Pro-Life Times: March 2003

EU compels nations to fund abortion

by Dominic Baster

The European parliament has voted to compel all member states of the European Union to fund abortion services in the Third World. The pro-abortion Sandbæk report, which will become a "regulation" establishing EU overseas aid policy for the next five years, was drawn up with the help of abortion provider Marie Stopes International. Only two voted against the report at committee stage, and the whole parliament adopted the report in Strasbourg on 13th February by a show of hands. Two pro-life amendments were rejected. EU regulations take precedence over national law, so all member states will now be obliged to fund abortion services overseas through their contributions to the EU's multi-million pound international aid budget. This includes Ireland, which has a pro-life constitution, as well as the pro-life accession countries such as Malta and Poland when they become full EU members.

The regulation mandates the EU to provide money to promote "the recognition of reproductive and sexual health and rights ... including ... universal access to a comprehensive range of safe and reliable reproductive and sexual health care and services". According to the World Health Organisation's definition, 'reproductive health care services' include abortion. The main author of the report, Danish MEP Ulla Sandbæk, admitted this when she told Ireland's Radio Kerry on 19 November 2002 that the new regulation would mean that abortions would be legally funded by the EU.

Politicians, Church leaders and others in Malta and Poland are among those to have expressed great concern about the pro-abortion agenda of the EU. Abortion is expected to play a major part in upcoming referenda in both countries on whether to join the EU next year. Whereas the Maltese government negotiated a protocol asserting nationa sovereignty in the area of abortion legislation as part of its EU accession treaty, no such provision was negotiated by Poland. In response to concerns that popular pro-life sentiments could lead to a "no" vote in the referendum, the Polish government has since requested the addition of a protocol on abortion to its treaty, but an official at the European Commission said that this was impossible.

However, even statutory protocols on abortion will not prevent Maltese or Polish taxpayers from funding abortions through the EU aid budget in the wake of the Sandbæk report. John Smeaton, SPUC's national director, said, "I am deeply concerned that a pro-abortion agenda is being pursued by the EU without proper democratic scrutiny or informed debate, despite the fact that abortion law is not within the EU's competence. When as expected the EU's Council of Ministers confirms the regulations based on the Sandbæk report, the EU will become one of the foremost promoters of a culture of death around the world."

Comment

Catherine Gallagher

How much longer will the myth about safer sex be allowed to continue?

Sexually transmitted disease throughout Britain and Northern Ireland is escalating: a 25% increase recorded last year. Genito-urinary medicine clinics can barely cope with the tide of infected young people.

The Royal Victoria Hospital in Belfast recently had to stop its policy of open access as the demand was too great. Their statistics show that one in seven sexually active under 17-year-olds has chlamydia.

The condom as the great protector is another myth. A World Health Organisation study showed that the risk of catching HIV was reduced by regular condom use, but only by 60%. Condoms were even less effective against bacterial infections, reducing the chance of infection by only a third.

This may be safer, but is it safe enough when dealing with people's lives? The Family Planning Association now promote "safer sex" rather than "safe sex", but wouldn't it be more honest to admit that what they promote is not safe at all?

The challenge to us all is to see when 'experts' are promoting an agenda of their own, and not to be blinded by the decrees of unjust authority.

A short prayer for pro-lifers to say many times during the day
"Lord, that we may see".

Catherine Gallagher is a doctor working in disability assessment and is married to Owen, a GP. They live in Northern Ireland and have 9 children.

The shame of red nose day

John Smeaton

Comic Relief, the organisers of Red Nose Day, back abortion, in spite of having told the Catholic bishops that they do not fund, and have never funded, abortion services or the promotion of abortion.

Comic Relief's contempt for the human rights of unborn children is matched by their cynical disregard for those who oppose abortion: telling us one thing, and doing the opposite.

These are the facts:

Comic Relief's publication "Where the Money Went" for July 2000 - June 2001 states that Population Concern received £24,000.
Population Concern's projects include working for the implementation of abortion law in Bolivia and the promotion in Nigeria of "sexual and reproductive health", a term which the World Health Organization defines as including abortion on demand.
Population Concern is described by the Scottish Catholic Media Office as a "major contributor to China's now discredited one child per couple policy", a policy which has caused countless millions of compulsory abortions.
Other monies from the charitable donations to Red Nose Day are given to those promoting abortion.

"Only a small percentage of Red Nose Day goes towards abortions", it may be argued, but this argument holds no water. Supposing, in the 1940s, only a small percentage of a charity's funds went towards the killing of Jews and ethnic minorities in concentration camps, would it be OK for people to give to that charity? There is only one answer to that question. And there is only one response to Red Nose Day. Boycott it.

For further information contact johnsmeaton@spuc.org.uk.

Morning-after pill link to ectopic pregnancy

by Paul Tully

New evidence has forced the Government to alert young women to the danger of ectopic pregnancy after taking the morning-after pill. Sir Liam Donaldson, the Government's Chief Medical Officer, has sent a communication to all doctors asking them to be extra vigilant about the morning-after pill. He has also ordered Schering AG, manufacturers of the drug, to change the wording of patient information leaflets.

Advocates of the morning-after pill have already admitted that it kills early embryos by preventing implantation in the womb. Now it appears that there is also a connection with the deaths of embryos much later in development as a large proportion of the surviving embryos implant in the fallopian tubes, causing ectopic pregnancy. This presents a small but serious risk to the mother's life, as well as a high risk of sterility.

John Smeaton, SPUC national director said, "This drug should be removed from the market immediately so that the available data can be fully assessed. Every day thousands of doses are being given to unsuspecting women.

"Despite the fact that there has been no proper trial on the safety of this drug among under16s, it is now the Government's policy for school nurses to give this drug to school girls as young as 11 without parental consent."

"Bioethical house of horrors" started with IVF says archbishop

by staff reporter

Archbishop Mario Conti of Glasgow has condemned IVF saying that the "nightmarish journey" which has led to cloning started with "the British Government's acceptance of in vitro fertilisation". Cloning, he states, "is simply a logical progression ever further into this bio-ethical house of horrors"

Professor Robert Winston, a pioneer of IVF, complained that the Archbishop had damaged the reputation of scientists by suggesting that the acceptance of IVF had paved the way for cloning. Professor Winston himself has supported human cloning for research purposes.

In an article, which appeared in the Scottish newspaper the Sunday Herald, the Archbishop pointed out "that for every child brought to birth using these techniques, several embryos will have died, been frozen or destroyed in the process."

Professor Winston responded by saying, "Does not the archbishop recognise that the highly moral practice of IVF ... has resulted in around a million new human souls being born worldwide?"

Tiniest humans under attack in Ireland

by Dominic Baster

Pro-lifers in Ireland have expressed concern about the erosion of respect for the unborn in their country, especially with regard to the status of the embryo. IVF and the morning-after pill are already common in Ireland, even though they entail the deaths of embryos. The Irish Family Planning Association reported a large rise in demand for the morning-after pill in the run-up to Christmas, and many embryos are kept in storage at IVF clinics. The Irish government does not protect the rights of embryos, and even funds abortion providers overseas. The official Commission on Assisted Human Reproduction is due to present a report to the health minister in June on issues including IVF, the storage and disposal of embryos, and human cloning. Pat Buckley, leader of the pro-life group NEART, said, "These issues should not even be under discussion because article 40.3.3 of the Constitution protects all human life, a fact made even more clear in the Irish-language version of the text. The Commission claims that the question of whether pre-implantation embryos enjoy protection under the constitution is yet to be adjudicated upon, and that the Supreme Court would be likely to rule that the protection applied only after implantation. However, the Commission concedes that there would be serious implications for current practice if such protection did exist, and the Supreme Court has already ruled that the right to life applies from conception."

News in Brief

· Philippines - The Catholic Bishops of the Philippines have said that the government should remove all abortifacient drugs and devices from the market to prevent "silent abortions" caused by "silent abortifacients". Speaking at the Bishops' 86th plenary assembly, Bishop Teodoro Bacani of Novaliches, asked the government to prepare a list of drugs which either prevented the implantation of an embryo in the womb or displaced an embryo after implantation had taken place.

· Mexico - The US-based Population Research Institute has drawn attention to the alleged involvement of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) in coerced abortions in Mexico. The National Population Council of Mexico receives financial, technical and medical support from UNFPA. However, Mexico's National Human Rights Commission has denounced coercion in family planning programmes throughout Mexico.

· USA - A Californian Bishop has said that Catholic pro-abortion politicians should abstain from receiving Holy Communion. Referring specifically to California's pro-abortion governor, Gray Davis, who is a Catholic, Bishop William K Weigand of Sacramento said, "I have to say clearly that anyone - politician or otherwise - who thinks it is acceptable for a Catholic to be pro-abortion is in very great error."

· Argentina - A federal judge in Argentina has blocked the implementation of the government's so-called 'sexual health and responsible procreation' programme because it would involve the provision of abortifacients. Judge Cristina Garzón de Lascano ordered the ministry of health and social action to suspend the programme following a legal challenge by the Women for Life group, which asserted that the provision of abortifacient birth control drugs violated the right to life of the unborn and the right to health of women.

Population control: destroying the world's families

Many people think that population control is necessary to bring health and wealth to people in developing countries; in other words, if people don't have so many babies they would be better off. What is often not understood, by people in this country, is that population control is frequently brutal and coercive. Population control is rarely helping people to have the size of family they want, in a way acceptable to them. It is more likely to be outside agencies imposing methods of birth control on families that are against their culture and religion. The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) is the world's most important population control agency. In a recent White Paper, Douglas Sylva, director of research at the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute in New York, investigates the way in which UNFPA breaches its own policies and regulations as well as being guilty of potential human rights violations. Antonia Tully looks at Dr Sylva's findings.

UNFPA was set up in 1969 when hysteria about world over-population was at its height. Rich countries were terrified that burgeoning populations were a threat to their security. The United Nations became convinced that the world's population must be slowed down and stopped.

The UNFPA annual budget is between $250 to $300 million, depending on the actions of donor nations. The United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, the Netherlands and Japan have been the primary donors to UNFPA. Pro-lifers who have paid tax at any time since 1969 will be particularly concerned about the activities of UNFPA.

While UNFPA does support some valuable projects such as pre-natal and post-natal care, efforts to curb mortality and morbidity and care for illness associated with reproductive health, these occupy a fraction of the budget. Dr Sylva presents a horrifying picture of financial mismanagement by the UNFPA.

In 1998-1999, UNFPA spent $91 million on the purchase of contraceptives. The UN Board of Auditors investigating this found that the purchases were made even though they could not find enough suppliers who could deliver the quantities and quality they required (money was spent on non-existent goods) and that there was no check of whether the products met international standards. UNFPA recently shipped 10 million faulty condoms to Tanzania, which was only discovered when local officials carried out their own tests. AIDS is rife in sub-Saharan Africa and UNFPA promotes condoms as a means of protection against this deadly virus. Whether the policy of condoms against AIDS is sound or not, UNFPA has failed on its own terms. How many billions of other condoms distributed by UNFPA over the years may also have been faulty? This sort of ineptitude endangers the lives of people in developing countries.

At the beginning of his study Dr Sylva states, "UNFPA supports abortion and covertly promotes abortion. UNFPA distributes abortion equipment and abortion drugs throughout the developing world. UNFPA funnels money into non-governmental organisations (NGOs) that actually perform abortions." UNFPA itself apparently denies all involvement with abortion, but Dr Sylva reveals their true colours. One example of the way in which UNFPA tries to obscure its involvement in abortion is the use of manual vacuum aspirators (MVAs). An MVA is a multi-purpose piece of medical equipment, which can be helpful in the treatment of miscarriages. MVAs thus provide political protection for UNFPA, because if it is discovered that the machine was used for abortion, UNFPA can claim it had been misused.

The largest nation of all, China, has been brutalised by the savage pursuit of a population control policy for over 20 years: the one child policy. UNFPA played a major role here in providing funds for the coercive one-child policy and also acting as an informal public relations agency for the Chinese government. In 1979 UNFPA gave China $50 million to establish the one-child policy. Basically UNFPA taught the Chinese State Family Planning Commission how to make the one-child policy work - collecting information on where fertility needed to decline more, what contraceptive and abortion quotas to set for different regions and where women were regularly evading family planning regulations. At the recommendation of US secretary of state Colin Powell, the US has now withdrawn all funding to UNFPA, following a state department investigation into the activities of UNFPA in China. US law forbids funds going to agencies which support coercive abortion.

Non-governmental organisations (NGOs) are central to UNFPA's mission to cut the world's population, including the International Planned Parenthood Federation which calls for the circumvention or outright breaking of national abortion laws. They perform early abortions called menstrual regulation and operate abortion clinics and perform abortions on a massive scale. These are the groups that UNFPA funds and celebrates.

What should be done? Dr Sylva calls for a full US governmental study of the activities of UNFPA. Donor countries should withdraw their funding on the evidence that UNFPA supports coercion. Donor countries should consider establishing a new medical agency to assist families in the developing world that is free from the philosophy of population control. Finally, donor countries should transfer funds to the United Nations Population Division which provides non ideological statistical information on population.

For further information email douglasasylva@c-fam.org.

From the desk of Joanna Bogle

From the financial pages

I don't often read the financial pages of newspapers. They make my eyes glaze over with boredom. But the other day an article arrested my attention. Words leapt at me from the page: pregnancy, birthrate, families. Here at the Pro-Life Times office, we react to such words. I read on. The article (The Daily Telegraph, Jan 2003) was about pensions. With a staggering one pregnancy in three being terminated in some parts of Britain, our nation is no longer sustaining itself. Not enough children are being born to create a future. There won't be enough money in taxes to pay old-age pensions for today's middle-aged people, when they reach old age. Even private pension funds, in which so many have placed so much trust, won't really be sustainable without an economy to drive them. We face terrible problems - and the Government knows it. The national debate about pensions, already fairly anguished, is actually only just beginning. The article, incidentally, did not seem to think that there was anything that could be done to stop one child in three from being aborted. It simply pointed out that people who destroy their offspring can't be looked after by those offspring later on. Some day, perhaps quite soon, we will be allowed to discuss whether such killing should be regarded as acceptable, and whether as a nation and as a community we should stop ourselves from doing it.

Dynamite from Rome

If the financial pages of British newspapers have traditionally been stuffy, then Vatican documents don't exactly have a reputation for exciting reading either. Theological prose can sometimes be opaque. But look at the new document out from Rome on Catholics in political life. It's dynamite. Time's up for RC politicians who support abortion as a woman's right, saying, "I'm a devout Catholic, and may be personally opposed to abortion, but I can't impose my views on others". This new document makes it clear that no Catholic in good standing with the Church can take this approach any longer. Quoting John Paul 11, it states that those directly involved in lawmaking have a "grave and clear obligation to oppose" any law that attacks human life, and that for Catholic lawmakers "it is impossible to promote such laws or to vote for them". It also deals with Catholic organisations which take positions contrary to the teachings of the Church. Get the whole document and read it for yourself (CTS, 40-46 Harleyford Rd London SE11 5AY).

New message for young people

The new message about relationships concerns chastity. In America "abstinence programmes" in schools, encouraging young people to remain chaste and refrain from sexual activity until a lifelong marriage commitment, have proved successful. The abortion rate is going down. Young people are signalling the acceptability of making chaste choices. What about here? Still some way to go, but find out about the Challenge Team from Family Education Trust, The Mezzanine, Elizabeth House, York Street, London SE1. Or, for a more specifically religious-based message, try the Good Counsel Network 020 7723 1740.

And a good read

A new catalogue plops on to my desk. This comes from a firm in Wales offering a range of books from four different publishers, including many titles of interest to all concerned with the pro-life cause. Privilege of Being a Woman by Alice von Hildebrand, sounds a good read, while I can thoroughly recommend Ann Farmer's Prophets and Priests about attempts to impose population control policies on the poor. Get the whole catalogue: send SAE to St Austin Press, PO Box 28 Tenby SA69 9ZB.

China's women in despair as minister confirms population policy

by staff reporter

Zhang Weiqing, the minister in charge of China's State Family Planning Commission, has recently insisted that "family planning work must be a top priority" and that low population growth must be maintained.

The coercive one-child policy may be taking its toll on women's lives in the light of China's suicide figures. Suicide is the fifth most common killer in China and the vast majority of people who take their own lives are women under 40. For women age 15-34, their childbearing years, suicide is now the most common form of death. With two million suicide attempts in China each year and 287,000 deaths, more than half the world's suicides take place in China. China is virtually the only country in the world where suicides among women outnumber those by men. In most other countries, men are 3 to 4 times as likely to end their own lives as women.

"How can we ignore the connection between the brutality of China's one-child policy, in which women are dragged from their homes and their babies killed by abortion, and the utter despair of young women who kill themselves in such large numbers?", said Mrs Josephine Guy, from Kentucky, USA. Mrs Guy has travelled into China unaccompanied by Chinese Government officials and interviewed women subjected to coercion under China's population policy.

A spokesman for SPUC said, "It looks as though China is entrenching, rather than liberalising, its population control strategy, with further tragic consequences."

Aborted baby parts used in eye surgery

by staff reporter

Retinas taken from aborted unborn children have been used by doctors in California to help patients with eye problems. The doctors claim to have improved the vision of two people who have hereditary eye conditions by transplanting tissue from the retinas of aborted babies.

The operations occurred at the Doheny Eye Institute in Los Angeles on four patients with advanced retinitis pigmentosa. The results after the surgery showed that the sight had been improved in half of the cases.

Alan Bird, an expert at the Moorfields Eye Hospital in London, said that the results of the trial could mean that common eye conditions, including age-related degeneration, may be treated with transplants of foetal eye tissue. However, other experts were wary of the operations and cautioned that the improvements may only be temporary.

Alison Davis, National Coordinator of No Less Human (formerly the SPUC Handicap Division) said, "It is both tragic and offensive that aborted babies' body parts should be used as surgical commodities in this way. It is also tragic that people with degenerative eye conditions are being manipulated into thinking that the only hope of restoring their sight lies in cannibalising their fellow human beings. The financial resources put into this research would be better used in researching alternative, and ethical, treatments for eye conditions."

Abortion can lead to substance abuse

by Sam Forsdike

A new American study has indicated that women who have had abortions are more likely to endanger the health of subsequent unborn children through substance abuse. Published in the latest edition of the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, the results were derived from data collected in the National Pregnancy and Health Survey.

Dr. David Reardon, one of the co-authors of the report, suggested that the unaddressed grief and guilt suffered by women who have had abortions could be the reason why they are less able to abstain from drugs when they carry their next pregnancy to full term.

The study revealed that women with an abortion history were twice as likely to use alcohol, five times more likely to use illicit drugs and ten times more likely to use marijuana than other mothers who have not had abortions. The effects of such abuse are not only physically and mentally damaging to the mother but may also cause fatal results for their unborn child.

Margaret Cuthill, who is the national co-ordinator of British Victims of Abortion, said that she was not surprised by the findings of the survey:

"From our experience we have seen the emotional damage caused when there has been no help for women who have suffered abortions. Substance abuse is just one of the coping mechanisms used by women after abortions. This can be dangerous to the health of a mother's unborn baby and any of her existing or future children.

Other women who have had an abortion just want to curl up and go to sleep, some find they are unable to bond with subsequent children and push them away emotionally, or they may go the other way and try to compensate by being overprotective. It is essential that there is help available for women who have had an abortion."