May 2006
NEWSLETTER MAY 2006UPCOMING EVENTS
RESPECT FOR LIFE COFFEE AND DESSERT
Date: Thursday, May 18
Place: St. Ambrose Church, 210 South St., Cambridge
Time: 7:30 p.m.
Cost: $10.00
Speaker: Alex Schadenberg, Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition, will share with us his experiences and insights on the growing trend in our society toward euthanasia, in a talk entitled: ‘Euthanasia, No Way Out’
Musical interlude with soloist: Shawn Jackson
Charity Raffle with proceeds going toward Euthanasia Prevention Coalition and Reaching Minds Through Media Campaign.
Be informed and bring a friend.
RESPECT FOR LIFE PRAYER SERVICE
Date: Wednesday, May 31s
Place: Maranatha Christian Reformed Church, 94 Elgin St. S., Cambridge
Time: 7:30 p.m.
Please join with us in praying for respect for all life, from conception until natural. Fellowship.
ALLIANCE FOR LIFE GALA BANQUET
Date: Friday April 21st-
Place: Carmen’s Banquet Hall – Hamilton
Time: social at 6 p.m.; dinner at 7 p.m.
Alliance For Life is again inviting all pro-life individuals to attend a fundraising dinner to support their Media Campaign which brings pro-life commercials to television in Ontario.
Guest speaker Bobby Schindler, brother of Terri Schiavo.
Tickets $60.00. Please reserve before April 13 by calling our office 623-1850.
MARCH FOR LIFE OTTAWA
Date: Thursday, May 11
Theme: ‘Abortion is killing Canada’s future’
A CHARTERED BUS WILL LEAVE CAMBRIDGE for Ottawa at 5:30 a.m. from Smitty’s Furniture parking lot to attend the March For Life. Leaving Ottawa at 4 p.m., it will return the same day around 11 p.m. Make your voice heard!
Schedule: 12 noon, gather on Parliament Hill
1:30 p.m. March through downtown Ottawa
ALLIANCE FOR LIFE MEDIA CAMPAIGN
Many of you may have already seen the pro-life commercials on TV that are the product of your efforts and support of Alliance For Life’s Media Campaign.
Again this year, they need to raise approximately $750,000.00 in order for the commercials to run in the spring of 2007.
We know from the calls to the 800-665-0570 hot-line, that these ads are reaching women in crisis pregnancy. Please make your donation to Cambridge Right to Life and mark it ‘Media Campaign’.
COMMUNITY LIFE CHAINS
Date: Fridays – April 28, May 26, June 30 - (mark your calendars)
Time: 6:00 P.M.
Place: Hespeler Rd. (opposite Applebee’s Restaurant)
Join the Life Chains to pray for a just law for the unborn. Hundreds of people will see your witness on behalf of the unborn and their mothers. Let us love them both!
MEMBERSHIPS
We need new members!
Thank you to those of you who have renewed your membership and sent an extra donation for the Media Campaign T.V. ads. Again, we would like to remind you that you that offering a complimentary membership to CRTL to a friend who has had a baby, is a great way of providing others with life giving information while at the same time helping out our organization. You may also wish to consider CRTL in your estate planning.
Just call our office and we’ll be happy to assist you.
PAST EVENTS
PROTEST WALK
Our Pro-Life Advocacy committee chair, Cathy Miedema, reported that 25 people attended our annual January Protest Walk in front of our M.P. and M.P.P.’s offices on Jan. 27. Mr. Goodyear M.P. invited us into his office and spoke to us briefly. He related a truly heart-wrenching statistic, that there had been more babies killed by abortion than birthed in Toronto in 2005. Let us keep praying and doing all that we can to reverse this ominous trend.
GOOD NEWS
STUDENTS ACROSS CANADA UNITE FOR LIFE
Cambridge Right to Life is helping post secondary students in their pro-life work.
To this end, we give a yearly donation to National Campus Life Network. This is an organization that was formed by students in order to support, unify and expand individual pro-life groups on Canadian post-secondary campuses.
These students are doing amazing work, providing and creating resources as well as training other students to be a pro-life voice on campus.
With some 70% of all reported abortions being performed in Canada on women 29 and under, giving assistance to these students who are working with people in this age group, is a priority
The above figure represents not only 75, 004 human beings dead, but 150, 000 mothers and fathers of high school and post-secondary age who have been seriously wounded by the unspeakable crime of abortion. Please hold up in your prayers, the students of National Campus Life Network.
SAVING YOUR CHILD’S CORD BLOOD COULD SAVE YOUR LIFE!
By Camilla Gunnarson
What is cord blood?
Medical research has shown that a baby’s own umbilical cord blood can be a life-saving source. The period immediately following the birth of a baby is a unique moment for parents to collect cord blood stem cells and save them for future use.
Umbilical cord blood stem cells are created during the development of a baby throughout pregnancy. These stem cells are readily found in the fetal circulation and umbilical cord. Therefore, at the time of delivery, parents can harvest, process, and store these cells. What was once routinely discarded and treated as waste can now be used as valuable source of life-saving stem cells.
Why is it different?
Today there are several types of stem cells available to us. One is human embryonic stem cells that are taken from human embryo during in vitro fertilization treatments. The human embryo is allowed to grow 5to 7 days. It is then broken apart and its cells removed and plated out in the laboratory, thereby creating an embryonic stem cell line. Through this process the embryo is destroyed.
Another source is adult stem cells that are taken from bone marrow. These can only be collected by a bone marrow biopsy, which is a long and painful procedure. Often it is hard to find a suitable donor because bone marrow transplantation requires a perfect HLA antigen match. The recipient will reject the donated bone marrow unless all six out of six HLA antigens are matched perfectly between the donor and recipient.
How does it work?
A further source is umbilical cord and placenta; also called adult stem cells. Like bone marrow, cord blood is a rich source of the baby’s own stem cells. Cord blood stem cells are a viable and useful alternative to bone marrow stem cells in reconstituting diseased or depleted bone marrow resulting from conditions such as leukemia, lymphoma, sickle cell anemia and other life-threatening blood and immune disorders. Because umbilical cord stem cells are more universal in their potential, a perfect HLA antigen match is not needed for receiving donated umbilical cord blood stem cells; only a minimum of three of the six HLA antigens must match. This makes it much easier to find a donor.
Cord blood in action
One such recipient is Patrizia Durante of Montreal who was diagnosed in 2001 with leukemia when she was 27 weeks into her first pregnancy. Prior to the delivery of her baby, Patrizia had the foresight to ask her doctors to collect her child’s umbilical cord blood. At thirty-one weeks gestation, a healthy baby girl, Victoria Angel was born. Her umbilical cord blood stem cells were collected, processed and saved. When all other treatment modalities had failed Patrizia before Victoria Angel’s stem cells replenished her mother’s bone marrow and cured her mother’s leukemia. Little Victoria Angel saved her mother’s life. This ‘miracle’ demonstrates how unique umbilical cord blood stem cells are.
“I gave birth to this wonderful child, this miracle, who then saved my life. It’s just unbelievable.” ~ Patrizia Durante
There is increasing evidence that stem cells collected at birth can be directed to different cells lines such as neural tissue, liver cells, or cardiac muscle. These remarkable cells have been used thousands of times worldwide to successfully treat 45 different blood and immune system disorders. New research offers hope for future treatment of many other conditions such Diabetes, Heart Disease, Parkinson’s and Alzheimer Disease.
Where is it available?
The public appears to be unaware of the potential that these stem cells hold and that they have access to this kind of treatment option. There are facilities around the world that store donated umbilical cord blood and make samples available to people anywhere in the world who are ill. Japan has developed an Umbilical Cord Blood Public Bank where cord blood is collected at most births, processed, and saved for citizen need. A national registry lists all HLA samples on hand and ill people have access to them for their medical needs. The United States continues to invest a great deal of money to fund research using umbilical cord-blood stem cells. To date, the Federal Government has not taken an active role investing in this kind of treatment option.
But some researchers will not sit still waiting for Canadian politicians to catch up with this life-saving science. Currently there are three public umbilical cord blood banks in Canada: the Alberta Cord Blood Bank, Hema Quebec and Toronto based Victoria Angel Registry of Hope; the latter being named after Victoria Angel Durante.
None of these institutions receive any direct funding from the federal government. Though the Alberta Cord Bank received a two-year grant of 1.2 million dollars under the Western Economic Partnership Agreement from the Alberta government and the government of Canada in 1999, they have not received any federal funding since. Hema Quebec received money for supplies through Health Canada but no other federal funding. They do receive funding from the Quebec government.
As governments and the private sector look to the future of health care, there should be more emphasis placed on ethical forms of stem cell research. Patients are not only being cured but the research is ethically sound. Polls consistently indicate that Canadians do not want their tax dollars wasted on ineffectual and unethical embryonic stem cell research. Investing in the establishment of a national inventory of cord blood stem cells would benefit all Canadians.
To find out more about cord blood registry,
see: www.cellsforlife.com , www.corcell.com, www.stemcellresearch.org
Reprinted with permission from Life Canada
Other News
How safe is the chemical abortion ‘Morning After Pill’ RU-486
A February 2006 study published in The Annals of Pharmacotherapy should make Health Canada feel good about not approving RU-486 for use in Canada. Two obstetricians/gynecologists systematically analyzed the American Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) adverse event reports related to the use of this drug from September 2000 to September 2004 and have just published their findings. They are now asking the FDA to withdraw their approval of RU-486.
The reports draw attention to 637 adverse events (including 8 deaths) experienced by women who took RU-486 to terminate an early pregnancy. The most frequent serious and life-threatening events were haemorrhage (42 were considered life-threatening) and missed diagnosis of ectopic pregnancies (including 1 death). A total of 235 emergency surgeries were needed.
Reprinted with permission from Life Canada