There's a third world war on unborn children and on parents as primary educators

Today at Saragossa, Aragon in Spain, I gave the concluding address to the fourth International Pro-Life Congress (which you can find in full here in English,  Spanish and Italian). I congratulated the Spanish bishops and people for their defence of human life, of marriage and of parents as the primary educators of their children. I said, however, that a third world war had begun on unborn children and against parents as the primary educators of their children.

Both the Spanish and British prime ministers had promoted the lie that pro-life people wanted to impose religious beliefs on society. We actually represented humanity’s consensus on the right to life. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights said the right to life extends to “all members of the human family”. The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child said: “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”.

Wellington Webb, President Obama's adviser to the US mission to the United Nations, had said that America would promote legalised abortion throughout the world. Mrs Clinton, secretary of state, has said that, when her government speaks of reproductive health, it includes access to abortion.

I warned that on Friday (13 November) Mrs Christine McCafferty, Labour MP for Calder Valley, would be promoting abortion on demand in the Council of Europe's Parliamentary Assembly. I urged congress delegates to email members of the assembly's social, health and family affairs committee about Mrs McCafferty’s pro-abortion report which is called Fifteen years since the International Conference on Population and Development Programme of Action.

Archbishop Fisichella, president of the Pontifical Academy for Life, had reinforced the attack upon Archbishop Sobrinho of Recife who had upheld the right to life of two unborn babies. A sustained pro-life reaction to this scandalous situation had resulted in the publication of a document from the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith correcting Archbishop Fisichella's article.

The British government had a policy of providing access to abortion and birth control for children under 16 without parental knowledge or consent yet the Universal Declaration of Human Rights said: "The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State." It described parents as the primary educators of their children.

Birth control and abortion referral were being provided to children at British schools, including Catholic schools, under the age of 16 without parental knowledge or consent. This was happening with the co-operation of the Catholic authorities. At one Catholic school a nurse used a plastic model to show children how to put on a condom. The pupils were then given a card explaining where to get free contraceptives and morning-after pills, as well as giving address of a website which helps you get abortions. Catholic church leaders in England and Wales were also prepared to refer homosexual couples to other adoption agencies.

I told the congress: "Our crisis began with the rejection of Humanae Vitae. It will end with its acceptance and implementation." This restoration could only come about with a radical change in the policy for nominating Catholic bishops in Europe. Rome should only appoint men to the episcopate who had a sustained and genuine track record of fidelity to the teachings of the Magisterium on the transmission of human life (Humanae Vitae) and on life. The present situation was costing too many babies' lives.

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Archbishop Fisichella's prominence risks creating moral confusion

My picture shows Archbishop Fisichella (right), president of the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of the New Evangelization, with the co-authors of "Light of the World", a book-length discussion between Pope Benedict XVI and Peter Seewald, a German journalist.

How very unfortunate and inappropriate it is that Archbishop Fisichella should have been seen playing such a prominent role at the launch of "Light of the World".

Pope Benedict's comments about the use of condoms in that book have led to maelstrom of carefully created confusion in the mass media about Catholic teaching on condoms. Last month I warned that leading public figures in the name of the Catholic Church, in Britain and elsewhere, are misrepresenting the church's unchanging and unchangeable magisterial teaching on the use of condoms.

The picture above reminds me of the terrible damage Archbishop Fisichella has done to the Catholic Church's witness on abortion. He stands by the original wording of his article in L'Osservatore Romano, last year, which implied that there are difficult situations in which doctors enjoy scope for the autonomous exercise of conscience in deciding whether to carry out a direct abortion. Frances Kissling, of Catholics for a Free Choice, has said of the archbishop's position it "has opened a crack, through which women, doctors and political decision-makers can slip in".

Archbishop Fisichella's position on abortion gave comfort to Frances Kissling and, no doubt, to other opponents of Catholic teaching on abortion, such as Obama and Hilary Clinton, who are bankrolling abortion worldwide.

And those misrepresenting Catholic teaching on condoms worldwide, following Pope Benedict's interview, are now giving comfort to anti-life, anti-family legislators in the Philippines.

Thank God that the Kenyan bishops recently reiterated and reaffirmed "that the position of the Catholic Church as regards the use of condoms, both as a means of contraception and as a means of addressing the grave issue of HIV/AIDS infection has not changed and remains as always unacceptable".

I have frequently called for Archbishop Fisichella to be sacked. The price of not doing so is moral confusion in the church.

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SPUC is determined to hand on political experience to young people

Last week I wrote about twelve courageous national delegations at the United Nations which rejected the use of abortion as an instrument of international policy.

For nearly 20 years, the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children has been working at the United Nations in New York, Geneva and elsewhere, lobbying national delegations on behalf of the unborn and on behalf of parental rights as the primary educators of their children. SPUC's lobbyists, and our colleagues in other pro-life groups, have been calling for real help for women, children and men in developing countries - rather than the final solution of abortion promoted by Barack Obama, Hilary Clinton and the new British coalition Government.

SPUC is determined to hand on its political experience to young people. It's the young who are increasingly carrying the pro-life baton and who will go on to win the race to restore respect for human life and the family for future generations yet unborn.

Anne is a young student supporter of SPUC, who worked for the Society as an intern last summer. Anne joined SPUC's lobby at the UN's meeting of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) in New York earlier this year. She sent me the following report:

"Thank you for this wonderful opportunity of going to the UN. I've learnt so much and have met so many remarkable people. I really admire the good work SPUC is doing at the UN. (By the way a group of us from university went to the student conference last month which I believe has inspired more students to be pro active and pro-life.)

"During my internship for SPUC last summer I met Peter Smith, UN representative for SPUC and secretary of SPUC’s Evangelical division. Peter offered me a once in a lifetime opportunity to attend the 55th session on the Commission on the Status of Women, at the UN Headquarters in New York City [28th February- 4th March 2011]. I was thrilled at the prospect of accompanying Peter at the UN and began making travel arrangements without a moment’s delay.

"On my first day at the UN I had the privilege of meeting Jeanne Head, UN representative for National Right to Life, International Right to Life and winner of the prestigious Life Prizes Pro-life award. [Jeanne is pictured at the UN, above, with Pat Buckley, a SPUC lobbyist.] Before becoming the vice president for International Affairs for National Right to Life, Jeanne worked as an obstetric nurse. Jeanne really inspired and encouraged me; she has so much experience, rigour and enthusiasm and is so pro-active in her work. I enjoyed hearing of her triumphs at the UN and I found that even on my first day I was getting a real insight into the inner working of the UN.

"After meeting Jeanne, Peter and I attended a side event on the Yogyakarta Principles. The Yogyakarta Principles apply to sexual orientation and gender identity. Advocators of these principles want them to become part of international human rights law. Before attending this side event, I hadn’t heard of the Yogyakarta Principles. I found the implications of implementing these principles very interesting, especially once I had discovered that there are multiple kinds of gender identity and sexual orientation. The Yogyakarta Principles may even permit the abhorrent acts of bestiality, if this is considered a type of ‘sexual orientation’.

"On Tuesday I attended a negotiation on the working document for this session of the CSW: Access and participation of women and girls to education, science and technology, including for the promotion of women’s equal access to full employment and decent work. It was fascinating to hear delegates from all over the world comment upon, edit and suggest changes to the document that would become UN policy.

"The meticulous attention to detail - language, punctuation and phraseology - shows how thorough and important a document it is. Interestingly, it seemed that the more controversial the paragraph, the faster the chairman urged the discussion to go. By contrast, it seemed as though a disproportionately lengthy amount of time was spent on trivial paragraphs, where delegates would be excessively particular about the usage of commas and other marks of punctuation.

"After negotiations rounded off for lunch, there was a discussion on the prevention of maternal mortality and morbidity. This was of particular interest to me after having learnt about the UN prevention of maternal mortality during my internship for SPUC. The discussion was to primarily address MDG 5 and review the progress from last year. The pro-abortion agenda was quite explicit. The main preventative measure for reducing maternal mortality was to increase sexual reproductive health services [a term which they define as including access to abortion]. It was argued that early childbearing is a key factor of maternal mortality. As a result, they discussed ways to prevent early marriages; the encouragement and retention of girls in school being the main way to deter girls from entering into an early marriage. It was argued that girls who stay in school will make ‘better’ choices about when it is appropriate to marry and how to space their children ... Unfortunately, there didn’t seem to be much discussion about ensuring better pre and post natal care for mothers.

"On Wednesday I accompanied Peter when he went for lunch with Dr Seyed Vahid Karimi, first secretary and delegate for Iran. It was encouraging to meet a high profile figure who was pro-life and positive about the family. Having lunch with Peter and Dr. Karimi made me realise the importance of pro-life NGOs forming alliances with delegates. Being a pro-life presence at the UN encourages and supports pro-life delegates to continue to uphold the pro-life message in a very pressurised environment. Fr. Bene, the delegate from the Holy See was encouraged to see me and other young pro-lifers helping our NGOs and I think our enthusiasm lifted everyone’s spirits. I was glad to meet Fr. Bene and speak to him briefly. He was so committed to his duties as a delegate, attending all of the negotiations up until the small hours of the morning. Despite diligently attending the negotiations, he found the time to greet the Teen Eagles and me. The Teen Eagles were also helping pro-life NGOs and I very much enjoyed their company.

"On Thursday we met with the Ambassador of Namibia; Ambassador Emvula. This added to my ever increasing list of delegates and state figures that I’d met throughout the course of the week. That evening I was to meet the Ambassador of Iran at the Iranian reception.

"In the last two days of my time at the UN, I attended some excellent pro-life side events. We watched the premiere showing of the second Demographic Winter film, which was very insightful and thought provoking. I also attended a side event given by Sharon Slater; president of Family Watch International. This side event was a real eye opener, as the terminology used in UN documents was explained. Sharon highlighted the subtleties in UN language and the way that vague or ambiguous terms can and are used as umbrella terms; so that more can become permissible. I was shocked to learn about the kind of literature that is to be promoted and taught in schools in order for schools to have a “comprehensive sexuality education”. Some of the leaflets were published solely to promote sexual pleasure and rights. These leaflets were very graphic and encouraged sexual exploration, portraying it as some kind of right. Thankfully, Sharon exposes these issues by showing delegates what “comprehensive sexuality education” actually means and how leaflets such as “Healthy, Happy and Hot” are designed for young people, encouraging sexual exploration and activity.

"I am so thankful for having had the opportunity to attend the 55th session on the CSW at the UN. I feel as though my eyes have been opened and I have learnt a lot about how the UN works. I have had the privilege of meeting some very influential people and some truly inspiring pro-life activists who have dedicated their lives to the pro-life cause. I thank Peter Smith and SPUC for giving me this incredible experience and insight and I continue to admire their work."

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Stop calling abortion promoters "Catholics"

Michael Moore, the left-wing American film-maker, has claimed in a recent television interview to be

"an unapologetic Christian"

and said that

"we'll be judged according to how we treat the least among us".

Following Mr Moore's interview, Dr Austen Ivereigh, former director of public affairs to Cormac Cardinal Murphy-O'Connor, claims in yesterday's Guardian that Mr Moore is

"a committed Catholic".

Dr Ivereigh also claims that Mr Moore's latest critique of capitalism is based on the principles of Pope Leo XIII's (pictured) encyclical Rerum Novarum. Neither Mr Moore nor Dr Ivereigh make any mention of Mr Moore's ardent support for abortion. To quote but one example of Mr Moore's pro-abortion writings: in July 2000 Mr Moore wrote that:

"About the only reason I voted for [Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton] was because of [their support for abortion]".

Neither do Mr Moore nor Dr Ivereigh mention the Catholic Church's historic upholding of the right to life. In the same year as Rerum Novarum (1891), Leo XIII wrote:

"Clearly, divine law, both that which is known by the light of reason and that which is revealed in Sacred Scripture, strictly forbids anyone, outside of public cause [JS: e.g. war], to kill or wound a man unless compelled to do so in self-defence."

In the encyclical Centesimus Annus marking the 100th anniversary of Rerum Novarum, Pope John Paul II condemned

"the scandal of abortion".

It is not for nothing that automatic excommunication is the penalty for procuring an abortion, and that Holy Communion is (sometimes) denied to politicians who vote for legal abortion. As Mr Moore rightly says, "we'll be judged according to how we treat the least among us". Are not the unborn "the least among us"?

Dr Ivereigh's description of Mr Moore as "a committed Catholic" reminds me of the constant descriptions in the media of Cherie Blair as a "devout Catholic", despite Mrs Blair's opposition to Catholic teaching on sexual ethics and her endorsement of pro-abortion organisations. It also reminds me of the constant descriptions of Tony Blair's "conversion to Catholicism", even though he refuses to repudiate his anti-life political record, and attacks papal teaching on homosexuality, telling the Church it must change its "entrenched attitudes" to homosexuality.

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Parents, the primary educators, "are the most dangerous people of all"

Last week I wrote about my address to the ninth annual session of the Rhodes Forum: "Dialogue of Civilizations". I am very pleased to share with readers a talk given by Dr Thomas Ward (pictured) at the same conference. Dr Ward is a retired general practitioner, is the founder and former president of The National Association for Catholic Families (NACF) and a corresponding member of the Pontifical Academy for Life. He is married to Dr Mary Ward who are proud parents and grandparents.

Towards a new Civilisation of Life: Parents the Primary Educators and Protectors of their children

Madam Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen our Forum’s invitation to analyse the viability of global civilisation is timely. The word viability is from the French vie, life and able capable of – so capable of life. Of course, a viable civilisation depends upon the viability of its basic units, its families. My topic is the viability of the current paradigm of Western élites for the families of the world.

Alexandra Kollontai, (1872 –1952) the first Soviet People’s Commissar for Social Welfare wrote in 1920:

Communist society will take upon itself all the duties involved in the education of the child  Kommunistka (1920) Communism and the Family.

In 1922 Lenin called a meeting of Marxist intellectuals to study why the Bolshevik Revolution had not spread to the West. According to the major conservative thinker Ralph de Toledano “this meeting was perhaps more harmful to Western civilization than the Bolshevik Revolution itself'”. The two key strategic objectives decided upon at the meeting were:

• Judeo-Christian belief was to be erased by the use of sexual instinct.
• The family and its rights over education were to be eradicated.

These intellectuals moved to Frankfurt becoming known as the 'Frankfurt School' and then to the United States where they used Ameriacn commercial, academic and media resources to spread their silent world revolution.

This silent revolution in the West has never stopped. For example Saul Alinsky who died in 1972 was an American transitional Marxist. He supported the Frankfurt School’s “long march through the institutions ”, churches, trade unions and existing political parties. He dedicated his creed in Rules for Radicals to Lucifer, whom he called the "first radical". His two best known disciples are Barack Obama and Hilary Clinton. In 2010 our U.K. Prime Minister, David Cameron, claimed Alinsky as the inspiration for his Government’s present agenda for Britain. This agenda was promoted in my own parish a few weeks ago.

Dr Brock Chisholm (1896 –1971) the first Director of the World Health Organisation in 1948 wrote:

Children have to be freed from.. .. religious and other cultural “prejudices” forced upon them by parents and religious authorities…

He went on to explain how:

…sex education should be introduced in the 4th grade, (i.e. for nine to ten year olds) eliminating “the ways of elders” if necessary by force. (ref: Valerie Riches, Sex & Social Engineering, 1986) 

A Family Planning Association spokeswoman:

Parents – they’re the most dangerous people of all - (The Times, 5 April 1974, ref: Valerie Riches, Sex & Social Engineering, 1986) 

Lady Helen Brook, (1907-1998) who was the successor to Marie Stopes and the first to make contraceptives generally available to the young in the United Kingdom, wrote in 1980:

It is now the privilege of the Parental State to take major decisions - objective, unemotional, the State weighs up what is best for the child.... (The Times, 16 February 1980)

The International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF), the world's largest abortion provider, say in their document 'FAQs on young people, their sexuality and their rights'

Parents ……do not have ‘rights’ over their children

And in their Youth Manifesto for the 21st Century they say

All young people (from the age of ten)* must have information and education on sexuality and the best possible sexual and reproductive health services (including contraceptives).

All young people must be able to choose from a full range of contraceptives including the latest advances in contraception.

In Germany in 2006, in the case Konrad v.Germany the European Court of Human Rights ruled that German Christians did not have the right to home school because it believed that it would set up “parallel societies”.

Again in Germany, in 2009 ten Christian parents who refused to allow their ten year old children to attend compulsory sex classes have now completed a second prison term (forty-three days) during which the State exercised even greater control over their children.

In Spain there are currently:

• 50, 000 parents formally complained to the government asking for the option to remove their children from classes promoting blasphemy against Our Lord, homosexual** behaviour and Communism. The Government refused.
• 2,000 parents brought law suits to obtain this opt out. The Government refused.
• 305 parents asked the European Court of Human Rights for this opt out. The judgement is awaited.

But the corpus of law protecting your rights as parents is overwhelming, particularly in The Universal Declaration of Human Rights 1948, which starts:

Whereas disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind

And later continues:

The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State. Article 16 (3)

Because Hitler had used the educational system to indoctrinate children the drafting committee added:

Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children. Article 16 (3)

This prior right to educate ones children with the support of society and the state is a fundamental human right which should be enshrined in every national constitution in the world.

How was this prior right removed in England?

English clerical liberalism has been an essential ally of the birth control lobby. The crucial year was 1930 when, for the first time in Christian history, the Church of England morally sanctioned contraceptives in marriage. This gave the Anglo-Saxon world, the dominant world culture, the moral justification for contraception. Contraception has been the locomotive of the sexual revolution.

The current head of the Anglican Church teaches that since non pro-creative sex is acceptable in contraception it must logically follow that homosexual acts are justifiable.

An affiliate of IPPF started the provision of contraceptives for the young. The international headquarters of IPPF are in London. Contraceptive provision and indoctrination in schools have been the locomotive of the removal of parents’ rights. This indoctrination now includes the promotion of homosexuality.

In 1974 in the U.K parental rights were removed on contraception based on advice given by an affiliate of IPPF. As direct legal consequences in 1985 parental rights to consent to general medical treatment were greatly diminished and in 2004 parental rights on abortion were removed. This May the last Catholic adoption agency was closed down by law because it refused to sanction homosexual adoptions. Currently the website of the British Foreign Office provides a Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transsexual toolkit to promote these legal changes worldwide. Such changes bring a real risk that parents throughout the world who try to protect their children from homosexual indoctrination could themselves be charged with indoctrinating the “hate crime” of homophobia. There would then be possibility of their children being put into care. The parents would have no legal recourse if the carers appointed were homosexuals.

Some of the consequence of our broken society are:

• marriages down by 50%
• the mean number of sexual partners for adults is nine
• 45% of children illegitimate
• 40% of children aged fifteen or younger having sexual intercourse
• the subjective well being of our young people is the worst of the thirty-four states of the OECD
• Family breakdown costs £20 billion yearly.

Our Prime Minister speaking after the riots confirmed that our society is broken, immoral and irresponsible. He said:

If we want to have any hope of mending our broken society, family and parenting is where we’ve got to start... 

He continued:

The potential consequences of neglect and immorality on this scale have been clear for too long...Children without fathers; schools without discipline...crime without punishment; rights without responsibilities... 

So our Culture of Death is dying. We the Christians of East and West, both of the lungs of Europe, must replace it with God’s Civilization, the Civilization of Life based on love within the family. The Holy Church of God cannot accomplish its mission in society except through the family and its mission. Ladies and gentlemen, we have to go to the entire world to tell everyone that social, cultural, economic and political life must be for the family, and no longer at the cost of the family.

The first step towards this new civilization is to restore to parents their right to educate and protect their children in conformity with their moral and religious convictions. Parents are the primary educators of their children. This right is God given in the Commandment. “Honour your father and your mother” (Exodus 20:12). It is affirmed by Our Lord in His teaching and in his His life. “He went down with them to Nazareth, and lived there in subjection to them. And his mother kept all these words in her heart. And so Jesus advanced in wisdom with the years.” (Luke 2: 51-52)

This right is fundamental. It is founded upon parental transmission of life to and love for their child. The Social Doctrine of the Russian Orthodox Church teaches “Children become fruits of their love and communion, and their birth and upbringing belong, according to the Orthodox teaching, to one of the most important goals of marriage.”

This right is inalienable. It is irreplaceable. Again as the Social Doctrine of the Russian Orthodox Church teaches: “The role of family in the formation of the personality is exceptional; no other social institution can replace it”.

As a family doctor and a Christian father of seven children and nine grand children I will share with you my own thoughts on family life. Your homes where your children learn to love by knowing that you love them are the cradles of the new civilization. Your example as good Christian parents provides the role model for the next generation. Children will naturally absorb sound attitudes on love, marriage and the true meaning of sexuality from good parents.

Confidently forbid any damaging sex instruction. Teach each child individually the beauty of chastity, modesty and sexuality as appropriate to his or her maturity. Only you are in the position to know what, when and how. Form associations of families. Encourage your children to intensify their Christian lives through family prayer and closeness to the Church. Such beautiful families are the Civilization of Life

In conclusion: a new Civilization of Life is dawning. The Civilization of Life is God’s civilization. It is your civilisation.

*The words "from the age of ten" do not appear in the body of the text in the linked to document. However if you hover your cursor over the words "Young people" you will see that IPPF mean "[t]hose who are aged between 10-24 years". Interestingly, just above that the same device is used to provide the definition of "youth". You will see there that "The World Health Organization refers to those in the 15-24 age range as youth". I have used a bracket in my quote because that is the effect of this device, although on the webpage the information that IPPF think that all ten year old children must have sex education and access to contraception is not immediately apparent to the reader. I wonder why?

** Why is the Catholic Church's teaching on homosexuality (and sexual ethics generally) 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.

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New petition launched by Amnesty for Babies

At present the unborn are facing an unprecedented number of threats to their right to life:

• the Obama-Clinton push for entrenched abortion rights at home and expanded ones abroad
• the Spanish government's radical new abortion law, coupled with a denial of conscientious objection for pro-life doctors
• government and private pro-abortion agencies facilitating secret abortions in schools, including Catholic ones.

What is unknown, or misunderstood, or ignored in all this, is that international law in fact upholds the equal right to life of all unborn children. Interpreted correctly, the United Nations (UN) Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and other international human rights instruments, either explicitly include, or do not exclude, the unborn from the same full protection given to all other members of the human family.

Considering the growing menace of abortion worldwide, it is time for a new response which aims to ensure that international law is applied correctly in protecting the unborn. Amnesty for Babies is a pro-life initiative to petition to the international community to:

• ensure to the maximum extent possible the survival and development of the child before as well as after birth
• adopt all measures necessary to protect adequately human life and dignity in the application of life sciences.

Please visit the Amnesty for Babies website, download the petition and start gathering signatures. I hope that people in various countries will gather signatures in public places (e.g. high streets, squares), outside houses of worship, among friends etc. National and regional organisations around the world are invited to become co-sponsors of the petition - contact Amnesty for Babies to find out how. The aim is to present the petition to the UN General Assembly next year.

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Stunning speech on Obama "the Abortion President"

Chris Smith, the pro-life American congressman, delivered a stunning speech at the National Right to Life annual convention held last week. Do read his important address in full, but below are some key extracts.

• "[Pro-life work is] a selfless expression of love for the disenfranchised and powerless, absolutely based on the core principles of nonviolence and malice towards none—even for those who actually dismember or chemically poison children to death and euphemistically call it choice.
• "[The pro-life cause is] the greatest human rights struggle on earth.
• "The bravest of all in [the pro-life] movement are the post-abortive women who are 'silent no more'. Their voice and message of hope must be heard everywhere and especially by post-abortive girls and women who suffer depression and deep emotional scaring.
• "Mr. Obama has earned the dubious title of the Abortion President. He talks inclusion, but practices exclusion ... [I]n record time has made the White House the wholly owned subsidiary of the abortion lobby ... [H]is administration is aggressively seeking to reverse virtually every modest pro-life law ever enacted or policy promulgated since Roe v. Wade.
• "The Abortion President is the master of the art of misdirection. From his speeches we hear soothing, pretty, mesmerizing words loftily summoning us to common ground—common burial ground that is. Obama’s talk of common ground is a trap—a snare—for the gullible and for the nominally pro-life who have emerged as the newest enablers ... pushing a few non-controversial pro-life positions like the adoption option all the while seeking to nullify authentic abortion reducing policies—the real common ground—including public funding bans, women’s right to know laws and parental notice statutes. Both the pro-abortion Alan Guttmacher Institute and pro-life advocates actually agree that prohibitions on taxpayer funding for abortion significantly reduce the number of abortions ... Clinton tried to sell common ground. Gore used it as well. And now our Abortion President is presenting it to the nation as if he invented it. It’s a trap.
• "As a result of Obama's new policy, pro-abortion organizations are now flush with cash and will continue to get hundreds of millions of dollars annually to push abortion around the world, all of it decoupled from pro-life safeguards ... With little fanfare, the Abortion President has stuffed and is in the process of stuffing the federal bureaucracy from top to bottom with some of the most extreme pro-abortionists on the planet.
• "[A] new, dark chapter in the Global push for unfettered abortion has commenced ... In light of his coordinated attack overseas, we must do a better job of warning nations in Africa and Latin America in Asia and even Europe that the Global War on Abortion is at their doorstep. Then there is the Obama abandonment of women in China ... Despite the fact that the UN Population Fund has actively supported, co-managed, and white-washed the most pervasive crimes against women in human history, President Obama donated $50 million to the UNFPA ... [T]here are the missing girls—about 100 million—victims of sex selection abortions. This gendercide is a direct result of the one child policy ... Population control blames children for bad governance and the misuse and misallocation of resources. If you want to know where that worldview takes us, just look at China.
• "[The] Abortion President reversed President Bush’s ban on taxpayer-funded embryo-destroying stem cell research ... embryonic stem cells that kill the donor, are highly unstable, have a propensity to morph into tumors and are likely to be rejected by the patient unless strong anti-rejection medicines are administered...
• "[Y]ou and I have no other option but to fight. We must be disciplined and alert and wise. And we need to redouble our efforts and recruit new activists here and around the world especially among the young. This is no time for quitters or the faint of heart."

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The Tablet helps radical pro-abortion group raise money

The 14 May edition of The Tablet, the self-styled "International Catholic Weekly", came with an insert (pictured) from an organisation called Womankind, appealing for donations to help it and its partner groups "support girls and women wanting change". Womankind is a radical pro-abortion group which attacks the Catholic Church for upholding the sanctity of human life  - see the list of references below. This is not the first time The Tablet has included a fundraising insert for a pro-abortion organisation: in 2008 the 12 July edition contained an insert from Médecins Sans Frontières ("Doctors Without Borders"), which both performs and defends abortion.

The 14 May Womankind insert follows soon after The Tablet's 30 April editorial which, citing the pre-marital cohabitation of HRH the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, argued that the Churches should endorse cohabitation "as a sensible precaution".*

Raising money for abortion campaigners, publishing pro-abortion dissent, endorsing pre-marital cohabitation, campaigning for so-called gay rights, disobeying Church teaching on contraception ... May I encourage readers of this blog to contact the Catholic bishop in their area, as well as the parish priests of any local churches which stock The Tablet, urging them to cancel and ban sales of The Tablet. Tabula delenda est

* Why is the area of sexual ethics 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. 

Web references to Womankind's support for abortion
N.B. "Sexual and reproductive health and rights" is commonly used by pro-abortion bodies as both a technical term and an euphemism for abortion on demand (Technical definitions prepared for the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD), Cairo, 1994; Hillary Clinton, April 2009).

"[Womankind's] efforts...guaranteeing women’s sexual and reproductive health and rights" [link]

"2005 – women defend their gains at the ten year review of implementation of the Beijing Platform for Action and successfully defeat a proposal led by the U.S government for an anti-abortion amendment to the declaration" [link]

"But, increasingly, this vital work is threatened by a powerful group of right-wing organisations. Linked with conservative governments, they oppose sexual and reproductive rights and freedoms for women and girls." [link]

"In Peru, the problem of legal abortion is embedded in a society in which the exercise of women’s sexual and reproductive rights is not achieved".[link]

"WOMANKIND’s partners are keen to point out that the ongoing restrictions on women's rights are...to do with the wider external environment which is often hostile towomen’s rights. In Peru, Maria-Ysabel Cedano, from DEMUS, puts this down to ‘the interference of the hierarchy of the Catholic Church’, particularly in matters related to sexual and reproductive health." [link]

"WOMANKIND’s four Peruvian partners are working in a very difficult environment. There is a real backlash against women’s rights, after a period in which community organisations and women’s organisations...made significant advances. Women started to benefit from better sexual and reproductive rights ... Many battles were won. But right now the influence of the Catholic Church is very apparent in relation to sexual and reproductive rights: even though the law allows abortion for women whose life may be in danger, public hospitals don’t have the necessary guidance. When the main women’s hospital in Lima did develop guidelines, the Ministry of Health caved into pressure from the Church and invalidated them." [link]
 
Womankind's Peruvian partner-organisation DEMUS has created a cartoon character called Barbi. "Barbi uses [Facebook] to comment on current issues and developments such as Peru‘s recent efforts to decriminalise abortion". [link]

"Bolivia’s women also face serious and substantial risks to their sexual and reproductive health ... Access to legal abortion is restricted to cases of rape, incest, abduction not followed by marriage, or when the mother’s health is at risk ... While contraception is available throughout the country, sustainable use is limited to educated, urban women ... Educating women about their health and particularly their sexual and reproductive rights, enables them to ‘take ownership’ of issues that fundamentally affect their lives."[link]

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Archbishop Fisichella should be sacked, not promoted

Catholic on Line seems pretty certain about rumours of the formation of a new pontifical council - a pontifical council for the new evangelization.

I might have shared this enthusiasm were it not for another rumour that Pope Benedict may be about to invite Archbishop Rino Fisichella (pictured) to preside over this new council.

Readers may recall that last February five prominent members of the Pontifical Academy for Life - following a meeting of the Academy - called on Pope Benedict to remove Archbishop Fisichella as President of the Pontifical Academy for Life.

Their unprecedented step was prompted by Archbishop Fisichella's opening address to members of the Academy in which he stood by the original wording of his article in L'Osservatore Romano, last year, which implied that there are difficult situations in which doctors enjoy scope for the autonomous exercise of conscience in deciding whether to carry out a direct abortion. I explained the potentially disastrous implications of Archbishop Fisichella's article in a talk at the 4th Pro-Life World Congress in Saragossa last November. Fr Finigan in The Hermeneutic of Continuity also covered the matter fully last July.

How, I wonder, would Frances Kissling, of Catholics for a Free Choice, respond to Archbishop Fisichella's appointment to such an important post - she who memorably said of the archbishop's article in L'Osservatore Romano that it "has opened a crack, through which women, doctors and political decision-makers can slip in"?

Or how would the US President Barack Obama and Hilary Clinton, his pro-abortion, secretary of state - who are bankrolling abortion worldwide - respond to such a papal appointment?

How would such a scandalous appointment affect the world's perception of Catholic moral teaching on abortion? And, in Obama's push for a universal right to abortion, how would such an appointment affect the world's perception of conscientious objection to abortion on the part of health professionals?

According to Catholic on Line:

" ... The new department will be aimed at bringing the Gospel back to Western societies that have lost their Christian identity ... There is a desperate need for such a new evangelization. Many Catholic Christians do not know what the Church actually teaches and have embraced what some have called a 'cafeteria Catholicism'- choosing what parts of their faith they will follow ... "

Yes - and that's precisely the problem with appointing Archbishop Rino Fisichella to such a role. The position set out by Archbishop Fisichella, like the collaboration of the bishops of England and Wales with the British government on life issues, are cancers which are threatening to destroy countless human lives. A perception that Cafeteria Catholicism prevails in the church will end up serving up the right to abortion worldwide.

In the interests of the lives of unborn babies worldwide Archbishop Fisichella should be removed form the Pontifical Academy for Life without the consolation prize of a promotion especially one which might make him a Cardinal.

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Obama and China best of friends when it comes to forced abortion

President Barack Obama met with Hu Jintao, the Chinese leader, yesterday at the G20 summit in London. I think the smiles say it all. Mr Obama recently lifted the funding bans on the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) and other anti-life agencies which are complicit in China's one-child, forced abortion policy. I'm sure that makes Mr Hu very happy.

The late Dr John S. Aird, former senior China specialist at the U.S. Bureau for the Census, was one of the world's experts on the one-child policy. Shortly before his death in October 2005, Dr Aird wrote to SPUC: "[T]he new Chinese leadership under Hu Jintao seems to have taken, if anything, a still harder line on population control than its predecessor."

The warm attitude shown to the Chinese regime by Mr Obama and by Hilary Clinton, the new US secretary of state, reminds me of the warm relationship between Henry Kissinger, former secretary of state and Mao Zedong, the Communist dictator, in the 1970s. Indeed, it was Kissinger's infamous National Security Study Memorandum (NSSM) 200 of 1974 that set the stage for the Chinese to adopt a strict population control policy in co-operation with UN agencies in 1979. The belief that population growth, at home and/or or abroad, is bad for a country's economic and security interests rapidly became official dogma in America, China, the UK and many other countries.

After countless millions of abortions, as well as the effect of abortifacient "contraceptive" drugs and devices, and other anti-family practices, many countries now have no answer to the dilemma of how to provide for the growing proportion of their populations which is past retirement age.

For example, in the year 2000, of the population of Ukraine, 26% were children and 20% were elderly, making a total of 46% of the Ukrainian population categorised as dependent. It is predicted that by 2050, the proportion of children in the Ukrainian population will have fallen to 13%, whereas the proportion of elderly will have risen to 57%, making a total of 69% categorised as dependant. This represents an inversion of the usual population pyramid, in which a large base of working (i.e. income- and revenue-generating) citizens support a smaller base of non-working citizens.

So all the talk about stimulus packages to end the financial crisis is pointless without a plan to end the population crisis. Some tough choices are being made to end the financial crisis: company directors are being sacked and entrenched bad habits are being ended. Some tough choices need to be made to end the population crisis: many political leaders need to be sacked and abortion and other anti-life/anti-family practices need to end.

UN council backs Russian resolution promoting traditional values

Pat Buckley, who lobbies for SPUC at the Human Rights Council in Geneva, has sent me a report on a new, positive, development. He tells me:

"In a rare break from its long term strategy of attempting to dictate newly-conceived so called 'rights' to everyone - such as the manufactured 'right to abortion' - the UN Human Rights Council has approved a resolution tabled by the Russian Federation, entitled 'Promoting human rights and fundamental freedoms through a better understanding of traditional values of humankind'.

"The resolution which cites the United Nations Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action, calls for the holding of a workshop to be held in 2010 for an exchange of views on how a better understanding of traditional values of humankind underpinning international human rights norms and standards can contribute to the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms".

Whilst the proposers of the resolution include some strange bedfellows, its approval presents an important opportunity. "As a result of the successful resolution, a workshop on traditional values will now be held in September 2010. Submissions can be made by well-disposed governments and non-governmental organizations promoting fundamental human rights on the basis of natural law", Pat Buckley says.

Needless to say this resolution was strenuously opposed by the countries that are trying to impose their own values on mankind. The European Union, which persistently seeks to promote abortion in international forums, attempted to undermine the resolution. When this attempt failed, the EU declined to enter consensus and the resolution was put to a vote. The resolution was carried by 26 votes to 15 with 6 abstentions. (Just 47 nations out of 193 sovereign nations have a vote at the Human Rights Council.)

"It was no surprise to find the US opposing the resolution, which has renewed under Barack Obama the pro-abortion policies pursued under Bill Clinton", Pat reports.You can read the resolution text in all UN languages.

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My letter in this weekend's Tablet rebutting Clifford Longley's 'pro-choice' position

The 19 November edition of The Tablet (the de facto house journal of British Catholic dissent) contains a column-piece on abortion by Clifford Longley (pictured), the broadcaster (who inter alia assists Catholic Voices, co-run by former Tablet deputy editor Austen Ivereigh). My published letter responding to Mr Longley is immediately below, and below that is (for the sake of completeness) Mr Longley's column-piece. Tabula delenda est.

The Tablet, Letters, 26 November 2011

Catholic MPs must oppose abortion

Clifford Longley’s tendentious reasoning (“The argument that criminal law must mirror moral law is surely not tenable”, 19 November) supporting Catholic MPs embracing a “pro-choice” position does him little credit.

At the heart of Longley’s account is his flawed notion of the relationship between democracy and abortion. In Evangelium Vitae (nn. 69-73), Blessed Pope John Paul II makes it clear that democratic systems cannot operate without moral foundations. He critically refers to the “commonly held” view that “the legal system of any society should limit itself to taking account of and accepting the convictions of the majority”. This “commonly held” view is and always has been rejected by the Church. “Democracy cannot be idolised to the point of making it a substitute for morality or a panacea for immorality,” says Evangelium Vitae.

The fundamental values of society – in the case of abortion, the fundamental right of an innocent person to be protected from intentional killing – are not provisional and changeable “majority opinions”, says Blessed Pope John Paul II. Democracy can only flourish when fundamental human values are protected in law. Catholic MPs, and all MPs of goodwill, have a conscientious duty to protect fundamental human values.

Evangelium Vitae (n. 73) encapsulates the matter, where MPs are concerned, in these terms: “In the case of an intrinsically unjust law, such as a law permitting abortion or euthanasia, it is therefore never licit to obey it or to ‘take part in a propaganda campaign in favour of such a law, or vote for it’.”

John Smeaton
National director, Society for the Protection of
Unborn Children, London SE11

The Tablet, "The argument that criminal law must mirror moral law is surely not tenable", Clifford Longley, 19 November 2011

Is it plausible for a Catholic MP to be “pro-choice”? The issue is raised once more by the case of Jon Cruddas, Labour MP for Dagenham and Rainham and a practising Catholic, who has incurred church disapproval for saying that he thinks abortion should be – to quote President Bill Clinton – “safe, legal and rare”.

Cruddas has also said he is happy with the law as it stands in Britain, which is not quite a standard pro-choice position because of the 24-week time limit and because two doctors have to confirm that the statutory criteria have been met. But Cruddas’ views were nonetheless described by a spokesman from the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales as “significantly at variance with the Church’s position”.

That position is set forth in general in the 1995 encyclical, Evangelium Vitae, that “direct abortion, that is, abortion willed as an end or as a means, always constitutes a grave moral disorder”. It therefore follows, it goes on to argue, that the law must protect all unborn human life, from the moment of conception, from deliberate harm. It would not surprise me if a Catholic MP held the first of these two points, yet hesitated about the second. Indeed the first of these two positions is probably not far from what most people feel.

Even Ann Furedi, director of the British Pregnancy Advisory Service and therefore a major lobbyist on the pro-choice side of the argument, has said abortion is “always a personal tragedy”. She and many like her, however, would say it is sometimes the lesser of two evils. I have heard her liken a woman who seeks an abortion to a hunted animal caught
in a trap, which gnaws off its own foot in terror in order to escape.

The argument that the criminal law must in all respects mirror the moral law – and specifically the moral law as interpreted by the Catholic Church – is surely not tenable. Almost nobody thinks adultery, for instance, should be a crime. And while it is characteristic of the Catholic way of thinking about morality to say that ends can never justify means, there are instances where the “lesser of two evils” – killing an enemy in war, for instance – is regarded as acceptable.

Nor can we ignore the political reality. The present UK abortion law is supported by a large majority of public opinion and a large majority of MPs. The absolutist position – that every abortion from the moment of conception onwards should be punished as a crime – has minimal support. As far as I am aware, no attempt has ever been made in the House of Commons to repeal the Abortion Act, and the probability of such an attempt succeeding is zero.

Were such a law by some undemocratic means ever to be passed, with public opinion in its present state, the difficulties would be insuperable. Would juries ever convict anyone under a law they so strongly disagreed with? Would
judges, similarly ill-disposed, ever pass deterrent sentences? If not, where would be the law’s protection of the unborn? And what would this do for respect for the law, not to mention democracy?

This picture presents real dilemmas for a conscientious Catholic MP. He or she cannot simply advocate repeal of the Abortion Act without saying what should be put in its place. Repealing it would simply make all abortion legal. Yet the only option the Catholic Church would approve of on the basis of its teaching cited above, complete criminalisation, is in practice unrealistic. Are any Catholic MPs who would not support complete criminalisation for such reasons as these, therefore, to be deemed “pro-choice”?

This is the heart of the problem. Anything less than complete criminalisation would involve someone having to decide which abortions to allow and which to prohibit. The “choice” of the pregnant woman would necessarily figure in that decision. MPs in this situation would naturally prefer them to be as few as possible – or “rare”, to use one of Mr Cruddas’ terms. They would be bound to prefer them to be “safe”, to use another, rather than unsafe; and “legal”, to use the third, rather than illegal.

Would it not be reasonable for Catholic MPs to want to take into account the damage to respect for democracy and the rule of law that would follow if the criminalisation of all abortion had somehow been forced through Parliament in defiance of public opinion? Is that course of action really “the Church’s position” with which Mr Cruddas is said to be “significantly at variance”? Catholic MPs are not the only ones with a moral dilemma – it seems the bishops face one too.

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Microsoft first lady partners pro-abortion leaders

Melinda Gates, the “first lady of Microsoft”, who is giving US$4 billion to reduce births in poorer countries, is due to attend a summit with world abortion leaders on 11 July. Mrs Gates has said she does not want to fund and support abortion. SPUC challenges the suggestion that the money will not help promote abortions.

Mrs Gates wants to focus on contraceptives. In a recent interview she said: 'From the very beginning, we said that as a foundation [the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation] we will not support abortion, because we don’t believe in funding it'.  She is expected to reiterate this at the family planning summit in London this week.  Fiorella Nash, a SPUC researcher, responds in this video and asks whether Mrs Gates’ intervention will save lives or cost lives:



SPUC believes that efforts to elevate abortion as a human right will be a key policy aim of the summit, which is expected to be dominated by pro-abortion organisations such as the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF), certain UN agencies, Marie Stopes International (MSI), and Ipas, the hand-operated abortion-device company.

• Key stakeholders such as the British and US governments, IPPF, MSI, and Ipas are committed to pro-abortion policies and practices. These governments and groups include contraception and abortion in the same healthcare packages that they export to the developing world. Abortion and contraception are seen as part and parcel of family planning and so-called reproductive rights.
• Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, has said that you cannot have maternal health without reproductive health. ‘Reproductive health’ includes abortion. Pro-abortion governments such as the UK refuse to differentiate between money spent on abortion and contraception overseas. 
• Melinda Gates will be funding all types of hormonal contraception – pills, injections, implants, patches, IUDs, rings etc. Each of these has the potential to cause an abortion by preventing the human embryo implanting in the womb of his or her mother. Women are rarely told this when being given such drugs.
• When 'contraceptive failure' occurs, and a baby is conceived, family planning NGOs will promote chemical or surgical abortion as a back-up. Far from avoiding abortions, the Gates family planning summit may increase the number. Increasing contraceptive prevalence may often increase abortion rates, contrary to expectations.
• In a letter to The Financial Times, IPPF and Marie Stopes International say: “This initiative is invigorating the international sexual and reproductive health and rights community.” It is naive of Mrs Gates to think she can ring-fence the funding of contraception with these partners. 
• In June 2011 Mark Pritchard MP asked the Secretary of State for International Development to look into how much the DFID spent on abortion. Andrew Mitchell replied that: “the Government have no such plans. It is not possible to disaggregate UK aid spending for safe abortion from wider expenditure on areas such as reproductive health care, maternal and neonatal health and health personnel development.”  
• IPPF and allied groups refused to accept US government funds under the Bush administration when the funds were restricted to non-abortion family planning projects. 
• In 2008, the Gates Foundation gave over US$2.4 million dollars to IPPF Europe Network, and over US$6 million dollars in 2009.
• The Marie Stopes International Global Impact Report for 2010 estimated that MSI had performed 1.3 million abortion and post-abortion procedures.
• The latest project launched by DFID is called Preventing Maternal Deaths from Unwanted Pregnancy (PMDUP). DFID will give £67 million pounds over 5 years from July 2011 to June 2016 via MSI and Ipas, to carry out and promote abortion and contraception in 14 countries.

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Pro-abortion Jon Cruddas MP reappears on Catholic speaking circuit

I recently blogged about the National Justice and Peace Network (NJPN) which held its 33rd annual conference last month.  I explained that one of the people invited to speak at the NJPN's conference was pro-abortion Jon Cruddas, Labour MP for Dagenham and Rainham.

In December Mr Cruddas told The Catholic Herald that abortion:

"should be safe, legal and rare".

Since 2000, Jon Cruddas MP voted 18 times with the anti-life lobby, for example voting in favour of the anti-life Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act at second reading (which denotes approval for the bill's principles) - a law designed to kill millions of innocent human beings deliberately created never to be born. He also voted for the pro-euthanasia Mental Capacity Bill (now Act) at second reading and third reading (which denotes approval of the bill as a whole). Mr Cruddas has expressed his pride in his voting record in support of the homosexual agenda.* In this connection I draw attention to the June 2004 US bishops' document Catholics in Political Life which says:

"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."

I now hear that Jon Cruddas is due to speak at Blackfriars Hall, the Dominican permanent private hall of the University of Oxford. Organization for this event is led by the Las Casas Institute Halley-Stewart scholars Robert Heimburger and Marcos Medina. The event is entitled ‘The Modern State and the Kingdom of God’. Jon Cruddas is giving talk five Building Democracy.

It is appalling that a "Catholic" politician who holds pro-abortion opinions has been invited to speak at this event and on this topic. Blessed John Paul II wrote the following about democracy, in his encyclical Evangelium Vitae (20):

If the promotion of the self is understood in terms of absolute autonomy, people inevitably reach the point of rejecting one another. Everyone else is considered an enemy from whom one has to defend oneself. Thus society becomes a mass of individuals placed side by side, but without any mutual bonds. Each one wishes to assert himself independently of the other and in fact intends to make his own interests prevail. Still, in the face of other people's analogous interests, some kind of compromise must be found, if one wants a society in which the maximum possible freedom is guaranteed to each individual. In this way, any reference to common values and to a truth absolutely binding on everyone is lost, and social life ventures on to the shifting sands of complete relativism. At that point, everything is negotiable, everything is open to bargaining: even the first of the fundamental rights, the right to life. This is what is happening also at the level of politics and government: the original and inalienable right to life is questioned or denied on the basis of a parliamentary vote or the will of one part of the people-even if it is the majority. This is the sinister result of a relativism which reigns unopposed: the "right" ceases to be such, because it is no longer firmly founded on the inviolable dignity of the person, but is made subject to the will of the stronger part. In this way democracy, contradicting its own principles, effectively moves towards a form of totalitarianism. The State is no longer the "common home" where all can live together on the basis of principles of fundamental equality, but is transformed into a tyrant State, which arrogates to itself the right to dispose of the life of the weakest and most defenceless members, from the unborn child to the elderly, in the name of a public interest which is really nothing but the interest of one part. The appearance of the strictest respect for legality is maintained, at least when the laws permitting abortion and euthanasia are the result of a ballot in accordance with what are generally seen as the rules of democracy. Really, what we have here is only the tragic caricature of legality; the democratic ideal, which is only truly such when it acknowledges and safeguards the dignity of every human person, is betrayed in its very foundations: "How is it still possible to speak of the dignity of every human person when the killing of the weakest and most innocent is permitted? In the name of what justice is the most unjust of discriminations practised: some individuals are held to be deserving of defence and others are denied that dignity?" When this happens, the process leading to the breakdown of a genuinely human co-existence and the disintegration of the State itself has already begun.

In his 2006 interview for Compass Youth, Jon Cruddas MP responds to his interviewer as follows:

Q. Like Ruth Kelly, you are a Catholic - and some people have suggested you are not progressive enough on important issues like gay rights and abortion. What do you think of these issues?

A. I sometimes feel like starting these sorts of responses with “my name is Jon Cruddas and I am a Roman Catholic!” It’s not something I particularly feel should be a big issue. I am more than happy to debate the real issues though. I don’t know what progressive “enough” means, but I can give the facts from my votes in Parliament. Since 2001, there have been 14 votes in the Commons to extend equal rights for gay people. I made sure I attended every single one, and I voted in favour of extending rights for gay people in every vote. On abortion, there is a vote on Tuesday next week [31st October] in Parliament. A Tory MP has proposed strict restrictions on a woman’s access to abortion services. I will vote against that Bill on Tuesday and would vote the same way on similar legislation in future. As Bill Clinton put it, I think abortion should be safe, legal but rare.

Q. So Jon, do you believe in a woman's right to choose?

A. Yes.

MPs who hold such views constitute a danger to the most vulnerable people in society. Jon Cruddas MP shows himself to be dismissive of the right to life, a self-evident right founded on natural law and ascertained by right reason He is also dismissive of the Catholic faith which has consistently taught and upheld the sanctity of human life from conception [Evangelium Vitae 57]. Both his political and his Catholic credentials show Jon Cruddas MP to be unqualified to speak on building democracy.

*The late Pope John Paul II, the great pro-life champion, taught in paragraph 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.

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Responsible Catholics cannot turn a blind eye to the rumoured promotion of Archbishop Fisichella

In a small inside story of yesterday's Corriere della Sera, it's mentioned that Archbishop Rino Fisichella (pictured) is shortly to be appointed president of a new pontifical council - a pontifical council for the new evangelization. Last month, when this appointment was being rumoured, I said that Archbishop Fisichella should be sacked, not promoted. The rumour mill is turning strongly again in Rome this weekend and my opinion about the archbishop remains unchanged.

National Catholic Register tells us that John Paul II coined the term “the New Evangelization” to mean a reawakening of the faith in long-established Christian parts of the world, particularly Europe, but which have since fallen away from the faith.

My reasons for continuing to say that Archbishop Fisichella should be sacked not promoted include:

• he stands by the original wording of his article in L'Osservatore Romano, last year, which implied that there are difficult situations in which doctors enjoy scope for the autonomous exercise of conscience in deciding whether to carry out a direct abortion
• Frances Kissling, of Catholics for a Free Choice said of the archbishop's article in L'Osservatore Romano that it "has opened a crack, through which women, doctors and political decision-makers can slip in"
• during the past week, as Pat Buckley, SPUC's lobbyist at the Human Rights Council in Geneva, has reported, that the United Nations Secretary General and the United Nations High Commissioner on Human Rights, have jointly been leading international political manoeuvres to declare a "human right to abortion"; I believe that the United Nations will sense that their moment has come with the Catholic leadership's witness on the inviolability and dignity of every human life appearing to weaken
• US President Barack Obama and Hilary Clinton, his pro-abortion, secretary of state - who are bankrolling abortion worldwide - will recognize the significance of Archbishop Fisichella's appointment and will step up their efforts accordingly
• Archbishop Fisichella's appointment will send the wrong signal to the Catholic bishops Conference of England and Wales whose policy, through the Catholic Education Service, is to co-operate with the British government's arrangements which have sought to ensure that schoolchildren, including Catholic schoolchildren, get access to abortion and birth control services

Responsible Catholics and pro-life leaders cannot afford to turn a blind eye to the damage to the common good, which includes the good of Archbishop Fisichella, by his appointment to such a post. If there is something one can do to speak up, to raise the alarm, to communicate our concerns, and to pray, we have a serious responsibility to present and to future generations to do so. As Pope John Paul II said in Evangelium Vitae, number 95:

"We need to begin with the renewal of a culture of life within Christian communities themselves. Too often it happens that believers, even those who take an active part in the life of the Church, end up by separating their Christian faith from its ethical requirements concerning life, and thus fall into moral subjectivism and certain objectionable ways of acting. 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. With equal clarity and determination we must identify the steps we are called to take in order to serve life in all its truth."

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UN High Commissioner seeks to criminalize opposition to abortion provision - worldwide action needed now

Navanethem Pillay (pictured right), the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, who was recently re-appointed for two years, has made a shocking start to her new two-year period of office.

Under the guise of publishing "technical guidance" promoting maternal health, Ms Pillay has issued a report seeking to make effective opposition to abortion provision unlawful on the part of parents; and to criminalize health professionals, administrators and non-governmental organizations (NGOs, like SPUC) who seek to oppose abortion provision - including abortion provision to children under the age of consent.

Pat Buckley, SPUC's lobbyist at the Human Rights Council at Geneva, is now working flat out to warn country delegates about the serious dangers posed by Navanethem Pillay's report, entitled in full "Technical guidance on the application of a human rights-based approach to the implementation of policies and programmes to reduce preventable maternal morbidity and mortality".

Please contact your MP and your MEP (in Britain and Northern Ireland) or your political/parliamentary representatives in whichever country you live - especially political representatives who are pro-life -  and warn your church leaders, about Ms Pillay's shocking report. Please act now.

Pat Buckley sent me the following comments/analysis this morning:

"This technical guidance report purports to be about reducing maternal mortality and morbidity. However the main thrust of the document instead of focusing on issues central to the reduction of maternal mortality, contains a thinly disguised pro-abortion agenda.

"The guidance report includes, amongst other things, attacks on:

• parental rights
• freedom of conscience
• and freedom of speech.

It contains 87 references to 'sexual and reproductive health', 27 of which also refer to 'sexual and reproductive health rights'. These are terms which are misused by powerful governments and politicians, like Barack Obama and Hilary Clinton, and UN bodies, to promote abortion on demand throughout the world.

"There are two references to comprehensive sexuality education and various references to goods and services in the context of sexual and reproductive health.

"The report identifies 'rights holders'and 'duty bearers' and stipulates the obligations of the duty bearers. Such obligations include the removal of all barriers to sexual and reproductive health (SRH) services including abortion, abortifacients and contraceptives, which are defined as 'fundamental rights'.

"The technical guidance report in paragraph 22 stipulates that States should act against so called interference by third parties including NGO’s if they object to the agenda set out in the document.

"It also stipulates that States should enforce laws and policies and that 'States may be held responsible for private acts if they fail to act with due diligence to prevent, investigate and punish violations of rights'.

"The technical guidance doesn’t simply call on States to take action, it makes States liable if they do not act against anyone or anything seen as a barrier to the implementation of the sexual and reproductive health agenda set out in the document which as we saw includes abortion, explicit sex education for minors and paragraph 30 attacks laws that ban abortion, laws that uphold conscientious objection and laws that would allow for parental notification before providing contraception or abortion to children, as well as other issues.

"In other words" Pat Buckley, SPUC's Human Rights Council lobbyist, warns, "Ms Pillay is seeking to make effective opposition to abortion provision unlawful on the part of parents; and to criminalize health professionals, administrators and NGOs (like SPUC) who seek to oppose abortion provision - including abortion provision to children under the age of consent."

Pat Buckley continues:

"According to Ms Pillay's report, laws and policies that impede access to sexual and reproductive health services must be changed, including laws criminalizing certain services only needed by women; laws and policies allowing conscientious objection of a provider to hinder women’s access to a full range of services; and laws imposing third-party authorization for access to services by women and girls.

"The technical guidance calls for Comprehensive Sexuality Education (CSE) in schools and for a budget to be available for dealing with teenage pregnancies through the education system in addition to budgets in the health system. The report footnotes the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, (UNESCO) International technical guidance on sexuality education"

Comprehensive Sexuality Education (CSE)

CSE is a highly controversial, rights-based approach to sex education that encompasses much more than simply teaching children and youth about sexual intercourse and human reproduction.

CSE programmes can be disguised under a variety of different names such as sexual and reproductive health counseling, information or services; HIV education; life skills programs; sex- education; sexual education; sexuality education; Social Personal and Health Education (SPHE) etc.

Common Components of CSE Programmes

• They claim access to CSE is a human right
• They encourage acceptance and exploration of diverse sexual orientation and gender identities,
• They promote the use of condoms,
• They promote abortion as acceptable, safe and without consequences,
• They encourage youth to advocate for sexual rights
• They teach youth without parental knowledge or consent under the guise of confidentiality or privacy rights
• They promote sexual pleasure as a right and necessary for sexual health,
• They promote masturbation as healthy and normal
• They teach children and youth they are sexual from birth
• They encourage anal and oral sex and peer to peer sexuality education

In 2009 UNESCO in partnership with UNICEF, UNFPA, WHO and UNAIDS published controversial International Guidelines on Sexuality Education which suggest among other things, teaching five-year-old children that they can touch their body parts for sexual pleasure.

After a number of UN Member States complained, UNESCO released a new publication called the International Technical Guidance on Sexuality Education, which was not quite as controversial as their original guidelines although many of the objectionable publications were still footnoted.

Comments on this blog? Email them to johnsmeaton@spuc.org.uk
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