NEWSVol. 10 No.2 - Winter Edition 1993 Print Post Approved - 33L385/00042
Pro-Life Victoria: Speaking Up for Humanity in the Nineties |
Contents:
- Medical Report
Destroys Myth of Safe Abortion
- Chastity on the Cards
- Rental Assistance Sponsors
- Editorial Direction
- U.S. Author to Speak
- Horton's Dilemma was Ahead
of His Times
- What do Unborn Babies Know?
- The Contradiction of Pro-Choice
- Inside a Secret World
- 'Baby's' First Pictures
on Ultrasound Video
- The Secret War on the Unborn
- World View
Two separate international medical reports released in the last few months have highlighted the hazards of abortion. One study was conducted in New Zealand and the other in the United Kingdom. Both show significant rates of medical complications among women who have had an abortion.
The British study, conducted by Dr Michael Jarmulowicz, involved an extensive review of medical literature about post-abortion suffering.
Dr Jarmulowicz report is based on a long term, large scale study on the effects of abortion which is being carried out by over 2,000 general practitioners and gynaecologists. The interim results of this study show that in the first 21 days following the abortion, 10% of women returned to their doctor suffering from a complication attributed to the abortion. 2.1% of the complications were described as "major complications".
Christchurch doctor - Peter Sykes - conducted his own study of complication rates using data from local medical institutions.
Both studies reported a significant rate of perforation or rupture of the uterus - a potentially life threatening complication. A common figure quoted for first trimester abortions is 0.1 - 0.3%; although a study published in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology suggested an overall perforation rate of 19.8 per 1,000 abortions. One New Zealand woman who participated in Dr Sykes study suffered a major haemorrhage due to a perforated uterus and underwent a hysterectomy to save her life. In the course of his research, Dr Jarmulowicz looked at a study from a day care abortion clinic in Liverpool which revealed that 20% of patients developed some type of post abortion infection, such as Pelvic Inflammatory Disease. The problems resulting from this disease are serious. 22% of women who have had the disease suffer subsequent spontaneous miscarriages, while 10% are subsequently infertile. Further, there is a sevenfold increase in the risk of ectopic pregnancy following an incidence of the disease, and 14% of women are plagued with prolonged chronic pelvic pain.
Dr Jarmulowicz’s study also comments on the psychological effects of abortion. It cites a 1992 article in the British Journal of Psychology which found that 10% of women will suffer marked, severe psychological or psychiatric disturbances in the post-abortion period. Also reported is a study published in the Southern Medical Journal which quotes a possible figure of 41%, depending on the type and incidence of symptoms displayed.
Jarmulowicz concluded his report by saying that "abortion has nothing to do with the true values and ideals of medicine, the first principle of which is Primum no necere - first do no harm". The concept of "safe, legal early abortion" - which pro-abortionists claim to be a "woman’s right" - is in fact a myth.
Condensed from QRTL Newsletter
New York - Thousands of teenagers are signing "covenant cards", handed out by clergy, promising to remain sexually pure until marriage.
Enthusiasm for the cards emerged at the annual Southern Baptist Convention in Houston, Texas.
The campaign was started in April by youth ministry consultant Richard Ross, who hopes to collect 100,000 pledges by next year’s convention.
The idea was to help teenagers realise they were not alone if they felt they should resist early sex.
The cards read: "Believing that true love waits, I make a commitment to God, myself, my family, those I date, my future mate and my future children to be sexually pure until I enter a covenant marriage."
The Herald-Sun (24/6/93) reported that the "covenant card" has also reached Melbourne. This program can only help improve the chances of babies being born in loving, stable environments.
We are well established in our rental premises, but find the rental a burden. The rent for the PLV office is the single biggest bite out of our annual budget. If the budget was relieved of such a burden, more money could be poured into other projects such as the foetal model kits, advertising and educational material to name only a few needy avenues.
Pro-Life Victoria is looking for 12 individuals who will commit themselves and their parish or church to raising a month’s rent each year. The rent is approximately $500 a month. Can you take up the initiative in your local area?
You may wish to take up an annual appeal with your parish. If so, PLV can provide specially marked envelopes for the appeal. Otherwise, you may come up with another idea to raise the funds.
If you are willing to be involved in this project, I ask that you fill the coupon out below and send it back to the Pro-Life office. We only ask when there is a need. I can assure you that there is a need.
David Millie
President
Thank you to everyone who took the time to fill out the membership information forms for 1993 which were sent out in the last newsletter.
However, it was with regret that I read many of the returned forms. Many people had not availed themselves of the opportunity to extend the pro-life message by giving the executive names and addresses of three friends or associates to invite to join the movement.
Unless we reach more people and consistently attack the cultural ethos that says that life is a product that has no special significance, we will lose the struggle. That sadly only means one thing. More babies will die. More elderly people will fall victim to euthanasia.
It is as simple as that. Unless we make the effort, it won’t happen. The world isn’t listening for the cries of the unborn. It can only bear our voices. If anyone wants to send in names and addresses of people we could invite to join PLV, we would be most grateful.
American author and President of Lutherans For Life (LFL) USA, Dr Jean Garton, will be speaking at a Lutheran’s for Life Seminar to be held at Luther College, Plymouth Road, Croydon, 7.30 p.m. on the 14th July.
Dr Garton speaks on a smorgasbord of pro-life issues in the United States today. She also wrote the book "Who Broke The Baby?", an essential work in the pro-life movement. Dr Garton will be speaking on the nation’s consciousness of pro-life issues.
For more details about the conference, please ring Mrs J. Kowald on 053 871 262.
The late, great Dr Seuss has be en celebrated for his crystal-clear communication of values through the medium of children’s literature. Although Theodore Seuss Geisel always said that he wrote only to entertain children, many observers have found significance in his books. The Butter Battle Book (1984) was obviously about nuclear confrontation; The Lorax (1971) dealt with the environment, and so forth.
One Dr Seuss book was singularly prescient. Published in 1954, Horton Hears a Who came out long before abortion was even a mild controversy. And yet, decades later, Horton Hears a Who remains the simplest and most elegant way to explain to anyone, young or old, the intrinsic value of every human life.
The jolly elephant Horton has very large ears, and hence can hear very well. He thus discovers a very small person living on a dust speck, and sets out to protect him:
I’ll just have to save him, because, after all, a person’s a person, no matter how small
Soon he discovers an entire village, Whoville, inhabited by the Whos, and converses with their mayor. Other jungle creatures scoff at Horton simply because they can’t see or hear the little persons. Presently, the speck (by now attached to a clover) is carried off by an eagle to be discarded.
While Horton chased after, with groans, over stones that tattered his toenails and battered his bones, and cried, "Please don’t harm all my little folks, who have as much right to live as us bigger folks do?’
Some of the analogies with the real world are uncanny: Horton’s big ears are the equivalent of our modern scientific equipment, such as magnetic resonance imaging and sonograms, with which scientists have discered much more accurate information about what’s going on in the womb.
The ridicule and scorn heaped upon Horton - "Why, that speck is as small as the head of a pin! A person on that? Why, there never has been!" - is entirely similar to the ridicule heaped upon the pro-life position that the baby is a real person.
Mr Geisel could not possibly have forseen the abortion-clinic protest of recent years, and yet Horton’s adventure is a perfect road map for Operation Rescue. Having recovered the clover and trying to protect the little persons, Horton is captured by a gang of jungle monkeys and harshly sentenced by a sour kangaroo.
"You’re going to be roped, and you’re going to be caged. And as for your dust speck Ha! - that we shall boil in a hot steaming kettle of beezle-nut oil."
After which:
They beat him. They mauled him. They started to haul him into his cage. But he managed to call to the mayor, "Don’t give up! I believe in you all!
"A person’s a person no matter how small!
"And you very small persons will not have to die if you make yourselves heard, so come on, now, and try?’
The story of Horton Hears a Who is being played out in the city streets today. The nice thing about children’s books is that they have happy endings. Unfortunately, we don’t know how the struggle over abortion is going to turn out. But it’s nice to be on the same side as Horton.
Some small fraction of people leave us a legacy that continues over indefinite time. Mr Geisel is one of those. Somewhere, there are children walking around today because their mothers, facing a decision about abortion, remembered what they had learned as children and accepted the words of Horton, that:
A person’s a person, no matter how small.
(1) BABIES can taste and swallow amniotic fluid. If sugar is added, the swallowing rate increases.
(2) BABIES can hear sounds and vibrations. A sleeping babe will wake if a tuning fork is put on mum’s tummy.
(3) AT about four months, babies react to being touched and turn their heads in response to a touch on their lips or cheek.
(4) BABIES have sleep/wake patterns but they don’t necessarily correspond with mum’s.
(5) THEY love music and newborns respond to tunes played during pregnancy - if mum sat down quietly to listen, baby will settle, if mum liked to bop along baby will become active.
(6) SMOKING is bad for baby. Nicotine is just one of many chemicals in cigarettes that may cross the placenta into baby’s bloodstream and cause slow development and low birth weight. When mum smokes, smokes, baby’s heart beats more rapidly. Alcohol, if consumed in large quantities, may also affect growth and brain development.
(7) ALL that amniotic fluid that baby swallows has to go somewhere so, from about 12 weeks, babies start to urinate.
(8) BABIES don’t like pain. If your baby needs an injection while still in the womb, he or she will wriggle and squirm. lf fluid is drawn from the amniotic sac, baby may reach out to touch a needle and then pull his/her hand away.
(9) BABIES become very active if exposed to strong sunlight and if mum sits outside in the sun in her bikini, baby will think it’s party time.
(10) BABIES hear muffled sounds and learn to recognise the voices of mum, dad and others they hear often. Chatting with your baby may also help with emotional development.
Compiled by Maree Curtis Herald-Sun, with help from Prof. Shaun Brenneke, director of perinatal medicine, Royal Women’s Hospital
By Michael R. Heaphy, M.D. - a practicing
physician in Ohio
Extract from National Review - November
1992
For the last few years, it has been commonplace to hear conventionally enlightened people soberly and confidently announce that they are not pro-abortion but, rather, pro-choice. Because of the generality that is implicit in the unqualified word "choice", it is logical to examine the pro-choice argument from a broad perspective.
To make a pro-choice argument is to assert a liberty to perform an action, X, without bothering to explain why X should be legal, without acknowledging the nature of X, and, sometimes, without permitting the name for X to cross one’s lips. Illogically, "choice" is both the premise and the conclusion. The pro-choice argument for abortion is that abortion should be legal because women have the right to choose. The problem with this argument is that an unqualified right purely and simply to choose could be used to advocate legal status for drunk driving, cannibalism, insider trading, or anything else. Unless one believes that all conceivable actions should be legal, it is not reasonable to base advocacy of legality for a particular action on unqualified choice.
To understand what abortion is all about, it is useful to re-direct our attention from the abstract plane down to a more practical level. For example, in my own state of Ohio, there is the practice of W. Martin Haskell, M.D.
Depending on the size of the unborn child, Dr Haskell employs various techniques. If the fetus isn’t too far along, Haskell can probably use the suction curettage method in which a sharp curette is used to reduce the fetus into chunks small enough to be sucked out of the uterus.
Later in pregnancy the fetus is too large for this method. Such cases provide Dr Haskell with many of his referrals. He is an expert at killing human fetuses at five and six months’ gestation. He uses laminaria to dilate the cervix in a three-day procedure, then simply goes in, makes a direct instrument attack on the fetus, kills it, and takes it out.
Of course, the head is usually crushed in this D & E (dilation and evacuation) procedure. An unripened cervix just doesn’t expand enough to pass a five or six month head. If the unborn baby is big enough, then the arms and legs may have to go too. The fetus is typically dismembered and removed piece by piece in a D & E abortion. The parts are often inspected to make sure an arm or a leg hasn’t been left in the mother.
Presumably the "conscientious practitioners" of abortion (as the AMA now calls them) would be loath to admit to killing unborn children. They would rather say that they terminate pregnancies, an odd assistance for a process that invariably terminates itself
As long as the discussion is couched in such genteel terms, there isn’t much room for primitive, natural words like "arm" and "leg". They are gaucheries. On the other hand, if we could simply introduce a few Choice words into the vocabulary, then our mass media would no longer need to shy away from the topic of abortion techniques. The unborn child won’t be called a child but just a "fetus" (latin for "offspring"), and the arm is only a "potential arm" or, say, a "brachium".
Dr Haskell operates abortion facilities in Cincinnatti and suburban Dayton. When Yvonne Brower, a University of Cincinnatti student, called to enquire if she could observe abortions to gather information for a term paper, the clinic manager was magnanimous. On September 21, 1989, Miss Brower observed Dr Haskell killing fetuses. The events of that morning prompted Miss Brower to file a complaint with the police.
The following excerpt from the police report is of interest:
She stated that by 11 o’clock she had already observed two "D & E" three-day procedures on two patients. She stated on the third patient, however, the abortion was different... The patient’s water was already broken and she spontaneously gave birth prematurely before the proper D & E procedure could be done. She stated that the baby was delivered feet first very quickly through the birth canal. The head was on its way out when Dr Haskell reached over and got his scissors and snipped the right side of the baby’s common carotid artery.
Even then, Miss Brower stated, the newborn infant was not exactly dead. The police report again:
The complainant stated that the baby was still moving when she looked at it once again ... it was breathing shallow breaths, as was evidenced by the chest moving up and down. She stated that she could also observe the baby’s hand having slow, controlled, muscular movements.
It was reported that Haskell said Miss Brower "quite possibly" misinterpreted what happened in the abortion. Miss Brower, however, said she saw Dr Haskell perform 15 abortions the day before and two others that morning. "So ifs not like I hadn’t seen any before." she said.
Dr Haskell was questioned by the police. He maintains that when he does abortions he always causes the death of the fetus to occur just before delivery rather than after.
Of course, if killing the unborn, at the moment when Haskell openly admits to the act, is not merely not illegal but rather a "fundamental right", it would be remarkable for virtually the same act to constitute legal homicide a few seconds later. Legal homicide or not, however, it would seem clear that a direct, intentional, and lethal assault on a human fetus must constitute a homicide-in-fact in that old fashioned, as-long-as-words-have-meanings sense that even our federal judges are not quite able to change. It would be rather surprising if, here or there, some abortionist did not proceed to act on the logical basis that the result is the same whether one kills
the fetus and then takes it out or takes it out then kills it.
At present, good people are working to undo a decree that has transformed an entire class of human beings into constitutional outlaws suitable for discretionary killing. The idea that something so grandiose and Platonic as "choice" will be lost to our people if this killing is prohibited is as ludicrous as suggesting that people are already deprived of the same ideal by the prohibition of burglary or rape. The abortion struggle is of pivotal importance for humanity because it is about the value of human life and the value of truth. If that seems too abstract, then consider a more concrete approach: Recall that it is also about crushing unborn babies’ skulls and ask whether or not it is OK to do that.
Foetal monitoring and surgery are showing the world what pro-lifers already know - it’s a baby.
Ultrasound technology has removed the mystery surrounding the secret life of the unborn child. In doing so, it has transformed the foetus from an inaccessible embryo into someone’s unborn son or daughter.
The changes have been equally dramatic for doctors.
For years the capacity to diagnose defects in the foetus outstripped the medical profession’s ability to cure them, or even accurately predict how they would affect the baby, and abortion remained the major form of treatment.
But recent breakthroughs have made it possible to view the foetus as an individual patient who can be treated in his or her own fight.
Blood an urine can be extracted from the foetus and sampled.
In some cases, drugs and blood transfusions can be administered to the foetus, and excess fluid drained from the brains and lungs.
But modern medicine’s bravest frontier has also raised ethical questions about the abortion debate.
The screens show the foetus is more than a "potential life"; with a beating heart and blood flowing through paper-thin skin, the foetus is clearly alive and biologically human.
Foetal surgery techniques are reducing the excuses for abortion - babies with life-threatening medical conditions which can be legally aborted can also be saved while still in the mothers’ womb.
Neonatal intensive care wards can also save the lives of some infants who survive abortion procedures.
A Mornington Peninsula infant was still months away from birth when he became the world’s tiniest patient last year.
Doctors at the Monash Medical Centre effectively transformed the woman’s womb into a human operating theatre to clear a blockage in her unborn baby’s urinary tract.
Surgeons now believe it may be possible to operate on other endangered foetuses in a similar way - guiding microscopic instruments through an opening in the mother’s abdomen to the unborn patient.
Eventually, doctors may even be able to set up a miniature balloon heart pump inside the womb to treat cardiac-damaged foetuses. Gaps in the spinal column of foetuses with spina bifida - one of the most common birth defects - could also he closed in-utero.
Essentially, untrasound technology has shifted the drama of pregnancy from the flutters and kicks and hormonal changes the pregnant woman feels to something that everyone can see.
Faced with mounting evidence of foetal humanity, pro-lifers have a major new tool at their disposal.
Adapted from an article by Michael Pirrie in the Herald-Sun
VANCOUVER - A Canadian company providing video souvenirs of "baby’s first pictures," taken by ultrasound, has drawn criticism from people who object to children in the womb being recognised as children.
The company, First Movements Video Productions, was founded by Derek Kirkham, described by Pro-Life News as "a 100 per cent prolifer" who uses only properly trained technicians.
Women
bring a blank video tape to the ultrasound unit and get about 10 minutes of
recorded movements of their unborn baby. Sound from the womb is also recorded,
and Mr Kirkham provides a commentary to help viewers follow the images.
Mr Kirkham says he loves his work.
"Pregnancies are a lot of fun. It’s a constant high for me ... you just look at the mother as (the taping) is going on and she’s totally joyous."
Not everyone is happy, however.
The Vancouver Sun ran a front-page story worrying about the "murky ethical tones of this issue." Reporter Alicia Priest suggested that commercialising a medical diagnostic procedure was a form of exploitation. (Mr Kirkham points out that the technology was first used for detecting enemy submarines during the Second World War - hardly a medical purpose).
University of British Columbia ethicist Louis Marinoff was concerned about "the social and legal fallout of encouraging people to treat a fetus like a baby This could mean that the law (on when a child becomes a human being) has to be changed. This could be used by the pro-life people to show a way of viewing the unborn fetus as really a baby."
But B.C. Report quoted Dr Willard Johnston of Canadian Physicians for Life as saying: "I’ve been looking forward to this development for some time It’s an extra piece of the reality puzzle (to show) how human a fetus is".
Dr Johnston also said it is time the law took note of progress past 16th century medical knowledge.
from Denise M Cameron, secretary; Pro-Life
Victoria
published in The Age, Thursday June 24,1993
There is a disturbing inconsistency in the current concern about violence against women and children and gender bias within the judiciary. So much of the concern is being articulated by feminist women.
As a gender, women equal men in the perpetration of violence against the weak and vulnerable, Central to feminist philosophy is the "right" to abortion. In the past 20 years, 1.5 million women in Australia took their unborn children to doctors to be killed. Let’s not be semantic. On 31 May, "The Age" In Brief column reported "An unborn baby and a toddler died in a car crash" - likewise "unborn babies" die in abortion.
In the same breath as she condemns male violence against women and children, Senator Rosemary Crowley campaigns for the introduction of’ RU 486, chemical warfare on pre-born children.
As Human Relations Commissioner, Justice Elizabeth Evatt recommended abortion up to 28 weeks. Touted as a future Human Rights Commissioner she overlooks "gender selection", which over-whelmingly disadvantages girl babies, but agonises over "gender bias in the judiciary.
And Pamela Bone, writing from Vienna (The Age, 19/6) on the Human Rights Conference, cites Singapore’s Foreign Minister, Mr Wong Ran Seng, implying that "laws of abortion" are an example of denial of human rights when abortion is really an abuse of human rights.
Feminism demands better treatment from men than women themselves are prepared to give their own children.
Wanda Franz, President of National Right to Life USA, writing recently in that paper says: "It is spine chilling to realise 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 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."
CANADA: Three reports in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine detailing the "success" of fetal tissue transplants into patients with Parkinson’s disease were misleading and politically motivated, a Canadian neurologist claims.
Dr Paul Ranalli, of the University of Toronto, says the journal’s credibility has suffered through the decision to publish the article with an appeal to President Bill Clinton to lift a ban on funding fetal tissue research (which the president did in January).
After reading the articles on the claims, he concluded that, all moral reservations aside, "these surgical adventures simply do not work."
© The Official Newsletter of Pro-Life Victoria, Edited by Grant Clarke |