Fr John Fleming on the Mental Capacity Act

I am in Nottingham today with Fr Fleming, the bioethicist, member of the Pontifical Academy for Life, and adviser to the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC). He is speaking to Catholic clergy in England this week on behalf of the Society. His talk includes an unflinching analysis of the Mental Capacity Act.

The Act provides for euthanasia by omission of reasonable care, Fr Fleming says. It does this by a faulty understandings of ordinary care, autonomy and “best interests”.

Ordinary care

Fr Fleming explains Pope John Paul's teaching that the administration of water and food, even when provided by artificial means, always represents a natural means of preserving life, not a medical act. However, under the Mental Capacity Act, artificially-delivered food and fluids is seen as medical treatment.

Autonomy

Autonomy is the right to self-determination, the right to free choice. However, free choice is linked to fundamental human values and inalienable human rights such as the right to life. A person cannot exercise his autonomy by giving away his right to freedom, for example, by selling himself into slavery. Neither can he use his autonomy by denying his right to life as the Mental Capacity Act permits.

Neither can my autonomy be exercised by another person. The Mental Capacity Act falls prey to a false understanding of autonomy in this respect too. “Autonomy” cannot be handed on like a baton in a relay race, Fr Fleming says. You can make decisions on my behalf when I am not able to do that for myself but that is not an exercise in autonomy. It might be you acting autonomously on my behalf.

This leads to another danger: Relatives can be overcome with identifying with the patient's suffering and the problem of transference arises: "Please put grandma out of my misery".

“Best interests”

Hurt a child and the law intervenes, Fr Fleming says. The law ensures that parents' choices on behalf of their children are constrained by the child's objective “best interests”. However, the Mental Capacity Act 2005 imposes no such constraint on those with power of attorney for, and doctors caring for, mentally incapacitated patients.. The patient's “best interests” in the new law are not objective but are subjectively defined.

The Mental Capacity Act by enshrining in law euthanasia by neglect is the first legislative step to active euthanasia, and those behind it know that's the case, Fr Fleming says.

Remembering but not mourning Deng Xiaoping

Today is the 11th anniversary of the death of Deng Xiaoping, the de facto leader of Communist China between 1978 and 1992. Deng is well-known for having ordered the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989. Deng is less well-known as the founder of China's one-child policy, which is implemented by forced abortions and many other coercive means. The one-child policy only started in 1979 once Deng, one of the founders of Communist China, had taken control of the regime. Deng - who himself had six children! - said in 1987: "In order to reduce the population, use whatever means you must, but do it!” Deng is pictured here with Henry Kissinger, former US Secretary of State and author of the infamous NSSM 200 (National Security Study Memorandum 200), which recommended that the United States should promote population control in the developing world in order to secure American interests. The West should reject the amoral Realpolitik of NSSM 200 and instead ensure that the Chinese Communist regime cannot use this year's Olympics to divert attention from its crimes against unborn children and their mothers.

Saving the children?

Save the Children, the international humanitarian charity, has again undermined its cause by promoting an anti-life approach. In a report issued today entitled "Saving children's lives: why equity matters" (PDF 428KB) Save the Children states that in Sierra Leone "understanding of sexual and reproductive health is low" and so "[i]n 2005 [Save the Children] provided basic reproductive health equipment" to clinics in a particular district. The staff in the Save the Children-supported clinics are now enabled "to discuss a range of health and family planning issues" with pregnant women. The report goes on to claim that "[a] huge reduction in neonatal deaths is also possible if pregnant mothers can access appropriate support, including help to control the timing and frequency of pregnancies....The effective use of contraception can help mothers to control their fertility and space their pregnancies in a way that enhances their health and that of their babies." We can say a number of things in relation to this report:

• Save the Children is not pro-life - indeed, as detailed in SPUC's charity bulletin (PDF 123KB), it supports the ideology of abortion;

• 'Reproductive health', 'family planning' and 'contraception' are terms which often entail abortion operations and/or abortion-inducing birth control drugs and devices;

• Even where the particular methods of artificial birth control used are not themselves abortifacient, the mass provision of artificial birth control is accompanied by a rise in abortion - the killing of children - as leaders of the pro-abortion lobby acknowledge;

• Population control endangers a country's prosperity by depleting its best natural resource - people - and money that could otherwise be spent on primary health care.

the rights of the unborn in international law

I was in Ireland this week with Dr John Fleming, President of Campion College, Sydney, a new Catholic university. He was speaking to priests in Galway on the rights of the unborn in international law at a meeting organized by Pat Buckley, director of European Life Network, Ireland.

Dr John Fleming is a Catholic priest, married with three children. He is a bioethicist and widely published in that field. He was a foundational member of UNESCO’s International Bioethics Committee, which produced the Universal Declaration on the Human Genome and Human Rights.

He has recently co-edited a book Common Ground, launched in Melbourne last September, which contains a chapter by Fr Fleming entitled “What rights, if any, do the unborn have under international law?”

Copies of his book are available from SPUC at £15 plus postage and packing.

Why Humanae Vitae was right about contraception

It's good to see that Janet Smith, the famous author of Humanae Vitae: A Generation later and editor of Why Humanae Vitae Was Right is speaking in Westminster Cathedral Hall on 6th March.

After 34 years working in the pro-life movement, I am convinced that the teaching of Humanae Vitae on the inseparable connection between the unitive significance and the procreative significance of the marriage act is of fundamental importance for the future of the family and for the sanctity of human life throughout the world. Furthermore, I believe that what is happening today to the family and to the sanctity of human life in Europe provides overwhelming evidence of the prophetic importance of Pope Paul VI’s words:

“The Church, nevertheless, in urging men to the observance of the precepts of the natural law, which it interprets by its constant doctrine, teaches that each and every marital act must of necessity retain its intrinsic relationship to the procreation of human life." Humanae Vitae, 11

In a presentation in Warsaw last May, at the World Congress of Families, I said:

Britain is witnessing the fulfilment of the prophetic message of Humanae Vitae, Pope Paul VI’s historic encyclical which celebrates its 40th anniversary next year. Speaking about the inseparable connection between the unitive and procreative significance of sexual intercourse he wrote: “Finally, careful consideration should be given to the danger of this power passing into the hands of those public authorities who care little for the precepts of the moral law. Who will blame a government which in its attempt to resolve the problems affecting an entire country resorts to the same measures as are regarded as lawful by married people in the solution of a particular family difficulty? Who will prevent public authorities from favoring those contraceptive methods which they consider more effective? Should they regard this as necessary, they may even impose their use on everyone.” (Humanae Vitae 17)

Moreover, as Pope John Paul II points out in Evangelium Vitae (13), there is a close interconnection between contraception and abortion.According to the manufacturers, one of the contraceptive pill’s modes of action is to cause an early abortion.

Last year [2006], a teacher at a Catholic comprehensive school for boys and girls in Kent, England, spoke out publicly about the sex education given to her class of 13- to 14-year-old children. The teacher, a Miss McLernon, said: “I think people should be aware of what is going on in schools. I witnessed the nurse using a plastic model to show these children how to put on what she said was a chocolate flavoured condom.” She went to on to explain to her pupils that flavoured condoms had been made because prostitutes didn’t like the taste of rubber.

Miss McLernon added: “Every child in the class was given a card explaining where you could get free contraceptives and the abortion-inducing morning-after pill. The card also gave details of a website for young people explaining how a surgical abortion could be arranged. This is a Catholic school where you would expect children to be protected from this sort of thing.”

Sadly, more and more Catholic parents are telling us at the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children about terrible experiences in Catholic schools, both at secondary and primary school level. Protests on the part of Catholic parents and teachers seeking to protect young people do not appear to be heard.

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The full text of my talk is here. A list of resources published by Janet Smith is here.

The intrinsic wrongnesss of IVF

A story in the Sunday Telegraph points towards the intrinsic wrongnesss of IVF, proving how allowing human life to be created outside the body and inside the laboratory has led to the killing of human beings and the abuse of human dignity. The Sunday Telegraph reports that the government has admitted that in recent years there have been hundreds of accidents in which embryos have lost, damaged or destroyed by IVF centres.

It is only because legal permission for IVF has turned early human life into a commodity that the IVF centre staff involved haven't been charged with unlawful homicide. Imagine the outcry if hundreds of new-born babies were accidentally lost, damaged or destroyed by neo-natal medics.

Build peaceful pro-life resistance

In addition to developing prudent political opposition to the killing policies of the UK government and parliament, we need, I believe, to develop peaceful, pro-life resistance campaigns against such policies. My belief is reinforced by news I received this weekend.

Morning-after pill manufacturer’s admissions and evasion…

A reader forwarded me a letter sent to her friends this week by Bayer Schering Pharma, the manufacturers of the morning-after pill (which may cause an early abortion by preventing the embryo from implanting in the lining of the womb).

The Bayer Schering letter underlines three major concerns for UK citizens, especially parents:

1. There is very limited medical evidence on the effects of the morning-after pill on girls under the age of 16. [Levonelle 1500 delivers 50 times the daily dosage of the Norgeston daily mini-pill.]
2. Scherings carefully avoid answering the question of whether they are accountable for any ill-effects arising from the administration of the morning after pill. If Scherings isn’t accountable for the effects of their product, who is?
3. If pregnancy occurs after taking the morning-pill, the possibility of an ectopic pregnancy should be considered.

Bayer Schering’s important letter is a reminder of the shameful teenage pregnancy policy of the government, personally introduced by Tony Blair, as Prime Minister, in June 1999. His government’s policy, amongst other things, targeted children under the age of 16 to be given the morning-after pill without the knowledge or consent of parents. Tony Blair said: “This is a comprehensive programme of action which we will put into practice straight away”.

The government pursues this policy with reckless disregard for the unknown ill-effects of the morning-after pill on the children, our children and grandchildren.

Ectopic pregnancy is a significant cause of maternal death.

Health professionals, pharmacists, teachers, school governors should be encouraged by pro-lifers to resist the government’s policy by conscientious objection. Those who make decisions on our children’s behalf – providing abortifacient birth control and abortions to children under the age of 16 and others – must be made aware that we hold them accountable for those decisions.

Contact me if you want to join SPUC’s peaceful pro-life resistance campaign.

suspended sentence for assisting suicide

This time last week the press reported on the sentence given to a man from West Sussex who, reportedly, placed a plastic bag and pillow over his wife’s face after she had taken an overdose of pills. His wife, Mrs Cook, had multiple sclerosis. Mr Cook was given a suspended jail sentence for assisting her suicide “on the ground of diminished responsibility”.

Alison Davis (pictured), the leader of No Less Human, a division of SPUC, wrote to The Times about Mr Cook’s sentence. Alison believes that the underlying reason for the light sentence was that Mrs Cook was disabled, depressed and wanted to die. Since Alison’s letter to The Times has not been published, she suggests that I publish it instead:

“It seems to me that this [kind of sentence] has become the norm when disabled people who are simultaneously depressed are deliberately killed. It is assumed that the disabled person is "right to want to die" and no effort is put into trying to ameliorate the effects of severe depression - something that would be done as a matter of course for people with no obvious disabling condition.

“I have several disabling conditions and use a wheelchair full time. I experience severe spinal pain on a daily basis, and even morphine doesn't always control the pain.

“Twenty years ago, when doctors thought I didn't have long left to live I decided I wanted to die. It was a settled wish that lasted over 10 years. I attempted suicide several times, and had assisted suicide been legal then I would have requested it. Under the rules that apply in Holland, Belgium and Switzerland I would have qualified for it. Failing that, if I could have found someone prepared to "assist" me to die, I would have jumped at the chance.

“It took my friends many years to help me change my mind about wanting to die. I still have the same level of pain now, and my disabling conditions have deteriorated significantly. What has changed is my outlook on life. If assisted suicide had been available to me then,no one would ever have known that the future held something better for me, and that the doctors' prognosis was wrong.

“I suggest that what sick and disabled people like me really need is help and support to live with dignity until we naturally die. Cases such as that of Mr & Mrs Cook only serve to underline a negative view of the value of suffering lives, and create a double standard - non-disabled depressed people are treated, disabled depressed people are killed. This is unfair, unjust and unworthy of a civilised society.”

supporter climbs 22,800' peak for SPUC

One of our supporters has climbed the highest mountain in the world outside the Himalayas to raise funds for SPUC’s work. Mr Mark Norbury, who is British-born but lives in Canada, set off to climb Aconcagua, Argentina, on the 10^th of last month and reached the summit of the Andean mountain on the 27^th. He has since made it safely back to base camp.

Mark had to contend with altitude sickness, windburn and sunburn. He said: “Nearing the summit I felt really dizzy with the altitude and my body kept telling me to just lie down and rest, but I continued on, one step at a time. I never once seriously considered giving up. I'd come this far and was so determined to reach the top. I crawled on to the summit at 4 pm.”

Mark has been a keen mountaineer since his youth. His first climb was Great Gable in the Lake District, England, at the age of two. In 2002, he conquered Kilimanjaro, Tanzania, the highest mountain in Africa. Aconcagua is 6,962 metres (22,841 feet).

Mark said that deciding which organisation to support through sponsorship for his climb was not difficult. “Protecting the lives of children is, I believe, the most important challenge facing the world at this moment. Life begins at conception, as scientists can prove, and there is little that distinguishes a baby within the womb from a baby who has been born. Both are dependent on their mother for nourishment, warmth, love and all that sustains their life. The average mother or her doctor would not dream of killing a baby after birth, yet sadly it has become socially and politically acceptable to kill a baby within his or her mother's womb."

If you would like to make a credit/payment card donation to Mark’s fundraising efforts please ring (01772) 258580.

Britain's failing teen pregnancy strategy

The British government's teenage pregnancy strategy aimed to cut the conception rate among under-18s by 15% between 1998 and 2004, and to halve that rate by 2010. It has spent more than £250 million yet has only achieved an 11.5% reduction. The most significant reduction in the rate from its high point in 1998 was in 1999 before the strategy was implemented. The pace of reduction actually slowed down once the strategy was implemented. Central to the strategy has been the availability and promotion of birth control - both "contraception" which may work abortifaciently and abortion via the Abortion Act 1967.

The human cost of this policy is incalculable. While the conception rate in 1998 for England and Wales was 47.1 per thousand, only 42% of those conceptions led to abortion. The conception rate in 2005 was 41.4 per thousand, but 46.4% of these ended in abortion.

Britain now has the highest rate of teenage pregnancy in western Europe. [Daily Mail, 6 February] The government wants teenagers to use long-term birth control methods such as injections, implants and intrauterine devices. [Daily Mail, 6 February] However, contrary to the government's claims justifying its policy, the availability of birth control is not a factor in teenage pregnancy rates.

The social causes of teenage pregnancy

Professor David Paton of Nottingham University (pictured) found that teenagers in poor areas were more likely to visit birth control clinics, yet those areas had higher teen pregnancy rates. Teenagers in better-off parts of England were less likely to go to clinics even though the rate was lower there. [The economics of family planning and underage conceptions, Journal of Health Economics, March 2002] Professor Paton found that social deprivation was a factor in teenage pregnancy. More recently, he has said: "An improvement in general education levels appears to be the most significant factor in reducing teenage pregnancies."

Although politicians want to throw yet more birth control at this problem, they do also acknowledge the social factors. Ms Beverley Hughes MP, the children's minister, speaks of "tailored support for all teenage parents to reduce future teenage pregnancies." A ministry statement says that such support: "… would also tackle the underlying causes of early pregnancy such as low aspirations, disengagement from learning, poor educational attainment and poor emotional health." [Department for Children, Schools and Families, 29 January]

Mr Chris Bryant, Labour MP for Rhondda, recently told parliament: "The map of teenage pregnancy in Britain is the map of poverty and deprivation. Last week, I put together some statistics, which, for the first time, were done by constituency, rather than by local authority. They show that the map is a consistent line of the poorest communities in this country". [Westminster Hall Hansard, 29 January]

Mr Bryant's report, based on extensive interviews with teenage mothers, said that in 2005 there were 39,804 conceptions among under-18s in England - a rate of 41.3 per thousand. Teenage pregnancy was linked with deprivation, leading to a: “vicious cycle of underachievement, benefit dependency, ill health, lack of aspiration, poor parenting and child poverty.” Press coverage refers to Mr Bryant's warning that some teenage girls were getting pregnant to get a council flat. This may or may not be true, but no amount of sex-education or free condoms is likely to prevent a girl who wants a baby from becoming pregnant.

The relationship between household-type and poverty

Social disadvantage is directly associated with family breakdown. Children raised by two married parents do better financially, academically and socially. Children raised outside a stable family structure find it harder to form stable, committed families for their own children.

National government surveys in the US show that, in families where the parents have always belonged to each other and to their children, there is the lowest level of child poverty (12%) and in stepfamilies it is 13%. The level of poverty in divorced, single-parent families is 31% and, with cohabiting parents, it is 39%. Separated, single-parent families have a poverty-level of 41%, while always-single mother households are at 67%. [Dignity of the child from conception and its right to life, home, and family, Dr Patrick Fagan, World Congress of Families IV, Warsaw, Poland, 12 May 2007]

Therefore, the biggest single contribution government could make to reducing social deprivation, child poverty and, consequently, teenage pregnancy, would be to ensure that children were raised by both biological parents in a married relationship.

Undermining parental rights

The teenage pregnancy strategy actually undermines families by removing the parents' rights to decide the nature of the sex-education their children receive and when they should receive it. A Council of Europe document states: "In exercise of any functions which it assures in relation to education and to teaching, the State shall respect the right of parents to ensure such education and teaching in conformity with their own religious and philosophical convictions." [article 2, Protocol to the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, as amended by protocol 11, Paris, 20 March 1952.]

Ms Beverley Hughes recently said to parliament: "What that strategy has been designed to do is, first, encourage parental engagement." [Westminster Hall Hansard, 29 January] However, in the field of sex-education, Ms Hughes's government has removed parents' rights. It is now threatening to target children in primary schools, and to make sex-education mandatory. Government policy has also assailed parental authority by secretly supplying birth control and abortion to underage children.

Moral hazard and contraceptive failure

People are more likely to avoid risks when there is no safety-net. Teenagers engage in risky sexual behaviour if they think they can get birth control without their parents finding out, and a secret abortion if contraception fails. Insurance companies call this moral hazard. [Professor David Paton, Faith, July-August 2007]

Contraception is much more likely to fail than people generally believe. A report published on the 29th of last month by Marie Stopes International in Australia shows that some 43% of women who became pregnant unintentionally were using oral contraceptives when they conceived and another 27% reportedly used a condom. This highlights the foolishness of a sexual health strategy which is founded on the assumption that children will be more efficient in the use of contraception than adults.

Health risks of hormonal birth control

The evidence shows use of birth control (especially by those under 20) is associated with significant risks. The teenage pregnancy strategy could actually be contributing to the human and economic costs of sexual ill-health. Hormonal birth control such as the pill is associated with cancer. Despite news stories suggesting the pill can reduce the risk of ovarian cancer, there is a well-established link to an increased risk of cancer of the breast, cervix and liver. These effects are even more dangerous when exposure to pill is begun before physical maturity, and goes on for many years.

Cervical cancer

The connection between cervical cancer and the pill, has been under investigation since 1964. Since then studies have confirmed a heightened risk, particularly to teenager users. In 1988, research on 47,000 women published in The Lancet showed the connection between use of the pill and genital cancers.

Breast cancer

This probably presents a greater risk to pill-users than cervical cancer. Research in the Netherlands in 1994 showed a heightened risk associated with long term use. In 1995 The Lancet cited research which concluded women who had started oral contraceptive use at between 20 and 24 years of age had three times the risk of developing breast cancer before the age of 46 than those who had never used it.

Further studies have concurred with this and the Netherlands Cancer Institute reported the particular danger of use before the age of 20. In 1996 research conducted by Malcolm Pike showed a 50% increase of breast cancer in women who started on the pill before the age of 20. The results of tamoxifen, the anti-oestrogen drug, in the prevention of breast cancer confirms the role of oestrogen (and therefore the combined pill and morning-after pills) in the development of cancer. Bringing a pregnancy to full term safeguards against breast cancer.

Blood clots

The risk of death from clots can begin within one month of starting on the pill. In 1968 hospital admissions for blood clots were shown to be nine times greater in women who used the pill than those who did not.

Despite the development of the low-dose pill, this risk remains four times greater in users of the pill. Women with hereditary high cholesterol are advised not to use the pill. Users with a hereditary defect of the clotting factor in their blood face a 30-fold increased risk of developing clots compared to normal non-users.

Liver tumours

These are rare and, although not usually malignant, such tumours can cause death if they rupture.

Minor side effects

These include depression, raised blood pressure (with an increased risk of stroke even in girls as young as 14), and conditions such as eczema and chloasma.

Sexually transmitted diseases

While the discussion of teenage sexual health has focused on teenage pregnancy, the rise in the rates of sexually transmitted diseases has been alarming. There are serious implications for the future fertility of children and teenagers who contract such diseases.

Conclusion

The teenage pregnancy strategy is not working. While the conception rate has fallen slightly, the number of recorded abortions continues to rise, without even including early abortion caused by birth control drugs and devices. (The manufacturer's description of the Norgeston mini-pill concedes that it can stop young embryos from implanting in the womb (nidation).)

The government stubbornly insists that what is needed is even more birth control, yet this has been shown not to be a factor in teenage pregnancy. The government pays lip-service to the social factors which do lead to teenage pregnancy yet undermines the traditional family which is more likely to give children an emotionally stable and materially adequate upbringing. In all this, we are scarcely told about how birth control can fail and can threaten women's health.

For further information on anything mentioned here, or on what you can do in your area to counter the government's failed teenage pregnancy strategy, contact me at johnsmeaton@spuc.org.uk

Northern Ireland unity against British abortion law

I attended a meeting today at the Northern Ireland Assembly led by Jeffrey Donaldson (right), a DUP MLA and MP and chairman of the all-party pro-life group at Stormont and Pat Ramsey (left), an SDLP MLA and vice-chairman of the group.

Also there were Johanna Higgins, a pro-life barrister, Karen Jardine of the Evangelical Alliance, Mrs Betty Gibson, chairwoman of SPUC Northern Ireland, Liam Gibson, SPUC development officer in Northern Ireland, Bernie Smyth, leader of Precious Life, Lynn Coles of Silent No More in Northern Ireland, Aidan Gallagher of Human Life International, Ireland and a number of other MLAs and pro-life activists.

Everyone at the meeting was united in opposing the imposition of Westminster-style abortion legislation on Northern Ireland which was overwhelmingly opposed in a debate at Stormont last October 22nd on a motion which was agreed unopposed.

Lords fail to oppose unethical embryo bill

The House of Lords this evening approved the Human Fertilisation and Embryology bill on third reading without any substantial restraining amendments. The Lords failed to divide on the Bill.

An attempt by Baroness Williams of Crosby to ensure that embryos could only be used for research when no alternative exists was rejected. Pro-embryo research peers said it was over-restrictive and impracticable.

The clause would have required researchers to produce evidence that the research couldn’t be done without using human embryos, and that the project was likely to produce an outcome. This was opposed by the government as well as peers involved in embryo research, and the House voted by 197 to 41 against the amendment. Following this defeat, critics of the bill failed to divide the House over the bill as a whole, allowing it an unopposed third reading.

During the debate, Lord Jenkin of Roding, a former health minister pointed to the lack of any moral framework behind the proposals – though not opposed to embryo research in principle himself. He said it was a “not to the credit of the House [of Lords]” that the Bill, now at its final stage in the Lords, still lacked any underlying ethical principle.

The Bishop of Chester urged that scientists should have more respect for dead people than to use their cells to create cloned human embryos or hybrid embryos for research, but the government assured the House of Lords that this would be permitted in the bill before it became law. Lord Jenkin rightly identified the total absence of a moral foundation for the bill. The Warnock report in 1984 accorded the human embryo a vague ‘special status’, and the 1990 embryology law paid lip-service to this principle. The current government rides roughshod over any such pretence of ethical sensitivity. The idea that anyone who has previously given general permission for the use of their tissue in research may now be cloned is shocking. This also applies to children who have died, and whose cells may have been cultured and developed into cell lines for legitimate research.

Lord Walton, in arguing for the creation of cloned embryos in such situations, said that it would only apply where there was “no indication that the donor had any objection”. Lord Walton’s assurance was absurd and misleading. Those who donated tissue 20 or 30 years ago would not have had any way of knowing that Lord Walton and his colleagues would be putting forward such obscene proposals now – and therefore no opportunity to express an objection. He will do grave damage to the reputation of doctors and researchers, and the government may seriously harm critical services like the blood donor service if they do what they promise and incorporate this in the bill. Many patients and donors will not want to give any of their genetic material to UK institutions if this becomes law.

"Guilt and Anger over Abortion"

Under this arresting headline, the Sunday Times yesterday carried three excellent letters .

One of them is particularly powerful:

"Like most educated, modern young women, I had believed that abortion was a right that should be freely and safely available...Five years later, not a day passes that I do not regret my decision. The gut-wrenching guilt and the anger at those who played a role in the event, have only worsened over time – especially after the birth of my first child."

These letters remind us how important it is to keep on telling the truth about abortion. Your sensitive witness in the media may save lives from an abortion - a mother's, a father's, and an unborn baby's.

You might want to Have Your Say in The Sunday Times on-line letters page.

Tony Blair "bid" to be president of EU council

“I’ll be president of Europe if you’ll give me the power – Blair” ran the headline in The Guardian on Saturday, and it certainly caught my eye.

I wrote to Tony Blair early last month following reports that he had been received into the Catholic church.

I asked him if he now repudiates:

• voting in 1990 for abortion up to birth three times during Parliamentary debates on what became the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 1990;
• personally endorsing his government’s policy of supplying abortion and birth control drugs and devices to schoolgirls as young as 11 without parental knowledge or consent;
• his government introducing legislation which has led to a law which allows, and in certain circumstances requires, doctors to starve and dehydrate to death vulnerable patients;
• his government’s commitment to the promotion of abortion on demand as a universal fundamental human right;
• personally championing destructive experiments on human embryos.

I have no wish for Tony Blair to don sackcloth and ashes. I’ll do that for my own sins before I judge anyone else.

However, Tony Blair’s position on abortion, abortifacient birth control, IVF and euthanasia by neglect is a matter of public record. As prime minister he was in the forefront of championing the culture of death not only in Britain but also, on abortion, around the world through the UK’s foreign policy.

Particularly while there’s a possibility of Tony Blair running for public office in any part of the world, citizens have a right and a duty to challenge him on his political record on pro-life matters. As a Catholic myself, I do not believe that politicians can be protected from public scrutiny simply by being received into the Catholic church.

If Tony Blair does repudiate these positions, I will be the first to shout it from the rooftops.

scientists want to make embryos from dying children's tissue

The government is under pressure to let scientists take tissue from dying children and use it to make human and human-animal embryos. The creation of human or hybrid cloned embryos is morally contentious and highly controversial in the community. On these grounds alone it should not proceed.

The speculative nature of the proposal

Even if there was an ethical argument for such research, the proposal is highly speculative and any potential benefits are unknown. My source, a BBC website story, quotes the bodies which are lobbying for this as writing: "The Bill, as it stands, imposes a barrier to one of the most potent tools for research into the most severe childhood diseases." This is untrue. No-one actually knows whether cloning or the formation of other hybrids has any research value. No-one knows either if such embryo formation can apply to the study of the severe childhood diseases which lobbyists mention. Previous arguments for miracle cures from using embryos have yielded no treatments, and research has arguably proven of limited value. This article seems to reflect similar overblown claims.

There have also been no specific explanations about why hybrid embryos in particular will be of any research or treatment value. Some scientists or other advocates think all they have to do to get an unethical proposal through is to claim that cures for diseases will be forthcoming. The proponents ought to be pressed to explain in greater detail, on reasonable scientific grounds, how they think hybrids will advance research into diseases, and on what already established scientific research using other interspecies hybridisation they are making their claims.

Viable alternatives

There already are good alternative research methods. Work by Yamanaka and others with induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells has made nuclear transfer unnecessary, whether using human or animal eggs. Professor Ian Wilmut, who cloned Dolly the sheep and holds the UK licence to clone humans, announced in November that he was walking away from his cloning licence in favour of iPS, which he declared to be both "100 times more interesting" and "easier to accept socially". Professor James Thomson, who first discovered human embryonic stem cells, confirmed that these new iPS cells derived from human skin had every property of cloned embryonic stem cells, and declared, "Isn't it great to start a field and then to end it?"

Professor Martin Pera, former director of embryonic stem cell research at the Australian National Stem Cell Centre, wrote of "a new year and a new era". He said the generation of iPS cells through direct reprogramming "avoids the difficult ethical controversies surrounding the use of embryos for deriving stem cells". [Nature 451, 135-136 (10 January 2008) doi:10.1038/451135a]

Consent

It is generally agreed that consent should be sought from any participant in research, and particular care must apply where vulnerability by age or condition exists. This is a basic principle of research ethics and there are very limited circumstances under which it can be waived. Such circumstances might include:

• when it is reasonable to believe that the participant would have consented if they were able
• the risk to participants is minimal
• the project is not controversial and does not involve significant moral or cultural sensitivities in the community
• the research supports a reasonable possibility of benefit over standard care
• any risk or burden of the research is justified by its potential benefits to him or her
• the research objectives cannot be pursued by any other means.

Even if the proposed research were ethical and even if certain outcomes could be guaranteed, consent could not be waived on several of these grounds.

Ethical objections

Even if can be proved that embryos from dying children's tissue can produce therapies, and even if the consent issue could be addressed, the ethical objections simply rule out the practice. Last year we described those objections in our submission to a parliamentary committee on a bill which was the forerunner to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill now before parliament. We said that the former bill: "Accelerates the waning respect for human life that is marking scientific endeavours in the modern biotechnological era."

Premature baby study welcome but isn't guide to abortion law reform

According to PA a study from University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (UCLH) found survival rates for babies born alive between 22 and 25 weeks of gestation rose from 32% in 1981 to 71% in 2000.

The professor behind the research, Professor John Wyatt, said it showed what could be achieved if staffing levels were kept consistent and adequate resources were pumped into units.

Anyone who has experienced the trauma of a premature birth will warmly welcome scientific advances in saving both prematurely-born babies; and Professor Wyatt’s work in this field helps to fulfil the provision in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child that says that children need special care and protection both before and after birth.

A child's capacity to survive is not what makes him or her a human being. When a premature baby, after receiving expert treatment, sadly dies, doctors are not criticised for treating a non-person. They have tried to save a baby, but sadly failed.

From a political perspective, it is important to note that the viability of unborn children should not be used as a guide for reforming the law on abortion. Viability is a criterion which varies from place to place in the country and from place to place in the world. Viability has nothing to do with the humanity of the child in the womb; it has everything to do with technological progress and the excellence and dedication of medical staff.

Passing legislation on such an arbitrary basis leads to legislatures making equally arbitrary exceptions – as the UK Parliament did in 1990, making abortion lawful up till birth for disabled babies and on certain other grounds.

Contact me for more information on this vital aspect of the abortion debate.

The Forced Abortion Olympics

I see that Mia Farrow is hitting the headlines, dubbing the Olympic Games in China The 'Genocide Olympics' They might equally be called "The Forced Abortion Olympics". Maybe you're asking: Why are Western nations turning a blind eye to China's appalling systematic attacks on the rights of unborn children, on women's rights, and on the rights of families, with its inhuman one-child policy?

The answer is: many Western governments, including our own UK government, are complicit in the policy (and Times columnist Melanie Reid clearly agrees with it). The UK is the fourth highest funder of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), according to their annual report , and UNFPA's involvement in China's one child-policy is very well-documented

Lords must reject embryology bill

Last night the government's Human Fertilisation and Embryology bill completed its Report stage in the House of Lords and is due to be debated at Third Reading next Monday, 4th February.

Many Lords, following the government's lead, were dismissive of a call for the establishment of a national bioethics commission. Lords also voted against an amendment to ban late-term abortions of disabled babies, by 89 votes to 22.

Anthony Ozimic, SPUC’s political secretary commented in a press statement: "Total rejection of the government's bill is the only adequate response pro-life parliamentarians can make in the anti-life climate of the current parliament. Lords should move to vote against the bill in principle and as a whole at Third Reading.”

For reasons explained here, we are opposed to introducing amendments to the Abortion Act in this Parliament.

Do we live in a civilised country? Draw your own conclusions.

Last night the House of Lords considered the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill at Report Stage. During a debate on Baroness Masham’s amendment which was aimed at eliminating disability as a specific ground for abortion, Baroness Meacher (pictured) argued that it would have been in the “best interests” of two children she knew with cerebral palsy to have been aborted.

She said:

“I want to speak about the rights of the child. The Mental Capacity Act refers to the child having capacity; if they do not have capacity, it is important for the professionals to consider their best interests. If we could hold to that, we would be doing pretty well.

“I happen to know two tiny children who were born at 25 weeks with very severe cerebral palsy. They were natural births. Those two children cannot breathe naturally; they have to be helped to breathe. They will never talk. They lie on their backs and can do nothing. My belief is that there are children, born at those very early ages, who are not viable people. It would be in their best interests to have been aborted.

“There rests my case. We need to consider the best interests of these babies.”

Baroness Meacher’s statement is interesting and significant for a number of reasons. Firstly, none of the other peers present shouted “Shame”; secondly, the Mental Capacity Act does not apply to children; thirdly, Baroness Meacher’s reference to the Mental Capacity Act suggests what SPUC has always pointed out – that “best interests” in that legislation can be defined in such a way that mentally incapacitated patients may now be killed in their “best interests” – as happened to Tony Bland; fourthly, Baroness Meacher clearly considers that her own capacity and achievements in life put her right to life in a different category from the right to life owed to people with cerebral palsy – that she is “viable person” but “they” are not “viable people”.

The pro-abortion lobby got their arguments pretty muddled up during the debate on Baroness Masham’s amendment. Lord David Steel (pictured), the main sponsor of the Abortion Act 1967, responded to Baroness Masham’s reference to Beethoven; that, given Beethoven’s family history, he might have been aborted. Lord Steel said that Baroness Masham’s argument was "fundamentally false because you cannot have abortion retrospectively. Nobody has ever said either to Beethoven or to any of these (disabled) children I have referred to: 'Oh I wish you had never been born.' That is an absurd argument and not one that should be sustained.” Enter Baroness Meacher stage right! (See above)

Baroness Tonge, a leading supporter of the Voluntary Euthanasia Society, spoke along much the same lines as Baroness Meacher. She said: “I said in Committee that we were not talking here about disabled human beings, but about some grossly abnormal human beings; many of those whom I have seen bear little resemblance to human beings.

“In Committee I mentioned the child with anencephaly that I delivered. It had no brain and a grotesque appearance...”

And so she goes on.

For a loving and civilised view of anencephalic babies, read the report of the remarkable case of Marcela Jesus Galante Ferreira from Brazil, to which Alison Davis drew my attention:

“Little Marcela de Jesus Galante Ferreira has broken all the records of survival. The anencephaly she suffers should have caused her death hours or days after birth, but to the amazement of many, she is now four months old, becoming the new pro-life symbol in Brazil and the most uncomfortable celebrity for some pro-abortionists who have criticized doctors for helping the infant.”

Alison Davis (pictured), the head of No Less Human, a division of SPUC, and who has spina bifida, put the ethical position to me this way:

“Every baby is entitled to his or her natural life-span however long or short that may be. And we do them an injustice if we cut short their life by even a minute. Every person is entitled to their life whether it lasts one minute or a hundred years.”

For reasons explained here, we are opposed to introducing amendments to the Abortion Act in this Parliament.

new monthly Catholic ethics forum

Andrew Swampillai has alerted me to a “new pro-life initiative for young people”. He tells me: “A group of medical students and young doctors have started a monthly Catholic ethics forum in association with the Linacre Centre. It is aimed at exploring the Catholic position on bioethical issues and geared towards anyone interested, especially in the healthcare profession. Being the first of its kind in London, we thought it may be of interest to your blog readers and people on your email lists. Our first talk is [tomorrow, Wednesday 30 January] at 6.30 pm at Vaughan House (behind Westminster Cathedral) and will be given by Dr Charlie O' Donnell and is entitled So you want to be a good Catholic health professional?" More information is available from Stephen Barrie on (020) 7266 7413.

Keeping things in perspective on the HFE bill

It’s reported that cabinet ministers, members of the all-party parliamentary pro-life group, and others are calling on Geoff Hoon MP, the Government’s chief whip, for a free vote on the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill.

Of course it’s right that politicians should demand the freedom to vote according to their consciences, without being penalized by their party, on a bill which, if passed, will cost the lives of countless human beings. This is also a bill which, like the Abortion Act, will be copied in countries around the world.

However, pro-life lobbyists must not confuse the issues. Whatever their party leaders may threaten, politicians have a moral duty to vote against a bill which will:

• extend the creation of embryonic children in the laboratory ('test-tube babies')
• allow embryonic children to be abused and killed for a wider range of research purposes
• permit the creation of human-animal hybrid embryos.

We must keep things in perspective. No punishment meted out by Gordon Brown on cabinet ministers or backbench politicians, however dreadful, absolves them of their moral responsibility to vote against such a bill.

Opposition to IVF grows in Poland

There’s a most encouraging report that opposition to IVF is growing in Poland. The rising opposition is attributed to statements from the country’s bishops.

Tragically, IVF, as a way of bypassing infertility out of compassion for infertile couples, is widely accepted in the UK. It’s important for opponents of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology bill to understand that its proposals are a logical development of the practice of IVF which amounts to the manufacture of human beings. At the same time, we must continue to promote ethical alternatives to IVF such as naprotechnology as does Life and the SPUC education and research trust.

NaProTechnology or Natural Procreative Technology is a new and innovative medical science that works cooperatively with the body's natural procreative cycles, enhancing the chances of procreation naturally and healthily. It is proving to be more successful than IVF.

my quotations of the week

Last Sunday, Bishop Philip Tartaglia described the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill, on which I blogged yesterday, as "a state sponsored attack on human life". Here are a few snippets from his excellent homily, delivered last Sunday in St. Mirin's Cathedral, Paisley.

"...It seems that hardly a year passes that the bishops need to bring before you yet another state-sponsored attack on unborn human life. It almost seems that the powers of evil are never done fomenting the culture of death among hapless human beings by attacking the innocent unborn or the weak terminally ill with the great lie that these lives have no value at all or only have the value that powerful men and women are prepared to concede them.

"The latest twisted enterprise is legislation soon to be presented by the Government at Westminster which would allow the creation of human-animal embryos. You should know that such procedures are banned in other countries. They have rightly been described by the President of the Pontifical Academy for Life as a "monstrous act against human dignity, and I am sure that that is the instinctive reaction of our moral reason..."

On Wednesday, Cardinal Pell's profound and beautiful speech on the challenges facing those defending the culture of life, given the week before in Seoul, South Korea, was published in Zenit.

Cardinal Pell quotes Dr Shinya Yamanaka, the Japanese scientist who has had ethical qualms about destructive human embryo research:

"'When I saw the embryo', he said, 'I suddenly realised there was such a small difference between it and my daughters. . . I thought, we can't keep destroying embryos for our research. There must be another way'.

"There were of course, many differences between this several day old human embryo and Yamanaka's daughters in terms of its maturity, size, appearance and capacities. Yet his knowledge and awe of the embryo's intrinsic potential for human growth and development allowed him to recognise the essential similarity between them -- their common humanity and shared dignity. Yamanaka's breakthrough is, amongst other things, the fruit of the virtue of reverence."

On Thursday, in his weekly newspaper column, The Archbishop of Guadalajara, Cardinal Juan Sandoval Iniguez, called on Mexicans to reject pressures from the United Nations to legalise abortion in every state throughout the country - as I blogged earlier in the week. In memorably blunt language he wrote: “Let us remain, then, with the fundamental idea: abortion is killing, killing is a crime condemned by God’s, by man’s law and by the Constitution of Mexico."

On Saturday, the moving story of Lorraine Allard, 33, hit the headlines. At four months pregnant, she was diagnosed with terminal liver cancer and was offered a termination. She refused and she gave birth to Liam 15 weeks prematurely. She told her husband: "If I am going to die, my baby is going to live." Everything else this week pales into insignficance.

last chance for Lords to stop Human Fertilisation and Embryology bill

The last chance for the House of Lords to stop the Human Fertilisation and Embryology bill is currently scheduled for Monday 4 February. Peers will be debating the use of human embryos in experiments. The Bill seeks, among other things, to:

• extend the creation of embryonic children in the laboratory ('test-tube babies')
• allow embryonic children to be abused and killed for a wider range of research purposes
• permit the creation of human-animal hybrid embryos.
  

Over recent weeks, the Government and supporters of embryo research have blocked all substantial efforts to lessen the evils of the Bill during its passage through the Lords. Although it is unlikely that pro-life Lords will defeat the Bill, a strong vote against it now will help and encourage MPs to oppose the Bill when it goes to the House of Commons - probably in mid-February. Many people wrote to the Lords in November asking them to oppose the bill at second reading - this had great impact and helped encourage pro-life peers in their opposition to the bill.

Please write to one or more Lords as soon as possible, urging them to move for a vote against the Bill. You can contact peers from our page of parliamentarians' email addresses. You are free to write to any Lord(s) you wish. Please write to one or more - as many as you can. The most important thing is to contact them soon, and to urge them to vote against the bill at third reading.

SPUC activist honoured

On Wednesday I blogged on how Mrs Frances Levett was due to receive a civic award for her work for the society. The picture shows her at yesterday's ceremony with Fr James O'Hanlon, parish priest of St John the Baptist and St Peter, Welby Lane, Melton Mowbray, who proposed Mrs Levett for the award.

International Student Pro-Life Conference, Scotland: 28th – 30th March

Kaye Smith, the student conference organiser in our SPUC Scotland office, says: "This conference is a unique pro-life event which promises to be a special weekend of fun, education, training and a great opportunity to network with fellow students making a difference in their schools and university campuses around the world."

Celeste Beal, great niece of famous civil rights leader Dr Martin Luther King, will be the keynote speaker. As the theme for the conference is Human and Civil Rights, Celeste will explain why she believes abortion is today’s most pressing civil rights issue. As a young student herself, Celeste is passionate about her youth and pro-life work and has a strong desire to help, motivate, uplift and positively impact the world and the people she meets.

Other areas of pro-life work will be explored.

The arts will also form a part of the conference with a special screening of the movie, Bella, winner of the Toronto Film Festival People’s Choice Award 2006, which has been welcomed by the international pro-life community.

Registration

All those wishing to attend the conference must register beforehand. Information relating to the conference, including registration, venue and accommodation is available on our special conference website. For further information, or to book places, phone SPUC Scotland on (0141) 221 2094 or email kaye@spucscotland.org or info@spucscotland.org.

plain speaking on abortion

In his Evangelium Vitae, Pope John Paul II wrote of a "dangerous crisis of the moral sense" about abortion. He said: "Given such a grave situation, we need now more than ever to have the courage to look the truth in the eye and to call things by their proper name [JP II's emphasis], without yielding to convenient compromises or to the temptation of self-deception".

Readers of this blog, whatever their religious faith, will like the idea of church leaders doing what the late pope recommended. Cardinal Juan Sandoval Íñiguez, Archbishop of Guadalajara, Mexico, has knocked a United Nations official off her pedestal for proposing the legalisation of abortion throughout Mexico. The cardinal writes: “Let us remain, then, with the fundamental idea: abortion is killing, killing is a crime condemned by God’s, by man’s law and by the Constitution of Mexico."

I think I've got that your eminence. Thank you. I do recommend that everyone reads what you've said.

the aftermath of abortion

I met on Tuesday with Margaret Cuthill and Cathy McBean, our British Victims of Abortion team in Glasgow. We were making plans for SPUC's Silent No More events throughout Britain in the coming year which I wrote about recently. At these events, Margaret and others - women and men - will be sharing with the public their personal painful experiences of abortion. In this way the Society reaches out to others who may be affected by an abortion and are struggling in silence. There is an online list of the forthcoming Silent No More events. For further information about the work of British Victims of Abortion, which is funded by the SPUC education and research trust, contact Cathy or Margaret on (0141) 226 5407.

Cathy McBean (left) and Margaret Cuthill at BVA HQ, Glasgow.

SPUC activist to be honoured by MP and mayor

A pro-life activist is to receive an award for her work for SPUC in Leicestershire. Mrs Frances Levett, treasurer of SPUC's Rutland and Melton branch, will receive a Community and Charity Champion award from Mr Alan Duncan, Conservative MP for Rutland and Melton, and Councillor Pam Posnett, mayor of Melton, tomorrow.

Mrs Levett's citation for the award mentions that she has been a member of SPUC since 1972. As well as helping run the Melton branch, she has helped found other local branches. Mrs Levett ran a study-day on post-abortion syndrome for more than 80 people at Glenfield Hospital, and was among the organisers of an SPUC float at the Melton Show parade. The award is supported by the Melton Times newspaper.

Defending life by conscientious objection

The Portuguese Medical Association has re-elected its president who defied pro-abortion pressure from the government there. [LifeSite, 22 January] Dr Pedro Nunes has promised not to change the association's pro-life code of practice, according to a message I received from Professor Jerónima Teixeira (pictured), a leading obstetrician and gynaecologist from Portugal. We should be encouraged by the courageous pro-life witness of doctors in Portugal.

The battle to defend human life increasingly centres on conscientious objection. In recent months, the Pope made a powerful plea to pharmacists to resist pressures to collaborate in supplying “products which have clearly immoral aims”. [Pharmalot, 29 October] Benedict XVI made apparent references to:

• so-called contraceptive drugs
• devices which may work, in part, by preventing the embryo from implanting in the lining of the womb
• drugs to enable persons, perhaps with a terminal illness, to commit suicide.

He said: “In this area, it is not possible to anesthetize consciences, for example, about the effects of [a drug’s] molecules to prevent the implantation of an embryo or to shorten a person’s life.”

SPUC is also playing a role in developing the practice of conscientious objection in order to protect human life. For example, we are fighting against euthanasia and the impact of the Mental Capacity Act through Patients First Network. This group helps you tell doctors, nurses and other healthcare workers how you expect to be treated in hospital if you are mentally incapacitated.

The pro-life movement worldwide should be working on ways to build a powerful, peaceful resistance movement against abortion, in-vitro fertilization, human embryo research and euthanasia, to complement the vital political, educational and caring work already being carried out.

Lords must reject bill before the government makes it even worse

The importance of radical opposition to the government's Human Fertilisation and Embryology bill continues to impress itself as the plot unfolds. Last night the House of Lords again considered amendments to the bill, the second day of the bill's Report stage. Peers from across the House tabled amendments seeking, in the most modest way, certain ethical constraints upon the bill. One of those amendments tried to retain within the Bill a modicum of respect for the role of fathers. The government rejected even such a timid amendment and the House followed suit by voting against it.

A disturbing amendment from the pro-embryo research lobby however, seeking to loosen ethical constraints, was ostensibly resisted by the government but with sympathetic noises and comforting reservations. Lord Patel, a leading pro-cloning peer, promoted an amendment to permit the creation of cloned embryos from cells donated in the past, where the donors have not been informed of any possibility of their being cloned. Baroness Royall, the Government spokeswoman, started off by opposing the amendment but then promised to go away, reflect on the matter to find a way to accommodate it if possible and return with any possible solution.

Those moving more ethically-conscious amendments don't have the force of numbers to get the government to accept any major ethical constraints on the bill. What is there left to do? Only to maintain a radical, principled opposition that sends the message to the government and parliamentarians that the bill is evil. The mock battle between the government and the embryo-research lobby must be seen for what it is - just an exercise in passing the buck.

At the bill's forthcoming Third Reading its critics should join together to try to stop it before it reaches the House of Commons. Some of them will baulk at this, pleading that the unelected House of Lords must hand the bill over to the elected House of Commons, or that the House of Lords is just a revising chamber and so it shouldn't block government bills. Yet Parliamentary convention won't stop the government continuing to sanction the killing of the innocent. That will only stop when enough parliamentarians are pro-life enough to stand and oppose it.

let's support Portugal

Whilst I’m on the subject of abortion being forced on people, let’s turn to Portugal, a country somewhat closer to the UK. I got a message today from Thereza Ameal, one of the pro-life leaders there, begging for our spiritual support.

You may recall that last November, the Portuguese government piled pressure on doctors to change their ethical code on abortion. Reuters reported on 15th November:

“Portuguese doctors have rejected a government ultimatum to remove an ethical ban on performing abortions after this deeply Catholic country approved the practice in July.

"Pedro Nunes, the head of Portugal's Medical Association, said doctors had every right to object morally to an abortion, which is stated to be wrong in the association's ethical code, despite government threats to take him to court.

"Having an opinion and ethical principles is what separates rational beings from a flock of sheep," Nunes said.

"The ethical code states doctors must respect human life from its beginning and the practice of abortion constitutes a grave ethical failure.

"This has nothing to do with abortion. It has to do with doctors having the right to have their own opinion," Pedro Nunes, who represents around 35,000 doctors, told reporters.

"The health minister threatened to take us to court if we did not change our code ... but the code can only be changed by doctors and not by a health minister."

Thereza writes today:

"We are preparing some events of praying here in Portugal for the sad anniversary of the referendum of 11th February 2007.

"We have [continuous] prayer in different churches, in front of the Holy Sacrament, … from the 1st to the 15th February, 24h a day and we hope to have it also until the rest of the month.

"We asked … hundreds of parishes to pray the Rosary before or after the Sunday Mass (10th February) and during the Mass to make a short prayer for Life.

"In the 29th January a group of people will also start to pray in front of the abortion clinics. They are looking for people to pray for them and for this work

"Please, pray for Portugal and for all who are working for Life here. It is very difficult with this Government."

I’m sure that many will be joining Thereza in spirit and in prayer, especially on 29th January and on 11th February, the anniversary of the abortion referendum.

The resistance to abortion in Portugal is alive and well. Anything the pro-life movement in other countries can do to help – through practical support, sharing experience and expertise, and prayer – is vital. International Planned Parenthood Federation and its powerful allies must not be allowed free rein to quash pro-life resistance in this beautiful, civilized, corner of Europe.