NEW! Nigerian State Rejects Abortion-Legalizing Bill Pushed by American Group
NEW! Pro-Lifers Relieved with Outcome of Geneva UN Human Rights Council Meeting
NEW! Global "Safe Abortion" Conference Denies Conscience Protections, Risks of Abortion
NEW! Commentary: Is Anyone Really Pro-Abortion?
NEW! 'Maafa 21: Black Genocide in 21st Century America'
NEW! Is Late-Term Abortion Ever Necessary?
Thousands of Late-Term Abortions Will Continue Following Death of George Tiller
Commentary: A Pro-Life D-Day in Nigeria…
Nigerian State Rejects Abortion-Legalizing Bill Pushed by American Group
Thousands of demonstrators show up to protest in pro-life Imo state
The legislature of Imo State, Nigeria voted 13-1 on June 1 against a bill that would have made abortion legal in the pro-life state. The rejection of the Reproductive Rights Bill was called “a victory of the superior Imo cultural values over the new global Western Cultural Revolution,” by the Nigerian newspaper This Day.
Nigeria has long resisted pressure to liberalize its social policies. In April 2007, LifeSiteNews.com reported, in an article about the African Health Ministers’ vote to work towards legalizing abortion throughout the continent, that Nigeria has voiced strong opposition to this push for legal abortion. Dr. Philip Njemanze, chairman of the Nigerian African Anti-Abortion Coalition, had accused some international organizations at the time of promoting abortion, and thereby of violating the Nigerian Constitution.
In the case of the recent bill, one of the strongest sponsors of the effort to legalize abortion was the American organization, International Project Assistance Services, a prominent global abortion-lobbying group. According to This Day, Ipas and Dr. Orji have been distributing handheld abortion devices in the country for three years. IPAS’s Nigerian representative, Dr. Ejike Orji, had declared that the pro-abortion bill would easily be passed by the House.
According to This Day, thousands of demonstrators from all walks of life, from school children, to community leaders, to Catholic priests and religious sisters, showed up to proclaim the dignity of life outside the legislative building. All the seats in the hearing room were filled by 7:00 a.m., though the public hearing was not to commence until noon. The demonstrators carried placards with slogans like “Reproductive right is abortion,” “Imo mothers love children,” and “I am a child not a choice.”
The bill claimed to deal with women’s reproductive health, but, in fact, if passed, it would have made abortion legal throughout all nine months of pregnancy. The most anti-life section of the bill said, in part: “The choice of the woman shall be paramount on matters of (a) control of fertility (b) Timing, number and spacing of their children (c) Choice of methods of fertility control and family planning. The Health of the woman shall be paramount to all considerations of reproductive right.”
The extremely broad language of the bill would have opened up the law to on abortion on demand.
The only group to support the bill at the hearing on June 1st was the National Council of Women Societies (NCWS), who asserted that it would liberate women from dissemination and oppression. After the hearing, however, some of the women present with NCWS confessed that they had been hired to come to the hearing, and that they regretted their involvement.
This Day calls the bill’s defeat a “triumph.” “The defeat of Imo abortion Bill last Monday is yet another triumph of reason,” they say. “It is also a triumph of democracy and the popular will. In a democracy like ours sovereignty belongs and the people ought to wield that sovereignty from time to time in way that favours them [sic].”
Related: World Bank Urging Pro-Abortion Curriculum in Nigeria
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2002/sep/02090906.html ; African Health Ministers Vote to Approve Protocol to Legalize Abortion Throughout Continent
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2007/apr/07041701.html [1June09, Owerri, Nigeria, P. B. Craine, www.LifeSiteNews.com]
Pro-Lifers Relieved with Outcome of Geneva UN Human Rights Council Meeting
The United Nations (UN) Human Rights Council (HRC), meeting this month in Geneva, Switzerland, has adopted a resolution on maternal mortality and human rights that relieves concerns pro-lifers had during the early stages of negotiations.
The battle over the final text concerned two points: how broad a reference to "sexual and reproductive health" would the document contain, and whether member states would retain oversight over a report on maternal mortality from the UN Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights (OHCHR) called for by the resolution.
As Patrick Buckley, who covered the Geneva conference on behalf of the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC), told C-Fam’s “Friday Fax,” the reference to "sexual and reproductive health" is qualified by placing it in the context of the right to enjoy "the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health," and does not expand the meaning of the phrase nor create any new rights.
Member states have consistently rejected attempts to include a right to abortion within the term "reproductive health." New United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stoked concerns that the Obama administration would push to expand the UN definition when she testified before the Foreign Affairs Committee of the United States House of Representatives that she understood “reproductive health” to include abortion.
The second concern was over the report on maternal mortality. Originally, member states were to be shut out from providing input, which was to be left solely in the hands of the OHCHR and UN agencies including the World Health Organization, the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) and the UN C
hildren's Fund (UNICEF). These agencies have sought to link "universal access to reproductive health" – a broad term abortion advocates claim includes a right to abortion – with maternal mortality reduction.
Member states debated and rejected including a "reproductive health" target when they adopted the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in 2000. UNFPA representatives in particular have nevertheless openly stated that adding a "reproductive health" target under the maternal health MDG is essential to increasing global legitimacy and funding for the reproductive rights agenda.
The HRC resolution retains the agreed-upon language where it explicitly references MDG 5, which it limits to “improving maternal health.” This can be seen as a victory for pro-lifers who lobbied delegates on the document language.
The involvement of the pro-abortion Center of Reproductive Rights, an abortion advocacy public interest law firm, in promoting this month’s HRC resolution had also raised red flags.
Critics contest any linkage between abortion and maternal mortality reduction. Buckley stressed that "Maternal mortality stems from poor nutrition, lack of basic health care such as adequate pre- and post-natal care, transportation et cetera, rather than lack of legal abortion."
The HRC is an inter-governmental body within the UN system comprised of 47 states founded by the General Assembly to promote and protect human rights at the international level. The final HRC resolution is expected to be presented to the full UN General Assembly this autumn, where it will be voted on by all major states.
[19June09, Katharina Rothweiler, New York, C-Fam; 19June, www.LifeSiteNews.com]
Global "Safe Abortion" Conference Denies Conscience Protections, Risks of Abortion
A year-and-a-half after the "Global 'Safe Abortion'" conference took place in London, abortion advocates Marie Stopes International and Ipas just released the conference report detailing the abortion movement’s worldwide strategy.
While organizers claimed that the primary objective of the conference was to "save women's lives and reduce maternal mortality," the report reveals that participants prioritized a so-called "right" to "safe and legal abortion" above all else – dismissing any evidence of its harmful effects on women and even denying the right of conscientious medical professionals to object to participating in abortions.
The 800 conference participants, culled from the world's major abortion advocacy groups, crafted and signed the "Global Call to Action for Women’s Access to Safe Abortion" demanding that women everywhere "have full access to legal, voluntary, safe, and affordable abortions as part of comprehensive sexual and reproductive health care."
The Call to Action also demanded that governments reform their laws and policies "at all levels" to ensure "rights to contraception and safe abortion," and that medical schools provide "physicians, nurses, midwives, and other healthcare workers" with abortion training.
Presenters lamented that even where abortion is legal, there are technical and policy barriers to contend with, such as shortages of trained, authorized healthcare personnel, particularly in rural areas. Strategies to address this lack of access to abortion focused on training non-physician "mid-level providers," such as nurses and midwives, and promoting "medication abortion" to "facilitate" the "expulsion of uterine contents," as well as undermining conscience protections relied on by physicians, nurses and other health care workers opposed to taking unborn life.
Advocates were encouraged to press for greater liberalization where abortion is permitted "to preserve the woman’s health" by urging abortionists to argue that abortion was necessary to achieve the World Health Organization’s definition of health as “a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.”
Apart from pushing for legalization, conference participants were urged to argue for the broadest interpretation of existing laws and policies and attack "other medically unnecessary administrative constraints that hinder access," such as requirements for spousal and parental consent and multiple physician authorizations. They were also urged to combat pro-lifers’ success in linking “pregnancy termination” to cancer, infertility and severe psychological trauma.
While those involved in the conference purported to help women by lowering maternal mortality through legalizing abortion, a new publication from National Right to Life (NRLC) points out that the lack of modern medicine and quality health care, not the prohibition of abortion, "results in high maternal mortality rates." Contrary to "safe abortion" advocates’ claims, NRLC argues that liberalization "in the developing world, where maternal health care is poor, […] would increase the number of women who die or are harmed by abortion."
Indeed, a recent United Nations treaty body submission by the pro-abortion Center for Reproductive Rights (CRR) conceded that the nation of Sri Lanka had made great strides in lowering maternal mortality while retaining laws penalizing abortion that CRR considers among the world’s “most restrictive.” [19June09, Samantha Singson, New York, C-Fam; 19June, www.LifeSiteNews.com]
Commentary: Is Anyone Really Pro-Abortion?
By Donald DeMarco PhD
In his final debate with Senator McCain, Barack Obama declared, in his usual emphatic manner, “No one is pro-abortion.” Obama has an idealized notion of human beings (Republicans excepted), while perhaps feigning ignorance of what is really going on. Behind Obama’s declaration is the seemingly plausible hypothesis that no woman would ever get pregnant for the sole purpose of having an abortion. The grim facts, nevertheless, refute this hypothesis.
Aborting for bonus money
Consider the current situation in Australia. In an attempt to reverse the country’s plummeting birthrate, the government of Australia pays women $5,000 for each successful birth, as reported by LifeSiteNews.com (October 23, 2008). It also awards that same amount, on “compassionate” grounds, in the case of a stillbirth. However, since late-term abortions are registered as stillbirths, a woman choosing an abortion at this time in her pregnancy is also eligible for the $5,000. As a result, according to the Australia Associated Press, some women routinely conceive for the purpose of aborting late-term in order to collect the bonus money. One woman is reported to have had three such abortions.
‘Beautiful’ abortion
The Australian example is by no means unique. On February 1, 2002, LifeSiteNews.com reported that some female athletes were deliberately getting pregnant and having early abortions in order to improve muscle strength. In “The Choices,” an article appearing in the January/February 1994 issue of Mother Jones, a writer identifying herself as “D. Redman” confesses that she felt “almost heroic” after obtaining a chemical abortion because the procedure was then experimental and thus made her a pioneer for other women. “At last,” she writes, “the blood I’ve been
praying for. I look at the women around me and think how beautiful we are in our rebellion…”
Abortion as religion, art and entertainment
Also consider Ginette Paris’ book, The Sacrament of Abortion, in which, from a purely pagan perspective, she describes abortion as sacred. Similarly, Brenda Peterson, writing for New Age Journal (“Sister Against Sister: Re-Thinking Abortion Rhetoric,” September/October 1993) refers to abortion as a “sacrament” and a “sacred act of compassion.”
Cold and callous indifference for unborn human life may have reached its absolute zero in the “art” project of Yale University student Aliza Shvarts. On April 17, 2008 the Yale Daily News reported that Ms. Shvarts claimed to have artificially inseminated herself over a nine-month period “as often as possible” and then induced miscarriages by means of herbal abortifacient pills. The filmed record of her activities (we cannot be too specific here) constitutes her senior thesis presentation. The April 18, 2008 Yale Daily News reported that the Yale Women’s Center defended Shvarts, stating, “Aliza Shvarts’ body is an instrument over which she should be free to exercise full discretion.”
The New York Times (November 10, 1985) reported that two abortions were committed on women at a feminist conference in Barcelona, Spain. When the bottled remains of the babies were presented to the audience of 3,000 feminists, according to Times’ reported Edward Schumacher, “The hall rocked with cheers.”
Indeed, there are women who are truly pro-abortion in the sense of getting pregnant for the sole purpose of having an abortion. They do it for money, to gain a competitive edge, because they think it is a sacrament or a sacred act, for art’s sake or for the feminist cause.
A spreading plague
Abortion has radically dehumanized and devalued preborn babies. It has engendered attitudes of cold-heartedness, narcissism and violence. Who knows how far this contagion will continue to spread, how many people it will affect and in how many ways? Abortion is an evil, and it is the nature of evil to spread until it is checked. It is an unleashing of death that spreads like a plague throughout society in increasingly sinister ways. Abortion is a choice for death, and its long shadow haunts all of us.
In his 1968 novel, Couples, John Updike was being more prophetic than he realized when he noted the after-effects of abortion: “Death, once invited in, leaves his muddy boot prints everywhere.” Commenting on this episode in the novel, in which a character procures an abortion, constitutional lawyer John T. Noonan, Jr. writes, “Symbolically the abortion seals a course of infidelity. Conclusively it becomes death personified.” (How to Argue About Abortion, published by the Ad Hoc Committee in Defense of Life, 1974)
There is no middle ground between birth and abortion. The proper response to abortion is not to seek a middle ground that does not exist, but to end abortion and, in so doing, end the evils that follow in its wake.
[Dr. Donald DeMarco is professor emeritus at SJU in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, and an adjunct professor at Holy Apostles College and Seminary in Cromwell, Connecticut as well as Mater Ecclesiae College in Greenville, Rhode Island. He is also the author of 22 books and a corresponding member of the Pontifical Academy for Life. This article was published in the March-April 2009 issue of Celebrate Life, American Life League’s bimonthly publication; ALL Pro-Life Today, 19 June 2009)
'Maafa 21: Black Genocide in 21st Century America'
Maafa 21 (the word "Maafa" is derived from a Kiswahili word and means "African Holocaust" or "Holocaust of Enslavement") is a well-researched and informative film that shows the connection between slavery/racism, the American eugenics movement — of which Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger was an influential figure — Nazi Germany, and legalized abortion. [RenewAmerica, http://www.renewamerica.us/columns/abbott/090618; ALL Pro-Life Today, 18 June 2009)
Is Late-Term Abortion Ever Necessary?
In the aftermath of the killing of George Tiller, the Kansas abortionist, on May 31, 2009, we have heard praises of his compassion and courage in performing late-term abortions. But is late-term abortion (or any abortion) ever really necessary? Does the demise of a clinic performing late-term abortions leave a "void" that is harmful to women?
[Family Research Council, http://www.frc.org/infocus/is-late-term-abortion-ever-necessary; ALL Pro-Life Today, 19 June 2009]
Thousands of Late-Term Abortions Will Continue Following Death of George Tiller
The killing of late-term abortion practitioner George Tiller has focused the nation's attention on abortion, but it hasn't shown the spotlight on the number of late-term abortions done every year. Even after Tiller's death, which pro-life groups have thoroughly condemned, late-term abortions will continue. According to the Centers for Disease control, 1.3 percent of all abortions — nearly 9,000 a year — are done after 21 weeks into the pregnancy. That's 8,482 babies who, in 2005 alone, could have potentially survived outside their mother's womb, according to the very latest medical research. The Alan Guttmacher Institute, which is formerly the research arm of Planned Parenthood, the nation's largest abortion business, has been noted by both sides as having more accurate figures than the CDC. It notes 13,000 late-term abortions annually done after 21 weeks of pregnancy.
[6June09, Washington, DC, LifeNews.com]
Commentary: A Pro-Life D-Day in Nigeria
In Nigeria, we celebrate victory over IPAS, IPPF, and other pro-abortionists who sponsored some state lawmakers to put up the Imo State Abortion Bill, termed Women’s Reproductive Rights Bill 2009, a domesticated version of CEDAW.
The law would have legitimized the killing of millions of Africans for use in Fetal and Embryonic Stem Cell Trafficking to Europe and America.
This victory which came on 1June09 was well deserved. Today we celebrate the D-Day over the evil of Fascism and Nazism that established the killing fields in Europe like Buchenwald, Germany. As much as we celebrate this great historic event of victory over the evil of Fascism that perpetuated the Holocaust, we must remember that today Buchenwald is in every corner of every modern city around the World, the killing fields of abortion centers are more lethal and numerous than the cremation ovens of Buchenwald, fascists killed in thousands, abortionists kill in billions. Contraceptive chemicals are as foeticidal to our unborn young brothers and sisters, as were gas death chambers to victims of the Holocaust.
Just like the Great Economic Depression was associated with the evils of the Holocaust, so is the Worldwide Economic Crisis linked to the Holocaust of Abortion, Contraception and Embryonic Stem Cell Research.
World Leaders at the time of the Holocaust were consumed with oratory and style but not on substance of what they had to
do to save the victims of the Holocaust, in much same way as today, the opinion polls rate World Leaders by how they look and how the say what they say, but not on the substance or content on what they need to do to save the most vulnerable and weak of humanity – the unborn child.
It is unfortunate that most of today’s World Political leaders are not charismatic on the most important question of our time, the Future of Humanity, but pick and choose issues of peripheral essence to score momentary poll points.
Just as the Nazis justified the gas chambers as providing medical advancement for Nazi medicine, advocates of embryonic stem cell research justify the killing of millions of human beings at embryonic stage to seek illusive cures of diseases.
We agree with President Obama that the D-Day is a rebuke to the conscience of all those who deny the Holocaust, but we add that, it also includes all those who deny the full human rights of the unborn child and the embryo. The D-Day reminds us that our victory over the Culture of Death is near, and that the Culture of Death will collapse like the other litany of evil ideologies like Slavery, Fascism, Racism, and Communism. (AAAC, Global Prolife Alliance]