Volume 7 Issue 27

Pregnant Woman Changes Mind Mid-Abortion, Saves Twin Babies

A North Carolina woman undergoing a chemical abortion had a change of heart when she learned she was carrying twins and was able to save her babies thanks to the work of a pro-life pregnancy center.   

The woman was six weeks pregnant when she visited a Charlotte, N.C., abortion clinic – A Preferred Women’s Health Center – with the goal of ending the pregnancy. 

Pregnancy Help News first reported the story. 

“Oh – twins,” the technician at the abortion clinic said while performing an ultrasound.

The pregnant woman had always wanted twins, and she swallowed the first pill without having time to consider the consequences. 

A chemical abortion is a two-step process involving a pair of drugs, RU-486 (mifepristone) and misoprostol. Together, they’re known as the abortion pill. Mifepristone blocks the natural hormone progesterone and causes the lining of the uterus to release the unborn baby. Misoprostol starts the contractions that result in delivery of a dead baby.

Leaving the clinic, the woman heard a sidewalk counselor: “It might not be too late for you – AbortionPillReversal.com– they can still help you save your baby.”

The woman, known pseudonymously as “Alexis,” visited the website and called the phone number that was listed. She wanted to save her babies. 

“We got her started on the abortion pill reversal treatment extremely fast,” Courtney Parks of HELP Pregnancy Center told Pregnancy Help News. “It was a matter of hours.”

Reversal treatment involves an extra boost of progesterone to offset the effects of mifepristone. About 750 babies have been born thanks to the treatment and to pregnant women changing their minds.

Parks and sonographer Kelly Byrum let Alexis view her unborn babies on an ultrasound machine. 

“They were tiny, little babies and they had beautiful, little heartbeats,” Parks said. “I just remember sitting with her in that ultrasound room and her crying, and just hoping that this would work for her so that she could save her babies.”

The reversal treatment worked, and several months later, Alexis delivered healthy twins.

The pregnancy center even threw her a baby shower.

“She told me, ‘If I had known what I know now and I had seen how the Lord has provided for these babies, I would have never even walked into that clinic.’ So she’s just been overwhelmed with just how good God has provided for her throughout this,” Parks said.

Three Christians Forced to Convert to Buddhism in Rakhine State, Burma

YANGON, Burma, June 19, 2019 (Morning Star News) – Local authorities in western Burma (Myanmar) last month forced three Christians to convert to Buddhism, area sources said.

In Ann Township in southern Rakhine state, five local officials led by U Tin Shwe Maung took two ethnic Chin Christians from their homes in Padi Kyin village to a monastery on May 24 and threatened to expel them from the village if they did not convert to Buddhism, according to the Chin Human Rights Organization (CHRO).

Forcing pastor U Aung Thin and a member of his 30-member house church who requested anonymity to sign documents stating their conversion to Buddhism before the Buddhist monk in charge of the monastery, the officials also threatened that the two Christians would be fined 100,000 kyats (US$80) if they engaged in Christian activities, villagers told CHRO.

Previously local officials have demanded money from other Christians, according to area Christians.

In a separate case the next day (May 25), a Buddhist monk took Padi Kyin village Christian U San Tin Aung to a village administration office and compelled him to sign documents stating conversion to Buddhism or else he would be expelled from the village, according to CHRO.  

“We released a statement publicly to let the Burmese government know that ethnic Chin people in Padi Kyin village were forced to convert to Buddhism,” CHRO Field Director Salai Terah told Morning Star News. “We are trying to travel to that area to find out and solve the problem.”

Village officials have told CHRO leaders that they do not want them to visit, and Terah said doing so now would only worsen treatment of Chin Christians there.

“We can’t travel there at the moment because local authorities and local residents don’t want us,” he said.

Christians told CHRO that after the men signed the documents, area officials again threatened to expel them from the village if they continued practicing Christianity.

The officials also banned the three men from visiting the homes of Christians and doing business with them. Authorities patrol the village announcing through a loudspeaker that if the three men fail to obey, they will be fined 100,000 kyats (US$80) each, local sources told CHRO.

Some local Christians who have been insulted and physically assaulted by local authorities because of their faith have moved to nearby villages, according to CHRO.  

Many ethnic Chin retain their ancestral animist beliefs and practices, though today most are Christians, according to the Joshua Project and other sources. Encouraging Buddhism to try to unite Burma’s disparate peoples, the Burmese government has long persecuted Chin Christians for their faith.

In July 2018, a group of Buddhists physically assaulted a pastor and two Christian women in the Ann Township area, beating them and stoning their home, Terah said.

The house church in Padi Kyin is the only congregation in the village. Of the more than 200 households in the village, only 11 are Christian.

Our Christian community who are minorities there suffer discrimination and human rights violations,” Terah said. “We publicly released the news, but the government took no action. We want religious freedom. Don’t the government leaders know our suffering, or do they pretend to not know it?”

CHRO will try to bring the cases in Padi Kyin village before international Christian organizations if the government fails to address them, he said.

Burma is about 80 percent Buddhist and 9 percent Christian. The country is ranked 18th on Christian support organization Open Doors’ 2019 World Watch List of the countries where it is most difficult to be a Christian, up from 24^th the previous year. 

Biotech & Human Identity: The Danger Of Tampering With Our Genetic Code                      

When we use our bodies in ways that they are not designed for, bad things can happen. Non-reproductive sexual practices can damage the body in a variety of ways, ranging from STDs to hepatitis to cancers to fecal and urinary incontinence. Our bodies are not infinitely malleable, and whatever our desires for them might be, using the parts of our body contrary to their purposes can cause health problems. But what if our bodies are not operating correctly to begin with? What if we are missing limbs or are blind or deaf or have lost the use of one part of our body? What do we do then?

The answer is obvious: we use whatever technologies or medicines that we can devise to overcome the problem. Tremendous advances in prosthetic technologies, cochlear implants, transplants, surgical reattachments of severed body parts, and the like have enabled people to live normal lives and even to excel in ways that would have been unthinkable just a few decades ago.

Gene Therapies

That much is uncontroversial. Things get more complicated when we are dealing with genetic issues, however, because of the critical importance of our DNA to our identity. On a biological level, it is arguably the fundamental element that distinguishes human bodies from animal bodies.  It also makes each of us physically unique (aside from identical twins). Our genetic code is thus a critical element in defining us as human beings and as individuals, and thus attempts to manipulate it raise important ethical and worldview questions. 

Biotechnology is developing at an incredibly rapid rate, so we need to think these questions through very carefully. The place we need to begin is with the distinction between Somatic Cell Gene Therapy (SCGT) and Germline Gene Therapy (GGT). The former, in current technologies, seeks to cure disorders caused by a single gene such as hemophilia or cystic fibrosis localized to a part of a person's body. SCGT does not change all the cells in a person's body, only those necessary to correct the disorder. This is relatively uncontroversial, at least in its current form.

In contrast, Germline Gene Therapy modifies sperm and egg cells, thereby changing permanently the genetic makeup of the entire organism. Unlike Somatic Gene Therapy, the changes introduced by GGT are passed down to all of the modified organism's descendants. This raises serious ethical questions and as a result has been banned in humans by Australia, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and Israel. This is due in no small part to the unknown effect it might have on future generations, who would thus be rendered part of a human experiment without being able to give consent. 

And yet ... if we could use gene-editing technologies to eliminate Sickle Cell Disease or Tay-Sachs or other terrible genetic diseases in cases where we know parents are carriers who could pass them on to their children, some argue that this would be a positive benefit and that the transmission of the corrected gene through the person's descendants would actually be a benefit, whatever the risks involved.

The problem is, we do not know all the things that genes do, and "correcting" a gene for one problem might create enormous problems elsewhere, if not in this generation than some generations down the line. This is why it has been banned in several countries--we don't know enough to properly assess the risks, making it unethical to do the experiment.

Pre-Implantation Genetic Diagnosis

As an alternative, we could use Pre-Implantation Genetic Diagnosis (PGD) to avoid transmission of the defective genes. PGD is used to analyze the genome of babies produced through in vitro fertilization to determine whether the embryo has the genes for the disease.  If not, the embryo can be implanted; if so, she or he is discarded. In effect, the parents and technicians decide the embryo is better off never being born than being born with the disease. In other words, the approach does not cure the diseases; it eliminates children with them. Other uses of PGD illustrate a fundamental problem with biotechnology. While it can be used to cure diseases, it can also be used for other purposes, such as determining the sex of children so parents can have the child they want--usually a son. Parents in the deaf community have used it to ensure that their child is deaf as well, and parents with dwarfism have done similarly.

And taking the next step, even without genetic technology, the use of sperm bank and in vitro fertilization can enable women to choose the characteristics they want in the father of their baby, including things such as height, hair color, and education level. Babies thus become a consumer commodity, and like all consumer commodities we insist on our right to choose what we want. And in so doing, we impose our will on all future generations coming from our preferences. This devalues human life and leads directly to a War on the Weak that reduces and ultimately rejects the value of the mentally or physically handicapped.

In ancient Greece and Rome, imperfect babies were "discarded"--thrown into a river or down a well, flushed into the sewers, or left to die on a hillside--in the name of eugenics. Now, in a hideous merging of utilitarian ethics and consumerism, we do the same with our embryos, not to "strengthen the race" but to give us the designer baby we want.

Somatic Gene Therapy Issues

There are similar issues surrounding the largely uncontroversial field of Somatic Gene Therapy. To take a simple example, I am red-green colorblind, a sex-linked trait I got from my mother involving a defect on the X chromosome. It's a relatively minor problem, and no one to my knowledge is working on Somatic Gene Therapy to fix it. 

But suppose someone was. Suppose it was possible to introduce genetic material into my eyes that would build the appropriate cones for color vision that I lack. That would be a good thing--it would be repairing something that isn't working correctly. But take it to the next step. The same technology that can heal can also enhance. Suppose I am a Special Operations soldier. We could use the same technology to introduce cones that would respond to infrared or ultraviolet light, enabling me to see in the dark. Wouldn't that be a good thing? Or suppose you could introduce genes to enhance memory and cognition, or to enhance strength and coordination or stamina--in effect, creating a Captain America type super soldier (or super scholar or super athlete). Wouldn't that be a good thing?

Or take prosthetics. We can currently provide prosthetic devices that enable amputees to function on a more normal level; we are even working on powered exoskeletons to restore mobility to people with spinal cord injuries. (We are also working on Iron Man-like military exoskeletons to enhance physical performance and to provide full-body ballistic protection.) It seems inevitable that soon we will have powered prosthetics to further improve amputee abilities, perhaps allowing them more raw strength in the prosthetic limbs than an able-bodied person has.

If an able-bodied person wanted these kinds of prosthetics, should we allow it? There are already "trans-abled" persons who claim to have handicaps they do not and insist on surgical intervention to make them conform to their self-conception. Why not allow people to merge with machines like a disabled person with powered prosthetics? Is there anything ethically wrong with creating the Six Million Dollar Man or a cyborg?

Techno-Gnosticism

If there is no fixed human nature, if we are infinitely malleable, if we have the right to choose who or what we are, none of these possibilities raise any ethical issues.  Our personal perception of our identity is all that matters, regardless of physical facts, and we have an unalienable right to force physical reality to conform to our self-image and our desires. We are, in short, in a technological form of neo-Gnosticism.

All these examples, many of which seem like bad science fiction, have been seriously proposed by thinkers in our world. They all are various forms of Transhumanism, a worldview which argues that human beings should take charge of our own evolution and merge with machines. 

Many of the most important Transhumanists aren't as interested in the body as they are in merging our consciousness with computers--an even more extreme techno-Gnosticism