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International Right to Life Federation,
Inc. THIRD INTERNATIONAL EUTHANASIA CONFERENCE: This was held recently at The Hague in the Netherlands. The 3_-day meeting was attended by leadership delegates from the countries of Holland, Ireland, Mexico, Malta, Canada, Philippines, Nigeria, Poland, Germany, France, Russia, South Africa, Lithuania, Sweden, Scotland, England, U.S., Belgium, India and Israel. It was held on the 50th anniversary of the publication of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights. That was in 1948. Due to societal changes, it was felt that the original needed updating. Accordingly, a new International Declaration of Human Rights was promulgated at this meeting by unanimous consent. On Page 4 is the 1948 wording. The new version is on Page 5. AUSTRALIA – ABORTION BILL PASSES: In November, the Australian capital territory passed a bill on abortion. Henceforth, women seeking abortions will have to wait out a 72-hour cooling off period before getting the abortion. The other major provision is that certain information must be given to the woman prior to her having the abortion, this being in the form of a pamphlet that is yet to be prepared. It includes a conscience clause and certain other conditions. In essence, it is a watered down version of a bill introduced by legislator Paul Osborn which would have banned almost all abortions. After its passage, pro-life praise was muted because it wasn't as strong as they had hoped, but pro-abortion forces were furious. ARGENTINE – DAY OF UNBORN: Argentine President Carlos Menem has signed a decree that proclaims 25 March (Feast of the Annunciation) to be the Day of the Unborn Child. Citing the authority of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Declaration on the Rights of the Child, he pointed out that “Under our constitution and our civil legislation, life begins at the moment of conception.” The decree charges two government officials – the Minister of Culture and the Ambassador to the Holy See – with the responsibility for planning appropriate events to mark the annual observance. TAJIKISTAN SUPPORTS ABORTION: On 17 November, the Asian nation of Tajikistan authorized a new policy on abortion. This allows women to obtain abortion under a variety of exceptions. This includes provisions for “unmarried women, women who already have more than five children, and women made pregnant by rape.” There are ten other exceptions – this according to BBC/Itar-Tass News Agency report 11/19/98. BAVARIAN LAW OVERTURNED: A law in the German State of Bavaria, due to take effect in July of '97, has been blocked by the German Federal Constitutional Court. In October that court ruled that the law would be “detrimental to the health of Bavarian women as it would force them to travel outside the region to get an abortion.” ... they also “ruled that Bavaria was not legally competent to legislate over abortion matters.” Abortion has been legal in Germany in the first trimester. The only limit placed has been that she has had to consult an advice center or doctor. In a useless gesture, the court emphasized that doctors must “emphasize the protection of unborn life”. This provision of the law has not been widely enforced, and no one really believes that this will change. MOSCOW – ABORTIONS: The Russian Health Ministry has released a report stating that there were 2.5 million abortions in Russia in 1997. For every 10 babies conceived, 7 were killed by abortion. Only 10% of abortions were performed on women 18 and younger. The report stated that “two women in three suffer from health complications as a result of the abortions.” In Russia there are more coffins than cradles, with the population dropping by over 1.5 million people in the last five years. HUNGARY MUST REVISE LAW: Under its 1992 law, abortions are legal in Hungary, if birth threatens the life of the mother, for serious fetal abnormalities, or if the mother is in “a serious physical, mental or financial crisis”. Last year there were 64,564 abortions, with 97.5% done for the “serious crisis”. In November, Hungary's Constitutional Court ruled that the parliament must pass more definitive legislation – that the current wording is too loose. It said that the current law does not require any evidence of a “crisis” situation. “It is not unconstitutional that the law allows abortion if she is in a serious crisis situation, but the same law must define what a serious crisis situation is and when it can be applied. Abortions carried out solely on the statement of a woman, without a chance to check if there is a crisis needs re-examination.” Hungary's current population is 10.3 million. In 1975 it was 11 million. ISRAEL – POPULATION: The population of the nation of Israel was officially reported in September of '97 to be 5,863,000 people. Of this, Jews were 4.7 million, Arabs 1.16 million. Annually, only 17,000 legal abortions are reported to be performed in Israeli hospitals, but several times that many are unofficially done and not reported. The mean fertility rate per woman in her lifetime, among Jews, is unofficially reported to be less than 2.0, while that, among Arabs, is over 4.0. If this disparity in birth rates continues, it will only be a matter of time until the 4 to 1, Jew to Arab ratio is sharply reduced and even ultimately reversed. The Haredi, orthodox Jews, tried to persuade the Israeli government to at least close the illegal abortion clinics - so far, without results. A religious party did attempt to pass an amendment protecting the life of unborn children from conception – again without success. CHINA'S COERCIVE STERILIZATION LAW: We have a report from the Washington Post. Considering the subject and the source, we should take this with great caution. However, the report is that China's Ministry of Public Health has suspended parts of their controversial law permitting doctors to sterilize people with “serious genetic conditions”. Current law had directed doctors to determine whether a couple had “any genetic disease of a serious nature”. The law then gave the physician the right to block “child-rearing” through sterilization or “long term contraceptive measures”, e.g., in the province of Ginsu, there was a 1986 law called “The Law for the Compulsory Sterilization of Idiotic, Slow-witted, Stupid & Deranged People. It sterilized anyone with an IQ under 49, simply sending teams and then sterilizing retarded girls (never boys). Supposedly, this has stopped. The controversy over these laws cast a shadow over the 18th International Congress of Genetics held in Beijing in August. Many Western geneticists boycotted the meeting, submitting only 400 abstracts. In past years there were thousands submitted. IRISH ABORTIONS INCREASE: In 1996, the British Statistics Office reported that 4,894 Irish women traveled to Great Britain to abort their babies. In 1997, the figure reported had risen to 5,325. Abortions are permitted in Ireland only when the mother's life is in danger but, following a constitutional referendum which permitted distribution of information about foreign abortion chambers, the number of Irish women crossing the Irish Sea for abortions has steadily risen. Comparing these numbers to the total population of Ireland, it shows that one of every twelve babies conceived in the Republic of Ireland is aborted. Only 2% of married women aborted their babies, but 25% of unmarried women did. GERMANY – VIABILITY: The German Federal Medical Association has called for stricter laws on abortions. In a statement published in November in Cologne, the Association demanded that no abortion should be allowed after viability. According to this statement, that would apply as of and from the 24th week “when the child weighs approximately 500 grams.” After this point, abortion, it states, should be allowed only in special, exceptional cases in which extremely severe and incurable diseases or developmental deficiencies exist. DUTCH ANTI-EUTHANASIA CARDS: All pro-lifers know that euthanasia has been legal in the Netherlands for almost two decades through judge-made law. Now the newly elected Dutch government is pressing ahead with a proposal to legalize “assisted suicide” by doctors in a formal law. Of the roughly 130,000 Dutch people who die every year in the Netherlands, it has been estimated that about 25,000 die through direct or indirect euthanasia. One-fourth of the practicing physicians in Holland report that they have ended a patient's life without his or her specific request. In reaction to this, more than 10,000 people in Holland have started carrying an anti-euthanasia card in their wallets. These are being distributed by pro-life groups and state: “I request that no medical treatment be withheld on the grounds that the future quality of my life will be diminished. I believe this is not something that human beings can judge. I request that, under no circumstances, a life-ending treatment be administered because I am of the opinion that people do not have the right to end life.” SINGAPORE – DE-POPULATION: In the early `70s, Premier Lee in Singapore was worried about over-population. Accordingly, that government sponsored campaigns to encourage people to have only one or two children. In the early 1990s, it became evident that the Muslim Malayans coming into Singapore from the North were rather rapidly reproducing, while the indigenous Singapore Chinese were not. The government changed its policy rather abruptly, told Planned Parenthood to close its office and leave, and began to encourage native Singapore people to have larger families. This has progressed to where now the government is encouraging native Singaporians to have at least four children. AUSTRALIA'S ABORTION: The Australian Bureau of Statistics released results of a survey on 12 November 1998. According to it, out of 500,000 pregnancies in Australia last year, there were 95,000 induced abortions, 150,000 miscarriages and 2,000 stillbirths. These add up to almost half of the pregnancies reported. The survey also found that one-third of Australian babies born were to unmarried mothers, this being a 70% increase in the last ten years. U.S. HALTS QUINACRINE DISTRIBUTION: The U.S. Food & Drug Administration has issued a warning letter to Drs. Elton Kessel and Stephen Mumford demanding that they “immediately halt” all distribution of Quinacrine pellets. It stated that it was “very concerned about the safety risks associated with the use of this drug...and its effect on women and the fetus, if the woman is or becomes pregnant.” It demanded that these doctors “immediately halt” all distribution of Quinacrine pellets. These have been used to sterilize women in the Third World. It noted this was unapproved and unsafe and that “the product at issue does not meet even the threshold requirement for export in that it is not approved for use in non-surgical female sterilization in any country.” The FDA asked the doctors to “destroy their existing supply...under FDA supervision. They are to inform the regulators within fifteen days how they intend to comply or face possible seizure of the pellets or criminal prosecution.” U.N. – AIDS – AFRICA: Experience has shown that United Nations demographers are the last people on earth to acknowledge a slowdown in population growth or even the potential for reversal. Therefore, it was of interest to see a U.N. study released 29 October that noted that the global AIDS epidemic is forcing demographers to “dramatically scale back predictions for population growth over the next century in some African nations.” Noting that some nations hardest hits by AIDS have an infection rate of almost 25%, they noted that in nine African nations HIV infection infects 10% of the population or more, while in Botswana more than 25% are infected. The same report actually reduces the predicted worldwide population in the year 2050 from their previous estimate of 9.4 billion to their current revised estimate of 8.9 billion. Your editors note that other estimates of population worldwide predict the possibility that by the year 2050 the globe may be on the verge of a consistent de-population slide in total numbers. TORONTO SCRATCHES UNICEF: Because of this U.N. agency's drift away from its original humanitarian mandate, and its clear and progressive move toward more and more support internationally for contraception, sterilization, abortion and population control, the Vatican had suspended its annual symbolic donation. This past year, the Toronto Catholic School District has also terminated their annual Halloween collection for UNICEF. In place of it, their pro-life group, Aid to Women, is distributing fund-raising boxes within their schools. NO VATICAN MONEY FOR UNICEF: Two years ago the Holy See Mission to the U.N. withdrew its money from UNICEF because the agency was involved in supporting abortion overseas, especially in refugee camps ... “We are told the Holy See would be happy to return to UNICEF under certain conditions, but these conditions have not been met.” This according to Austin Ruse, Director of the Catholic Family & Human Rights Institute in New York. It further warned parents to not participate in the annual Children's Collection for this pro-abortion U.N. agency. In particular, Ruse cited the assistance given by UNICEF in the preparation of a field manual for use in refugee camps stating that it “overtly supports the use of things like vacuum aspirators that are used for abortion, and UNICEF urges their use in refugee camps, the most dangerous and disease-ridden places on earth.” AUSTRALIAN EMBRYOS DOOMED: The Australian Infertility Treatment Act of 1995 mandated the killing of aging embryos to begin on January 1st of 1998. A three-month extension was granted, which postponed this date until April 1. Since that time, hundreds of unborn children, frozen as embryos, have been progressively killed. The law states that human embryos more than five years old must be destroyed. Pro-life protests that this was, in each case, the direct killing of a living human were unsuccessful. The killing has continued. CONTACT US Phone: (513) 729-3600
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