for “political reasons” that year and failed to perform any more before a raid of Gosnell’s clinic in 2010 that led to charges, according to the grand jury.

In their letter, Goodlatte and Franks told the attorneys general they want to know if the federal government “might partner with states to help prevent similar atrocities.”

“We are seeking to find out if state and local governments are being stymied in their efforts to protect the civil rights of newborns and their mothers by legal or financial obstacles that are within the federal government’s power to address,” they said.

The pro-life organization Live Action, which has become famous in recent years for its undercover investigations of Planned Parenthood and other abortion centers, has released since April 28 four hidden-camera videos that show clinic personnel providing guidance on late-term abortion attempts.

The videos, secretly recorded by actresses posing as women considering abortion, not only record flippant comments about the procedure by at least one doctor but show some doctors confirming they will not provide life-saving care for children who survive an abortion. One video shows a clinic staffer explaining how to dispose of a baby born alive.

Lila Rose, Live Action’s president, called for congressional hearings, saying Gosnell “is clearly not alone.”

Live Action’s investigation shows “these gruesome practices seem to be standard operating procedure” in many abortion clinics, she said in a written statement.

With his Senate resolution, Lee sought approval by unanimous consent, but Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D.-Conn., filed an objection, which blocked the legislation. On May 8, Blumenthal offered a resolution that would serve the purpose of supplanting Lee’s. The Democrat’s resolution condemned all “incidents of abusive, unsanitary, or illegal health care practices.”

Lee objected to Blumenthal’s resolution, saying he had not been able to read it.

“I am heartened and I think all Americans should be heartened and the entire pro-life movement should be heartened by the clear implication in this proposal that health regulations should be equitably applied and enforced on abortion clinics as they are on other healthcare facilities,” Lee said, according to The Daily Caller.

In the Gosnell trial, the four babies involved in first-degree murder charges were only some of hundreds at least six months into gestation who were killed outside the womb after induced delivery at his clinic, according to the grand jury report. After delivery, Gosnell — or another staff member — would jab scissors into the back of a baby’s neck and cut the spinal cord, witnesses and the grand jury reported. Gosnell called the killing of these children “snipping.”