By Michael F. Flach
Herald Staff Writer
(From the issue of 9/18/03)

Kansas Senator Sam Brownback said he was privileged to be part of the delegation that presented the Congressional Gold Medal to Mother Teresa of Calcutta in 1997, just three months before her death. The saintly nun left a lasting impression on the senator, even though he was not yet Catholic.

Throughout her brief visit to Washington, Mother Teresa, who was confined to a wheelchair, never asked for anything other than prayers for her Sisters of Charity. "I want you all to pray for us," she asked. "Pray that we will continue to do God's work."

As she got into the car which would take her to the airport, she grabbed Brownback’s hand, looked him the eyes, and uttered three words, "All for Jesus."

"I was searching for the wisdom of the universe," he said at the time, "and I got it."

Brownback, considered one of the leading pro-life voices in the Senate, spoke Sept. 10 at the Catholic Information Center (CIC) in Washington as part of the Melady Round of Lectures sponsored by CIC and the Potomac Council of the Knights of Columbus. His topic was "Respecting the Human Dignity of the Individual."

As a legislator, "if you get this right (respect for human dignity), then you get everything else right. If you get it wrong, much of your public policy will be wrong."

Brownback reflected on three specific issues connected to the topic of human dignity — bioethical research, North Korea, and widows and orphans.

Just because the scientific community can successfully perform human cloning and genetic research, doesn’t mean that it should, said Brownback, who chairs the Commerce Subcommittee on Science, Technology and Space.

In an earlier debate regarding the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Brownback said, "the human embryonic stem-cell research being proposed by the NIH is illegal, immoral and unnecessary. It is unfortunate that the NIH has chosen to violate congressional intent by endorsing research that relies on the deliberate destruction of human embryos."

He thanked the Knights of Columbus for being "very clear in its thinking on the bioethics issue."

Brownback said he never gets an answer when he debates "the other side" on the question of whether a child is person or property. "This was the central issue of the slave debate during the 19th century," he said.

The good news in the areas of adult stem cell and umbilical cord research is that people are being saved, he said.

Bioethics will be a critical debate during the next Congressional session, Brownback predicted. Society is moving toward eugenics and the search for the perfect baby. "It won’t be a diverse group," he said. Scientists will copy the smartest and strongest humans, just like they do in animal research.

"North Korea is experiencing the worst human rights abuses anywhere in the world," Brownback said. The current regime has gulags, forced starvation and persecution of Christians. It has been 50 years since the armistice was signed.

"Pray for the Korean people," he said.

Brownback supports the Widows and Orphans Act of 2003. "Who can be against widows and orphans?" he asked.

Since Sept. 11, 2001, the number of refugees entering the U.S. annually has dropped to 30,000. Despite the fact that 80 percent of refugees worldwide are women and children, most refugees entering the U.S. are men since they are better equipped to fight through bureaucracy of the system, he said.

"The U.S. should reach out and bring in widows and orphans from refugee camps around the world," Brownback said. "It’s clearly the right thing to do. We will be truly blessed."

The U.S. is in a unique position as the world’s economic and cultural leader, he said. "We must be increasingly wiser and humbler to maintain the position we are in. If we don’t, woe to us."

Brownback predicted that during the current session Congress will approve and sign into law the partial-birth abortion ban. "This may seem like a small step, but it’s significant," he said. "We need to keep pushing it (the pro-life agenda) along incrementally."