Life Advocacy Briefing

Rep. JoAnn Davis, RIP

WE WERE DEEPLY SADDENED TO LEARN OF THE PASSING LAST WEEK of a true pro-life champion, US Rep. JoAnn Davis (R-VA). Intending to write our own tribute, we realized we could not improve on the one written by Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of Susan B. Anthony List, a prominent pro-life lobbying group whose associated political action committee focuses most of its resources on electing pro-life women to Congress.

“During her two-year battle with cancer, [Rep.] Davis continued her work on Capitol Hill, demonstrating her strong character and perseverance in the face of adversity. … [Rep.] Davis’s commitment to women and the unborn was solid and unwavering. … [Rep.] Davis deserves praise as one of our most outspoken supporters for the unborn. She introduced the Adoption Information Act and co-sponsored several important pro-life bills. In addition to speaking out against abortion on the House floor many times, [Mrs.] Davis co-sponsored the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban, the Child Custody Protection Act, the Weldon-Stupak Human Cloning Prohibition Act, the Unborn Victims of Violence act, the Informed Choice Act, the Abortion Non-Discrimination Act, and the Unborn Child Pain Awareness Act. … We will miss JoAnn Davis’s leadership, tenacity and goodness. Congress is a better place because of her strong presence there. With a backbone of steel and a heart full of compassion, she was a true servant of God.”

We join Mrs. Dannenfelser in asking readers to “please keep her family, friends and staff in your thoughts and prayers.”

Can You Help Wow Aurora & the Nation?

THE INVITATION IS OPEN to all pro-life citizens to travel to Chicago-suburban Aurora, Illinois, for a morning rally on Saturday, Oct. 27, at Planned Parenthood’s largest abortuary in America. Shuttles will carry protesters from a church parking lot a mile away to hear pro-life speakers, to engage in a continuous prayer vigil, picket the premises, leaflet the neighborhood, walk around the block, stand for Life. Special features are promised for youth. Details are available via the Internet at www.FamiliesAgainstPlannedParenthood.org.

Protests continued last Tuesday night at the Aurora City Council, where well more than 100 mostly local citizens spoke out against the mayor’s issuance to Planned Parenthood of a permit to do business at the 22,000-square-foot megabortuary. The council invited further input on the controversy during a special session after the council’s regular meeting. Hundreds have packed city hall for every council meeting since PP’s secret siting of the abortuary was revealed in mid-summer.

Vatican ‘Nails It’ on ‘Rape’ Loophole

IN A RECENT VATICAN RADIO INTERVIEW reflecting on Amnesty International’s betrayal of human rights by embracing the international abortion cartel, Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone gave a clear declaration of the injustice in the “abortion for rape” loophole advocated even by so many who claim the pro-life label.

“‘Violence cannot be answered by further violence, murder with murder,’” said Cardinal Bertone, quoted by Elizabeth O’Brien reporting for LifeSiteNews.com. “‘Even if the child is unborn,’” he said, “‘it is still a human person … [with] a right to dignity as a human being. … All forms of violence against women must be opposed,’” he said.

Surely that proscription includes a second act of violence – violence within her body against the fruit of her womb. Nothing about the situation of a child’s conception can justify the killing of that little boy or girl.

Protecting our Children

SOMETHING IS MISSING FROM THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS IN MISSOURI this fall. Something nasty.

The state’s new law – barring abortuary personnel from teaching sex education – has taken effect.

Signed by Gov. Matt Blunt (R) in July, the law gives permanent status to the Missouri Alternatives to Abortion Services Program, which, writes Jennifer Thurman for Baptist Press (BP), “allow[s] schools to emphasize abstinence during sex education classes.”

“‘Abortion providers like Planned Parenthood should not be supplying our students with information about sexual health,’” said Gov. Blunt, quoted by Ms. Thurman. “‘This vital legislation ensures,’” he said, “‘that our children get the information they need from teachers, parents and physicians.’”

The BP story quotes Stop Planned Parenthood’s Jim Sedlak: “‘The elected officials in Missouri understood the conflict of interest that exists when Planned Parenthood is allowed to teach or provide material for sex education classes. To have an entity that profits from the sale of birth control and abortion teaching our children about sex is ludicrous.’” The practice, though, is widespread, and citizens and public officials everywhere must inquire about PP’s involvement in local schools and stop it.

“‘High school and college girls are PP’s major customers,’” noted Mr. Sedlak, “‘exactly the ones who are reached by PP’s sex education programs in the schools. … According to Planned Parenthood data,’” he said, “‘70% of its customers are under the age of 25, and 27% are under the age of 20.’”

Know Your Gift Recipient!

Excerpts from Guidelines for Identifying Cancer Groups We Can Support, by Karen Malec, president, Coalition on Abortion/Breast Cancer (www.abortionbreastcancer.com)

“October is to breast cancer groups as Christmas is to retailers” – Prof. Joel Brind, president of the Breast Cancer Prevention Institute. …

October is the season for wearing pink ribbons and buying a multitude of pink products. Only in America could a deadly disease be so heavily commercialized! During this month, we are faced with a barrage of news articles and television programs that purport to tell us what the facts are concerning breast cancer.

Since the 1980s, when most breast cancer organizations were founded, cancer patients and others have helped the breast cancer fundraising industry to raise billions of dollars “to find a cure” for breast cancer. But women have been largely kept in the dark about breast cancer prevention. … Breast cancer organizations have misled Americans about the disease through the use of a variety of marketing strategies and fear tactics [in a determined tactic to avoid acknowledging the abortion/breast cancer link].

For these reasons, the Coalition on Abortion/Breast Cancer is offering a list of guidelines to assist the public in recognizing cancer organizations that are truly serving women. Here is a list of considerations when deciding what organizations to support:

• First, do the organization’s leaders tell women the truth that abortion raises breast cancer risk? Breast cancer groups violate their missions to “eradicate breast cancer” when they withhold life-saving information about risk factors for the disease. … A study by Patrick Carroll, published in the Journal of American Physicians & Surgeons (www.jpands.org) on Oct. 2, 2007, demonstrated that abortion is the “best predictor of breast cancer.”

• Second, do the organization’s leaders suggest or imply there is “no cure” for the disease? If so, they are using fear as a marketing strategy. Most women do not die of breast cancer. About 80% of all breast cancers are already being cured. The mortality rate has been drifting downwards in recent years.

• Third, do the organization’s leaders claim that most women diagnosed with breast cancer have no known risk factor for the disease? A number of organizations use this marketing technique. Most American women have used the birth control pill in the combined form (estrogen plus progestin), and many have used combined hormone replacement therapy. The World Health Organization and the National Cancer Institute classify combined (estrogen plus progestin) oral contraceptives and combined hormone replacement therapy as a carcinogen. …

• Fourth, do the organization’s officials tell women, “We don’t know how to prevent breast cancer,” or “There is very little you can do to prevent breast cancer”? As a matter of fact, 5-10% of all breast cancers are hereditary, and most breast cancers are preventable. Overexposure to the hormone estrogen is associated with most of the risk factors for breast cancer. …

• Fifth, does the organization give funds to Planned Parenthood? Were its leaders previously associated with PP or some other abortion advocacy organization? If so, a serious conflict of interest exists. The breast cancer group Susan G. Komen for the Cure has given hundreds of thousands of dollars to Planned Parenthood. You can find a list of Komen’s grants by doing a search on Komen’s website using the term “Planned Parenthood.” See http://cms.komen.org/Komen/GrantsProgram/ Community-BasedGrants/FindAGrant. Although Komen claims that the funds it has given to PP are intended for breast cancer screenings, PP’s annual reports for the years 2000-2005 reveal that breast cancer screenings have declined by nearly 15%, while abortions have increased by nearly 23%. Money is fungible and can be moved easily from one side of a business to another. …

• Sixth, do the organization’s leaders claim that the biggest risk factors for breast cancer are “being female and getting older”? If being a female and getting older are the biggest risk factors for breast cancer, then why does the United States have a breast cancer rate that is five times greater than that of India, Japan and China? …

• Seventh, does the organization accept donations from pharmaceutical companies (i.e., manufacturers of hormonal drugs or cancer treatment drugs)? This, too, would create a conflict of interest for a cancer group.

• Eighth, does the cancer organization support experiments on human embryos? When deciding whether to donate to a particular cancer organization, many people would want to know whether the organization either gives grants to researchers conducting experiments on human embryos or is otherwise supportive of this type of research.

Planned Parenthood Plays Fast & Loose with Abortion Stats

Oct. 11, 2007, “Special Alert” from Population Research Institute, by Steven Mosher, PRI president, reprinted by LifeSiteNews.com

The abortion fundamentalists at the Alan Guttmacher Institute have an ax to grind. Guttmacher styles itself the “research arm of Planned Parenthood,” but it may more properly be called its lobbying arm. [Life Advocacy Briefing editor’s note: Or, PP’s propaganda arm.]

In its new report on abortions worldwide, Guttmacher makes several claims. These fall into two broad, overlapping categories. The first consists of ploys to raise more funds for the population control-abortion crowd. The second, intended to pander to radical feminists, consists of veiled pleas to legalize abortion, couched in the form of arguments.

Guttmacher claims that the number of induced abortions worldwide declined from nearly 46 million to under 42 million between 1995 and 2003. “Significantly, the abortion rate for 2003 was roughly equal in developed and developing regions … despite abortion being largely illegal in developing regions.”

In actual fact, neither Guttmacher nor anyone else knows how many abortions have been performed worldwide in this year or any other year. Guttmacher’s numbers may be reasonable accurate for countries with socialized medicine, like Great Britain, where accurate records are kept. But for other developed countries, like the United States, they are at best educated guesses. Abortion may be legal, but its proponents have kept it deliberately shrouded in secrecy.

As far as the numbers given for the developing world, they are simply bogus. Take the case of Colombia, for example. In the hysteria surrounding the effort to legalize abortion there, the feminists kept advancing higher and higher numbers. The numbers of illegal (hence “unsafe”) abortions spiraled upward at a dizzying pace – 250 thousand, 300 thousand, 450 thousand. All fantasy.

I interviewed the Vice Minister for Health of Colombia on Sept. 28th of this year. She informed me that, since the legalization of abortion in that country on May 10th of last year, the Ministry for Social Protection’s health clinics had performed approximately 50 abortions. Not 50,000 or 5,000 or even 500. Fifty. This is several orders of magnitude smaller than predicted.

Why, you may ask, does the Guttmacher crowd play fast and loose with zeros? Because they are deliberately exaggerating the magnitude of the problem in order to create a “health crisis.” After all, the more women they can claim have “unsafe” abortions, the more women they can claim die as a result. The numbers are merely chips in a high-stakes poker game to legalize abortion-on-demand worldwide.

Another Guttmacher claim is that the number of abortions has “fall[en] most where abortion is broadly legal. … On the whole, the abortion rate decreased more in developed countries, where abortion is generally safe and legal on broad grounds … than in developing countries, where the procedure is largely illegal and unsafe.” This statement is speculative at best, since there are no hard numbers where clandestine abortions are concerned. Again Guttmacher invents absurdly large numbers of “unsafe abortions,” which then enable it to claim that the abortion rate plummets with legalization (and the collection of real statistics).

“We know, and the new evidence confirms yet again, that the best way to make abortion less necessary is to help women avoid unwanted pregnancies in the first place.” Or so says Guttmacher. Yes, well, in China the number of abortions has declined from 15 million to only nine million, not because of the wider availability of contraceptives but because so many women have been sterilized. The same is true in Viet Nam and several other countries which have seen government-run sterilization campaigns.

Guttmacher’s final claim is that “unsafe abortion remains a major global health challenge.”  Dr. Sharon Camp, president and CEO of the institute, maintains that “We know that the crucial first step in making abortion safer is to legalize the procedure, ensuring that it is performed by skilled providers under the best possible conditions. It’s high time for policymakers worldwide to review their commitment to women’s health by addressing these crucial issues.”

This is Guttmacher’s first global review of abortion since 1995, perhaps because its numbers the first time around were so risible that they were disinclined to attempt it again. But with pro-aborts in the Congress determined to kill the Mexico City policy and to give money to International Planned Parenthood Federation and other abortion-performing groups, it probably seemed like an excellent time to trot out the same old tired arguments.