NEWSVol. 10 No.1 - Autumn Edition 1994 Print Post Approved - 33L385/00042
Pro-Life Victoria: Speaking Up for Humanity in the Nineties |
Contents:
- Pro- Life Set for the Future
- School Contacts
- Editorial
- Baptists Plead with Clinton
- Canadian Walk
- Uniting Church Vs the Bible
- IVF Experimentation
- America's Shameful Legacy
- The Instant Answer is the Cruel
One
- "RU 486" Update
- World View
Just before Christmas, 50 foetal model sets
finished their voyage from the United Kingdom to the offices of Pro-Life
Victoria in Hawthorn. The model sets are an integral part of PLV’s educational
strategy, Project "How You 
Began" to reveal to Victorian children the
development of the child within the womb and foster the value of human life.
Most of the fifty sets have since been distributed to secondary schools in
Victoria in a pilot program that is aimed to provide feedback on the usefulness
and impact of the models. The sets are designed for use in science and personal
development classes. If the impact on children is anything like in the United
Kingdom results, PLV will have run an effective campaign for the future children
of this land.
The foetal model set concept was developed
over several years by a team of British scientists and doctors. Each of the five
models in the set show the child at a different point of development. Each model
is scientifically and medically accurate in its portrayal of the child. Each set
also comes with a set of course notes.
The sets are given on loan to the schools, with the loan renewed on an annual basis. Some of the schools to have already received a foetal set include
5 Wodonga schools; Glen Waverley Technical College; Xavier College, Kew; Clonard College, Geelong; St Leo’s, Box Hill and Our Lady of Mercy, Heidelberg.
One teacher who took a set of models commented that her students were fascinated by the models and learned a lot by being able to touch and hold the figures.
President of Pro-Life Victoria David Millie, said that Project "How You Began" was one of the biggest projects the movement had ever taken on and is one of PLV’s top priorities in our focus to build a pro-life future.
To successfully implement Pro "flow You Began", PLV is calling for members to undertake to contact their local school and see if they wish to be loaned a foetal model set. The only stipulation PLV makes on the loan is that the models are displayed prominently in a classroom or library when they are not in use, and the contact teacher fills in an occasional survey feedback form on how beneficial the models are. The loan is renewed on an annual basis. There is no cost to the school for the use of the models. If you are able to make contact with a school and deliver a foetal model set to a school, please contact the PLV office.
At the moment there are some remaining sets of models to go out. If requests outstrip supply, the remaining contacts will be given priority when the next shipment of models arrives.
Standing up for pro-life issues may not seem like the most popular activity to do, but Pro-Life Victoria is not alone in its work in this state. New groups are springing up to rise to the challenge of protecting life alongside the more established organisations. We welcome each group to the battle. Each group has a job to do. A unique aspect of the battle is theirs to be won.
"Christians for Life" is a recently formed group that has been peacefully witnessing outside the homes of Melbourne abortionists and abortuaries. "Alive" is a prayer and activity network being built among the churches on the Mornington Peninsula. "Living Life Ministries" works to equip churches for the work of service with the sanctity of life at the heart of the Gospel. Another group, "Abortion Alternatives, has started a peaceful sidewalk counselling service in front of abortuaries.
These groups are not run by fanatics but by sincere men and women who cannot rest any more in the face of the carnage of pre-born human life in Victoria.
To all pro-life groups, Pro-Life Victoria extends a brotherly hand. It is good not to be alone.
The pro-life agency of a leading Protestant denomination in the United States, the Southern Baptist Convention, has written to President Clinton asking him to reconsider his support for abortion on demand. Mr Clinton is himself a nominal Baptist. The Convention’s Christian Life Commission emphasised that Southern Baptists "remain unalterably committed to the protection of unborn human life ... The
euphemisms of ‘choice’ and ‘reproductive freedom’ cannot disguise or justify killing a baby ... Therefore we earnestly plead with you prayerfully to reconsider your stated positions on abortion on demand ... We appeal to you to be tolerant of all people, but not tolerant of wrong-doing. Accord dignity and worth to all, but do not dignify sin and vice, no matter how common."
What can one person do for the pro-life cause? The possibilities are endless if you take the example of Canadian grandmother Therese Weiler, whose pro-life commitment set herself the challenge of a 240 day walk for 6,849 kilometres across her homeland.
The venture - designed to raise the awareness of the precious nature of human life, especially the pre-born, the handicapped and the elderly - took up most of 1992.
Therese suffered for years from disabling
varicose veins and severe planter 
warts on her foot. Several surgeries had
failed to correct the problem. On a pilgrimage to St. Joseph’s Oratory in
Montreal, a piece of cloth which had touched the body of Brother Andrea had been
given to her. She did not put too much faith in the incident, but put the cloth
in her sandal and forgot about it. A short time later she felt a tingling in her
foot. It was the next morning that she missed the pain in her toes. The planter
wart also came away from the foot easily, roots and all.
A few weeks later, out walking, Therese was consciously missing her pain and was praising God. She told Him He could use her feet to do anything He wanted. God was to take her up on the offer.
The morning before Therese was to go and see her orthopedic surgeon to he fitted with orthotics, she powerfully sensed that God had a special plan for her and that she was not to be afraid. At the doctor’s she was asked what kind of walking she intended to do. Without any forethought, she said she would be walking across Canada. She wanted to take the words back, but she knew this was what God had intended for her.
So began her trek with her "Venture for Life" mobile home and gained much support along the road from pro-life supporters.
The concluding paragraph is a quote from Therese.
"I am making this walk, not because I know how to explain the sense of God’s calling or the logic of it, but BECAUSE I MUST, whether anyone understands or not. I AM WALKING THIS WALK BECAUSE I BELIEVE WITH MY WHOLE BEING THAT ALL HUMAN LIFE IS MADE IN THE IMAGE OF GOD, AND IS PRECIOUS. I am making this walk because I offered my feet to God, and He took me at His word. It is the task I have been given to do."
PLV Vice President, Peter Ben man and his wife, Claire, were honeymooning in New Brunswick, Canada, when they met up with Therese and heard this fantastic story. Peter says that it just a "chance meeting"
Adapted from Melinda Tankard Reist’s
article In the ACT RTL News
While the initial media furore has died down regarding the Uniting Church’s NSW Synod’s decision to support a woman’s right to decide whether she will abort her child, the Victorian Synod is quietly considering the subject as well. At the last Synod it was decided that the Social Development division would report at the 1993 Victorian Synod meeting on the subjects of abortion and euthanasia.
It is interesting to note that the document by which the NSW synod made its decision did not contain one scripture reference. It seems that every other opinion was sought, except the one source, the Bible, that gives the church meaning and direction.
In his book Abortion: The Personal Dilemma, Gardner summarises: The Old Testament reminds us that God is the giver of life (Zech 12:1), the One by whose power foetal development occurs (Ps 139:13 & Job 10:8-12), and to who every living soul belongs (Ezek 18:4). This being so, life is not to be taken on one’s own initiative, not even for the most inescapable of obligations, the blood feud (Gen 4:15 & Num 35:15-25). Man is not to cause the death of the innocent and guiltless (Ex 23:7), for the blood of the innocent cries to God from the ground (Gen 4:10).
In the New Testament, the Old Testament Commandments are condensed into one obligation given by Jesus: "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind. This is the greatest commandment. It comes first. The second is like it: Love your neighbour as yourself. Everything in the Law and the Prophets hands on these commandments." (Mat 22:37-40). The parable of the Good Samaritan challenges our limited understanding of who our neighbour is. Why should it not include the tiny, unseen neighbour in the womb?
Created in the image of God, we are unique in the creation and enjoy a special standing with God. Abortion is fundamentally an attack on God, because he is made in His image.
The Uniting Church has turned its back on the standards and protection that God has ordained for every living person and listened to society’s dictates. It is another hole in one of the last walls to protect the unborn: Christendom.
Francis Shaeffer, one of the greatest Christian thinkers of the 20th century summed the battle up this way:
‘The fate of the unborn is a question of the fate of the human race. We are a one human family - if the fights of one part of the family are denied, it is of concern to each of us. What is at stake is no less than the essence of what freedom and fights are all about."
ACTION COMMITMENT
The members of the executive of Pro-Life Victoria have each made a commitment to visit their local Uniting Church minister and share with him or her the need for the church to not adopt this policy on abortion. We urge all PLV members to do the same. Look up the scripture verses in the above article. If you wish to borrow the video The Silent Scream to show your local minister, the office can lend you a copy. One PLV Uniting church member has been so devastated over her church’s decision she organized meetings in her local congregation to rally support for the pre-born.
The Victorian Government is now working on new legislation to regulate practices arising from In Vitro Fertilisation. For this, it is to be commended.
Current legislation in Victoria has led only to confusion and has been based on fraudulent concepts and terminology pushed forward by scientists purely to ensure that some embryos are available for experimentation. The Government Advisory Committee has been split on crucial issues, but the Committee majority has sought considerable power for itself and had provided draft legislation which would allow experiments up until the fourteenth day of human development.
Pro-Life Victoria has recently resubmitted its views to the Minister for Health, Mrs Tehan, and to key government members. The submission is similar to Western Australian Parliament Legislation passed in 1991 which bans all harmful and destructive experimentation on human embryos or on human life in the process of fertilisation. Proposed research in Western Australia must now only be for therapeutic purposes where existing scientific knowledge indicates that no detrimental effect on the well being of the embryo is likely to occur. There is good reason to believe that the current Government will bring forward legislation reducing the abuse of embryos created by LVF. As Shadow Minister for Health, Mrs Tehan spoke out clearly insisting that the Parliament had not intended that there be any experiments beyond syngamy (approximately 22 hours after fertilisation).
Right now there is considerable pressure on the State Government from research scientists not to restrict their experiments.
Two years ago, Pro-Lifers responded admirably to the call to write letters to the Post Syngamy experimentation inquiry. Since then Pro-Life Victoria initiated a petition campaign and gained the assistance of various supportive pro-life and pro-family organisations. If the benefits of our limited success to date are to be maintained, pro-lifers must again write to the Minister for Health, Mrs Tehan, seeking a ban on embryo experimentation. If you require letter writing notes, please telephone the Pro-Life office on 818 6186 and leave your name and address. If not, Mrs Tehan’s address is:
555 Collins Street,
Melbourne, 3000.
By Wanda Franz,
Ph.D. - President
of the National Right to Life USA
Condensed & Reprinted from the National Right to
Life News (USA)
Twenty years ago, on January 22, 1973, the United States Supreme Court swept away all laws prohibiting abortion, imposed legalized abortion on the whole country, and thus unleashed the legal and profitable slaughter of millions of innocent babies in the womb.
Twenty years and 30 million abortion deaths ago, the Supreme Court robbed preborn children of all vestiges of legal personhood.
Twenty years and 30 million abortion deaths ago, the Supreme Court arrogantly ignored the dictum of the Declaration of Independence "that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights", and imposed its own dictum that taking a child’s life by abortion is a constitutional "liberty".
Twenty years and 30 million abortions ago, the Supreme Court made the sanctuary of the womb into the most dangerous place an innocent child can occupy.
Americans must ask Justice Blackman and all other jurists who claim to see the right to an abortion in the Constitution how they can justify this peculiar "right" that requires that another human being must be killed each and every time this "right" is exercised.
Americans must ask those who defend abortion "rights" bow they can categorically oppose truly informed consent and waiting periods, spousal consent and notification, parental consent and notification, conscience clauses for individuals and institutions.
Is
it just to deny a woman full information about the biological facts of
the child’s development in the womb, about the dangers of abortion - before
she lets an abortion violate her body? Why should she not have the same right to
full disclosure she has with all other surgical procedures? How much longer must
we hear of women being told before an abortion that the child in the womb is
"just tissue, like a tumor"?
Is it just to deny a woman the opportunity to rethink beforehand the irreversible act of aborting her child? The law requires such waiting periods for loan agreements and insurance policies.
Is it just to deny a father a say about the abortion of the child he helped to create? If fathers have no rights, how can we hold them to any obligations?
Is it just to demand that taxpayers fund the private decision of a woman to have an abortion?
The proponents of abortion have spared no effort to persuade the public that the legalization of abortion would provide great benefits. With abortion readily available, there would be far fewer "unwanted" children, child abuse would decrease, women and girls would be able to make "responsible choices" and have "options", there would be fewer teenage parents, and abortions would be "safe".
Sadly, one thing is true, there are fewer children because almost a third of each generation is aborted. Yet child abuse has reached epidemic proportions ever since legal abortion enabled parents to have children only "when they were ready to have a child".
Teenage pregnancy and birth rates have risen sharply. Teenage pregnancy rates have decreased in Minnesota and Utah where the law requires real parental notification and therefore fosters parental involvement.
Abortion supposedly gives women "control over their bodies" and over their lives. In fact, abortion is most "liberating’ to irresponsible and predatory men; abortion frees them of any responsibility for the child they helped to create. Women, however, find themselves abandoned in ever greater numbers.
And, as pro-lifers warned, the "choice" of privatized killing by abortion has been broadened into the "choice" of privatized killing by infanticide and euthanasia - all in the name of providing medical care.
This then is the appalling legacy of 20 years of legal abortion in America.
It is spine chilling to realize that the enthusiasm for abortion goes well beyond the fraudulent claim that abortion is a necessary "option" in cases of real or imagined hardship. Rebecca Walker, contributing editor to Ms. magazine, writes in the November 1992 issue of Harper’s Magazine: "[Y]our abortion can be a rebellious and empowering act. It is an act through which you can assert yourself; one which can enable you to feel more connected to women around the world. Indeed, it is a surgical operation with a mission .
An unwanted pregnancy need not mean an unwanted child. My experience shows there’s another opinion.
I was another "worst-case scenario" when I was raped as a virgin teenager from Philadelphia’s inner city. Raped by a salesman passing through my place of employment, the experience of sexual assault was traumatising enough, but to find myself pregnant was inconceivable. Born to alcoholic parents, I was told I was an unwanted child, and now I was pregnant with an unwanted child. It wasn’t fair.
In 1962 there was no abortion accessible to me 30 years ago. Today I am grateful for this. I may have welcomed the relief of a safe abortion (not understanding its ramifications). I wound up going full term with the pregnancy, and gave birth to a baby girl in a Los Angeles County hospital. She became what I referred to as "the missing piece" of my life, as I never held her or saw her; she was adopted at birth. How could I have known she’d be the only child I would give birth to?
You can’t imagine the impact when, a few years ago, I picked up the phone and a voice announced, "Hello, you’ve never met me, but I am your daughter".
Our remarkable reunion has been so fulfilling. My daughter’s husband shook my hand and tearfully remarked, ‘Thanks for not aborting Julie; I don’t know what my life would be like without her and our children."
Supplying an instant abortion for a girl with an unwanted pregnancy (whether married, unmarried, raped or not) may sound compassionate - even noble - to the providers. But for a woman who is depressed, sniffing cocaine may be a welcome relief; for a person over-whelmed with problems, drinking may offer instant comfort. But these remedies only lead to further problems, in much the same way an abortion also sets a woman up for future regrets. Invariably, this "abortion answer" is offered without full disclosure of its potential impact and the alternatives available.
Abortion is too permanent an answer for a temporary problem. Abortion is not an answer, it is an additional problem to be reckoned with later.
For our convenience, do woman honestly have the right to eliminate the life of another who cannot speak for itself? The rights of unborn woman (or men) count also. Fetologists will confirm that there is no magic moment when, in the womb, this fetus will suddenly transform into a human being. If it is not a human being from conception, is it an alien being? If it is not alive, why is it growing?
Most women I know who discovered themselves to be pregnant cried out loud. It was unexpected, not at the right time, there was not enough money, it would interfere with career plans. But in due time they got over their crisis and this groundswell of questions, and settled in on the process of giving life.
How cruel if the government had tempted our mothers with an instant answer - no more confusing questions. Simply have an abortion, onus! The question of the conception of life is not in our hands, so therefore there are no illegitimate children. Even though a couple may decide when to make love, apparently God decides when to make life.
My daughter, Julie born of sexual assault, did not inherit any "evil genes". As she puts it, "It doesn’t matter how I began, but what I’ll become". I’m so grateful that because an easy abortion was not offered to me, I did not give this innocent child the death penalty for the crime of her father.
Lee Ezell is a businesswoman in Newport Beach. Extract from the Los Angeles Times.
SWEDEN: The government of Sweden announced in September that it had authorised the use of the abortion pill "RU 486" for early abortions.
UNITED KINGDOM: Two groups of private abortion "clinics" in the United Kingdom have been approved by the Government to do early abortions using RU 486. The drug is already licensed for use in public hospitals.
U.S.A.: No-abortion and medical organisations in the U.S. have admitted using a young expectant mother to smuggle samples of RU 486 into the country on July 1, 1992. The woman broke down in tears at New York’s Kennedy Airport after she was found with the pills by customs officials.
It later emerged that the officials had been tipped off by abortion supporters who had been scheming to set up a test case to allow RU 486 onto the U.S. market for abortions.
Lawyers from a pro-abortion group, the Centre for Reproductive Law and Policy, then joined the woman in filing a suit against the U.S. government agency that had banned importation of RU 486 for personal use, alleging that it violated the woman’s privacy and hindered her doctors in their work. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the ban July 17.
CANADA: The Society of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists of Canada in June 12 formally asked the Canadian government to approve RU 486 for abortions. On July 20, the Health Minister of the Canadian province of Ontario called on the Federal Health Minister to encourage the introduction of RU 486 into Canada and to speed up the testing process.
AUSTRALIA: Roussell Australia, the Australian arm of the RU 486 manufacturer says it has no plans to introduce RU 486 after an enormous community backlash against the drug, promoted through a postcard campaign, nevertheless, feminist and pro-abortion groups are still lobbying the Federal government.
INTERNATIONAL PRO-LIFE SOLIDARITY: PROLIFERS are picketing French Embassies around the world on June 21, the day of the annual general meeting of Roussell-Uclaf shareholders. Join together at the French Consulate, 492 St Kilda Road, Melbourne at 11.00 am. Remember the French government was a partner with Roussell in developing the drug.
CANADA: Quote "As a physician, it is unusual to meet a woman requesting abortion who feels she has any real choice. Women are often told to have an abortion or lose their jobs, their relationships, or face single parent poverty. Some Choice! Women are being told that they can have an equal place in our society provided they do not try and change society, provided they adopt masculine values and keep their reproductive "liabilities".
‘The pro-choice slogan is really just a cruel joke that obscures the killing behind the euphemism "the fight to choose". Our society has declared that it is easier and cheaper to restructure pregnant women than to restructure society."
Dr J.L. Reynolds.
FRANCE: Quote Pro - life movements . . . "can no longer count on laws to respect human life - we have to promote it ourselves immediately and with every possible means. The evils of the anti-life mentality cannot be eliminated by getting out into the streets and waving flags, even though such manifestations may in some cases be justified. The systematic imposition of death (on) the unborn child, the fruit of human love, can only be vanquished by the positive promotion of love and life."
President of French
Association Provie (Pro-Life).
JAPAN: The Japanese Health Ministry was reported on November 19 to have established a commission to examine ethical and practical aspects of legalizing euthanasia. Among questions for examination is whether the withdrawal of patient care and the administration of lethal substances could be recognised as "fights" of the terminally ill.
LATIN AMERICA: A large number of Catholic Bishops from Latin America who met in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, last October, sent a letter to the Secretary General of the United Nations stating that "systemic campaigns against births organised by international institutions and governments, and which go against the cultural and religious identity of our nations, are unacceptable." They also spoke of the need to "strengthen the culture of life" and asked for policies in defence of the family, which they identified as "the true sanctuary of life".
NIGERIA: The Nigerian Government s borrowed US$78.5 million to finance a seven year population control project that is targeted primarily at the country’s rural population. The project is reported to include the importation of drugs for sterilization and sexual suppression, and a strong promotion of abortifacient implants and intra-uterine devices.
PAKISTAN: A feminist group in Pakistan, the Women’s Action Forum , has launched a campaign to have abortion legalised to eliminate children conceived after rape. As Pakistan’s laws on rape may shortly be reformed to remove their reported bias against women, the demands of the feminist group may be used to justify the inclusion of legalised abortion among the reforms.
PHILIPPINES: The new population policy of the Philippines’ government will include the promotion of abortifacients such as the intra-uterine device, according to a report attributed to an Asian religious news agency. The programme has been criticised by Filipino Bishop Jesus Varela, chairman of the Family Life Commission saying: "Our problem here in the Philippines, as it is in the rest of the Third World, is that we are up against geo-political and world economic interests. In the United States, Germany, England and France there are formidable pressure groups pushing (population control) programmes in the Third World because of their heavy investment ... in companies manufacturing (birth control) drugs and devices".
SOUTH KOREA: Over one million, one hundred thousand people have signed a pro-life petition asking the South Korean government to withdraw clauses in a new Penal Code that would confirm the legality of abortion.
Also in Korea, pro-life leaders report progress in their efforts to promote education in sexual abstinence among teenagers.
USA: The U.S. Supreme Court on December 7 rejected a challenge to a Mississippi state law that regulates abortion by ensuring that expectant mothers wait for 24 hours between asking for an abortion and having one, and by requiring abortionists to inform abortion-minded women of the duration of pregnancy, the medical risks of both abortion and bringing pregnancy to term, the possibility of medical assistance benefits, the liability of the father for child-support and the option of having information about foetal development and about organisations providing alternatives to abortion.
© The Official Newsletter of Pro-Life Victoria, Edited by Grant Clarke |