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International Right to Life Federation,
Inc.
Vol. 17 No. 3
(May/June 2006)
Vietnam Abortions Sky High
In April the local Pioneer newspaper reported that there are 17 babies born for every 1000 women, compared to 83 abortions.
The report said that each women in Vietnam has approximately 2-½ abortions in her lifetime.
This gives Vietnam one of the highest abortion rates in the world.
According to its own national health statistics in 1989, there were 760,000 abortions. In 1995,
it has climbed to 1.4 million.
EU Approved Funding Embryonic Stem Cell Research
The European Union parliament has approved spending tax money on embryonic stem cell research. However,
the funding will not be used for human cloning. The guidelines from the last budget gave preferential treatment to
adult stem cell research but still funded embryonic stem cell studies as long as they were not
conducted in nations with bans on such funding.
Euthanasia in Switzerland
Neighbors of the Dignitas Euthanasia Clinic in Zurich report that “almost everyday the bodies of people who have
chosen to kill themselves are taken down in the lift” (Daily Record 20, May).
Since it is not large enough to hold a coffin, the bodies are put into body bags and manually carried down to the
waiting hearses in the street. If this continues, Switzerland may soon replace Holland as the center of euthanasia
killing in Europe.
Korea Now into Adult Stem Cells
The major research clinic at Seoul National University in Korea, where the disgraced Dr. Hwang's team was based,
has announced that it will now use the site and the equipment as a gene therapy clinic that will focus on adult stem cell
research. Let’s hope this message gets to those zealots who are still pursuing tax funding for embryonic stem cell
research, which kills five day old human embryos, when research into adult stem cell therapy is producing new
discoveries every week.
Some Abortions Okay in Columbia
Bowing to the drumbeat of pro-abortion pressure from the United States, the United Nations and other major international organizations, the Constitutional (Supreme) Court of Columbia has partially legalized abortion. By a vote of 5 to 3, it approved the killing of pre-born children who have congenital abnormalities, or if they are conceived by rape or incest. This happened after an intense prolonged and heavily financed campaign to legalize abortion in that country. Defenders of human life had sent a petition to the court with 2-½ million signatures. In addition, there were thirty thousand letters sent to them from the children of Columbia and hundreds of pro-life Amicus Briefs were filed with these judges.
Human Life International which lead much of the defense of life stated,
“Anti Columbia interests seek to destroy our culture, steal our children, violate our women and plunder our heritage”.
Cuba High Abortion Rate
While unborn babies lives are protected in almost all of Latin America, Cuba is the exception.
It has had abortion on demand for 40 years. Abortion there is so common that many women rely on it for contraception.
According to the Public Health Ministries Health Statistics Yearbook,
there are 11 women who died in 2004 alone from induced abortions.
A news agency also reports that Cuban health officials believe that more than 70% of women who have infertility problems
have a history of one or more abortions.
South Korea Worries about Under Population
Forty years ago its government encouraged South Korean couples to limit to two children.
It enforced this by refusing to pay for education of children beyond the second child.
It also ended maternity benefits for women after the second.
It now has the lowest birthrate of any of the pacific rim nations, except China.
From one million births in 1970, the latest figure was 476,000. It has a rapidly aging population.
Accordingly it has announced it will spend 20 billion dollars to combat this under population.
We await details.
Ecuador Pill Ban
The Ecuadorian Constitutional Court unanimously upheld a lower court that had
prohibited the sale of the morning after pill in that nation.
Pro-Life Leader Appointed at State Department
President Bush has installed Ellen Sauerbrey as the Assistant Secretary of State for Population.
As a former UN women's representative, she had effectively and compassionately carried out Bush's
pro-life policy as Ambassador to the Commission on the Status of Women at the UN.
She’s a former Maryland state lawmaker and gubernatorial candidate.
Pro-abortion senators had continued to block the vote on her nomination and so during the Christmas recess,
Bush appointed her as a recess appointment, which she will hold for the next two years.
Massive Human Organ Transplant Industry in China
Canada’s pro-life newspaper, the Interim, reporting with details from a story in the Epoch Times 4/19/06, has broken open a large secret organ transplant industry in China. Liver transplants there rose from a national total of 78 in 1998 to 3000 in 2003. Prices for westerners coming in for transplants include, for a kidney $62,000 USD, heart $170,000 USD, cornea $30,000 USD. But due to traditional Chinese beliefs very few Chinese willingly donate their organs or those of their family members. Who then are these donors? This source reports that the organs come from Falun Gong practitioners whose religion has been ruthlessly suppressed by the Chinese Government and whose leaders have been imprisoned for years. The government reports thirty thousand transplants a year. Epoch Times says the number is more than a hundred and ten thousand.
In China a fresh organ can be obtained in as little as two days. In the US such a candidate must often wait years for an available properly matched donor organ. Considering this rapid availability, the article assumes that there must be thousands of potential donor prisoners in order to be able to select a matched organ that quickly. This article and another from GeneEthique, 4/28/06, details the procedure. The prisoner is given an anesthetic, the organ is removed, and then the prisoner’s body is cremated within 72 hours. A Chinese minister of health is alleged to have said, “95 percent of organs transplanted in China are harvested from executed prisoners”. If the above detailed reporting is true, the organs are taken from live prisoners, who then are cremated.
Abort Babies because of Club Feet
Figures from the office of National Statistics in the UK, report that in the last decade more than 20 women had abortions later than mid-pregnancy, because the babies had been diagnosed with club feet. Four more were aborted because they had extra fingers or webbed feet.
It is noted that all of these congenital malformations are completely correctable surgically after birth.
Why Women Have Abortions
Certainly there is a variation in reasons in different countries particularly for economic reasons.
It may be of interest to note a major investigation in the US. This was by the research arm of Planned Parenthood,
so it is certainly not slanted in a pro-life direction. The most important reason given was:
| |
25% |
Not ready for a(nother) child/timing is wrong |
|
23% |
Can't afford a baby now |
| |
19% |
Have completed my childbearing/have other people depending on me/children are grown |
| |
8% |
Don't want to be a single mother/am having relationship problems |
| |
7% |
Don't feel mature enough to raise a(nother) child/feel too young |
| |
4% |
Would interfere with education or career plans |
| |
4% |
Physical problems with my health |
| |
3% |
Possible problem affecting the health of the fetus |
| |
<0.5% |
Was a victim of rape |
| |
<0.5% |
Husband or partner wants me to have an abortion |
| |
<0.5% |
Parents want me to have an abortion |
|
<0.5% |
Don't want people to know I had sex or got pregnant |
| |
6% |
Other |
Please note that the reasons commonly given for abortion, the so-called hard cases, make up a very, very small percentage. Overwhelmingly, the reasons given are social and economic.
INSTEAD OF SAFE SEX WE SHOULD BE
TEACHING YOUNG PEOPLE SAVE SEX.
English House of Lords
Rejects Bill to Permit Assisted Suicide
In May by a vote of 148 to 100, the English House of Lords rejected a bill,
which would have permitted assisted suicide in England and Wales.
The Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC)
in England had led a vigorous campaign against this euthanasia bill.
What They Really Want?
When Professor Jerome Lejeune (Chairman, Dept. of Genetics, University Rene Descartes, Paris) was being cross-examined by the Royal Commission he said, amongst other things, that while attending a Paris Press Conference where Catholics, Protestants, Humanists and people of other Beliefs put forward their views; all of them said what they wanted to say (about abortion), and there was one woman who was a chief of the campaign in France for abortion and she spoke; and at that moment all stopped writing because she was not talking about abortion any longer. She said bluntly, “We are fighting to destroy Judaeo-Christian society and civilization. To destroy it we have to destroy the family, we have to destroy its weakest point, and the weakest point of the family is the unborn child. Hence we are for abortion”.
Dr. Lejuene reported this in 1977. He's no longer with us. “Does this still apply?”
Why Become an Abortionist?
Except for money this profession has almost nothing to attract a doctor. So why do abortions? Canadian Psychiatrist Doctor Phillip Ney has been studying this for decades. He reports a pattern in many cases of abuse and neglect when these doctors were children. He states that if the child within oneself was killed psychologically when the person was young, then as an adult that person will sometimes reenact the trauma by killing the child within another person physically. This is called “traumatic reenactment”. This person doesn't understand what happened to him or her, so he tries to repeat it, relive it, recreate the circumstances surrounding it so that he can master it. This type of relationship explains sometimes why some people may wander from one abusive relationship to another and never seem to learn, even though learning is precisely what the person is trying to do. They hate it all the while. As abortionist David Zbaraz said in the Washington Post 3-3-80,
“it's a nasty, dirty, yucky thing and I always come home angry”.
Abortion Increases Child Abuse
In the journal Acta Paediatrica (Vol. 94, Num. 10, Oct. 2005),
we are given new information about abortion and child abuse. According to this study by Priscilla Coleman and Associates, women who have had induced abortions are 2.4 times more likely to physically abuse their children.
The title of the article is Associations Between Voluntary and Involuntary Forms of Perinatal Loss and Child Maltreatment
Among Low Income Mothers. This increase contrasted sharply when compared with the increase among women who had experienced a miscarriage or a stillbirth. The author suggests that “emotional difficulties and unresolved grief responses from pregnancy loss could explain such an unhealthy parenting response”. They also say that emotional healing after abortion will increase the likelihood of “violence free families”.
New Source of Embryonic Stem Cells
Scientists in the California PrimeGen Biotech presented new findings at a meeting in Spain. They have found stem cells in men’s testicles that have embryonic stem cell like qualities. They have helped these cells turn into nerve, heart and bone cells. These findings follow an announcement a week earlier that German researchers found new adult stem cells in the testicles of mice, which gave them similar results.
Britain Cytotec Causes Problems
This prostaglandin drug (Misoprostol) was studied in 8,600 women by England’s Liverpool University researchers Dr. Z. Alfirevic and A. Weeks who warn of medical problems from its use. It should be used with caution for the induction of labor they say, as well as causing medical problems when used with RU-486 to produce a chemical abortion.
Most Oregon Suicides Due to Depression
The state of Oregon has released its latest annual report noting that there were 38 assisted suicides reported there last year. The typical patient is a white male, age 70, with cancer, who has a college education. Some others suffer from AIDS or Lou Gehrig’s Disease. While many patients cite depression as their reason for asking to be killed, only two of the 38 received psychological evaluations prior to being given the lethal drugs. This is a tragedy and an outrage. Clinical depression is a biochemical illness, which in most cases can be successfully treated with medication. The law does not require such psychiatric evaluation and treatment, and so this looks like a convenient way to get rid of grandpa.
Italy May Legalize RU-486
Italy’s new Premier Romano Prodi is expected to ask that his nation legalize this dangerous abortion drug. It has now been responsible for the deaths of 12 women worldwide, 7 in the US, 2 in Britain, and 1 each in Canada, Sweden and France. In the US alone more than 950 women have been injured from the drug, some requiring emergency surgery, blood transfusions and other medical attention.
Italy’s new Health Minister Livia Turco has stated that the drug should be sold in Italy.
The Philippine Foundation for Breast Cancer
The Philippine Foundation for Breast Care has publicly announced that it agrees with the link of abortion to breast cancer. Its President, Christina Santos M.D. stated, “We acknowledge the abortion breast cancer link based on the physiologic changes in the breast lobules of women who choose to deliberately interrupt their pregnancies by induced abortion,
and the risk for breast cancer that this will pose later to that women”.
J.C. Willke, President,
International Right to Life Fed.
1821 West Galbraith Road
Cincinnati,
Ohio 45239 USA
Phone +1 (513) 729-3600
Fax +1 (513) 729-3636
e-mail:
IRTLF@lifeissues.org
International
Right to Life Fed., International Office
Ruitersweg 35-37 1211 KT Hilversum
The Netherlands
Phone +31 35 624-4352
Fax +31 35 624-9141
e-mail:
info@schreeuwomleven.nl
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