“Outlaw abortion and abortion won’t stop. Women will just do it illegally and women will die!”
Or so the argument goes… But facts are pesky things, and they show that the opposite is true in Chile.
According to new research from the MELISA Institute, since Chile’s ban on abortion, not only has maternal health improved but the number of women seeking illegal abortion has plummeted!
(more…)
In May, the European Commission summarily rejected the largest democratic initiative in European Union history—a pro-life petition called “One of Us.” The decision left many wondering: Is participatory democracy dead in the European Union?
Self-governance is essential to any democratic regime, but that’s merely an inconvenient truth to the bureaucrats in Brussels. The European Union continues to wrestle with criticism of its ever-deepening democracy deficit — the failure of the EU system to involve citizens in the decision-making process.
A Quiet Inquisition (2014)
Documentary, Not Rated (65 minutes)
Directed by Alessandra Zeka and Holen Sabrina Kahn
Dr. Carla Cerrato marches firmly through the brightly-painted halls of Hospital Alemán Nicaragüense. Her white medical coat has “Ipas” emblazoned across the pocket. The obstetrics offices and maternity ward at Dr. Cerrato’s hospital are by no means squalid, but neither are they a model of sterile hospital care that those in developed nations expect as a matter of course. Today, Dr. Cerrato is advising a 28-year-old patient who may have ruptured the amniotic membrane protecting her unborn child. If that’s the case, the patient’s mother says she’d rather see her grandchild aborted than risk possible infection. Despite Nicaragua’s ban on abortion, Dr. Cerrato is willing to oblige.
A Quiet Inquisition is a cleverly persuasive documentary. It grips the audience with emotional appeals and lauds Dr. Cerrato as a trustworthy, compassionate doctor who is willing to act boldly in the face of Nicaragua’s pro-life laws. There’s just one problem: this agenda-driven propaganda film fails to take account of the facts regarding abortion and maternal mortality.
After a conference in Toronto this month, Melinda Gates wrote on the Foundation’s website that because of the controversy around the topic, “the Gates Foundation has decided not to fund abortion. “
But is it true? Does the Gates Foundation really refrain from funding abortion around the world?
Father Shenan J. Boquet, president of Human Life International called the statement “outright deception.” Fr. Boquet notes that, “The Gates Foundation has in the past and will continue to give tens of millions of dollars to the largest abortion providers in the world, including International Planned Parenthood Federation and Marie Stopes International. These large sums of money will undoubtedly expand the reach and influence of the abortion industry.”
According to the Gates Foundation grant database, the Foundation gave Planned Parenthood of America, the International Planned Parenthood Federation, and Planned Parenthood of Western Washington about $71 million from before 2009 through 2013. Additionally, the Gates Foundation gave $46.1 million to Marie Stopes International in 2012 alone.
Since 1994, the United Nations has held review conferences to evaluate progress on the Cairo platform for action. Each conference on population and development is basically the same: every year, developed regions such as the United States and the European Union try to push population control on developing regions by threatening to withhold aid money or otherwise twisting their arms. The same pro-abortion lobbyists show up to U.N. headquarters to push for more abortion around the world.
We’ve been there to resist their effort since 2011. Personhood has joined hands with other pro-life, pro-family organizations at the U.N. to encourage respect for the dignity of the human person. Together, our coalition is preventing the forces of death from advancing their agenda.
Last week was the 20th Anniversary of the Cairo agreement, yet Planned Parenthood and their cronies have been unable to advance beyond the agreed language of 1994. There is still no “right to abortion” in international consensus and human life remains protected in many countries around the world.But that doesn’t stop them from trying.
At one point last week, the document being negotiated by national delegations was chock full of references to “sexual rights,” “sexual and reproductive health services,” and “reproductive rights” (code at the U.N. for abortion). In fact, the document referenced these topics 20 times more often than it mentioned food. It never referenced clean water or literacy. Strange emphasis for a document purportedly dealing with global development, isn’t it?
Thankfully, at the conclusion of negotiations, many of these offensive references were deleted by the Chair. While not perfect, last week’s outcome document was yet another setback for Planned Parenthood and pro-abortion lobbyists at the U.N.
It’s essential that we continue to stand in the gap at the U.N. to prevent them from imposing their pro-abortion agenda on the rest of the world. Our U.N. outreach effort is small, but effective. We are a thorn in Planned Parenthood’s side. Your support for Personhood is truly making a difference around the world! Thank you for standing with us as we champion Personhood for every human being, from conception to natural death–both here in the United States and around the globe.
BRUSSELS—The European Parliament voted down a report defining abortion as a “human right” today, in accordance with the popular groundswell of pro-life sentiment in Europe. The vote comes after the “One of Us” campaign, endorsed by Personhood Education and the Vatican, announced it has collected more than 1,400,000 signatures within the European Union to recognize the personhood of unborn children.
The draft report considered by the European Parliament would have elevated the right to abortion above the right to life, restricted the conscience rights and religious freedom of health care workers, and demanded public funding for abortion and other forms of embryonic destruction. The assembly defeated the report in a 351 to 319 vote, sending it back to committee.
Currently, international law recognizes no “right to abortion.” Even if adopted, legal scholars question whether the report could have held any binding legal effect over member states, since the European Union only possesses the authority conferred to it by member states.
“Representatives at the European Parliament wisely listened to the pro-life will of the people,” said Josh Craddock, Personhood Education’s United Nations liaison. “More than one million voices have called for the EU to recognize personhood for unborn children. It’s time for the radical ‘experts’ in Brussels who drafted this report to abandon their delusional social agenda.”
The “One of Us” initiative is only the second European Citizens’ Initiative in history to reach the petition requirements established by the Commission. If passed, it will ban EU financing of abortion and other embryonic destruction.
Craddock continued: “Killing an innocent human being can never be considered a fundamental ‘human right.’ Life is the ultimate human right, without which no other rights can exist.”
A new medical study refutes the recently reported claim that “The risk of death associated with childbirth is approximately 14 times higher than with abortion.” The study, published in the peer-reviewed Linacre Quarterly, concluded that the dubious claim is “unsupported by the literature and there is no credible scientific basis to support it.”
Dr. Byron Calhoun, vice chair of the Department of Obstetrics & Gynecology at West Virginia University-Charleston, reviewed the data from abortion-related mortality in the United States and determined that “valid scientific assessment of abortion mortality [is] extremely difficult.” This stems from the fact that:
Abortion-related mortality is vastly underreported “due to poor quality reporting and definitional issues”. Dr. Calhoun’s research shows that “maternal deaths,” “late maternal deaths,” “pregnancy-related deaths,” and “pregnancy-associated deaths” are being defined to include, but not identify, “abortion-related deaths.”
Other factors making data unreliable include “incomplete reporting, definitional incompatibilities, voluntary data collection, research bias, reliance upon estimations, political correctness, inaccurate and/or incomplete death certificate completion, incomparability with maternal mortality statistics, and failing to include other causes of death such as suicides.”
The “numerous and complicated methodological factors make a valid scientific assessment of abortion mortality extremely difficult.” Based on reliability of the available data, Dr. Calhoun indicates that it would be impossible to claim with any degree of scientific certainty that abortion is safer than childbirth, especially with the specificity that abortion is fourteen times safer!
Dr. Calhoun calls for “substantial discussion” on this women’s health issue so that “all reproductive outcome variables and associations: including elective abortions” are reported in a consistent fashion that is accessible to medical researchers.
Read the paper here: http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/maney/lnq/2013/00000080/00000003/art00010
by Josh Craddock
Is it always wrong to take an innocent human life? That’s the question Princeton Professor Peter Singer asked in his editorial for The Daily Star last week. It’s also the question that RedState editor Erick Erickson begs in his unhinged attack on Georgia Right to Life, after they withdrew support from the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act. Both authors overlook the crucial distinctions between non-interference and accomplice with abortion.
Criticizing the “absoluteness” of answering yes, Singer outlines the case of Beatriz—a pseudonymous El Salvadoran woman caught in the middle of an international dispute over her country’s pro-life laws last month. Singer, like other abortion advocates, argues that Beatriz’s health condition (classified by national health authorities as non-threatening to her life) and her unborn child’s brain abnormality (anencephaly) produce a case where taking innocent human life is justifiable. He laments the Salvadoran Supreme Court’s ruling, which upheld the country’s personhood protections for both mother and child.
Yet his dramatic storytelling truncates the ending: Beatriz went into labor naturally and her doctors determined the kind of delivery—Caesarean section—that would be best for their patient. Her baby daughter was born alive and lived for five hours. An abortion would have torn the little girl limb from limb inside the womb.
It’s ironic that Singer, an advocate of so-called “death with dignity,” asks whether there was any benefit to delivery and natural death instead of a violent abortion. The difference is that, while non-interference is not immoral (provided reasonable efforts have been made to preserve life), it is always immoral to actively assent to the killing of an innocent human being.
Erick Erickson misses this same distinction in his hit-piece against Georgia Right to Life (GRTL). When House Republicans exempted children conceived in rape and incest from their fetal pain legislation, GRTL pulled its support for the bill. Supporting the bill with those exceptions authorizes the intentional killing of some innocent human beings, with the intention to possibly save others. Yet this bill never even had the possibility to save others, since it cannot pass the Senate and would receive a decisive veto from President Obama if it did.
To see the parallels in reasoning more clearly, compare these paraphrased summaries:
Supporting the fetal pain legislation (as amended), which reinforces the legality of murdering children based on the circumstances of their conception, could be considered joining as an accomplice. Revoking support for such a bill (non-interference) is a moral response to a compromise which undermines the foundational moral principle that all unborn children are persons deserving legal protection. Why would Erickson vilify other pro-life advocates for adhering to that principle?
While his support for “exceptions” in pro-life bills advances the same flawed reasoning as Singer, Erickson only hints at the unstated serpentine question, “Is it always wrong to take an innocent human life?” If we are to remain pro-life, the answer must always be yes.
A tragic rape case in Chile has sparked calls for legalizing abortion in the South American country. An eleven-year-old girl from Puerto Montt known as “Belen” is 14 weeks pregnant after having been repeatedly molested by her mother’s boyfriend.
Rather than being outraged at the rapist, abortion-promoters have seized upon Chile’s law prohibiting abortion in all cases. Even the mother has shamefully spoken in defense of the rapist and called for the abortion of her grandchild. The popular Presidential candidate, Michelle Bachelet, said via Twitter: “Michelle has a plan to decriminalize therapeutic abortion in cases of rape.” Bachelet previously promoted pro-abortion policies during her tenure as the head of UN Women.
The young girl, however, has declared her desire to keep the unborn child. “I’m going to love the baby very much, even though it comes from that man who hurt me,” Belen said in a TV interview. “It will be like having a doll in my arms.” Current pro-life President Pinera praised the girl for her “depth and maturity” and has asked the health minister to personally look after the girl’s health.
“Anyone who truly cares about a rape victim would want to protect her from the rapist, and from an abortion, and not the baby,” said Personhood Education spokesperson Rebecca Kiessling, who was conceived in rape and has become an outspoken advocate for others like her and for women, such as her mother, who have been raped.
“A baby is not the worst thing which could ever happen to a rape victim—an abortion is,” continued Kiessling. “That’s why most rape victims not only choose life for their children, but they choose to raise their child conceived in rape. They express that the baby brings healing, but abortion brings more suffering and destruction—another violent intrusion into her womb. My birthmother says that I’m a blessing to her. I honor her, and I bring her joy.”
In 2006, abortion allowed a serial rapist in Kansas, Robert Estrada, to repeatedly abuse his four step-daughters, aged 11-16. The sexual abuse was covered up because Estrada easily procured legal abortions for the girls.
“Abortion emboldens rapists,” said Jennifer Mason, Personhood Education’s communications director. “If abortion were legal in Chile, it would allow criminals like this to escape being caught, because he can take the victim to a local abortion provider, dispose of the evidence, and continue to victimize the young girl. Abortion for rape and incest is not compassionate; it is cruel. If Chile wants to protect girls like Belen, it shouldn’t give cover to rapists and criminals.”
Abortion increasingly victimizes women, but it also kills the second victim of rape: the unborn child. Personhood Education warns that legalizing abortion for rape and incest undermines the personhood of the unborn child and will lead to total legalization of abortion.
“Students of abortion history will recall that the gradual legalization of abortion in the cases of rape and incest undermines the personhood of the unborn child,” Mason continued. “If the right to life can be abrogated in cases of rape and incest, why should we respect it in other instances? The child in the womb is a person with rights, regardless of the circumstances surrounding his or her conception.”
The 1989 ban on abortion in Chile was correlated to a near total reduction in abortion-related maternal mortality. In 2008, Chile had the second lowest maternal mortality rate in the Americas, just behind Canada and ahead of the United States.
A new scientific study published by the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons indicates that Ireland provides better maternal and neonatal healthcare to pregnant women and their babies. The study reviewed more than 40 years of national health data, including rates of maternal mortality, stillbirth, and preterm birth.
In Great Britain, where abortion has been legal since 1968, rates of maternal mortality have remained obstinately high. The article reports maternal mortality of 6 per 100,000 in England and Wales. Meanwhile, abortion-free Ireland boasts one of the world’s lowest rates of maternal mortality, with only 3 deaths per 100,000 women.
Although Irish women can travel to Great Britain to obtain an abortion, the rate of abortions performed on Irish women remain low. The authors calculated that fewer than one-tenth of Irish women will experience an induced abortion, compared to one-third of English women. A prior medical history of induced abortion was correlated with preterm birth and low birth weight, which are in turn associated with with a higher rate of cerebral palsy. The study’s authors discovered that these indicators of neonatal health are also more favorable in the Irish jurisdictions.
“Over the 40 years of legalized abortion in the UK there has been a consistent pattern in which higher abortion rates have run parallel to higher incidence of stillbirths, premature births, low birth-weight neonates, cerebral palsy, and maternal deaths,” the authors conclude. “In contrast, both Irish jurisdictions consistently display lower rates of all morbidities and mortality associated with legalized abortion.”
The study comes on the heels of proposed legislation which would put Ireland on a path toward British-style abortion law.
Personhood Education 