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Volume 20, Number 2
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March/April 2009
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Bolivia – New Constitution Permissive
After a two-year process and a referendum in January, 61% of Bolivians approved a new constitution. Included in this is “entitlement to sexual and reproductive rights for men and women.” Further a proposed clause that would have outlawed abortion had stated that the right to life should start at conception. This was not adopted.
This looks like it will result in legalization of abortion in Bolivia.
State of Washington Legalizes Assisted Suicide
In the U.S., the State of Washington has joined Oregon to become the second state to legalize assisted-suicide.
Pro-life forces were outspent by a 12 – 1 ratio largely by out of state money.
Estonia - Financing Abortion Constitutional?
In February, a new chancellor of justice ruled that public funding of induced abortion was constitutional.
This reverses a previous ruling.
Council of Europe Pro-Abortion
The Council of Europe is separate from the Council or Parliament of the European Union. It does not have legal authority, but is an influential part of the European legal machinery, and its recommendations are taken seriously in the drafting of U.N. laws. Consequently, we are distressed to hear that it has officially recommended that those few countries in Europe that still restrict abortions should guarantee unrestricted access to abortions and completely decriminalize the procedure.
Also, they would have sex education mandatory for young people.
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Luxembourg - Now Legalizes Euthanasia
This tiny European country has become the third country to legalize euthanasia. It had approved a bill which was vetoed by Grand Duke Henri. The Parliament then unanimously voted to remove such power
from the Grand Duke and went ahead to approve its legalization.
Honduras
The Honduras congress has approved a law banning the use of the morning-after pills, stating that these can cause abortions in some circumstances. This bans the purchase, sale, use,
or distribution of Plan B and similar abortifacient medications.
Vietnam Population Declining
The total fertility rate born to a woman over her lifetime in Vietnam was 2.33 in 1999.
Last year, it was 2.07, which is slightly under replacement level.
India Offers Money to Prevent Girl Aboritons
The government has begun to offer 3,000 USD to poor families for each new female birth. This is in response to the fact that today only 927 girls are born for every 1,000 boys, with the missing girls being killed by abortion or infanticide. In Punjab, it is 793 girls. The government money will be paid in increments. The girls must be immunized, educated, have proper nutrition and avoid marriage until the age of eighteen.
At that time, a lump sum of 2,500 USD will be paid.
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Premature Delivery Among Black Linked to Abortion
The Association of American Physicians and Surgeons reports that black American women give birth prematurely at a rate three times higher than other races, sighting six studies as evidence. The abortion rate in the black community is 4.3 times that of non-blacks. Nearly one out of every two black American children is killed in utero. Eliminating other confounding factors, this study pinpoints the induced abortions as the
primary cause of the excessive premature birth rate.
Canada Population to Decline
Canadian census shows a precipitous demographic decline in the future.
The school age population in the next ten years is set to decline by 500,000 children.
Spain to Expand Pro-Abortion Law
Under current law, abortion is technically illegal and only allowed in case if the pregnancy is a threat to the physical or mental health of the woman. This had been routinely ignored and abortions have skyrocketed. Now the Spanish government wants to expand the law to
make legal the de facto practice of abortion on demand.
Spain
Responding to the Spanish government’s effort to totally legalize abortion on demand, a number of major marches were held on March 24. There were 100,000 in Madrid alone,
but a total of 500,000 more rallied in more than 80 cities across Spain.
Summit Meeting
The fifth Summit of the Americas in Trinidad Tobago in April found the International Planned Parenthood pushing hard to advance their abortion agenda.
With the new administration in the U.S., its delegates now support this effort.
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Most Doctors Now Oppose Abortion:
A major nationwide survey in the U.S. by the University of Chicago has turned up interesting results. 52% of doctors oppose abortion, and an additional 29% say they would not refer a patient for an abortion. Among these, 14% said that they did not believe that they were required to tell a patient about all treatment
options when it comes to morally objectionable procedures such is abortion.
Buenos Aires Pro-Life
The government of Argentina’s largest providence, which contains over 1/3 of the country’s total population, has declared itself to be “Pro-Life.” At a meeting with the seventeen Catholic bishops of the providence, in the presence of the Governor, Vice Governor and numerous Cabinet officials, the Health Minister publicly stated,
“This is a pro-life government and is against abortion.”
Teenage Girsl Suffer from Depression
Research reported in the Journal of Health Economics by Drs. Sabia and Reese found that sexually active teenage girls have twice the rate of depression of their non-active counterparts.
The numbers were 19% compared to 9.2%.
Media Excited About Embryonic Stem Cell Trial
The Geron Corporation has announced FDA approval of a trial involving implantation of human embryo-derived nerve cells into patients with damaged spinal cords. The media received this as a breathtaking breakthrough, but the Catholic News Service was not impressed. Their statement said, “All Geron Corporation has done is turn all of their embryonic stem cells into mature nerve cells, --- so what? We can get such nerve cells by far simpler means. They then inject that bunch of ordinary nerve cells and hope like hell that there is not a single embryonic stem cell left in the mix. If there is, Geron is putting the patient at risk for a tumor on the spine. We note that severed spinal cords have been rejoined and the patient returned to partial function by the use of their own adult stem cells, and this now for the last three years.
Why keep trying the more dangerous embryonic ones?”
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Assisted Reproduction Equals More Birth Defects
The U.S. government’s Centers for Disease Control has released a
report “Assisted Reproductive Technology and Major Structural Birth Defects,” in the
journal, Human Reproduction. More than 1% of infants in the U.S. are conceived through artificial reproductive technologies, chiefly in vitro fertilization. The study shows that among such pregnancies resulting in single birth, such assisted reproductive techniques were associated with twice as many heart defects, twice the number of cleft lips and/or palates, and four times the risk of GI (gastro-intestinal) defects
compared to babies conceived without fertility treatment.
Pro-Homosexual Movement - Publication from Canada
Given that the pro-homosexual movement has generally been a bitter enemy of the pro-life movement,
we publish the following from Canada:
- Life expectancy of homosexual men in
Canada is 55 years (20 years less than heterosexual males).
- GLB (Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual) people commit suicide at rates from
2 to 14 times more often than heterosexuals.
- GLB people smoke 1.3 to 3 times more.
- GLB people have rates of alcoholism 1.5 to 19 times higher.
- GLB people have rates of depression 2 to 3 times higher.
- Gay and bisexual men comprise 76% of AIDS cases.
- Gay and bisexual men are 54% of the new HIV infections each year. If one uses Statistics Canada’s figure of 1.7 of all
GLB people becoming infected, this is 26 times higher than average.
- GLB people have a higher risk for anal cancer.
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Multiple Sclerosis Responds to Adult Stem Cells
A young man developed symptoms of MS in 2000. When he was eighteen years old researchers at Northwestern University took adult stem cells from his bone marrow, preserved them, destroyed all existing immune cells in his body by chemo therapy and then reinserted the original stem cells. These took root and developed new native immune cells that regenerated his entire immune system. Dr. R. Burt, the team leader said, “For the first time in the history of human events we have not just slowed
the process of the MS of the disease, but have apparently reversed it.
U.S. - Japan and New Stem Cells
In April, Kyoto University and a new U.S. bio-technology company are starting work on redefining and commercializing stem cell reprogramming (the new pluripotent stem cells)
as this whole new field is opening up.
Study: Abortion Significantly Increases Premature Birth
A huge German study has further substantiated the link between induced abortion and future premature births. This study evaluated over 2 million pregnancies, 1995 – 2000. The study compared three separate groups: women with prior induced abortions, women with only miscarriages in their history, and women with only stillbirths in their history. It revealed that women with one prior abortion had very premature births (32 – 34 weeks) increased by 30%. With more than one prior abortion the risk rose to 90%. It noted also that pre-term birth raises a child’s risk of cerebral palsy, mental retardation, epilepsy, visual impairment, hearing disability, gastro-intestinal injury, respiratory distress, and severe infections. Those born at less than 28 weeks have a 129 times increased risks of cerebral palsy compared to full term delivered babies.
This massive study is by far the largest ever done.
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Stem Cells Help Spinal Cord Injury
Reporting in the Cell Transplantation journal, Vol. 17, No. 12), a reporter reports on eight patients. They injected adult bone marrow stem cells from the patient directly back into each one’s spinal column. To date, they have had no tumor formation, infection or increased pain, and almost no minor adverse effects. The patients’ quality of life has improved with some functional improvement, including bladder control. They note that embryonic stem
cells have never helped a human patient and have multiple problems.
Embryonic Stem Cells Cause Brain Tumor
Stem cells taken from a fetus (with different DNA) were injected into the brain of an Israel boy suffering from lethal ataxia telangiectasia. These injected cells caused a slow growing brain tumor as well as a second spinal cord tumor.
The brain tumor continues to grow.
Stem Cells Help Diabetes and Broken Jaw Bone
A study in Brazil published in the Journal of the American Medical
Association (JAMA) used the patient’s own adult stem cells to treat Type I Diabetes. The study reported that most of these patients now no longer need insulin and this during a minimum eighteen-month follow up.
Another success with adult stem cells was in Korea. Doctors there have re-grown a patient’s jaw bone using his own adult stem cells. The jaw bone and most of his teeth had been removed in removing a tumor. His own stem cells were taken from his own bone marrow,
which were then “multiplied and specialized” to form an osteoblast, a bone forming cell. These were injected into the impaired part and after six months to a year new bone material has grown to fill the gap.
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Major Advance in Stem Cell Research
Within the last year, stem cell pioneer, James Thomson, was able to take a patient’s skin cells and reprogram them backwards into more primitive stem cells, equivalent in most ways to embryonic stem cells. There was a problem however, as the method left behind viruses and outside genes which could cause problems for these new pluripotent stem cells if they were inserted back into that human donor. Now Thomson has developed a safer way of creating these cells, without the viruses and mutations, by delivering the special genes with a plasmid, a small stable circle of DNA. This dilutes and removes these contaminant cells. This apparently eliminates the last major objection to using these in place of the almost totally discredited embryonic stem cells which can only be obtained by killing a five-day-old human embryo. We are told that this is a technique that any basic molecular biology lab can use and
that it is now time to start using these cells therapeutically.
Adult Stem Cells Help Parkinson's
In UCLA researchers have publicized results in the Bentham Open Stem Cell Journal, Feb. 2009, which states, “We have documented the first successful adult neural stem cell transplantation to reverse the effects of Parkinson’s disease and demonstrated the long term safety and therapeutic effects of this approach. It details how the team isolated the patient’s own neuro stem cells, multiplied them in test tubes invitro and then was able to differentiate them into producing mature neurons (nerve cells) and then introduce them into the brain. Immune-suppressants were not needed, as would have been the case with embryonic stem cells. Their results, for the five years following the procedure,
are that the patients improved over 80%.
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www.internationalrighttolife.com
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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
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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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