NEWSVol. 17 No.1 - Winter Edition 2000 Print Post Approved - 33L385/00042
Pro-Life Victoria: Speaking Up for Humanity in the New Millennium |
Contents:
- Freedom March - March for the Freedom to be Born
- Please Write Now!
- Editorial
- A Win
- Two New Books of Interest
- Letter to the Editor
- And then I Heard the Heartbeat
- United Nations & the Holy See
- World View
Right to Life Victoria plans to hold a Freedom to be Born March in Melbourne on Saturday 9 September. ProLife Victoria believes this decision is a very timely one. For some time now, we have been suffering a deep seated anxiety that "not enough is being done". We need to do more to attract the attention of the community and our legislators, in particular, to the plight of our increasingly endangered preborn brothers and sisters.
We need to engage in more public displays in defence of human life. We welcome this encouraging initiative and call upon all prolifers to support and actively participate in the Freedom March.
One of the most important tactics employed by our foes in the war on the unborn, is psychological. Freeze the prolifers out of the public arena, paint them as a spent force, describe them as irrelevant, emphasise the "fact" that the "majority of Australians support abortion". Are you, as a prolifer, going to be "psyched" out of the most important of all struggles, by a few spin doctors?
Now is your chance to be re-invigorated by standing tall, proudly and publicly for the freedom of our preborn brothers and sisters to be born alive. Now is the chance to share in and be inspired by, the camaraderie and esprit de corps of what is a unique movement, a movement "for others". The prolife movement has always been about rights for people other than themselves.
When the McKenzie Lamb Abortion Bill was introduced into Federal Parliament in May 1973, Melbourne staged the biggest prolife march in Australia. 20,000 were estimated to have marched in protest against the legalised killing of unborn children.
With
an annual 80-100,000 abortions since then and the practice of the inhumane
partial birth abortions in this State, it is understandable we often wonder why
we don’t recapture that fervour today. Because the road since 1973 has been
long, hard and at times disappointing, some of us may have fallen by the
roadside. Whilst we are with the prolife movement in spirit, we may have ceased
being with it in person. September 9 will be early spring, a time of new life,
new growth and flowering. The 0lympic Games will be a great inspiring
celebration of some of the joys life can offer. There couldn’t be a better
time to come together and "cry freedom" for the unborn.
Prolife Victoria issues a very strong invitation to members, supporters and friends made over the years, as far back as its inception in 1982, to be there that day. The organisers of the Freedom March deserve our support. Do not see them embarrassed by a small turnout!
To have a Freedom March of thousands, it will not be enough to simply attend alone. We must ask our family members, sisters, cousins, uncles, aunts, friends to join us.
And like any march, the biggest numbers are only ever achieved when people are bused in. Do not be daunted by the idea of hiring a bus! At least investigate the idea. Go to your local parish, school or sympathetic organisation and advertise for people to join you on a bus to the Freedom March. Once the idea catches on, you will be amazed at how easy it is.
A bus ride to a Freedom March on a spring day in Melbourne is surely one of the more pleasurable "chores" we could ever ask of our supporters.
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Melbourne |
The following letter to the Premier Mr Bracks is included here to provide up to date information on the activities of Victorian scientists. Please use some of the information contained in this letter to write your own letter to Mr Bracks and Mr Thwaites expressing your concern on this matter.
Without doubt our scientists have been pressuring Mr Thwaites to amend legislation and remove constraints on their experimentation on human life. We must show that to do so would create a storm of protest. Recent media reports suggest Mr Thwaites is prepared to do the bidding for scientists who show no regard for the value of human life in its early stages. Please write also to The Minister for Health and your local Member:
Hon. S. Bracks
Premier
1 Treasury Place
Melbourne Vic. 3000
Mr J. Thwaites
Minister for Health
555 Collins Street
Melbourne Vic. 3000
For your local Member call:
13 23 26
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8 May 2000 Dear Mr Bracks A Monash University team of scientists recently circumvented Victorian law in obtaining human embryo stem (ES) cells in Singapore as it is illegal to create the cells here and to then destroy the embryos. Any experimentation of this kind should hove been reported to Parliament in reports of the Infertility Treatment Authority. We are particularly concerned that the Minister for Health, Mr. Thwaites has praised the actions of these Monash scientists and perhaps unwittingly promoted their defensive and unsubstantiated claims that ES cells cannot develop to form a new human being. The world is on the brink of human cloning. Governments in many countries have said ‘No way’ The Victorian Government needs informed advice on each development, on the claims of scientists and the ultimate objectives of this line of research which will inevitably be dependent on human cloning. Disregard has been shown by these scientists for human life, for their obligations to the Infertility Treatment Authority and for Victorian law. Whilst the Monash scientists may claim that human ES cells do not have the capacity to form a human being, their vested interest in making such a claim should be clear. Such claims should not be taken too seriously given evidence already available and an awareness that the scientists circumvented Victorian law in obtaining the human ES cells. Experiments with mice have already shown that ES cells can develop not just specific body tissues but can also develop to form a mouse. (Journal of Development Biology. 1993). The Director of the National Institute of Health in Washington DC, Dr Harold Varmus has spoken on the capacity of ES cells and he would not rule out the possibility of ES cells recongregating to form an embryo as has already occurred in mice. We urge you to uphold the law in Victoria particularly as contained in the Infertility Medical Treatment Act. This legislation provides some limited protection to human life and prohibits the creation of human embryos purely for the purposes of harmful experimentation and destruction. It is worth considering the purpose of the work of Monash University scientists with human ES cells. They claim to have developed human nerve cells from ES cells. To use such cells or other tissue cells in transplantation procedures in the future, histo-compatability with the recipient will be necessary. There is already a push from Australian scientists to address this - what some scientists want is to try to use cells from the body of the transplant recipient to clone one or more developing living human embryos genetically identical to the recipient. Transplantation would involve the farming of human life and dismembering these cloned human embryos for use in tissue transplantation. There are alternative routes for research into ways in which histo-compatible tissues may be developed. The creation of cloned embryos just provides another possible means of being first. Unfortunately for some scientists, the attraction of being first to announce a finding in biomedicine is so strong that if permitted, they would clone human beings and then dismember them in an effort to be first in developing treatments based on human cloning. This approach is most objectionable on human rights grounds. It has been prohibited in several countries in which governments have already considered the issues. Here in Australia. the National Health and Medical Research Council has urged the States and Territories to ban human cloning. We urge you to resist the lobbying of scientists to permit experimentation which will ultimately be dependent on doing what many countries have banned - the use of cloned human beings for experimentation. Yours faithfully Peter Beriman President
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There is a constant stream of articles on life issues flowing over my desk. So often I think "Gosh, I wish our supporters could read that. How fired up they would be to know about this." Space in our quarterly newsletter simply does not allow for such dissemination.
One recent article, however, really impressed me. It was called "The Vanishing ProLife Apologist: Putting Life Back into the Abortion Debate" by Scott Klusendorf in the Christian Research Journal 22(l). The article was in response to another article by Paul Swope "Abortion: A Failure to Communicate" in which the United States Caring Foundation director argued that the prolife movement must respond to the actual concerns of women tempted by abortion and not argue solely on the morality of abortion. Scott Klusendorf, in a synopsis however warned: "The past few years have witnessed a stunning development in the prolife movement. Many prolife leaders now think we can make abortion rare by downplaying the moral question: "Does abortion take the life of a defenceless human being?" They favour a new strategy that appeals to the self interests of women rather than moral truth. One leader asserts that an emphasis on unborn babies will only drive women of childbearing age away from the prolife movement. But this new strategy is dangerous because it leaves the pro-abortion culture largely unchallenged. At the same time it unilaterally strips the prolife movement of its most powerful tools of persuasion. If prolife advocates are to make abortion unthinkable, they must speak frankly about the nature of abortion."
Pro-abortion Naomi Wolf has written "The pro-choice movement often treats with contempt the prolifers’ practice of holding up to our faces their disturbing graphics (But) how can we charge that it is vile and repulsive for prolifers to brandish vile and repulsive images if the images are real? To insist that truth is in poor taste is the very height of hypocrisy. Besides, if these images are often the facts of the matter, and if we then claim that it is offensive for pro-choice women to be confronted by them, then we are making a judgement that women are too inherently weak to face a truth about which they have to make a grave decision. This view is unworthy of feminism."
Scott Klusendorf believes, "Down playing the truth about abortion is totally unnecessary and strips the prolife movement of its most powerful tools of persuasion. We can win if we force abortion advocates to defend killing babies. The national debate over partial birth abortion is a case in point. Though President Clinton has twice vetoed legislation banning the procedure, the debate has helped prolifers in at least 5 ways."
In one illustration he quoted Kathryn Kohlbert at a 1996 National Abortion Federation Meeting cautioning delegates that if the debate over partial birth abortion focuses on what happens to the unborn, their side will get "creamed". She urged focusing exclusively on the woman.
The emotional & psychological harm done to women and families who undergo abortions, (I can only describe the experiences in Melinda Tankard Reist's recently released book Giving Sorrow Words, as "de-gutting") and the demonstrable connection between abortion on breast cancer are very important contributions to the abortion debate, something women have an undeniable "right to know". Prolifers should be warned however, against being psyched out of emphasising: "Intentionally killing an innocent person is a morally wrong. Elective abortion is the intentional killing of an innocent human person. Hence, elective abortion is a moral wrong." Mary Balch, director of the National Right to Life State Legislative Department explained her success with liberal law makers. "All we had done was to say to them ‘Pro-abortionists support removing a large, living unborn baby almost entirely from her mother’s womb, stabbing her in the head with scissors, and sucking out her brains. Are you willing to support this?"
We can provide you with a copy of this insightful article by Scott Klusendorf, Director of Bioethics at Stand to Reason. Simply phone 9818 6186 to order a copy.
I believe it could be very helpful in keeping us all properly focused.
Denise Cameron
Editor
Germany - German antiabortion campaigners have won the right to campare abortion to the Holocaust in a controversial judgement by the country’s highest court. After a long battle between pro and anti-abortion groups, judges ruled that use of the term "babycaust" can be used by protesters.
The Age -6 June 2000
Giving Sorrow Words:
Women’s Stories of Grief after Abortion
Melinda Tankard Reist
Amid the noise of the ongoing debate over abortion, voices struggle to be heard: the voices of women harmed by abortion. Women traumatised by abortion, who have suffered lasting emotional shock, who were not prepared for the intense suffering they have experienced, have not been allowed to speak.
Giving
Sorrow Words includes the complete personal
accounts of 18 women and draws on the experiences of more than 200 others. All
thought they would be able to get on with their lives after an abortion, but
their lives were never the same. There is no period of mourning for a woman
suffering grief after an abortion. There are no grief teams, no body for her to
cuddle and dress, no ceremony, no grave on which to lay flowers, in short,
nothing to acknowledge that the baby ever existed. The book also lifts the lid
on the coercion women experience from partners, families and society in general.
The inadequacy of current pre-abortion counselling practices and the lack of
informed consent are also revealed.
Giving Sorrow Words brings suffering aborted women out of the shadows. It gives a glimpse into the face of grief after abortion.
"Perfect heartbreak, a brave book. Here are the secret sufferings of bereft and yearning mothers. Whisperings and wistful might-have beens. Let the grieving mothers mourn their unlived children." ... by Barry Dickins
A Life Worth Keeping:
The Abortion Debate
Copies are available from the Church and
Nation Committee of the Presbyterian Church of Victoria for $5 a copy (plus $1
postage) or postage free for five copies or more.
| Please send me ........ copies of
Giving Sorrow Words at $15 a copy. Total price: $............................. Pro Life Victoria LPO Box 2115, Hawthorn 3122 Name Address
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Please send me copies of ........
copies of
A Life Worth Keeping Enclosed is a cheque/money order, payable to:
Church and Nation Committee, Name Address
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March 19, 2000
Dear Madam
The rubella vaccine routinely given to young Australians is made by Merck Sharp & Dohme (MSD) pharmaceutical company.
MSD has been approached by members of the Muslim community concerned because pig gelatin is used in part of the manufacturing process.
The company has agreed to make an alternative form of the vaccine in which pig products are not involved.
Over the years, MSD has been approached by people unhappy that a "virus line cell" used in manufacturing this vaccine originated from the remains of an aborted baby.
MSD has waved these objections aside.
If enough people expressed concern, the company might decide to find a way of making the vaccine without continuing to exploit the results of abortion. MSDs address is:
PO Box 79
Granville NSW 2142.
Yours sincerely
Arnold Jago
It’s hard to hear the life inside you and stay pro-choice, by Meredith Berkman from The Human Life Review Winter 2000
For the first couple of months, I jokingly referred to my material state as the "alleged pregnancy". There were no outward signs that anything inside of me had changed; I continued to run 91/2-minute miles in Central Park; my clothes still fit. I smiled at other women's children in the neighborhood; but had no thoughts about having my own.
And then I heard the fetal heartbeat.
Friends already saddled with double strollers and nursery-school tuition fees had assured me that the eerie racing noise would completely alter my perspective, that I would finally understand I was having a baby. But no one warned me that listening to that unfamiliar sound - as my husband excitedly stood beside me in the doctor’s office, holding my hand - would transform the way I feel about abortion.
I have identified myself as pro-choice for my entire adult life, and supported a woman’s constitutional right as guaranteed by Roe v. Wade. Like most people I know, I have donated money or attended fund-raisers for groups like Planned Parenthood. I have never voted for a pro-life candidate. I have condemned protesters who carry graphic signs outside abortion clinics; I would have willingly engages them in heated debate.
But from the moment I listened to the thrilling rat-tat-rat-tat pulsing inside my uterus, I knew there was a living being inside me, whether or not I was emotionally prepared for its impending arrival. And the thought of losing that life or deliberately ending it seemed almost unendurable.
"There’s someone in there!" I tearfully told my husband as we left the doctor’s office. "How could anyone want to take it away?" I protectively stroked my stomach many times that night.
At first, I was almost ashamed of my visceral reaction, and wondered if my spontaneous rethinking of this hot-button issue was related to raging hormones (the excuse all pregnant women can rely on when we need to explain anything away). But as the weeks have passed, and my husband and l have seen the baby moving on the sonogram screens (though it’s hard to tell sometimes if you’re looking at the head or the knee) the feeling has intensified. I am oddly comforted when other staunchly pro-choice friends and acquaintances admit that the experience of pregnancy - and astonishing technological advances that allow us to see and hear the baby much earlier - has forced them to question their political positions.
"Before I got pregnant, I could not, for the life of me, understand not being pro-choice," says Liz Lange, who owns Liz Lange Maternity (where I spend a lot of time these days) and has an eleven-month-old son. "Then you see even the tiniest little dot and it’s blinking and the doctor says, ‘there’s the heartbeat’. Suddenly, you’re connected with the baby as a person. After that appointment, I made what I call my first baby album. And it’s not the pictures of him in the hospital, those are later pictures. It’s every single sonogram, and the amniocentesis results.
"Now I understand how there are people out there who could think abortion is wrong. I don’t know that I’m one of those people. But I’m not surprised by their feelings, and I’m no longer dismissive of them."
Though it is still sometimes hard for me to grasp that I will soon give birth to a child, I can’t ignore that the baby growing inside of me is gearing up for a life of her own. I can feel her moving now, and when I run (slowly) in the park, I feel that she is exercising with me. Though my husband and I haven’t chosen a name yet, we have a distinct sense of our daughter. We are convinced she has curly hair, talks a lot, and has a big personality
I have just started my sixth month, and it is chilling to consider that under New York State Law, I have until the end of this week to end the pregnancy. (Later-term abortions are legal only if "necessary to preserve the woman’s life".)
Yet I am not willing to describe myself as anti-abortion. Yes, I am deeply disturbed by the procedure, and it is not an option I think I could choose. I am open to "the other side" now, and wonder what their numbers would be like in this country if they softened their tactics, improved their marketing image, and began targeting vulnerable people like me.
But I would still defend a woman’s right over her own body. I know that doesn’t make moral sense in light of my conviction that a fetus, even in the first trimester, is a human life. I suppose I am an ideological coward (or much worse) because I am so far unprepared to abandon a longtime belief.
I prefer to think of myself as deeply conflicted and in transition: pro-choice with an asterisk.
United Nations & The Holy See - The aggressively anti-Catholic group, Catholics for a Free Choice, has been leading a charge to have the Holy See removed from the United Nations, to have its permanent observer status revoked.
This campaign has gone into high gear, while the radical pro-abortion and anti-family forces enjoy substantial publicity from the pro-abortion press and continue to press their case. They have collected, as of this writing, 400 to 500 signatures of as many organisations supporting their case. To counter this, the pro-life office at the UN in New York, the Catholic Family and Human Rights Office under Mr Austin Ruse, has mounted a counterattack. In their press conference on March 16, a coalition of pro-life, pro-family groups announced that they had the signatures of more than 1015 organisations from 46 countries that support the continuing presence of the Holy See at the UN. It is noted that the Holy See (the Vatican) has been a strong pro-life, pro-family voice and a rallying point for other nations, particularly Muslim nations. Joining the alliance of Evangelicals, Catholics and Muslims has been Focus on the Family, Concerned Women for America, Family Research Council, Human Life International and the International Right to Life Federation, to mention a few.
from Right to Life of Greater Cincinnati April2000.
USA - Use Humans, Not Rats. Animal
Times is the quarterly publication of People for the Ethical Treatment of
Animals. This is an aggressive, worldwide animal rights group. In its winter
edition, it has announced that the group is giving financial grants to companies
who will prefer testing human embryos as an alternative to the use of rats and
other animals in experimentation.
World Net Daily, in January, published a report by the pro-life committee of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, and it notes that the current draft document out of the US Government justifies the killing of human embryos in order to obtain stem cells and may reduce the use of laboratory animals for drug testing. It concludes: "The human embryo ranks lower in status than a laboratory rat." And so, I guess we’ve been reduced to asking the question: which living being has more value: a laboratory rat or a living human embryonic baby?
from Right to Life of Greater Cincinnati Newsletter, April2000.
AFRICA - Over-Population Cause of Poverty? Dr Jacqueline Kasun, a world authority on demography, say this: "In reality, problems commonly blamed on over-population are the result of bad economic policy." For example, Western journalism blamed the Ethiopian famine on over-population, but this was not true. The Ethiopian Government caused it by confiscating the food stocks of traders and farmers and exporting them to buy arms. That country’s leftist regime, not its population, caused the tragedy. In fact, Africa is beset with problems often blamed on over-population, has only one-fifth the population density of Europe and has an unexploited food-raising potential that could feed twice the present population of the world, according to estimates by Robert Roger Ravelle of Harvard and the University of San Diego.
Economists writing for the International Monetary Fund in 1994 said that African economic problems result from excessive government spending, high taxes on farmers, inflation, restrictions on trade, too much government ownership, and over-regulation of private economic activity. The report did not even mention the population.
from Right to Life of Greater Cincinnati Newsletter, April 2000.
USA - Planned Parenthood: Profitable. In its 1998-99 annual report, the Planned Parenthood Federation of America lists a net profit of $US126 million. Added to their previous assets, it now has net assets totalling $US536 million. And this organisation claims to be a charity. It wants all kinds of special deals including reduced rates of advertising. It frequently laments that it needs more government support and asks for special pricing from drug companies. And all of this while it is sitting on obscene profits of more than half a billion dollars.
from Right to Life of Greater Cincinnati Newsletter, April 2000.
USA- Complications With Assisted Suicide. A sobering new Dutch study published in the February 28 edition of the New England Journal of Medicine reports on 648 cases of assisted suicide. It notes that this is often fraught with complications and long delays before death occurs. These "complications" occur in 7% of assisted suicides and "problems with completion", that is, of dying, occur in 16%. This compared with direct euthanasia in the Netherlands with "problems" of 3% and 6% respectively. In the accompanying editorial it was noted that this rate of complications would surprise Americans "who have never considered that the procedures involved in physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia might sometimes add to the suffering they are meant to alleviate and might also preclude the tranquil death being sought". In the Dutch study, it was admitted that doctors often had to "complete the process", i.e. directly kill the patient when assisted suicide failed. It is noted that this has also occurred in one or more of the reported cases in Oregon.
from Right to Life of Greater Cincinnati Newsletter, April 2000.
USA - To Catholic Candidates. We have been asked by several members to repeat the words of the US Catholic Bishops in their statement, "Living the Gospel of Life, No. 32." It states: "We urge those Catholic officials who choose to depart from Church teaching on the inviolability of human life in their public life to consider the consequences for their own spiritual well-being, as well as the scandal they risk by leading others into serious sin. We call on them to reflect on the grave contradiction of assuming public roles and presenting themselves as credible Catholics when their actions on fundamental issues of human life are not in agreement with Church teaching. No public official, especially one claiming to be a faithful and serious Catholic, can responsibly advocate or actively support direct attacks on innocent human life." They note that the inherent value of human life at every stage and in every circumstance is not a sectarian issue, any more than the Declaration of Independence is a sectarian creed. Further, they state that they do not endorse candidates or political parties but do challenge all in political life to reject the violence of abortion.
from Right to Life of Greater Cincinnati
Newsletter,
April 2000.
© The Official Newsletter of Pro-Life Victoria, Edited by Denise Cameron |