A film was produced recently by a Christian, who is also a bioethicist, which challenges the morality of in vitro fertilization.

“Eggsploitation,” produced by Jennifer Lahl, director of the Center for Bioethics and Culture Network in San Francisco, is used as an aid in Lahl’s many talks at academic and religious institutions to explain why Christians who oppose abortion and embryonic stem cell research should also oppose IVF, The Boston Globe said.

The film, which will be shown at Tufts University and Harvard Law School this week, describes the procedures required in egg donation such as the donor having to take hormones and undergo surgery to harvest eggs, according to The Boston Globe.

Women interviewed in the film (who were admittedly extreme cases) described experiencing torsion ovaries, advanced breast cancer, internal bleeding and strokes, among others, from donating their eggs, The Boston Globe reported.

Lahl said the same technology behind embryonic stem cell research is behind IVF. Both involve embryos created in a lab by fertilizing an egg extracted from a woman, and both involve the destruction of embryos, The Boston Globe said.

Stem cells destroy the embryos for research purposes. IVF often produces more embryos than a woman will implant, so the excess are either destroyed or frozen. Lahl says this is no different from abortion, according to The Boston Globe.

Lahl also says the process invades human dignity noting, “The minute the egg comes out of body, it is graded, the sperm is graded, then the embryo is graded.” This is for the purpose of determining which embryos have defects, The Boston Globe said.

A mother of three daughters in college, Lahl was surprised when they brought home copies of their school papers that contained advertisements that offered money to young women in exchange for donating their eggs. Lahl is pushing for legislation that would prohibit payment to donors of eggs, The Boston Globe reported.

Evangelical acceptance of IVF

Evangelicals are largely unaware of the process behind egg donation and IVF. The technology is largely viewed as a way for infertile couples to have babies. Lahl told The Boston Globe, “They want to believe that children are a gift and that any way we get children is a good thing.”

Nigel Cameron, founder of Center for Bioethics and Human Dignity, is also an evangelical Christian. He said evangelicals are not as concerned about IVF because the issue of abortion only became prominent in the 80s, by which time IVF was already a fact of life, The Boston Globe said.

So far, it is only the Catholics who have continued to object to IVF. Evangelicals have accepted most forms of contraception and do not believe, as the Catholics do, that the primary purpose of sex is for procreation, The Boston Globe said.

IVF is so mainstream, in fact, that as of 2006 some three million babies were born with this technology; and this year’s Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine went to Robert Edwards for his work on IVF, according to The Boston Globe.

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Ergun Caner will no longer be dean of Liberty University’s theological seminary.

Caner, a Baptist minister, gained fame as a Muslim-turned-Christian who spoke across the country and on television of his conversion, and was considered an expert on Islam. When he joined Rev. Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University in 2005 enrollment trebled, the AP said.

However the university’s board of trustees concluded after an investigation that Caner made contradictory statements, fabrications and embellishments in a number of public speeches and in his book, particularly with reference to names, places he claimed to have lived in and dates, the AP said.

The story of Caner has led to a rise in skepticism about other ex-Muslims turned Christian, some of whom claimed to be former terrorists and who found welcome among Christian fundamentalists, the Washington Post said.

Other Muslims turned Christian who claim to have formerly been terrorists are U.S. citizens Walid Shoebat who wrote the book, “Why We Want to Kill You,” and Kamal Saleem, author of “The Blood of Lambs,” the Washington Post said.

Concern has been raised that some are even accepted as experts on terrorism by the media, Congress and the military. They have delivered speeches at Harvard Law School and made appearances at Fox News and CNN, the Washington Post said.

They have also given talks at a terrorism conference and the findings were sent to Capitol Hill and the Pentagon. Mikey Weinstein, president of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, has called this a national security threat, the Washington Post said.

Weinstein expressed concern that they were spreading fear of Islam and fomenting prejudice, the Washington Post said.

According to the AP, Caner will still be part of the faculty of the Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary. The school has cited his cooperation with the investigation and issued an apology for misstatements.

The investigation of Caner came about when Muslim and Christian bloggers cited irregularities in Caner’s claims on YouTube. This led other apologists and pastors to raise questions about the contradictions, the AP said.

When the issues arose, Caner changed the biography on his website and asked some groups to remove damaging video clips from their own websites. Nonetheless the questions remained, and Liberty University conducted their investigation, the AP said.

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The time and expense spent on rescuing and rehabilitating animals amid the Gulf oil spill has given rise to the issue of animal rights, and the question of whether animals have souls.

At the same time, the topic of theology and animal law will be covered in a summer course at Harvard University, taught by Paul Waldau, president of Harvard’s Religion and Animals Institute, The Washington Post said.

In a piece he wrote for The Washington Post, Waldau said that animal law was first taught in Harvard Law School in the year 2000. A decade later, over 120 out of 196 law schools in the United States have picked it up and also give a course on animal law, with some giving more than a dozen courses in this area.

Harvard’s Divinity School taught courses on “religion and animals” before 2000, but it has not picked up as quickly nor as largely among theological seminaries. However Waldau notes in the article he wrote for The Washington Post that both religion and law are fundamental components of human life.

Waldau also cited faith leaders who exemplified kindness and feeling for animals, such as St. Francis of Assisi and Gandhi. He contends in his piece in The Washington Post that currently religious institutions have lost this sensibility and tend instead to teach a “traditional” religious view that man has a right to harm animals.

Valerie Elverton Dixon, founder of JustPeace Theory.com contends in a separate piece that she authored for the Washington Post that humanity was created to be vegetarian–though she admits that she herself is not.

In her Washington Post article, Dixon cites Genesis 1:29, “And God said, ‘See I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the land and every tree with seed in its fruit; you shall have them for food,’” and says that eating animals came after—not before–the fall.

Dixon differentiates rights from moral duty.  She says in her Washington Post piece that rights come with responsibilities, while moral duty is an offspring of rights. She adds that one should be able to think about the consequences of what they do to be able to have rights.

Dixon says in her Washington Post article that there is a reflexive quality too such that even people who are comatose, those born with disabilities and babies have rights, because they are human.

Dixon further describes rights as the human prerogative to act, or to inhibit certain acts from being done to humans. She contends in her Washington Post article that animals should benefit from our moral consideration.

Citing the disaster in the gulf, Dixon says humans have a larger duty to consider animal wellbeing, including the regulation of factory farms and methods of slaughtering animals, she writes in The Washington Post.

Extrapolating further, she says having greater conscience toward animal rights may indirectly resolve human problems of obesity and health; and will make us more excellent people, she writes in The Washington Post.

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The Concerned Women for America (CWA) expressed recently concern that President Barak Obama’s newest Supreme Court appointee, Elena Kagan, is unfit for the job, according to Christian NewsWire (CNW).

The report said when Kagan was formerly dean of the Harvard Law School, Kagan banned military recruiters from the campus.  “In her disdain for the military, Elena Kagan considers her own views and opinions as more important than obeying the law and equipping the country with the best fighting force in the world. We need justices who put national security over the feelings or demands of special interest groups,” the CWA said.

Elena Kagan as Dean of Harvard Law School/Credit:Doc Searls

The CWA also urged the US Senate to oppose Kagan’s nomination and to give precedence to a justice who will defend the Constitution, uphold the right to life and traditional marriage.

Other concerns raised by Christian NewsWire are that Kagan will not uphold restrictions on abortion, nor overturn Roe v. Wade.  Kagan upholds a “woman’s right to choose” view on abortion related issues.

Christian NewsWire also mentioned issues raised by the Life Legal Defense Foundation (LLDF), among them:

• Does she view opposition to abortion as a form of female discrimination?

• Would she support exclusion of abortion from funding sources such as Medicaid, state assistance programs, or insurance coverage?  Or would she see such exclusion as deprivation of equal protection?

• Does she believe the First Amendment applies equally to public sidewalks outside “reproductive health facilities” or would she believe the government may enact special speech restrictions in these areas?

Dana Cody, LLDF president said she hoped pro-life senators would examine kagan’s record and bear in mind the interests of the pro-life movement for the protection of unborn children and their mothers.

Meanwhile, the Huffington Post’s Micheal Kieschnick raised other concerns, specifically:

What are Kagan’s views on executive power and whether corporations deserve the rights of a person.  Kieschnick expressed hope that her legal views were that Obama has limited power and that corporations should have none of the rights of individuals, particularly that of free speech.

While Kieschnick expressed reservations he overall felt Kagan was qualified for the job and expressed hope that the senate would confirm her very quickly.

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