by Rusty Pugh and Jody Brown
(AgapePress) – The director of Concerned Women for America says even some pro-abortion supporters frown on the idea of human cloning, thereby reinforcing the pro-life position that life begins at conception.
CWA's Wendy Wright says for years, the pro-abortion argument has been that human life does not being at conception but at some other point — though they lack consensus on exactly when it does begin. Wright says in the debate over cloning and stem cell research, pro-abortion advocates have undermined their own argument.
“The arguments over embryonic stem cell research and cloning [have] clearly defined that life does begin at conception,” Wright says. “Now pro-abortionists are claiming that the vote on cloning [last week in the U.S. House] does nothing regarding the abortion argument because with cloning there is no woman involved, no woman who's carrying the 'new human life.' But by admitting that human life begins at conception, they have undermined their own pro-abortion argument that it's not a life that's being taken in an abortion.
“All these arguments surrounding cloning and embryonic stem cell research [are] helping to prove the point that pro-lifers have been trying to get across for years — that … life does begin at conception,” Wright says.
Last week, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Human Cloning Prohibition Act which bans completely the cloning of a human being. The issue of human cloning will now be taken up by the U.S. Senate, where Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas has introduced his version of a bill to ban cloning.
Photo Flap
The controversy of “when life begins” now includes disagreement over what has been called perhaps the most influential photograph of the century in the pro-life debate. The photojournalist who snapped the now-famous picture of an unborn child grasping the finger of surgeon says pro-abortion forces are attempting to discredit his work.
Michael Clancy was on an assignment for USA Today when he snapped what has arguably become one of the most convincing pieces of evidence in existence that unborn children are living human beings. A doctor was performing in utero surgery for spina bifida on a child at 21 weeks gestation. Clancy snapped a photograph showing the child grasping the surgeon's finger.
Clancy says pro-abortion forces have claimed the picture of baby Samuel Armas was staged. He says even the doctor has attempted to discredit him by claiming the child didn't move. But Clancy says he knows what he saw.
“I'm just saying what I saw and what I captured on film,” Clancy says. “A doctor wiggling his finger as if he was … standing next to a week-old baby's crib — he reached a finger out and as a reaction, the child squeezed his finger and that's the moment I took the picture.”
Clancy says there is no doubt the child was reacting to the surgeon. But he says the picture begs the question: How much pain does the unborn child experience during this surgery? Clancy says the child was not sedated in any way for the procedure.
(This update courtesy of Agape Press.)
