Southern Baptist support was essential in the passage of legislation restricting sex trafficking and regulating tobacco during the past year, said Richard Land, president of The Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission.
Those victories “would not have been possible without the help of faithful Southern Baptists who contacted their representatives,” Land said in his agency’s report during the Southern Baptist Convention.
The William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act, signed by former President Bush last December, cracks down on sex traffickers in the United States and abroad and provides more help to their victims.
About 17,500 people are trafficked into the United States each year, according to the State Department Trafficking in Persons Office. Worldwide it is 800,000 trafficked across international borders, half of whom are minors and 80 percent of whom are women.
The new law, named for the 19th-century evangelical Christian who led the effort to end Great Britain’s slave trade, beefs up enforcement and penalties and gives federal law enforcement broader authority to prosecute crimes.
On June 22, President Obama signed legislation giving the federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA) authority to regulate tobacco.
“For the first time ever, (cigarette manufacturers) will have to tell us what’s in them,” Land said. “They can no longer pimp cigarettes to our children. It will save tens of thousands of lives.”
The Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act also allows the FDA to order tobacco companies to reduce the amount of nicotine they put into cigarettes and to require cigarette packages to carry larger graphic warnings. Some press reports say the law signals the end of the description of some cigarettes as “low tar” or “light.”
Another significant moral victory in the past year was the development of induced pluripotent stem cells, common abbreviated as iPS cells, Land said. The new creations, unveiled by scientists in November 2007, look and behave like embryonic stem cells taken from seven-day-old embryos — widely used in medical experiments but controversial among many conservatives because the embryo is discarded.
“Scientists can harvest the fat cells from our own bodies and treat them, and they will regress to the embryonic state,” he said. “They can get the benefits without killing the baby to do it.”
The development of iPS cells is “an answer to prayer,” Land said. (Editor’s Network)
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