action alert
STEVEN BECKER CASE: (see Communque 8/14/00 for background). Jim Cole, general counsel for Missouri Right to Life, is preparing an amicus brief in the case arguing in favor of Steven Becker’s right to life. If you are interested in joining the amicus brief on behalf of an organization, or individually, please e-mail “>Jim Cole or call 314-727-0101.
abortion
BREAST CANCER: Britain’s Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists has validated the work of endocrinologist Joel Brind, Ph.D., in its evidence-based guidelines, and again in recent press reports though pro-abortion forces within RCOG are working to deny what is substantiated in the Royal College’s own publication.
(Reading: “Doctors to Alert Millions: Abortion Can Lead to Breast Cancer,” ALL news release, 8/22/00; “Abortion Could Cause Breast Cancer,” Daily Mail (UK), 8/13/00; “Doctors Dismiss Abortion Risk Report,” BBC, 8/14/00; “The Care of Women Requesting Induced Abortion,” RCOG, with the “Information for Women” section specifically addressing Dr. Brind’s research; for details and an interview, contact Joel Brind, Ph.D.)
MURDER: “None Dare Risk Murder” is the theme of a new web site, quoting the 1974 Vatican Declaration on Procured Abortion: “From the moral point of view this is certain: even if a doubt existed concerning whether the fruit of conception is already a human person, it is objectively a grave sin to dare to risk murder. ‘The one who will be a man is already one.'” For more information, visit None Dare Risk Murder.
(Reading: Vatican Declaration on Procured Abortion)
birth control and health insurance coverage
ESCALATING PROBLEM: Planned Parenthood is assisting pharmacist Jennifer Erickson of Seattle in her lawsuit against Bartell Drug Company, a firm that will not provide her with birth control coverage. Planned Parenthood has also established the web site “Cover my pills” which provides news, and state legislative information.
COMMENT: Columnist Domenico Bettinelli, Jr. writes: “So let’s get it straight. If a woman wants to sleep with her boyfriend without consequences or a couple wants to be married and have sex whenever they want, but not children, I should have to pay for this through my increased premiums. Isn’t the decision to have contracepted sex her personal lifestyle choice? If I decided that I wanted to drink myself to stuttering oblivion every weekend, should my health insurer cover the cost of aspirin? Just what is the purpose of health insurance?”
(Reading: For pro-life arguments against the question of health insurance coverage for recreational drugs (contracepted sex), see The Pill Bill; “A Tough Pill to Swallow, Catholic World News”)
birth control pill
FEMALE ATHLETES SAY NO! A British doctor at the World Youth Rowing Championships, held this month in Croatia, reports “nearly 30 percent of young women rowers in Britain are resisting the strong pressure from coaches and team doctors to take contraceptive medication (the ‘pill’) to alleviate irregular cycles.” BOMA reports “these young women learn from our website (Billings Method) that it is quite normal for young women to become ‘irregular’ when there is physical and emotional stress delaying ovulation. They need NOT go on the ‘pill.'”
(Reading: “Why Is Quality Always in the Minority?” Population BOM Newsletter, 8/00, to subscribe: “>)
PRECOITAL: Researchers investigated the possibilities of using a progestogen-only (single tablets of 30 mg levonorgestrel or 350 mg norethisterone) pill as a “pre-coital contraceptive” and tested the concept on 16 women. Further studies “in vitro and possibly in vivo” should be carried out to assess efficacy. Author/researcher/pharmacist John Wilks points out that if the method is approved, “it can be predicted that the pregnancy rate from this method will be very high, as will the attendant abortion rate.” And in a letter to the editor of the Daily Telegraph, he asks if the progestogen offered to women will be “one of those recently documented as the cause of death of New Zealand women, and reported in The Lancet, or will it be one of those associated with an increased risk of stroke and reported in the July 5, 2000, edition of JAMA?
(Reading: “A Pre-coital Pill? A Preliminary In Vitro Study,” British Journal of Family Planning, 2000:26(3):165-66; “Before-sex Pill to Get Aussie Test,” the Daily Telegraph-Mirror, 7/12/00, p. 3; letter to the editor by John Wilks, B. Pharm, MPS, MACCP, 7/13/00)
WARNING: To advocates of the argument that taking the pill can make menstruation optional, (see Communiqué, 8/18/00) Ellen Grant, M.D., author of The Bitter Pill: How Safe Is the Perfect Contraceptive? points out that “the claim that contraceptive pills are safer than pregnancy is unlikely to stand up to close scrutiny.” Dr. Grant makes clear that a woman attempting to avoid menstruation by using the pill is asking for serious pathologies, some of which are life threatening. “And to top it all, breast cancer has been found to be increased after very short-term use of oral contraceptives (mean three years).”
(Reading: “Dangers of Suppressing Menstruation,” The Lancet, vol. 356, 8/5/00, p. 513, paid subscription required)
brain death
NOT! Dr. Jon Yun, an oncologist who advocated the brain death theory in the past, testified recently that “we must not jump to the conclusion that a dubious definition of death-the medical hypothesis of brain death-is in fact death.”
(Reading: “Human Experimentation on ‘Brain Dead’ Encouraged by Cloners,” Catholic World News Briefs, 7/28/00; for further documentation see “Heart Transplants: Is Brain Death Real Death?” and “When Is a Person Really Dead?“)
imposed death (euthanasia)
AGING: A new study into 11,000 hospital cases in Scotland has indicated that patients as young as 49 are being denied life-saving treatment on the grounds of their advanced years and that ‘significantly more of the elderly died than would be predicted.”
(Reading: News briefs, Society for the Protection of the Unborn Child, 8/11/00, for details you can visit Age Concern Scotland and address your request for details to Jane Barrow, and visit SPUC)
VENTILATORS: In Britain a High Court gave doctors permission to withdraw a ventilator from a 19-year-old-man suffering from motor neuron disease.
COMMENT: We would remind Communiqué readers: “A ventilator (commonly, but less accurately called a “respirator”) is used to move air and/or oxygen in and out of the patient’s lungs, which is vital for survival. More often than not, a ventilator is ordinary means of treatment and should be used. However, there are exceptional cases when the ventilator is extraordinary means and continuation of this breathing assistance might be optional. Ventilators are used to support life while healing occurs. Patients often can be weaned off ventilators to breathe without further help.”
(Reading: News briefs, Society for the Protection of the Unborn Child, 8/11/00; see “Do I Have to Spend My Last Days Hooked Up to a Machine?” for additional information)
norplant
RECALL: Wyeth-Ayerst has suspended shipments of certain lots of Norplant pending further investigation into “shelf-life stability problems” with certain lots. Apparently the lots in question render the abortifacient ineffective. Providers are removing the specified lots from their shelves. Pharmacists for Life reports that American Home Products, parent company to Wyeth-Ayerst, experienced “another 3.6 percent” drop in stock on Friday, 8/18/00.
COMMENT: Bogomir Kuhar, PharmD, FASCP, of Pharmacists for Life writes. “The amount of levonorgestrel was evidently less than stated on the packet. One can only wonder: how many babies will be surgically aborted if they are conceived in mothers using the affected lots of Norplant?”
(Reading: Wyeth-Ayerst letter, 8/10/00, posted on the FDA website; Pharmacists for Life website; “Clinics Begin Removing Norplant,” Star Tribune, 8/18/00)
planned parenthood
FEDERAL FUNDING: The General Accounting Office issued GAO/HEHS-00-147R “Federal Funds to Nonprofit Organizations” to Sen. Phil Gramm and Rep. Chris Smith on July 18, 2000 regarding “reproductive health: federal funds provided to four nonprofit organizations.” The report is available on the web in PDF format. The millions of tax dollars are reported for 1997 and 1998 as dispensed to Population Council, IPPF, PPFA and Alan Guttmacher Institute.
politics
PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE BUCHANAN: Reform Party presidential candidate Patrick J. Buchanan said, during his acceptance speech: “What about the forgotten Americans of Philadelphia (at the GOP convention)? I mean America’s unborn children, another million of whom will die this year without ever seeing the light of day. For these lost innocents, there was barely a word of compassion from the party of compassionate conservatism. Well, Republicans may be running away from life, but as long as there is life left in me, I will never run away-because their cause is my cause, and their cause is God’s cause.”
(Reading: Buchanan acceptance speech)
population control
AGING POPULATIONS: The United Nations has issued a report called “Replacement Migration: Is It a Solution to Declining and Aging Populations?” The report contains observations including “maintaining current levels through replacement migration alone seems out of reach, because of the extraordinarily large number of migrants that would be required.”
(Reading: “Large Immigration Flows Could Help Offset Declines in Developed Populations,” Family Planning Perspectives, 5-6/00, pp. 147-8)
stem cell research
SPARE PERSONS? With the NIH guidelines allowing the use of “spare” embryonic babies for stem cell research now firmly in place, it is no coincidence that so-called bioethicists like George Annas have laid the groundwork for medical professionals to advise parents about “disposition” of “stored” embryos not needed for in vitro fertilization (see “Ulysses and the Fate of Frozen Embryos: Reproduction, Research and Destruction?” by George Annas in the New England Journal of Medicine, 8/3/00, pp. 373-376). Annas writes that “human embryos are not waste products, and if we really mean to respect the human embryo because of what it represents, we must at least ensure that the people who created it for purposes of procreation decide its fate together at a time when the decision is likely to matter.”
COMMENT: HELLO! The human embryo is a person at fertilization. This person is not “representing” anything but IS who she is, period! Thus her parents have already procreated her and are already her parents. The problem is that there are too many among us who choose to promote false science for the purpose of dehumanizing certain people for utilitarian purposes. Murder is still murder and no amount of verbal gymnastics will change that unalterable fact.
(Reading: For further commentary on this matter, visit the American Bioethics Advisory Commission and check out the writings of Dianne Irving, Ph.D., Donal P. O’Mathuna, Ph.D., and Eugene F. Diamond, M.D. You will learn that human personhood is not negotiable.)
WHY DO IT AT ALL? C. Ben Mitchell, a fellow with the Center for Bioethics and Human Dignity, has written a commentary for Christianity Today on stem cell research.
united nations
MILLENNIUM SUMMIT: LifeSite has prepared a special report dated 8/18/00 on this upcoming meeting which some claim is shrouded in secrecy.
vaccines
SIGN PETITION ON LINE: To seek a change in policy from Merck and Company, requesting that they develop alternative childhood vaccines NOT made from cells of aborted children, join Campaign for Ethical Vaccines US 2000: Children of God for Life.
zinger
WHEN MURDER ISN’T! Columnist Harold Henderson writes “George W. Bush, Trent Lott, and Tom DeLay ‘may truly and sincerely think abortion is murder,’ writes Jacob Weisberg in Slate (July 14). But they know that ‘overturning Roe would be about the worst thing that could possibly happen to the Republican Party. A genuine threat to the legal right to abortion would energize a grassroots liberalism not seen in this country since the 1960s.”
(Reading: City File, Section 1, 8/11/00, Chicago Reader)
reflection for prayer
Love is sufficient of itself; it gives pleasure by itself and because of itself. It is its own merit, its own reward. Love looks for no cause outside itself, no effect beyond itself. Its profit lies in its practice. I love because I love; I love that I may love. Love is a great thing so long as it continually returns to its fountainhead, flows back to its source, always drawing from there the water which constantly replenishes it. Of all the movements, sensations and feelings of the soul, love is the only one in which the creature can respond to the Creator and make some sort of similar return however unequal though it be.
-Bernard, abbot and doctor of the Church, 1090-1153 AD
STEVEN BECKER CASE: (see Communque 8/14/00 for background). Jim Cole, general counsel for Missouri Right to Life, is preparing an amicus brief in the case arguing in favor of Steven Becker’s right to life. If you are interested in joining the amicus brief on behalf of an organization, or individually, please e-mail “>Jim Cole or call 314-727-0101.
abortion
BREAST CANCER: Britain’s Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists has validated the work of endocrinologist Joel Brind, Ph.D., in its evidence-based guidelines, and again in recent press reports though pro-abortion forces within RCOG are working to deny what is substantiated in the Royal College’s own publication.
(Reading: “Doctors to Alert Millions: Abortion Can Lead to Breast Cancer,” ALL news release, 8/22/00; “Abortion Could Cause Breast Cancer,” Daily Mail (UK), 8/13/00; “Doctors Dismiss Abortion Risk Report,” BBC, 8/14/00; “The Care of Women Requesting Induced Abortion,” RCOG, with the “Information for Women” section specifically addressing Dr. Brind’s research; for details and an interview, contact Joel Brind, Ph.D.)
MURDER: “None Dare Risk Murder” is the theme of a new web site, quoting the 1974 Vatican Declaration on Procured Abortion: “From the moral point of view this is certain: even if a doubt existed concerning whether the fruit of conception is already a human person, it is objectively a grave sin to dare to risk murder. ‘The one who will be a man is already one.'” For more information, visit None Dare Risk Murder.
(Reading: Vatican Declaration on Procured Abortion)
birth control and health insurance coverage
ESCALATING PROBLEM: Planned Parenthood is assisting pharmacist Jennifer Erickson of Seattle in her lawsuit against Bartell Drug Company, a firm that will not provide her with birth control coverage. Planned Parenthood has also established the web site “Cover my pills” which provides news, and state legislative information.
COMMENT: Columnist Domenico Bettinelli, Jr. writes: “So let’s get it straight. If a woman wants to sleep with her boyfriend without consequences or a couple wants to be married and have sex whenever they want, but not children, I should have to pay for this through my increased premiums. Isn’t the decision to have contracepted sex her personal lifestyle choice? If I decided that I wanted to drink myself to stuttering oblivion every weekend, should my health insurer cover the cost of aspirin? Just what is the purpose of health insurance?”
(Reading: For pro-life arguments against the question of health insurance coverage for recreational drugs (contracepted sex), see The Pill Bill; “A Tough Pill to Swallow, Catholic World News”)
birth control pill
FEMALE ATHLETES SAY NO! A British doctor at the World Youth Rowing Championships, held this month in Croatia, reports “nearly 30 percent of young women rowers in Britain are resisting the strong pressure from coaches and team doctors to take contraceptive medication (the ‘pill’) to alleviate irregular cycles.” BOMA reports “these young women learn from our website (Billings Method) that it is quite normal for young women to become ‘irregular’ when there is physical and emotional stress delaying ovulation. They need NOT go on the ‘pill.'”
(Reading: “Why Is Quality Always in the Minority?” Population BOM Newsletter, 8/00, to subscribe: “>)
PRECOITAL: Researchers investigated the possibilities of using a progestogen-only (single tablets of 30 mg levonorgestrel or 350 mg norethisterone) pill as a “pre-coital contraceptive” and tested the concept on 16 women. Further studies “in vitro and possibly in vivo” should be carried out to assess efficacy. Author/researcher/pharmacist John Wilks points out that if the method is approved, “it can be predicted that the pregnancy rate from this method will be very high, as will the attendant abortion rate.” And in a letter to the editor of the Daily Telegraph, he asks if the progestogen offered to women will be “one of those recently documented as the cause of death of New Zealand women, and reported in The Lancet, or will it be one of those associated with an increased risk of stroke and reported in the July 5, 2000, edition of JAMA?
(Reading: “A Pre-coital Pill? A Preliminary In Vitro Study,” British Journal of Family Planning, 2000:26(3):165-66; “Before-sex Pill to Get Aussie Test,” the Daily Telegraph-Mirror, 7/12/00, p. 3; letter to the editor by John Wilks, B. Pharm, MPS, MACCP, 7/13/00)
WARNING: To advocates of the argument that taking the pill can make menstruation optional, (see Communiqué, 8/18/00) Ellen Grant, M.D., author of The Bitter Pill: How Safe Is the Perfect Contraceptive? points out that “the claim that contraceptive pills are safer than pregnancy is unlikely to stand up to close scrutiny.” Dr. Grant makes clear that a woman attempting to avoid menstruation by using the pill is asking for serious pathologies, some of which are life threatening. “And to top it all, breast cancer has been found to be increased after very short-term use of oral contraceptives (mean three years).”
(Reading: “Dangers of Suppressing Menstruation,” The Lancet, vol. 356, 8/5/00, p. 513, paid subscription required)
brain death
NOT! Dr. Jon Yun, an oncologist who advocated the brain death theory in the past, testified recently that “we must not jump to the conclusion that a dubious definition of death-the medical hypothesis of brain death-is in fact death.”
(Reading: “Human Experimentation on ‘Brain Dead’ Encouraged by Cloners,” Catholic World News Briefs, 7/28/00; for further documentation see “Heart Transplants: Is Brain Death Real Death?” and “When Is a Person Really Dead?“)
imposed death (euthanasia)
AGING: A new study into 11,000 hospital cases in Scotland has indicated that patients as young as 49 are being denied life-saving treatment on the grounds of their advanced years and that ‘significantly more of the elderly died than would be predicted.”
(Reading: News briefs, Society for the Protection of the Unborn Child, 8/11/00, for details you can visit Age Concern Scotland and address your request for details to Jane Barrow, and visit SPUC)
VENTILATORS: In Britain a High Court gave doctors permission to withdraw a ventilator from a 19-year-old-man suffering from motor neuron disease.
COMMENT: We would remind Communiqué readers: “A ventilator (commonly, but less accurately called a “respirator”) is used to move air and/or oxygen in and out of the patient’s lungs, which is vital for survival. More often than not, a ventilator is ordinary means of treatment and should be used. However, there are exceptional cases when the ventilator is extraordinary means and continuation of this breathing assistance might be optional. Ventilators are used to support life while healing occurs. Patients often can be weaned off ventilators to breathe without further help.”
(Reading: News briefs, Society for the Protection of the Unborn Child, 8/11/00; see “Do I Have to Spend My Last Days Hooked Up to a Machine?” for additional information)
norplant
RECALL: Wyeth-Ayerst has suspended shipments of certain lots of Norplant pending further investigation into “shelf-life stability problems” with certain lots. Apparently the lots in question render the abortifacient ineffective. Providers are removing the specified lots from their shelves. Pharmacists for Life reports that American Home Products, parent company to Wyeth-Ayerst, experienced “another 3.6 percent” drop in stock on Friday, 8/18/00.
COMMENT: Bogomir Kuhar, PharmD, FASCP, of Pharmacists for Life writes. “The amount of levonorgestrel was evidently less than stated on the packet. One can only wonder: how many babies will be surgically aborted if they are conceived in mothers using the affected lots of Norplant?”
(Reading: Wyeth-Ayerst letter, 8/10/00, posted on the FDA website; Pharmacists for Life website; “Clinics Begin Removing Norplant,” Star Tribune, 8/18/00)
planned parenthood
FEDERAL FUNDING: The General Accounting Office issued GAO/HEHS-00-147R “Federal Funds to Nonprofit Organizations” to Sen. Phil Gramm and Rep. Chris Smith on July 18, 2000 regarding “reproductive health: federal funds provided to four nonprofit organizations.” The report is available on the web in PDF format. The millions of tax dollars are reported for 1997 and 1998 as dispensed to Population Council, IPPF, PPFA and Alan Guttmacher Institute.
politics
PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE BUCHANAN: Reform Party presidential candidate Patrick J. Buchanan said, during his acceptance speech: “What about the forgotten Americans of Philadelphia (at the GOP convention)? I mean America’s unborn children, another million of whom will die this year without ever seeing the light of day. For these lost innocents, there was barely a word of compassion from the party of compassionate conservatism. Well, Republicans may be running away from life, but as long as there is life left in me, I will never run away-because their cause is my cause, and their cause is God’s cause.”
(Reading: Buchanan acceptance speech)
population control
AGING POPULATIONS: The United Nations has issued a report called “Replacement Migration: Is It a Solution to Declining and Aging Populations?” The report contains observations including “maintaining current levels through replacement migration alone seems out of reach, because of the extraordinarily large number of migrants that would be required.”
(Reading: “Large Immigration Flows Could Help Offset Declines in Developed Populations,” Family Planning Perspectives, 5-6/00, pp. 147-8)
stem cell research
SPARE PERSONS? With the NIH guidelines allowing the use of “spare” embryonic babies for stem cell research now firmly in place, it is no coincidence that so-called bioethicists like George Annas have laid the groundwork for medical professionals to advise parents about “disposition” of “stored” embryos not needed for in vitro fertilization (see “Ulysses and the Fate of Frozen Embryos: Reproduction, Research and Destruction?” by George Annas in the New England Journal of Medicine, 8/3/00, pp. 373-376). Annas writes that “human embryos are not waste products, and if we really mean to respect the human embryo because of what it represents, we must at least ensure that the people who created it for purposes of procreation decide its fate together at a time when the decision is likely to matter.”
COMMENT: HELLO! The human embryo is a person at fertilization. This person is not “representing” anything but IS who she is, period! Thus her parents have already procreated her and are already her parents. The problem is that there are too many among us who choose to promote false science for the purpose of dehumanizing certain people for utilitarian purposes. Murder is still murder and no amount of verbal gymnastics will change that unalterable fact.
(Reading: For further commentary on this matter, visit the American Bioethics Advisory Commission and check out the writings of Dianne Irving, Ph.D., Donal P. O’Mathuna, Ph.D., and Eugene F. Diamond, M.D. You will learn that human personhood is not negotiable.)
WHY DO IT AT ALL? C. Ben Mitchell, a fellow with the Center for Bioethics and Human Dignity, has written a commentary for Christianity Today on stem cell research.
united nations
MILLENNIUM SUMMIT: LifeSite has prepared a special report dated 8/18/00 on this upcoming meeting which some claim is shrouded in secrecy.
vaccines
SIGN PETITION ON LINE: To seek a change in policy from Merck and Company, requesting that they develop alternative childhood vaccines NOT made from cells of aborted children, join Campaign for Ethical Vaccines US 2000: Children of God for Life.
zinger
WHEN MURDER ISN’T! Columnist Harold Henderson writes “George W. Bush, Trent Lott, and Tom DeLay ‘may truly and sincerely think abortion is murder,’ writes Jacob Weisberg in Slate (July 14). But they know that ‘overturning Roe would be about the worst thing that could possibly happen to the Republican Party. A genuine threat to the legal right to abortion would energize a grassroots liberalism not seen in this country since the 1960s.”
(Reading: City File, Section 1, 8/11/00, Chicago Reader)
reflection for prayer
Love is sufficient of itself; it gives pleasure by itself and because of itself. It is its own merit, its own reward. Love looks for no cause outside itself, no effect beyond itself. Its profit lies in its practice. I love because I love; I love that I may love. Love is a great thing so long as it continually returns to its fountainhead, flows back to its source, always drawing from there the water which constantly replenishes it. Of all the movements, sensations and feelings of the soul, love is the only one in which the creature can respond to the Creator and make some sort of similar return however unequal though it be.
-Bernard, abbot and doctor of the Church, 1090-1153 AD