Life Issues Institute, Inc.

International Right to Life Federation, Inc.
Vol. 10 No. 4
(September/October1999)

The International Right to Life Federation will be con-sponsoring with Schreeuw om Leven, a conference in the Netherlands entitled, “Life on the Brink of the New Millennium.” For detailed information phone Schreeuw on Leven.

The National Association of Pro-life and Pro-family organization in Brazil will be sponsoring a major conference in the capital city of Brasilia on 12 - 14 November, 1999. Cardinal Lopas Trujillo, Dr. J.C. Willke and other will be speaking at the conference.

South African Conference

By the time you receive this newsletter a major conference will be under way in Durban South Africa. It is scheduled for 8 - 10 October. It has been sponsored by a broad coalition of almost every pro-life group in South Africa. One of the principal organizers is a member of the International Right to Life Federation, Dr. Albu van Eeden. Among the major speakers will be Dr. J.C. Willke, President of IRTF.

The number of Irish women having abortions in England rose last year. This, according to statistics from the United Kingdom office of National Statistics. The overall total of Irish abortions was 5,892, up 10% from last year and 30% from 1995. The Irish Times reports that the actual number is even higher as many Irish women give British addresses when seeking an abortion.

UN demographers report that the world's six billionth person will be born on October 12^th. Over half of the countries in the world now have birth rates below replacement level, while the other half is rapidly joining them. (Doomsayers keep reminding us when the world population has doubled the last time.) Unless a totally unforeseeable, absolutely dramatic change takes place, it is quite evident that the world's population will never double again. In fact, UN and other statistics show us that in another 50 years, the present growth will have slowed, stopped and will reverse, so that after 2050, the world's aging population will be declining.

Sadly SHAS, (the ultra orthodox religious Jewish party in government) has agreed to this. It's interesting to note that the original producer of RU 486 is the Germany firm Hoechst, which is the direct descendant of I.G. Farben, which made poison responsible for gassing Jews and others in World War II.

In the New York Times, August 1999, Bill Gates is quoted as saying, “I've excelerated my philanthropic plans. Melinda and I are convinced that that there are certain kinds of gifts that are better made sooner than later.” His net worth is estimated to be over $100 BILLION. That makes him by far the world's richest man. He has also said that he intends to leave all but $20 million of his wealth to charities. This could mean that he will give away $100 BILLION. Tragically two of his favorite charities are population control programs and Planned Parenthood-type abortion programs.

The British Association has issued guidelines, which have been unanimously challenged by pro-life groups there. These guidelines advise doctors that they could stop “artificial feeding” of patients in whom there was no prospect of recovery. And that it may be right to withdraw it to avoid prolonged suffering. In response, Dr. Peggy Norris said this was a “death ethic,” what it did was to equate feeding by artificial means (i.e. tube feeding) and equate it with treatment by calling it “artificial feeding.” There's a big difference. Your editor reminds readers that many types of supportive treatment can be withdrawn and the patient will sometimes die, but if you withdraw food and water the patient will always die, and painful and within a specific period of time.

On 10 August, the Dutch government published plans to legalize euthanasia. These are expected to gain parliamentary approval next year. If such a law is passed, it would merely formalize practices that have been routine in this country for over a decade. These guidelines would allow children, as young as 12 years old, to demand and receive euthanasia. Much prominence has been given to proposed “strict” guidelines. These would require:

The patient make a voluntary, informed request.
The patient be suffering irremediable and unbearable pain.
All other medical options be exhausted.
A second opinion by a physician be sought.
The euthanasia be “carefully carried out.”
Case must be reported to the coroner.

It has been painfully obvious for many years that judge-made law has been requiring all of these guidelines. However, with few exceptions, these guidelines have been routinely ignored by doctors. There is no reason to believe that these guidelines will be any more respected than the previous ones. So, nothing will change. The new formal law will be a total farce.

At a meeting in St. Louis of the International Botanic Congress, the charge was made that the earth is now “hurdling towards an extinction crisis.” The National Anxiety Center, a watchdog organization, reporting on environmental misinformation, condemned this, calling it “rubbish.” “Even the United Nations reports that the earth produces enough grain to provide every person worldwide with 3,500 calories a day, everyday. When you take into consideration all foods, including meat, fish, fruits and root crops, the world produces at least 4.3 lbs. of food per person, per day. Malnutrition, rather, is blamed on despotic governments who don't care about their own people.” This organization further states, “When you consider the attack the Greens are mounting against genetically engineered food crops, i.e., more abundant food crops that do not require more farmland because they can resist heat or insect attack, what does that say? It says the Greens will find any excuse they can to reduce the world's population, even if it means fighting one of science's greatest benefits to mankind in modern times. That kind of thinking leads to programs designed to reduce the human population, which of course is the Green agenda.”

The Ulster Pregnancy Advisory Association in Belfast has closed after more than twenty years. It was thought that continuous picketing by pro-lifers was a major factor in its closure.

The Toronto Sun recently so titled the Canadian province of Quebec. In the 1950s the average woman in Quebec gave birth to 3.9 children, today it is 1.5. Other Canadian provinces continue to gain a certain number of people through immigration. This is less of a factor in Quebec, perhaps because of its French language. A major factor has included the high number of abortions, 35 for every 100 live births, as well as the small number of young people who are marrying. Very telling is the fact that the most common sir name among newborns in Montreal in 1996 was Nguyen (Vietnamese), followed by Patel (East Indian), and after these, French names. Quebec faces an actual decline in population in the near future.

Because it can't afford it, Russia has postponed a national census indefinitely. It was expected to confirm demographers worst fears; Russians are dying off so fast, and giving birth so infrequently, that it's population may shrink by nearly half in the next 50 years. In the last 10 years their death rate has climbed from 11 to 15 deaths per thousand per year. Life expectancy for men has plunged from 65 years in 1987 to 58 in 1995. For every 15 people who die only 9 are born. Estimates are that Russia is now burying 250,000 more people a year than are being born. And with the population steadily aging, this number will continue to rise.

The chief government minister of Delhi, in July, proposed a bill that any family with more than 2 children should be, “denied rations, government employment, job promotions and other benefits.” Parents of such families would be ineligible for housing loans and could not be candidates in public elections. A dozen women's groups have demanded the rejection of this controversial bill, which they say, amounts to punishing the poor for their poverty. They note that, “where there has been an increase in social sector programs, with direct benefit to the poor, the family size has dropped accordingly.” They point out that poor families have many children because they're not sure how many will survive to care for them in their old age.

Kenya Health Secretary Julius Meme, has recommended that abortion be legalized and that “outdated” laws be repealed. In reaction that country's vice-president, George Saitoti responded that, “abortion should never be legalized and is acceptable only when the mother's life is in danger.” Father Michael Ruwa of the Kenya Episcopal Conference said that abortion is against the sanctity and dignity of human life and argued that countries with legal abortion have seen an increase in sexual activity among young people. He also reacted to a UN suggestion calling for sex education in schools saying, “If this is introduced in schools, the rate of immorality and pregnancy among our children will shoot up.”

In an attempt to gain support for “voluntary” euthanasia, the euthanasia society in Australia aired a 90-second commercial. On it, terminal cancer patient, June Burns, made an emotional appeal that she be allowed to kill herself legally. Mrs. Kath Harrigan, spokeswoman for the Federation of Right to Life Organizations, called the ad “distasteful and a disgrace”, while the president of RTL of New South Wales, Mr. Greg Smith, questioned the lady's psychiatric state and asked whether or not she was receiving adequate palliative care.

The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) urged Pakistan in late May to anticipate an aging population in the future. This is called a demographic transition. It is being told to prepare for a future when there will be more older people needing care and fewer younger people contributing to the economic growth and tax revenues that will be needed to care for the aging people. Should UNFPA be surprised? This is exactly what they have been pushing toward for the last several decades. But don't hold your breath that they will cut back on population control family planning. They'll think of reasons to keep cutting the population down.

The Alan Guttmacher Institute, a branch of Planned Parenthood, is reporting that between 1992 and 1996 the total number of abortions in the U.S. has decreased from about 1.5 to about 1.4 million. This I the lowest rate in the last 20 years. The federal government' Center for Disease Control (CDC), which consistently reports fewer (because many states do not report accurately, and several not at all), has also reflected a similar drop. Another way of measuring by CDC is the rate of 20 per 1,000. In contrast, Sweden's was 18, Canada's was 16, the UK was 15, Russia's 68, and Romania's 87. Netherlands reported 6, but since it does not report abortions in the early weeks as abortions, that figure is not comparable.

Studying suicides associated with pregnancy over an 8 year period in Finland, the following was shown. There were 5.9 suicides after a birth per 100,000 women. The rate after miscarriage was 18. The rate after induced abortion was 35. The age group with the highest rate were teenagers. Women who committed suicide tended to come from lower social classes and were unmarried.

New legislation forbids the cloning of human beings, genetic manipulation and implantation of embryos in women beyond natural childbearing age. It will allow artificial fertilization for “stable” couples in which the man and the woman have been certified as sterile. The law would allow the production of up to 3 embryos, which must be immediately implanted in the mother's womb. It would forbid preservation of frozen embryos or the use of embryos for scientific experiments.

A high court has condemned to death an abortionist who first attempted to kill a child in the womb. That failed, the child was delivered and the abortionist killed the newborn child. She will be hanged.

Killing babies during delivery (partial-birth abortion) has been a controversy, not just in the U.S. House and Senate, but in the states. To date, more than half of the state legislative bodies - 29 of them - have passed legislation to ban such killing of babies during delivery. At this writing, only 10 are currently in effect. The balance are tied up in court challenges. This year 10 new states enacted such legislation. They include Florida, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Oklahoma, Virginia, Wyoming, Missouri and Wisconsin. The states where such proposed bans failed to pass included Minnesota, New York, and Hawaii. A ban on these abortions has been placed on the November ballots in Colorado and Maine.

Consistently, over the last few years, at every United Nations conference, we have seen the following social goals as clear aims by wealthy nations to be imposed on less developed nations. The agenda would include:

Establishing elective abortion as a human right.
Giving complete sexual license to people of all ages.
Redefining the family to include same sex couples.
Denigration of religious beliefs, motherhood, fatherhood, marriage and the traditional family.
Discouraging and/or preventing women from being full-time wives or mothers.
Establishing gender quotas.
Imposing permissive sex education on children of all ages.
So-called “human rights of individuals” (read abortion, etc.) to supercede any national sovereignty.
Instituting global taxation to fund the above agenda.

All of the above has been pushed relentlessly by the Clinton appointees to the U.N. through USAID, International Planned Parenthood, etc. They have been joined enthusiastically by Canada and the Western European nations. This agenda has been resisted by Muslim nations, by under and lesser-developed nations and by the Holy See.

And now it's the Packard Foundation. It is giving money to major international population control and abortion organizations. Recently it gave $300,000 to lobby for legalized abortion in Brazil. It gave $150,000 to a Mexican group to “strengthen the voice of pro-choice Catholics.” It gave $200,000 for the U.S. National Abortion Federation and $500,000 to the U.S. Sex Information and Education Council, a strongly pro-abortion organization. It has also given over $1.9 million to international family planning and radical environmental groups for various population control projects.

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