Federal Report Shows New Drop in Abortions

Rebecca Gonzales | November 30, 2015

During the Thanksgiving holiday week, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control published its annual abortion surveillance report, revealing a historic decline in the incidence of abortion across the nation since 1973.

Lagging three years behind, this year’s report covers the national abortion data for 2012. The abortion data is analyzed from the 47 areas that voluntarily report abortion statistics to the CDC. States that do not report to the CDC include several large jurisdictions – California, New Jersey, the District of Columbia, and Maryland. According to the Guttmacher Institute in 2011, these four were among the jurisdictions with the highest abortion rates in the nation.

Germany Bans “Business-like Assisted Suicide,” But New Regulation Reminds Us: Killing Can Never Be Safe

Charlotte Lozier Institute | November 24, 2015

By Jacqueline H. Abernathy, Ph.D.

Switzerland has an unlikely tourist attraction — one where those who visit never leave — and it draws Germans to it more than visitors of any other nationality. It is called the Dignitas clinic, and Germans represent 44 percent of foreign-nationals paying the staff to help them commit suicide. This is more than double the next most common nationality of suicide tourists, British citizens, who constitute 21 percent of the euthanasia clinic’s international business. Death as a paid service is such a concern to the governments of Germany and the United Kingdom that both have recently voted on legislation to ban this practice. Britain overwhelmingly rejected killing outright this September with a vote of 330 to 118 against legalizing assisted suicide.

Germany, however, banned assisted suicide, but only when operated as a business.

Testimony of CLI Legal Policy Fellow in Support of Ohio’s Defund Planned Parenthood Bill

Thomas M. Messner, J.D. | November 24, 2015

On November 17, the Ohio House Committee on Community and Family Advancement held a hearing on proposed legislation to defund Planned Parenthood and reallocate over $1 million yearly in government funding to other Ohio medical health centers. Following the hearing, the Committee recommended and the Ohio House passed H.B. 294 by a vote of 62-33.

Thomas M. Messner, J.D., Senior Fellow in Legal Policy for the Charlotte Lozier Institute, submitted the following written testimony in support of the bill

Time to End Embryo-Destroying Stem Cell Research

Eugene C. Tarne | November 17, 2015

Will induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) finally replace human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) in the field of regenerative medical research?

Results of a recent study published in Nature Biotechnology argue that they should.

First, some background.

In 2007, Japanese scientist Shinya Yamanaka discovered a method to create fully pluripotent, embryonic-like stem cells from ordinary somatic (body) cells. The ability to do this had been characterized as the “holy grail” of stem cell research and, indeed, Yamanaka’s achievement changed the field of regenerative medicine. So groundbreaking was his discovery that he was awarded the Nobel Prize just five years after announcing it.

Stem Cell Awareness Day: Major Research Center’s Quest for Cures Uses Ethical Sources Only

Eugene C. Tarne | November 5, 2015

Recently, numerous research facilities, both public and private, marked “Stem Cell Awareness Day,” holding lectures, issuing statements and highlighting ongoing progress in the field of regenerative medicine.

Among those participating was the University of California, Davis, one of the country’s leading institutions for stem cell research and regenerative medicine. Writing in her local newspaper, the Davis Enterprise, Jan Nolta, the director of the Stem Cell Program at the UC Davis School of Medicine, highlighted the program’s “numerous novel clinical trials ongoing and in the pipeline” and its 16 disease teams testing stem cells to treat the following…