By recognizing the progress in the Pro-Life movement, we find ourselves motivated to keep working harder. On the national level, President Bush has had much success in his Pro-Life endeavors. His Pro-Life judicial nominee Priscilla Owen has recently been approved after years of filibusters. He has also been quite vocal in the fight to preserve the lives of embryos and recently focused on those frozen through in vitro fertilization. JJ and Tracy, a couple from Texas, shared with President Bush their story of frozen embryo adoption. Also, according to a recent study by the Alan Guttmacher Institute (the research branch of Planned Parenthood), abortions have decreased during President Bush’s first term in office. We have much for which to be grateful.
Please read this issue of the Pro-Life Update carefully to understand some of the challenges we now face and how you--an educated Pro-Lifer--can help advance the Culture of Life. Please share this information with your family, friends and church congregations. Make copies. Spread the news. Senate Confirms Texas Supreme Court Judge Priscilla Owen
After finally lifting filibusters on several appeals court nominees, the Senate has confirmed the first of President Bush’s Pro-Life judicial picks. Priscilla Owen was a strict constructionist judge on the Texas Supreme Court and received a 56-43 vote in the US Senate to be appointed to the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals. Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) said that Owen was “a supremely qualified nominee [who] received the up-or-down vote she deserved.” The Senate had voted 81-18 to end the filibuster against Owen.
As a Supreme Court judge in Texas, Justice Priscilla Owen worked hard to strictly follow the constitution and the laws in place. She carefully scrutinized the case for each girl who came before the court asking for a judicial bypass to the Parental Notification law. Her approval was opposed due to her numerous decisions against allowing teenagers to bypass the law which passed under Governor Bush’s leadership in 1999. Justice Owen joined then-Justice Greg Abbott (now our Texas Attorney General) and Justice Nathan Hecht in preserving the legislative intent of that law; their dissent from the majority decision of the other justices on the Texas Supreme Court noted that in passing Parental Notification, the legislature intended for parents to be involved in the health care decisions of their minor daughters and that only in extreme cases should a judge allow a minor to proceed without her parents’ knowledge.
Owen is a deserving candidate who has received the highest qualification rating by the American Bar Association. We can be confident that she will not legislate from the bench, but will work hard to uphold our constitution.
Despite Contrary Claims, Abortions Decrease under President Bush
Just days before the 2004 Presidential election, researcher Harold Stassen released a report claiming that abortions had increased during President Bush’s first term. Planned Parenthood’s research branch, the Alan Guttmacher Institute (AGI), however, has recently released a report documenting the decrease in abortions.
Stassen based his report on statistics from 16 states, some of which were not even named in his article. According to AGI, Stassen likely chose to look at states with statistically higher abortion rates and the socioeconomic groups that are more likely to obtain abortions. He sometimes used old figures and even included the birth rate instead of the abortion rate in one state in order to reach his conclusion.
Stassen’s report claimed that abortions in Colorado “skyrocketed 111 percent.” AGI officials, however, say that statistic is inaccurate because state officials only recently began using new methods to account for historic underreporting. The same apparent jump in abortion numbers occurred in Arizona.
AGI’s study determined that abortions decreased nationwide by .8% in 2001 and by another .8% in 2002. The abortion rate (the number of women having abortions relative to the population as a whole) also decreased by 1% in 2001 and .9% in 2002.
Following AGI’s report, Stassen admitted that he cannot substantiate his original claims. He sent a memo on May 25 to FactCheck.org saying that the AGI study was “significantly better” than his own. “I based my estimates in October on the sixteen states whose data I could find then. Now, seven months later, and with their extensive data-gathering ability, AGI bases their results on 44 states.”
JJ & Tracy’s Frozen Embryo Adoption
JJ and Tracy met in college and have been married for 10 years now. After dealing with infertility for some time, they were ready to look into adoption over in vitro fertilization. However, they wanted to experience pregnancy and be responsible for the prenatal care of their baby. Embryo adoption provided them a way to be both adoptive and birth parents while saving the lives of some tiny humans slated for destruction. They believed that God had chosen them to be an instrument on behalf of those preborn babies.
A Texas adoption agency performed a home study to determine that JJ and Tracy would provide a safe home. Working through the Nightlight Christian Adoption Agency, they petitioned the genetic family, forwarded an autobiography and a photo collage. After several months, Nightlight matched them with a genetic couple who responded with pictures of their family and their medical history.
On August 5, 2004, JJ and Tracy underwent their first embryo transfer, implanting three embryos. Then, on August 19, doctors confirmed that one of the embryos survived the transfer, and Tracy was pregnant. Jack Lewis Jones III (called Trey), was born on April 25, 2005. On May 24, 2005, JJ and Tracy met with President Bush at the White House and participated in his press conference during which he promoted the ethical forms of adult stem cell research and decried destructive embryonic stem cell research. For more information on JJ and Tracy’s story, visit www.jjandtracy.com.
