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International Right to Life Federation,
Inc. IT'S TIME FOR DUES: It's that time of year again folks and time to appeal to you to help keep this newsletter coming. Please understand that we have no major, consistent source of income. Our contributions come from national pro-life groups and from your dues. I think you'll agree that the United Nations is substantially increasing its anti-family, anti-life activity. It is making major efforts through the United Nations and in individual countries to undermine the moral and ethical foundations of our countries. In response to this, pro-life people have risen up. Many have been and will continue to work at UN meetings to counter their anti-life activities. The International Right to Life Federation is one of the core organizations helping to coordinate this and other pro-life and pro-family activity internationally. It works with all religious and social groups. It works with all friendly nations. This newsletter is a significant piece of the action. It is mailed to leaders in over 150 countries. Because of its ongoing information, much activity has been stimulated. Further, a great deal of coordination has occurred because of this newsletter. This then is our request to you to do your part to keep this newsletter coming. Your dues also keep the International Right to Life Federation functioning and hopefully will help it move into a substantially more influential position worldwide. A membership blank is enclosed. ISRAEL BANS HUMAN CLONING: Israel's parliament has banned cloning humans for the next five years and has passed further legislation to monitor genetic research. CANADA-MARCH FOR LIFE: On May 14, 1999, Canadian pro-life people will march in their capitol city of Ottawa. This demonstration will mark 30 years of the culture of death in Canada. The legalization of abortion occurred in 1969, buried in a revision of their national penal code. The second major happening was in 1988 when the Canadian Supreme Court struck down that law. Since that time, there has been no law in Canada regulating, allowing or forbidding abortions. Ever since then, the number of abortions has been on a continuously raising curve. In the meantime, Canada's Federal Government has ruled that Planned Parenthood is a charity for tax revenue purposes, while Human Life International has been judged to be “political” and contributions to it are not tax deductible. EL SALVADOR'S VICTORY: A year ago the El Salvador parliament reformed their criminal code. This removed all exceptions that would have allowed abortion for any reason. They also passed the first step in a two step process to amend their constitution. The change would protect life from conception. The second step was approval by their parliament by a 2/3 vote. That vote came in February and received an overwhelming approval, 72-8. The new constitutional provision recognizes, “the human person as a human being from the instant of conception.” Julia Regina de Cardenal, pro-life leader in El Salvador has called this a miracle. KOREAN CLONING QUESTIONED: A panel of scientists have cast serious doubt on the claim by a team of South Korean medical researches that it had succeeded in cloning a human embryo. This claim has drawn worldwide attention as the first successful step in a human clone. But four experts from the Korean Doctor's Association, after a months' investigation, stated that the research could not be scientifically verified. They stated, “We would not go so far as to call this a complete fraud, but we concluded that as scientists, they were very clumsy throughout their research, not keeping proper documents of the procedure.” EUTHANASIA?: “My father was sentenced to 10 years in prison for being forced to euthanize handicapped patients in Austria in 1945. He was released after six years for exemplary behavior but was a broken man without a job. After 6 months of freedom, he killed himself with the same injection. When I look at today's euthanasia movement I ask myself, how far have we come down morally? My father was forced to do a deed he didn't want to do and was found guilty. Now in some countries euthanasia has become legal and all right.” DON'T FORGET The St. Petersburg Seminar begins Wednesday evening, April 14 and goes through Saturday night, April 17. After a day of rest, most participants will board a train Sunday night, April 18, and go to Moscow for two more days of meetings. This is co-sponsored by the International Right to Life Federation. Its venue is at the International Christian Center, 193167 Chernoretsky Lane, 4/6 St. Petersburg, Russia. Their tela/fax is 7 812 277 4843. Their e-mail is root@opench.spb.su. For further information contact our Dutch office at telephone: 31 0 35-6244352, fax 31 0 35-6249141 or email:sol.cfl@rainbow.lifenet.nl VIETNAM – MORE ABORTIONS: According to government experts, last year there were more than 1.1 million abortions reported in Vietnam. This is four times the number that government planners had set as a national target. Done in hospitals or public clinics, a typical abortion takes 90 minutes and costs $4.50 (American dollars). While girl babies are not killed like in India or China, nevertheless Vietnam families keep trying until they get one or two boys, as “we have to make sure we have someone to carry on the family line.” Particularly alarming to health officials is the fact that the recent increase in abortions is largely centered among unmarried adolescents. EGYPT – ABORTION: An ominous development has occurred in Egypt. Egypt's law now makes abortion illegal unless the life of the mother is in danger. But a leading Muslim imam, in a statement, has called on the Egyptian government to legalize abortions for unmarried victims of rape. Sheik Nasr Farid Wasel, Egypt's Grand Mufti, holds no legal authority in Egypt, but he is widely respected by Muslims there. The government's deputy health minister, Adel Ahmed, however, said the government has no immediate plans to change its law. He disagreed with Wasel's ruling, saying: “If we do this, we will encourage rape rather than solve the problem.” He noted that in Egypt rape is punishable by death. HUNGARIAN – ABORTION Q&A: Dr. Foldenyi Janos of Budapest has published a Hungarian edition of Dr. & Mrs. Willke's book “Abortion Questions & Answers.” Its ISBN # 9637878-83-1. Its well-known predecessor “Handbook on Abortion,” plus “Abortion Questions & Answers” are now available in 21 different languages. Our thanks to Dr. Janos for a persistent effort over a number of years to bring this book to publication. It should prove to be a very valuable pro-life teaching tool in his nation. ABORTION FACILITIES CONTINUE DECLINE: In 1982 there were 2,908 facilities performing abortions in the U.S. These included hospitals, individual physicians' offices and free-standing abortion mills. In 1992 the number was 2,380. In 1996 it was down to 2,042. At this time, approximately 90% of all abortions are done in free-standing abortion mills. The decline has occurred almost entirely in facilities that did fewer than 400 abortions a year. It would appear that local public opinion has been substantially responsible for the closing of these smaller facilities who could not stand up against the opposition of their communities, as a significant percent of their income was derived from other medical practice, which is vulnerable to boycotting. Full-time abortion chambers are not vulnerable to this kind of pressure. Signed Helga, New York, Published Family Voice-January 1999 RUSSIAN COUPLES STERILE: Russia's Deputy Health Minister, Tatiana Stukolova, is quoted by Tass News Agency as saying that between 15% and 20% of Russian couples cannot have children. “In more than half the cases, this sterility is due to abortions carried out too early on the woman.” DENMARK – MEMORIAL: In Vedersoe, a village west of Copenhagen, a granite memorial has been unveiled. On it is inscribed: “To the more than 500,000 Danish citizens whose lives have been stolen by abortion.” The memorial stands at the gate of a planned park next to a Lutheran church whose minister avoided the ceremony. The local bishop, Niels Holm, called the park “an expression of bad taste”. Danish law has allowed abortion until the twelfth week since 1973. About 20% of all pregnancies end in abortion each year. Denmark has about 5 million population. EUTHANASIA CONFERENCE SET: The International Right to Life Federation in conjunction with Schreeuw om Leven will again co-sponsor an international euthanasia seminar. The dates have been set for 19-23 November, 1999. This will be the Fifth Annual such conference held in the Netherlands. This time the venue will be in The Hague. It will be preceded on November 22 and 23 by the 5th Asian Life Conference, entitled, “2 Billion Asian Girls to the Slaughter.” The title of the euthanasia conference will be, “Life on the Brink of the New Millennium.” For more information on this please contact our office in the Netherlands. EUTHANASIA IN HOLLAND: Many know that Holland has legalized euthanasia and that approximately every sixth person buried in Holland is killed, directly or indirectly, by a doctor. What many do not know, however, is that the law has been made by judges, and that the Dutch parliament has never officially legalized abortion. Now there is a bill proposed in The Hague that would, by statute, legalize euthanasia. It basically codifies the requirements which judges have previously set down that are to be observed when a patient is euthanized. They include:
It sounds like these would be tight and would sharply limit the number of cases that would qualify. In fact, judges have long since laid down all of these requirements and, in practice, doctors routinely ignore all of them. Since doctors have been ignoring this judge-made law without prosecution, there is no reason to assume that an official law passed by Parliament simply restating the above conditions would change what is happening in the Netherlands at all. Such a law would be an exercise in futility. GERMANY REJECTS BIO-ETHICS CONVENTION: The German Justice Minister, Edzard Schmidt-Jorzig, has demanded that the Convention on Human Rights & Biomedicine not be signed. The chief criticism is that research on the mentally incapacitated which is not for their benefit, is unethical. The judiciary “rejects research on embryos unreservedly”. The Central Ethical Committee of the German Medical Association has also declared a moratorium on the use of fetal brains for the treatment of Parkinsons Disease. Why is it that the Germans, of all West Europe, adamantly oppose recent trends on human research? It should be obvious. They have been there once before – and remember what happened under the Nazis. They will not be a part of its being repeated. BAN ON HUMAN CLONING: The United Nations Commission on Human Rights has adopted the first international guidelines on bioethics and the human genome. It calls for countries to ban human cloning. It emphasizes respect for the dignity and human rights of individuals “regardless of their genetic characteristics.” It was co-sponsored by 86 countries and approved November 19. It was then ratified by the UN general assembly by voice vote. It does not carry the force of law but does set standards for researchers and those who would use genetic information. While recognizing the right to freedom or research and freedom of thought it states, “practices which are contrary to human dignity such as reproductive cloning of human beings shall not be permitted.” CLINTON ESCAPES PUNISHMENT: The President has been an aggressive foe of almost all the principles that the pro-life movement stands for. The best commentary we have seen after his acquittal, was from the Christian Coalition. It stated, “Today's decision by the United States Senate to acquit President Clinton for the crimes of perjury and obstruction of justice, makes a mockery of our nation's long history of equal justice under law, which is the bedrock of our justice system. With their verdict today the Senate has set the President above all other Americans, and left him uncountable for his illegal actions. The implications of this decision will leave a permanent scar on our nations history and on the rule of law that will take many years to overcome. “The biggest losers in this whole sad story however, are the working women and vulnerable children of America. Allowing Bill Clinton to get away with what he's done, completely undercuts the legal and moral foundations of American society and deals a severe blow to women who are fighting sexual predators in the work place. Children now have the lesson that lying, cheating and breaking the law are permissible on the pathway to success. And every parent's teaching against these behaviors has been completely undermined and rendered utterly worthless.” WORLD POPULATION: We now have the 1998 revision of the world population estimates and projections – a report issued every two years by the United Nations. Steven Moser, president of the Population Research Institute, commented: “These census figures make it harder for the population controllers to exaggerate the number of people on the planet in years to come. The population of the world will never double again...We will only add two or three billion members of the human family before beginning what will be a wrenching descent.”...“The most alarming statistic of the 1998 revision”, says the Catholic Family & Human Rights Institute, a U.N. watchdog, “is the number of countries who have reached what is known as `below replacement fertility', a condition where the citizens of a country no longer replace themselves. In order to replace itself, a country must have at least 2.1 children per couple. Two years ago, 51 countries had fallen below that number. The number of countries now in low replacement fertility is 61. Experts fear these countries are in demographic free fall, with no end in sight.” Pro-lifers who wish to inform their fellow citizens of the truth about world de-population, as supposed to the mythical propaganda being employed by U.N. population imperialists, can now begin to cite figures from this official U.N. population report. These figures are authoritative and should be widely disseminated. USAID AGAIN: Dr. Mary Meaney has written about a recent trip to Kenya. While there, she found a sick Kenyan woman laying by the side of the road. Alarmed, she and her companions drove this woman to the nearest government hospital, which was 5 hours away by car. There was no doctor there. In the pharmacy there were “no gloves, no syringes, no vitamins, no basic medical supplies but there were 75,000 condoms from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). CONTACT US Phone: (513) 729-3600
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