Attorneys of Chicago’s Pro-Life Action League filed an appeal with the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals against an April lower court decision permitting any form of fetal experimentation.
Stated League director Joseph Scheidler: “If this decision were not appealed, Dr. Mengele-type of experimentation on live human subjects would be allowed to be performed on unborn children. A civilized society cannot allow such barbaric practices.”
The appeal, which may even go to the U.S. Supreme Court, will halt all fetal experimentation transplants for two or three years at least.
***
Decent burial for fetal remains, court rules
When the Eighth U.S. Court of Appeals upheld Minnesota’s Fetal Disposal Law in early August, another crack appeared in the edifice of institutional abortion.
The law was passed in 1989 following the public furor over the discovery of 13 aborted babies in the dumpster behind the Robinsdale Clinic in Minneapolis. However, before the law could go into effect, Planned Parenthood and notorious abortionist Mildred Hanson convinced U.S. District Judge David Doty to issue an injunction in June 1989. He expressed the view that the law infringes on “a woman’s right to abortion.”
In overturning the injunction, Appeals Court Judge Donald Lay referred to last year’s historic Webster decision of the Supreme Court, saying that “A state may make a value judgment favoring childbirth.”
Debra Braun, Vice-President of Pro-Life Action Ministries was particularly pleased about the psychological impact of the ruling. Because of wide media coverage, she told The Interim, “People were reminded that a dead human body results from an abortion.”
***
Cuomo and Ferraro
Two prominent pro-abortion Catholics in New York, Governor Mario Cuomo and 1984 Democratic vice-presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro, are playing leading roles in seeking a pro-abortion New York Senate in November 1990.
Ferraro was criticized for her pro-abortion views by New York Cardinal John O’Connor in 1984. She and presidential candidate Walter Mondale lost to former president Ronald Reagan. New York State deserted the democratic fold.
The 1974 Declaration on Procured Abortion from the Vatican restated the unchanging Catholic teaching that Christians may not promote legislation accepting or widening access to abortion.
Newsweek for August 20 notes that “former Democratic vice-president candidate Geraldine Ferraro is raising her profile by campaigning for 15 pro-choice Democratic women running for the New York State Senate.”
Over the past year, New York state governor Mario Cuomo has been warned by New York Auxiliary Bishop Austin Vaughn on several occasions that his public support of legalized abortion may endanger his soul in eternity. In June, New York Cardinal O’Connor published a 16-page discussion of the relationship between Church and State on the issue of abortion. Excommunication he declared, was one instrument available to the Church to emphasize the seriousness of the issue.
Governor Cuomo, however, appears to be a man of the present who calculates risks and counts votes instead. In August he made it clear, the U.S. weekly, The Wanderer reports, that he is confident that the Church will not act against him. Like Ferraro he, too, supports the 15 Democratic pro-abortion feminists.
