Vol. 18 No.4 - Autumn/Fall 2002 Print Post Approved - 33L385/00042
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Pro-Life Victoria: Speaking Up for Humanity in the New Millennium |
Contents:
- Keep Stem
Cells Adult-Only
- Editorial
-
Over to
You!
- Cardinal Likens
Abortion To Terrorism
- What African Women
Want (not "Reproductive Health Care")
- Children Shouldn't be
Created to serve the Needs of Parents
- Out of the Mouths of
Babes ...... A person's a person, no matter how small. (Dr. Suess)
- Senator Brian
Harradine on the COAG Decision
- Dr 1.2%
Nitschke
- Letters to the
Editor
- Support for Our
Website
- World
View
by Dr David van Gend MBBS, FRACGP, DPM, Old Sec., World Federation of Doctors who Respect Human Life.
The stem cell debate needs to get over its fixation with embryonic cells, which remain both useless and dangerous, and focus on the dramatic but safe achievements using the precious stem cells from our own "adult" tissue, and from the afterbirth of babies.
So far we have had "a factually undernourished, immature debate" according to Christopher Pearson in The Age (1/4), referring to the astonishing ignorance of politicians, journalists, and therefore the public, concerning stem cell therapies. The one essential fact - that we can harness the magnificent power of stem cells without ever destroying human embryos - has so far been successfully buried under a heap of embryonic hype.
Credit for thus keeping the public "factually undernourished and immature" must go to the "well-orchestrated lobbying campaign" by the IVF embryo industry, noted in the Australian Financial Review. The embryo researchers, whose four or five spokesmen appear infallibly in every news item on stem cells, understandably emphasise embryonic sources of stem cells rather than adult sources. Embryos are their chosen field; if embryonic research is sidelined, they are sidelined.
As a result of this professional lobbying and media work, the Premiers and the public have come to think that embryos are the only game in town when it comes to stem cells and those cures for terrible afflictions like Parkinson's and spinal paralysis. That is completely false.
We will send the Premiers a list of several dozen medical reports of dramatic new human therapies and cures using adult and placental stem cells, if they would care to fax us back a list of embryonic therapies and cures. Their sheet will be completely blank. There is not, contrary to public illusion, a single therapy using embryonic stem cells, while stem cells from these other uncontroversial sources are rapidly being applied to a wide range of previously incurable conditions.
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The most recent medical example - and a fine example of the trickle down effect of an ignorant media keeping us all stupid - was young Rhys Evans, a British toddler with "bubble boy" immune deficiency. On Friday night, immediately after reporting the COAG agreement to allow embryo research for stem cells, Australian television networks reported Rhys's cure using genetically modified stem cells. The illusion was created that this was a breakthrough for embryonic stem cells, but of course they were his own non-embryonic marrow stem cells. Half a dozen other children with severe immune deficiency have been fixed with adult stem cells. A child last year in Singapore with thalassemia was cured using stem cells from another baby's placental blood. Several blind Taiwanese men were likewise reported cured last year using stem cells from their cornea. French and German trials last year were successful using adult stem cells to repair heart muscle after heart attack. An American woman with a severed spine has now regained at least the movement in her feet and control of her bladder after treatment with her own adult stem cells. All this achieved ethically without ever destroying or cloning a single embryo. |
None of our leaders seems to be aware of the successful use of adult stem cells in a range of cancer therapies, or of further promising trials in juvenile diabetes, Parkinson's, MS and other immune disorders - including a "phenomenal" response in a Chicago trial for Crohn's disease last August reported at: www.stemcellresearch.org This explosion of genuine treatments using adult and placental stem cells will leave the whole fanciful, unethical, and dangerous world of embryonic exploitation in the dust. Fanciful, because as embryo researcher Professor Martin Pera of Monash conceded in Saturday's Courier-Mail, "there were no guarantees the experimental technology would progress beyond the lab". Unethical, because each embryo is a unique, dynamic human existence with its own genetic identity and destiny, part of the human family, not mere frozen meat.
Dangerous, because the only clinical achievement of embryonic stem cells has been to produce tumours of teeth and hair in the brains of animals and of a Chinese woman suffering Parkinson's disease. No wonder the editor of the journal Stem Cell cautioned "it will be necessary to thoroughly investigate the malignant potential of embryonic stem cells".
By contrast, New Scientist web site reported on January 27 "Ultimate Stem Cell Discovered" - an adult bone marrow stem cell which matches the versatility of embryonic stem cells without the malignant potential. These are the magic bullets of medicine in the years ahead, and they are from our own body, not from embryos.
What then to do with the frozen generation of IVF embryos, these abstracted and abandoned offspring in their cold metal womb? There is no good outcome. Either they are thawed out as expired meat, which is a gross offence, or they are reheated as food for science, which is a more complex violation.
The former scenario demands that IVF companies in future be prohibited from the offence of creating surplus embryos, along the lines of the Norfolk Clinic which will only conceive embryos that are to be implanted. The latter "reheating" scenario is the greater of the two evils, because it establishes the principle that human embryos can be consumed as raw material for research - with COAG allowing for any research, not just for stem cells - and it creates an ongoing market for this product. And embryo research is the necessary first step into embryo cloning and the whole eugenic project of "child as consumer product", not fellow human traveller.
Pandora's box can still be bolted down again. When it comes to a conscience vote in State Parliament on embryo experimentation, a better informed conscience may now acknowledge that COAG acted in blissful ignorance, and in light of adult stem cell advances there is no compelling reason to lay the foundations of a dehumanising industry around our tragically "surplus" embryos.
"Bubble boy" Rhys Evans - reprinted from The Australian
Last year ended with a tragic loss for the Australian prolife movement and this year began with a seemingly daunting challenge. In December abortion was legalised in Tasmania. In April, Prime Minister John Howard and the Labor Premiers of all States decided to allow research on excess human embryos.
In December with little or no warning, Tasmania's Premier Jim Bacon legalised abortion in a state in which over 1000 babies were already being killed every year. Against all odds, Tasmanian prolifers and Right To Life Australia managed to put up a sterling defence of the unborn. Churches were flooded with letter writing notes, advertisements were placed in major newspapers, letters far outweighing those in defence of abortion, flooded the letters pages of all newspapers, parliamentarians were lobbied and a very credible public witness was held outside Parliament House. Most demoralising was the low standard of debate during passage of the legislation. Even more demoralising were the statements of some who should have known better. It was inexcusable that Tasmania's Anglican Bishop John Harrower, after 30 years of abortion debate, should have been so ill informed and supported such radical changes to the State's abortion laws as were contained in Judy Jackson's Criminal Code Amendment Bill (No 2). "There are times when clearly if we don't take the life of the unborn then the life of the mother will be taken," he argued. The fact this so rarely happens is evidenced by the World Health Organisation figures revealing Ireland, which prohibits abortion, has the lowest maternal mortality rate in the world. Tasmania's existing law allowed for abortion to save the life of a mother. Doctors had been "stretching" it to do up to 1000 abortions a year. If every year, 1000 Tasmanian women genuinely needed abortions to save their lives, it was a Royal Commission into existing ante natal care that was needed, not permissive abortion. An honest medical student had exposed a breech of the law. The abortion lobby had seized the opportunity. Bishop Harrower played into their hands and Parliament's Christmas gift to Tasmanians was for even more babies to be killed in the coming years.
When Bishop Harrower preached at Christmas, did he ask his congregation to reflect on what might have been had abortion been as freely available in Bethlehem as Tasmania, when a Jewish virgin, with a spouse unable to provide her with more than a bestial stable, gave birth to a baby Bishop Harrower undoubtedly called, "our Re-deemer"? Did he recall Herod and the Massacre of the Holy Innocents? Or did he talk instead of the importance of saving Tasmania's trees, the need for population increase or "human rights", all except the right-to-life?
Denise M Cameron
Editor
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Turn Up Write Now! |
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This year, all Parliaments around Australia will be addressing the issues raised by stem cell research. The leaders of all State Governments and the Federal Government have expressed their intention to allow 'surplus' embryos from IVF programs to be destroyed in experiments. However, only the first round in this battle for human rights has been fought. It is a precursor for further debates - creating embryos specifically for experiments; creating cloned human embryos purely to create compatible tissues for patients.
It is vital that State and Federal politicians feel some heat on this issue so that they know a large number of people care about the disregard for human life. Please write now to express your disgust that human life is to be destroyed in experiments and that the path being chosen will lead to more and more unethical practices in medicine.
Please write in your own words. Short letters are sufficient. Feel free to choose from the following points or make your own. Please write to Federal Parliament now addressing your letters to:
• Your own Federal Member of the House of Representatives;
• Prime Minister John Howard, Parliament House, Canberra 2600;
• As many of Victoria's Senators as you can;
• In coming months we will advise the most appropriate time for letters to members of the Victorian Parliament.
POINTS TO MAKE
• Human life is not a commodity for science to use in experiments or for anyone to use in medical treatments.
• How outrageous that our Parliamentary representatives have chosen to pursue and develop medical treatments that will depend upon the destruction of human life.
• How horrifying as a precedent that our politicians intend to legislate to define some human beings as 'surplus'. Ask your member if he/she knows whether Australia will be the first nation to actually define certain human beings as 'surplus' so that they may be destroyed in experiments for science.
• The incredible achievements in adult stem cell research have been ignored. The use of embryos is unnecessary. I support stem cell research - using stem cells from sources which do not require that embryos are killed.
• Adult stem cell research has potential to provide tissues that are compatible for patients but this is not the case with so-called spare but unrelated embryo sources.
• Express you concern that instead of developing
acceptable treatments using adult stem cells, Australia is embarking on a path
that will be effective only if patients are cloned so that the clones can be
cannabalised for compatible tissues.
Find your Victorian Federal Member of Parliament and Victoria's ten Senators under Commonwealth Parliament Offices, on page 647, of the White Pages of your phone book. If you are unaware of your electorate, phone the Electorate Office on 9285 7171.
Cardinal Francis Arinze |
VATICAN CITY - A Roman Catholic Cardinal
compared abortion, euthanasia and genetic experiments to the Sept. 11
terror attacks, saying recently they all share a "contempt for human
life." Cardinal Francis Arinze, the Vatican's point man on dialogue with
other religions, made the remark in a message celebrating a Buddhist
festival.
He appealed to Buddhists to work against "a culture of death, in which abortion, euthanasia and genetic experiments on human life itself have already obtained or are on the way to obtaining legal recognition." |
In his statement, Arinze said: "How can we not make a correlation between this culture of death in which the most innocent, defenceless, and critically ill human lives are threatened with death, and terrorist attacks, such as those of 11 September, in which thousands of innocent people were slaughtered?"
"We must say that both of these are built on contempt for human life," the Cardinal said.
The Vatican released the statement Tuesday ahead of next month's Feast of Vesakh, which celebrates Buddha's birthday.
Arinze said Buddhists and Christians share a "common respect for human beings."
Christians and Buddhists, he said, "should build a culture of life, in which the right to life is fully protected from conception until natural death.... This would be a way to counteract and overcome the culture of death."
The 69-year-old Cardinal has worked for more than 20 years at the Vatican, where he has been a key figure in arranging interfaith dialogue among Catholics, Muslims and Hindus. He gained attention in the past after a newspaper article described him as a contender to be the next pope. Since then, he has shied away from contact with the press.
by Steve Mosher, Population Research Institute
Who wants reproductive health care? Not the people of Ghana, according to a just completed survey of health care needs in that country.
The survey, the first of a series of similar surveys to be carried out in different regions of Africa, was conducted in the Ghanaian city of Takoradi. A total of 397 individuals of both sexes were interviewed by one of four trained interviewers on one of Takoradi's main thoroughfares, selected at random from the constant stream of passersby.
Those interviewed were shown a list of 15 different health programs, and asked to rank order the list from greatest to least in terms of their own personal health needs. The fifteen kinds of health programs listed were Malaria Eradication, Leprosy Treatment, Reproductive Health, Syphilis Treatment, Polio Prevention, Clean Water Program, Natural Family Planning, Sleeping Sickness, Gonorrhea Treatment, Tuberculosis Treatment, Yellow Fever Prevention, HIV/AIDS prevention, Cholera Treatment, Measles Prevention, and unnamed "Other Programs."
Other information collected included sex, age, religion, marital status, and prior history of contraception, sterilization and abortion. The data on health needs was entered into a database and the mean rank order was calculated for each category. The higher the rank order for a particular kind of health care, the greater the perceived need.
The most pressing health care needs identified by the respondents were for Malaria Treatment (mean rank order 4.16), Natural Family Planning education ( 5.23), Clean Water Program (5.30), Measles Prevention (5.54), and HIV/Aids Prevention (5.86). Malaria, Measles, and HIV/AIDS are all diseases which, in the Ghanaian context, run at epidemic or near-epidemic proportions and so are of obvious concern. The citizens of Ghana are also clearly aware that polluted drinking water is a vector for the transmission of disease, and so give a high rank to clean water programs.
The only surprise in this cluster of health needs is the high ranking of NFP, which was welcome by the respondents as a natural means of planning one's family. In the comments section of the questionnaire, a number of respondents declared that they would like more education on Second order health needs (with mean rank orders from 7.14 down to 9.97) included Tuberculosis Treatment, Cholera Treatment, Leprosy Treatment, Polio Prevention, Sleeping Sickness, and Syphilis and Gonorrhea treatment. These are all diseases which are endemic in Ghana, although not affecting the percentage of the population that, say, HIV/AIDS does.
The single most striking result of the survey is the dismal showing of Reproductive Health. This category of health care, defined as the limitation of child bearing by means of contraception, sterilization, and abortion, came in dead last. It had a mean rank order of 13.66. Even "Other Programs" ranked higher.
Reproductive health care was also overwhelmingly rejected by the Ghanaian interviewees in the comments section of the interview. Mention of reproductive health elicited strong negative comments from the interviewees such as "Stop reproductive health; it's not good," "Stop reproductive health, eradicate malaria, and "We don't need reproductive health programs."
Population control organizations active in Africa, including UNFPA, the US Agency for International Development, speak of "huge unmet needs" for their reproductive health programs. They justify their promotion of contraception, sterilization, and abortion by claiming that this is what the African people want.
Our survey suggests that this is not only untrue, but that it is a complete perversion of the truth. Ghana has huge, unmet needs for many kinds of primary health care, but reproductive health care is not one of them. The Ghanaian people not only do not welcome programs of contraception, sterilization, and abortion, they view such programs as a positive evil.
Let's start giving the people of Africa health care programs which they really need, instead of inflicting upon them anti-life programs that they do not want.
LIFE, the UK's leading pro life charity, was
shocked to hear that an American baby boy, now four months old, was created
to be born deaf because his deaf parents wanted their child to share their
disability.
Julie du Plessis, LIFE spokesperson, commented: `Children are gifts, not "items" to be ordered up according to parents' specifications. Parents do not have any rights to choose their offsprings' disability or ability. To allow that they do is to go further down the slippery slope to full acceptance of designer-baby parenthood. This depersonalises human procreation and treats children as mere products.'
In this case the circumstances are particularly shocking. The 'parents' are a lesbian couple, both totally deaf. After having unsuccessfully approached sperm banks for a donor who was deaf, they used the sperm of a friend with five generations of deafness in his family. This baby was born to a surrogate mother. This is IVF at its most repugnant.
The parents are deliberately choosing a disability for their child. They have even refused to let him have a deaf aid although he has slight hearing in one ear. But selecting the sex of an unborn child or what he/she should look or speak like is wrong in all instances.
Our concern should be for the child in the first instance. If parents are allowed to say what disability their baby should have they also allow the 'right' to eugenic abortion - ie. the right to get rid of a baby whose 'specification' is not what they wanted.
`We are in danger of destroying the natural equality between parent and
child. What we are seeing is a shift in thinking which turns parents into
consumers and children into products. Children should not be created to serve
the needs of their parents. Children should be loved and accepted
unconditionally. This child was born on condition that he was
deaf.'
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Out of the Mouths of Babes ...... A person's a person, no matter how small. (Dr. Suess) |
I was so taken by the following true story told to me recently by a young mother, I just have to share it with you.
As a way of telling their two young daughters that they were to have a new baby brother or sister, this couple, expecting their eighth child, decided to wrap the video of their baby's ultrasound scan in Christmas paper and give it to them amongst their other gifts. Selecting the right moment , they gave their gift to their daughters. The package was unwrapped, the video turned on and the two little girls attention focused on the screen. The parents then asked their daughters what they could see. Their five year old daughter's response was immediate: " It's a person," she said. Not a baby, note! A person. Strange that a five year old can so readily recognise what grown, supposedly intelligent men like Professor Peter Singer and others can't; who defend human embryo experimentation and abortion on the grounds "It is not a person", that a person's a person no matter how small!
Denise M Cameron
Editor
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The Council of Australian Governments (COAG) decision on human embryo experimentation was neither "enlightened", "magnificent" or "a win" as hailed by the Prime Minister and Premiers at the post-COAG press conference. Premier Peter Beattie claimed: "We chose the enlightened road". But the decision to ransack the tiniest members of the human family for their spare parts can never be an enlightened one. Descriptions of human embryos at the press conference as "stocks" and references to the "adequacy of their supply and distribution" served to denigrate and commodify them. |
The proposal amounts to "an end justifies the means" approach which no Parliament should countenance.
An evil act remains evil even if some good may result.
Obtaining stem cells from embryonic human beings to their destruction is an attack on the status and respect due to the most vulnerable members of the human family.
We all started life as a human embryo and no civilised society should reduce the status of that human being to one of an experimental rat or laboratory tool.
The Prime Minister appears to have been heavied by the Premiers in the decision to limit a ban on using "surplus" embryos to three years.
If agreement is reached to use embryos newly created after April 5 this year, then it means not only will this current frozen generation be exploited for research, but so will the next.
It is unclear how the consent process will work in relation to embryo experimentation. The changes regarding consent have not been well explained. Does the agreement from COAG mean that any research on the embryos for whatever purpose is permissible if a couple agreed to "research" in a general sense? Is that research going to be defended? Will couples not be told the specific ends to which their embryos are to be experimented on?
More information is needed regarding the ethics panel advising on the issue within 12 months. How will the panel be constituted? Will it include representatives of the wider community especially people with disabilities? Will it exclude people who have a vested interest in the research?
If the COAG proposal is to go ahead, then it mandates the tightest possible regulatory regime with an independent regulatory authority being established to review the use of every human embryo and that the authority have access to the widest possible advice. For example, it should not be left to the Monash Human Research Ethics Committee to decide whether a particular embryo can or cannot be used for this purpose.
Assessment must be done on an embryo by embryo basis. As the COAG decision reflects a utilitarian approach, the Prime Minister and Premiers must insist at the very least that the possibility of attaining the ends that are claimed can be supported by rigorous scientific proof. The hype which has characterised the campaign to permit embryo use is a caricature of the scientific process.
I again call on the Prime Minister to give priority to research into adult stem cells.
Significant and exciting advances in therapies using adult stem cells have been ignored or glossed over in the hype surrounding embryonic stem cells. Embryonic stem cell research is being presented as "the only hope" for those suffering debilitating diseases.
For example, we have Bob Carr visiting spinal injury patients in Sydney extolling the promises of embryonic stem cell research, saying: "I want to see it available here so that blokes like you can get up out of the wheelchair and walk again". (WIN News April 4, 2002)
But neither he nor any of the other Premiers cited the successful treatments derived from ethically acceptable sources such as stem cells derived from the patient.
It appears the Premiers have been captured by the IVF industry and biotech companies campaign for cutting up embryos rather than examining the scientific literature citing successful adult stem cell therapies being applied to Parkinson's spinal cord repair and diabetics.
It is unfair and cruel to build up false hopes in the hearts of the suffering and their families. It is evident from the scientific literature that embryonic stem cells have yet to help a single human patient. By contrast stem cells obtainable, for example, from the cord blood, tissues, bone marrow or organs of patients are resulting in their cure.
Wait for it: When therapeutic applications of embryonic stem cells cause disastrous immune and other reactions because they are not histocompatible with the patient, IVF scientists will call for the cloning of embryonic human beings to be dissected for more compatible stem cells!
The euthanasia lobby along with the media, have
repeatedly claimed 71% of the community favours patient killing. The recent
South Australia State Elections provided an opportunity to demonstrate their
claims when euthanasia activist Dr Philip Nitschke stood for election to the
Legislative Council. If euthanasia was as popular with the Australian
constituency as claimed, Dr Nitschke should have romped in.
Dr 1.2% Nitschke |
Instead, he gained a mere 1.2 per cent of the vote. He was unable to make any excuses. A full page advertisement "Are You Dying to Vote for Dr Nitschke?" alerting voters to Dr Nitschke's platform was placed in The Adelaide Advertiser by the Coalition for Better Palliative Care, two days before the elections. Voters had the opportunity to vote for euthanasia. They rejected it and henceforth Dr Nitschke should be called Dr 1.2% Nitschke", as a reminder that euthanasia has been well and truly debated in Australia and repeatedly debunked.
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Stem Cell Work is
Destructive
I am deeply disgusted by embryonic stem cell research. How can you even think about sacrificing an innocent human for the sake of someone else's cure?
I am disappointed in you, Steve Bracks. I completely agree with you, Denis Hart.
Those embryos shouldn't even be there. Keeping human embryos in a refrigerator and discarding them when they are not needed is wrong.
But I am fighting a losing battle.
How can these innocent embryos stand up for themselves with very few people to do it for them?
Realise the true, right thing, Australia.
Wake up and don't do destructive embryonic stem cell research.
Julia Bakowski, 11 years
Altona Meadows
reprinted from The Age
15 April 2002
A couple of replies to our
website - keep up the good work!
Hello,
I just surfed in to your website ... viewed the
pics. Those pics could only be described as GRUESOME!, but they should be shown
to ALL those that may be now (and in the future), contemplating abortion.
I 'see' abortion as COLD BLOODED MURDER, perpetrated upon the MOST INNOCENT of our society, often as almost a 'cosmetic' operation. Education, HARD HITTING education is the ANSWER!!!!
I am usually quite pragmatic about most other 'life' issues (such as capital punishment and others), but on this issue ... one simply HAS TO TAKE A STAND!! How can otherwise 'normal', rational, thinking beings do this? Is there a lot of $$$$ at stake? Is there some political, social or other 'power' advantage to be gained? Is the human fetus not to be viewed as human? If not human, then WHAT?
I guess that the reason that I cannot understand it is because it is not understandable. And those that try and defend such a view are really trying to defend the indefensible ... but I still have not been able to see the 'BIG PICTURE' yet. I guess that I am just bloody bewildered !!!
Anyway, I just had to write to you and voice these feelings and questions ... I just HAD to.
Sincerely, Warren T. Texas USA. (However, I am an Australian citizen).
Dear Editor,
I have always been against abortion... I am doing a report and speech about sexual abuse of children. So I was doing a search on Google for "pictures of children" to display in my presentation... I ran across your page of aborted fetuses by accident... That is the most horrifying thing I have ever seen in my life. How the hell could someone do that? How could you have a job doing that? I commend your efforts in fighting abortion. Keep it up. Just to let you know, those pictures seriously made me cry. A 19 year old male crying... That takes a lot. I wish they could put these pictures on tv..... Again, keep up the work.
Sincerely, Jason
AUSTRALIA - Research
conducted in South Australia has suggested that pregnant teenagers are now more
likely to have abortions than to give birth because the option of giving
their unplanned child up for adoption is no longer generally considered viable.
Figures for 2000 published by the state's department of human services indicate
that 1,093 girls aged 15-19 had abortions, compared to 802 who gave birth. Kaisu
Vartto, chief executive of the family planning group SHINE SA, commented: "In
the 1970s, women were either choosing adoption, abortion or birth, [but] the
rate for adoption has dramatically declined."
from The Advertiser, South Australia, February 2002.
PORTUGAL - Figures compiled by the Council of Europe have revealed that Britain has the second highest abortion rate within the European Union. According to the report, Britain had an abortion rate of 15.7 per 1,000 women of childbearing age per year. Sweden had the highest abortion rate (18.3 per 1,000 women per year) while Denmark had the third highest rate (15.5 per 1,000 women per year). [Irish Times, 19 March] The report suggests that Ireland (7.8 per 1,000 women per year, all performed in Britain) had a higher abortion rate than the Netherlands, although Dutch abortion statistics are misleading because they do not include the widespread practice of so called menstrual extraction.
from SPUC Bulletin, March 2002
IRELAND - The Dutch floating abortion clinic which docked in Dublin last year amid much publicity has lost its licence. Els Borst, the Dutch Health Minister, said that she admired the work of the Women on the Waves foundation, which aimed to abort unborn children protected by their mother-countries' laws. A government spokesman explained: "It doesn't make any difference that the organisation is only using the abortion pill. If it goes wrong, patients need to be cared for in a proper clinic, and at sea it's just impossible."
from Ireland online via ProLife Infonet February 2002
UNITED NATIONS - The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) is supporting a South African organisation which promotes abortion for children without the knowledge or consent of their parents. The Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute (C-FAM) has revealed that UNICEF provides "major funding" for Love Life, a proabortion website for South African youngsters. The website tells girls: "It is your right to get an abortion. If people are unhelpful, don't get discouraged. Keep trying. "Describing the abortion procedure as "a gentle suction", the website tells girls that they will "feel a sense of relief" after the abortion and that they should "celebrate together" with their boyfriend.
from C-FAM January 2002.
UNITED KINGDOM - Prolifers have rejected suggestions that in vitro fertilisation (IVF) treatment provides a better way of becoming pregnant than the natural method of procreation. The BBC has reported that "couples at the best performing IVF clinics across the world have a higher chance of becoming pregnant during one cycle than those leaving it up to nature". [BBC News online, 16 January] However, Dominic Baster of SPUC commented: "Human beings created by IVF are exposed to a disproportionate risk of death, and this is one of the reasons why the technique is wholly unacceptable. Most IVF babies who are placed inside a woman die before implantation or birth, but an even greater proportion are not even given this small chance of life. The majority of IVF babies die either in the petrie dish, or during the freezing and thawing procedures if they are stored, or in the course of destructive experimentation. Such wanton disregard for the dignity of human life is scandalous."
from SPUC January 2002
UNITED STATES - The family of a woman who bled to death during the abortion of her unborn child has been awarded more than $2.2 million in damages by a court in the USA. Gracealynn T Harris, aged 19, died during the abortion at the Delaware Women's Health Organisation Clinic in September 1997. A jury found that the abortionist was 40% responsible for her death and that the clinic was 60% responsible.
from The News Journal, Delaware January 2002
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© The Official Newsletter of Pro-Life Victoria, Edited by Denise Cameron |