Pro-LIFE NEWS

Vol. 12 No.1 - Autumn Edition 1995                              Print Post Approved - 33L385/00042

Contents:

- Threat from the North
- Editorial
- Election Results Show U.S. Turning Against Abortion
- Designated Unperson
- More Counselling is Needed
- World View

Not since the Japanese bombed Darwin 53 years ago this February have born Australians been under such threat as they now are with the announcement of Northern Territory Chief Minister Marshall Perron’s Euthanasia Bill, his Right of the Terminally Ill legislation.

This proposed Northern Territory legislation has implications for all Australians. The Australian newspaper’s Darwin correspondent David Nason, writing in The Australian February 21 said, "A central feature of Perron’s euthanasia legislation is to allow other Australians to come to the Northern Territory to receive what he calls a ‘death with dignity’ ... tomorrow Perron’s Right of the Terminally Ill private members Bill will be tabled in the Northern Territory Parliament. A ‘little candle’ in the grand scheme of things, but a jurisdiction Perron would have lit up the world to give the suffering a legal right to kill themselves".

Even more frightening and bizarre was Nason s account of a recent meeting between Northern Territory writer and columnist Frank Alcorta and the Chief Minister on the afternoon before he revealed publicly his euthanasia plans. "At one point he became almost evangelistic, declaring euthanasia would see the Northern Territory ‘lead the world’, ... He was obsessed," said Alcorta. "It was as though he had seen the light on the road to Damascus." "Alcorta is adamant that Perron’s euthanasia crusade has a major component of ego. He also believes it is a ‘colossal blunder’ from which Perron cannot recover.

We all know Marshall Perron’s assurances that his legislation only applies to those who ‘voluntarily’ seek euthanasia and will only involve willing doctors and nurses are useless.

Holland has provided us with a real ‘role model’. The Dutch Government sponsored Remmelink Report revealed over half the euthanasia deaths there were executed by doctors without the patients consent. Even as we go to print a Reuters report February 18-19 reveals "A new controversy over the liberal Dutch mercy-killing laws threatened to blow up yesterday after the Justice Minister Ms Winnie Sorgdrager, said, "Doctors could end the lives of patientswho were not already dying."

Pro-Life Victoria has written to each of the 25 NT Assembly Members providing them with copies of the David Nason articles, and those written by bioethicist John Fleming, Anglican Archbishop Dr Keith Rayner as well as copies of letters printed in the press from the Royal College of Surgeons Mr David Thiele and the Anti Cancer Council’s Nigel Gray denying support for the Bill. Peter Beriman and Denise Cameron have written to all NT newspapers. The legislation has now been referred to a Select Committee. Letter writing notes are enclosed for pro-lifers to write to this Committee and as many Assembly Members as possible.

 

"Never see evil without trying to remedy it"

Blessed Mary MacKillop’s motto.

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I  feel it in my bones that this is a very important year for the Australian pro-life movement. Almost that we are at the crossroads. If we don’t go forward now, we just might slip forever.

Eve been feeling this way for about six months, ever since I read and heard on the airways pro-abortionist Senator Margaret Reynolds and abortion provider Jo Wainer reveal plans for a campaign to dismantle abortion laws, state by state around Australia.

My fears were crystalised by a relentless series of lengthy pro-abortion articles in The Australian newspaper beginning on December 14 with a front page article featuring coloured photographs of three women doctors proclaiming "the decision about abortion rests with women as an individual right of self determination" and continuing into January with the pro-life movement, with the exception of space granted to Margaret Tighe of Right to Life Australia, virtually locked out of the debate. I took all this as a signal to action and faced 1995 all fired up to defend the unborn from abortion and the vulnerable from euthanasia. Defeat is inevitable only if we do nothing.

This is why I have dubbed this ‘Year of the Pen". You can do it! We can stop abortion and prevent euthanasia. To inspire you all I have selected a great article from the latest Human Life Review titled "Election results shows US turning against abortion", illustrating how against the seemingly insurmountable odds the election of Bill and Hillary Clinton presented American pro-lifers, the US pro-life movement has fought back so that not one single pro-life incumbent senator, member of the House or governor of either party was defeated by a pro-abortion challenger. But pro-life challengers defeated nearly 30 hard-core pro-abortion incumbents in the November Congressional elections. This could not have happened but for grass roots supporters like yourselves.

The American pro-life leaders didn’t achieve this, the silent workers like yourselves did. Always doing what the leaders asked writing the letters, distributing protest cards, all the mundane, "invisible" activities. Never mind the high profile activities. It’s people like you who really matter.

The American pro-life movement has been helped by an ever increasing, unstoppable revulsion for abortion. Abortion numbers are actually down. And pro-abortionists anxiety up! So please take heart from this - and take up your pens and write. To start the year write against Northern Territory Chief Minister Marshall Perrons Euthanasia Bill and then to our Premier Mr Jeff Kennett, asking him to stop all embryo experimentation in this State.

Michael Pirrie, Medical Writer with the Herald-Sun has written two recent articles publicising the National Health & Medical Research Council’s concerns revealed in a recent study of the effects of invitrofertilisation on women and children born of invitrofertilisation. The Victorian State Parliament is scheduled to review Victoria’s IVF legislation this year. Jeff Kennett must not be left to feel we’ve forgotten all about this.

To help pro-lifers defend the laws in place against abortion and to appeal for their enforcement, Pro-Life Victoria has designed a flyer suitable for display beside telephones. It lists all the talk back radio shows, the radio stations, band and telephone numbers, that they be ready and available for us all to start speaking up for life.

We are very happy to be launching this in this edition of Pro-Life News.

Denise Cameron

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 by Ray Kerrison reprinted from New York Post where It first appeared in November 1994

Lost in the right-wing euphoria flooding out of the November elections is a signal of the most profound social change spreading throughout the nation.

Believe it or not, the United states is rapidly, astonishingly and mercifully revolting against abortion. The election result is only one sign of the new climate taking hold, but its impact is blockbuster

it is part of the biggest news story today: America is yearning to go back to basics.

A study of the election returns is stunning. Not one single pro-life incumbent Senator, member of the House or Governor of either party was defeated by a pro-abortion challenger. But pro-life challengers defeated nearly 30 hard-core pro-abortion incumbents. If these results had been reversed, they would have been Page One news across the country

Instead the incredible pro-life victories have been muted by a liberal media that refuses to accept them.

Perhaps the biggest single surprise of the electoral season was First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton’s flat, unequivocal condemnation of abortion. In an interview with "Newsweek" magazine, she said abortion was "wrong".

Radical feminists have not yet recovered from the shock. Hillary was the high priestess of the movement and her desertion on the eve of an election has left them speechless. We’re still waiting for Hillary’s gushiest media disciple, Anna Quindlen, to explain to New York "Times" readers Hillary’s defection.

Hillary has joined Kate Michelman, head of the National Abortion Rights Action League, who, in a rare moment of candour, told a Philadelphia "Inquirer" reporter last December, "We think abortion is a bad thing".

Kate’s slip of conscience triggered such a furore in the ranks that she was forced to deny having said it. Unfortunately for Kate, the reporter taped the conversation.

Resistance to abortion is rising everywhere. The shortage of doctors prepared to perform them is becoming an industry crisis. Research papers in numerous prestigious medical journals pointing to a link between breast cancer and abortion have alarmed many women.

One of the most potent factors in the defeat of the Clinton health-care Bill was its abortion provisions. The huge influx of pro-life Senators and representatives into the new Congress will now make it harder than ever for the Clintons.

As Doug Johnson, legislative director of the National Right to Life Committee, put it, "No matter what kind of health-care Bill President Clinton proposes, it will not pass if it does not explicitly exclude abortion".

At the UN Conference on Population and Development in Cairo last month, the Clinton administration’s primary goal to enshrine abortion as a universal family planning tool was repudiated. Events of the past month do not portend the elimination of abortion. Far from it. But they strongly reject the social values promoted by President Clinton, Governor Cuomo, Edward Kennedy, the National Organisation for Women, ACT UP and the New York "Times. Americans have weighed the harvest of 30 years of permissive social behaviour - skyrocketing divorce, single parents, epidemics of AIDS and herpes, soaring illegitimacy, bloody school violence, rampant drug addiction,hideous crime, condoms for kids - and found it wanting.

Reaction against the destruction of 1.5 million babies in the womb every year is an integral ingredient in the social rebellion now sweeping society.

The amazing thing is that one of the first shots in the revolt was fired here in New York City. We just didn’t recognise it at the time.

It occurred when angry parents stormed the streets in protest against the "Rainbow" curriculum and the kiddie condom craze launched by then Schools Chancellor Joseph Fernandez and then Mayor Dinkins. They blew Fernandez out of town and Dinkins out of office.

That was the forerunner of what happened across the whole nation three weeks ago, when tens of millions of Americans went to the polls and voted for the restoration of traditional values.

The media may ignore its massive pro-life content, but the message is clear: The abortion tide is turning. The nation, like Hillary Clinton, thinks it is wrong.

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The abortion debate stands or falls on a single question: is the preborn a person? One would not necessarily known this from the great heat and little light that usually surrounds the issue, as pro-lifers target additional social ills caused by abortion license, and abortion defenders charge that pro-lifers only want to punish women for sexual activity, or keep them pregnant and out of the workforce.

However, so much passion would not arise if the issue was not literally a matter of life and death. In the Roe u. Wade decision Justice Harry Blackman wrote that if the "suggestion of personhood (of the preborn) is established, the (abortion rights) case, of course, collapses, for the foetus’ right to life is then guaranteed specifically by the (l4th)Amendment." Thus, the personhood of the preborn child is the single point on which the entire debate turns.

Abortion defenders generally concede that the preborn is both human and alive, but still harbour a half-focused and ill expressed feeling that he is not quite yet "one of us" - not really a person. This position is one which is impossible to defend logically or scientifically and can set a dangerous pattern for any other living human decreed to be not "one of us." Let us examine some of the arguments used to depersonalize the preborn.

The preborn is not a person because she is so small. The charge that "Every good argument for abortion is a good argument for infanticide" finds confirmation here. Size remains relative throughout human life: the 6 week foetus is very small compared to a newborn, but one could also justly compare the newborn’s size with that of Hulk Hogan. The argument about size is a version of one of human society’s most durable, least honourable assertions: might makes right. Big people can throw away small people. As most women are smaller than most men, it is a dubious assertion for women to champion. To many of us know in our own bodies what violence at stronger hands is like.

The preborn is not a person because he is unwanted. We speak here of women’s disabling fear: I’m nothing without a man. If no one wants me, I don’t exist. If worth depends on someone else’s approval, then we may in turn eliminate our own children who do not please us. Worth based on wantedness, that chimerical achievement, is ominous for children, blacks, women, the disabled, and other living things.

The preborn is not a person because she does not have human form. This is in fact untrue: that "glob of tissue" finds order quickly, and every baby aborted has a face hands, eyes, gender and a beating heart. But even if a method were available that could strike during that rush to recognizable form, it would be an ominous precedent to embrace. Discrimination against living human beings because they "look funny" has a long and ignoble history. The truth is that even the earliest embryo has a human form, though it may be an unfamiliar one. We are all "globs of tissue" in changing form from conception until death.

The preborn is not a person because he would be disabled. Our disabled friends may well feel a chill: if we’d only caught them before they were born, we would have "spared them" their "unhappy, unsightly" lives. Killing in the name of compassion has had a tenacious appeal throughout this ruthless and sentimental age. We stand with Scrooge, with the strong and healthy, and locate the "surplus population" in the weak and sick. It is worthwhile to recall that we are each only temporarily able bodied, each potential candidates for lovingly-administered death.

The preborn is not a person because she could be abused. Prenatal dismemberment is indeed an effective preventative for postnatal abuse, though the net result to the child may not be what she would have preferred. Implicit here is the assumption that the lives of the disabled, are not worth living; that the rape survivor, the battered spouse, should never have been born. When this future abuse is only theoretical, as in the case of a preborn child, we make a devastating affirmation of the abuser s power and undermine the hope of those who would believe the past can overcome. The hope that abortion would prevent child abuse has been cruelly mocked by statistics which indicate that, though every child in America could have been aborted during the past nineteen years of legality, reported child abuse has in that time increased 500%. The notion of the disposable child persists even after birth.

The preborn is not a person because he is not sentient. Consciousness self-awareness is a trait which gradually emerges and then fades during the course of a normal human life, and is by no means fully present in a newborn; the average house cat is capable of more intelligent interaction than a month-old child. Some would choose six months foetal age as the point that the potential for this future awareness is present; however, potential is a slippery concept, as all the potential abilities of a lifetime are present at the moment of fertilization. To attach increasing value to those of increasing awareness is no doubt flattering to the intelligentsia who developed the standard, but a bit worrisome for the rest of us-especially for our mentally disabled friends who may grow up to star in their own TV shows for all we know. The preborn child is only temporarily lacking in awareness, in consciousness, and daily moving toward its completion. To rush to kill him before he achieves it is as repulsive as rushing to kill a recovering coma victim before she can open her eyes.

The preborn is not a person because she does not yet have a soul. Although a person’s body unquestionably begins at the moment the sperm dissolves in the ovum, some say their religious beliefs decree that the soul is invested later; this reflects pre-scientific belief that the preborn was an inert lump until she came to life and the mother felt movement. While some of our ancestors sincerely believed the prequickened foetus not to be alive modern proponents hold the eerie notion that she is a living body without a soul. Religious people have every right to enter the abortion debate with vigour, but quirky religious ideas that the soul arrives a 6 months gestation or departs at age 48, or takes the day off alternate Wednesdays cannot be the basis of the right to kill. Venerable religious traditions calling for immolation of children , or throwing of virgins into volcanos, should likewise be ineligible for exception from laws that protect life.

The preborn is not a person because he lives inside his mother’s body. The preborn is not a part of his mother’s body any more than an astronaut is part of the space ship. The fact that neither is viable without necessary access to oxygen, food, and shelter does not prove that they are not persons. Both the foetus and the astronaut are tenants, though in the case of the preborn it cannot be denied that he can be an uncomfortable and demanding one. Does this give the mother the right to evict her unwanted tenant? The situation may be like that of a sea captain who discovers a stowaway and considers whether to throw him overboard. The missing factor in the analogy is that the preborn did not take up residence in his mother’s body under his own will, but called into being (in virtually all cases) by a consciously chosen act that the participants were aware could have resulted in pregnancy. For both parents, undertaking to have sexual relations must be accompanied by a responsible recognition that (even with careful contracepting) a child may result. That this result disproportionately taxes the women, that the man can walk out, abandoning his responsibility to her and his child, does not prove that it is right for the women to do the same. Choices that lead to greater responsibility, greater accountability, are choices that lead to a stronger society for women and their children, and men as well. Choices that feed the cycle of heedless abandonment hurt us all.

This century has already taught us, in too many bloody lessons, that it is a dangerous thing to designate any human life as an "unperson." Devaluing, rationalizing, renaming, discarding seem to spread outward in concentric rings of expediency. When women so desperately agree to depersonalize their own children as a condition of full participation in society, a lot more is at risk than those tiny lost lives. Better check your size, your sentience, your wantedness; there’s no telling who is next.

Frederica Matthews-Green is Vice President for Communications with Feminists for Life and the editor of "Sisterlife", their quarterly journal.

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printed in the Herald Sun Thursday January 26 1995

THE Herald Sun is to be commended for publishing Helen Carter's article, (January 16), highlighting the doubling of the risk of breast cancer following abortion of a first pregnancy.

It should be pointed out that the "mystery" has only been created by refusal of those involved in the abortion industry to acknowledge the deadly link between abortion and. breast cancer as the research has been available for more than a decade.

In 1981, researchers Pike and Henderson published a landmark article in the British Journal of Cancer, "Oral contraceptive use and early abortion as risk factors for breast cancer in young women".

However, the pro-abortion faction in the medical community has stonewalled the research because It is determined to preserve the "right" to abortion, regardless of the future impact on women’s health.

Of course, other factors such as postponing the first child-birth to beyond early 20’s, also has significant impact - and here again it is the feminist pro-abortion lobby that bears responsibility because it has promoted careers for women ahead of family formation, ignoring the risk to a women’s life and health.

The comment by Dr Mark Jones, of the Women’s Clinic Richmond Hill, that one could equally well say that tertiary education increased breast cancer risk because it meant women deferred parenting, is absurd. It is quite possible to be a parent and continue tertiary education.

This task would be facilitated if pregnancy support services received even one-tenth of the funding going to abortion provision. The tragedy is that in Australia many young girls have abortions without being counselled about other options or informed of their increased risk of breast cancer. Breast cancer is the major killer of women prior to the onset of old age (other than road accidents) and is on the increase while childbearing in the Western world has never been safer.

Babette Francis,
National and Overseas
Co-Ordinator, Endeavour Forum.

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AMERICA: Pensacola Again - A certain doctor, Steven Brigham, was brought in as the abortionist to replace the murdered Dr. John Britton at the Pensacola abortion chamber. The Florida State Board of Medicine acted recently to remove his license. This resulted from complaints that he had already injured two women during abortions and had offered to perform an illegal abortion on a third woman in the last three months of her pregnancy.

Prior to this he had lost his medical license in New Jersey, in New York, and in Pennsylvania. Abortion may be legal in Florida, but it certainly doesn’t sound like it is safe.

AMERICA: Another Woman Dead In California, at the San Ysidro Abortion mill, on December 8th, Magdalena Rodriguez died. The cause of death was internal haemorrhage from a botched abortion which perforated her uterus.

California records show that the abortionist had previously been convicted on seventeen felony and mis-demeanour charges, including grand theft, Medi-Cal fraud, providing dangerous drugs to patients without proper authorization and aiding the unlicensed practice of medicine. He served a jail term, returned to again do abortions, and now this has happened. The abortionist, Suresh Gandotra, was ordered by the court to close his clinic and stop practising medicine.

AMERICA: Three Doctors Shot - An unpublicized fact is that there are dozens of doctors shot by patients every year. One such event occurred on February 9th, 1993, in Los Angeles County, at the University of Southern California Medical Centre. A former patient walked into its Emergency Room and shot three doctors. A receptionist, and another doctor were taken hostage, but later released. All three doctors recovered, although one was in a critical condition for several weeks.

Isn’t it interesting, that the shooting of one abortionist makes headlines around the world, but the shooting of three doctors in this case was not reported by the general media.

AUSTRALIA: More Children needed to avert population fall. - Couples had to produce more children or Australia would be unable to sustain its population, the director of the Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, Professor Richard Blandy, told the Economic Planning Advisory Commission conference.

Professor Blandy, from Melbourne University, said Australia’s population-minus migrants-would peak at 19 million in the early 2020’s based on present trends, and then decline quite rapidly.

The situation was so serious he suggested new policies, including forcing people without children or aged dependants to help pay for families.

"The intergenerational and extended family must be given greater political and economic support if our society is going to cope with our real, long term population issue: population decline and ageing," Professor Blandy said.

Fertility rates were substantially below the levels needed to sustain the population in the long term. ‘Assuming we wish to avert population decline, as well as a miserable old age for Australians in the second half of the 21st century, effective measures to encourage Australian women to have two-plus rather than two-minus children are now vital."

Fiona Carruthers
The Weekend Australian Nov 1994.

GERMANY: Berlin, Nov 22 - Seeking to stem a drop in birth rates, the government of the eastern German state of Brandenburg has announced that it will pay parents $650 for every new child they have.

Birth rates have fallen sharply in the former East Germany. In Brandenburg, births have fallen by more than two-thirds, from nearly 38,000 in 1989 to 12,000 last year.

Many Eastern couples are reluctant to have children because they are unsure whether they will be able to survive in the newly competitive society. This insecurity has led not only to a sharp decline in the birth rate but also to a drop in the marriage rate and more than tenfold increase in sterilizations.

"Young people used to think that the most important conditions for marriage were love and a good partnership," said Jutta Gysi, who recently completed a study of family life in Brandenburg. "Now many women prefer a secure job to having a child."

Some countries, including Hungary, Poland, Belgium, Luxembourg and Portugal, provide payments to families that have newborn babies.

"All over Germany, people are feeling insecure." said Manfred Krohn, a spokesman for the Brandenburg government.. "They’re thinking about studying and working not about families. This is now a serious national problem. We have to confront it."

Stephen Kinzer - New York Times

 

NETHERLANDS: Doctors Killing Patients - Dutch doctors, who will not perform euthanasia and in addition refuse to refer their patients to other doctors, who will kill them, will now be prosecuted. The Dutch Chief Inspector of Public Health, announced this new Dutch government policy in the official bulletin of the Health Ministry, "Trefpunt."

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