"I begged and danced for the approval of my mother who tried to abort me"

On Wednesday I had the privilege of speaking at a pro-life march in Budapest, the capital of Hungary. Over recent decades, anti-life policies have resulted in the killing by abortion of more than 6 million Hungarians, and thus deeply damaged many millions of families. Pro-lifers in Hungary chose the feast-day of the Holy Innocents to name the children lost and toll bells in their memory.

At least one Hungarian, by the grace of God and by the strong intervention of his father, survived the abortion intended for him. He is my host, Dr Imre Taglasy, the director of Human Life International (Hungary) who took such good care of me when a bone got stuck in my throat on my first day in Budapest. He and I are pictured above in Budapest, after the march.

Here, in his own words, is his deeply moving story:

I begin my story with my family, and especially with my father, who was a major in Hungary till the end of the Second World War. As a professional soldier with his religious conviction (he was born in a Catholic family of eight children) he was declared a class-enemy of the new Communist regime and was sacked at once and removed with his wife and two sons from Budapest to the Great Hungarian Plain (puszta). They were ordered not to leave their dwelling place. He could hardly find the most basic job ... he and his family were starving.

In this sad plight my father's wife realized she was pregnant. My father tried to protect me, but my mother did not want to carry me to term. But it was not so simple to get rid of an unborn baby in the early '50s ... so she asked my grandfather staying in the capital to get a doctor who would be willing to perform the abortion. He found such a doctor in Budapest but class enemies were not allowed to leave the plain (puszta), so while my father was absent she tried to cause an abortion by jumping down from a kitchen table; when that failed she took very hot baths in a tub but they were not successful either. Then she got a lot of quinine pills from her brother. She took them but they were not sufficient to cause a miscarriage so I was born.

I heard the story of my birth accidentally when I was 11 years old and when my father and I were staying in Yugoslavia with relatives. It was late at night and I had gone to bed in the room in which my father and my relatives were talking.

At that time my parents had already divorced and one of my relatives asked my father why. Thinking I was asleep, my father told him the story.

As I lay there in bed, neither a small child nor an adult, I cried, speechlessly, all night long into my pillow. I experienced an emotional earthquake. I felt good myself and I did not know why my mother had tried to kill me at all.

I am still looking for the answer which is perhaps blowing with the wind, since she died some years ago.

There are two different expressions in our Hungarian language concerning "mother". One of them ("edesanya") is connected with "sweetness" meaning that the sweetness of a loving mother has a connection to the milk you get from her bosom. The other word ("anya") simply means that somebody has a mother but this term is very formal and has no special content of sentiment so one uses this term in every official form requiring the name of your parent. In fact my mother tried to kill me, terrorised by the economical pressure of the regime and when it was not successful she didn't give me suck, so I was neither able to enjoy her milk nor her love.

Later when I was two years old I was found by a very nice young lady who lifted me up to her heart from under the kitchen table. She bought me new clothes, shoes, brought me to the opera-house for performances (since she was a ballet-dancer) and to the photographer since she was proud of "her" nice godson ... my relatives told me that I had usually called her with this word: "mother" (edesanya).

My biological mother could not love me although I was begging or dancing for her approval and acceptance. I studied well, become a well-known writer by publishing several books, carried out scientific research and won academic honours but everything seemed to be in vain since I was not able to win her love. In my twenties I published a book of poems and one of these works reflects on my life story using the ancient Greek myth of Penelope. In this poem you can analyse the confused bonding of an abortion-survivor with his parent or with the abuser of her child.

PENELOPE, MY MOTHER

you sit on the stigma of silence

with averted eyes

you would draw my face

onto your withered lap

spin it over weave it through

with sea-blue veins

with scarlet reed

spin me over weave me through

with snake

with strand of hair

unravel me by night

give birth to me by day

only kill me by night

you would piece together my bones

a stripped-down image

for the walls of your palace

bind my skin and gut

as strings onto your harp

is it an axe that I am

propped up in a corner

is it a prince

sewn inside a frog's skin

(Translated by Eva Kovacs-Hicks, Toronto)

It took 50 years of pain and sorrow to overcome the situation of a deeply damaged (unborn) child and that of a post-abortive mother ... I always tried to love my mother ... meanwhile I realized that I hated those foods (cheese, beer, etc) which she liked whilst, on the contrary, I liked the kind of women who have black hair and eyes, slight face which reminded me of my god-mother. So many times I asked myself: where is my mother, how can I love her?

Before her death the Lord gave me the answer by His merciful forgiveness. After so many years of struggling, begging and dancing for her love I finally was able to reconcile with her before her death. It happened by not accepting but rather understanding some of the elements of the kind of "internal" terrorism which pushed and pressured her to kill me. And finally I am going to die too and I badly need this forgiveness of the Lord for my own sins as well.

There is a picture in my bedroom above my bed. This photo was taken by the sculpture of the Pieta carved by Michelangelo in the middle of 16th century. The picture illustrates the Blessed Virgin who is a Patron Saint of Hungary and now she is perhaps my mother and hope and trust as well.

Against the civilisation of death I am now working for the culture of life full time. From the special grace offered me by Almighty God, the Creator, I have a large family ... The smiles of my children and wife are my strongest weapon in doing my duty to protect life! Thanks to the Lord!

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Please attend SPUC's conference on women's rights

Each year an estimated 350,000 mothers die from pregnancy related causes. This is a tragedy that must come to an end. The 2015 deadline for achieving millennium development goal 5 (maternal health) is fast approaching, yet mothers are still dying. What is happening, and how can you and I help bring it to an end?

Join us on 20th March 2012 for an international day conference in London that will address the UK's policy on maternal health and mortality in the developing world. The scandal of the UK exporting abortion around the world will be challenged at a day conference entitled "Abortion or Maternal Health: What should we be funding in developing countries?" This will take place on Tuesday 20 March 2012, at the Regent Hall, 275 Oxford Street, London W1C 2DJ, from 9.30am to 5pm.

Please encourage your friends and contacts, especially medics, students, clergy, lawyers, developing world charity promoters, teachers and advocates of women's rights to attend the conference.

The coalition government continues to promote abortion intensively in poorer countries of the world – on the false pretext of reducing maternal deaths. We cannot ignore how our country is working to export the culture of death around the world.

A detailed briefing and presentation are available to prepare participants for the conference and future educational and lobbying efforts. The briefing includes suggestions for straightforward action to challenge the government.

Internationally renowned experts speaking on the day include lawyer Roger Kiska of the Alliance Defence Fund, consultant obstetrician Dr. Obielumani Ideh from Nigeria, and maternal health campaigner Fiorella Nash. 

Our headline speaker is Professor Robert Walley. Dr. Walley is the founder and executive director of MaterCare International (MCI), and Fellow of the Royal College of Obstetricians & Gynaecologists of England. He has visited Africa regularly since 1981, and for seven years he directed a maternal health project in Nigeria. MCI has worked in Ghana, Kenya, Haiti, East Timor, Rwanda, and Sierra Leone.

Entrance to this important conference can be purchased online via our website shop or by filling in and returning a booking form. Tickets cost £55 or £35. Lunch can be added for £10.

Official flyer for the conference

Downloadable booking form

You can also use the conference's Facebook page to invite others to attend.

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A bone stuck in my throat in Budapest leads me to witness a sign of hope

Yesterday I arrived in Budapest to particiapte in and to speak at the "Peace in the Womb" march for the abolition of legalised genocide in Hungary, which takes place today.

I spent much of my time yesterday at St John's hospital in Budapest (pictured) where, with great kindness and professionalism, the medical staff succeeded in removing a duck bone stuck in my throat.

Dr Imre Téglásy, my host in Hungary, was also very kind. Imre, an abortion survivor and the father of ten children, is president of Alpha Alliance, Human Life International, Hungary. He is organising today's march, which finishes at the palace of the Hungarian state president. In spite of the great pressures on Imre on the eve of such a big event, he stayed with me throughout my mercifully short but painful ordeal, joking "a prophet cannot ignore someone in need of help because he's so busy prohesying".

So my adventure in Hungary has begun with an impressive experience of the kindness of Hungarians - a kindness also in evidence at the old people's retirement home where I am staying and where the residents are clearly being treated by the staff with great love and respect. That kindness is a sign of hope for Hungary and for Europe. That kindness is the legacy of a largely Catholic culture which clearly still survives in spite of the numerous disastrous historical events, which have afflicted Hungary in the twentieth century and into the twenty-first century...including the killing by abortion of (at least) six million unborn children since abortion was legalised here in June 1956.

As long as the milk of human kindness continues to flow there's  hope that abortion can be defeated and a civilisation of life and love established.

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Pro-life movement continues to flourish in Belarus

At the start of 2011 LifeSiteNews.com described the Open Hearts Foundation, an education focused pro-life group in Belarus, as a ray of hope in Eastern Europe. Hilary White reported:

In 1994, four years after Belarus declared independence from the Soviet Union, the abortion rate in the country had reached an unimaginable high of 65.8 percent of all pregnancies. Since then it has fallen steadily to 28.2 per cent in 2008, according to figures issued by the Ministry of Statistics and Analysis and the Ministry of Health.

Some of this success may be attributable to a growing pro-life movement, which is doing everything it can to make sure that those numbers continue to drop. According to the pro-life education group, The Open Hearts Foundation, the Belarus pro-life movement had a very busy year last year.

Their recent newsletter indicates that pro-life work is continuing to flourish in Belarus. Their recent newsletter reports plans to open crisis several crisis pregnancy centres, pro-life motor-rallies (pictured) in three cities (Vitebsk, Mogilev and Brest), participation at the World Demographical Summit in Moscow (at which SPUC were represented by Dr Tom Ward) and the hosting of pro-life seminars for families.

The editorial of the newsletter concludes by saying:

our mission on this earth is to create the civilization of love and life round us

We at SPUC wish the Open Hearts Foundation and all their pro-life colleagues in Belarus every success in doing just that.

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Abortion survivor produces award winning documentary in defence of life

I was very pleased to read on Patrick Buckley's blog that Melissa Ohden has released a new hour long documentary, called  A Voice for Life. Melissa's mother underwent a saline abortion when she was six months pregnant with Melissa. Here is a brief description of a saline abortion, taken from SPUC's 2002 document A Way of Life

The use of prostaglandins is the most common form of late abortion in Britain. Prostaglandins are hormone-like substances which are administered to the pregnant woman either by a drip into a vein or directly into the womb. After a period of between 12 and 24 hours, prostaglandins cause the womb to contract, causing the baby to be delivered prematurely. In order to prevent the baby from being born alive, abortionists may inject urea or saline into the amniotic sac or potassium chloride into the baby.

Melissa, like Gianna Jessen who survived the same procedure, is now a powerful defender of the unborn. You can watch a summary of her story in the youtube video below.

It seems that Melissa's new documentary is set to be a great tool for the pro-life movement to help defend the lives of unborn children and their mothers. Patrick says

A Voice for Life continues to garner awards on an international level, including the Transforming Stories International Film Festival in South Africa, and the Redemptive Film Festival in Virginia Beach, where it received the highest honor. More importantly, to the creative team of A Voice for Life, Steve Feazel, Gunther Meisse, and Melissa Ohden, the pro-life film is making an impact in the world, touching hearts changing minds, and bringing hope and healing to individuals who have been devastated by abortion.
...
In addition to the 58 minute documentary, a short, 9 minute film, featuring Melissa as narrator, has also been released for pregnancy centers and other organizations that minister to abortion vulnerable women to utilize as a resource in their life-saving, life-transforming work. Melissa's powerful message to women in this video as both a survivor and a mother, herself, is beyond description. To view the trailer of the short resource video, visit www.avoiceforlife.com/trailer.html.

Any readers in the UK suffering after an abortion should contact ARCH (Abortion Recovery Care and Helpline) runs a helpline: 0845 603 8501 and which can be telephoned from within the UK (calls charged at local rates). There is also an ARCH website.

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Catholic Voices rush to defend episcopal obfuscation on homosexual unions

In recent days and weeks "Catholic Voices" have been rushing to defend comments by Vincent Nichols, Catholic archbishop of Westminster, on homosexual unions.* ** Yesterday the Catholic Voices blog claimed that:

"Archbishop Nichols's position on civil partnerships is consistent with church teaching"

and:

"As the law continues to treat homosexual behaviour as a private phenomenon, it is entirely consistent with church teaching for Archbishop Nichols to support the civil partnership scheme as an existing and legitimate mechanism to help give stability to committed couples of the same sex, while strenously resisting any attempt by the state to redefine marriage."

Part of Catholic Voices's defence of Archbishop Nichols' position is that the civil partnership legislation:

"does not undermine the unique position of marriage in British law as it does not presuppose that a civil partnership is a homosexual relationship."

Yet as Jacqueline Humphreys, an Anglican barrister, has said:

"[T]here can be no ambiguity that [UK civil partnerships] are intended to be sexual ... [T]he fact that some people do not engage in genital sexual activity within their marriage does not prevent marriage from being the legal regulation of an essentially sexual relationship. The same applies to civil partnerships ... [C]ivil partnerships are in all important respects the same as marriage in terms of practical legal effect. Civil partnerships also share the overwhelming majority of the conceptual understandings of marriage that exist within English law".

In fact, Ms Humphreys, who supports homosexual unions, argues that UK civil partnerships can't undermine marriage - because (she argues) they are marriages! (However, I can't emphasise strongly enough how important it is to campaign against the government's proposals for same-sex marriage, as such explicit and total legal equality with true, i.e. heterosexual, marriage would further enshrine homosexual unions in UK law as well as undermine marriage by redefining it.)

Ms Humphreys has explained in detail how the Civil Partnerships Act has numerous aspects which mirror UK marriage law. There are so many of these aspects, so I won't list them all here, but here are some of the main ones [my emphases in bold]:

• "Like marriage, a civil partnership ends only on death, dissolution or annulment"
• "[C]ivil partners are to be treated by law in the same way as married couples in respect to property disputes" etc.
• "Civil partnerships are also designed to be monogamous ...  This mutual exclusivity of marriage and civil partnership has the effect of putting civil partnerships firmly in a position equivalent to marriage."
• "[T]he range of persons within prohibited degrees of relationship with whom it is not possible to enter a civil partnership...is the equivalent to that for marriage ... If civil partnerships are not assumed to be sexual, there can be no reason to restrict close family members from entering them. But because they are presumed to be sexual, it would not be appropriate for the law to legitimise 'incestuous' relationships."
• "[T]he term 'in-law' where it appears in legislation also includes relationship by reason of civil partnership in addition to relationship by marriage and that `step-parent' and 'step­child' relationships are also recognised for civil partners as they would be for spouses."
• "A civil partnership is voidable on the ground that at the time of its formation the respondent was pregnant by some person other than the applicant."
• "[M]any of the details of the 2004 Act anticipate that children will be a feature of the family life of some civil partnerships"
• [T]he Act recognises same-sex marriages in other countries as civil partnerships.

Ms Humphreys explains that it is for technical legal reasons that adultery is absent as a ground for dissolution, and not because civil partnerships are not intended to be sexual. She concludes that the only significant difference between UK civil partnerships and UK marriages is the obvious - the former are same-sex only, the latter opposite-sex only.

Even Archbishop Nichols's spokesman admitted [my emphasis in bold] that:

"the archbishop acknowledged the existence of 'civil partnership' between persons of the same sex that already offer the same legal framework of marriage". 

So it is absurd for Catholic Voices to claim that the Civil Partnerships Act 2004:

"denies homosexual unions a parliamentary imprimatur and does not enshrine them as institutions within the legal structure of the United Kingdom."

Catholic Voices did state correctly that:

"Civil partnerships...come into effect through the signing of a civil partnership document rather than via publicly-made promises in a civil ceremony, as...with marriage."

Yet everyone knows that civil partnerships are in practice celebrated like civil marriages:

• conducted at registry offices, witnessed and registered by the same government officials who witness and register marriages
• celebrated with much of the traditional panoply of weddings (rings, kisses, formal attire, receptions etc)
• referred to in common parlance as "weddings" and the partners referred to as "husbands" or "wives".

Here are Elton John and David Furnish in wedding attire as they celebrate their civil partnership at Windsor Guildhall, famous for the civil marriage of HRH the Prince of Wales, on the first day that the civil partnership legislation came into effect:

Also on the first day of civil partnership legislation, here are two lesbians in (modern) wedding attire at their civil partnership ceremony at Brighton Town Hall:

And again on the same day, two homosexual actors proudly display their exchange of rings - the most traditional, public and permanent of material symbols of marital fidelity - at their civil partnership ceremony at Islington Town Hall:

Catholic Voices' scramble to defend Archbishop Nichols is the latest evidence confirming that Catholic Voices has been established to defend the Catholic bishops of England & Wales against accusations of dissent from Catholic pro-life/pro-family teaching. For example:

• its selection criteria explicitly bars anyone who is "angry or upset with...the bishops of England and Wales"
• it not only "has the blessing of the Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales", but it is "accountable to the bishops"
• it perpetuated the myth that the Soho Masses for homosexuals, established and protected by the bishops, are perfectly proper within the context of Catholic teaching and discipline, when in fact there is solid and mounting evidence that the Masses are organised by and for homosexuals who explicitly dissent from the Church's teaching
• it opposed parents trying to protect the Catholic (i.e. pro-life, pro-family) ethos of their schools from bullying by bishops and their dissenting bureaucrats (book, p.150-151).

What we need are real voices of Catholics as distinct from the highly-compromised establishment mouthpieces called "Catholic Voices".

*SPUC's national council, which is SPUC's policy-making body, elected by its grassroots volunteers, last month passed the following resolution to defend marriage:

"That the Council of SPUC, noting the various proposals currently being made by the present Government and others in regard to the status and standing of marriage and its consequent effect upon family life; and further noting the higher proportionate incidence of abortion in unmarried women compared to married women, resolves to do its utmost to fight for the retention of the traditional understanding of marriage in the history, culture and law of the United Kingdom, namely the exclusive union of one man with one woman for life; and accordingly instructs its officers and executive committee to conduct a major campaign to this end, to co-operate with other persons and societies in so doing and specifically to target the Government's consultation period starting in March, 2012, in regard to (so-called) same sex marriage."

**Why is marriage (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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This Christmas, help free Chen Guangcheng, persecuted opponent of China's one-child policy

As we in the UK start our Christmas celebrations, we are safe in the knowledge that our family lives will not be interrupted by arbitrary imprisonment or torture. We can (at least for now) speak out freely against pressure upon women to end the lives of their children through abortion. Chen Guangcheng has no such safety or freedom. Since speaking out against forced abortions and sterilisations in Linyi in 2005, the Chinese Communist authorities have subjected him to years of imprisonment, torture, neglect and harrassment. He is currently under house arrest. Christian Bale, the Hollywood actor, tried recently to visit him but was roughed up by officials instead.

Chen, who is blind, has become a icon for freedom, instantly recognisable in his dark glasses. Chen's supporters have started a Dark Glasses campaign to pressure the Communist government to release him. Anyone can join this campaign - simply take a photo of yourself wearing dark glasses, with a message of support for Chen, and email it to Women's Rights Without Frontiers - full details are available on their website. Here is the photo I'll be sending:

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Today's must-read pro-life news-stories, Tue 20 Dec

Garik Hayrapetyan, UNFPA Armenia

Top stories:

Selective abortion of girls increases in Armenia, says UN Population Fund
The Armenian representative of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) has warned of a rise in unborn girls being aborted in Armenia. Garik Hayrapetyan (pictured) told a news conference that: "In ten to 20 years, we will face a deficit of women -- that means, of potential mothers". [AFP via Yahoo!, 19 December] Anthony Ozimic of SPUC  commented: "UNFPA's words of concern about sex-selective abortion are empty, considering that UNFPA has for decades been complicit in China's forced abortion programme, which is largely responsible for China's massive gender imbalance."

Other stories:

Embryology

• IVF industry booming in Ireland [Irish Independent, 19 December]
• British Heart Foundation funds destructive embryo research [John Smeaton, 19 December]

Sexual ethics

• Mother conceives 6 times in 5 years despite contraception [Mail, 20 December]
• Sociologist slams UK deputy PM's dismissal of marriage [Mail, 19 December]
• Group sex is latest trend for teen girls, suggests US report [Mail, 19 December]
• A book to help parents fulfil their role as the primary educators of their children in sexual matters [John Smeaton, 19 December]

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British Heart Foundation funds destructive embryo research

SPUC has re-launched its information on charities as an online index, with new entries and updated information added as and when new information is received. Today's charity is the British Heart Foundation (BHF).

In a letter SPUC dated 22 October 2010, Betty McBride, BHF's director of policy and communications, said that the BHF:

• currently funds more than £12 million of stem cell research using both embryonic and adult stem cells. SPUC comment: Human embryos are human beings from the moment of their conception (fertilisation or an analogous form of creation such as cloning). Removing stem cells from them abuses and usually kills them.
• does not have a policy on pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) but added that the more "...we learn about the genetic causes of cardiovascular disease, it may become possible for PGD to be used."
• does not fund research into prenatal diagnosis of disability or provide advice on where such tests can be obtained
• funds training for ultrasonographers who undertake foetal scans in early pregnancy to identify congenital heart disease. SPUC comment: One possible purpose of discovering heart disease in the unborn is to enable parents to choose to abort their affected child.

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A book to help parents fulfil their role as the primary educators of their children in sexual matters

Edmund Adamus, the director of pastoral affairs in the Catholic archdiocese of Westminster, has written an inspiring article on sex education which has just been published in L'Osservatore Romano, the Vatican newspaper. Edmund's article promotes a new book entitled "As I Have Loved You" by Dr Gerard O'Shea of the John Paul II Institute for Marriage and Family in Melbourne, Australia. The book provides a programme and materials which help parents fulfil their role as the primary educators of their children in sexual matters. It would be wrong, however, to think that the book pits parents against schools: in fact, the work was produced after a long period of "careful consultation with teachers, parents and experts in the field". Edmund writes:

"Conscientious Catholic teachers and educators [all too often unduly burdened with the increasingly aggressive civil demands for explicit sex education, even at primary age-levels] know just how the more intimate aspects of the topic are best handled through a personalised one-to-one dialogue.

They also know [as they are often parents themselves] that those best placed to deliver this kind of one-to-one formation, are in fact parents. For countless decades, Catholic parents have appropriated the habit of delegating their unrenounceable and irreplaceable educative role in this arena to the Catholic school, and then largely forgetting about it. Now they need to be formed as moral educators of their children."

An aim of SPUC's Safe at School campaign is also to remove a source of conflict between schools and parents, by stopping the intrusion of pornographic sex education programmes into schools.

"As I Have Loved You" is published by Gracewing Publishing in Great Britain and Connor Court in Australia.

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Today's must-read pro-life news-stories, Mon 19 Dec

Christian Bale: tried to visit Chen Guangcheng

Top stories:

UK prime minister says UK should return to Christian moral values
David Cameron, the British prime minister, has called for British society to return to traditional Christian moral values. In a speech to mark the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible, Mr Cameron said: "moral neutrality is not going to cut it any more". [Telegraph, 17 December] John Smeaton, SPUC director said: "It is hypocritical for Mr Cameron to promote traditional morality when his government is bank-rolling abortion, contraception and homosexuality at home and abroad."

Dutch pro-lifers say: campaign for abortion abolition, not stricter rules
The annual Dutch March for Life took place on Saturday 10 December. It is estimated that 1,400 people took part in the march, which is almost double last year's attendance. Dr Bert P. Dorenbos, President of Cry for Life and the chief organiser of the march, said: "We're not going for stricter rules, but we are called to advocate the abolition of abortion." John Smeaton, SPUC director, commented: "Dr Dorenbos’s comment is particularly applicable to the UK and misguided parliamentary moves, e.g. trying to lower the 24-week upper time-limit on most social abortions." [John Smeaton, 15 December]

Other stories:

Abortion

• One in five sexually-active women aged 16 to 24 has taken morning-after pills in past year [Mail, 17 December]
• MEPs issue death penalty for unborn babies with HIV [John Smeaton, 16 December]
• Morning-after pill use in Spain soars 83% after sales allowed in pharmacies [ANSA, 14 December] 
• SPUC supporters use Christmas celebrations to reach out to those hurt by abortion [John Smeaton, 14 December]

Euthanasia

• UK hospital accused of leaving patients to starve [Telegraph, 17 December]
• UK General Medical Council drawing up guidelines on assisted suicide [Mail, 16 December] 

Population

• Hollywood star (pictured) assaulted in bid to visit Chinese forced abortion opponent [Reuters, 16 December]

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MEPs issue death penalty for unborn babies with HIV

SPUC supporters and regular readers of this blog will remember that we recently urged our supporters to contact their MEPs and ask them to vote against the motion in the European Parliament on abortion and HIV/AIDS. The motion was riddled with anti-life and anti-family content.

Daniel Blackman, who researches international affairs for SPUC, has written a report on the outcome of the vote on the motion.

EU passes motion promoting abortion under the banner of HIV/AIDS prevention, by Daniel Blackman

On 1 December 2011 MEPs debated and voted on the controversial motion entitled “on the EU response to HIV/AIDS in the EU and neighbouring countries.” The motion was put forward by Françoise Grossetête on behalf of the PPE Group; Nessa Childers on behalf of the S&D Group; Antonyia Parvanova on behalf of the ALDE Group; Satu Hassi on behalf of the Verts/ALE Group; Marina Yannakoudakis on behalf of the ECR Group; Marisa Matias on behalf of the GUE/NGL Group; and Oreste Rossi on behalf of the EFD Group. The date selected for the final vote was strategic, 1 December being world AIDS day.

The original motion was itself harmful for people already living with HIV/AIDS, and for those whose lifestyles put them in the high risk group for contracting HIV. Amongst other things, the motion strongly favoured the “condom first” approach of the UN, EU, and WHO. Some of the worst sections included:

AA. whereas it is crucial to advocate strengthening and expanding policy and programming in the area of links between sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) and HIV so that HIV/AIDS prevention programmes are integrated into SRHR programmes and HIV/AIDS prevention becomes an integral part of sexual and reproductive health care.

14. Calls upon the Member States to ensure that all National AIDS programs and strategies develop strong linkages between sexual and reproductive health and HIV services.
15. Notes that prevention measures should explicitly include adequate information and sex education, access to protection means, such as male and female condoms, and strengthening the rights and autonomy of women in sexual relationships.

22. Calls on the Commission and Council to ensure access to quality comprehensive sexual and reproductive health services, information, and supplies. This should consist of, among others, confidential and voluntary counselling, testing and treatment for HIV and all sexually transmitted infections; prevention of unintended pregnancies; equitable and affordable access to contraceptives, including access to emergency contraception; safe and legal abortion, including post-abortion care; care and treatment to prevent vertical transmission of HIV, including of partners and children.

It is clear that the scientific evidence, the epidemiological studies and the voices of experts like Dr. Edward C. Green and Professor David Paton on the ineffectiveness of current condom-first anti-life approaches, really don’t matter in the face of political expediency and aggressive anti-life ideology. The motion became much worse following the submission and acceptance of amendments to the motion. These motions were put forward by many of the original proposers of the motion listed above, and other MEPs like Sophia in't Veld, Michael Cashman, and Corinne Lepage, well-known for their aggressive promotion of contraception, abortion, and destructive behaviours and lifestyles.

Prolife MEPs and NGOs worked together, calling for split and separate votes on some of the most controversial sections, hoping that they would be exposed and voted out of the motion. However, even without the most anti-life amendments, the document as a whole would have remained unacceptable. SPUC encouraged constituents to contact their MEPs about the most dangerous sections and the harmful content likely to remain, which meant that a clear vote against the motion as a whole was required. People living with HIV/AIDS do need particular medical and pastoral support, but this motion fails these people and acts as a Trojan horse for the agendas of pro-abortion MEPs and lobby groups.

On the day, all of the anti-life pro-abortion sections received overwhelming support from MEPs, including the vast majority of the PPE (Christian Democrat) MEPs. Every vote on anti-life sections was lost by a wide margin. Section 22, which includes an explicit promotion of abortion, received 6 separate roll-call votes. Every single one was sadly lost. The fifth roll-call vote dealt specifically with the reference to abortion. Only 206 MEPs voted against abortion i.e. they used their vote to defend unborn babies. They were:

ALDE: Aylward, Gallagher, Harkin, Takkula
ECR: Bielan, Cymański, Czarnecki, Deva, Helmer, Kamiński, Karim, Kirkhope, Kowal, Kurski, Legutko, McClarkin, Migalski, Piotrowski, Poręba, Szymański, Tannock, Wojciechowski, Włosowicz, Ziobro
EFD: Belder, Borghezio, Fontana, Morganti, Rossi, Scottà, Speroni, Terho, Tzavela, Vanhecke
NI: Claeys, Dodds, Gollnisch, Hartong, Kovács, Le Pen Marine, Madlener, Mölzer, Obermayr, Stassen, Stoyanov Dimitar, Zijlstra
PPE: Abad, Allam, Andrikienė, Angelilli, Antonescu, Antoniozzi, Arias Echeverría, Ayuso, Baldassarre, Balz, Bartolozzi, Bastos, Bauer, Becker, Belet, Berlato, Bodu, Bonsignore, Borys, Brok, Busuttil, Böge, Băsescu, Březina, Cancian, Carvalho, Casa, Casini, Caspary, Coelho, Comi, Daul, De Mita, Delvaux, Deutsch, Deß, Dorfmann, Díaz de Mera García Consuegra, Estaràs Ferragut, Feio, Ferber, Fernandes, Fidanza, Fraga Estévez, Gahler, García-Margallo y Marfil, Gardini, Gauzès, Glattfelder, Grzyb, Gyürk, Gál, Gáll-Pelcz, Handzlik, Hankiss, Herranz García, Hibner, Higgins, Hohlmeier, Iacolino, Jahr, Jazłowiecka, Jeggle, Jędrzejewska, Kalinowski, Karas, Kasoulides, Kastler, Kelam, Kelly, Klaß, Koch, Kozłowski, Kuhn, Köstinger, La Via, Landsbergis, Langen, Lehne, Liese, Lisek, Lope Fontagné, Mann, Matera, Mato Adrover, Matula, Mauro, Mayer, Mayor Oreja, McGuinness, Melo, Mikolášik, Millán Mon, Mitchell, Morkūnaitė-Mikulėnienė, Mészáros, Neynsky, Niculescu, Niebler, Olbrycht, Oomen-Ruijten, Pack, Pallone, Papastamkos, Patrão Neves, Pieper, Pirker, Posselt, Protasiewicz, Proust, Pöttering, Quisthoudt-Rowohl, Rangel, Reul, Rivellini, Roithová, Rübig, Salafranca Sánchez-Neyra, Saryusz-Wolski, Saudargas, Schnellhardt, Schnieber-Jastram, Schwab, Scurria, Seeber, Siekierski, Silvestris, Sommer, Sonik, Stolojan, Stoyanov Emil, Surján, Szájer, Sógor, Teixeira, Thun und Hohenstein, Thyssen, Tőkés, Ulmer, Ungureanu, Vaidere, Verheyen, Vidal-Quadras, Weber Manfred, Weisgerber, Wieland, Winkler Hermann, Wortmann-Kool, Zalewski, Zanicchi, Zeller, Zwiefka, de Grandes Pascual, de Lange, del Castillo Vera, van de Camp, Áder, Őry, Šťastný
S&D: Prodi

Section 22 makes the link between pregnant mothers with HIV/AIDS, their babies, and the “solution” to mother-child HIV transmission by killing the child before he or she is born. The majority of MEPs are clearly not content with killing the disabled; they are now seeking out sick babies.

In the final vote, 454 MEPs voted in favour of this barbaric resolution, a small but stalwart 86 voted against it, and 44 abstained. The MEPs who voted against were:

ALDE: Aylward, Gallagher
ECR: Bielan, Cymański, Czarnecki, Deva, Helmer, Kamiński, Kowal, Kurski, Legutko, Migalski, Piotrowski, Poręba, Szymański, Tomaševski, Wojciechowski, Ziobro
EFD: Agnew, Andreasen, Belder, Bufton, Clark, Fontana, Speroni
GUE/NGL: Angourakis, Toussas
NI: Claeys, Gollnisch, Hartong, Kovács, Madlener, Mölzer, Obermayr, Zijlstra
PPE: Allam, Antoniozzi, Arias Echeverría, Ayuso, Bartolozzi, Borys, Brok, Busuttil, Březina, Cancian, Casa, Casini, Deß, Díaz de Mera García Consuegra, Ferber, Fidanza, Fraga Estévez, Gardini, Grzyb, Handzlik, Hibner, Kalinowski, Kastler, Kelam, Kelly, Klaß, Koch, Kozłowski, Mato Adrover, Mauro, Mayor Oreja, Millán Mon, Olbrycht, Pieper, Posselt, Protasiewicz, Pöttering, Roithová, Salafranca Sánchez-Neyra, Saryusz-Wolski, Saudargas, Sommer, Sonik, Surján, Vidal-Quadras, Zalewski, Zeller, Zwiefka, de Grandes Pascual, del Castillo Vera, Šťastný

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Dutch pro-lifers say: campaign for abortion abolition, not stricter rules

The annual Dutch March for Life took place on Saturday 10 December to commemorate the passing of the Pregnancy Termination Law, passed on 18 December 1980, which allows for abortion on demand in Holland up to the 24th week of pregnancy.

It is estimated that 1,400 people took part in the march, which is almost double last year's attendance.

The event was organised by the pro-life group Cry for Life. Dr Bert P. Dorenbos, President of Cry for Life and the chief organiser of the march, said:

"We're not going for stricter rules, but we are called to advocate the abolition of abortion."

Dr Dorenbos’s comment is particularly applicable to the UK and misguided parliamentary moves, e.g. trying to lower the 24-week upper time-limit on most social abortions.

It is greatly encouraging to see the development of a vibrant and active movement for life in the Netherlands.

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SPUC supporters use Christmas celebrations to reach out to those hurt by abortion

The tree "Have a Heart for unborn babies". The model of an unborn child can be seen  in the middle of the red floral heart.

I often receive emails from supporters doing fantastic work in defence of life. I am always greatly encouraged when visiting SPUC branches in various parts of the country. I thought I would share an a message I received from Frances Levett, of SPUC Melton Mowbray.

Dear John,

I'm forwarding the photo of our Christmas tree which we entered in this year's Christmas Tree Festival at St. Mary's C of E church, Melton Mowbray. We always enter a decorated tree in this large festival which is attended by several thousand people. This year we chose the theme "Have a Heart for Unborn Babies" and decorated it by hanging hearts on it: some bauble hearts and some red card ones with facts about an unborn baby's heart written on them. We put a poinsettia floral heart at the base, with a model of an unborn baby lying among the flowers. We also invited people who had lost a baby to abortion to write a message to their child on a blank card heart and hang it on the tree.

We found 24 messages on the tree at the end of the festival, most of them addressed to the baby by name, showing the pain and suffering caused by abortion. "4th Christmas without you. Still miss you", and the heartbreaking "I'm sorry. Lots of love, Mummy." We have received several comments to the effect that this was the best tree we have ever submitted. A social worker from Leicester who works with adoption let us know she thought it was very moving and helpful to people. I must give thanks to Rachel and John Cousen, Isobel Steele, Alastair Street and Frances Levett for their ideas and work.

It strikes me that this is a simple and thought provoking initiative which could easily be replicated in other parts of the country.

It also strikes me that this extraordinary response in one English town to the simple Christmas tree initiative of our local branch gives the lie to the recent study purporting to show that abortion doesn't harm mental health.

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Today's must-read pro-life news-stories, Wed 14 Dec

Vince Cable: Malthus was wrong

Top stories:

Sing for the unborn this December
The Good Counsel Network, a pro-life organisation which assists women in crisis pregnancies, are carol singing at London tube stations next week (19, 21 and 22 December) to raise money for their life-saving work. Please go along and join them one evening if you can. If you're not comfortable singing then they always need help collecting money too. For more information and to let them know if you plan to join them please contact Conor on 0207 723 1740. [John Smeaton, 11 December]

SPUC Council passes resolution to defend marriage
SPUC's national council, which is SPUC's policy-making body, elected by its grassroots volunteers, last month passed the following resolution to defend marriage: "That the Council of SPUC, noting the various proposals currently being made by the present Government and others in regard to the status and standing of marriage and its consequent effect upon family life; and further noting the higher proportionate incidence of abortion in unmarried women compared to married women, resolves to do its utmost to fight for the retention of the traditional understanding of marriage in the history, culture and law of the United Kingdom, namely the exclusive union of one man with one woman for life; and accordingly instructs its officers and executive committee to conduct a major campaign to this end, to co-operate with other persons and societies in so doing and specifically to target the Government's consultation period starting in March, 2012, in regard to (so-called) same sex marriage." [John Smeaton, 8 December]

Other stories:

Abortion

• UK pro-abortion lobbyist celebrates Christmas morning-after pill promotion as "Jingle Pills indeed"! [BMJ, 12 December] SPUC slams it as "sick trivialisation" [Twitter, 13 December] Lobbyist also claimed: "[I]t's sex [pro-lifers are] against". SPUC comment: What an absurd claim, when in fact many pro-lifers have large families. [Twitter, 13 December] 
• UK pro-abortion group holds Christmas carols concert in Anglican church [FPA, 13 December] SPUC comment: Did they dare to sing the famous Coventry Carol with its line: "children young, to slay"? [Twitter, 13 December] 
• SPUC challenges review which denies abortions harms mental health [Guardian, 9 November] Detailed SPUC comment [SPUC, 9 November]

Euthanasia

• Doctors wanted to starve disabled son of Irish pro-life politician [John Smeaton, 13 December]
• Read this letter on the Liverpool Care Pathway [John Smeaton, 13 December] 

Population

• UK cabinet minister says Malthus population theory was generally wrong [Mynewsdesk.com, 13 December]

Sexual ethics

• Swiss Catholic bishops argue over school sex ed [LifeSiteNews.com, 13 December]
• The worst sexualisation of children is happening in schools [John Smeaton, 10 December]
• Same sex marriage is opposed by SPUC Scotland [John Smeaton, 9 December]
• English Catholic bishops using wrong strategy in marriage battle, says papal biographer [CNA, 9 December]

General

• March for Life to be held in Budapest, Hungary, 28 December [Pat Buckley, 13 December]
• Pope at Guadalupe Mass: Defend life from conception to natural end, protect family in its genuine form [VIS, 13 December]
• Holy See praises bilateral relations with Chile including pro-life & pro-family mutual interests [VIS, 13 December]

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Doctors wanted to starve disabled son of Irish pro-life politician

On 30 November Anthony Ozimic, SPUC's communications manager, took part in a debate at University College Cork (UCC), Ireland, on assisted suicide (slides from Anthony's speech), organised by the UCC Law Society. Anthony was quoted in The Irish Times report on the debate:

"[E]uthanasia [i]s underpinned by a pessimism about the value of life and the ability of society to respond adequately to the sick and the vulnerable."

Speaking (pictured) alongside Anthony was Kathy Sinnott, the Irish disability rights campaigner, SPUC supporter and former member of the European Parliament (MEP). Anthony and Kathy have spoken together before at UCC, to Students for Life there.

Also featuring in the debate were:

• Tom Curran, European coordinator of Exit International, the pro-euthanasia and suicide organisation headed by Dr Philip Nitschke;
• Dr. Kieran Doran, senior lecturer in healthcare ethics, UCC;
• Dr. Adam McAuley, senior lecturer in medical and international human rights law, University College Dublin (UCD). 

The debate was chaired by Dr Deirdre Madden, senior lecturer in law, UCC.

Mrs Sinnott began her speech (full text) by challenging the students to confront the fundamental questions of what it means to be a human person and what is the true nature of death:

"I would suggest to you that before approaching the question of natural death or euthanasia it is important to find out the truth about ourselves as the human person.

In doing so you will go a long way to answering another question important to this discussion: what is death?"

Mrs Sinnott spoke powerfully on a number of issues, including the attempts of hospital staff in Dublin to deprive her son Jamie of a feeding programme, based on their assessment of his quality of life:

"My first [experience of euthanasia and it's advocates] was a personal encounter which concerned my son Jamie, who is profoundly disabled. Following a severe reaction to a flu jab, his health seriously deteriorated. By the time he, a young man taller than I, had been reduced to 65lbs, he was spending a lot of time in hospital in Dublin.

However he was not being treated. I knew that he needed to be fully scoped and put on a feeding program; both were standard procedures that would have been performed on someone without a disability long before they got to this stage.

Through persistence, I got half the test done and based on this the consultant told me and repeated three times that if we did not get Jamie on a feeding program that he would die. I thanked him and said that we would do whatever it took to make a success of the feeding program. I was delighted that at long last, Jamie could start to get well.

But a half hour later, the consultant, two younger doctors and a nurse, came to the ward where I was waiting for Jamie to come back from the test. They sat down around me with an atmosphere of concern and told me that they had been talking and that they had decided not to put Jamie on a feeding program. They said his quality of life was poor.

I got Jamie out of there as fast as I could and brought him back to Cork, where he was fully tested and put on a program of elemental feeding. Today Jamie weighs 8 stone, he no longer needs a wheelchair instead he walks the country roads every day. He is not longer miserable he takes an active part in his life and sometimes even smiles.

Thank you Cork University Hospital Prof Quigley and team. And an Irish Constitution and High Court that recognized his worth and therefore his rights."

This is yet another example of the success of the euthanasia lobby in exporting the practice of euthanasia by neglect - see my blog-posts earlier today and on 2 December about this practice in the UK.

In his own speech Anthony Ozimic highlighted  the comment made in 1984 by Helga Kuhse, the international euthanasia advocate and leader, which perhaps most concisely encapsulates the widespread radicalism of the euthanasia movement:

"If we can get people to accept the removal of all treatment and care, especially the removal of food and fluids they will see what a painful way this is to die and then, in the patient's best interests, they will accept the lethal injection "

Mrs Sinnott said in her speech that her time working in the European Parliament revealed the truth behind the myth that there are 'extreme' and 'mainstream' branches of the euthanasia lobby. I made this very point recently when pointing out that Dr Philip Nitschke is not the extreme wing of the pro-death lobby, but rather the unacceptable face of a lobby wishing to appear moderate in the promotion of their radical pro-death agenda. Mrs Sinnott explained that she had attended a conference organised by the liberal democrat group at the European Parliament, in which the organisers made clear that their objective was free, easy and open access to euthanasia, voluntary and involuntary - although they cautioned that it is important in the beginning to always talk of assisted suicide and to downplay euthanasia.

Mrs Sinnott also relayed the experiences of a friend of hers with ten years' experience confronting death as a hospice nurse. Her friend informed her that her experience suggests that an initial fear or rejection of death, the desire to confess and the desire to travel are so common as to be almost universal traits among dying patients.

Mrs Sinnott's speech concluded with her own reflections on death:

"What I have discovered from those who know death well, those who have had a personal encounter and those who are facing into it convinces me that death is both a unique and very important personal event and a stage, a normal developmental stage of human life."

Dying is a natural, normal part of life which comes to us all. Assisted suicide and euthanasia are violations of that natural process, which should be respected as an integral part of our lives.

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Read this letter on the Liverpool Care Pathway

On 2 December I blogged about a Telegraph report on the Liverpool Care Pathway. In response to that report, Veronica Stabbins, a lady from Windsor, has given powerful testimony to the pro-euthanasia reality of the Pathway in a letter published yesterday - please read it below (you will need to scroll down the page, as it's about one-third down down the page). As I said on 2 December, I urge readers to check whether the Pathway is being operated in hospitals, hospices or care homes where you live. If so, please write to the management there and draw their attention courteously to the concerns which continue to be expressed about the Pathway.

Telegraph, letters, 12 December 2011

One-way path to death

SIR – My family had some experience of the Liverpool Care Pathway (report December 1) last year.
My mother, aged 99 and living in a nursing home, was taken as an emergency to a hospital A & E department with acute respiratory distress. My brother and I arrived soon after. The doctor told us there was no help for her and that she would probably only live for about two hours.

Obviously unwell, but responsive, she was transferred to a stark room and her saline drip taken down. A nurse wanted to remove her oxygen mask, but she insisted on keeping it, as it helped her breathing.

Another nurse was about to give her an injection of morphine, but I challenged this as my mother was not complaining of pain. The nurse said it was normal protocol.

In answer to our questions, we were told that Mother had been placed on the “care pathway of the dying” and that she would not be given any food or water but would have regular sedation.

We asked if she could be transferred to a private ward to be more comfortable in her final hours. This was arranged promptly. Her physician confirmed she was indeed terminally ill and no medication would be appropriate, only care. To everyone’s surprise, she began to improve and after a week could take sips of water and food.

Mother lived for a year, visited daily by family and friends. The highlight of her “extra” year was her 100th birthday, when she entertained 40 people to a tea party.

She would not have lived that extra year, had she been denied water and sedated in hospital last year.

Veronica Stabbins
Windsor, Berkshire

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Sing for the unborn this December

The Good Counsel Network, a fantastic pro-life organisation which assists women in crisis pregnancies, are carol singing to raise money for their life-saving work. They say:

The Good Counsel Network organise Carol singing in Tube stations in Central London every year to raise money to help save more childrens lives, and to bring Jesus to people in the streets. This is always very popular with all of the commuters and lots of fun for all who come and sing or rattle a bucket if you are not able to sing . This years dates are:

Singing starts at 4.30pm and finishes approx 8pm on all dates and we go for a drink in local pub or restaurant afterwards.

Monday 19th December at Piccadilly Circus Tube Station (Meet at main ticket office

Wednesday 21st December at Green Park Tube Station (Meet inside the barriers of the main ticket hall)

Thursday 22nd December at Waterloo Tube Station (Details of where to meet coming soon)

Please go along and join them one evening if you can. If you're not comfortable singing then they always need help collecting money too. For more information and to let them know if you plan to join them please contact Conor on 0207 723 1740

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The worst sexualisation of children is happening in schools

Lynette Burrows(pictured), an author on children’s rights, family campaigner and mother of six children said in October this year on the BBC's Sunday Morning Live show:

“I think parents have the absolute right to protect their children from this sort of education which is so unhelpfully obsessed with destroying childhood innocence, in a way that's reminiscent of paedophilia. To me, anyone who wants to talk dirty to little children is a danger to them."

Last week Mrs Burrows spoke at SPUC's Safe at School "Sex education as sexual sabotage" meeting in Westminster, after which our 47,000 strong petition against explicit sex DVDs in primary schools was presented to Michael Gove and the Department for Education by parents joined by Jonathan Evans, MP for Cardiff North, and Andrea Leadsom, MP for South Northamptonshire.

I am delighted that Mrs Burrows has allowed me to publish her talk, in full, on this blog.

Talk for SPUC on 1st December 2011 by Lynette Burrows

First of all, I want to say what a pleasure and a privilege it is to speak on the same platform as Dr. Reisman; a person that I have long admired – and quoted from, on innumerable occasions. Her courage in saying what she has – and being damned by the pundits for saying it, is a useful lesson to us all, in how any individual speaking the truth these days, and sticking to their guns, can expect to be treated. There is nobody more bigoted and hostile than a liberal whose method or opinion is questioned, and one has to be prepared to stand up to all the misrepresentation and insults they throw.

The British, though not a cowardly people, are very easy to embarrass and we often flinch from confrontation rather than ‘speaking the truth and shaming the Devil’ as the nuns who taught me used to say. I was invited to be on the panel to assess the Sex Education forum hosted by ITV in 2008 where, I think, the current crop of horribly unsuitable films were previewed to a warmly appreciative audience of teachers, educationalists, social workers etc, etc. They were graphic and ugly and the only thing that saved them being the sort of material shown by fundamentalist religious groups depicting sex as the work of the Devil was the relentlessly jokey tone and the way deeply shocking images were shown as being perfectly normal and commonplace. This is quite a marketing device actually – to normalize the circumstances surrounding what you want to sell, however counter-cultural and offensive they are to what are essentially community and family values.

I was the last of the panel to give my opinion of the films and said, in my usual kindly and inoffensive way that it reminded me of the policy of the Nigerian govt 30 years ago, when they gave out bomb-proof pills to protect the army in their civil war. ‘They didn’t work of course but hey, who cares, they were a good idea and people bought them! Not everybody died anyway. ‘Wear a condom and you’ll be safe’ – that’s all. Never mind the casualties!’ It didn’t go down well, and even worse, my opinion that the material was put together by crazed paedophiles, drunk with the freedom to talk dirty to young people.

Really, there was pandemonium – and a man stood up and said that I was a dinosaur who thought all sex was dirty even though it was perfectly normal and decent and no-one should have any inhibitions about the body because it was natural and lovely. ‘OK, I said, show us your willy then’! If it’s so normal and as un-shocking as a tattoo or a scar, show us what you are so happy to show crowds of strangers without embarrassment. You show us yours – just to demonstrate that, used as a teaching aid, it is as easy and without implication as you claim. ‘Disgraceful’, he thundered, and sat down whereupon a teacher who, she said, had brought her six-form with her, announced that she was leaving because she didn’t want her pupils to listen to such ignorant, backward rubbish. Alas for her, a tall black girl, who seemed typical of the rest of the class, said that she had never heard any other opinion upon the subject and she wanted to hear more – so she stayed and so did the class, leaving the teacher to stalk out alone with something less than authority.

These films were designed for teenagers and what was unacceptable about them as a means of instructing the young was principally their crudity, insensitivity and assumption of a hard-boiled, quasi- medical approach to human relations but, more importantly, their glossing over important facts such as the failure-rate of all contraceptives, particularly among the young, but also with adult, married couples and the risk involved in promiscuous sex for young people. Sexually transmitted infections (STIs) were always referred to as being ‘treatable’ despite many of them being, in fact, incurable – an old trick that is invariably used by the media particularly the BBC.

The reality of treatment that goes on for years, or all your life, is never spelled out for them; nor the fact that even the Romans had treatment, in the form of herbs, potions and carrying a rabbit’s foot in your pocket – but the disease itself was not cured. It’s true they now have a vaccine that targets two of the most common forms of HPV – but there are other strains of the disease which it doesn’t touch. What about if you encounter one of those?

I cannot see the current sex education programme as being anything but ‘marketing’. Never mind the pious talk of ‘only if you want to do it’, the reality is that they fixate on sex as a way of selling it and grooming young people to be sexually active from as early as possible. As long ago as 1975 the Monopolies Commission reported that the Family Planning Assocation's (FPA) educational activities had ‘widened the market for contraceptives’. You bet they have – otherwise they would have been abandoned long ago.

They are still involved in probably most of the sex-education in schools and have managed to put up the number of illegitimate children born to young mothers enormously. In the reign of Elizabeth I in the sixteenth century until the accession of Elizabeth XI in the twentieth century the illegitimacy rate was more or less stable at 10%. Once the FPA got access to young people, that changed and we now have an illegitimacy rate that is not far off 50% and still rising.

The rather remarkable thing is that all their tendentious advice is given with the one prescriptive proviso that, should they catch an STI, they must not sleep with anyone else until they are considered safe. This is the first and only mention of the fact that it is possible to be abstinent when it comes to sex. Apart from this one instant, young people are supposed to be like rabbits, instinctively programmed to copulate most of the time.
It seems a bit strange to me that they should consider young people altruistic enough to abstain only for the sake of protecting others and not themselves! Talk about shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted.

The subject of sex education for primary schools is another ball-game, as they say. I do believe that all ‘sex-education’ as practiced today is wicked because it has, in terms of human misery, an unacceptable number of casualties. All of which can be re- used as further propaganda for the necessity of their product.

With little children, however, we are on holy ground and Christ Himself warned that those who lead children astray would deserve hideous punishment. ‘Better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck and he were drowned in the depth of the sea’. We often refer to protecting their innocence – but what do we mean by it? Is innocence simply the absence of useful information; is it simply not knowing something or other?

I don’t think so. I think it is something much more vital and akin to a mental immune system that operates in young children for as long as they need it for their growth and development and for the protection of their mental well-being. I don’t believe they can grow up healthily without certain areas that they have not got the emotional maturity to understand or deal with, being veiled from them.

In fact, the filtering out of pre-mature information is intrinsic to the child and does not have to be enforced. Children just don’t notice things that they don’t understand; it doesn’t register with them - as has often been noted in the millions of children that used to share a bedroom with their parents when there was no other space available or, as in the Old Testament, they were all tent dwellers. Children made their own privacy around them that mere events couldn’t penetrate.

To force sex-ed on to them, before they are ready is therefore to enact mental violence on them for some theoretical reason that is far closer to paedophilia than anything else. We see the beginning of the theory, I think, in the 1970 booklet, recommended by the FPA, Boy, Girl, Man, Woman in which paedophiles were described as ‘enticers’. Here is the quote: ‘Enticers are kindly people who treat children tenderly and affectionately’. The writer went on to suggest the ‘the child’s natural sexual curiosity may find an outlet in the company of paedophiles’.

So here we have the theory laid out for public approval. Since sexual curiosity is natural to a child therefore it is alright to allow adults, who have another agenda entirely, to have sexual access to educate them in it. They say, and they are experts, that children need a ‘sexual outlet’ and they are the people to facilitate satisfying this ‘natural’ need. Most people recoil in horror from such a suggestion – and they are right. But the fact is that the material produced now for the innocent eyes of young children is doing just that.

Of course all parents know the fascination that the body holds for little children. The fact that not only rude noises, but pee and poo is produced from within themselves and without their direct control, is very fascinating to them and the source of much innocent humour. But this is a healthy interest in their bodily functions which is not coprophilia, or any other perversion, and any attempt to emphasize and educate a child in it, would rightly be considered child-abuse.

So, I stand by my original opinion that the increase in talking graphically about sex to young children is essentially paedophilic in nature. It is increasing the number of people who are allowed to ‘talk dirty’ to children, and so to breach the protective armour of their innocence. Thus it is widening the scope for paedophiles to target children. Warning children with slimy, disclaimers about ‘inappropriate touching’, is simply token and meaningless to a child. How can they recognize the danger signals from those who wish to exploit them if such a large number of adults are implicated in the same ‘dirty talk’’?

To me, the shamelessness of showing children graphic sex should act as a warning signal to us to beware of the adults who provide it. They are either a danger to children themselves or, more likely, are too stupid to see the danger inherent in demolishing the taboo that protects children from predators.

We now know, how the attitude of the FPA in 1970 helped to make respectable the whole idea of paedophile ‘enticers’ that culminated in the National Council for Civil Liberties, with two later cabinet Ministers in the Labour Government on the board, inviting two openly paedophile groups to affiliate to them later in the 1970s as examples of minority rights. We also know that it gave rise to what a police chief described as the ‘staggering scale’ of paedophilia in children’s homes in the 1970s where, according to the North Wales Tribunal of Enquiry in 1997, twelve boys had committed suicide over a twenty two year period, in order to escape their paedophile tormentors.

Schools and churches of many different faiths produced far fewer numbers of men who acted upon this theory of benign enticers, but they have got all the publicity in the last few years. The scandal of the previous two decades have been expunged from the public mind. Once homosexuals had set their sights on gaining full equality in civil society - even subverting the institution of marriage itself - those in the media would never permit any hint of this dark history to appear in any programmes or discussions.

That vile theory has now gone, buried so deep that no-one ever refers to it or the reason why so much of the ‘child abuse’ now featured in our newspapers, occurred during the 1970’s, even though it definitely calls for explanation or, at least, comment. But, the Devil never sleeps and this latest manifestation of a cruel desire to deprive children of something natural and wholesome has reappeared in another form.

Fortunately, this government has re-stated parents’ right to withdraw their children from sex-education but many schools are used to by-passing or ignoring pesky parents. Parents have every right to know what material the school proposes to use and to watch it in advance. They must exercise their rights and churches, of every denomination, should act themselves to view the material, to warn parents and inform them of their rights. Personally, I would withdraw my children from any class described as being about ‘sex-education’. They don’t need it and parents can supply all they need to know from their knowledge of the child, from their own instincts and in the context of their family.

I have never believed the oft-repeated propaganda from the ‘sexualizers’ that ordinary families are incapable of talking to their children about the facts of life. They have managed it alright throughout all the ages - long before the Family Planning Association appeared as a tool for selling something they could simultaneously make both irresistible and beneficial. The increase in everything sexually damaging to young people can be fairly placed at their door and not at the doors of ordinary people; who though aware of the danger to their children of drug-pushers, pimps and crooks, do not expect harm to come to them via the classroom. The so-called sexualization of children is a modish, current cause for concern, deplored by many, including in government – they should face the reality that by far the worst aspect of it begins and is continued under our noses in our schools.

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