Pro-LIFE NEWS

Vol. 20 No.3 - Autumn/Fall 2004                                                                             Print Post Approved - 33L385/00042

Contents:

- Positive ProLife
- Editorial
- Vale - Geoff and Tom
- Fetal Models Now Over 500
- Forthcoming Events in 2004
- "All their tomorrows depend on your love"
- Size Is No Criterion: Even The Smallest Human Life Matters
- Kerry Wins U.S. Democratic Nomination, Will Promote Abortion as President
- Kofi Annan Calls Abortion Group "Shining Example" for world
- World View
 

major project for Pro Life Victoria commenced in AL ^ 2003 is to be continued and expanded. It involves the distribution of the poster pictured opposite advertising a positive alternative to abortion. The poster publicises the national 24 hours hotline for help for pregnant mothers, uncertain, unprepared, upset, frightened and reluctant to discover they are carrying a child. The hotline is that of Pregnancy Counselling Australia, staffed by trained Pregnancy Counsellors 24 hours a day. The eye catching poster has been designed especially for doctors surgeries ' churches, health centres and any other remotely suitable venue, with the aim of  proclaiming in the most practical and tangible way, that help for the mother and child is only as far away as the nearest telephone. Death for the child is not the only alternative for a woman faced with an unplanned pregnancy. To date the laminated posters which are accompanied by an appropriate covering letter, have been sent to 1500 churches around Australia and to every general medical practice in Victoria, West Australia and the Australian Capital Territory. Throughout 2004 Pro Life Victoria will be actively pursuing the further distribution of the poster throughout the Northern Territory, Tasmania and South Australia, as finances permit. We will not give up until every medical practice in Australia has received a poster With the exception of one overtly hostile student health service operator, the

posters have been very well received, with reports of numerous 'sightings' in churches and medical practices. Only the rate of calls to the 24 hour service will confirm how effective is our advertising. In the meantime, pro lifers can be satisfied every attempt is being made to proclaim to the world the pro life movement does have an

alternative to abortion. Given the number of post abortion calls to the hotline from women traumatised by their abortion, we can also confirm and advertise to the world that abortion hurts women, that abortion is simply not good enough for society to offer any woman. It is a failure of doctors, obstetric, antenatal and social work departments for a start. If they can't rise to the challenge of delivering a mother of a live child then, let the prolife movement try Whilst the project may sound straight forward, it has required a lot of coordination and has been expensive. Each poster costs $1 to post and acquiring the addressed labels for so many medical practices has not been cheap. We are indebted to the services of Andrew Bartholomew for the graphic design ofthe poster, to our model Celia, of the prolife Grant family and to Maryse Usher of Pregnancy Counselling Australia who virtually got the project off the ground." The really "hard yakka" of laminating thousands of the posters with a hired laminating machine in the Pro Life Office was done by PLV President Peter Beriman, his wife Claire and office volunteers Klara Doroszlay, Kate Millie and David Collard who worked until they were all but submerged in a sea of laminate. They truly deserve to feel well satisfied by the outcome of their commitment and energetic efforts.

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If ever a political party de served the name by which the American Democratic Party has become known 'The pro death Party" it is the Australian Democrats. Victorian Senator Lyn Allison has now given notice in Federal Parliament to introduce a bill to overturn the Andrews Bill which prohibited euthanasia in the Northern Territory. Elsewhere it has been an Australian Democrat Sandra Kanck who has been pursuing euthanasia in South Australia. And who can ever forget the spectacle of former Australian Democrats leader, Senator Natasha Stott Despoja, following the fatal shooting inside a Wellington Street East Melbourne abortuary, taking a photo shoot opportunity on the footpath outside to defend the routine killing inside? Have they, as legislators, really nothing better to offer society than death? Meanwhile, I open my March edition of Australian Nursing Journal, from Anne Warren, RN, Stanhope Victoria, to read the following letter of concern from a registered nurse of 40 years with both hospital and university training about the treatment of a'Not for Resuscitation' patient in a large city hospital. See how, little by little,

by "not for resuscitation" orders and a creeping culture of death, we are slipping down the slippery slope to the so unnecessary lethal jab. Can't you just hear the radio shock jocks blaring "You wouldn't do this to a sick dog! Put ,em out of their misery. Give them an injection. Give them the jab!

Denise M Cameron Editor

This is the 'Dying with Dignity" letter from Anne Warren.

I have been nursing for 40years. I am a Registered nurse with both hospital and university training and I currently work in a managerial position in the private sector.

I was recently informed of the death of a former colleague's husband. He was in his 80's, and had prostate cancer and secondaries in the bone.

He had been admitted to a large city hospital with a fractured neck of femur which was repaired, and he seemed to be progressing well.

However, he had a further fall in hospital and fractured the other neck of femur. His condition then deteriorated rapidly and the relatives were asked whether he was for resuscitation. His family felt it best that he not be.

From then on it appeared that he was neglected: he was never turned, he developed bedsores and his mouth was dry and cracked and his tongue swollen because no mouth toilets were performed.

My friend was very distressed to see her husband die in such a manner, but whenever she complained about the lack of care was told: "0h, we don't do that any more!"

What is happening to nursing today? Are we so hell-bent on obtaining degrees and diplomas that we overlook basic nursing care?

My friend, who was a nurse all her working life until retirement, is shocked at the way her husband was neglected.

The Australian Nursing Journal has a Best Practico section -perhaps a Best Practise Guide on caring for patients who are old and dying would be useful.

It could simply be entitled: "Dying with Dignity".

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A sad loss to us oil in Pro Life Victoria late lost year was Geoffrey Donahue, our regular Wednesday volunteer. Geoffrey was a passionate defender of unborn children being as he was, such a joyous participant of life himself. Everything in life seemed to interest Geoffrey. He did his voluntary chores in the office to the accompaniment of the beautiful music he so appreciated, frequented libraries for the texts of poems such as Oscar Wilde's denunciation of capitol punishment in The Ballad of Mead Ihg Gool for me to use in a tolk 1 once delivered on the infamous Irish Rope Case, endlessly cheered me up when ever 1 flogged and remained supremely optimistic that good would one day prevail, that we would achieve rights for unborn children. He would send pithy comments to

0ur other regular office volunteer Vondo lost her much loved husband Tom Berry late lost year. Tom had been a great support to Vando in her regular "do anything required role" in the ProLife office, timing his golf to fit in with her transport each Tuesday morning. Tom and Vondo migrated to Access Age especially when cant and hypocrisy needed to be exposed! Geoffrey's life interest me. His mother hod died in childbirth and he hod greatly missed her, growing up in an orphanage for which he always hod a good and grateful word. But he dearly missed his mother and the sad loss of her seemed to me to effect his sense of the preciousness of human life. Given the sadness of Geoffrey's early life, it was a joy to know what a happy life he had with his wife Barbora, who he was so fortunate to meet later rather thon early in life, at a concert of the music of which they shared such a love. And he hod a daughter Helen he coiled his Princess of his Vaido Castle who along with Barboro and the rest of us remembers him so fondly.

Australia years ago and always retained their stead fost,foith based commitment to such truths as lt is never lawful to take an innocent life, within the womb or without, for whatever reason. Agrect joy for Tom wasto live long enough to hove his grandson Thomos, born with Down Syndrome, named after him. 

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A new shipment of 100 sets of fetal models arrived late ProLife Victoria's Alast year in the office of Pro foetal models Fetal Life Victoria. The total number of sets we have now imported into the country for distribution to Models schools and associated education facilities is now 500. A further 20 sets have been forwarded to now over schools this year. Pro lifers who know of any schools without a set 5010 should contact Pro Life Victoria who can check on this from our data base and provide a set to the nominated school, Project "How You Began".

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is-zs Ap A

J9 Right to Life Australia - Annual Life Walk

- Albury to Melbourne

259 26 & 27 June

OD Right to Life - Annual Conference and Conference Dinner

18 September

OD Freedom March

October (depending on Sitting Days)

OD Lobby Day State Parliament

Saturday 23 October

OD ProWe Victoria - Annual General Meeting

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The Canberra Times - Monday 23 February 2004

Size matters to cloners and their supporters. Disparaging the human embryo as "almost invisible to the eye", a mere "speck of dust" and therefore of no moral weight, tells us something about the disparager's vision but nothing about the meaning of the embryo.

In an uncivil and unscientific tirade against "Bible brandishers" trying to "thwart" human cloning (CT February 16, p 11), Johann Hari joins all the IVF scientists who want to downgrade the embryonic human into mere raw material for research, free to be cloned or cut up, sneering in unison that the embryo is

lismaller than a full stop".

But the Universe itself was once smaller than a full stop, and other scientists do not consider its smallness to be grounds for contempt.

When physicists study the embryonic universe it is a matter of intellectual wonder that so tiny an entity could express itself into so vast and fruitful a cosmos. Other scientists studying the embryonic human should feel the same wonder. For the human embryo in its complexity and energy is a universe in miniature, an entire world exploding outwards from the Big Bang of conception.

The ignorant eye sees only a speck of dust; the knowing eye sees a self-contained world vibrantly alive, whose meaning cannot be weighed in grams or trivialised for being tiny. Its meaning lies in the fact of its having a human identity, a genetic name that is spelt out at conception and takes a lifetime to be fully expressed. It is a new character scripted into our common story, a fellow traveller whom we must cherish.

So this is an appeal for an intelligent and respectful perspective on tiny human beings, natural, IVF or even cloned, not propagandist put-downs about the embryo being a "speck of dust". Smallness can be an illusion of perspective, leaving us ignorant of the good things contained in smallness.

The great divide over embryo experimentation and cloning has been between those who think these smallest human lives matter, and those who think they do not.

It is significant that, in the words of a Senate Report into cloning: "There is in fact little disagreement that the embryo is a human life and that its life commences at fertilisation."

On that we agree: an embryo is a human life. The disagreement is over when that life begins to "matter". According to some, a human life today needs a certain

Live-birth cloning is clearly wrong - but it's also wrong to create a clone for its stem cells, says Dr David van Gend.

quantity of certain qualities, before grudging it full admission to the human family. '5entience and the capacity to feel pain are better ways to register full life than raw conception", Hari writes, thus granting humanity to the 18 week fetus.

Set against such a conclusion is the traditional faith, held by many ordinary people, that an embryo matters from the start for the same reason any of us matter: we belong to the one human family under the one Father, and even the embryo is known and loved by Him.

This illustrates what Hari calls "the fundamental disagreement about the most basic question of all: what human life is". That will remain at the heart of the disagreement over how human life may be created, whether it must be in the humane context of a mother and father conceiving a child, or whethel, asexual cloning is to be permitted, where there is no real mother or father.

For a clone can be made from a lump of anonymous human meat in the hospital freezer, an artefact of the laboratory with no parent to protect it from exploitation. Or if a clone is made from the cell of a known adult, that adult is not a true parent: a clone is the donor's identical twin, not their child, so a woman who gives birth to her clone is not the child's mother, but her twin sister. That clone would be the first utter orphan in the human race, with no possibility of a father or mother or place within normal human kinship.

Live-birth cloning is obviously wrong. But it is also wrong to create and kill a younger clone for its stem cells.

For a while there will be general condemnation about live-birth cloning. But at some stage our culture's Word of Power will be uttered in the context of cloning: "choice", especially reproductive choice, and the condemnation will falter.

Lesbian partners wanting their own baby, parents wanting to replicate a dead child, weird cults, will demand their right to choose cloning.

Then, for a culture which in the name of "choice" has so violated the central moral bond between parents and their offspring, starting with the culling of social abortion and working backwards to the cannibalising of useful embryos, what chance will there be of maintaining resistance to this newest dehumanising "choice" of cloning?

Dr David van Gend is a spokesman for Do No Harm, an association promoting adult stem cell research but opposing cloning.

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will officially leave the race. Meanwhile, in their last debate, prior the primary, Kerry said his first acti~ as, president will be to overturn Bush's Mexico City Policy. First instituted by President Reagan in 1984, the pro-life foreign policy prevents taxpayer money from going to groups that promote or perform abortions in other countries. On his first day in office, President Bush reinstated the policy after former president Bill Clinton had cancelled it during his eight years in office.

#,When a candidate is so ignorant or so dishonest about something as sacred as his own faith, he or she is hardly worthy of trust to govern the greatest nation on earth," Father Frank Pavone explained, referring to John Kerry's declaration that his Catholic religious beliefs don't compel him to legislate the church's pro-life view.

I could never understand why Fr. Pavone, who heads Priests For Life and other denominational pro-life organizations keep making the same mistake.

Pro-abortion Catholic politicians are not only breaking with Catholic Doctrine, but with the will of God, "Thou Shalt Not Kill."

If John Kerry says that his Catholic religious beliefs don't compel him to legislate the church's pro-life view, then he should be asked, "then why do you not honour God's Commandment, "Thou Shalt Not Kill," which is not just for Catholics.

I guarantee you he will be standing there with egg on his face, because there is no denying that human life begins at conception. We now have DNA for the ultimate proof. It is irrefutable.

This mistake is not just with Catholics, but all other pro-life denominations. They're NOT abortions they're the killing of human beings and a human being is a person. Look it up in the dictionary..

As far as 1 know, there has NOT been a Constitutional Amendment that denies this fact. I know that the pro-aborts would like to change the meaning of words, but as of this writing, a human being is a person and a person is a human being, which makes the Roe Vs Wade decision, all the more mind boggling. It certainly was not based on the Constitution, science or

common sense.

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from Friday Fax - Catholic Family & Human Rights Institute, March 2004

At a gala event held in January, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan received an award from the International Women's Health Coalition (IWIIC), a group working for worldwide abortion on demand for women and girls. Annan's enthusiastic acceptance of the award raises renewed questions about the objectivity of Annan, and the UN secretariat in general, which is responsible for organizing major conferences on international social policy.

In his acceptance speech, the Secretary General lauded IWIlC, saying that 1 am moved that you have chosen to honour me this evening. Above all, I want to pay tribute to the International Women's Health Coalition for the work it is doing around the globe. The IWI1C and its partners provide indispensable leadership for the health and rights of girls and women worldwide. If there were more pioneers like you, the world would be a better place.. You are a shining example."

This leadership includes teaching abortion advocates how to skirt "restrictive" abortion laws. For instance, where legal abortion is restricted to those abortions considered necessary to save the life of the mother, IWHC recommends that abortion providers simply "adopt a broader definition of what constitutes a threat to a woman's life by considering the risk of death if she seeks a clandestine procedure."

IWHC also works for the radical reinterpretation of UN human rights documents. IWHC admits that no UN document "explicitly asserts a woman's right to abortion." But, "Despite these qualifications. the conference documents 

and human rights instruments - if broadly interpreted and skillfully argued - can be very useful tools in efforts to expand access to safe abortion." For instance, according to IWI1C, the right to life, the first right enumerated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, should include a right to abortion, since women who seek illegal abortions risk their lives.

IWHC has also praised the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) for providing chemical abortifacients and early abortion devices in refugee settings while avoiding international scrutiny. I~ claims that UNFPA's" preassembled reproductive health kits have helped speed up response to emergencies and to halt case-by-case controversies about what supplies should be included. Thus, subkit three includes emergency contraception, and subkit eight includes manual vacuum aspiration equipment."

Manual vacuum aspiration appears to be central to IWHC strategy to expand access to abortion, since the early abortion for which it is used, a procedure IWHC labels "menstrual regulation," constitutes, according to IWI-IC, one of the "loopholes under which safe abortion can be provided even in settings where laws are restrictive."

In his speech, Annan stressed the need for "achieving a deep social revolution that will give more power to women, and transform relations between women and men at all levels of society." He concluded by calling the staff of IWHC "wonderful partners of the United Nations family."

Copyright - C-FAM (Catholic Family & Human Rights Institute). Permission granted for unlimited use. Credit required.

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GERMANY - An alternative to abortion in the form of 'baby hatches' is gaining ground in Germany, designed to help desperate women with unwanted pregnancies. The 'baby hatch' is simply a hatch in a wall containing a bed and blanket where a woman can leave her baby anonymously. The mother retains a hand or footprint of the baby so that she can get back in touch with the centre and reclaim the baby within a certain period of time. If the mother does not get in touch, the baby is put up for adoption. There are now 65 baby hatches in Germany, mainly supported by the Catholic Church and other Christian charities.

from Yahoo News February 2004.

SOUTH AFRICA -A South African pro-life group called the Health Professionals Conscientious Objection Campaign is claiming its 'greatest victory yet' after announcing that the staff at a major hospital are refusing to carry out abortions. According to Philip Rosenthal, the group's coordinator, "numerous other small hospitals, especially rural ones are refusing to do abortions, but this is the first time a major urban hospital previously doing abortions has stopped."

from news 24.com February 2004.

UNITED NATIONS - The UN educational, scientific and cultural organisation (UNESCO) has agreed to stop producing documents promoting abortion. In January the secretary of US health and human services wrote to UNESCO's director-general, expressing concerns about a recent UNESCO document "unwanted pregnancy and unsafe abortion". UNESCO has since distanced itself from the publication and circulated an internal memo stating: "As UNESCO does not promote abortion, and no funds are given by Member States to be spent on abortion-related activities or materials, I ask you to ensure that UNESCO's policy in this area is not misrepresented, in particular through publications and co-publications." from C-FAM February 2004.

UNITED KINGDOM -A Catholic journalist has criticised Catholic bishops for 'pressurising' Catholic politicians on issues such as abortion. Clifford Longley stated: "Being racially prejudiced, drunkenness, lying and adultery are all sins but not crimes. Sometimes a compromise has to be reached between the moral law and the criminal law." [BBC, 16 February] Anthony Ozimic of SPUC commented: "No one of whatever religious persuasion, in any syste m of government, democratic or otherwise, has a right to impose their malformed conscience upon the unborn by voting for their killing. International human rights law places a primary obligation upon the state not to take human life., in particular, the UN Declaration on the Rights of the Child states that the child "needs special safeguards and care, including appropriate legal protection, before as well as after birth". One suspects that both Clifford Longley and Senator Kerry doubt whether the unborn are children and have therefore concluded that the unborn need not be protected by law."

from SPUC source March 2004.

UNITED KINGDOM -Britain is facing a sexual health crisis, according to the Independent Advisory Group on sexual health and HIV. 10% of young people are thought to be infected with chlamydia and the HIV rate has increased by over 20% for the second year running. By contrast, in Uganda the ABC approach encouraging abstinence and fidelity has resulted in a nationwide change in sexual behaviour and a steep reduction in the HIV rate.

from The Times of London February 2004.

UNITED KINGDOM -A woman who was believed to be in a persistent vegetative state has made a recovery described by doctors as 'miraculous.' Kelly Barker, 35, suffered massive head injuries and went into a coma when she was hit by a truck five months ago. Doctors believed her to have a minimal chance of regaining consciousness and her parents were considering having her life support ended. However, in November she began opening her eyes and moving. She can now sit up, respond to questions with nods of the head, move her arms and walk with assistance.

from detnews.com February 2004.

USA -American black prolife activists have highlighted how people of their race account for a disproportionately high number of abortions. Ms Day Gardner of Black Americans for Life pointed out that, while black women were 13% of the population, they had 35% of the abortions.Black people were not replenishing themselves. She did not wish to downplay the death of 40 million unborn children of all races since legalisation in 1973. Rev Janine Simpson of CareNet said Black History Month should be marked by supporting women with unplanned pregnancies.

from Focus on the Family February 2004.

USA - An article in the US based Psychiatric Times has put forward the argument against assisted suicide through an analysis of practice in the Netherlands and Oregon. The article concludes by stressing the importance of palliative care and the right of patients to good end-of-life nursing.

from The Psychiatric Times February 2004.

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