Month: February 2004

Innocent Man Freed After Decades On Death Row for Rape/Murder He Didn’t Commit

In January, Nicholas Yarris walked out of the Pennsylvania prison where he had spent 23 years on death row for the rape and murder of a Philadelphia woman.

Yarris was convicted of the killing in 1983 after police testified that he had confessed to the crime. Yarris denied that claim at trial, and the only physical evidence linking him to the crime was that he (and 20 percent of the population, including the victim’s husband) had the same blood type as the killer.

Recent DNA testing of genetic material found under the woman’s fingernails, on her underwear and in gloves worn by the killer showed they all belonged to the same man, but that man was not Yarris.

According to the ACLU, 112 people in 25 states have been released from death row since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976.

Source:

State frees death row inmate exonerated by DNA. Dan Nephin, Associated Press, January 16, 2004.

Group Wants Father Figure Requirement Removed from Fertility Treatment in UK

In Great Britain, clinics that perform in vitro fertilization are required by law to consider the “need of the child for a father” before allowing women to undergo the procedure. The Human Fertilization and Embryology Authority recently argued that this requirement is “nonsense” and is proposing to have that provision removed from the law.

Suzi Leather, chairwoman of the Human Fertility and Embryology Authority, said in a speech,

It is absolutely clear if you think about the changes in society and the different ways that families can be constituted that it is anachronistic for the law to include the statement about a child’s need for a father.

It seems to me a bit of nonsense to have that still in the legislation.

The requirement does not appear to prevent single women or lesbians from obtaining IVF. Clinics simply list an alternative father figure such as an uncle or grandfather to comply with the law.

Matthew Mudge, chairman of Families Need Fathers, took issue with the proposal, telling IC Wales,

The whole proposal is sick – there are enough fatherless children around, why should another generation not have fathers?

All the statistics show that tearaway youngsters, generally speaking, come from single parent homes which lack the guiding hand of a father figure, or what I like to call, a benign dictatorship.

The father is generally regarded as the disciplinarian in the nuclear family who teaches the children self-discipline and respect for others.

As a Christian and as a father I find the whole idea repugnant.

The BBC reports that the HFEA is planning a “major review” of this and other requirements that were included as part of Great Britain’s 1990 Human Fertilization and Embryology Act.

Sources:

IVF ‘father figure’ law attacked. The BBC, January 21, 2004.

Fury over call to end IVF father ‘nonsense’. Madeleine Brindley, The Western Mail, January 22, 2004.

Man Wins Lawsuit Against Fertility Clinic Over Consent to Use Embryos

Richard Gladu, Jr. was awarded $108,000 from a Massachusetts fertility clinic whom he sued for allowing his wife to be implanted with a frozen embryo without his consent.

Gladu and his wife, Meredith McLeod, had the frozen embryos created and implanted so that McLeod, who was infertile, could have a child.

But in the mid-1990s the couple had a rocky marriage, eventually ending in divorce. Despite Gladu’s claim that he told his wife he did not want any more children, McLeod returned to the clinic in 1995 to be implanted with the remaining embryos resulting the birth of a girl.

Gladu sued the Boston IVF clinic seeking $3 million in damages for breach of contract. Gladu argued that the clinic had a duty to seek his consent before implanting the embryos.

A jury agreed, though awarded Gladu only $108,000 — $98,000 for the cost of raising the child and $10,000 for emotional distress. The jury did not, however, agree with Gladu’s contention that the doctors involved had acted negligently.

Sources:

Ex-husband sues clinic over birth of daughter. John Ellement and Thanassis Cambanis, Boston Globe, January 15, 2004.

Man gets $108,000 from fertility clinic. Jay Lindsay, Associated Press, January 30, 2004.

Dishonest Comparison of Great Britain and U.S. Teen Pregnancy Rates

In January, Olga Craig wrote an op-ed for the Daily Telegraph favorably comparing the declining rate of teen pregnancies in the United States with the rate in Great Britain, which has the highest teen pregnancy rate of any country in Europe. But in doing so, Craig left readers with a distorted view of the effectiveness, or lack thereof, of the two countries at preventing teen births.

Craig argues that the U.S. rate is declining due to the recent emphasis by the Bush administration on abstinence, whereas the British rate is as high as it is, she maintains, because Great Britain has gone the opposite route of “dishing out condoms and morning-after pills, making sex education compulsory in secondary schools, and inundating our teenagers with explicit information on sex.”

According to Craig,

In the past decade the number of teenage pregnancies in America has decreased by 30 percent, with the past year’s statistics indicating a historic low of just 43 births per 1,000 teenage girls.

. . .

For the past 12 years Britain has been the pregnancy capital of Europe. According to Unicef’s figures, in 2002 some 41,966 British girls under 18 became pregnant. Of those, 5954 were 15; 2,011 were 14, and 450 were under 14.

Anytime someone talks about per-capita rates for one country and just gives absolute numbers for the second country, the odds are very high that the intent is to deceive and such is true in this case.

What Craig conveniently leaves out is that Great Britain’s teen pregnancy rate is significantly lower than that of the United States. Most estimates put the UK teen pregnancy rate in the low 30s per 1,000 teenage girls.

In addition, while Craig is correct that Great Britain’s teen pregnancy rate has risen over the last 12 years, she fails to note that most studies of teen pregnancy in the UK show the rate has declined over the past several years.

Why do Great Britain and the United States have such high rates of teen pregnancies for developed countries? Both countries face similar issues with ethnic makeup, immigration and poverty that are fundamentally different from what other developed nations face.

Source:

No sex please . . . Olga Craig, The Telegraph (London), January 11, 2004.

Could a Defense of Marriage Amendment Become Part of the Constitution?

Dave Winer absurdly claims that an amendement to the Constitution defining marriage as being between one woman and one man could never be adopted,

The hot story today is the President’s call to amend the US Constitution to prevent gay marriage. You heard it here first: It won’t pass. It can’t.

But the reasons Winer gives make little sense.

Homosexuality is becoming fairly accepted in the US.

Yes, but gay marriage is not “fairly accepted.” National polls show Americans oppose gay marriage by roughly a 2-1 margin. That number tends to increase rather than decrease when gay marriage is actually in the news.

Winer continues,

This amendment won’t pass anywhere outside the Deep South.

In order for an amendment to succeed after making it out of Congress, it would have to be adopted by 38 states. Care to guess how many states have passed laws that define marriage as only between one man and one woman?

That’s right, boys and girls, 38.

And the idea that opposition to gay marriage is a Southern issue only is ridiculous. Ohio adopted an anti-gay marriage law just a few weeks ago.

Which is not to say that the gay marriage amendment is likely to become adopted. Getting any amendment through is difficult, and while polls show that Americans oppose gay marriage, they are not very keen on this sort of amendment either. Currently polls show about 49 percent of Americans opposed to such an amendment.

But that’s doesn’t necessarily mean the amendment is doomed. Remember, the amendment needs 38 states, not 50 percent of the vote. It is very likely that a disproporationate number of pro-gay marriage voters are located in a very small number of states, such as California or Massachussetts. Just as George W. Bush was able to win the White House without winning a popular majority, so could an anti-gay marriage amendment be adopted even if a slight majority of Americans oppose it.

Personally, I suspect the biggest obstacle to such an amendment will be getting it past Congress. Democrats will likely adopt John Kerry’s bizarre position that he is against gay marriage but that an amendment banning gay marriage would be “divisive.”

LRA Kills Almost 200 in Weekend Attack

Lord’s Resistance Army soldiers attacked a camp for displaced persons near Lira, Uganda, this weekend. According to the BBC, 190 of the estimated 4,000 people living in the camp were killed in the attack and many more were injured.

The BBC quoted MP Charles Angiro describing the attack,

The rebels came with sophisticated guns… and grenades. When they arrived at the camp at 5.30pm, they approached it from three fronts – from the north, east and south and left the western side for their exit. . . They bombed the camp… and overpowered the local defence forces and then started burning the huts.

Angiro complained that the army has not done enough to protect civilians in the area from the LRA, and that it had tried to downplay the extent of the casualities.

Angiro told the BBC that he counted at least 500 huts burned to the ground by the LRA.

Source:

Uganda rebels ‘burnt my family alive’. The BBC, February 23, 2004.