Our Takes Daily

Katrina euthanasia case takes step forward
Times-Picayune
New Orleans District Attorney Eddie Jordan has promised to drop the murder charges against two Memorial Medical Center nurses accused by Attorney General Charles Foti of helping Dr. Anna Pou euthanize four patients after Hurricane Katrina, instead seeking to compel their testimony to a grand jury, according to documents filed at the Louisiana Supreme Court. The Church is opposed to euthanasia because ?it contradicts the natural inclination of the human being to preserve and perpetuates life,? states the U.S. Catholic Catechism for Adults.

Parents willing to let embryonic children die for research
CNN
A majority of U.S. couples with stored embryos from fertility treatments say they would be willing to donate unused embryos for stem cell research, says a doctor who surveyed patients. "Large numbers of infertility patients ... support using embryos for research, and these are people who have invested emotionally and financially in these embryos," Dr. Anne Drapkin Lyerly of Duke University said in a telephone interview Wednesday. Use of stem cells derived from embryos is a moral issue that has troubled politicians, religious and medical leaders and couples with stored embryos. For Catholics, this research is unjust because obtaining stem cells kills the embryo, which is an affront to the beginning of life.

Re-evaluating same-sex marriage
Los Angeles Times (registration site)
The California Supreme Court on Wednesday asked lawyers clashing over same-sex marriage whether the state's domestic-partners law provides all the benefits of marriage, and whether the term "marriage" has special legal significance. The questions came in a request for supplemental briefings in legal challenges by the city of San Francisco and gay-rights advocates to the state law that limits marriage to a man and a woman. The questions seem to indicate the justices are trying to determine whether the domestic-partners law makes same-sex marriage unnecessary. The Catholic Church has consistently supported marriage as a union between a man and a woman.