Christian Life News

Christian Headlines By John Stonestreet and Roberto Rivera (Breakpoint) - Posted at Christian Headlines: This story has everything … Reproductive technology? Check! Same-sex union? Check! Autism? Check! Lawsuits? Check! The assumption that a child “product” of reproductive technology that someone paid for is “defective”? Check! In fact, I’m not sure I’ve seen a story in the last decade that more definitively proves what we often say around the Colson Center: Ideas have consequences. Bad ideas have victims. A recent Washington Post article tells of an Illinois woman who has struggled to raise two children, her now six- and seven-year-old sons. Both have autism. But this story isn’t about her day to day life dealing with these challenges. It’s about why the boys are autistic in the first place. Both of her sons were conceived by sperm donation, from the same nameless donor, “Donor H898.” This woman chose artificial insemination because her female partner, well, could not i

Image Source: Institute of Neuroscience of Chinese Academy of Sciences Smithsonian.com By David Roach - Posted at Baptist Press: SHANGHAI (BP) -- The first-ever primates cloned through a technique that produced Dolly the sheep have been cited by Christian bioethicists as a potentially valuable development in animal research. But they warned that two monkeys engineered by Chinese researchers must not become a step toward cloning humans. The cloning method used by the Chinese scientists "should not become a test case for the perfection of human cloning techniques," said Raymond Johnson, a Pennsylvania pastor who received a financial award from Trinity International University last year to help him study the relationship between Christianity and science. "While lauded as a valuable scientific breakthrough," Johnson, pastor of The Journey Church in West Chester, Pa., told Baptist Press, "even a quiet inference fortified by this experiment that human li

Image Source: WFAA-TV By Monica Hernandez - Posted at WFAA-TV:   "This was, of course, a difficult decision, especially because he’s not my baby. I understood how scared the biological parents must have been. I remembered how scared and confused I was when I got pregnant with my own twins. I was twenty years old, had not planned for the prospect of having one, yet alone two children and was frightened. I remember thinking, how much easier it would all be if there were easy answers. I did not consider an abortion even if, at that moment, it would have made things a-lot [sic] easier. Instead, at twenty years old and with no idea how I could afford or care for twins, I chose to provide them life. That decision was the best decision I’ve ever made. My children have been my biggest blessings and my greatest treasures." A baby at the center of a legal battle and national debate will receive life-saving surgery after a lengthy showdown between his biological parents and the

Posted at the National Review : But this issue is an opportunity for finding common ground on ways to protect women. On Thursday, Arizona Republican congressman Trent Franks announced he would resign in the face of an ethics investigation, after having asked women on his staff to be gestational surrogates for him and his wife, who had been struggling with infertility. In his statement, he described the surrogacy approach they ultimately did take as “pro-life.” Jennifer Lahl, a nurse, has been working with broad coalitions against surrogacy for years as the founder and president of The Center for Bioethics and Culture Network . She talks with National Review about the problems of surrogacy and why pro-lifers — and anyone else concerned with human rights and women’s health and freedom — should never embrace it. Kathryn Jean Lopez : Would you ever describe surrogacy as a “pro-life” option? Jennifer Lahl: I would never, ever describe surrogacy as pro-life. Surrogacy necessaril

By Jennifer Lahl - Posted at The Public Discourse : A recent embryo custody battle highlights the plight of the hundreds of thousands of frozen embryos in the United States today. I’ve said it before , and I’ll say it again: it almost always starts with an emotional story. The latest situation is an embryo custody battle in Arizona. It highlights the depth of real human emotions connected to having children and building a family, and the ways in which human lives are affected by a justice system that seeks to do what is right in the midst of a true ethical mess. As with all embryo custody battles, there are never any winners. There are plenty of losers, though, and the embryos have the most to lose by far. This case , of course, tugs at our heartstrings. In 2014, at the age of thirty-three, Ruby Torres was diagnosed with triple negative breast cancer —a very aggressive breast cancer that has the lowest five-year survival rate of all breast cancers. Torres was engaged at the