abortion
FORMER ABORTIONISTS: For background information on the Society of Centurions, founded by Dr. Philip Ney of Canada, read the interview with American Joan Appleton, a former abortion clinic nurse.
JAPAN: A disabled woman was allegedly forced to have an abortion by an unnamed facility housing the mentally disabled in Sendai province.
(Reading: “Abortion ‘Forced on’ Mentally Disabled Woman,” Mainichi Daily News, 9/19/00)
POLICIES BY STATE: The Alan Guttmacher Institute provides “The Status of Major Abortion-Related Laws and Policies in the States.”
birth control pill
SEASONALE: As medical experts debate whether or not menstrual cycles are necessary, Barr Laboratory conducted a survey and found that five to ten percent of pill users practice skipping “reminder pills” because they do not wish to have a period. Planned Parenthood’s Judy Sutton calls this “the honeymoon trick.” Barr is the pharmaceutical firm developing Seasonale, which “contains the same amounts of estrogen and progestin as regular pills.” The pill would be taken for 84 days in a row before skipping a week, thus causing the user to have only one period per season.
(Reading: “Making Menstrual Cycles Obsolete,” Chicago Sun-Times, 9/18/00; “Barr Files IND for Seasonale Oral Contraceptive“; Barr Labs)
chemical abortion
RU-486: British researchers claim that mifepristone (RU-486) could be marketed as a contraceptive because a four-month trial on 90 women found that the “drug was largely successful in preventing ovulation and was 100 percent effective in preventing pregnancy.” Further trials are recommended.
(Reading: “Abortion Pill May Be Sold as Contraceptive,” Telegraph, 9/22/00)
congress
EMERGENCY ABORTION PILL: The House of Representatives voted 250-170 in favor of language, sponsored by Congressman Tom Coburn, that prohibits the use of tax dollars for the provision of “postcoital emergency contraception, or the provision of a prescription for postcoital emergency contraception, to an unemancipated minor, on the premises or in the facilities of any elementary school or secondary school.” Both houses of Congress have now adopted the language and the bill is in conference.
(Reading: “U.S. House Blocks Funding of Abortifacient for Schools,” 9/21/00, EWTN News; Life Advocacy Briefing, 9/25/00, to obtain a copy, send a request for a subscription to “>Life Advocacy Briefing; to review a copy of the legislation containing the language, H.R. 4577, search at the Library of Congress)
PAIN RELIEF PROMOTION ACT: The American Cancer Society opposes this bill, claiming that of the “more than 1,500 individuals who die of cancer every day in this country–more than half” of them die in pain. The ACS claims that the bill would stifle the use of pain relief medications, even though no such effect is foreseen by the sponsors or major supporters including the International Anti-Euthanasia Task Force and Physicians for Compassionate Care.
(Reading: “Oregon Suicide Bill Surviving Senate,” The Oregonian, 9/24/00)
culture of death
ANTIDOTE: Christopher West explains that Pope John Paul II’s theology of the body is the answer to current anti-life attitudes, saying “This is John Paul’s proposal to the world about the truth of human life. This is the antidote to the culture of death. If the family is the foundation of society, then sexual union is the fountainhead of culture. Ordered towards love and life, sexual union builds a culture of love and life. Ordered against love and life, it builds a culture of utility and death. Welcome to the world in which we live.”
(Reading: “The Sexual Counter-Revolution,” National Catholic Register, 9/2/00, by subscription only; Pope John Paul II’s Theology of the Body by Christopher West)
HUMAN CLONING: A recent press release claims that the CLONAID society, associated with the Raelian movement, has obtained funds to “recreate a baby who died because of medical malpractice.” Strange? This is the same group that offered to fund Richard Seed in 1998 when he claimed he was prepared to clone a human being.
(Reading: “Human Cloning: Rael Officially Presents to the Press the First Surrogate Mothers of the Human Cloning Project,” 9/18/00)
feticide
INDIA: See s series of articles on Foeticide: Research and Analysis.
imposed death
SANCTITY OF LIFE: Neil M. Gorsuch has written a clear analysis of the law, recent Supreme Court decisions and the status of the human being in the euthanasia era. In “The Right to Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia,” Gorsuch addresses history, fairness, autonomy, and utility, and concludes: “The sanctity-of-life view also has implications for the removal of life-sustaining treatment, the use of palliative care and the treatment of incompetent persons. All these end-of-life decisions should be treated consistently, and the developing common law in these areas is largely coming to reflect and embrace the sanctity-of-life position endorsed here.”
(Reading: “The Right to Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia,” Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, Summer 2000, pp. 599-710; NOTE: not available via the internet, but can be acquired by a search of the local library’s electronic database for those possessing library cards.)
infanticide
NEWBORNS: British health care providers write on their experience caring for newborn babies with extreme conditions that may result in death. They question whether it is feasible to “look for indicators of human traits, self-awareness, self-control, a sense of future and of the past, the capacity to relate to others, concerns for others, and communication and curiosity and make our decisions based on these.” And they comment, “Scarce resources makes prioritising admissions inevitable and unpleasant. However, putting financial constraints aside, we feel there are some children for whom it is simply unethical to offer intensive care.”
COMMENT: Sound like Princeton’s Peter Singer?
(Reading: “End-of-Life Decisions for Newborn Infants,” The Lancet, 9/9/00)
in vitro fertilization
BRITAIN: A brother and sister conceived through donor sperm insemination are to bring a test case under the Human Rights Act demanding to know the identity of their father. The case is expected to be one of hundreds following a law change enabling the human rights convention to take affect.
(Reading: “Call to Identify Sperm Donor in Human Rights Test Case,” The Guardian, 9/11/00; also see Human Rights Act)
myth
CONTRACEPTIVE USE REDUCES ABORTION: NOT! The Population Council recently argued that of 133 million births annually around the world, 33 million (one-fourth) are “unintended.” Adding to that number, they claim, are the 46 million annual abortions. The solution, designed to “reduce abortion” is increased contraceptive use. Researchers Charles Westoff and John Bongaarts do not stipulate the early-abortion mechanisms of population controllers’ favorite “contraceptives.”
(Reading: “Increase in Effective Contraceptive Use Can Reduce Abortion Rate, Say Two Leading Demographers,” Population Council press release, 9/13/00; for the alternative view, see “Do Sex Education and Access to Contraception Cut Down on Abortions?” by K. D. Whitehead)
sex education
PARENT POWER OR THE STATE? ABC News reports “An increasing percentage of public school sexual education instructors are teaching students to ‘just say no to sex’ as the only way to prevent pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases, a new study says.”
The Alan Guttmacher Institute is promoting more “comprehensive” sex ed in the schools, and the Kaiser Foundationhas issued a survey suggesting that “most parents, along with educators and students themselves, would expand sex education courses and curriculum.”
American Life League is promoting the outstanding book Parent Power!! by Jim Sedlak, which teaches parents exactly how to have the impact needed to protect their children from the pro-promiscuity mavens trained by Planned Parenthood and their ilk.
siamese twins
BRITAIN: As parents of Jodie and Mary decide whether or not to appeal a Court of Appeals ruling before the House of Lords, Bishop Nikol Cauchi of the island of Gozo (home of the twins’ family) decried the court’s decision saying, “It will allow for the death of other innocent children in similar circumstances.” And Birmingham, England’s, Archbishop Vincent Nichols said the court’s judgment “amounts to the direct killing of a person, whose basic right to life will be denied.” The lawyer representing the twin who will die if the children are separated said he has made the “agonizing decision” not to appeal a court order allowing the surgery, but denies this will set a dangerous precedent. It has also been reported that the parents are seeking a 250,000 British pound payment to tell their story to a tabloid newspaper.
(Reading: SPUC Information Office, 9/26/00; the court decision is linked to SPUC website; “Twins Parents Seek a Quarter Million Pounds for Story,” The Observer, 9/24/00; “Solicitor’s ‘Agony’ over Twins Decision,” BBC News, 9/29/00)
unicef
TRICK OR TREAT? For the latest report on UNICEF and their anti-family agenda, see “Internal UNICEF Memo Reveals Intentions for Child Summit Next Year.”
you
POST ABORTION SYNDROME: Rachel’s Vineyard produces two curricula for post abortion healing plus a weekend retreat manual. To learn about these valuable resources, see Rachel’s Vineyard or call 1-877-HOPE-4-ME.
zinger
TED TURNER: Loving wildlife so much that he is amassing 1.7 million acres of U.S. land, Turner is quoted as saying “Hey, God put [prairie dogs] here for a reason. Who are we to exterminate ’em.”
(Reading: “Ted Turner, NARAL and Prairie Dogs,” Republican National Coalition for Life FaxNotes, 9/22/00)
reflection for prayer
America, it is said, is suffering from intolerance. It is not. It is suffering from tolerance of right and wrong, truth and error, virtue and evil, Christ and chaos. Our country is not nearly so much overrun with the bigoted as it is overrun with the broadminded … In the face of this broadmindedness, what the world needs is intolerance.
-Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, “A Plea for Intolerance,” 1931, cited in “Christ or Chaos.”
FORMER ABORTIONISTS: For background information on the Society of Centurions, founded by Dr. Philip Ney of Canada, read the interview with American Joan Appleton, a former abortion clinic nurse.
JAPAN: A disabled woman was allegedly forced to have an abortion by an unnamed facility housing the mentally disabled in Sendai province.
(Reading: “Abortion ‘Forced on’ Mentally Disabled Woman,” Mainichi Daily News, 9/19/00)
POLICIES BY STATE: The Alan Guttmacher Institute provides “The Status of Major Abortion-Related Laws and Policies in the States.”
birth control pill
SEASONALE: As medical experts debate whether or not menstrual cycles are necessary, Barr Laboratory conducted a survey and found that five to ten percent of pill users practice skipping “reminder pills” because they do not wish to have a period. Planned Parenthood’s Judy Sutton calls this “the honeymoon trick.” Barr is the pharmaceutical firm developing Seasonale, which “contains the same amounts of estrogen and progestin as regular pills.” The pill would be taken for 84 days in a row before skipping a week, thus causing the user to have only one period per season.
(Reading: “Making Menstrual Cycles Obsolete,” Chicago Sun-Times, 9/18/00; “Barr Files IND for Seasonale Oral Contraceptive“; Barr Labs)
chemical abortion
RU-486: British researchers claim that mifepristone (RU-486) could be marketed as a contraceptive because a four-month trial on 90 women found that the “drug was largely successful in preventing ovulation and was 100 percent effective in preventing pregnancy.” Further trials are recommended.
(Reading: “Abortion Pill May Be Sold as Contraceptive,” Telegraph, 9/22/00)
congress
EMERGENCY ABORTION PILL: The House of Representatives voted 250-170 in favor of language, sponsored by Congressman Tom Coburn, that prohibits the use of tax dollars for the provision of “postcoital emergency contraception, or the provision of a prescription for postcoital emergency contraception, to an unemancipated minor, on the premises or in the facilities of any elementary school or secondary school.” Both houses of Congress have now adopted the language and the bill is in conference.
(Reading: “U.S. House Blocks Funding of Abortifacient for Schools,” 9/21/00, EWTN News; Life Advocacy Briefing, 9/25/00, to obtain a copy, send a request for a subscription to “>Life Advocacy Briefing; to review a copy of the legislation containing the language, H.R. 4577, search at the Library of Congress)
PAIN RELIEF PROMOTION ACT: The American Cancer Society opposes this bill, claiming that of the “more than 1,500 individuals who die of cancer every day in this country–more than half” of them die in pain. The ACS claims that the bill would stifle the use of pain relief medications, even though no such effect is foreseen by the sponsors or major supporters including the International Anti-Euthanasia Task Force and Physicians for Compassionate Care.
(Reading: “Oregon Suicide Bill Surviving Senate,” The Oregonian, 9/24/00)
culture of death
ANTIDOTE: Christopher West explains that Pope John Paul II’s theology of the body is the answer to current anti-life attitudes, saying “This is John Paul’s proposal to the world about the truth of human life. This is the antidote to the culture of death. If the family is the foundation of society, then sexual union is the fountainhead of culture. Ordered towards love and life, sexual union builds a culture of love and life. Ordered against love and life, it builds a culture of utility and death. Welcome to the world in which we live.”
(Reading: “The Sexual Counter-Revolution,” National Catholic Register, 9/2/00, by subscription only; Pope John Paul II’s Theology of the Body by Christopher West)
HUMAN CLONING: A recent press release claims that the CLONAID society, associated with the Raelian movement, has obtained funds to “recreate a baby who died because of medical malpractice.” Strange? This is the same group that offered to fund Richard Seed in 1998 when he claimed he was prepared to clone a human being.
(Reading: “Human Cloning: Rael Officially Presents to the Press the First Surrogate Mothers of the Human Cloning Project,” 9/18/00)
feticide
INDIA: See s series of articles on Foeticide: Research and Analysis.
imposed death
SANCTITY OF LIFE: Neil M. Gorsuch has written a clear analysis of the law, recent Supreme Court decisions and the status of the human being in the euthanasia era. In “The Right to Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia,” Gorsuch addresses history, fairness, autonomy, and utility, and concludes: “The sanctity-of-life view also has implications for the removal of life-sustaining treatment, the use of palliative care and the treatment of incompetent persons. All these end-of-life decisions should be treated consistently, and the developing common law in these areas is largely coming to reflect and embrace the sanctity-of-life position endorsed here.”
(Reading: “The Right to Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia,” Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, Summer 2000, pp. 599-710; NOTE: not available via the internet, but can be acquired by a search of the local library’s electronic database for those possessing library cards.)
infanticide
NEWBORNS: British health care providers write on their experience caring for newborn babies with extreme conditions that may result in death. They question whether it is feasible to “look for indicators of human traits, self-awareness, self-control, a sense of future and of the past, the capacity to relate to others, concerns for others, and communication and curiosity and make our decisions based on these.” And they comment, “Scarce resources makes prioritising admissions inevitable and unpleasant. However, putting financial constraints aside, we feel there are some children for whom it is simply unethical to offer intensive care.”
COMMENT: Sound like Princeton’s Peter Singer?
(Reading: “End-of-Life Decisions for Newborn Infants,” The Lancet, 9/9/00)
in vitro fertilization
BRITAIN: A brother and sister conceived through donor sperm insemination are to bring a test case under the Human Rights Act demanding to know the identity of their father. The case is expected to be one of hundreds following a law change enabling the human rights convention to take affect.
(Reading: “Call to Identify Sperm Donor in Human Rights Test Case,” The Guardian, 9/11/00; also see Human Rights Act)
myth
CONTRACEPTIVE USE REDUCES ABORTION: NOT! The Population Council recently argued that of 133 million births annually around the world, 33 million (one-fourth) are “unintended.” Adding to that number, they claim, are the 46 million annual abortions. The solution, designed to “reduce abortion” is increased contraceptive use. Researchers Charles Westoff and John Bongaarts do not stipulate the early-abortion mechanisms of population controllers’ favorite “contraceptives.”
(Reading: “Increase in Effective Contraceptive Use Can Reduce Abortion Rate, Say Two Leading Demographers,” Population Council press release, 9/13/00; for the alternative view, see “Do Sex Education and Access to Contraception Cut Down on Abortions?” by K. D. Whitehead)
sex education
PARENT POWER OR THE STATE? ABC News reports “An increasing percentage of public school sexual education instructors are teaching students to ‘just say no to sex’ as the only way to prevent pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases, a new study says.”
The Alan Guttmacher Institute is promoting more “comprehensive” sex ed in the schools, and the Kaiser Foundationhas issued a survey suggesting that “most parents, along with educators and students themselves, would expand sex education courses and curriculum.”
American Life League is promoting the outstanding book Parent Power!! by Jim Sedlak, which teaches parents exactly how to have the impact needed to protect their children from the pro-promiscuity mavens trained by Planned Parenthood and their ilk.
siamese twins
BRITAIN: As parents of Jodie and Mary decide whether or not to appeal a Court of Appeals ruling before the House of Lords, Bishop Nikol Cauchi of the island of Gozo (home of the twins’ family) decried the court’s decision saying, “It will allow for the death of other innocent children in similar circumstances.” And Birmingham, England’s, Archbishop Vincent Nichols said the court’s judgment “amounts to the direct killing of a person, whose basic right to life will be denied.” The lawyer representing the twin who will die if the children are separated said he has made the “agonizing decision” not to appeal a court order allowing the surgery, but denies this will set a dangerous precedent. It has also been reported that the parents are seeking a 250,000 British pound payment to tell their story to a tabloid newspaper.
(Reading: SPUC Information Office, 9/26/00; the court decision is linked to SPUC website; “Twins Parents Seek a Quarter Million Pounds for Story,” The Observer, 9/24/00; “Solicitor’s ‘Agony’ over Twins Decision,” BBC News, 9/29/00)
unicef
TRICK OR TREAT? For the latest report on UNICEF and their anti-family agenda, see “Internal UNICEF Memo Reveals Intentions for Child Summit Next Year.”
you
POST ABORTION SYNDROME: Rachel’s Vineyard produces two curricula for post abortion healing plus a weekend retreat manual. To learn about these valuable resources, see Rachel’s Vineyard or call 1-877-HOPE-4-ME.
zinger
TED TURNER: Loving wildlife so much that he is amassing 1.7 million acres of U.S. land, Turner is quoted as saying “Hey, God put [prairie dogs] here for a reason. Who are we to exterminate ’em.”
(Reading: “Ted Turner, NARAL and Prairie Dogs,” Republican National Coalition for Life FaxNotes, 9/22/00)
reflection for prayer
America, it is said, is suffering from intolerance. It is not. It is suffering from tolerance of right and wrong, truth and error, virtue and evil, Christ and chaos. Our country is not nearly so much overrun with the bigoted as it is overrun with the broadminded … In the face of this broadmindedness, what the world needs is intolerance.
-Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, “A Plea for Intolerance,” 1931, cited in “Christ or Chaos.”