Abortion on demand leads to abortion by coercion

Our colleagues at LifeNews report that a man in Massachusetts has been charged with assaulting his pregnant girlfriend because she refused to have an abortion.

Pregnant women are often put under intense pressure and abortion can seem to be the only option. Our colleagues at the Elliot Institute have found that 64% of abortions involve coercion. They also point out that the leading cause of death among pregnant women is homicide, and in many cases it is known that the violence happened solely to prevent birth.

As abortion has been declared to be a constitutional right in the United States, abortion is almost totally unrestricted. In Britain, pro-abortion MPs are seeking to move the law as far as possible towards the American situation, through amendments to the Abortion Act 1967 via the Human Fertilisation and Embryology (HFE) bill. We owe it to women to act now to stop those amendments, because easier access to abortion places women under pressure to have abortions.

Celebrate International Day of Peace in the Womb on Sunday, 21st September 2008

Pat Buckley, one of the world’s foremost pro-life lobbyists at the UN, has called for governments throughout the world to declare an amnesty for babies starting on Sunday week, 21st September, the day designated by the United Nations as the International Day of Peace. He cites Mother Teresa who called abortion “the greatest destroyer of peace” in her unforgettable Nobel lecture when she received the Nobel Peace Prize, on 11th December 1979.

Let’s respond to Pat’s call and to Mother Teresa’s prophetic lecture, and make Sunday week, 21st September, the International Day of Peace in the Womb. Mother Teresa began her lecture saying: “As we have gathered here together to thank God for the Nobel Peace Prize I think it will be beautiful that we pray the prayer of St. Francis of Assisi … ”

I suggest that Christian pro-lifers write to their pastors this week, enclosing a copy of Mother Teresa’s Nobel Peace Prize lecture and asking them, if possible, to draw attention to the following words and to lead the faithful in the prayer of St. Francis:

“As soon as he [Jesus] came in her life - immediately she went in haste to give that good news, and as she came into the house of her cousin, the child - the unborn child - the child in the womb of Elizabeth, leapt with joy. He was that little unborn child, was the first messenger of peace. He recognised the Prince of Peace, he recognised that Christ has come to bring the good news for you and for me … but I feel the greatest destroyer of peace today is abortion, because it is a direct war, a direct killing … And we read in the Scripture, for God says very clearly: Even if a mother could forget her child - I will not forget you - I have carved you in the palm of my hand. We are carved in the palm of His hand, so close to Him that unborn child has been carved in the hand of God. And that is what strikes me most, the beginning of that sentence, that even if a mother could forget something impossible - but even if she could forget - I will not forget you. And today the greatest means - the greatest destroyer of peace is abortion. And we who are standing here - our parents wanted us. We would not be here if our parents would do that to us. Our children, we want them, we love them, but what of the millions. Many people are very, very concerned with the children in India, with the children in Africa where quite a number die, maybe of malnutrition, of hunger and so on, but millions are dying deliberately by the will of the mother. And this is what is the greatest destroyer of peace today. Because if a mother can kill her own child - what is left for me to kill you and you kill me - there is nothing between …”

The UN website suggests: “A Peace Day event can be as simple as lighting a candle or meditate on Peace on September 21”.

Christians and non-Christians alike might like to celebrate the International Day of Peace by meditating on Mother Teresa’s words – and saying the prayer of St. Francis which you can find at the foot of Mother Teresa’s lecture to which I link above.

The false dichotomy behind assisted suicide

Today's Independent features an interview with Debbie Purdy (pictured with her husband Omar, outside the high court), a lady with multiple sclerosis who is pursuing a legal challenge relating to assisted suicide. SPUC is seeking to intervene in the case so I can't comment here on the case itself. I can say, however, that The Independent's interview is at best biased and at worst seriously factually misleading.

Dignity, compassion and solidarity are all at the heart of the pro-life response to illness and disability. Protecting life and autonomy, providing good palliative care and ensuring people's psychological welfare are, and should in practice be, inseparable. It is the pro-euthanasia movement which implies or even claims that these things can be mutually contradictory. They claim that the good of life can be an obstacle to the good of autonomy, and that a patient's psychological welfare can't be ensured if palliative care can't permanently remove all pain. This is because they don't or won't realise that:

• only if life is protected as an inalienable good will the vulnerable be protected against violations of autonomy and dignity
• palliative care can help all patients and treat most pain
• illness, suffering and disability are an inevitable experience of the human condition which challenges us to care, not kill.

Men are victims of abortion too

A conference was held earlier this week in Chicago to highlight the little-acknowledged fact that men are victims of abortion too. The conference, entitled "Reclaiming Fatherhood: A Multifaceted Examination of Men Dealing with Abortion", was organised by the National Office of Post-Abortion Reconciliation & Healing and sponsored by the Knights of Columbus and the Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago.

SPUC, in cooperation with our sister organisation British Victims of Abortion (BVA), have also been highlighting the effect of abortion upon:

• men who are excluded from the abortion decision
• men who are against abortion or what one would term pro-life
• married men whose spouses abort against their will
• men who are ambivalent about the abortion decision.

Pictured is Mr Charles McCann of Torquay, at a Silent No More event organised by SPUC and BVA in Plymouth last year.

Pro-abortion politician says Northern Ireland is backward for opposing Abortion Act

The latest campaign for the extension of Britain's Abortion Act to Northern Ireland was launched last night at a shambolic meeting in one of Belfast's most expensive hotels. There were about 100 people there, mostly from Northern Ireland but with significant numbers from southern Ireland, England and further afield. All the usual suspects attended: the Family Planning Association, the Irish Family Planning Association, the Ulster Humanists' Association and, of course, the Socialist Workers' Party.

Only two of the 108 members of the Northern Ireland legislative assembly (MLAs) openly support the extension of the Abortion Act and both spoke at the meeting. One is the sole representative of a fringe party linked to a Loyalist terrorist group which refuses to decommission its weapons. The other MLA is from the Alliance party, which has always opposed violence.

Alliance is a small party with seven assembly members and no policy on abortion. Some Alliance MLAs are pro-life but Anna Lo, the member for South Belfast (above right), supports the extension of the 1967 act to Northern Ireland. Ms Lo told the gathering that she was not advocating abortion on demand but said she was a realist. She went on to say that women were criminalised by Northern Ireland's "ancient law" which only permits abortion on strictly medical grounds.

Northern Ireland, she said, had always been a conservative society but if the province wanted to attract people and stop the brain drain, it had to be more liberal. "How can we remain so backward?" she asked. In fact, there is no brain drain from Northern Ireland and, if a society wants to have more talented young people, then it should not kill them before they are born.

When the Olympic torch was making its way through Britain, Ms Lo's son was involved in protests against China's appalling human rights record. It is sad, therefore, that someone from a culture where abortion has been the cause of so much suffering should be blind to the injustice of British abortion law. Later when speaking to a member of SPUC who attended the meeting, Ms Lo refused to believe that it was legal in Britain to abort a child with a disability right up to birth.

It is regrettable that she implies that many of the people who elected her to the Northern Ireland Assembly are backward. While no country has a perfect human rights record, there is no comparison between the problems Northern Ireland has seen and what goes on every day in China, where women are forcibly aborted and baby girls are abandoned to die because of the traditional preference for sons.

When it comes to abortion Ms Lo is not the realist she thinks she is. She admits that, in the past, she has helped women get abortions, and she is now advocating a law which she clearly doesn't understand. Ms Lo owes the people of Northern Ireland an apology for calling them backward because they believe that unborn children have a right to life. Rather than being backward, Northern Ireland does pretty well in many ways, including having the UK's lowest maternal mortality rate.

Government spends more on failed, ethically bankrupt, anti-life, anti-family teenage pregnancy campaign

Today’s on-line edition of Sales Promotion magazine regales us with news that Iris London, the marketing agency, has won an advertising contract from the government to promote condom use.

The deal has been struck by the government’s Central Office of Information on behalf of the Department of Health and the Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF), which run the government’s sexual health and teenage pregnancy initiatives.

This news is replete with tragic ironies. From past experience, Iris London’s campaign promoting condoms will

• lead to an increase in sexual ill-health
• lead to an increase in the numbers of unborn children being killed, and
• may lead to an increase in the number of under-age conceptions.

So the Department of Health will effectively be promoting disease; and the Department for Children, Schools and Families will effectively be promoting

• more killing of unborn children
• the blighting of children’s lives, and
• the undermining of families (as parents are barred from knowing about their children’s confidential access to birth control).

The Sales Promotion magazine article says:

“Campaigns will aim to engage the young audiences at timely and actionable moments to help reduce the occurrence of sexually transmitted infections and under-18 conception rates as well as ensuring accurate information and advice is available about sex and relationships for those under 16.”

The record over virtually a decade shows: it won’t work. We should ask our MPs to find out how much this campaign will cost – another drop in the vast ocean of money the government has spent on its failed, ethically bankrupt, anti-life, anti-family teenage pregnancy campaign.

TUC abortion policy, agreed today, plays into the hands of unscrupulous employers

This is a warning to watch out for the insidious promotion of abortion at your place of work.

This afternoon at the Trades Union Conference (TUC) conference in Brighton, the TUC voted through a motion to promote abortion. Amongst other things, Motion 19 calls on trade unions to promote abortion rights within the work place under the guise of ‘equal rights’.

There is the usual shameless promotion of abortion on demand but there are two parts of the motion to which I particularly draw attention: a call for the publication of “guidance and support for trade unions on workplace issues relating to access to abortion and time off for treatment” (section vi) and a call for the extension of the 1967 Act to Northern Ireland (section iv).

The truth is that abortion hurts women and abortion is the antithesis of equal rights. My worry is that promoting abortion in places of work will also promote an anti-woman, anti-motherhood, agenda in the workplace. Unscrupulous employers seeking to avoid key workers taking up to a year’s maternity leave might well find the TUC policy of promoting abortion within place of work very convenient. How convenient for employers to put their selfish business interests first under the guise of women’s rights!

This is also a call to people in the workplace in Northern Ireland. As I have blogged previously the pro-abortion lobby is spreading lies about backstreet abortion in Northern Ireland. Now the TUC, no doubt on the basis of such lies, is joining the campaign to impose the British Abortion Act on Northern Ireland against the wishes of the people there. Propaganda in the workplace put out by pro-abortion trade unionists in Northern Ireland should be actively challenged and resisted.

Julie Burchill wins the third George Orwell prize

Post-abortion trauma (PAT), sometimes called post-abortion syndrome, is a condition members of the pro-life movement come across a great deal. I suspect this is chiefly because we are among the few sections of society prepared to offer genuine support to women suffering after abortion. Professor Philip Ney, the psychiatrist, states: “From clinical and research observations, I have concluded that abortion is the most deeply damaging trauma that can happen to any human.”

A study conducted in New Zealand, published in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry in 2006 concluded: “Those having an abortion had elevated rates of subsequent mental health problems including depression, anxiety, suicidal behaviours and substance use disorders. This association persisted after adjustment for confounding factors.”

The Elliot Institute's website contains thousands of pages of research, case studies and other resources on post-abortion problems including PAT. Organisations such as BVA, Good Counsel Network, Life and Silent No More work around the clock offering help and support to women and men struggling after an abortion experience.

In spite of the overwhelming evidence that abortion hurts women, the abortion lobby continue to dismiss or ignore it, whilst at the same time letting slip from time to time that abortion does indeed carry the risk of psychological and emotional harm.

The Brook Advisory Service's website fails to mention anything at all about the emotional and psychological after-effects of abortion. It might of course be covered in the pamphlets on sale at their online shop, but the abortion page on the site simply ignores the subject. Likewise, the section on abortion on the BUPA website makes no mention of how a woman may feel after an abortion, aside of physical symptoms.

The RCOG comes within a whisker of treating PAT honestly, then uses the usual "it is probably not the fault of the abortion, you are probably just like that" argument to dismiss the problem:

“Some studies suggest that women who have had an abortion may be more likely to have psychiatric illness or to self-harm than other women who give birth or are of a similar age. However, there is no evidence that these problems are actually caused by the abortion; they are often a continuation of problems a woman has experienced before.”

Later, the RCOG states that a woman should be offered “further counselling if you experience continuing distress (this happens to a few women and is usually related to personal circumstances)".

FPA's leaflet for young people claims that "most women who choose an abortion do not regret it" and that "only a few women have any long-term psychological problems and those women who do often had similar problems before pregnancy." FPA state that women should seek help if they are "feeling upset about having had an abortion", but none of the cartoon-faces illustrating the point express regret:

• “I just felt very relieved after the abortion. I still do!”
• “Sometimes I wonder what having a baby would have been like. But, no, I don't regret it.”
• “I was surprised how sad I felt, but I must admit we were both really relieved.”

The token sad girl states: “It was a difficult time for me – not just the abortion. Counselling really helped me.” So even in her case, abortion is not the primary cause of her unhappiness.

An interesting angle on the subject at Women on Web, modern-day backstreet abortionists who send abortion drugs to women in pro-life countries. As expected, Women on Web do their best to dismiss the likelihood of mental distress following an abortion since “feelings of regret after abortion are rare. Indeed, the most common emotional response after abortion is relief.” If women do feel bad, readers are told, it is likely to be the fault of “taboo and social stigma” or guilt “because they don't feel guilty about having an abortion, but think they should feel guilty.”

The confusion expressed on the website, however, only serves to highlight the conflict that exists within the abortion movement itself. For example, readers are informed that “most psychiatric experts doubt the existence of 'post-abortion syndrome' and point out that abortion is not significantly different from any other stressful life experience that might cause trauma in some people.” So, is there a risk of a trauma response after abortion or isn't there? Straight after assuring readers that “most women who have abortions experience little or no psychological harm”, the FAQ reads: “What can I do to help myself heal after an abortion?” Is this the healing that women only rarely need? Healing from an overwhelming sense of relief perhaps?

Then there are the few pro-abortion types who actually use the unhappiness women experience after abortion to promote their cause. I was browsing "Abortion changes you". I should point out immediately that it appears to be a very good site, offering women the opportunity to explore their feelings after an abortion and seek help and healing. The stories posted on the site are by no means a reflection of the site's own policy on abortion and they make heartbreaking reading, charting the journeys of women abandoned by families, boyfriends or husbands as soon as they became pregnant, very young women frightened by the prospect of raising a child alone.

“I chose to pretend like nothing happened,” wrote one. “I had a mask in place to make it look, to the outside world any way that I had it all together. No one even knew I went into deep depression every year around Easter and then again in December, when my little girl would have been born.” “Whoever is thinking about having an abortion, please THINK OVER AGAIN. It's your baby. Or else you'll regret later like me and some others.” “Every day I live with regret, shame, and sadness. I hate myself for what I've done.”

Tucked in the midst of all these stories is a "prayer" someone has posted which is supposed to help women who have had abortions. It is taken from a book entitled “Talking to God."

“A Prayer After the Termination of a Pregnancy:

“I made a decision, God, to terminate my pregnancy. This choice was not made lightly. I prayed, I meditated, I searched by soul for an answer. I knew in my heart that I should not complete this pregnancy.

“You know my heart, God. You know my pain. You know my anguish. In your infinite wisdom, I pray that You will glean the spark of potential life and plant it where it may grow and flourish.

“Help me, God. Shield me from the reproach of those who do not know my heart. Teach me how to overcome feelings of shame and guilt.

“Let me begin again, God. Lead me to new hope, to new joy. Hear me, heal me, never leave me.

“Amen."

It is almost blasphemous in its self-justification, basically saying: "God, I just wanted to tell you what a good, upright person I am! And it wasn't really a human life, it was a 'potential life', so that's all right then, but do please protect me against these nasty pro-life types who keep pointing out that there is a something wrong about abortion." It is a stark reminder that religion can be used to manipulate women into accepting an experience their own feelings and instincts tell them should never have happened.

But once again, the George Orwell Prize goes to an individual. Step forward Julie Burchill, for her breathtakingly ignorant and bitchy attack on women suffering after abortion, published in The Guardian no less.

“No doubt if you're the sort of lumbering, self-obsessed poltroon who believes that seeing Mommy kissing Santa Claus 30 years ago irrevocably marked your life, you wouldn't get over an abortion, as you wouldn't get over stubbing your toe without professional help. But you choose to be that way, because you are weak and vain, and you think your pain is important. Whereas the rest of us know not only that our pain is not important, but that it probably isn't even pain - just too much time on our hands.”

“Political language ... is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind." George Orwell

Bishops preaching the gospel of life

The Catholic bishops of the United States have released a fact-sheet, seeking to correct some common misunderstandings and mispresentations of the Catholic church's teaching on abortion. The fact-sheet has been written specifically "[i]n response to those who say this teaching has changed or is of recent origin". Nancy Pelosi (pictured), the US senate majority leader, has sought to justify her support for legal permission to kill the unborn on the basis of that error. In Britain, Professor Lisa Jardine, the recently-appointed head of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA), has misrepresented Catholic thinking on life, as I blogged recently.

The US bishops' fact-sheet says:

"[M]odern science has not changed the Church’s constant teaching against abortion, but has underscored how important and reasonable it is, by confirming that the life of each individual of the human species begins with the earliest embryo ... [T]o claim that some live human beings do not deserve respect or should not be treated as “persons” (based on changeable factors such as age, condition, location, or lack of mental or physical abilities) is to deny the very idea of inherent human rights."

It is very heartening for Catholics like myself to know that the US bishops are preaching the gospel of life, and in such such a helpfully factual way.

The abortion scandal in Catholic schools in England, Part Two: Throwing children and families to the wolves

I wrote last week about the terrible betrayal of families and children by the Catholic authorities of England and Wales in relation to their co-operation with British government policy of providing schoolchildren with secret abortions and abortifacient birth control drugs and devices.

I said that it was clear to me that the Catholic Education Service (CES), chaired by Archbishop Vincent Nicols, the archbishop of Birmingham, is at the root of the problem. I said that I would be writing to the CES, as a Catholic father and as national director of SPUC, to raise a number of questions and I asked concerned readers to help me draft my letter – by checking out the links I provided on my post and letting me know their views. (If you’ve not done so, you may like to read what I wrote last week.)

My first question to the CES, quoting from the CES document “The Connexions Service working in Catholic schools in England”, was:

“Why is Connexions ‘a service to be welcomed’ [in Catholic schools and colleges] when it’s clearly a government agency which, amongst other things, refers young people to abortion agencies?”

I have some further questions to include in my letter to the CES in relation to their above document which goes on to state:

“[The Connexions Service] has also caused some concern in our Catholic community because its wide remit to provide advice and guidance to young people includes matters of personal development, and by implication, sex and relationships (SRE) education”.

My question on this is:

“Why do you use the term ‘by implication’ in the statement above in view of Connexions’ absolutely explicit demonstration of their commitment to anti-life sex and relationships education on their website?”

The CES document, above, continues: “These [matters of personal development including sex and relationship education] are the responsibility of the governing bodies of our schools and colleges and there will usually be robust policies to accompany SRE.”

My questions to the CES on this are:

“How robust do you think such policies have to be in order to prevent Connexions advisers from telling schoolchildren that they have a right to access secret abortion and abortifacient birth control drugs and devices – and other services which are contrary to the health and moral welfare of children?

“What form of words does the CES recommend that governing bodies use to ensure that Connexions advisers never advise children about such services?

“Given that Connexions is being welcomed and, thereby, promoted in Catholic schools and colleges, is the CES aware of any robust policies which have been framed so as to ensure that Catholic schoolchildren do not regard the Connexions website – which openly refers to children’s option to choose confidential abortion services – as a useful source of information on such matters?

“The CES says that governing boides of Catholic schools and colleges will “usually” have ‘robust' policies to accompany SRE. This clearly implies that there are some Catholic schools which don’t have ‘robust’ policies in place. Are not the children and families of such schools being thrown to the wolves by the Catholic authorities of England and Wales?”

A friend in high places for the disabled

In her acceptance speech at the Republican national convention, Sarah Palin, the party's nominee for US vice-president, said:

"[I]n April, my husband Todd and I welcomed our littlest one into the world, a perfectly beautiful baby boy named Trig. From the inside, no family ever seems typical. That's how it is with us. Our family has the same ups and downs as any other... the same challenges and the same joys. Sometimes even the greatest joys bring challenge. And children with special needs inspire a special love. To the families of special needs children all across this country, I have a message: For years, you sought to make America a more welcoming place for your sons and daughters. I pledge to you that if we are elected, you will have a friend and advocate in the White House."

Considering that in America, as in many other countries, the overwhelming majority of unborn children diagnosed with Down's syndrome are aborted, the totally pro-life Sarah Palin would be a much-needed friend and advocate for them in the White House.

In Britain, unborn children are treated worse than unwanted dogs

The Telegraph reports that a dog is put down every 80 minutes "for want of a home or because they were ill or aggressive". Clarissa Baldwin, head of the Dog's Trust charity, said that dogs were being treated as "throwaway commodities", adding that "dog ownership is a privilege, not a right."

We should all have a general oncern for animal welfare, and the Dog's Trust concerns are valid. The issue of human abortion is of course outside the remit of the Dog's Trust, but we should remind people that Britain treats unborn children in general far worse than dogs. Whereas one dog is killed every 80 minutes, 30 unborn children are killed in the same period. (What's more, that figure doesn't include the unrecorded abortions caused by abortifacient birth control or those IVF embryos destroyed in laboratory experiments.)

Many of those killings of unborn children occur "for want of a home" - unborn children abandoned by their mothers, often under pressure from others who regard an unexpected child as an undesirable burden. Some of those killings, however, are also on the grounds that certain babies are considered unhealthy or even perceived as aggressors (the idea that an unplanned pregnancy is an attack upon the mother).

No child need be killed for want of a home or because they are disabled, or can be regarded as an aggressor against his or her mother.

It has often been said that the English prefer their dogs to people. Abortion is a sad reflection on humans, who often behave worse towards each other than some of the most aggressive and neglected of animals.

Let's rally around Sarah Palin's family

Sarah Palin, the Republican party's proposed nominee for US vice-president, has announced that Bristol, her unmarried 17-year-old daughter, is pregnant. Sarah Palin is regarded as having a strong and total committment to the sanctity of human life and the dignity of the family. Some anti-life commentators have been quick to rush to condemnation. Sarah Sand, an American columnist, has written:

"I have utter contempt for [Bristol's] mother [Sarah] ... Bristol is one year away from legally being an adult, and unfortunately for her she’s fair game ... Bristol has absolutely no choice about having a baby ... But this isn’t about Bristol. It’s about her mother, her mother’s parenting skills, judgment ... Palin is one-hundred percent responsible for putting her nearly adult daughter in the limelight and is to be condemned for it, not us who will talk about it..."

For the anti-life/anti-family lobby, sexual activity is primarily about personal pleasure, and the natural consequence of sex - a child - is such an intolerable imposition that it justifies even homicide. As Ann Furedi (a recent recipient of my George Orwell Prize) of BPAS has written:

"Sex is an accepted part of an adult relationship for which we do not expect to suffer unwanted consequences. Pregnancy is seen by an increasing number of women as an unwanted consequence that they are not prepared to adapt to ... [I]t may be time to understand that, for women, abortion is an essential method of family planning and accept it as such."

I blogged recently about how The Times has been openly promoting abortion as a good solution for teenage pregnancy.

One suspects that the controversy about Bristol Palin's pregnancy is being whipped up by the anti-life lobby via their friends in the media. They believe that having an abortion is the right thing for a teenage mother to do and they don’t want Sarah Palin and her family setting a very different example to the world – including their joyful acceptance of Trig, their Down’s Syndrome son.

I hope that reasonable-minded citizens will continue to rally around the Palin family.

Nothing honourable about Professor Robert Edwards

Alastair MacDonald, the second-ever child to be born by IVF, has called for Professor Robert Edwards, the IVF pioneer, to receive an honour for his work. There is, however, nothing honourable about IVF, which is not treatment for infertiliy but a large-scale experiment abusing and destroying early human life. Prof. Edwards revealed the true nature of IVF in his evidence to a parliamentary committee in 2004. Prof. Edwards said:

"[O]nly 15% of all human eggs will implant. We are in a disaster area here so you have to select the embryos, and we now know how to select them—just to find the 15%." (JS: By "eggs" Prof. Edwards means fertilised eggs i.e. embryos)

As SPUC has pointed out repeatedly, the vast majority of human beings conceived in the laboratory are discarded, or frozen, or selectively aborted, or miscarried or used in destructive experiments.

Prof. Edwards also commented about pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD):

"When people say PGD is expensive, I always say what is the price of a disabled baby who is born. What is the cost for anyone to bear? That is a terrible price for anybody to bear, and the financial cost is immense. A PGD by comparison is a very small sum of money."

IVF is therefore the route by which the disabled are killed because they are deemed to cost too much money.

Prof. Edwards revealed more of his true colours when he was asked whether a line can be drawn between embryo experimentation and eugenics. Prof. Edwards replied:

"Again, it depends what we mean by eugenics. Eugenics was started in the 1870s by an English geneticist [Francis Galton] who had the welfare of mankind in his mind. The work became degraded after 1930 caused by the Nazis ...".

Yet it was the work of Francis Galton which was the inspiration for Nazi eugenics. (Wesley J. Smith, a leading American pro-life bioethicist, has commented about Galton's eugenics on his blog Secondhand Smoke).

Prof. Edwards showed the slippery slope in action:

"One of my ambitions is to take a sample of blood and take a white cell in place of a gamete for patients who do not have their own gametes. That would be wonderful and, by the way, that would involve cloning and that is why I do not agree with abandoning cloning either. I think you have to leave your mind open on all these questions. You never know where you are going to be next week! We may find that cloning helps infertile patients.

In response to the committee request to define "embryo", Prof. Edwards said variously:

"[Y]ou have to define human life and I would not like to do that ... I would say that most scientists I know would be very unwilling to define too hard because we understand what we are doing and I can understand what all my colleagues are doing in the advance of research. I am not trying to be unhelpful ... I think the answer is to make your own definition."

This sort of evasive, hazy and self-serving approach would be unacceptable in any other professional field. Imagine a reconnaissance officer who would observe an enemy position and report back: "Well, I wouldn't want to say what type of things I saw ... most of us reconnaissance officers don't like to describe too clearly what we see, we just know instinctively ... I think we should just make it up as we feel." Imagine the general's anger and the subsequent court-martial!

Yet the committee - dominated by some of parliament's most notorious anti-lifers - agreed with Prof. Edwards's approach, which is now reflected in the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill! Indeed, this approach is a stock-in-trade tactic of the anti-life movement. Among other times, this tactic was successfully deployed in the 1992 Planned Parenthood v Casey case; against SPUC's court challenge on the morning-after pill; and more recently by Barack Obama.

Returning to Prof. Edwards, he is both a deeply disturbing and deeply unimpressive promoter of unethical science, and deserves no honour.

The Philippines and backstreet abortion claims published today by AFP in Manila

In a news story today, AFP (Agence France-Presse) promotes the extraordinary claim that there are between 473,000 illegal abortions and 800,000 illegal abortions annually in the Philippines, a country which has a constitutional ban on abortion (and a strong bishops’ conference constantly speaking out against abortion). That would mean that the Philippines has something approaching three times the abortion rate of the UK where virtual abortion on demand has been lawful for over 40 years. (The AFP report appears to be a blatant media effort to promote a "reproductive health" bill which, I reported recently, has totalitarian and coercive elements)

Anyone who’s travelled to the Philippines, as I have on several occasions, and has witnessed first hand the love of the family and the natural abhorrence of abortion in that country, would immediately recognize here the Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels [pictured] principle at work: “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it”.

Similar outrageous claims about backstreet abortion have recently been made about Northern Ireland, as I’ve blogged recently.

The World Health Organization (WHO), the reported AFP source for the figure of 800,000 illegal abortions, routinely makes unsubstantiated claims about illegal abortions, as Dr Susan Yoshihara has pointed out.

It should be noted that the WHO is one of the world’s major pro-abortion bodies. For example, it encourages the provision of abortion facilities in refugee camps. A document produced by the WHO states that camps should:

“where elective abortion is legal, establish links with an appropriate health care facility (Type II health centre for first trimester, district hospital for first and second trimesters). If no such facility is available, consider training staff on-site in the provision of manual vacuum aspiration (MVA) for first-trimester abortion (however, see footnote*) …

“* … Given the particularly sensitive nature of this aspect of reproductive health, it is vital to be aware not only of the legal position within the host country, but also whether there is likely to be violent opposition from within the refugee or displaced community. Opposition to services is looked at in Section A, Chapter 3, and Section C, Chapter 9.”

The source for AFP’s reference to 473,000 induced abortions in the Philippines is the Guttmacher Institute, a body supported by the World Health Organization, the UNFPA, Planned Parenthood of America – and many other major pro-abortion institutions. [The AFP report gives the source as UNFPA]

A more accurate appraisal of the number of abortions in the Philippines can be found in a paper, by Dr. Roberto De Vera of the University of Asia and the Pacific, entitled "An Analysis of the Estimated Figure of induced abortions in the Philippines in 2000 as published in a 2006 Guttmacher Institute* report by Susheela Singh et al".

He says:

“In the 2006 Guttmacher Institute report "Unintended Pregnancies and Induced Abortions in the Philippines: Causes and Consequences", Susheela Singh et al estimated that there were 473,000 induced abortions completed in the Philippines in 2000 using a method consisting of three steps. First, based on reports gathered from 2,039 hospitals which contained the top ten leading causes of admission in the 1999-2001 period, they arrived at an estimate of the number of women in 2000 who were hospitalized due to complications from both induced and spontaneous abortions. Second, they calculated the number of women hospitalized for induced abortions by subtracting the estimated number of women hospitalized for spontaneous abortions (or miscarriages) from the estimated number of women hospitalized for induced and spontaneous abortions. Finally, they arrived at the estimated number of women who had induced abortions by multiplying the estimated number of women hospitalized for complications due to induced abortions by 6 to account for the women who had induced abortions who didn't go to the hospital.

“We find that their method overestimates the figure of induced abortions in the Philippines in 2000 because of three flaws. These flaws had the effect of 1) overestimating the figure for women hospitalized for spontaneous and induced abortions due to an assumption that is weakly supported by statistical data; 2) underestimating the number of women hospitalized for complications due to spontaneous abortions (or miscarriages) because it mistakenly covers only those women with spontaneous abortions occurring in 12th to 22nd week of pregnancy who were hospitalized for complications; and 3) using a multiplier which most likely is higher than the ratio of the number of women who have induced abortions to the number of women who are hospitalized for complications due to induced abortions.

“Using modified version of the Singh et al methodology (corrected to account for the above flaws), we arrived at an alternative estimate of 25,924 induced abortions in the Philippines in 2000 (1.3 abortions per 1,000 women in the reproductive age). Using a second method, we multiplied 0.0117, the share of induced abortions to live births by the number of live births in 2000, to arrive at second estimate of 20,831 induced abortions in the Philippines in 2000 (1.1 abortions per 1,000 women of reproductive age). We consider these two estimates of induced abortion in the Philippines in 2000 to be more reasonable than the 473,000 estimate (24.5 induced abortions per 1,000 women of reproductive age) published in the 2006 Guttmacher Institute report.”

Former abortionist Bernard Nathanson, recently repeated the admission made in his book "Aborting America": "We claimed that between five and ten thousand women a year died of botched abortions," he said. "The actual figure was closer to 200 to 300 and we also claimed that there were a million illegal abortions a year in the United States and the actual figure was close to 200,000. So, we were guilty of massive deception."

The deceptions once practiced, but now renounced, by Bernard Nathanson are alive and well in the work of the Guttmacher Institute and the World Health Organization and in today’s AFP report on the Philippines.

The puzzling saintly air of certain strongly pro-abortion politicians

One of the puzzling things for voters, who oppose abortion and other attacks on the sanctity of human life, is the saintly air of certain strongly anti-life politicians such as Barack Obama and, closer to home, Tony Blair (who has repeatedly refused to repudiate the strongly pro-abortion, pro-human embryo research and pro-euthanasia by neglect policies he and his government pursued). Tony Blair has even established a "Faith" foundation under his own name!

The puzzle has been solved by Michelle Obama! According to CNA, yesterday in Denver she said that Barack Obama's pro-abortion stand "respects the sacred responsibility of parenthood" ... so who could be more holy than Barack and Tony?

The abortion scandal in Catholic schools in England, Part One: Catholic Education Service at the root of the problem

In previous posts, I have referred to the government’s policy of providing children at school with access to secret abortions and abortifacient birth control without parental knowledge or consent. (The document to which I link, above, states, amongst other things: “Deliberate breaches of confidentiality … should be serious disciplinary matters.”) I have also referred to the fact that the Catholic authorities in England and Wales are co-operating with this policy.

I’ve spoken publicly about the abortion scandal in Catholic schools at many meetings in England and Wales and at international meetings, in Warsaw, Kracow and Manila, with bishops, cardinals and representatives of the Vatican and the Holy See listening to my talks. I’ve been interviewed about the situation in Zenit, the Catholic news agency which, according to its mission statement, aims to view the modern world through the messages of the Pope and the Holy See.

No-one has ever sought to deny the evidence I’ve put forward. No-one has ever written to Robin Haig, SPUC’s national chairman, to ask him: Why is SPUC’s national director saying these things about the Catholic authorities in England and Wales? On the contrary, Catholic priests and parents have approached the Society to confirm that what I am repeatedly and publicly saying is true. Occasionally, SPUC is given the facts about an abortion agency being promoted, with the consent of the school, and SPUC takes up the matter with the Catholic authorities.

But still the abortion scandal in Catholic schools in England and Wales continues.

As a pro-life campaigner I consider that the government’s policy of providing secret abortions to children is the worst development since the passing of the Abortion Act 1967. As a Catholic father, I consider that the policy of the Catholic authorities in this respect is the worst imaginable betrayal of the sacred trust given to the church by her founder. Jesus’s words could not be more relevant and appropriate: “It would be better for you if a millstone were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea than you to cause one of these little ones to stumble” (Luke 17,2)

The “little ones” concerned are the families betrayed by the policy of the Catholic authorities in England and Wales – parents and children of whom Pope John Paul II said:

“Following Christ who ‘came’ into the world "to serve" (Mt 20:28), the Church considers serving the family to be one of her essential duties. In this sense both man and the family constitute ‘the way of the Church.’"

It’s clear to me that at the root of the problem is the policy of the Catholic Education Service (CES). I’ve decided to write to the CES as a Catholic father whose children recently attended Catholic schools, and as national director of SPUC … but I would appreciate help from the readers of this blog. My letter not only needs to dot all the “i’s” and cross all the “t’s” – the CES policy must be reversed. The CES must understand, above all, from the Catholic laity and all concerned citizens, its responsibility to protect (not expose) children from the government’s policy of encouraging children to access to abortifacient birth control services and abortion.

If this is an issue which concerns you, please look at the links I provide in my posts on this topic and let me know what you think. This will be the first of several posts.

Let me start by looking at the CES remit which begins:

“The CES negotiates, on behalf of all bishops, with Government, and other national bodies on legal, administrative, and religious education matters in order to: promote Catholic interests in education; safeguard Catholic interests in education; contribute to Christian perspectives within educational debate at national level…”.

We’re told then that the CES negotiates on behalf “of all bishops”. The Catholic Directory tells us that the CES chairman is Archbishop Vincent Nichols and it was established in 1988 as an agency of the bishops’ conference [of England and Wales]. The CES chief executive is Ms Oonagh Stannard.

The CES document “The Connexions Service working in Catholic schools in England” tells us: “The Connexions Service is making an increasing impact on young people in Catholic schools and colleges. It is a service to be welcomed.”

Connexions is the Government's support service for all young people aged 13 to 19 in England. Prominent on the homepage of Connexions’ website is a link and contact details of Connexions Direct advisers – a major aspect of their work to which I will return in later posts.

Another link, centre-stage on the homepage, entitled “Relationships”. Various routes on the Connexions website lead to information about how to obtain an abortion and just a few clicks away on this page you find the following advice:

“I'm pregnant, what are my options? ... There are four main options ...

“ ... Terminate the pregnancy by having an abortion ...

“ ... Remember, ultimately the choice to keep the pregnancy or terminate it is yours. Listen to other peoples' advice and consider financial, physical and emotional support networks that you will need whatever your decision, but the choice is ultimately yours.”

In my letter to the Catholic Education Service, the first question I will be asking is: Why is Connexions ‘a service to be welcomed’ when it’s clearly a government agency which, amongst other things, refers young people to abortion agencies?

Please let me know your views – and any comments you may have on the documents to which I’ve linked. Write to me at johnsmeaton@spuc.org.uk

I will return to this matter very soon. With many schools starting back it really is time the CES policy was more widely understood and reversed. As parents and responsible citizens we must resist the government’s pro-abortion policy and, as a Catholic, I am particularly concerned about my church authorities’ co-operation with that policy.

How can the dream survive if we murder the children?

Barack Obama's speech to the Democratic National Convention overnight was given on the 45th anniversary of Martin Luther King's famous "I have a dream" speech. Indeed, Mr Obama, the first African-American nominee for US president, ended his own speech referring to Martin Luther King's speech.

Dr Alveda King, Martin Luther King's niece, has led protests outside the convention against Mr Obama's extreme pro-abortion positions (see my 31 July blog about Mr Obama). Alveda has said:

“Senator Obama’s answer to the ills of society, such as continued tax dollars to Planned Parenthood, are diametrically opposed to everything African Americans truly believe and an anathema to the dream of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr." [JS: Planned Parenthood is the American branch of the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF), the world's largest abortion provider and promoter.]

Alveda continued: "Every aborted baby is like a slave in the womb of his or her mother. The mother decides his or her fate.

"In the shadow of the famous ‘I Have a Dream’ speech by my uncle in 1963, as Barack Obama makes his speech in 2008, how can the Dream survive if we murder the children?”

John McCain, Mr Obama's Republican rival, has referred to Mr Obama's position on abortion:

"For a man who talks so often about 'hope,' Senator Obama doesn't offer much of it in meeting this great challenge to the conscience of America".

Also in contrast to Mr Obama and his Democratic party, the Republican party has approved a strikingly pro-life manifesto:

"Faithful to the first guarantee of the Declaration of Independence, we assert the inherent dignity and sanctity of all human life and affirm that the unborn child has a fundamental individual right to life which cannot be infringed.

"We support a human life amendment to the Constitution, and we endorse legislation to make clear that the Fourteenth Amendment's protections apply to unborn children."

This approach mirrors the Amnesty for Babies campaign.

So we should warn people, especially those sympathetic to the other messages of Mr Obama and the Democratic party, not to get swept away by "Obamania".

By Their Fruits: Eugenics, Population Control, and the Abortion Campaign: Book Review

Mr Leon Menzies Racionzer, a seasoned pro-life campaigner, has been reading Ann Farmer's newly-published By Their Fruits: Eugenics, Population Control, and the Abortion Campaign*, and this post is based on his kind examination of this important book.

By Their Fruits reveals the abortion campaign's true origins and motives, beginning with Thomas Malthus' 18th-century warnings that population growth would outstrip increases in food supply. Malthus has of course been proven wrong: as a 2001 report by the United Nations Population Division put it,

"Even though population increased more rapidly during the twentieth century than ever before, economic output grew even faster, owing to the accelerating tempo of technological progress…while world population increased close to 4 times, world real gross domestic product increased 20 to 40 times, allowing the world to not only sustain a four-fold population increase, but also to do so at vastly higher standards of living."

Mrs Farmer tells of a plot by a nucleus of politicians and other influential people. The plan is to manage national and global economies by controlling the breeding habits of the poor and non-white, and eradicating the disabled.

She describes the Eugenics Society's Machiavellian activities and includes references to previously unpublished personal files of more than 40 of its members. The eugenicists saw the poor, infirm and non-white as a national burden. They feared such people's breeding habits would alter society so that the elite would be over-run by a sub-class. The lower orders were therefore best limited in number or eradicated.

The eugenicists portrayed a bleak view to legislators of 19th and early 20th-century family life among the poor. Women were described as being oppressed in the home, virtual sex slaves. Mrs Farmer, a member of the Labour Life Group, traces her own working-class family's history to Victorian times. She finds that wives and mothers were actually stabilising forces in families, with a strong moral sense and pride in their offspring. There were also economic advantages to having large families.

Suffragettes and early feminists campaigned for poor mothers' welfare and condemned demands for legalised abortion. By contrast, proponents of the 1967 Abortion Act, including feminists, exaggerated the number of back-street abortions, manipulating statistics on natural miscarriages. The pro-abortion movement constantly refuels this myth.

The eugenicists' birth control policies have actually led to promiscuity and more abortions. Reductions in the size of poorer families have led to an ageing population and a shrinking workforce, which strains the retirement pension system.

The book also describes current proposed changes to British embryology law. It warns of a future with continuing negative attitudes to the poor and disabled. Medical science could become more concerned with the eradication of defective genes than with the search for cures or alleviating pain.

* Catholic University of America Press, ISBN 978-0-8132-1530-3

"Mistaken reasoning" of those who say Catholic church should drop its opposition to contraception: Bishop O'Donoghue

Bishop Patrick O’Donoghue’s “Fit For Mission? Church, Being Catholic Today” provides a major commentary on the Catholic church in England and Wales, including in relation to pro-life issues.

It represents a significant response to the call made by Pope John Paul II: “With great openness and courage, we need to question how widespread is the culture of life today among individual Christians, families, groups and communities in our Dioceses” (Evangelium Vitae, 95)

“Fit For Mission? Church” follows in the style of Bishop O’Donoghue’s “Fit for Mission? Schools” in which he calls on parents, schools and colleges to reject anti-life sex education.

I began reading “Fit For Mission? Church” because I knew it would contain a robust challenge to the culture of death – and I was not disappointed.

On pro-life issues, I would single out the importance of Bishop O’Donoghue’s understanding of the prophetic significance and authority of Humanae Vitae. Indeed, I think it’s important for all believers in God to hear the first thing that Bishop O’Donoghue says about the authority of that document:

“I have heard it expressed many times that the obvious rejection of the Church’s teaching on contraception by many Catholic couples is an apparent expression of the sensus fidelium [what the Catholic faithful sense to be the Catholic faith] and, consequently the Church should drop its opposition to it and adopt a more permissive attitude. This mistaken reasoning forgets three elements essential to the authentic sensus fidelium: Firstly, the sense of the faith must be founded on the Word of God and not secular opinion. Scripture is clear that there is an inseparable bond between sexual love, procreation and God’s creative power and lordship over life…”

Bishop O’Donoghue’s highlights the key point: God’s creative power and lordship over life. And, when this teaching is rejected, mankind and its governments assume arbitrary power over life and death. Whatever a person’s position on Bishop O’Donoghue’s theological perspective (and SPUC includes people of all faiths and none) even those who don’t believe in God can observe the consequences.

Humanae Vitae, Pope Paul VI’s encyclical, so derided by the liberal “intelligentsia”, accurately forecast that once contraception became “regarded as lawful by married people in the solution of a particular family difficulty” (HV, 17), brute power which would be used by governments to impose birth control policies on their populations. We now have coercive abortion in China and secret abortions for schoolchildren in the UK – and we have legislative proposals, which include coercive and totalitarian elements, in Kenya and in the Philippines.

Moreover, to my own mind it’s quite clear* that countless human lives have been destroyed as a result of the rejection of Humanae Vitae and its teaching on the wrongfulness of the separation of the unitive significance and procreative significance of the conjugal act, not least through birth control and IVF practices, including amongst Catholics (*albeit on the question of the separation of the unitive significance and the procreative significance of the marital act SPUC itself has no policy. The Society is made up of people of all faiths and none and SPUC’s remit is solely concerned with defending the right to life from conception till natural death.)

As Southern Cross Bioethics Institute put it in their commentary on the Philippines Reproductive Health Bill: “A ‘contraceptive’ is abortifacient (literally ‘causing abortion’) when one of its modes of action is to precipitate the destruction of the developing embryo. For example, intrauterine devices prevent the implantation of the embryo in the uterine lining and hence cause its destruction”. This is something which should concern everyone.

And as I mentioned last month on my blog (in a post about “The Tablet’s” ill-informed campaign against Humanae Vitae) IVF – which gave birth to the first IVF child thirty years ago – has led in the UK to over two million embryos discarded, or frozen, or selectively aborted, or miscarried or used in destructive experiments. (2,137,924 human embryos were created by specialists while assisting couples in the UK to have babies between 1991 and 2005, according to BioNews. During this period, the HFEA informs us that the total of live babies born through IVF procedures was 109,469.)

On a positive note Bishop O’Donoghue observes in his diocese of Lancaster that “the Church has richly developed her doctrine on marital love, seen in Pope John Paul II’s comprehensive theology of the body, the deepening understanding of marriage as a covenant and the Billings Ovulation Method”.

And I love the passion with which the bishop proclaims the truth about human life when he says:

“The advocates and apologists for the culture of death dismissively accuse Catholics of being ‘indoctrinated’ or ‘brain washed’. They are wrong. The one thing we have in common is that we value human life, because we know how much God values every human life. The value of every human life is at the heart of the Gospel, ‘But God proves his love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us’. (Romans 5:8).

“Every crucifix in church and home proclaims the victory of life over the culture of death. The paschal mystery of Christ, (Eucharist, passion, death and resurrection) are the ultimate expression of the Law of Self Gift:

“At every opportunity proclaim the right to Life – the most fundamental human right that underpins authentic work for justice and peace…“

Pray, Protest and Petition the institutions that promote the culture of death – Parliament, the British Medical Association, the Royal College of Nurses, Brook Advisory Centres, broadcasters, the tabloids and broadsheets.“

I also ask all parishes to support Catholic organisations, such as Life groups, that provide counselling, advice, support and hospitality to women considering abortions.

“Also consider actively supporting the following groups promoting the Gospel of Life: The Society for the Protection of Unborn Children; Sisters of the Gospel of Life, Life and other pro-life organisations.

Finally, I note Bishop O’Donoghue’s concern, expressed in a note circulated by his secretary that “the section [9.9] on the Bishops' Conference is but a very small part of the document. There are far more important parts … .” I’ve no doubt that’s true and I am looking forward to re-reading and to studying the document in greater depth.

However, what he says about the bishops’ conference is important: “We must keep it clearly in mind that the Bishop is not the manager of his local branch of the Catholic Church, who reports to the board of the national Episcopal Conference…” It’s important because, as I’ve noted elsewhere, the Catholic authorities in England and Wales are co-operating with the government in providing our children and grandchildren with secret abortions in Catholic schools. Bishop O’Donoghue headlines this section of his document “The Need for Confident and Courageous Bishops” and he highlights the following extract from the Catholic church’s teaching in Lumen Gentium: [Bishops] are authentic teachers, that is, teachers endowed with the authority of Christ, who preach to the people committed to them the faith they must believe and put into practice... Bishops, teaching in communion with the Roman Pontiff, are to be revered by all as witnesses to divine and Catholic truth.” (LG 25).

I do not believe that the policy of the Catholic authorities in England and Wales regarding secret abortions in Catholic schools is one which is in tune with teaching “endowed the authority of Christ” or with “teaching in communion with the Roman Pontiff”. It’s important to be reminded that individual Catholic bishops in England and Wales are free to reject such a policy – as Bishop O’Donoghue, a confident and courageous bishop, has done. He calls on parishes to “Review the parish’s co-operation with schools to challenge the culture of death among young people” and much else besides.