Protest against St Andrews University honour for pro-abortion Hillary Clinton

The BBC reports:

"Former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will be honoured for her work when she visits Scotland next month.

She will address academics and students at St Andrews University before being given an honorary degree.

The visit on 13 and 14 September comes as the university continues to mark its 600th anniversary.

St Andrews principal Professor Louise Richardson said she was delighted the wife of former president Bill Clinton would be attending.

Mrs Clinton will be honoured for her efforts in championing the causes of education, human rights, democracy, civil society and promoting opportunities for females around the world.

Professor Richardson said: "We are absolutely delighted that Secretary Clinton will join us and other distinguished guests from around the world as we celebrate 600 years of university education in St Andrews."

...

"As one of the most influential women in the world, Hillary Clinton, as stateswoman, senator, and policymaker, never shied away from tackling difficult questions, working to make the world a better place, inspiring others, speaking out for the voiceless and striving ever to excel.""

Hillary Clinton is one of the world's most prominent pro-abortion public figures. For example:

• at a major international conference in 1995, she said: “women’s rights are human rights and human rights are women’s rights”, which has been used ever since by the pro-abortion lobby at the UN to push for the so-called 'women's right' to abortion to be enshrined as a human right
• as a US senator, Mrs Clinton had a 100% pro-abortion voting record
• in April 2007, she condemned the US Supreme Court's upholding of the federal ban on partial-birth abortion, as contrary to "a woman’s right to choose" and "constitutional rights"
• in July 2008, she attacked health professionals' right to conscientious objection to abortion and abortifacient birth control
• in April 2009, Planned Parenthood, America's main abortion provider, awarded her the Margaret Sanger Award, the foundress of the worldwide pro-abortion movement. In her acceptance speech, Mrs Clinton said: "I admire Margaret Sanger enormously" and "I want to assure you that reproductive rights and the umbrella issue of women's rights and empowerment will be a key to the foreign policy of [the Obama] Administration". (Read SPUC's youth blog on The Life and Crimes of Margaret Sanger: Part I, II, III, IV and V.)
• also in April 2009, she told the US Congress that: "We happen to think that family planning is an important part of women's health and reproductive health includes access to abortion ... ”
• in January 2010, she renewed the Obama administration's commitment to bankroll abortion worldwide
• in March 2010, she called upon Brazil to consider legalising abortion, describing it as "a fundamental personal right"
• later in March 2010, she said: "You cannot have maternal health without reproductive health. And reproductive health includes contraception and family planning and access to legal, safe abortion".

Please write to Professor Louise Richardson, the Principal of the University of St Andrews, to protest at the planned honour for Mrs Clinton, explaining why Mrs Clinton's promotion of abortion is contrary to "education, human rights, democracy, civil society and promoting opportunities for females around the world" and " working to make the world a better place, inspiring others, speaking out for the voiceless". You can email Professor Richardson at principal@st-andrews.ac.uk or write to her at:
College Gate
North Street
St Andrews
Fife
KY16 9AJ

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Obama-Clinton administration renews commitment to bankroll abortion worldwide

Yesterday Hillary Clinton, the pro-abortion US secretary of state, gave a speech marking the 15th anniversary of the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) in Cairo. In her speech, Mrs Clinton notably failed to remind the audience that the programme of action agreed by governments at Cairo says: "In no case should abortion be promoted as a method of family planning". Mrs Clinton nonetheless confirmed the Obama administration's commitment to support and bankroll organisations which promote abortion as a method of family planning, notably the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) and the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA). Mrs Clinton frequently used the terms 'reproductive health' and 'family planning', making only one passsing reference to abortion. In April, following direct questioning by pro-life Congressman Chris Smith, Mrs Clinton was forced to admit that the Obama administration's definition of reproductive health includes abortion.

Here are some extracts from Mrs Clinton's speech yesterday, and my comments [JS] on them:

• "What is it we will do between now and 2015? Remember what was expected of us [at Cairo]. All governments will make access to reproductive healthcare and family planning services a basic right." [JS: This means the Obama administration believes Cairo requires all governments to provide abortion and contraception.]
• "We have made measurable progress since 1994 in improving the health and the lives of women and children, especially girls. For example, the use of modern contraceptives worldwide has increased from under 10 percent in the 1960s to 43 percent in 2008." [JS: As I blogged yesterday, contraception paves the way for abortion, and the physical and psychological damage abortion does to women.]
• "And 15 years after the Cairo conference, far too many women still have little or no access to reproductive health services, including family planning and maternal healthcare." [JS: This shows just how extreme the Obama-Clinton administration regime is. Even though almost every country in the world allows abortion and contraception, resulting in tens of millions of abortions annually and a growing under-population crisis, the administration wants more.]
• "More than 215 million women worldwide lack access to the modern forms of contraception, and this contributes to the nearly 20 million unsafe abortions that take place very year." [JS: I have blogged before about the pro-abortion lobby's outrageous manipulation of shaky statistics.]
• "[W]e are working with religious leaders in Afghanistan and Pakistan to increase access to information about family planning" [JS: Obama-Clinton know that the anti-life juggernaut can be stopped by religious leaders.]
• "Uganda, where USAID works with the International Planned Parenthood Federation to provide reproductive health services" [JS: The pro-abortion lobby is determined to reverse the Ugandan government's emphasis on abstinence and fidelity, which has been successful in reducing HIV rates.]
• "So we are rededicating ourselves to the global efforts to improve reproductive health for women and girls ... One of President Obama’s first actions in office was to overturn the Mexico City policy, which greatly limited our ability to fund family planning programs" [JS: In fact, the Mexico City policy denied millions of US federal dollars to organisations which promote abortion, not just 'family planning'.]
• "We have pledged new funding, new programs, and a renewed commitment to achieve Millennium Development Goal Five, namely a [three-fourths] reduction in global maternal mortality, and universal access to reproductive healthcare." [JS: which means seeking to force governments to allow abortion on demand.]
• "This year, the United States renewed funding of reproductive healthcare through the United Nations Population Fund, and more funding is on the way. The U.S. Congress recently appropriated more than $648 million in foreign assistance to family planning and reproductive health programs worldwide. That’s the largest allocation in more than a decade – since we last had a Democratic president, I might add." [JS: which is why it's essential that more pro-lifers win seats in this year's mid-term elections, and that a pro-life candidate replaces Obama in 2012.]
• "[T]oday, the United States is proud once again to support the work of the UN Population Fund." [JS: despite that body's shameless complicity in the China's one-child policy of forced abortions.]
• "[E]very single child in this country – boy or girl – deserves a chance to live up to his or her God-given potential." [JS: There's a good Jewish-American word for such a statement: 'chutzpah'. Under Obama-Clinton, countless more children's lives will be extinguished.]

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Hillary Clinton should not have been honoured by St Andrews University

Hillary Clinton (left) at St Andrews

Today the University of St. Andrews awarded former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton an honorary doctorate for her (alleged) championing of:

“education, human rights, democracy, civil society and promoting opportunities for females around the world”.

However, Clinton is radically pro-abortion and works to promote abortion in the developing world. Abortion is contrary to human rights and opportunities for females, born and unborn. Hillary Clinton supports the killing of unborn children in the developing world. She should not have been awarded a doctorate by the University of St. Andrews.

Hillary Clinton supports the appalling procedure of partial-birth abortion. The child is delivered up to the neck; then a sharp instrument is inserted into the back of the head to kill the child; then an aspirator is used to suck out the brain so the head can be crushed and pass through the cervix.

Hillary Clinton received the Planned Parenthood ‘Margaret Sanger Award’ in 2009. Clinton said of Sanger:

“I admire Margaret Sanger enormously... I am really in awe of her.”

Margaret Sanger believed the following:

• "The most merciful thing that the large family does to one of its infant members is to kill it." Woman and the New Race
• "The most immoral practice of the day is breeding too many children”. “The large family... is therefore a greater evil than any one of them [war, poverty, child labour, prostitution]."
• "Keep the doors of immigration closed to the entrance of certain aliens whose condition is known to be detrimental to the stamina of the race, such as the feeble-minded, idiots, morons, insane, syphilitic, epileptic, criminal, professional prostitutes, and others in this class."
• "Apply a stern and rigid policy of sterilization and segregation to that grade of population whose progeny is tainted."
• "Feeble-minded persons, habitual congenital criminals, those afflicted with inheritable disease, and others found biologically unfit by authorities qualified to judge should be sterilized or, in cases of doubt, should be so isolated as to prevent the perpetuation of their afflictions by breeding." America Needs a Baby Code.

Clinton opposed plans for conscientious objection for healthcare professionals to abortion.

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Don't be fooled: Obama and Clinton are funding forced abortions in China

In a horrifying report in today's Times, Chinese women are said to be angry about China's policy of forced abortion, compulsory sterilisation and infanticide

It's a tragic irony that, reportedly, Chinese women (and possibly The Times) are pinning their hopes on the Obama administration - and specifically on Hillary Clinton, Obama's Secretary of State who's visiting China this week - to stand up for human rights and speak up for women on this issue.

One of Barack Obama's first actions as President was to restore funding to UNFPA (and other organisations promoting abortion overseas), whose involvement in the forced abortion regime in China and elsewhere is all too well documented.

• In 1979, the very year that China introduced its brutal one-child policy, UNFPA signed a "Memorandum of Understanding" with the Chinese government.
• In 1983, the year commonly regarded as the worst year for coercion, UNFPA gave one of its first two Population Awards to the minister-in-charge of China’s State Family Planning Commission. (The other award that year was given to Indira Gandhi, the Indian prime minister, whose government enforced compulsory birth control including sterilisation.)
• In 1985, Rafael Salas, UNFPA’s then executive director, told Premier Zhao Ziyang that "China should feel proud of the achievements made in her family planning program." (reported by The People's Daily, the Communist Party's official newspaper).
• In 1991, UNFPA's then executive director Nafis Sadik said: "China has every reason to feel proud of and pleased with its remarkable achievements made in its family planning policy and control of its population growth.” (Xinhua, 11 April 1991) In 2002 China's State Family Planning Commission gave Nafis Sadik its own Population Award.
• In 1999, UNFPA aided and abetted "ethnic cleansing" by indicted war criminal Slobodan Milosevic by assisting his regime's plan "to limit or forbid the enormous increase of the birthrate in Kosovo".
• In 2001, Thoraya Obaid, the new UNFPA executive director, said that over the past 20 years, China had seen notable achievements made in population control by implementing the family planning policy.
• In 2001, research by the (pro-life) Population Research Institute (PRI) found that UNFPA was complicit in population control against Muslims in the Chinese province of Xinjiang.
• In 2003, UNFPA exploited the aftermath of the war in Iraq to launch a campaign to provide "reproductive health" to Iraqi refugees. ("Reproductive health" is a euphemism which the World Health Organisation (WHO) has defined as including abortion on demand.

In The Times report about Chinese women's growing anger we read:

" ' ... Six days before the due date, 10 strong strangers came to my house, forced me into a truck then took me to a family planning clinic, where the doctor gave me an injection,' she said.

"'The child began struggling in my womb and one of these scum even kicked me in the abdomen. Then the baby came out and they threw it into a rubbish bin. I could even see it was still moving ... '"

The Times report continues:

" ... Clinton annoyed the Chinese regime with a speech at a 1995 women's conference in Beijing in which she said: 'It is a violation of human rights when women are denied the right to plan their own families, and that includes being forced to have an abortion or sterilised against their will.'

"Now Clinton is predicted to tackle Beijing on a broader range of issues than the economics-focused approach taken by the Bush administration. She has signalled that she will take a firmer stand on human rights ... "

Whatever Hillary Clinton's human rights rhetoric, the only way Chinese women can judge her real intentions is to see whether or not she disassociates herself from Barack Obama's policy spelled out clearly last month in these words: " … I look forward to working with Congress to restore U.S. financial support for the U.N. Population Fund ... "

So I say to the women of China and to The Times - Don't be fooled: As things stand, Obama and Clinton are funding the forced abortion regime in your country.

Mrs Clinton praises eugenicist birth control promoter

Mrs Hillary Clinton has confirmed that, when her government speaks of reproductive health, that term includes access to abortion. The US secretary of state was talking to the House of Representatives' foreign affairs committee. She also praised Margaret Sanger (1879-1966), the birth-control advocate. Representative Christopher Smith pointed out in the committee that Ms Sanger had been a eugenicist and asked Mrs Clinton to confirm that the Obama administration would promote abortion overseas. Her replies suggested that it would.

Mr Smith later said: "It is evident that Mrs Clinton and President Obama want to force the tragedy of abortion upon women around the world especially and including in countries where democratically elected leaders want to continue to protect their unborn children. There are other ways in which both mother and baby are protected, cared for and helped - with food, nutrition, clean water and life-affirming healthcare. Secretary Clinton's inability to see this will mean more babies will die and more women will suffer the consequence of abortion as a result of US foreign policy overseas."

Mrs Clinton recently received an award named after Ms Sanger from Planned Parenthood.

Mrs Clinton, it's Lockerbie and worse every day for the unborn

Hillary Clinton, the pro-abortion American secretary of state, is opposing the release from prison of Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi, a Libyan convicted of the bombing of an American airliner over Lockerbie, Scotland in 1988. Mr Megrahi is dying of cancer. In a press conference (see YouTube video below), Mrs Clinton said:

"I just think it is absolutely wrong to release someone who has been imprisoned based on the evidence about his involvement in such a horrendous crime."

The Lockerbie bombing, which killed 270 people, was indeed a horrendous crime. Yet more than 3,000 people are killed every day in America in the horrendous crime of abortion, which Mrs Clinton ardently promotes. Because of clever pro-abortion lawyer-politicians like Mrs Clinton, her husband Bill and her boss President Obama, it remains not just Lockerbie but 9/11 for unborn babies in America every day.

(The photo above is from a witness by Oregon State University Right to Life. On the 35th annniversay of Roe v Wade, the group planted 3,000 crosses to highlight the number of unborn babies aborted daily in America.)



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Courageous politician holds Hillary Clinton to account

On 27 March Hillary Clinton (pictured bottom-right), the radical pro-abortion US secretary of state, visited the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe, Mexico, a major shrine for the international pro-life movement. The very next day in Texas, Mrs Clinton received from Planned Parenthood, America's biggest abortion provider, an award named after Margaret Sanger (pictured top-right), the founder of the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) of which Planned Parenthood of America forms part. In her acceptance speech, Mrs Clinton said: "I admire Margaret Sanger enormously" and "I want to assure you that reproductive rights and the umbrella issue of women's rights and empowerment will be a key to the foreign policy of [the Obama] Administration".

In response, on 31 March Chris Smith, the pro-life congressman for Trenton, New Jersey, gave a stunning speech in the House of Representatives, holding Mrs Clinton to account for her endorsement of Sanger. Among many notable parts of his speech, Mr Smith laid out the evidence of Sanger's "cruel and reckless disregard for poor, pregnant women". Sanger had argued forcefully and at length against any form of welfare for poor mothers, arguing instead for the poor to be prevented from breeding. Mr Smith said that Planned Parenthood was really "Child Abuse Incorporated", as "[a]bortion is violence against children".

In a world dominated by a more and more aggressive and extremist anti-life regime under President Obama, we need many more courageous public figures like Congressman Chris Smith. There is no incompatibility between clear condemnations of abortion and profound, practical compassion for mothers in difficult circumstances. Chris Smith's speech featured both, and accurately represented the pro-life movement's core values.

Must-read pro-life news-stories, Mon 16 September

Top stories:

Hillary Clinton should not have been honoured by St Andrews University
The University of St. Andrews has awarded former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton an honorary doctorate for her (alleged) championing of "education, human rights, democracy, civil society and promoting opportunities for females around the world." [BBC, 13 September] However, Clinton is radically pro-abortion and works to promote abortion in the developing world. Abortion is contrary to human rights and opportunities for females, born and unborn. Hillary Clinton supports the killing of unborn children in the developing world. She should not have been awarded a doctorate by the University of St. Andrews. [John Smeaton, 13 September]

Local Authorities should tell primary schools: no more sex ed in science lessons, says Safe at School
Local Authorities should advise that primary schools will not be permitted to include sex education in Key Stage 1 and 2 science lessons under the new National Curriculum, said the Safe at School campaign, which supports parents facing unacceptable sex education in their child's school. Antonia Tully of SPUC's Safe at School campaign said: "Every parent should now feel confident that their primary-aged child will not be subjected to graphic information about sex in compulsory science lessons. Where local authorities advise schools of the requirements of the national curriculum, from 2014 they must stop advising both schools and parents that there is mandatory sex education in science lessons." [SPUC, 13 September]

Other stories:

Abortion

• My letter in The Telegraph on sex-selective abortion [John Smeaton, 12 September]

Euthanasia

• UK health service patients 50% more likely to die of neglect than in US, suggests study [Mail, 12 September]

Population

• David Attenborough praises China’s one-child policy: criticized for ignoring ‘demographic winter’ [LifeSiteNews.com, 11 September]

Sexual ethics

• Free Church issues strong warning on gay marriage [Times, 12 September]
• Planned Parenthood’s gender insanity: where normal is the new abnormal [LifeSiteNews.com, 11 September]

General

• Pro-life message was at the heart of Attraction’s success in Britain’s Got Talent [LifeSiteNews.com, 11 September]

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Hillary Clinton's appointment tops unprecedented pro-abortion line-up

The appointment of Hillary Clinton as US Secretary of State is confirmation that Barack Obama's administration will be the most anti-life in American history. In addition to Mrs Clinton's appointment and other anti-life Obama appointments which I blogged about recently, Mr Obama has appointed:

Susan Rice, who worked in Bill Clinton's anti-life administration, to be a US ambassador to the United Nations

Ellen Moran, executive director of pro-abortion group EMILY's List, to be White House director of communications

Dawn Johnsen, former legal director of pro-abortion group NARAL, to be a member of his Department of Justice Review Team.

It is therefore incredibly appropriate that Pope Benedict's prayer intention for this month is: "That, faced by the growing expansion of the culture of violence and death, the Church may courageously promote the culture of life through all her apostolic and missionary activities."

Courage means, for both Catholic and non-Catholic pro-lifers, not engaging in woolly wishful thinking that fails to oppose Mr Obama's pro-abortion government, naively allayed by his vague election-time promises to find "common ground" with pro-lifers in order to reduce abortions. Supposing Barack Obama supported the killing of, say, Catholic nuns ... Would right-minded citizens feel inclined to accept vague assurances that he would work with opponents of such killings in order to lower their incidence - whilst simultaneously promising to sign into law a draconian measure designed to extend such killings? What is the difference between the humanity and human rights of unborn children and Catholic nuns?

After the infamous Munich agreement in May 1938, Adolf Hitler said that he had no further territorial claims to make in Europe -and then went on to invade and control huge swathes of Europe. Hitler's words at Munich were believed by many wishful thinkers at the time, even though Hitler had set out clearly in Mein Kampf his belief that it was essential for Germany to occupy eastern Europe. Mr Obama has set out clearly his intention to sign the Freedom of Choice Act (FOCA) as his first deed as president, and to reverse the pro-life gains made under the Bush administration - yet some wishful thinkers, Chamberlain-like, remain in denial.

Many Germans of Hitler's time, and many people across the world, will have loved J.S. Bach's Advent chorale Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme (Sleepers, wake, the voice calls us). This Advent, let's rouse all those people we know are sleeping in apathy to awake and respond to Pope Benedict's call to courageously promote the culture of life.

Knife crime, abortion, Mother Teresa and Gordon Brown

This morning a Google UK search provides over 11,000 news references to knife crime. The first two headlines from Times Online and the Press Association read "Brown commits to immediate action on knife crime" and "PM pledge over knife crime measures".

Today's knife-crime news and questions about the causes of violence in Britain (and its solution) bring to mind Mother Teresa's speech on 3rd February, 1994, at the National Prayer Breakfast in the US, in Washington DC - attended by President Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton, the first lady.

Mother Teresa said:

"Many people are also concerned about all the violence in this great country of the United States. These concerns are very good. But often these same people are not concerned with the millions who are being killed by the deliberate decision of their own mothers. And this is what is the greatest destroyer of peace today - abortion which brings people to such blindness."

Peggy Noonan, best-selling author and columnist for The Wall Street Journal and present at the prayer breakfast, described the audience's response, including the reaction of Bill and Hillary Clinton, in an article in Crisis magazine:

"Well, silence. Cool deep silence in the cool round cavern for just about 1.3 seconds. And then applause started on the right hand side of the room, and spread, and deepened, and now the room was swept with people applauding, and they would not stop for what I believe was five or six minutes. As they clapped they began to stand, in another wave from the right of the room to the centre and the left. But not everyone applauded. The president and first lady, seated within a few feet of Mother Teresa on the dais, were not applauding. Nor were the vice president and Mrs. Gore. They looked like seated statues at Madame Tussaud’s. They glistened in the lights and moved not a muscle, looking at the speaker in a determinedly semi-pleasant way."

I'm sure Gordon Brown is entirely genuine when he says: “

The terrible stabbings that have occurred this week are shocking and tragic and my thoughts are with the families and friends of those who have been hurt or killed in these attacks".

In saying such things the Prime Minister expresses the thoughts of virtually everyone in the UK; and if Gordon Brown were to discover the cause of this epidemic of violence and begin to address it, his premiership will go down in history for this reason and he will be well remembered by the British people.

I believe that what Mother Teresa said in 1994 about violence in the United States applies equally to the situation in Britain today; and I believe that if Gordon Brown begins to see the mistake he (and Parliament) made in voting for legalised abortion, in vitro fertilisation and destructive embryo research - and thus completely undermining respect for the sacredness of all human life - he will have discovered the greatest destroyer of peace in Britain and the biggest cause of knife-crime.

Now that debate and voting on pro-abortion amendments to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill have been delayed till the autumn by the government, pro-life leaders and church leaders should waste no time in echoing the words of Mother Teresa:

"...this is the greatest destroyer of peace today, abortion...".

Tony Blair, Bill and Hillary Clinton have never repudiated their pro-abortion positions and the worldwide consequences of their policies have been catastrophic. Even one small step for Gordon Brown, using his Government's influence to stop a complete meltdowon on respect for unborn life in Britain, could prove to be a giant leap for humanity.

Obama-Clinton's worldwide abortion propaganda unit

The US House of Representatives is due to vote this week on the establishment of an Office of Global Women’s Issues within the US State Department. The office will be responsible for coordinating efforts “relating to gender integration and women’s empowerment in United States foreign policy.” The head of the new office is Melanne Verveer (pictured), former chief of staff to Hillary Clinton, and reported to be pro-abortion Catholic. With Barack Obama as President and Mrs Clinton as Secretary of State, we can expect this new office to engage in a worldwide campaign to make abortion on demand a universal human right.

This is yet more evidence that, for Obama and Clinton, a pro-abortion position is not just something to be expected of a Democratic party administration. They now appear to be making the promotion of a so-called right to abortion among the highest priorities of US domestic and foreign policy, something the mainstream media has generally failed to report. The courageous opposition, however, of thousands of people, including scores of bishops, to Notre Dame university honouring Obama turned the world's spotlight on Obama's anti-life reputation. That is why at Notre Dame Obama felt it necessary to try to spin convincingly about common ground. All the more reason why we must debunk his spin and warn the world about the abortion-centred new world order he is working to create.

My speech to the Dialogue of Civilizations conference in Rhodes

This week I am attending the Rhodes Forum, where I have been invited to address the ninth annual session of the Rhodes Forum: "Dialogue of Civilizations". Below is the full text of my address at the roundtable on population and the family. The roundtable was attended by the Rhodes Forum's founding president Vladamir Yakunin, who was appointed president of Russian Railways by the Government of the Russian Federation in June2005.  The roundtable was moderated by Natalya Yakunina, the wife of Mr Yakunin, who is chairman of Russia's Sanctity of Motherhood programme. I said:

Madam chairman, ladies and gentlemen,

21st century families are deeply affected and damaged by powerful political forces promoting population control, both in developing and in developed countries.

Firstly, there is an unequivocal determination on the part of the world’s most powerful politicians and UN officials to promote access to abortion on demand in every country of the world. Let me begin with President Obama. In a speech on October 12th 2009, Wellington Webb, appointed by Barack Obama as special adviser to the US mission to the United Nations, confirmed that the Obama administration will be promoting legalised abortion throughout the world, targeting adolescents in a worldwide abortion drive.

Hillary Clinton, Obama's appointee as US Secretary of State, had already made it clear that when her government speaks of reproductive health, it's a term which includes access to abortion. In April, 2009, Hilary Clinton told Congressman Chris Smith at a hearing of the US Congress Foreign Affairs Committee "We happen to think that family planning is an important part of women's health and reproductive health includes access to abortion ... ”

Secondly, there’s an unequivocal determination on the part of the world’s most powerful politicians and UN officials to destroy conscientious objection on abortion and on other right to life issues.

Obama’s and Clinton’s pro-abortion allies at the United Nations have been in top gear. In September 2010 at the Human Rights Council in Geneva, Ban Ki Moon the UN Secretary General, and Navanethem Pillay, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, launched a report “on discrimination against women, in law and practice, and how the issue is addressed throughout the United Nations human rights system”. In that report they called for the policing of nations worldwide to “address the refusal of physicians to perform legal abortions”.

In the meantime, the anti-life lobby intensified its campaign in the European institutions.

A report on conscientious objection in medicine was debated last October in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe consists of elected representatives from the legislatures of the 47 member-states of the Council of Europe. (Please note that the council is entirely separate from the European Union, a body which includes 27 European nations.) The report’s focus was conscientious objection to abortion, contraception, IVF and euthanasia in "medical" care [my quotation marks]. If the report had been passed, Council of Europe member-states, that’s 47 European nations, would have been put under pressure effectively to abolish in law and practice conscientious objection within medicine.

Thankfully, instead of a pro-abortion victory, the tables were turned, and there was an important pro-life victory instead. Prior to the Council of Europe debate the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children in the UK sent detailed briefings to pro-life supporters and to religious leaders in the 47 nations of the Council of Europe. We urged them to lobby their political representatives to vote against this deadly report opposing conscientious objection. The outcome of the debate was radically opposite to the outcome anticipated by the pro-abortion lobby. The pro-abortion report was entitled: “Women’s access to lawful medical care: the problem of unregulated use of conscientious objection,” By way of contrast, the final resolution on the report was headed “The right to conscientious objection in lawful medical care”. The resolution is not perfect but it represents a huge setback for our opponents. It also presents a major new challenge to the pro-life movement in Europe and, perhaps, worldwide.

Thirdly, there is an unequivocal determination to promote homosexuality and other sexual orientation models worldwide probably with a view to bringing forward a resolution at the international level – either at the Human Rights Council or at the UN general Assembly in New York – recognising same-sex marriage.

In June this year, a resolution on sexual orientation and gender identity was presented at the Human Rights Council by South Africa – a resolution organized with the assistance of the United States and the European Union. In a carefully planned strategy, the South African Mission held a meeting on June 9th under the completely misleading heading “The imperative need to respect the established procedures and practices of the United Nations General Assembly in the elaboration on new norms and standards and their subsequent integration into existing international human rights law”.

The result of this meeting was the tabling of a resolution the following day June 10th on "Human Rights, Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity”. The resolution was passed on a vote in the Human Rights Council by 23 votes to 19 with three abstentions. This resolution was targeted at the Human Rights Council because western countries, in favour of expanding human rights to include sexual orientation and gender identity, currently enjoy a majority there.

Last month a similar resolution on sexual orientation and gender identity was agreed by political parties at the European Parliament.

These resolutions on sexual orientation, promoted by some western governments and powerful NGOs, are concentrating on the issue of discrimination and violence. In this way, sexual orientation issues are being placed on the international political agenda.

No one takes issue with the unacceptability of violence committed against persons. However, resolutions against violence will be used as a platform, for future actions. This is just the beginning, as progress has now been made in establishing the issue within the UN framework. This was a first step and it now seems probable to SPUC’s UN lobbyists that there will be a resolution in the coming months – either at the Human Rights Council in Geneva or at the General Assembly in New York – seeking to recognize same sex marriage.

Why is the issue of homosexuality important specifically for the pro-life movement? The late Pope John Paul II, the great pro-life champion, taught in no. 97 of his 1995 encyclical Evangelium Vitae that it is an illusion to think that we can build a true culture of human life if we do not offer adolescents and young adults an authentic education in sexuality, and in love, and the whole of life according to their true meaning and in their close interconnection.

This brings me to my fourth point. There is an unequivocal determination on the part of the world’s most powerful politicians and UN officials to destroy parental rights over their children’s education and formation.

In their work at the Human Rights Council, lobbyists working for the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children often meet country delegates from developing nations who are preparing reports for United Nations compliance committees. The Committee on the Rights of the Child is the UN’s compliance committee for the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

For example, there is nothing in the Convention on the Rights of the Child that can reasonably be construed as approving abortion or access to abortion for children under the age of consent without their parents’ knowledge or agreement. However, this does not stop the Compliance Committee from making recommendations promoting access to abortion for children under the age of consent without parents’ knowledge or consent. For example, a child’s “right to health” is protected under the Convention on the Rights of the Child. According to the UN Compliance Committee on the Convention a child’s right to health must include access to sexual and reproductive information, including on family planning and contraceptives, the dangers of early pregnancy, the prevention of HIV/AIDS and the prevention and treatment of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs). In addition, States parties should ensure that they have access to appropriate information, regardless of their marital status ... and regardless of whether their parents or guardians consent.

We can be sure that Pope Benedict’s message on the 1st January this year is anathema to such powerful UN committees. He said: “Parents must be always free to transmit to their children, responsibly and without constraints, their heritage of faith, values and culture.” Unfortunately, Pope Benedict’s strong statement is not universally supported by church officials – and the weakness of Church officials in many parts of the world is completely disastrous for unborn children, for parents and for their families.

Tragically, in Britain, induced abortion and birth control drugs and devices are provided to children at school, including Catholic schools, under the age of 16 without parental knowledge or consent. This is happening with the co-operation of the Catholic authorities - my fifth point.

Britain is witnessing the fulfilment of the prophetic message of Humanae Vitae, Pope Paul VI's historic encyclical which celebrated its 40th anniversary two years ago. Speaking about the inseparable connection between the unitive and procreative aspects 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.' When Pope Paul VI wrote these words, he was referring to governments imposing birth control practices on whole societies. His words apply tragically, with terrifying consequences for our families, to Catholic bishops in England and Wales, who co-operate with the British government policy of imposing birth control practices on families like mine.

The failure of Catholic bishops, not only in Britain but in very many parts of the world, to teach their flocks on matters relating to the fundamental right to life was directly responsible for great confusion and, consequently, for the failure of the overwhelming majority of Catholics, both clerical and lay, to provide truly effective resistance to the greatest legalized slaughter of human beings in the history of the world. Countless millions of unborn children were being killed each year and the policy of very many Catholic bishops was contributing hugely to this deplorable situation.

Unless the pro-life movement worldwide and all citizens of good will speak up loud and clear and make this deplorable situation absolutely clear to Christian pastors – the decline into the destruction of unborn children, the destruction of parents’ rights and responsibilities and the destruction of the health and moral welfare of young people will be completed with terrifying speed.

I call upon delegates here in Rhodes and citizens of good will worldwide to heed the words of Archbishop Hilarion Afleyev, President of the Moscow Patricarchate's Department for External Church Relations: "The Christin is called to profess his faith boldly, out of love of God and of his truth, and for the salvation of his soul, for eternal life".

Such religious and moral leadership is urgently needed for the family to survive its catastrophic destruction through the efforts and the will of powerful politicians and UN officials and the through the betrayal of families by religious leaders who have either lost their faith in God or their love for humanity.

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Obama régime is deferential to China

Just at the time when the US State Department reports that China's human rights abuses are worsening, citing

"repression last year in Tibet and Xinjiang, restricting dissent and religious freedom"

Barack Obama's brave new world has shown where its priorities lie - and they are not with the victims of repression.

Hillary Clinton, Obama's secretary of state, says:

“We have to continue to press them, but our pressing on those issues can’t interfere with the global economic crisis, the global climate-change crisis and the security crises. We have to have a dialogue that leads to an understanding and co-operation on each of those.”

US Congressman Chris Smith (right) puts it well when he says that Hillary Clinton's comments are

“a shocking display of pandering”

and that the Obama administration

“has chosen to peddle U.S. debt to the largest dictatorship in the world over combating torture, forced abortion, forced labor, religious persecution, human sex trafficking, gendercide, and genocide” according to EWTN news.

“Secretary Clinton said concern for the protection of human rights of the Chinese people can’t ‘interfere’ with the economic crisis, climate change, and security – as if human rights were somehow disconnected and irrelevant to those issues,” Congressman Chris Smith said.

Congressman Smith reminds us that, when Colin Powell (a supporter of abortion) was Secretary of State, the US State Department verified the pro-life Population Research Institute’s allegations that the UNFPA was cooperating with coercive abortion programme in China.

“UNFPA's support of, and involvement in, China's population-planning activities allows the Chinese government to implement more effectively its program of coercive abortion,” Powell said in a July 21, 2002 letter to Congress.

As I write this, I read that the Democrat majority in the House of Representatives is blocking debate of Mr Smith's pro-life amendments to President Obama's economic package. Mr Smith's proposals would stop government money from going overseas to pay for abortion (including forced abortion) and forced sterilisation.

Hillary Clinton attacks health professionals' right to conscientious objection to abortion and abortifacient birth control

George Bush, the US president, is under fire from Hillary Clinton for seeking to protect doctors’ and nurses’ conscientious objection to abortion, including abortifacient birth control drugs and devices. She reportedly described a Bush administration plan to define several widely used contraception methods as abortion is a "gratuitous, unnecessary insult" to women.

According to Reuters, a copy of a memo that appears to be an Department of Health and Human Services draft carries a broad definition of abortion as any procedures, including prescription drugs, ‘that result in the termination of the life of a human being in utero between conception and natural birth, whether before or after implantation.’

Hillary Clinton’s response to the Bush administration’s initiative shows that the “freedom” to choose abortion turns out to be a triple attack on freedom, the freedom of:

• the unborn to live
• health professionals and others not to participate in killing innocent human lives, and
  
• women and men to know the truth about the abortifacient properties of birth control drugs and devices.

I hope the Bush administration sticks to its guns on this issue.

Leading global pro-abortion advocates speak at Vatican conference

Ban Ki Moon, UN Secretary General

Two of the world's leading pro-abortion advocates were addressing a Vatican workshop on the environment today.

At the same time, a press conference at the Palazzo Cesi, in Rome, organised by the Heartland Institute, was addressed by two leading SPUC officials on behalf of Voice of the Family, warning that the population control lobby was advancing its agenda by means of the workshop held today by the Pontifical Academy for Sciences.

The following statement was delivered by Patrick Buckley, UN envoy of the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children, who was joined in Rome by Maria Madise, SPUC's international manager and manager of Voice of the Family:

Voice of the Family statement on the workshop “Protect the Earth, Dignify Humanity. The Moral Dimensions of Climate Change and Sustainable Development” held at the Pontifical Academy for Sciences, 28th April 2015

We wish to express our grave concern at the presence of Ban Ki Moon, the UN Secretary General, and Professor Jeffrey Sachs, Director of the Earth Institute, at the Vatican workshop Protect the Earth, Dignify Humanity. The Moral Dimensions of Climate Change and Sustainable Development held by the Pontifical Academy for Sciences (PAS), Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN) and Religions for Peace on April 28th 2015 in anticipation of the new papal encyclical on the environment.

Ban Ki Moon and Professor Jeffrey Sachs are noted advocates of abortion who operate at the highest levels of the United Nations.

The Vatican workshop aims to “raise awareness and build a consensus that the values of sustainable development cohere with values of the leading religious traditions, with a special focus on the most vulnerable.”

Unfortunately, pro-life and pro-family advocates who lobby at the UN have witnessed the environmental issues become an umbrella to cover a wide spectrum of attacks on human life and the family. These attacks pose an immediate threat to the lives of the most vulnerable – the unborn, the disabled and the elderly – as well as grave violations of parental rights.

In light of the attacks on innocent human life witnessed at the UN under the guise of environmental concerns, we are troubled to note the Vatican workshop’s desire “to help build a global movement across all religions for sustainable development and climate change throughout 2015 and beyond”. This timetable exactly coincides with the negotiations of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) at the UN, which include strong attacks on life and family. The SDG agenda will determine the direction and financial aid for the third world countries for the next 15 years.

Understandably the population control, pro-abortion lobby must be feeling very much empowered by the influence being exercised in the Vatican by two of the culture of death’s leading figures, Ban Ki Moon and Professor Jeffrey Sachs, especially just before the publication of an encyclical on the environment.

Ban Ki-Moon, who is one of the main speakers at the workshop at the Pontifical Academy of the Sciences, has on many occasions promoted the so-called “right” to abortion worldwide. (1) He also issued a controversial new report this year on sexual violence in conflict zones, which was critical of the lack of “safe abortion” in many conflict situations. The directive openly defies the consensus at the UN that abortion is an issue that should be left to individual nations.

Dr Jeffrey Sachs, who is also addressing the meeting, is a well-known international proponent of population control and abortion. (2) Sachs is one of the architects of the millennium development goals and a member of the Executive Board of the Sustainable Development Solutions Network. The Network has proposed draft Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) which contain provisions that are radically antagonistic to the right to life from conception to natural death, to the rights and dignity of the family and to the rights of parents as the primary educators of their children.

Our concerns relate specifically to Goals 4 and 5.

Goal 4 is to “achieve gender equality, social inclusion, and human rights for all”. The call for an end to preventable deaths of infants and children under the age of 5 excludes unborn children, despite the fact that the Convention on the Rights of the Child in its preamble recognises that “The child by reason of his physical and mental immaturity, needs special safeguards and care, including appropriate legal protection, before as well as after birth.”

Goal 4d, which states “Ensure universal sexual and reproductive health and rights” is completely unacceptable. Such language is routinely used by the international pro-abortion and population control lobby to refer to the legalization of abortion on demand and access for children, without parental knowledge or consent, to abortion and birth control drugs and devices in countries throughout the world. (3)

Goal 5, “Achieve Health and Wellbeing at all ages”, also includes a reference to sexual and reproductive health and family planning. (4)

In the light of all that has been said, it will be clear why Catholic families all over the world are greatly concerned that Vatican institutions may embrace the language of the United Nations, which, on the surface, speaks of protecting the environment while in reality providing cover for an anti-life and anti-family agenda. Any discussion on the environment must stem from understanding that the family, defined correctly, is the key to sustainable development, particularly at this time when the Synod on the Family has been called by Pope Francis to consider problems facing the family.

The family according to article 16.3 of the Universal Declaration (1948) is the “natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State”.

Furthermore, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the post-2015 development agenda must take account of the family; this is, in fact, recognised by the UN Secretary General’s 2011 Family Report. (5)

Accordingly, Voice of the Family proposes that the SDGs should contain a goal to strengthen the family and include realistic targets in that regard.

The holding of this vitally important conference in the Vatican at this crucial time in-between the two family synods and in the lead-up to the publication of the Sustainable Development Goals, and with the participation of these leading international pro-abortion advocates, is all the more worrying in the light of the most recent statement of Hilary Clinton saying, effectively, that opposition to abortion must cease to exist, even in the teaching of the Church.

We wish to place on record our view that, in any international agreement concerning the future of the human family, it is indispensable to assert the obligation for states to provide for the legal protection of the right to life of every human being from the moment of conception until natural death and to uphold the family as the fundamental group unit of society.

Footnotes
(1) In September 2010 at the Human Rights Council in Geneva and Navanethem Pillay, the then UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, launched a report “on discrimination against women, in law and practice, and how the issue is addressed throughout the United Nations human rights system”. In that report they called for the policing of nations worldwide to “address the refusal of physicians to perform legal abortions”

(2) In his book Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet Paperback – 26 Mar 2009 which deals with “global warming, poverty, war, deforestation and mass extinctions”, Sachs argues for legalised abortion.

(3) For example, in a speech on October 12th 2009, Wellington Webb, appointed by Barack Obama as special adviser to the US mission to the United Nations, confirmed that the Obama administration will be promoting legalised abortion throughout the world, targeting adolescents in a worldwide abortion drive. The ambassador was speaking at the UN's 15th anniversary commemoration of the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD). His speech expressly committed the US government to promoting "access to reproductive health commodities and services for adolescents". Webb stated: "President Obama, Secretary Clinton and Ambassador Rice have all underscored the strong support of the United States for human rights, women's rights and reproductive rights as well as universal access to reproductive health and family planning".
Hillary Clinton, Obama's appointee as US Secretary of State, had already made it clear that when the US government speaks of reproductive health, it's a term which includes access to abortion. In April, 2009, Hilary Clinton told Congressman Chris Smith at a hearing of the US Congress Foreign Affairs Committee "We happen to think that family planning is an important part of women's health and reproductive health includes access to abortion ... ”

(4) http://unsdsn.org/resources/goals-and-targets/

(5) “The majority of the Millennium Development targets, especially those relating to the reduction of poverty, education of children and reduction in maternal mortality, are difficult to attain unless the strategies to achieve them focus on the family.” (SG Family Report 2011 (A/66/62–E/2011/4)
“The stability and cohesiveness of communities and societies largely rest on the strength of the family.” (SG Family Report 2011 (A/66/62–E/2011/4)

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We must move quickly to resist the growing attacks on conscientious objection

In a recent speech, Wellington Webb, appointed by Barack Obama as special adviser to the US mission to the United Nations, confirmed that the Obama administration will be promoting legalised abortion throughout the world, targeting adolescents in a worldwide abortion drive. The ambassador was speaking at the UN's 15th anniversary commemoration of the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD). His speech expressly committed the US government to promoting

"access to reproductive health commodities and services for adolescents"

and he stated

"President Obama, Secretary Clinton and Ambassador Rice have all underscored the strong support of the United States for human rights, women’s rights and reproductive rights as well as universal access to reproductive health and family planning".

Hillary Clinton, Obama's appointee as US Secretary of State, has made it clear that when her government speaks of reproductive health, it's a term which includes access to abortion.

We must understand that it's the intention of the Obama administration not to allow health professionals' conscientious objection to abortion to get in the way. "Universal access" to "reproductive health", to which the Obama government declares itself to be committed, cannot be "universal" if troublesome pro-life health professionals object in conscience to participating in abortion cases or referring them to colleagues.

Actions speak louder than words - especially for Barack Obama on abortion.  In his infamous speech at Notre Dame University , he declared: “Let's honor the conscience of those who disagree with abortion, and draft a sensible conscience clause”. In his 9 September address to Congress on health care reform legislation that he promised that "federal conscience laws would remain in place". He has, in fact, taken action to reverse a regulation that allows health care providers the right to refuse perform services to which they object.

The attack on conscientious objection to abortion has become a top priority for the pro-abortion lobby elsewhere. At a Council of Europe meeting in Paris next month, one of the items on the agenda is "Women’s access to lawful medical care: the problem of unregulated use of conscientious objection". Forcing conscientiously objecting doctors to refer women to other doctors for abortion is another way in which pro-life ethics are being suppressed. And immediately on the horizon is the Brown government's anti-life legislative push expected in November - promoting access to abortion for schoolchildren without parental knowledge and consent.

There are many people who support or are sympathetic to pro-life values, but who do little to express that support or sympathy. We need to inform people that failing to defend the right to life of unborn children results in the erosion of the right of conscientious objection. Defending the right to life defends all other rights. Let's encourage as many people as possible to join the pro-life resistance revolution today!

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Pressure on pan-American meeting to endorse abortion

A pro-life colleague in Washington, DC, warns that a current meeting between the nations of central, north and south America could be used to promote abortion. Mrs Marie Smith (left) of the Parliamentary Network for Critical Issues says that the International Planned Parenthood Federation is trying to influence a declaration of the Fifth Summit of the Americas which is taking place in Trinidad and Tobago and ends on Sunday. The federation wants the conference, due to be attended by President Obama and Ms Hillary Clinton, to acknowledge what it calls reproductive health and rights as essential to prosperity.

Mrs Smith writes: "Pro-life advocates need to be alert to attempts to use the declaration to advance reproductive health with language which can include abortion. These terms include reproductive health care, reproductive health, reproductive health services, sexual and reproductive health, and sexual health. Pro-life countries will need to remove these terms from the document if possible and clarify in an Explanation of Position (EOP) that nothing in the document advances abortion."

Mrs Smith points out that there is a move to make reproductive health (which can include abortion) part of primary health care and HIV treatment. She says that caution is needed even when dealing with such innocuous expressions as comprehensive healthcare and services, health services, and healthcare services.

Mrs Smith adds: "While the Obama administration and Hillary Clinton State Department support IPPF in all its abortion endeavors, and will fund it with hard earned taxpayer dollars, the nations of Latin America and the Caribbean are a long way from rejecting their cherished defense of the most basic human right, the right to life of the unborn child."

The Parliamentary Network for Critical Issues is run by Life Issues Institute, Ohio.

There's hope for unborn children in the Faroe Islands

Jógvan á Lakjuni and Karsten Hansen

I returned on Tuesday from the Faroe Islands where I was speaking at the weekend at a national meeting of ProVita, a pro-life group established there twenty years ago. The title of my talk was Protect women, men and unborn children from abortion.

On average, there are, 45 abortions annually in the Faroes. In a nation of 50,000 people, that’s 45 unborn children too many. A roughly equivalent number in Britain would be 54,000 abortions annually, or over 1,000 babies killed in the womb each week.
The fertility rate there is between 2.4 and 2.6 live births per woman, significantly higher than other countries in Europe. Prams are very much in evidence in Torshavn, the capital city, and in the other little villages, nestling beside the north Atlantic sea, which I visited. Somehow, this made the annual killing of 45 Faroese babies all the more poignant.

The Faroes is a largely self-governing dependency within the kingdom of Denmark and, although its population is tiny, it has virtually all the characteristics of a nation state, including its own Parliament, Prime Minister and ministers. Unlike Denmark, the Faroe Islands is not part of the European Union. The Faroese Parliament, or Løgting, can be traced back to the first Norse settlement of the Faroes in the year 800.

Hilda Videro and Jógvan á Lakjuni

I was encouraged to find that many of the Faroe Islands’ 33 Members of Parliament oppose abortion. Three Members of Parliament attended my talk. They were Karsten Hansen, the minister of health affairs, Jógvan á Lakjuni, the Speaker of the Parliament, and Dr. Jenis av Rana, a general practitioner as well as being an active Member of Parliament.

I was also encouraged to learn that it's government policy in the Faroe Islands to reduce the incidence of abortion.

My talk focused firstly on the worldwide powerful political forces promoting abortion on demand in every nation of the world, not least Barack Obama, the US president, and Hilary Clinton, the US Secretary of State – who have proclaimed their worldwide pro-abortion policy for all the world to hear. (By the way, our meeting began with a traditional Faroese song of which there are very many. Our song had ten verses to a simple tune in praise of God and the beauty of creation. When the Faroese visit each others' homes it's usual for them to sing. They love singing.)

I told them:

• that top United Nations officials have called for the policing of nations worldwide to “address the refusal of physicians to perform legal abortions”
• that the UNFPA's involvement in China’s forced abortion regime is very well-documented
• that these pro-abortion forces are substantially supported by Denmark which is the fifth largest country donor in the world to the UNFPA
• that the Faroe Islands has a reputation of championing the best interests of its people, not least in a recent fishing dispute with the European Union and other nations
• that they should show the same David versus Goliath spirit in defying any pressures to make abortion even more widely available 

I urged this tiny nation to give the world a lead in changing the nature of the abortion debate; to bring about a paradigm shift in the national and global battle for the right to life of unborn children. I explained:

• that humanity’s consensus, as expressed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other documents, upholds the right to life of unborn children from conception, and that the intentional killing of unborn children runs contrary to international human rights agreements
• that just as all patients have a right to information about any medical procedure they are considering, this is even more the case with abortion: women and men have the right to information about the development of the baby, the nature of abortion, and its impact on the health of both women and men
• that abortion is unlike any other procedure in that it involves always killing one person and possibly injuring another, the mother, who is otherwise usually completely healthy
• that there is not one scientifically proven medical benefit of abortion but hundreds of studies linking it to a range of physical and emotional problems
• that abortion is strongly associated with domestic violence and the abuse of women*
• that ambivalence in women who may be considering abortion is common and ambivalence is related to post-abortion distress in the medico-scientific literature*
• that there is a solid body of evidence showing that when an abortion is undertaken for reasons of foetal abnormality the after-effects can be particularly traumatic - for both women and men*
• that it’s time to oppose the ideological agenda of Obama/Clinton - who shamefully mislead the public, doctors and politicians worldwide with their mantra that abortion must be safe, legal and rare
• that Ireland, where there's historically a constitutional ban on abortion has had, over a number of years, either the lowest rate, or amongst the lowest rates of maternal mortality in the world; that Malta, where abortion is prohibited under the criminal code, has a very low maternal mortality rate; that Chile where abortion is illegal has the lowest maternal mortality in the whole of South America
• that it's time to oppose the ideological agenda of influential bodies around the world like the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists in Britain, who have recently advised doctors in Britain to stress that induced abortion is a safe procedure and that this should be repeatedly emphasised to women
• that it should be a matter of public policy for government and parliamentarians, a matter of medical ethics for doctors, and a matter of educational policy on the part of ProVita to tell the public and, especially, mothers-to-be the real truth about what abortion involves.

Sofus Gregersen

Whilst in the Faroes Islands Sofus Gregersen, leader of ProVita Faroes, and I visited the Parliament for a meeting with Karsten Hansen, the minister of health affairs, who had attended the ProVita meeting.

We also met Dr. Jenis av Rana, a GP and a Member of Parliament (also at Saturday's ProVita meeting). Dr Jenis av Rana showed us around the historic Parliament building - providing me with another memorable highlight of my visit to this remarkable, beautiful, hospitable, independent nation.

Dr. Jenis av Rana

Dr Rana told us that amongst his patients there were children who might have been aborted. However, instead of saying to their mothers: "Yes, with your problem, I will refer you for an abortion" he would say: "Yes. I can see you have a real problem. Let's see how I can help you."

This is truly enlightened, compassionate and appropriate medical care in the light of the evidence that ambivalence about an abortion decision is common and that ambivalence is related to post-abortion distress.* I really feel there's hope for unborn children in the Faroe Islands.

*For a copy of Abortion and Women's Health compiled by Dr Gregory J Pike of the Southern Cross Bioethics Centre, please email me at johnsmeaton@spuc.org.uk

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The Catholic National Justice and Peace Network has failed to uphold the right to life

Eric Hester, the stalwart pro-life/pro-family Catholic educationalist, has kindly sent me a reply he has received from the National Justice and Peace Network (NJPN) regarding its invitation to pro-abortion speakers to address its annual conference - see my blog of 18 May. I reproduce, with Mr Hester's permission, the reply below in italics, followed with my response to each section.

"The National Justice and Peace Network, a grassroots body, rooted in Gospel values, works with groups and individuals of all faiths and none who share its aims and values."

But Frances O'Grady and John Cruddas MP (the NJPN conference's pro-abortion speakers) do not share the NJPN's "aims and values", namely justice and peace. They support abortion, which is the antithesis of justice and peace.

"We engage with all who seek to challenge unjust structures which perpetuate poverty, violence and environmental degradation."

But not only do Mrs O'Grady and Mr Cruddas not challenge the unjust structure of abortion, they promote it.

"For the past thirty years the Network has facilitated the national conference, open to all people of goodwill with a common commitment to work for a more just and peaceful world."

Where is Mrs O'Grady and Mr Cruddas's goodwill towards the unborn, whose killing they promote? Abortion makes the world less just and peaceful.

"Conference 2011 will address what is for many, in this period of economic difficulty, a burning issue - justice in the workplace. 

Abortion, which Mrs O'Grady and Mr Cruddas promote, every day denies 600 people in Britain alone the chance one day to enter the workplace. And what have Mrs O'Grady and Mr Cruddas said or done to promote the ability of medical workers to exercise their right to object in conscience to involvement in abortion?

"All those involved have been invited because of their expertise and experience of the workplace. This is the brief given to each speaker and we would not expect the debate to cover topics other than those directly related to the given agenda."

Just because a speaker has expert knowledge in a particular area doesn't mean all other considerations are irrelevant.

"NJPN supports a pro-life agenda across the board, working against all forms of violence and oppression which cause the deaths of millions around the world, including upholding the rights of the unborn and those at the end of life."

The phrase "across the world", and the relegation of pro-life issues to a sub-clause starting with the word "including", strongly implies that the NJPN believes in the 'seamless garment' error, so well debunked in 2009 by Cardinal Burke, who said: "The moral questions pertaining to the safeguarding and fostering of human life are all related to one another but they are not of the same weight. To use the image of the garment, they are not all of the same cloth."

"However, in a pluralistic society, we cannot expect that everyone with whom we work on specific issues will share our views in every area."

But abortion cannot be relegated to the realm of "views" and "areas". The NJPN are equating second-order social issues with first-order moral issues.

"We do not believe that this should prevent us from working with them to promote justice where we can; rather, we can hope that by building relationships with them, we can open the way for dialogue in those areas where we do not agree."

This is quite chimerical. As the late Pope John Paul II, that great pro-life champion, taught: "Above all, the common outcry, which is justly made on behalf of human rights - for example, the right to health, to home, to work, to family, to culture - is false and illusory if the right to life, the most basic and fundamental right and the condition for all other personal rights, is not defended with the maximum determination."

The NJPN would do well to study what is happening in the United States regarding the issue of speaking invitations to pro-abortion public figures. In 2004 the U.S. bishops approved a policy stating, in part:

“The Catholic community and Catholic institutions should not honor those who act in defiance of our fundamental moral principles. They should not be given awards, honors or platforms which would suggest support for their actions.”

"[P]latforms which would suggest support for their actions" had been interpreted to mean "speaking invitations, as these invitations would suggest support for their actions." For example, Thomas Olmsted, bishop of Phoenix, Arizona, cited this policy when he banned Janet Napolitano, the pro-abortion Arizona governor, from speaking at Catholic churches in his diocese. In 2008 Donald Trautman, bishop of Erie, Pennsylvania, boycotted the annual commencement at a Catholic college in his diocese over its invitation to pro-abortion Hillary Clinton to give the commencement address. Other US Catholic colleges have decided to withdraw invitations to pro-abortion speakers (examples from 2007 and 2008). In February 2008 a number of prominent US Catholic leaders signed a joint letter which:

"urge[d] our fellow leaders of Catholic schools, universities, hospitals, charitable organizations, advocacy groups, media and other institutions to refrain from all activities that provide a public platform to, or imply support or even neutrality toward, political leaders and candidates who advocate positions on serious moral issues that are clearly contrary to Catholic teaching, most especially the Church’s reverence for the sanctity of all human life from conception to natural death."

The letter says that US cardinals O' Malley and Keeler have also boycotted Catholic events featuring pro-abortion speakers.

Let us imagine two prominent public officials in mid-1930s Germany who defended and promoted the killing of Jews. Would it have been right for a justice and peace group to have invited those officials to speak to it about "justice in the workplace"? There is no moral difference between the killing of Jews and the killing of unborn children.

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