Weekly News

1. Abortion Clinic Escorts Sexually Abuse Praying Pro-Life Activists – November 30, 2007

Caught On Video: Abortion Clinic Escorts Sexually Abuse Praying Pro-Life Activists – "I am horrified that this is possible in Austria" says local Bishop after Viewing Video – By John-Henry Westen

VIENNA, Austria, November 30, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Video footage of abortion clinic escorts in the employ of Vienna abortionist Dr. Christian Fiala are so offensive that a local Bishop was stunned and is convinced that the case must be brought to state authorities. In the video, Dr. Fiala's staff can be clearly seen sexually abusing, humiliating and using grotesque intimidation tactics on pro-life activists who pray silently outside the abortuary.

The video shows abortion clinic escorts grabbing the genitals of male pro-life activists, undoing pant zippers, threatening to poke them in the eyes, sexually hugging them, making grotesque faces etc. One clinic escort is seen on the video taking a wooden wedge and simulating sex with a female pro-lifer, pushing the wedge into her genital area.

The (Warning – Graphic) video which has been posted on the Catholic Internet video website Gloria.tv can be viewed here: http://www.gloria.tv/?video=plexkbcvnjyprlb250ju

Rather than crack down on such atrocities police look the other way, according to local pro-lifers. Moreover, the Austrian Parliament is considering legislation to ban all pro-life activists from the public property outside abortion clinics, even if they are only praying silently.

Dr. Fiala, the Director of the well-known Gynmed walk-in abortion clinics in Vienna and Salzburg is fighting for the ban. According to Dr. Fiala, police officers are not allowed to take action against "those fanatic anti-abortion demonstrators, even when they "bother" women in a crisis situation."

The video evidence has however given the lie to Dr. Fiala's claims and shown him to be the perpetrator rather than the victim of intimidation.

Salzburg Auxiliary Bishop Andreas Laun viewed the video and spoke with Gloria.tv about his reaction. "I am horrified that this is possible in Austria," said Bishop Laun noting the brutality of the abortion clinic guards. The Bishop called the video a real eye-opener. "One can clearly see that they actually did such things," he said.

The bishop is convinced that the events shown in the video should be investigated by State prosecutors.

See the Bishop interviewed (in German) on the video:
http://www.gloria.tv/?video=fetp98hhe2yaggkwflsr

To express concern to Austrian authorities:

Austrian President Dr. Heinz Fischer
Österreichische Präsidentschaftskanzlei
Hofburg, Leopoldinischer Trakt
A 1014 Wien
Tel. 01/53422 (International: 0043-1-53422)
E-Mail: heinz.fischer@hofburg.at

Transplanting genetically engineered cells into the heart may reduce the risk of a fatal condition, which occurs after heart attack, research suggests.

Ventricular tachycardia – an unusually fast heart rhythm – is the main cause of sudden death after heart attack.

In mice, transplants of skeletal muscle cells engineered to produce a specific protein prevented the condition.

Experts said the study in Nature should help to direct research on using stem cells to treat heart attacks in humans.

The German researchers tested a variety of cells in mice who had been induced to have heart attacks.

The nice thing about skeletal muscle is it has adult stem cells so you can take a biopsy of the thigh muscle and grow millions and millions of cells in culture – Dr. Bernard Fleischmann

They found that heart cells taken from 15-day-old embryos reduced the risk of ventricular tachycardia but other implanted cells, such as skeletal muscle cells, did not.

It was found that a protein present in embryonic heart cells but not the other cells – connexin 43 – was the key.

By engineering skeletal muscle cells, which are more readily available than embryonic cells, to produce connexin 43, the researchers found the cells were equally effective in preventing heart arrhythmia.

Tests on the ability of the implanted cells to conduct an electrical current – an important function of heart cells – found the signal was passed between implanted and existing heart tissue.

Study leader Dr Bernd Fleischmann, from the University of Bonn, said more research would have to be done before the technique could be used in humans but the study was important.

"The nice thing about skeletal muscle is it has adult stem cells so you can take a biopsy of the thigh muscle and grow millions and millions of cells in culture."

He said there were ongoing clinical trials using skeletal muscle and bone marrow cells to try and restore pump function of the heart but this was the first study to look at arrhythmias.

Current treatment for patients who develop ventricular tachycardia after a heart attack is for a defibrillator to be implanted under the skin.

The expensive device gives a painful electric shock if it detects a fast heart beat.

Dr Tim Chico, an expert in vascular development at the University of Sheffield, said the study was preliminary.

But he added: "If it can be repeated in humans it would be a breakthrough in the treatment of patients with heart disease and could save thousands of lives."

British Heart Foundation medical director, Peter Weissberg, said: "This is a vital insight, only possible from animal studies, which should help direct current research using stem cells to prevent the dangerous consequences of heart attacks in people.

"However, application of this technique to people with heart disease is still a long way off."

3. Canadian Broadcaster Floats Show On How Christ Didn't Really Exist – November 30, 2007

Just in Time for Christmas – Canadian Broadcaster Floats Show on How Christ Didn't Really Exist – By Hilary White

OTTAWA, November 30, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Canada's government funded National Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) has offered its annual Christmas season refutation of Christianity, this year in the form of a documentary entitled, "The Pagan Christ" based on the book of the same name by popular Canadian liberal "theologian" Tom Harpur.

The CBC webpage for the documentary asks, "So, what if it could be proven that Jesus never existed? What if there was evidence that every word of the New Testament – the cornerstone of Christianity – is based on myth and metaphor?"

The idea was popularized by radical feminist and lesbian writers like the self-styled "witch" Miriam Simos, who goes by the nom de plume of "Starhawk", and is one of the foremost voices of eco-feminism. These writers were instrumental in founding a "goddess" worshipping neo-paganism in the 1970's and '80's that was zealously anti-Christian and particularly hostile to Catholicism and has grown in popularity in Canada and the US.

Harpur continues this tradition in his book and the CBC takes up the cause in the documentary saying, "During his research, Harpur discovered that the New Testament is wholly based on Egyptian mythology, that Jesus Christ never lived, and that – indeed – the text was always meant to be read allegorically. It was the founders of the Church who duped the world into taking a literal approach to the scriptures."

Harpur asserts that it is Christianity's "blind faith in [Biblical] literalism" that accounts for the impending demise of Christianity. The promotional page for the book says, "What began as a universal belief system has become a ritualistic institution headed by ultraconservative literalists."

The taxpayer-funded CBC has made no secret of its institutionalized dislike of biblical Christianity and conservative Christians. While self-identified Christians continue to make up about 70 per cent of Canada's population, the CBC has for years produced annual attacks on Christian beliefs in the form of such documentaries as The Pagan Christ.

So obvious is the CBC's dislike of Catholicism that the National Post blasted "Mothercorp" for its blatant biases in its coverage of Pope John Paul II's visit to Toronto for World Youth Day 2002. The Post cited the CBC's lengthy coverage of the "marginal story of anti-Catholic political activism as though it were of roughly equal scale and importance," as the visit of the spiritual leader of the world's billion Catholics.

The Post wrote, that the phenomenon of thousands of pilgrims responding to a papal invitation to deepen their spiritual lives, "does not compute in the mind of those middle aged ‘bien pensants’ for whom the idea of moral certainty is alien and traditional institutional religion abhorrent."

In April 2005, on the day of the election to the papacy of Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, CBC radio host Michael Enright hosted anti-Catholic "Catholic" New Times editor and Catholic schoolteacher Ted Schmidt to comment. Schmidt called Cardinal Ratzinger, the "great defect" of Pope John Paul II's papacy.

In May this year, CBC television offered a show depicting the Catholic Mass as a backdrop for drug and gang-related activities, including the use of the consecrated Host, that Catholics believe is literally the body and blood of Christ, as a vehicle for LSD.

Over the years, the CBC has promoted euthanasia, abortion, same-sex marriage, recreational adultery, embryonic stem cell research and has been particularly venomous towards the pro-life movement. In 1999 Campaign Life Coalition, Canada's leading pro-life organization, made a presentation to a Parliamentary committee citing the CBC's persistent anti-pro-life bias.

CLC told Parliamentarians that news coverage by the CBC "is biased against pro-life people of Canada". They asked that the government "examine the role the CBC plays in influencing Canadians with presentations which incorrectly portray the pro-life message and unfairly depict pro-life individuals"

4. Forces For Society's Most Vulnerable Convene At Conference – December 1, 2007

The burden of mercy – Forces for society's most vulnerable convene at conference

For the physicians, ethicists and academics attending the First International Symposium on Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide in Toronto this weekend, the world is being softened up for state-sanctioned killing of the weak.

"Once you bring death into the equation, then everything changes for the most vulnerable," said Alex Schadenberg, one of the organizers of the event.

Mr. Schadenberg, executive director of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition in Canada, believes right-to-die forces are well organized and on the march.

Although Oregon has been the only jurisdiction in North America to approve physician-assisted suicide, there have been efforts to make it legal in California, Vermont and Washington. Laws similar to Oregon's are in place in Switzerland, Belgium and the Netherlands. A Gallup poll this year found 71% of Americans approve of doctors ending the lives of terminally ill patients who request it.

Mr. Schadenberg, and the like-minded who have convened this conference, insist it is only a short step from the seemingly benign notion of allowing those in the final throngs of a terminal illness to legally take their own lives with the help of doctors, to killing those who are a burden to society.

"When it comes down to how it would apply to society in the long term, it will mean people who are most vulnerable will feel a subtle pressure from a society that often sees death as the best choice."

That is why, he said, a conference is needed to unite anti-euthanasia forces and develop a singular strategy to get their point across. Among other things, the conference will hear how the Nazi euthanasia program of the disabled relates to events today and how the medical language used by pro-euthanasia groups can disguise the "horror" of what is simply killing.

Many also feel that Canada may soon see legalized physician-assisted suicide. The majority of the Supreme Court of Canada ruled in 1993 that the law banning assisted suicide did not violate the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, in response to a challenge by Sue Rodriguez, a British Columbia woman who suffered from Lou Gehrig's disease. (She died the following year from a lethal overdose of drugs.) But the vote was only 5-4, meaning another court may rule differently on another challenge. And two years ago, a private member's bill to make physician-assisted suicide legal in Canada was introduced but faded when the election was called.

Oregon made physician-assisted suicide legal 10 years ago and since then 300 patients, most with cancer have used the system to end their lives.

Lovelle Svart was one of them. In fact, the 62-year-old cancer patient's preparations to take her own life are methodically documented on the Web site of The Oregonian newspaper. In a video, Ms. Svart is shown surrounded by family and friends while a volunteer from Compassion and Choices of Oregon walks her through the procedure to take the lethal medicine.

The volunteer, who has attended three dozen such suicides, says, "Is this what you really want?" Ms. Svart replies, "Actually, I'd like to go on partying. But yes."

Supporters of Oregon's Death With Dignity Act say it is a humane system that allows cogent adults to avoid horrific pain and die with some measure of control and peace, which certainly looks to be the case with Ms. Svart.

"For many patients, the first goal is simply the reassurance of knowing it's going to be available," said Dr. Nick Gideonse, who has prescribed six lethal doses to terminal patients. "Patients will say, 'This disease has robbed me of my life, my strength, my future. But darn it, the last day I'm the one going to make the call here.' "

But opponents call it an unnecessary loss of life that puts doctors in the role of executioner. They say many who opt for physician-assisted suicide could have experienced a fulfilling, pain-free life almost to the end.

"It's an inherent conflict of interest for physicians," argues William Toffler, a physician from Oregon who will be in Toronto this weekend. "It's at odds with a tradition of being an unimpeachable advocate for the health and well-being of our patients."

Critics also argue that as painful as it may be to deny someone a legal and quick procedure to end their suffering, the damage to society outweighs the benefit to the individual.

"I can understand at the individual level that in some cases you wish it was all over with, but the problem is as a society you have to choose what's going to be your norm," said Margaret Somerville, the founding director of the McGill Centre for Medicine, Ethics and Law, one of the main speakers at this weekend's meeting.

"We have this idea that what happens to me is nobody's business. The problem with euthanasia is it requires another person to do it, and it requires a complicit society to authorize it."

She fears that in a society in which such things as health care costs are hugely important, it is easy to imagine decisions of life and death being made on the basis of dollars. "One Australian politician said, which was completely amazing, 'When you have passed your best-before or used-by date you should be checked out as quickly, cheaply and efficiently as possible.' It's like we're a supermarket product."

She also said there is no controlling this once it starts. The Netherlands, the first country to legalize euthanasia, was originally set up like the Oregon model. But then three years ago, guidelines were released for the mercy killing of terminally ill newborns.

Professor Mark Mostert, of Regent University in Virginia, goes even further: He says the same economic rationale that eliminated "useless eaters" under the Nazi program of killing the disabled, is subtly at work today.

"If you're terminally ill and it's going to cost us thousands of dollars, and you're still going to die, then maybe it would make better economic sense to use the money for somebody else," he said.

But 10 years into Oregon's experience with physician-assisted suicide there is little evidence that such a nightmare scenario of killing poor and vulnerable people is taking place.

Records kept by the state show that all patients, except one, had health insurance, and 22% had some university education, while 41% had a bachelor's degree or greater. The two most cited concerns for taking the life-ending drugs were loss of autonomy (87%) and losing the ability to engage in activities that make life enjoyable (87%). Twenty-six per cent cited inadequate pain control or concerns about pain control.

Of the 65 patients prescribed a lethal dosage in 2006, for example, 35 took their own lives, 19 died from their disease and 11 were still alive at the end of 2006.

Dr. Linda Ganzini, a professor of psychiatry and medicine in Oregon, whom many consider one of the few objective researchers in the state, interviewed physicians, hospice nurses, social workers, chaplains and family members who were involved with someone who took their lives under the law.

"At a moral level, I'm somewhat uncomfortable with assisted suicide," she admits. "Of the 100 most important things you can do for people at the end of life, this is not one of them. On the other hand, I find it offensive [to question] them and their families for a making a choice that's consistent with their values."

She said the typical patient who chooses to die puts a high value on independence, wants to be in control and is not religious. "No one is making them do this. If anything, they're manipulating their world to make it OK.

"I came into this with the idea that if I could inform the debate it would help people form an opinion," Dr. Ganzini said. "But what's interesting is the more information people have, the more they don't change their opinion, they just change their argument. There's really something at a gut level about this issue that is not about the data."

5. Helium In An 'Exit Bag' New Choice For Suicide – Saturday, December 8, 2007

Another case of the Death Movement promoting techniques for suicide in order to later claim that we need to legalize this to enable controls on the practice. Therefore by encouraging people to kill themselves by asphyxiation they hope to pressure the law to be changed. – Alex Schadenberg

At least 19 people in B.C. have used method since 1999, assisted or not, criminologist discovers

A Vancouver expert on the international right-to-die movement says helium inhalation has become a method of choice for people, including British Columbians who want to die by assisted suicide.

Kwantlen College criminologist Russel Ogden said that at least 19 people in B.C. have committed suicide by using helium since 1999, according to statistics compiled for him by the Coroner's Service of B.C.

Ogden acknowledged that he has no way of knowing whether these people committed suicide because they had a terminal or progressively debilitating illness -- or because they were mentally ill.

But the figures, Ogden said, reflect a trend in the underground right-to-die community -- which he calls the "death counterculture" -- toward asphyxiation with helium for people ravaged by incurable suffering.

"What these B.C. statistics indicate is that a new method for suicide has entered the public consciousness."

Ogden said the technique of asphyxiation by helium inhalation first gained public exposure in the assisted-suicide community with the release in 2000 of the third edition of Final Exit, the landmark book written by Hemlock Society founder Derek Humphry, a primer on suicide and assisted suicide.

Information about the helium option has since been disseminated through the Internet, including YouTube, and various handbooks, he added.

The helium method basically involves a person placing an "exit bag" over his head with the helium entering the bag through a tube.

Helium is seen as a swift, highly lethal and painless way to die without involving physicians or drugs. Helium is also nearly undetectable in toxicological probes, which is important for people assisting a suicide because of the potential of criminal charges.

Kwantlen criminologist Ogden said the 19 deaths recorded by the Coroner's Service under-represent the number of deaths in B.C. involving helium.

"This is just the tip of the iceberg," said Ogden, who has researched the assisted-death movement for many years.

Ogden said the coroner's service figures only involve cases where equipment related to the use of helium was found.

The figures don't include cases where death is assisted by activists who remove all equipment or evidence so that the death is attributed to an underlying illness or undetermined causes, Ogden said.

"I have data provided to me by activists in the right-to-die movement between 1999 and 2002 on over 100 helium-related cases in North America that were unreported in any forensic literature."

Ogden said helium inhalation has become the preferred method among activists in the Final Exit Network, an underground U.S. group which helps people kill themselves.

Final Exit is an offshoot of the much larger Compassion and Choices, which lobbies for political changes such as the Oregon model of physician-assisted suicide for dying patients.

The best-known recent case of assisted suicide in B.C. involved Evelyn Martens, a Vancouver Island grandmother and right-to-die activist, who was charged with assisting two women to commit suicide.

One of the women, Monique Charest, a former nun, was found dead in her Duncan apartment in 2002. Evidence at trial revealed that Charest used the helium method to end her life.

Martens, who was an executive member of the Right to Die Network of Canada and an agent for "Last Rights" Publications, was acquitted in 2004.

Ogden, who teaches a course at Kwantlen called "Socio-legal Aspects of Assisted Death," said the emergence of new methods such as helium inhalation don't appear to spur any rise in the number of suicides. "What we know is that when a new method is found, people simply change their methods. The statistical incidence of suicide doesn't increase."

The emergence of helium as a method stems from Canadian and American laws prohibiting assisted suicide -- except in the state of Oregon.

Latimer Denied Early Prison Release – Globe and Mail Update and Canadian Press

The Saskatchewan farmer who sparked a national debate about mercy killing has been denied day parole seven years into a life sentence for killing his severely disabled 12-year-old daughter, Tracy.

Robert Latimer appeared without a lawyer before the board at the William Head Institution, a minimum-security facility on Vancouver Island where he has been serving his sentence. The three-member panel had to decide on Mr. Latimer’s risk to re-offend.

The board members said they were left with the feeling Mr. Latimer has not developed sufficient insight and understanding of his actions.

The board recommended that Mr. Latimer participate in some counselling and he won’t have another chance to apply for day parole for two years.

Mr. Latimer continued to insist that taking his daughter’s life was the right thing to do, explaining that girl faced what he called another mutilating surgery. He said because of anti-seizure medicine she would have had to bear that pain with regular-strength Tylenol.

He told the board it was not a snap decision and came after his wife said they would have to call in Dr. Jack Kevorkian, an American who helped people commit suicide.

But he said the two of them never discussed his ultimate decision to pipe exhaust gas into the cab of his truck with Tracy in it.

Mr. Latimer ignited a national debate about mercy killing on Oct. 24, 1993, after he Tracy in a blanket, put her in the cab of his pickup truck and filled it with exhaust fumes.

Mr. Latimer has maintained throughout that he was motivated by love: Tracy, whose tiny body was contorted by cerebral palsy, had suffered from a lack of oxygen at birth. It left her a quadriplegic with brain damage. She endured multiple operations and acute pain, and the future held only more of the same.

Leading advocates for the disabled, who argued Mr. Latimer put vulnerable Canadians at risk by dehumanizing the handicapped, didn't oppose his early release.

However, Jim Derksen, of the Council of Canadians with Disabilities, said his association will continue to fight the "unjust and unfair portrayal" of Tracy Latimer.

"Her father, the murderer, was portrayed as a victim," he said yesterday, before the parole decision. "Some people were willing to agree his daughter’s life was not worth living - it’s extremely dangerous to vulnerable people with disabilities."

The Canadian Civil Liberties Association sought clemency for Mr. Latimer, arguing that his case was an "awful injustice" created by Canada’s mandatory minimum sentencing regulations.

"Because of the mandatory minimum sentence, a compassionate father who broke the law out of love is punished as severely as a malevolent robber who broke the law out of greed," said Alan Borovoy, counsel for the civil liberties organization.

Mr. Borovoy said his group will continue to lobby the Conservative government to change the law.

"When they fashioned the penalty for second-degree murder, they didn’t have the situation of Robert Latimer in mind. That’s the reason why there should have been in the law some opportunity for a judge to consider extenuating circumstances."

A jury found Mr. Latimer guilty in 1997 on a charge of second-degree murder, but recommended that he serve only one year in jail and another under house arrest at his farm near Wilkie, Sask.

The trial judge, Mr. Justice Ted Noble, found that Mr. Latimer’s motive was to relieve what he saw as his daughter’s terrible and unremitting pain and described the killing as a "compassionate" homicide.

But the Saskatchewan Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court of Canada altered the penalty to fit the mandatory minimum sentence. For second-degree murder, that means a life sentence with no parole for 10 years, although offenders are eligible for day parole after seven years.

The Supreme Court also concluded that Mr. Latimer’s sentence was reasonable because he did not allow his daughter to take a more effective pain medication, a finding Mr. Latimer continues to fight to this day.

In a letter to the Supreme Court dated Aug. 8, he wrote: "The claim of such a medication is a fraudulent fabrication of the Saskatchewan Justice Department prosecutors to bolster the charges against me."

The Saskatchewan farmer and father of three surviving children has been taking courses from prison and remotely managing his grain farm in western Saskatchewan.

Greetings from LifeIssues.net (www.lifeissues.net)

Dear Friends for Life,

In a UN report updated from 2002, the UN states that the aging global population would have serious worldwide consequences in the near future. It blamed this on low fertility and increased longevity. Typically, it did not even mention the connection with contraception, abortion, and sterilization. It stated that the population aging is "unprecedented, a process without parallel in the history of humanity." People over 60 years will soon outnumber children, and by 2050 will be one-third of the population in the developed regions, with underdeveloped nations progressively approaching that percent. Today's medium worldwide age is 28. It will rise to 38. The oldest nation now, Japan, has a medium age of 43. The youngest is Uganda at 15. It stated that this trend would profoundly affect every area of human life, economical, political and social. Older people who were 8% of the population 50 years ago will rise to 22% by 2050.

Amnesty International is now promoting Sodomy. After recently enshrining abortion as a human right, Amnesty International has now gone further down the road to degeneracy by targeting nations that criminalize sodomy as "grave violators of human rights." They began with Nicaragua.

If Abortion Is Illegal, Will Women Die? Ireland has been an international test market on this question. Abortion there has always been illegal. For a recent three-year period, Ireland reported the lowest maternal death rate in the world. During the same period, the maternal death rate in Britain was five times as high. Abortion in Britain has been legal for almost four decades. The statistics are from the World Health Organization. – Jerry Novotny, OMI

Thought: "Science may have found a cure for most evils, but it has found no remedy for the worst of them all: the apathy of human beings." – Helen Keller

Lifeissues.Net Newsletter #352 – December 02, 2007

Table Of Contents:
1. Rise In HIV/AIDS Cases In Europe
2. Torture 'unpunished in Indonesia'
3. Vietnam Sees More Abortions Than Live Births in Ho Chi Minh City
4. UN seeks about $100 million to fight hunger in Indonesia
5. HIV/AIDS discrimination widespread in China
6. A Common Casualty of Old Age: The Will to Live
7. U.S. Sets Record in Sexual Disease Cases
8. The Future Is Now (The stem-cell debate changes.)
9. Our Culture's Pressure on our "Tween"-age and Teenage Girls
10. Life has lost its importance
11. Posttraumatic Stress Disorder After Abortion
12. Taken Into Custody By Divorce

Focus On Asia: – Torture 'unpunished in Indonesia' – Indonesia has a "culture of impunity" in the face of ill-treatment and torture, a senior UN official has said. Mr Nowak said he found evidence of detainees being electrocuted, suffering systematic beatings and even being shot in the legs at close range. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7109219.stm

Item #1. Rise In HIV/AIDS Cases In Europe
The rate of new cases of HIV/Aids in the European Union has almost doubled since 1999, a report shows. Estonia has by far the highest rate of diagnosis, followed by Portugal and the UK, according to the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control. The ECDC says that the proportion of new cases reported per million inhabitants went up across the EU from 28.8 to 57.5 in 2006.

View full article at BBC News: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7109139.stm

Item #2. Torture 'Unpunished In Indonesia'
Indonesia has a "culture of impunity" in the face of ill-treatment and torture, a senior UN official has said. Manfred Nowak, special rapporteur on torture, has spent two weeks inspecting the country's prisons and police and military detention centres. Mr Nowak said he found evidence of detainees being electrocuted, suffering systematic beatings and even being shot in the legs at close range.

View full text at BBC News: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7109219.stm

Item #3. Vietnam Sees More Abortions Than Live Births In Ho Chi Minh City
The number of abortions has declined in Ho Chi Minh City, but the large Asian city still sees more abortions there than live births. Vietnam has long had one of the highest abortion rates in both Asia and the world and the United Nations recently said sex-selection abortions are causing significant gender gaps.

View full text at LifeNews.com: http://www.lifenews.com/int541.html

Item #4. UN Seeks About $100 Million To Fight Hunger In Indonesia
An estimated 13 million children under five are malnourished in the world's fourth-most populous nation.

View full text at Reuters:
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/JAK252664.htm

Item #5. HIV/AIDS Discrimination Widespread In China
China's efforts to prevent HIV/AIDS-related discrimination have failed to stamp out "widespread" stigmatisation of sufferers, United Nations, officials said on Wednesday. The United Nations estimates that the number of HIV/AIDS sufferers in China is about 650,000.

View full text at Reuters:
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/PEK334489.htm

Item #6. A Common Casualty Of Old Age: The Will To Live
Suicide is more common among older Americans than any other age group. The statistics are daunting. While people 65 and older account for 12 percent of the population, they represent 16 percent to 25 percent of the suicides. Four out of five suicides in older adults are men. And among white men over 85, the suicide rate – 50 per 100,000 men – is six times that of the general population.

See the full article at NYT:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/27/health/27brod.html?ref=health&pagewanted=print

ITEM #7. U.S. Sets Record In Sexual Disease Cases
More than 1 million cases of chlamydia were reported in the United States last year – the most ever reported for a sexually transmitted disease, federal health officials said Tuesday.

Comment: And still liberals (Democrats) cannot understand why abstinence should be taught in public schools. All of the following occurred while liberals were passing out condoms until they were blue in the face. – Frank Joseph MD

Full article at apnews.myway.com:
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20071113/D8ST1PBO0.html

ITEM #8. The Future Is Now (The Stem-Cell Debate Changes.)
Another technical term for it is "somatic cell dedifferentiation." Just get those terms into your vocabulary because they'll be around for the foreseeable future. As reported in two scientific papers published today, reprogramming is now the future of stem cell research and renders ethically controversial therapeutic cloning obsolete.

Ever since the debate of embryo-destructive stem-cell research began in earnest in 1998 when researchers at the University of Wisconsin first isolated human embryonic stem cells, we've known that the best overall answer to the ethical impasse would be a solution that both allows the search for stem-cell related cures to go foreword, while doing so without harming or destroying embryonic human life in the process.

Full Article at CERC:
http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/medical_ethics/me0110.htm

ITEM #9. Our Culture's Pressure On Our "Tween"-Age And Teenage Girls
These young girls keenly feel the pressure from many sources, which include school, their peers, and society. The support they so desperately need from their parents while they are trying to navigate the maze of unrealistic standards expected of them may be non-existent, because many parents just don't understand the extent of the pressures. Parents may naively think that their daughters are too young to be feeling any stress or strain whatsoever. Life unfortunately, is not so simple nowadays.

The impact of our culture's pressure on young girls recently hit home for me when I found out that a young girl I know is now in Rehab being treated for anorexia and drug abuse! Who knew? No one saw it coming. Her parents were totally unaware for a while. This victim of society's horrid pressure – a sweet young girl from a Church-going family – hid any tell tale signs very cleverly. She had an excellent teacher - the girls who led her down the wrong path also taught her how to cover up any evidence of her new lifestyle. Thank goodness her parents realized what was going on before it was too late for her. This girl is now counting her blessings and relieved that her parents intervened. She also revealed that she could have died at the rate she was going.

View entire text at CERC:
http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/parenting/pa0130.htm

Item #10. Life Has Lost Its Importance
Scholars and activists from across the world will gather to discuss and affirm what really are extremely basic concepts – that people should not kill themselves, that life is always valuable, and that not even doctors, nurses or relatives have the liberty to decide when a person's life should end.

Problem is, life is considered one of the least significant issues in Western culture. Compared to opinions on the state of the market or the state of Paris Hilton, the notion of a person's inalienable right to live appears rather meagre. Or to put it another way, life is only assumed to be significant when it is thought to be of quality.

View entire text at CERC:
http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/euthanasia/eu0045.htm

Item #11. Posttraumatic Stress Disorder After Abortion
Research shows that a high percentage of women are likely to have some symptoms of posttraumatic stress after abortion. Even those having only some symptoms but not meeting all criteria may still experience significant distress. They will continue to remain at risk for developing full criteria posttraumatic stress disorder when exposed to other stresses later in life. Those who develop posttraumatic stress disorder often have symptoms that are very long-term, and this disorder is a predictor of poor general health. Comparisons with other groups give an indication of the magnitude of the stress that many women experience from abortion.

View entire text at LifeIssues.net:
http://www.lifeissues.net/writers/shu/shu_02posttraumaticstress.html

Item #12. Taken Into Custody By Divorce
Most Americans have made their peace with no-fault divorce, believing easy divorce to be an enhancement of individual liberty.

View entire text at CERC:
http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/marriage/mf0097.htm

Get Involved:
1. Be Informed: "My people are destroyed from lack of knowledge." Hosea 4:6. Visit Lifeissues.net for information at http://www.lifeissues.net.
2. Pray Daily: for the courage to be God's presence in society and strongly support those who are deemed "unworthy of life". "If My people who are called by My Name, will humble themselves and pray and seek My face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land." 2 Chronicles 7:14
3. Become Involved: "Journey for Life into the Heart of Asia" is a project, which appeals for donations to help finance travel expenses for talks to developing countries in Asia. Strong focus is placed on reaching Asian Catholic Major Seminaries, Schools, Parishes, Hospitals and Family related groups. A series of Life Issues lectures places emphasis on "The Asian Family at Crossroads: Trends and Challenges". For inquires about no-cost Pro Life Talks to your group within Asia: contact Fr. Jerry at jerry@star.quolia.com. To become a supportive Missionary participant for Human Life in Asia, kindly send your donations directly to: Fr. Jerry Novotny, OMI; LifeIssues.net, Editor; Akebono-cho 1-15-9; Kochi City, Japan, 780-8072; (or transfer donation directly to ProLife bank account: Jerome Novotny, Shikoku Bank, Asakura Branch, No. 102-1-0080824)

Contact Editor: Jerry Novotny, OMI; Akebono-cho 1-15-9; Kochi City, Japan, 780-8072; Tel/Fax: 088-843-0406; E-Mail: jerry@lifeissues.net.

Websites by Editor:
English LifeIssues Site: http://www.lifeissues.net,
Japanese LifeIssues Site: http://www.japan-lifeissues.net,
OMI Site: http://www.omijapankorea.net/index.html

Following complaints from parents, at least three Catholic school boards in Ontario have taken out of circulation a fantasy-adventure children’s novel titled The Golden Compass pending a review of its content, the National Post reported.

And yet according to the Toronto Star, “The award-winning tome was voted the best children’s book in the past 70 years by readers across the globe.”

A Hollywood movie version of The Golden Compass is due to be released next week. In the United States, the Catholic League is calling for a boycott of the film, claiming its sole intent is to “bash Christianity and promote atheism. To kids.”

Superintendent Ron McNamara said a group of parents, teachers, administrators and trustees will read the books and decide early next year if they should be allowed back in.

“The concerns were around the way organized religions are portrayed,” McNamara told the Examiner. “There was nothing specific about the Catholic religion. It’s about how religions are portrayed.”

Scott Millard, manager of library services, told CTV that it has been the board’s policy since 1990 that “any community member has the right to request a re-examination of learning or library material.”

Chris Weitz, the film’s director, denies that it is in any way anti-Catholic or anti-God. “I think it’s a shame that people are reacting to a movie they haven’t seen by attacking a book they haven’t understood,” he told Christianity Today.

In fact, some Christians are urging fellow believers to become more knowledgeable about the book and the movie before they start speaking out against them.

“If we really want to be able to speak out against Pullman’s ideas, we must know what we are talking about,” wrote Christian Post guest columnist Mark Earley. “...If we just go out there and tell people, ‘This movie is about kids who kill God!’ we just get a reputation as ill-informed scolds. Already that is starting to happen.”

“In our increasingly non-Christian (even anti-Christian) society, I understand the desire of some Christian parents to shield their children from the hostile messages and temptations society sends their way,” wrote Edmonton Journal columnist Lorne Gunter.

“Retreat from society into a sort of virtual cloister, though, is no way to promote any faith.”

A breakthrough by rival scientists in Japan and the United States could well mark the end of the long controversy over whether researchers ought to be able to create and destroy human embryos for purposes of extracting stem cells.

It was widely reported last week that the scientists had succeeded in making human skin cells behave like embryonic stem cells. If this technique can be perfected, it has the potential to make unnecessary the need for other sources of stem cells.

“It’s potentially huge, because you could, in principle... take somebody’s own cells and potentially grow them new cells,” Dr. Kelly McNagny, a stem cell researcher at the University of British Columbia, told the Vancouver Sun. “They’d be perfectly matched.”

Pro-lifers have long objected that the destruction of a human embryo is tantamount to killing a human being. Defenders of the practice said it was essential to the development of stem cells that hold out the best hope for cures for a variety of major ailments as varied as Parkinson’s disease and severed spinal cords.

“This is the breakthrough everyone’s been waiting for,” Dr. Tadeusz Pacholczyk, director of education for the National Catholic Bioethics Center, told the Boston Globe. “These new strategies remind us . . . it is never necessary for laboratory researchers to cross fundamental moral lines in order for science and medicine to advance.”

9. Partial Birth Abortion Ban "Poster Child" Turns Sweet Sixteen – November 27, 2007

Doctors wanted to abort her at 7 months – gave hopeless prognosis – By Hilary White

ROGERSVILLE, Tennessee, November 27, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Donna Joy Vance turned sixteen yesterday but if her mother had listened to her doctors, she would have been aborted at the gestational age of seven months. Fortunately for Donna Joy, her mother, Lori Vance, refused to go along.

"We're celebrating Donna Joy's 16th birthday," Lori Vance said. "It's a special day because it's a day the doctors and so-called experts way back when said would never come to be."

In 1991 Doctors recommended that Donna Joy be killed by partial birth abortion, because a scan had found five major brain disorders. In the worst of these, most of her brain had formed outside her skull, a condition called Holoprosencephaly, or HPE. They said that Donna would be born completely blind, deaf, with no face, no ability to move limbs, suck or swallow. Despite these dire predictions, Donna Joy has grown to be a pretty, happy and active young girl who suffers only cerebral palsy and peripheral blindness.

Lori Vance told reporters she would have been glad to give birth to Donna Joy, even if she were only to live "for a few minutes-to give her some dignity, wrap her up in a pretty blanket. Say 'I love you' and let her go."

In May, after the US Supreme Court voted 5-4 to uphold the constitutionality of the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003, Lori said she would have accepted Donna Joy no matter what her medical condition.

"I chose not to go through with the late-term abortion because Donna Joy's life doesn't really belong to me, it belongs to God, so it's only His for the taking," Lori said at the time. "I wasn't going to be a part of killing my own child. I knew that she could have awful handicaps, but it didn't matter to me because I still loved her. She was still my child." Today Donna Joy is the oldest survivor of this group of brain disorders.

Lori and Donna Joy have campaigned to end partial birth abortion, addressing Congress and appearing in the national media. Donna Joy appeared on programs such as the Rush Limbaugh radio show and the Phil Donahue TV show, becoming a poster child for the partial birth abortion ban cause.

So embarrassing was Donna Joy's presence to the abortion lobby's cause during debates, that at the tender age of five she enjoyed the distinction of being thrown out of the Senate chamber by one of the abortion movement's greatest advocates, Sen. Barbara Boxer from California.

"In the end I think more people heard our story because of what Senator Boxer did than would have if she just would have left us alone," Lori said.

When the ban was passed, Donna Joy said in a hand written statement, "I am really happy about my law. I am glad my mom did not let me die. It is a good law. It saves babies."

Donna Joy lives with her family in Rogersville Tennessee, and is a member of her church drama team and choir and participates in the state Special Olympics in which she won a ribbon for bowling.

Contacts:
Bradley Mattes, Executive Director
J.C. Willke, MD, President
Phone: 513.729.3600
Cincinnati, OH
E-Mail: info@lifeissues.org

Pro-Life Champion Leaves a Legacy of Life – Former Congressman Henry Hyde Passes Away

Life Issues Institute celebrates the life of Henry Hyde and the legacy of life he has left. Today, at age 83, former congressman Henry Hyde (R-IL) passed away. During his thirty-two years of service to our nation, he was an eloquent and outspoken voice for unborn babies and their parents on Capitol Hill. Congressman Hyde worked tirelessly on behalf of all innocent human life. In 1976, the well-known Hyde Amendment stopped US tax dollars from ultimately funding literally millions of abortions and has saved countless lives. He was also a leader in passing the ban on partial-birth abortion, the first federal restriction on a specific abortion procedure.

In April 2006, Bradley Mattes, Executive Director of Life Issues Institute, had the honour of presenting Life Issues Institute's Hero at Heart award to Congressman Hyde.

"Henry's death is a major loss to the entire pro-life movement. He and I worked closely together since he first introduced the Hyde Amendment. Probably no other person in public service, here and abroad, has had the influence and certainly no one commanded the respect that he did. We'll all keep trying, but none of us will ever be able to replace him," says Dr. J.C. Willke, President of Life Issues Institute. One particular quote by Henry has motivated many pro-lifers and is appropriate for today. He said, "When the time comes as it surely will, when we face that awesome moment, the final judgment, I've often thought, as Fulton Sheen wrote, that it is a terrible moment of loneliness. You have no advocates, you are there alone standing before God - and a terror will rip your soul like nothing you can imagine. But I really think that those in the pro-life movement will not be alone. I think there'll be a chorus of voices that have never been heard in this world but are heard beautifully and clearly in the next world - and they will plead for everyone who has been in this movement. They will say to God, 'Spare him, because he loved us,' - and God will look at you and say not, 'Did you succeed?' but 'Did you try?'"

Life Issues Institute is dedicated to changing hearts and minds of millions of people through education. Organizations and individuals around the world depend upon Life Issues Institute to provide the latest information and effective tools to protect innocent human life from womb to tomb.

Unborn Victims of Crime Act

I) Take Action: Send Your 1 Click Letter Today!
II) Bill C-484 Unborn Victims of Crime Act
III) How do Private Members’ Bills Work?
IV) Poll: 72% of Canadians Support a Foetal Protection Law
V) SUPPORT OUR EFFORTS:

Please forward or print this newsletter to share with others.

Our Influence: 653,214 One Click Letters sent since 2004

”I told police officers this is two bodies, two murders. I feel like my heart is broken into pieces.”

Besey Sesen, father of murder victim Aysun Sesen who was stabbed to death by her common-law partner, along with her 7-month-old unborn daughter.

”The law in Canada doesn’t allow for [prosecute] the killing of an unborn foetus.”

Toronto Homicide Detective Sgt. Gary Grinton.

“The law has to be changed.”

Aydin Cocelli, brother in law to Aysun Sesen,

Hi Suzanne,

In the past three years at least five pregnant women, along with their unborn babies, have been killed in Canada in violent attacks.

According to the /Criminal Code/, a child becomes a human being only when he or she has completely emerged alive from the mother’s body. Consequently in cases where a pregnant woman is assaulted, or murdered, law enforcement can only lay charges for harming the mother, not her unborn child.

On November 21, Edmonton-Sherwood Park MP Ken Epp introduced for first reading Private Members Bill C-484. If passed it would allow criminal charges to be laid in the death or injury of an unborn child when the child’s mother is the victim of a crime.

I) Take Action: Send Your 1 Click Letter Today!

Our first step to seeing this bill become law is to ensure that it returns to the House.

Unfortunately, it is possible that this bill could be deemed a ‘non-votable item,’ and killed in committee without ever coming before the House for second reading debate and vote.

It has happened before.

When a similar bill was introduced last year by Leon Benoit it was never allowed to proceed to second reading because the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs designated it as a ‘non-votable item,’ and consequently it was deemed defeated.

Let’s not let this happen again!

Take Action: Send a letter to the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs and tell them to allow this bill to be voted on.

Send your 1 click letter today: http://unitedmothers.ca/links/1click/

All it takes is 5 minutes to make a difference.

II) Bill C-484 Unborn Victims of Violence Act

”Having heard the heart-rending stories of the families of the victims, I am absolutely convinced that this is an issue which cannot be swept aside.”

”How do you tell these grieving families that the child they loved and lost never even existed in the eyes of the law?”

”My Unborn Victims of Crime bill addresses this grave injustice, and I encourage all my Colleagues from all parties to support this bill when it comes up for a vote in the House.”

MP Ken Epp, Edmonton-Sherwood Park

Known as the Unborn Victims of Crime Act, Bill C-484 is a response to repeated calls from the families of murdered pregnant women – and from the public at large – to recognize unborn children as crime victims when they are injured or killed during the commission of an offence against their mothers.

Read the full text of the bill here: http://tinyurl.com/ywzh7q

Members of the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs:

http://tinyurl.com/2dg2jh

III) How Do Private Members? Bills Work?

Practical Guide for Private Members' Business: http://tinyurl.com/2l2uux

List of Criteria for Making Items of Private Members' Business Non-Votable:

http://tinyurl.com/2sjvcp

IV) Poll: 72% of Canadians would support a foetal protection law.

”Canadians see this as a violent attack on two people, members of a family, and it is outrageous that the law denies the humanity of one of those family members.”

LifeCanada President Joanne Byfield

An Environics poll released last month found that three-quarters (75%) of Canadian women and two-thirds (68%) of Canadian men would support a foetal protection law.

The poll was commissioned by LifeCanada and asked, “Would you support or oppose legislation making it a separate crime to injure or kill a foetus during an attack on the mother?”

View the complete Environics Research Group poll report:

http://www.lifecanada.org/html/resources/polling/2007PollReport.pdf

V) SUPPORT OUR EFFORTS: If you appreciate our efforts, newsletter and technology please support us as we work to defend children, family, faith and freedom!

Please send your support today!

To become a quarterly donor of $25, $50, or $100 every 3 months, or to make a one-time donation using our secure server, please visit: http://unitedmothers.ca/links/donate/

If you prefer to make your donation by cheque please mail it to:

United Mothers Inc
P.O. Box 234
339 10th Avenue S.E.
Calgary, Alberta
T2G 0W2

Thank you for turning your heart to the children,

Michele Dow - www.unitedmothers.ca

I) Take Action: Contact the 5 Members of the Sub-Committee
II) Correction: Sub-Committee on Private Members’ Business

PLEASE FORWARD OR PRINT THIS NEWSLETTER TO SHARE WITH OTHERS
Our Influence: 670,649 One Click Letters sent since 2004

Good news! The sub-committee which will be voting on whether the Unborn Victims of Crime Act (Bill C-484) is a votable item will be meeting at 4:15 p.m. this Wednesday, December 5, to discuss and vote on C-484 and several other private members’ bills.

It is encouraging that there has been no stalling on this critical child protection bill which - if passed - will recognize unborn children as crime victims when they are injured or killed during the commission of an offence against their mothers.

If the bill is deemed votable it stays “alive” and will be returned to the House of Commons for 2 nd Reading debate and vote.

I) Take Action: Contact the 5 Members of the Sub-Committee
The five members of the PROC Sub-Committee on Private Members’ Business are: Joe Preston (Conservative), Chris Charlton (NDP), Pauline Picard (Bloc), Derek Lee (Liberal), and Scott Reid (Conservative).

Step One: 1 Click Letter
If you have not already sent your 1 click letter please do so today! Ask the members of the PROC Sub-Committee on Private Members’ Business to allow this bill to be voted on.
http://unitedmothers.ca/links/1click/

Step Two: Call the 5 Members of the Sub-Committee
Call the offices of the five members of the sub-committee on Tuesday or Wednesday and encourage them to deem C-484 votable. (Remember, you have until 4:15 p.m. this Wednesday.)

(Hint: You can phone after hours and leave a message on their answering machine. Be sure to leave your name and phone number.)

1) Hi, this is _________ calling from (City, Province). Thank you for your service on the PROC Sub-Committee on Private Members’ Business.

2) I understand that the sub-committee will be voting this Wednesday to determine whether the Unborn Victims of Crime Act (Bill C-484) is a votable item.

4) It is critical that our elected representatives have an opportunity to debate this issue in the House of Commons. (If you call after hours, be sure to leave your name and phone number.)

II) Correction: Sub-Committee on Private Members’ Business
The PROC Sub-Committee on Private Members’ Business (a sub-committee within the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs) - will be the MPs voting on whether C-484 is a votable item, not the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs (PROC) as I incorrectly reported in the November 28 newsletter, for which I sincerely apologize.

The PROC Standing Committee will only get involved if the bill is deemed non-votable by the sub-committee and is appealed by the Bill’s sponsor Edmonton-Sherwood Park MP Ken Epp.

Joe Preston (Conservative), Pauline Picard (Bloc), and Scott Reid (Conservative) serve on both the PROC Standing Committee and the PROC Sub-Committee on Private Members’ Business.

List of Criteria for Making Items of Private Members' Business Non-Votable: http://tinyurl.com/2sjvcp

III) SUPPORT OUR EFFORTS: If you appreciate our efforts, newsletter and technology please support us as we work to defend family, faith and freedom!

To become a quarterly donor of $25, $50, or $100 every 3 months, or to make a one-time donation using our secure server, please visit http://unitedmothers.ca/links/donate/

The evidence overwhelmingly suggests that the supposed beneficiaries of reproductive health programs are clamouring for anything /but/ "reproductive health care." It is only by arrogantly rejecting the real health and other needs of poor women-as the women themselves express them-that priority can be given to fertility control. – Steven W. Mosher

What Women Want (Hint: Not Reproductive Health Care) – by Steven Mosher and Colin Mason

Pat McEwen was visiting the small village of Huaca, high in the Andes Mountains of Ecuador. The village, not far from the Colombian border, was teeming with refugees fleeing from the ongoing battles between government forces and the drug lords. Mostly women and children, the refugees had arrived with only the possessions that they could carry. Many had lost husbands, sons and daughters to the conflict. "They had been poor even before the violence destroyed their villages," Pat recalled. "Now they had lost everything and [were] the 'poorest of the poor.'" These refugee women, in short, were perfect examples of the kind of "client" that the family planners would say needed "reproductive health services."

Pat decided to ask the group of 42 refugee women that she was meeting with three simple questions: "What are the things you worry about most often? What are your greatest needs? What can I do to help you the most?" Their worries centered around their children, their husbands, and family members from whom they had become separated. Their most pressing need was for blankets and warm clothes. Second was a way to provide for their families. A close third was medicine or health care for their children. Not one mentioned family planning.

Pat then went right to the heart of the "reproductive health care" controversy. " "If I could provide a way for you to have fewer children, or no more children, or to not be pregnant if you are pregnant, would you be interested?" she asked them. The atmosphere in the room, pleasant up to that point, instantly turned chilly. The women whispered among themselves, shooting Pat looks that were no longer friendly. Then one woman, her voice rising in indignation, spoke for all: "Sabe nada, estupida Americana!" Up to this point in the interview, Pat had been relying on translators to help with her halting Spanish, but this stinging barb came through loud and clear: "You understand nothing, stupid American!"

These refugee women had no use for contraceptives, sterilizations, or abortions and rejected Pat's offer of "reproductive health care" out of hand. "The reproductive 'right' that these refugee women wanted was the right not to have me or anyone else interfere in their reproductive lives," Pat recalled later. "They understood that more children meant more minds to plan the future, more hands to share the work, and more hearts to share joy and sorrow. These women had lost family members to violent deaths, but they understood that their children were the promise that there would still be a tomorrow."

Pat McEwen's encounter with the refugee women of Ecuador is corroborated by broader surveys of the real health needs of real women and men that PRI has carried out in the developing world. Who wants reproductive health care? Not the people of Ghana, according to a 2001 survey carried out by PRI in the metropolitan port city of Takoradi.

A total of 397 individuals of both sexes were interviewed by one of four trained interviewers on one of Takoradi's main thoroughfares, selected at random from the constant stream of passers-by. Those interviewed were shown a list of 15 different health programs, and asked to rank order the list in terms of their own personal needs, putting their most pressing need first and their least important need last. The health programs listed were: Malaria Eradication, Leprosy Treatment, Reproductive Health, Syphilis Treatment, Polio Prevention, Clean Water Programs, Natural Family Planning, Sleeping Sickness, Gonorrhoea Treatment, Tuberculosis Treatment, Yellow Fever, HIV/AIDS Prevention, Cholera Treatment, Measles Prevention, and Other Programs (unspecified).

What do these modern Africans have to say about their health care needs? They list their most pressing concerns as Malaria Eradication, Natural Family Planning, Clean Water, Measles Prevention, and HIV/AIDS Prevention. Now malaria, measles and HIV/AIDS are all diseases, which run at epidemic, or near-epidemic, levels in Ghana, confirming the good judgment of those we surveyed. Ghanaians are also aware that polluted drinking water is a vector for the transmission of cholera and other diseases, and so would like to see the water supply made safe. The only mild surprise in this cluster of top-ranked health needs is the presence of NFP, which was welcomed by many respondents as a safe and natural means of regulating their fertility.

Not surprisingly, Ghanaians want assistance with real diseases, not reproductive health services.

Second-order health needs listed included Tuberculosis Treatment, Cholera Treatment, Leprosy Treatment, Polio Prevention, Yellow Fever, Sleeping Sickness, and Syphilis and Gonorrhoea treatment. These are all diseases that, although not affecting the large percentage of the population that, say, HIV/AIDS does, are nonetheless endemic to Ghana. Here again, the views of those we spoke with accord well with Ghana's epidemiological realities.

Reproductive health care came in dead last. Even the unspecified "Other Programs" came in higher, suggesting that the Ghanaians would prefer almost any kind of health care to the kind of programs that they have been force-fed the past few decades. This disdain is further underlined in the "comments" section, where one reads such remarks as "Stop reproductive health; it's not good," "We don't need reproductive health programs." "Stop reproductive health; eradicate malaria," and so on.

Bear in mind that those with whom we spoke were not backward, tribal people, but highly westernized and educated residents of one of Ghana's most modernized cities. The residents are small shop owners and tradesmen, mechanics and other service providers, and agricultural proprietors and workers. Most of the inhabitants have received some education, and literacy rates are high. Why, then, should their views on their own health care needs, including their rejection of so-called reproductive health care, not be taken seriously in planning foreign aid programs?

Population control organizations find it highly inconvenient that their programs are not greeted with joy by their "targets," and they go to great lengths to disguise or explain away this fact. Overseas, they work overtime to create the impression of robust popular and government support for their anti-natal programs. However, this facade falls away in discussions with donors, in which they arrogantly suggest that the women's reluctance to contracept comes about because they either don't know their own minds, or because they simply don't know what's good for them (or their country, or the environment, etc.)

To suggest that a woman does not know her own mind in such a private and important matter as childbearing is, at the very least, patronizing.

To deal with this perceived problem, population controllers have contrived the concept of "latent demand," and the related concept of "unmet need." "Latent demand" means that, while a woman has a supposedly obvious need for a modern contraceptive, she is kept from demanding it by ignorance, fear, or superstition. Consequently, an "unmet need" is the percentage of women in a given country who are said to have a "need" for modern contraceptives that is not being "met."

How do USAID and other population control agencies arrive at the number of women in a given country who have an "unmet need" to be contracepted or sterilized? Certainly not, as the term itself suggests, by respectfully asking a representative sample of women about their actual contraceptive needs. Rather, the "unmet need" for modern contraceptives is circuitously inferred from survey questionnaire data as the percentage of women who (1) say they wish to delay the birth of their next child, or who want no more children, and who also (2) say they are not using modern means of contraception.

It is surely no accident that each and every one of the methodological shortcomings of determining "unmet need" and "latent demand" strengthens the case for population control by inflating the percentage of women in developing countries who are said to require the services of the controllers. "Unmet need," like "latent demand," is nothing more than a self-serving verbal dodge, used by the controllers to justify their budgets and design their programs, furthering the pretence that, in so doing, they are but serving the "deepest" needs of womankind.

If this sounds too harsh, consider how the controllers would behave if they were truly interested in meeting the reproductive health needs of women, as women themselves understand them. Their way forward would be simple and straightforward. They would merely have to ask women how many children they wished to have, and then provide the necessary maternal and infant health care programs necessary to safely achieve that number. Surveys show that parents throughout the developing world, just like parents from wealthy countries, have pronounced views on their own "desired family size." So these numbers would be easy to obtain.

What this means is that the controllers cannot, at one and the same time, pursue their anti-natal agenda and respect the fertility desires of women in the developing world. There is simply no way to reconcile these two mutually antagonistic goals. Instead, they serve the first, and pay lip service to the second. They invent spurious measures of flawed design which supposedly reflect the reproductive health needs of women but which are actually calculated to serve an anti-natal agenda. The alternative is, for them, quite unthinkable. For if the controllers were to relax their relentless efforts at fertility control, and begin to truly serve the reproductive health needs of women, the denizens of the developing world would fall into what they would regard as an uncontrolled frenzy of breeding.

Modern controllers are careful to hide their anti-natal agenda behind concepts such as "latent demand," "unmet need", and "reproductive health care." Occasionally the mask slips, however. PRI investigator Joseph Meaney, visiting a UN refugee camp in Albania in 1999, was struck by the fact that many of the Kosovo refugee women he was speaking to were eager to have more children, in part to make up for those they had lost to Serbian atrocities. When he mentioned this to a UNFPA doctor, the man exploded with distain for his charges: "They're refugees, don't you see! They can't have children!

Who are we to tell the poor women of the world that they cannot have more children? This is not reproductive health. This is reproductive oppression, and the women from these developing nations recognize it for what it is: an assault on their fertility and ultimately, their race. We should give the poor nations of the world primary health care, not ideological imperialism.

PRI is a 501(c)(3) educational organization. If you would like to make a tax-deductible donation to PRI, please go to our Donations Page:

The pro-life Population Research Institute is dedicated to ending human rights abuses committed in the name of "family planning," and to ending counter-productive social and economic paradigms premised on the myth of "overpopulation." Find us at www.pop.org.

Campaign Life Coalition National Newsletter (Current)