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Samaritan's Purse dissed again
Parents in the Canadian city of Calgary, Alberta, want the Samaritan's Purse program Operation Christmas Child banned from public schools, reports the CBC. The program, which is in 1,100 Canadian schools and thousands of other sites in the U.S., U.K., Australia, the Netherlands, Germany, Ireland, Austria, Switzerland, and Finland, asks students to pack a shoebox full of gifts for kids in developing countries. But some parents say it's all just a ploy for proselytizing.

"They're not just flying into a country and dropping boxes to whatever little child is standing there wanting this box," Rita Sirignano told the radio network (audio). They're really pressuring the children into conversion. "If I wanted my child to be proselytizing … I would send him to a Christian school," she said.

Samaritan's Purse spokesman Ivan Giesbrecht says Sirignano is missing the point. "In countries that we have been given permission to do so, we do tell these children we are Christians and that we are compelled by the love of God to do this and we want to bless these children," he said. About 6 million shoeboxes will be distributed in 100 countries on six continents.

We've been here before. In March 2001, The New York Timesinaccurately criticized Samaritan's Purse, saying that while workers aided earthquake victims in El Salvador with government funds, they found time to "preach, pray, and seek converts among people desperate for help."

Call the hate crime police. Between this and the coverage of slain missionary Bonnie Penner Witherall, it's clear that many people see aid and relief work motivated by Christian mission as a force for evil, not good.

GOP agenda: Abortions, faith-based initiative, abstinence, and fatherhood
"With Democrats no longer blocking their way in the Senate, President Bush and Republican congressional leaders plan a more vigorous push on their social policy agenda by trying to limit abortions, provide greater support to religious groups, and increase funding for sexual abstinence and fatherhood programs, according to White House officials and key lawmakers," The Washington Post reported on Monday's front page.

"The only places where these ideas are considered bad are on the two coasts," says Senate Majority Leader-elect Trent Lott. "Where the meat is in the sandwich, the rest of America, these are pretty mainstream ideas."

Happy Thanksgiving, Americans
Weblog will be on vacation Thursday and Friday for the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday. We'll be back Monday.

Bioethics:

• 'Human clone' unlikely say experts | But controversial Italian doctor Severino Antinori has announced that the first human baby clone will be born in January 2003 (BBC)
  
  
• huMouse™ | A design for creatures that are half man, half animal has raised fundamental questions about what it means to be human. Two critics of biotechnology want the U.S. Patent Office to answer them (Legal Affairs)
  
  
• Australia's Dr. Death | Spreading the assisted-suicide gospel (Wesley J. Smith, National Review Online)
  
  
• Deadlock over bill on female feticide continues | The main objection to the bill is the provision which requires mandatory registration of all ultrasound clinics, irrespective of whether they were used for diagnosis for gynecological purposes or for other purposes such as kidney and liver disorders (The Hindu, India)

Abortion:

• In deeply personal stories, the human face of the abortion debate | We hope that our series of articles moves away from the strict black-and-white outlines of the abortion battle into the more nuanced gray area: women's lives (Margaret Sullivan, The Buffalo News)
  
  

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November (Web-only) 2002, Vol. 46