NEWSVol. 9 No.2 - Winter Edition 1992 Print Post Approved - 33L385/00042
Pro-Life Victoria: Speaking Up for Humanity in the Nineties |
Contents:
- Nurses Poster Campaign
- Editorial
- 'Sex' Series Shows Bias
- Australian
Baptists Release Story of "Baby N"
- A.G.M. Proposal
- Abortions Sold
- Abortion Survivors Meet
- Abortion and Women's Rights
- English
court Rules that Pro-Life Opinions are Not Reasonable
- Abortion is the Pits
- New Viability Limit?
- Only People have Finger Prints
- World View
Nurses For Life, a special interest group within Pro-Life
Victoria, have designed and produced a poster intended for the notice boards of
all Victorian hospitals and related institutions.
The poster (pictured) has been designed to create an awareness of pro-life issues among the nursing community.
"In the practice of abortion and euthanasia, nurses have always been at the ‘coal face’," Nurses For Life convener, Denise Cameron said: "On top of the sadness they feel for the 80 - 100,000 unborn children killed in Australian hospitals every year, nurse-members of ‘Nurses For Life’ feel a deep shame that their once noble profession has become so involved in the widespread practice of abortion. The recent opinion poll on euthanasia taken among nurses, in spite of doubts as to the accuracy of its ‘representatives’, hasn’t helped their concern or ‘image’. This poster campaign is, in a sense, an act of reparation, an attempt to show the world the nursing profession isn’t totally devoid of its traditional respect for human life."
Recently I read an article that "lamented" the growing tide of pro-life opinion in the United States. Part of the author’s reasoning for this turn around in the nation’s opinion was the emergence of fetal photography. People could see that from an early stage the unborn child is human.
Medical and photographic technology has improved over the last two decades to provide us with the opportunity to look into our early hidden world. And each picture reconfirms the wonder, mystery and value of life. It is hard to maintain the antiseptic attitude that the fetus is a blob of tissue when medical technology can let us listen to heart beats, pick up brain waves and photograph a thumb being sucked.
Pro-Life Victoria has recently launched a program to promote the truth about the fetal stage of our lives, using scientifically designed models of the fetus at five stages of development. The models developed in Britain, were recently sent to several Victorian schools for use among teachers, students and parents. Glowing reports have flowed back.
This is an exciting tool to reshape our nation’s perception of the unborn and their right to life. The truth has an edge to it that cannot ever be completely blunted by propaganda. And the fetal model campaign is a very sharp tool.
'Sex', presented by Sophie Lee each week on the Nine Network, has told and shown us nearly everything about sex except for one important fact: sex can create an innocent life.
Recently, the show covered the issue of abortion. A young woman was recently interviewed who said she had had an abortion and regretted it. This was followed by another girl who said she had an abortion and thought nothing of it. The interviews were followed by an innocuous "pointer and chart" presentation of an abortion! The segment was finished with information of how to claim your abortion on Medicare.
The episode gave no scientific presentation of an abortion, such as the "Silent Scream". There was no look at the effects of post abortion grief syndrome on the mother. And there was no consideration of the life of the child. It added up to blatant bias and misinformation to viewers.
Pro-Lifers can ring the Australian Broadcasting Tribunal and complain about this biased presentation. Even though the whole series has been criticised for promoting sex without any framework of values, Pro-Life Victoria did not think it could let such anti-life presentation be made without some form of protest. The episode in question was aired in the 2nd of July.
Australian Broadcasting
Tribunal
Phone Number
008 337 417
Following the "Baby M" controversy in Victoria late last year over a handicapped child whose death was partly caused by a medically-induced drug toxicity, the Australian Baptist Union has published a report of a similar case in which the parents of a newborn handicapped child, "Baby N" were put under strong pressure by medical staff to let them kill the child. The child, a girl whom the parents called Natasha, was born in April 1989 with a severe form of spina bifida (myelomeningocele); the nerve cord protruding between the vertebrae of the spine and through the skin in the middle of her back. She was rushed to a large specialist hospital in Melbourne where a doctor informed her father that she had multiple severe disabilities, including possible intellectual impairment, and would need as many as twenty surgical operations before the age of five if she remained alive. The mother was told that if the baby lived, she would grow up to hate her parents, and that many couples who opted for giving life-saving treatment to such children ended up with broken marriages. The child’s parents were misinformed, about the attitude of a hospital surgeon to operating on handicapped children, and not informed at all about a whole range of support services at the disposal of handicapped children and their parents.
Things came to a head when the child’s
doctor recommended medication to prevent the baby becoming irritable and
"keep her comfortable". The parents agreed initially, but as time
passed, they saw that the child was sleeping constantly and not feeding at all.
They then understood what was happening: 
"We realized Natasha was not born
in a life or death situation. She was placed in it" said the child’s
mother. The parents ordered the sedative to be stopped and proper medical and
surgical care to be given to the child. On day 17 of her short life, Natasha had
the opening in her back closed up. "It’s miracle territory that in 17
days when her spinal cord was exposed that she didn’t get any infection in it.
Jesus Christ was with her." said her mother. Three years later, the girl is
a healthy and intelligent youngster who lives life to the full.
The parent’s assessment of the case was supported by Pastor Harry Monro, who had been offering pastoral care to the family throughout their ordeal. "I do not believe that the medical staff gave a balanced picture of what Natasha’s future would be." he said. "The advice the parents were being given was designed to place them in a position where there was only one decision that could be made. So it was not totally honest."
This story first appeared in "The Victorian Baptist Witness" and has been condensed for Pro-Life News.
Constitutional Amendments
to Pro-Life Victoria’s
Constitution
Two amendments are proposed by the Executive for consideration at the Annual General Meeting.
Major Amendment
Statement: By limiting any one person to a maximum tenure of two years as President, it is the view of the executive that Pro-Life Victoria is unnecessarily limiting its opportunities to make the best use of available people and creates inefficiencies in the leadership.
Proposal: In lines 2 and 3 of Clause 9 (b) of the Constitution delete: "except for the President who is not eligible for re-election to his/her former position"
Minor Amendment
Manuscript tidy up:
In Clause 9 (b) line 5.
Delete 8, insert 9.
Subscriptions Motion
It is also intended that agreement be sought at the Annual General Meeting for the annual subscription to be varied:
That the general member subscription be increased from $15 to $20 per annum, and the pensioner/student subscription be increased from $7 to $10.
The placentas of babies aborted in Russia are being used to manufacture cosmetics in France and Italy, according to a recent press report. The report claims that a factory-sized abortion clinic in St Petersburg is supplying tens of thousands of placentas from aborted babies to a French entity, the Institut Merieux, in Lyon, which processes them. The Institut then sells the placentas for use in the manufacture of cosmetics. The report claimed that last year 34,440 placentas from aborted babies were sold. The standard price was said to be over $3.00 per kilogram.
The Human Life International Conference in Ottawa Canada last May provided a unique perspective on abortion. It was the first time ever that a group of abortion survivors had been gathered together to share on their experiences. Of the survivors who attended the conference some seven abortion survivors took the stage and spoke about their lives.
Babette Francis, International Coordinator of Endeavour Forum, went as Australia’s representative. She reports on the emotional meeting.
The most moving session of the conference was the "First Ever Meeting of Abortion Holocaust Survivors". They came to Ottawa to show the world that when abortions fail, children live. Gianna Jessen, whom I met last year, was there with her adoptive mother, and enthralled us with her beautiful singing. Gianna, now fourteen, has medical records from the California department of public services to prove she survived a saline abortion in the 29th week of gestation. She is angered at the suggestion of the pro-abortion lobby that she is being used by pro-life groups when she talks publicly about how she survived an abortion. "I may not be an adult but I have a right to say what I think. I came here along with the other survivors to show that there is life inside the womb and that no one has the right to take it away. People are saying we were just blobs of tissue."
Another survivor was Lauren Pulliam, who as a tiny fetus clinging tenaciously to the uterine wall, somehow escaped an abortionist’s powerful suction machine. Subsequently, she won her mother’s love and was given a reprieve from death. Lauren, a delightful 17 month old, enchanted us all as she toddled around the meeting room, smiling happily at everyone.
Joshua Vanderveldon, now 12, lives next door to the Wisconsin abortion mill where his mother, Linda, had gone for advice. She was offered no other options but abortion. She underwent the procedure but weeks later when she still experienced symptoms. She went to another doctor who examined her with a stethoscope. He then said, "Do you want to hear your baby’s heart be at?" By then about four months pregnant, she refused to schedule another abortion. The joy of having her baby was offset by powerful feelings of guilt. Eventually, she connected with some pro-lifers from whom she received acceptance - a simple hug from one of them was a profoundly healing experience for her Linda is now Wisconsin's State Director of Women Exploited by Abortion. She purchased the house next to the mill where she had her botched abortion, and she and Joshua now picket the mill and witness to women who are about to enter.
These children have not escaped completely unscathed - Gianna has cerebral palsy, and Joshua also has some damage, but they are alive.
This conference received a lot of attention from the secular media in Ottawa and the conservative/religious press throughout North America.
by Frederica Mathewes-Green, Vice President
for Communication with the U.S. Feminists For Life
Published with permission from All About issues publication
The abortion debate seems like an unresolvable conflict of rights: the right of women to control their own bodies, the right of children to be born. Can one support women’s rights and oppose abortion?
Truly supporting women’s rights must involve telling the truth about abortion and working for it to cease.
It is because I still believe so strongly in the right of a woman to protect her body that I oppose abortion. That protection of a woman’s body must begin when her body begins, and it must be hers no matter where she lives - even if she lives in her mother’s womb. The same holds true for her brother.
For years I bought the line that the preborn was just a "glob of tissue." When I ran across a description of a Mid-pregnancy abortion, I was horrified at the description of the syringe’s hub jerking against the mother’s abdomen as her child went through his death throes. I learnt that early abortions are no more kind: the child is pulled apart limb from limb, and sucked through a narrow tube into a bloody bag. Worst of all, I learned that 400 - 500 times a year children are born alive after late abortions, and then made to die by strangulation, drowning, or are just left in a bedpan in a dark closet until their wimpering ceases.
I could not deny that this was hideous violence. Even if there was any doubt that the preborn was a person, if I had seen someone doing this to a kitten I would have been horrified. The feminism that hoped to create a just new society had embraced as essential an act of injustice.
Have Women profited from abortion legality? Someone has profited, but not the woman who undergoes one; the abortion industry makes $500 million dollars a year, and the sale of preborn children’s parts could push that figure into the billions. The women must also undergo a humiliating procedure, an invasion deeper than rape, as the interior of her uterus is crudely vacuumed to remove every scrap of life. Some women will be haunted by the sound of that vacuum all their lives. She can lose her health. In addition to the women who are punctured or killed on abortion tables, there are more subtly damaging effects. The opening of the uterus, the cervix, is designed to happen gradually over several days at the end of pregnancy. In an abortion, the cervix is wrenched open in a matter of minutes. The delicate muscle fibres can be damaged - a damage that may go unnoticed until she is far into a later, wanted pregnancy, and they give way in a miscarriage. By some estimates, the aborted woman’s chance of later miscarriages doubles.
Nicks and scratches can cause scarring which may lead to endmetriosis. If the scars are near the opening of the fallopian tubes, the openings can be partly obliterated. Tiny sperm can swim in and fertilize the egg, but the fertilized egg, hundreds of times larger than a sperm, cannot pass back through into the uterus.
This brings us to the most devastating loss of all: the woman loses her own child. Abortion rhetoric paints the preborn as a parasite, a lump, a "glob of tissue". In fact, it is the woman’s child, as much like her as any child she will ever have, sharing her appearance, talents, and family tree. In abortion, she offers her own child as a sacrifice for the right to avoid change in her life, and it is a sacrifice that will haunt her.
The last loss is of her peace of mind. Planned parenthood recently conceded that as much as 91% of aborted women may experience trauma after abortion, Some suffer depression, nightmares, suicidal thoughts; some wake in the night thinking they hear baby crying. A man who saw his wife gradually disintegrate after her abortion asked, "What kind of trade-off is control of your body for control of your mind?"
For all these losses, women gain nothing but the right to run in place. Abortion doesn’t cure any illness; it doesn’t win any woman a raise. In a culture that treats pregnancy and child-rearing as impediments, it surgically adapts the woman to fit in. If women are an oppressed group, they are the only such group to require surgery in order to be equal.
The question remains, do women want abortion? Not like she wants a Porsche or an ice cream cone. Like an animal caught in a trap, trying to gnaw off its own leg, a woman who seeks abortion is trying to escape a desperate situation by an act of violence and self-loss.
If we were to imagine a society that supported and respected women, we would have to begin with preventing unplanned pregnancies. Contraceptives fail, and half of all aborting women admit they weren’t using them anyway. Thus, preventing unplanned pregnancies will involve a return to sexual responsibility.
Further, we need to make continuing a pregnancy and raising a child less of a burden. Most agree that women should play a part in the public life of our society; their talents and abilities are as valuable as men’s, and there is no reason to restrict then from the employment sphere. But during the years that her children are young, mother and child usually prefer to be together. We must also welcome women back into the work force when they want to return.
Women’s rights are not in conflict with their own children’s rights; the appearance of such a conflict is a sign that something is wrong with our society.
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English court Rules that Pro-Life Opinions are Not Reasonable |
Source: Transcript of Judgement, dated 22 November 1991
Pro-life opinions are unreasonable and individuals who hold such opinions cannot use them to justify their behaviour, an English court has ruled. The ruling was delivered by Judge Pickering of Liverpool Crown Court when he upheld convictions of pro-life activists on charges of violating public order during protests outside an English abortion clinic. They had appeared on two grounds: that English law allows a defence of "reasonable conduct" in alleged violations of public order, and also permits the use of "reasonable force" to prevent crimes, which they believed to be taking place in the abortion clinic.
The Judge described one pro-life individual in the following terms. "He is totally opposed to abortion. The (Abortion) Act of 1967, in the view, is null and void ... (in his view), abortionists should be in prison, the staff should suffer the most drastic punishment, and mothers should suffer lesser punishment. Applying the objective test, such single-minded fanaticism is not reasonable, nor does it lay a foundation on which an argument of reasonable force to prevent crime can be raised." Considering another defendant, he ruled: "We are satisfied that she had, and has that total and fierce opposition to abortion which takes her to the point where we are satisfied that she fails to establish that her conduct was reasonable ...". About a third defendant: " ... the fervour and closed nature of her views on abortion and abortion clinics put out of court on any objective assessment that her conduct was reasonable." And a fourth pro-lifer met a similar end: " a fervent belief of the rightness of his own hostility to abortion, regardless of other opinions as to abortion, confirms to defeat any efforts to show that he was acting reasonably…".
U.S. Having an abortion took first place when a Gallup poll for Newsweek magazine asked 612 adult Americans about a series of situations which "would make you feel very bad about yourself.
Sixty-seven per cent of the women said they would feel very bad about having an abortion and 55 per cent of the men (19 per cent more than in a similar poll 10 years ago) felt the same about their wife or girlfriend having one.
U.S. Just when it seemed that the lowest limit of viability had been reached a new discovery offers promise that even younger premature babies will survive.
The lower limit seemed impassable because oxygen must pass through tiny sacs in the babies’ developing lungs. Only when these sacs are developed and mature enough can oxygen be exchanged by breathing.
Enter a new oxygen-saturated liquid called perflorocarbon. Doctors have immersed several terminally ill premature babies totally in this liquid. They breathed liquid instead of air and oxygen passed from the liquid through their tiny air sacs easier than oxygen from air.
These infants have breathed perflorocarbons for up to 19 hours with no ill-effects, and when they did die it was not from lack of oxygen
A fetus develops fingerprints 9 weeks after conception. It is his or her unique stamp of individuality. No one else can ever have the same l.D..
ARGENTINA: Dr Joseph Mengele, a doctor at the Auschwitz concentration camp who was known as the "Angel of Death" for conducting lethal experiments on prisoners, fled to Argentina after the end f the Second World War where he did abortions for several years, according to documents released in February by the Argentina government. Mengele entered Argentina using a Red Cross passport in 1949. He practised medicine in Buenos Aires in the 1950’s, and acquired "a reputation as a specialist in (illegal) abortions".
CANADA: In the Canadian province of British Columbia, the Health Minister has ordered 33 public hospitals to do abortions. The order is intended to undermine pro-life activities on the democratically-elected hospital boards.
CZECHOSLAVAKIA: One hundred and fifty doctors, scientists and health care personnel got a new perspective on pro-life issues when they attended a conference on scientific aspects of life before birth and other ethical issues in medicine. The conference took place outside the national capital, Prague, and was organized by Czech parliamentarian and pro-life leader, Mrs Maria Kapanova, in cooperation with the Czech Ministry of Health. International coordination was provided by the International Right to Life Federation.
FRANCE: be Draft laws on bioethics will presented to the French Parliament shortly. As currently worded, they would deny the human embryo any specific legal protection on aborting "excess" unborn children in multiple pregnancies.
GERMANY: The manufacturer of the abortion pill "RU 486" has lodged a request with the German government to have the pill tested in Germany, according to an April 24 announcement by a regional health authority. The move is seen as a preliminary step to having the pill marketed in Germany.
ITALY: In the central Italian town of L’Aquila, the pro-life movement took part in the annual Good Friday procession with an image of an unborn baby hanging from a cross. The image was named "Innocence Crucified". Beneath it was written: "So long as you do this to one of these, the least of my brothers, you do it to Me."
UNITED KINGDOM: Britain’s Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC) has issued a series of posters as part of its campaign to mark the 25th anniversary of the enactment of the country’s Abortion Act. One shows a silhouette of a field full of crosses with the caption: "No one visits these graves - they’re buried deep in our consciences." Another shows a model of a dead unborn baby with the words: "This is killing. This is legal! Something’s wrong with our law. Help change it." A third features an outline of an unborn baby above a large red heart containing the message: "Having a heart for unborn children."
USA: Fifteen organizations representing approximately 1.5 million American women have launched a new coalition to promote respect for the right to life. At an April 3 press conference to announce the launch, one of the speakers, Irene Esteves of the Professional Women’s Network, said: "We are all committed to societal change which supports the critical role of motherhood and reflects the dignity of the life of every child." She also gave an outline of the different backgrounds of the women represented in the coalition: "We are single. We are married. We are women with and without children. We are birth mothers and mothers of adopted children. We are at-home parents, working women and heads of households. We are women who have had abortions and even women who have been raped, or were conceived in rape."
USA: New York abortionist who was deprived of his medical licence after he tore an arm off an unborn baby during a failed abortion, had his licence returned on March 4. Dr Abu Hayat had been found guilty of incompetence and gross negligence by a new York state Health Department panel, but has since appealed the decision. He has been given back his licence until the appeal is settled. The baby whose arm he amputated was born the day after the failed abortion.
© The Official Newsletter of Pro-Life Victoria, Edited by Grant Clarke |