in this issue
activism: PRAYER / REGISTRATION / VOLUNTEER OPPORTUNITY
adoption: JUSTIFYING ABORTION?
condoms: TRADITIONAL VALUES?
contraceptives: “CURING” HEALTHY WOMEN
planned parenthood: CALIFORNIA / FLORIDA
population control: DID ANYONE NOTICE?
reproductive technology: HUMAN EMBRYOS ARE PEOPLE
reflection for prayer: PHILIPPIANS 2:7-9
activism
PRAYER: We are aware of many groups that are calling for prayer to end abortion on Good Friday, particularly between the hours of noon and 3 p.m. Many Catholic groups are gathering to pray the Rosary and the Stations of the Cross. Please take time, on the day we commemorate the Crucifixion, to ask for God’s help in our battle against the Culture of Death.
REGISTRATION: American Life League will be holding its annual pro-life conference in New Orleans from July 10-14. Speakers will include Judie Brown, Fr. Tom Euteneuer, Dr. Jack Willke, Archbishop Elden Curtiss and Pastor Johnny Hunter. Ambassador Alan Keyes will be the Friday luncheon speaker.
VOLUNTEER OPPORTUNITY: Crossroads is looking for college-age students (between 18 and 30 years old) to participate in its eighth annual pilgrimage for life. One walk begins in San Francisco and ends in Toronto. A second walk begins in St. Petersburg, Fla., and will conclude at the American Life League World Family Conference. After the conference, Crossroads will make a bus pilgrimage to World Youth Day. Spaces are filling up fast, so call now. To get more information, call 540-659-4171 and ask for or , or visit Crossroads online. This journey is offered up to God for the souls of the babies.
adoption
JUSTIFYING ABORTION? A report in the Alan Guttmacher Institute’s publication concludes, “The estimated effect of abortion legalization on adoption rates is sizable and can account for much of the decline in adoptions, particularly of children born to white women, during the early 1970s. These findings support previous studies’ conclusions that abortion legalization led to a reduction in the number of ‘unwanted’ children; such a reduction may have improved average infant health and children’s living conditions.” The Alan Guttmacher Institute is a research arm of Planned Parenthood.
(Reading: “Did Abortion Legalization Reduce the Number Of Unwanted Children? Evidence from Adoptions?” Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health, 1-2/02)
(FYI: Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health was known until recently as Family Planning Perspectives)
condoms
TRADITIONAL VALUES? The New York Times headlined an Agence France-Presse item, “Canada: Traditional values help condom campaign.” Canadian health officials say they’ve been able to sell the “safe sex” concept to Eskimos by packaging condoms in wrappers showing arctic trout, caribou, musk ox and other native animals. Borrowing from a recent campaign in Utah, promoters gave away condoms at the recent Arctic Winter Games.
(Reading: “Canada: Traditional values help condom campaign,” New York Times, 3/22/02)
contraceptives
“CURING” HEALTHY WOMEN: A British newspaper reports on “advances” in treating a condition that is described as a malady — the normal monthly cycle of a healthy woman. Steady doses of birth control chemicals would lengthen each cycle to three or four months. Though the product may go on the market in the U.K. next year, the technology is from the United States — the Eastern Virginia Medical School, an institution that is also involved with in vitro fertilization (see Communique, 1/25/02).
(Reading: “New pill will allow women to have just three periods a year,” The Independent, 3/14/02)
planned parenthood
CALIFORNIA: The Thomas More Law Center will appeal a state superior court ruling that threw out a lawsuit filed against Planned Parenthood. The case “sought to force Planned Parenthood to provide truthful and accurate information to women about the connection between induced abortions and breast cancer.” The Thomas More Center’s Richard Thompson said, “Big abortion has spared no expense to conceal the truth about this grave risk to women.”
(Reading: “Thomas More Law Center appeals court ruling denying trial on connection between abortions and breast cancer,” 3/20/02)
FLORIDA: STOPP International founder Jim Sedlak was among pro-lifers demonstrating outside a new Planned Parenthood center in Naples. Planned Parenthood claims the new office will not do abortions, but Sedlak told the Naples Daily News he’s heard that sort of story before. A Planned Parenthood clinic director in Sarasota denied any plans for abortions, “and then started doing abortions. They (here) will open and say they don’t plan to do abortions to get all the permits and then discover a need for abortion services in the community.”
(Reading: “Residents peacefully picket outside new Planned Parenthood headquarters,” Naples Daily News, 3/21/02)
population control
DID ANYONE NOTICE? Few if any of the major news outlets picked up an Associated Press story concerning a proposed downward revision in the United Nations’ world population estimates. For some time, the U.N. has said the world will contain 10 billion people by 2100. Now, U.N. spokesmen say the figure could be more like 9 billion — or perhaps even 8 billion. Joseph Chamie of the U.N. Population Division calls the implications “momentous,” noting that “the population starts to decline” when families have two or fewer children, which is now the case in most of the world’s developed nations.
(Reading: “U.N. study: Population boom a bust,” Associated Press, 3/12/02)
reproductive technology
HUMAN EMBRYOS ARE PEOPLE: A Los Angeles Times look at embryo adoption raises a curious point: could advances in embryo adoption lead to an erosion of abortion “rights”? The story points out that to Nightlight Christian Adoptions of Fullerton, Calif., “the thousands of fertility clinic embryos are like children locked in frozen orphanages.” The agency helps place those embryos for adoption. Nightlife’s Lori Maze says, “We’ve put a face on the human embryo.” NARAL’s Betsy Cavendish is worried that “a Supreme Court justice surveying the landscape will say there’s a new social consciousness that recognizes that embryos are people and will use that to deny the right to abortion.”
(Reading: “A cold war on embryo adoptions,” Los Angeles Times, 3/22/02)
reflection for prayer
PHILIPPIANS 2:7-9: Christ became obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Because of this, God greatly exalted him and gave to him the name which is above every name.