Pro-LIFE NEWS

Vol. 4 No.4 - March 1987                                   Reg. by Australia Post No# VBQ5467 (Cat B)

Contents:

- Vatican Gives Pro-Life Lead
- Pro-Life Nurses
- RU-486 - A New Abortion Drug Chemical Warfare on the Unborn
- Bioethics  Update Conference
- Strange Wording in Wainer Article
- Abortion Pill Should Not be seen as Contraceptive 
- Viability
- Few Likely to Benefit from IVF Experiment
- Harradine Criticises McCaughey on IVF

The recently released Vatican document - "Instruction On Respect For Human Life In Its Origin And On The Dignity Of Procreation" - uses sound moral argument to provide a strong lead for pro-life supporters.

The statement deals with the moral questions raised by technical interventions on human procreation, and on the relationships between moral law and civil law in terms of the respect due to human embryos and foetuses.

Far from being an ultra-conservative, lone voice, the spirit of the document is in line with world legislative trends. Last year’s Senate Select Committee report on Human Embryo Experimentation recommended a legislative ban on all non-therapeutic research on human embryos. This report’s general tenor was almost identical to the resolutions on human embryo research passed overwhelmingly last year by the Council of Europe’s parliamentary assembly.

The Vatican document points out:

"Various procedures now make it possible to intervene not only in order to assist but also to dominate the processes of procreation. These techniques can enable man to ‘take in hand his own destiny’, but they also expose him ‘to the temptation to go beyond the limits of a reasonable dominion over nature'."

Referring to the role of applied biology and medicine, the Vatican states: "No biologist or doctor can reasonably claim, by virtue of his scientific competence, to be able to decide on people’s origin and destiny... These interventions are not to be rejected on the grounds that they are artificial. As such, they bear witness to the possibilities of the art of medicine. But they must be given a moral evaluation in reference to the dignity of the human person..."

The Vatican also spoke out strongly on prenatal diagnosis: "If prenatal diagnosis respects the life and integrity of the embryo and the human foetus and is directed towards its safe-guarding or healing as an individual, then it is morally licit ... But this diagnosis is gravely opposed to the moral law when it is done with the thought of possibly inducing an abortion depending upon the results: a diagnosis which shows the existence of a malformation or a hereditary illness must not be the equivalent of a death sentence?’

The document goes on to condone therapeutic procedures carried out on the human embryo, which respect the life and integrity of the embryo, but affirms that:

"The practice of keeping alive human embryos in vivo or in vitro for experimental or commercial purposes is totally opposed to human dignity. Human embryos obtained in vitro are human beings and subjects with rights: their dignity and right to life must be respected from the first moment of their existence. It is immoral to produce human embryos destined to be exploited as disposable ‘biological material’.

"The connection between in vitro fertilization and the voluntary destruction of human embryos occurs too often. This is significant: through these procedures, with apparently contrary purposes, life and death are subjected to the decision of man, who thus sets himself up as a giver of life and death by decree. This dynamic of violence and domination may remain unnoticed by those very individuals who, in wishing to utilize this procedure, become subject to it themselves?’

The release of the Vatican document comes on top of last year’s Papal Tour of Australia, which was of great inspiration to many pro-lifers. Pope John Paul II made a great number of strong, pro-life statements:

"I would ask the men and women of science to make sure that they truly use their research and technical skill in the service of humanity, to make sure that these never become false idols. If science is ever separated from its moral and ethical demands, it can never lead humanity to a better life. Humanity has already had enough experience to know that such science can only destroy the very freedom and dignity of the human person which it was meant to serve?’

"If the vulnerable and defenceless are not safe, no one is safe for long. No human rights are safe in a world without firm moral principles, in a world where everything is relative and depends merely on a particular opinion or point of view."

"The only strong bases for civilization are reverence for human life from the moment of conception and throughout every stage of its earthly pilgrimage, respect for all fundamental rights of the human person, and true justice and equity in concern for the common good?’

A copy of the Vatican document and of Pope John Paul II’s collected homilies and talks in Australia is available at the Pro-Life office.

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A meeting to plan the 1987 programme and activities of Pro-Life Victoria’s "Nurses For Life" will be held on FRIDAY, 10th APRIL, at SUITE 17, 1st FLOOR, MORR ARCADE, 600 BURKE RD., CAMBERWELL. President of Pro-Life Victoria, Mr. Peter Stokes, will be present to speak of the challenges currently facing the pro-life movement

· the ever present and escalating numbers of abortions in Australia;

· the regulation of human embryo experimentation;

· the threat of infanticide;

· the threat of euthanasia.

At this meeting, we aim to organize ourselves into an effective, concerned voice for our patients - from conception to natural death.

Denise M. Cameron.
Convenor.
Nurses For Life.

Telephone: Pro-Life Office: 813 3144; After hours: 387 7065.

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RU-486 is a new drug that has recently had a lot of publicity. It is still in research and not marketed anywhere as yet. It is not a contraceptive. Its action is to cause abortion. It is truly chemical warfare on the unborn.

Proponents of the pill expect that it can be used in two ways: first, it can be taken once a month to "cause menstruation" (induce bleeding in the uterus) as they call it, even if the woman is pregnant; and second, it can be taken as a "morningafter pill" after what the researchers describe as "unprotected intercourse"

It is an anti-progesterone drug. It blocks its action, preventing it from nourishing the baby. As a result, this tiny boy or girl "withers on the vine", dies and drops off. The action is a form of starvation.

Clearly then, RU-486 acts as an abortifacient and not as a contraceptive. RU-486, and similar anti-progesterone drugs which may be developed in the future, kill the developing baby after fertilization and are totally distinct from true contraceptives which prevent fertilization.

Disguising the abortion pill

As anti-progesterone drugs are tested during the next few years, we would expect to see a campaign by proponents to disguise the drug’s abortion-producing properties. Media reports in the United States have already used misleading names for this new class of abortion-causing drugs that disguise its baby-killing properties: antiprogestin; contragestion; menses regulator; menses inducer; or even postcoital contraception.

In "The Age" (14th January, 1987), a Melbourne gynaecologist was quoted as describing RU-486 as a "last-chance contraceptive".

Consequences and complications

Recent research reports indicate that RU-486 is "effective" (will kill the baby) in 60-8O% of cases, if taken in the first six weeks of pregnancy. The sooner after her missed period it is taken, the higher the effective abortion rate.

If a pregnant woman took these pills when her period was due, at that stage her baby would already be two weeks old and would have been attached to her womb for about a week. If she was only three days late when she took the pills, her baby’s heart would already have started to beat.

If the pill fails to do its work and the pregnancy continues, the woman concerned would probably be urged to have a "termination" by vacuum aspiration or a similar method, because of the risk that the baby would have been damaged by the drug. In other words a second abortion would be attempted.

If RU-486 does go on the market at some future time, the abortion industry can be expected to repeat its past pattern of not providing women with enough information about the action and side effects of the drug to give an in formed consent. Hopefully most women would not be as trusting as a woman in Sweden who expressed only mild surprise at bleeding for four weeks after taken an experimental dose of RU-486.

Side effects issue unresolved

Tests during the last four years have revealed several important immediate side effects, including severe nausea, mild uterine pain, vomiting, weakness and fatigue. Researchers were worried that RU-486 could influence the production of essential hormones in the adrenal glands, but they have not uncovered that effect so far.

They feared that in addition to working to block the action of progesterone in the uterus, RU-486 might also block progesterone’s essential role as an intermediate chemical in the adrenal gland’s synthesis of other essential hormones.

The issue of RU-486’s potential for severe harm to the adrenal gland is still unresolved. Many clinical tests are still to come and the long-term effects of repeated use of RIJ-486 will not be known for years.

In addition, researchers suspended tests using RU-486 to abort an actopic pregnancy (implantation in the fallopian tube). The drug did not abort the pregnancy, and the woman had to undergo emergency surgery when the tube ruptured.

Education

Continued education of the public about the abortion-causing properties of RIJ-486 is essential to counter the misinformation campaign of the proponents.

During the next few years, pro-life supporters must continue to be vigilant as the pro-abortionists broaden their chemical warfare on unborn children. RU-486 represents just the first of a new generation of abortion drugs and the Pro-Life movement must prevent use of this drug.

CAROLINE BEATTY

Because the presence of RU-486 blocks the action of progesterone, the uterine lining sloughs, off and the embryo is expelled, as an unfertilised egg is during a normal period Only a pregnancy test prior to receiving the drug ‘will tell a woman for certain whetter she has actually conceived. The psychological consequences of this uncertainty can be significant. ‘We call it contragestation, not abortion’, says (Dr. Beatrice) Couzinet."

Source: Time Magazine. 29th December, 1986.

Comment: Another example of a linguostic contrivance.

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St. Vincent’s Bioethics Centre’s Fifth Annual Conference on Bioethics will be held

at THE MICHAEL CHAMBERLIN LECTURE THEATRE, AIKENHEAD WING, ST. VINCENT’S HOSPITAL, VICTORIA PARADE, FITZROY from 11th MAY to 14th MAY.

Topics covered during the conference include: Informed Consent; Responding To AIDS: Abortion and Euthanasia as Legal and as Moral Issues; Government Policies in The Allocation of Health Resources; Infertility Clinics; Ante-Natal Diagnosis.

Registration forms for the Conference are available at the Pro-Life office, or by telephoning the Bioethics Centre 418 2453.

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In an article in "The Age" (19th January, 1987), Keith Dustan wrote of the life and work of Dr. Bertram Wainer. In the midst of singing the praises of the late doctor, Mr. Dunstan made an extraordinary statement:

"The clinic is still in East Melbourne, just along the road from the Melbourne Hilton and not far from St. Patrick's Cathedral. It has a staff of 20 with seven doctors and at last count it had carried out 140,000 abortions since 1972 without a single death."

His understanding of the process and purpose of abortion would seem to be somewhat limited!

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from C. Scatty. executive officer of Pro-Life Victoria
(The Age, 17 January, 1987)

Reading the article on the new abortion pill, RU486 (The Age’, 15/1), I was amazed that a spokesperson for the Women’s Electoral Lobby should perpetuate the myth that abortion is a matter of women controlling their own bodies.

Such uninformed statements have no place in the mid-l98Os,. As recently as October, the exhaustive inquiry of the Senate Select Committee on Human Embryo Experimentation resulted in the statement: ". . , from the time of fertilisation, the embryo is a genetically new human life organised as a distinct entity oriented towards further development."

The out-dated woman’s body" argument springs from scientific and/or philosophic ignorance.

Women do have the right to choose what to do with their bodies. Surely the message of the feminist movement has been for women to take control of their lives in many different areas.

However, the "right to choose" must be exercised before conception takes place. Pregnant women do not have the right to kill, anymore than does any ether section of society.

Equally amazing was the description, by a Melbourne gynaecologist (‘The Age, 14/1), of this abortion pill as a last-chance contraceptive".

To discuss this drug in terms of contraception is grossly misleading. it is not a means of preventing conception, but of killing a child already conceived.

These attempts to blur the distinction between a contraceptive and an abortifacient arise, of course, from complete lack of respect for human life.

The Senate Select Committee on Human Embryo Experimentation has also confirmed that Pelvic inflammatory Disease (PID) and abortion are significant causes of female infertility. So concerned is the Health Commission about the incidence of PID and its link with infertility that in September 1986 it launched a PID awareness campaign.

it is, therefore, disappointing that the Women’s electoral Lobby is so quick to acclaim a potentially dangerous drug as a ‘wonderful thing for women".

CAROLINE BEATTY,
Camberwell.

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 The Herald, 3 March, 1987

THE term "viability’, as used in reference to an unborn baby’s rights is an extremely inaccurate word and should be struck from the law books.

The recent British High Courts decision (The Herald. Feb 25 denying the young father-to-be the right to stop his girlfriend from having their baby killed illustrates this. Most people would define ‘viable" as "capable of an independent existence" - By definition. therefore, even a 40-week, healthy baby after birth is not viable. Leave this healthy, full-term child alone and he will die in a few days from neglect

He is not capable of independent existence, but depends totally on the Life support given him by his mother

More fundamentaly, however, viability does not measure humanity or a baby's right to Live.

It measures the scientific sophistication and equipment of those around the baby. Babies haven’t changed - only the effectiveness of the external life support systems around them have.

By this frightening standard, a defective newborn child, or a defective child of any age, is also "no’ viable".

By the same criteria the senile elderly person, rendered incompetent by a stroke, the completely psychotic individual, or the quadriplegic victim, are all not viable, as they are not "capable of an independent existence".

Denise Cameron. Brunswick.

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from the Reverend W. J. Uren.
rector of Newman College
(The Age, 26 March, 1987)

One can only sympathise with the members of the standing review and advisory committee on infertility in their deliberations on the legality of destroying under experimentation 40 micro-Injected embryos at 20 hours.

On the one hand, five of the eight members have presumably been appointed to the committee to represent the spirit and Intentions of the original Waller committee in making auth reviews. On the other, they are asked to interpret parliamentary legislation which reflects not only the original Waller recommendations but also the submissions of other interested sections of the community.

Their task has been further complicated by a very relevant but unproclaimed section of the Infertility Act which the Solicitor-General suggests (on what authority?) may be disregarded. One is inclined to ask: Why not just leave It to the lawyers?

With the original legislation thus conveniently amended by the Solicitor-General it was not surprising that the previously divided committee is now reported as being "unanimously of the view that the proposed experiment be approved in principle".

One is surprised, however, by their further, also apparently unanimous, assessment that "it is very important and very worthwhile". "Worthwhile" for whom?

For the Infertile couple who require this confirmatory destructive experimentation for their embryos? Perhaps, but we should remember that they are a small percentage even of Infertile couples.

For the embryos? Hardly - their development is thus rudely interrupted at 20 hours.

For our community? I wonder. We are thus subtly embarked, by the Solicitor-General’s flat, on a program of creating embryos specifically for experimentation contrary to the explicit recommendation of seven of the nine members of the original Wailer committee.

Does anyone really think that this test thus purportedly introduced for a small percentage of infertile couples will not soon become standard for all P/F patients as an extra embryo will be fertilised specifically for genetic testing and destruction? And if we are willing to experiment to destruction with 40 embryos for 20 hours, how far are we from similarly justified experiments with half a dozen embryos at 20 days? What sort of community will we then be?

William Urea,
Parkville.

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By ANNETTE YOUNG,
The Age, 25 March 1987

An independent Tasmanian Senator claimed last night that comments this week by the Victorian Governor, Dr Davis McCaughey on human embryo experimentation had bought "discredit on the office of Governor’.

Senator Brian Harradine was commenting on a report in ‘The Age’ yesterday that said that Dr McCaughey, giving a lecture at the Royal Women’s Hospital on Monday on medical ethics, had indicated that non-legislative guidelines for the medical profession would be the best way to regulate in-vitro fertilisation research in Victoria.

Dr McCaughey said that even if restrictive legislation was approved by a majority vote, either in the Senate or in a public opinion poll, "It would still be questionable whether it would be good democracy to impose It".

Senator Harradine, a member of last year’s parliamentary committee on human embryo experimentation, said it appeared that Dr. McCaughey was not content with being a governor. He obviously wants to be a king with executive powers," he said.

"In so far as the Governor’s statement seeks to undermine an act of the Victorian Parliament which restricts experiments on human embryos, that is matter for the people of Victoria.

"However, in so far as his statements relate to proposals by a Senate select committee and the Family Law Council ... the statement of the Governor of Victoria is an improper attempt to unduly influence Commonwealth democratic processes."

TONY BURCHILL reports that the Victorian Health Minister, Mr White, yesterday refused to say whether the Government would proclaim the controversial section 6(5) of the Infertility (Medical Procedures) Act of 1984.

Section 6(5) makes it an offence to fertilise ovums outside the body of the woman providing the ovums except for the purpose of the implantation of embryos derived from the ovums in the womb of that woman or another woman.

The Minister is examining advice from the solicitor-general’s office on the act which regulates the procedures of In-vitro fertilisation.

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