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Pro-Life Intelligence, 15 December 2006
About Pro-Life Intelligence
This edition consists of our editorial, immediately below, as well as abstracts from several learned articles, which follow the editorial. On the website version and in HTML-based emails, each abstract is followed by a link to original article on the web.Eliminating humans is no way to solve human problems
Anthony Ozimic, SPUC political secretary
At first sight "sexual and reproductive health" would seem to most people to be a good thing. After all, we want to be healthy in every aspect of our lives. However, this phrase can be used to cloak moves to make abortion more widely available. Several initiatives have been announced recently promoting 'sexual and reproductive health' in the name of improving maternal welfare and reducing poverty.
On Wednesday (the 13th) many nations rejected an attempt to enshrine abortion as a human right at the adoption of the Disability Convention by the United Nations General Assembly. Peter C Smith, chief administrative officer at the UN for SPUC and the International Right To Life Federation, said: "15 national delegations made good interpretative statements on the controversial term 'sexual and reproductive health', which is often falsely interpreted to include abortion." Strong pro-life statements came from the USA and the Holy See. Mr Smith observed: "These interpretative statements mean that no one can claim that the Disability Convention includes a right to abortion, under the term 'sexual and reproductive health'."
Also this week, the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) launched its 2007 The State of the World's Children report, subtitled Women and Children: The Double Dividend of Gender Equality. The report states that: "some 99 per cent of all maternal deaths occur in developing countries", "two-thirds ... in 13 of the world's poorest countries." The report rightly concludes that "many of these women's lives could be saved if they had access to basic health care services, including skilled attendants at all births and emergency obstetric care for women who develop complications." I wish we could take UNICEF's words at face value, in the hope that UNICEF is moving away from its long record of not only interpreting "health care" and "obstetric care" to include abortion, but also promoting abortion at every available opportunity! In 1996, UNICEF's abortion advocacy caused the Vatican to suspend its annual contribution to the agency.
The European Parliament voted this week to retain the controversial terms 'reproductive health' and 'reproductive rights' in a new legal instrument to regulate European Union (EU) aid to developing countries - terms which are also often falsely interpreted to include abortion, even a universal human right to abortion on demand. MEPs voted to retain these terms, despite the fact that the vote may mean that abortions will be promoted and performed using taxpayers' money from Ireland, Malta, Poland and Portugal, the EU member-states where abortion is illegal, unconstitutional or heavily restricted.
At Westminster, a forthcoming report by the All Party Parliamentary Group on Population, Development and Reproductive Health will claim that population control is necessary to achieve the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). It should be noted that this group is not a parliamentary committee, government agency or expert body. It is simply a group of parliamentarians who share a belief in population control. The group is also not independent. It has received substantial funding not only from the Department for International Development, which interprets the MDGs as including a universal human right to abortion on demand, but also from pro-abortion and population control groups such as the International Planned Parenthood Federation, Marie Stopes and the UN Population Fund. It is claimed that the all-party group: "spent six months taking evidence from expert witnesses". However, many (if not most) of the witnesses are avowed advocates of population control including the falsely-named Catholics For a Free Choice, a pro-abortion group which works to undermine the Catholic Church's teaching on the sanctity of human life.
Is population control in the developing world through abortion - under the guise of reproductive health - really necessary for reducing poverty and improving maternal welfare? Well, the UN Population Division (UNPD) has stated: "Even though population increased more rapidly during the twentieth century than ever before, economic output grew even faster, owing to the accelerating tempo of technological progress while world population increased close to 4 times, world real gross domestic product increased 20 to 40 times, allowing the world to not only sustain a four-fold population increase, but also to do so at vastly higher standards of living." (UNPD, Population, Environment and Development, 2001)
In October, I represented SPUC at the MaterCare International workshop in Rome. MaterCare: "is an association of health professionals dedicated to improving the lives and health of mothers and their unborn children throughout the world, through new initiatives of service, training, and research, in accordance with the contemporary teaching contained in the Encyclical Evangelium Vitae" (The Gospel of Life, by the late Pope John Paul II). MaterCare has recently been granted special consultative status as a non-governmental organisation at the United Nations and is the obstetrics/gynaecology wing of the International Federation of Catholic Medical Associations. The theme of the workshop was The Dignity Of Motherhood And The Practice Of Obstetrics - Challenging The Status Quo. Speakers included Vatican cardinals, professors of obstetrics/gynaecology, bioethics, theology and demography, and pro-life/pro-family leaders.
The best presentation of the workshop was by Maria Srodon from MaterCare Poland. She said: "[M]others suffering from obstetric fistula in sub-Saharan Africa who are cast out from their homes for the suffering they encounter, and have no chance of returning to health because reproductive health priorities are to promote abortion and contraception, not help mothers, are victims of ... violation[s of the dignity of motherhood]." MaterCare is at the cutting-edge of dealing with fistula, which is a rupture of the genito-urinary tract. Mrs Srodon also gave the example of Stanisława Leszczyńska, a midwife at Auschwitz who saved around 3,000 children in what were (needless to say) the direst of circumstances, promoting breastfeeding and even lullabies.
SPUC agrees that the aims of the MDGs are largely positive and worthy of support. However, as Pope Paul VI told the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation in 1974: "It is inadmissible that those who have control of the wealth and resources of mankind should try to resolve the problem of hunger by forbidding the poor to be born." It is an inhuman way to solve human problems by eliminating humans. The rejection by the Holy See of the UN Disability Convention this week is both a stunning rebuke and a grave warning to the international community to stop exploiting the right to human development as a means of promoting abortion.
MaterCare is always in need of support, not
least because its uncompromising pro-life and truly pro-woman principles mean
that it is denied funding from anti-life institutions such as the EU. Please
visit www.matercare.org to register
your support.
Bad news for babies, by Anthony McCarthy, the Linacre Centre
Anthony
McCarthy of the Linacre Centre for Health Care Ethics critiques a report
by the Nuffield Council on Bioethics, Critical care decisions in fetal and
neonatal medicine: ethical issues. The report discusses and makes
recommendations on the withholding and withdrawing of life-prolonging treatment
from premature babies. He claims that the report effectively endorses
euthanasia by omission, by employing eugenicist criteria in an
evaluation of children's lives and by confusing the burdens of
treatment with the quality of a child's life. He warns that the
report's rejection of active euthanasia for newborns is undermined by its
effective endorsement of euthanasia by omission, thereby assisting the
euthanasia movement in its strategic aims. More.
Tiny but still human: embryonic stem cell research and its effects on society
The Most Reverend Anthony Fisher O.P., Auxiliary Bishop of the archdiocese of Sydney, an expert on bioethical issues, takes on not only the science of stem cell research but more importantly how the very nature of embryonic stem cell research harms society. He calls on all people to realise that bioethics is not divorced from justice and peace, but rather it is one of the major fronts on which justice and peace are being fought for. The dignity of a human person does not depend upon its size any more than it depends on its culture, colour or creed; destroying life harms the society that allows it not simply those directly involved with the act. More
Human dignity in the Nazi era: implications for contemporary bioethics
Dónal P O'Mathúna, Lecturer in Health Care Ethics, School of Nursing, Dublin City University, Dublin 9, Ireland, in BMC Medical Ethics 2006, 7:2 doi:10.1186/1472-6939-7-2
The infamous cruelty of the Nazi regime was supported and directed by the eugenic theory known as social Darwinism. This paper explores the content of social Darwinism in Germany, and explains how this pernicious philosophy can have guided the medical profession to such terrible ends. The author warns that some of the key themes of social Darwinism are reemerging in contemporary bioethical debate. Our appreciation for the inherent dignity of all human beings may serve as a counterbalance to the pressures of social Darwinism. More
