The fate of Roe v Wade

The vast majority of emails I send to scientists and academics inviting them to sign Declan’s petition to the UN on research cloning of embryos and stem cells are still being dumped to spam boxes (or to cyberspace, see blog of 4 September “Obama: Yes to stem cells, funding”). In fact, yesterday I sent a larger number of emails in one day than in previous weeks – 281 – but received only two out-of-office autoreplies: from the 182nd and 187th emails. I was quite surprised to discover this morning that three scientists had signed, the second largest number of signatories we have had in one day since 18 March. Oh, and Declan has not even received an email of acknowledgement from the founder and editor-in-chief of The Big Issue (a magazine sold by homeless people throughout the UK on registered street pitches) in respect of his complaint that from 10 November we will no longer be able to have a registered pitch (see previous blog).

Supreme Court of the United States

With major implications for human embryonic stem cell research and therapeutic cloning, the fate of Roe v Wade, the US Supreme Court case that legalised abortion, has become a well-publicised issue of concern in this year’s presidential election between abortion-rights opponent Republican nominee John McCain and abortion-rights supporter Democratic nominee Barack Obama. According to the Los Angeles Times, possible retirements of several Supreme Court justices could affect whether the Supreme Court maintains its slight majority in favor of upholding the decision. At least five Supreme Court justices support upholding court precedents on abortion rights, but if a supporter of Roe were replaced by a conservative nominee under a McCain administration, it could tip the majority against abortion rights.

Through most of the 1990s and until recently, the Supreme Court had a solid 6-3 majority in favor of upholding the right of a woman to choose abortion, reports the Times. But the margin has shrunk to one, now that Justice Sandra Day O'Connor is retired and has been replaced by Justice Samuel A Alito. And Justice John Paul Stevens, a leader of the narrow majority for abortion rights, is 88. Dawn Johnsen, an Indiana University law professor and former lawyer for NARAL Pro-Choice America, said: “Clearly, Roe is on the line this time,” adding: “It is quite clear they have four votes against it. If the next president appoints one more, the odds are it will be overruled.” Kathryn Kolbert, president of People for the American Way, said: “What we find scary is that people don’t understand what’s at stake. In the next four years, one to as many as three Supreme Court justices may step down, and they all will come from the liberal end of the court.” Wendy Long, a former clerk for Justice Clarence Thomas and counsel for the conservative Judicial Confirmation Network, said she believes the “consensus is Roe will fall slowly and incrementally, not in one decision” (Savage, Los Angeles Times, 5/10).

According to Salon, any effort by McCain to replace a more liberal justice with a more conservative one would probably be very tough because there seems little doubt that the Senate will remain in the control of the Democrats. That majority could prevent McCain from selecting individuals as conservative as Chief Justice John Roberts and Alito. “Still, the Democrats might find it harder to block a minority or female nominee, just as they failed to block Justice Clarence Thomas’ confirmation, despite a Democratic majority in the Senate,” Salon reports (Chemerinsky, Salon, 6/10).

Boston Globe columnist Ellen Goodman in an opinion piece writes that McCain is “out to overturn” Roe. Abortion-rights groups have been “crying wolf for so long that it’s hard to believe that the wolf is actually at the door,” but a ballot measure in South Dakota aimed at banning abortions except in cases of rape or incest, to save a woman’s life or to avert a “substantial and irreversible” maternal health risk of impairment to “a major bodily organ or system” is “directly pointed at Roe and targeted to arrive at the Supreme Court in time to greet a new justice,” according to Goodman. She adds, “If what happens in South Dakota doesn’t stay in South Dakota, a woman’s right will depend on whether she has enough gas to drive to the next, or the next or the next state” (Goodman, Boston Globe, 4/10).

New Scientist reports that this November voters in Colorado will decide on whether to amend the state’s constitution so that a “person” would “include any human being from the moment of fertilization”. The amendment was drafted by Rob Muise and colleagues at the Thomas More Law Center, a conservative religious legal organisation based in Ann Arbor, Michigan. By assigning rights to the embryo, it would probably make both abortion and stem cell research illegal, according to New Scientist. “Pro-choice advocates would challenge the law in court, creating what Muise calls a legislative ‘train wreck’: a series of appeals by one or both sides that would eventually take the case to the Supreme Court, which by then might have a conservative and anti-abortion majority” (Giles, New Scientist, 26/9).

Cardinal Justin Rigali, chair of the Committee on Pro-Life Activities of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) said: “The Catholic Church strongly supports promising and ethically sound stem cell research - and strongly opposes killing week-old human embryos, or human beings at any stage, to extract their stem cells” (The Wall Street Journal, 30/9). The Vatican has opened an office in Brussels and works hard together with other conservative forces for the implementation of more restrictive abortion laws and for the preference of Catholic Law above EU laws (Wikstrom, International Viewpoint, Sept). Should conservative Christian legal groups succeed in the US Supreme Court, the profound consequences for science may very well be felt in Europe. So, in the section of our campaign in support of human embryonic stem cell research and therapeutic cloning called “Religion in Public Life”, we will monitor Roe v Wade.

The Washington Independent reports that last year the Supreme Court voted in a 5-4 decision to uphold a federal ban on late term abortions, regardless of the health of the mother. In her dissent, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg called the decision “alarming”. She wrote: “It tolerates, indeed applauds, federal intervention to ban nationwide a procedure found necessary and proper in certain cases by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG). It blurs the line, firmly drawn in Casey, between pre-viability and post-viability abortions. And, for the first time since Roe, the court blesses a prohibition with no exception safeguarding a woman's health.”

Barred from the Dellow Centre?

We think that this morning could have seen us barred from the Catholic Sisters of Mercy Dellow Centre, the place where we sometimes shower and eat breakfast every weekday – the only food available to me for the entire day (see previous blog). Despite six tables being available in the canteen – the place had just opened – the homeless that on Sunday, while in the Manna Centre, more or less told me I would be found one morning with a knife in my back decides to sit with me. He throws his newspaper on the table with such force it lands on the chair beside me and then proceeds to open it on top of mine; I had to move to another table. And when Declan goes for a shower – he is now washing and shaving in the street as a result of all the hassle from homeless while attempting to wash in the men's washroom, see blog of 10 April “Washing in the street” – a homeless takes offence that he grabbed a chair and begins shouting loudly at him (the word f**k and its variations got repeated quite a few times). Yet no member of staff came in, despite that one of the nuns is normally attending to the two washing machines in the next room. Needless to say, Declan left the washroom as quickly as he could and we left the premises.

We are wary of this morning, understandably I think, because this is exactly how we got ourselves barred from the Methodist Church Whitechapel Mission last June (the place we had been washing since we were forced to become rough sleepers on 3 November 2006): the day we got barred by the minister’s wife due to concerns about our safety, I was assaulted by a homeless woman out of the blue in the canteen. And although Declan wrote by registered post to the minister himself and to the head of the Methodist Church in the UK, Rev Graham Carter, we were never readmitted. (Oh, and we still can’t access our drafts in Google Mail while in the Tower Hamlets Council Idea Store Whitechapel (they are accessible in the internet café), which is unfortunate since all our emailing to try and raise £4,000 for our campaign to support Declan’s petition to the UN is done from there and I now have to go to greater pains to do the work. We are beginning to wonder if the European Court of Human Rights might have invited the Government to set out its observations on the merits and admissibility of our case - Declan received a letter from the Registrar in December turning down his request of 8 September for priority, but informing him that the Court would examine his application, also of 8 September, possibly before the end of January.)


Pope Benedict XVI and bishops at the Basilica of the National
Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington 16 April

On Wednesday, the second day of his six-day US tour, Pope Benedict XVI visited the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in northeast Washington to speak directly to some 300 bishops and nine cardinals of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. He began by praising America's religious vitality and quickly turned to warning against the dangers of an ideology that he said threatens to reduce faith to a strictly private matter: secularism. "Is it," he asked, "consistent to profess our beliefs in church on Sunday, and then during the week to promote business practices or medical procedures contrary to those beliefs? Is it consistent for practicing Catholics to ignore or exploit the poor and the marginalized, to promote sexual behavior contrary to Catholic moral teaching, or to adopt positions that contradict the right to life of every human being from conception to natural death?" How such remarks will be taken by the bishops remains to be seen, but some observers saw them as strong encouragement to requiring stronger fidelity to Catholic principles among those citizens who claim to be Catholic, including politicians.

Cardinal Justin Rigali, archbishop of Philadelphia and chairman of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee for Pro-Life Activities, doesn't need words of encouragement. On 6 June, the day before the US House of Representatives voted in support of S5, the Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act of 2007, Rigali urged all House members to reject the "misguided and unethical legislation”, adding: "Ethically sound research using non-embryonic stem cells has continued to advance, helping patients with over 70 conditions in clinical trials." He clearly disregarded a letter of 4 April 2007 from the International Society for Stem Cell Research (ISSCR) - the primary international organisation of scientific, ethical, and clinical researchers in the field of stem cell biology – to all Senate members when S5 had been before the Senate. The ISSCR, which strongly supported S5 and believed this was the only bill before the US Congress that would accelerate research dedicated to finding better therapies for patients suffering from a variety of diseases, stated:

Passage of S5 would ensure that scientists in the United States can use Federal grant funds to study the many valuable human embryonic stem cell lines that have been developed since August 9, 2001, the date that President Bush announced his stem cell research policy ... You might hear during the debate about a list of 72 conditions that can supposedly be treated with adult stem cells. We urge you to question the validity of these claims. While adult stem cell therapies are powerful, they are not as wide-ranging as claimed. The range of diseases effectively treated with adult stem cells is still extremely restricted, largely limited to blood disorders and specific cancers. A vote for S5 will ensure that all avenues of stem cell research are adequately explored.

Rigali must not have been happy when S5 was passed by the House on 7 June by a vote of 247-176 (the US Senate had passed the legislation on 11 April 63-34). But his spirits certainly lifted when the legislation was vetoed by President Bush on 20 June: in a statement made the same day he criticized US congressional embryonic stem-cell advocates for "tragically" dismissing the medical advances made using adult stem cells. “I commend President Bush today for vetoing S5, the Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act,” the cardinal said. “This bill would not actually enhance stem cell research, but divert federal funds away from legitimate research toward avenues requiring the destruction of innocent human life.” He added: “The cause of science is not enhanced but diminished when it loses its moral compass.”