Life Advocacy Briefing

Coming to Washington Next Tuesday?

PRO-LIFE CITIZENS FROM THROUGHOUT AMERICA WILL CONVERGE on Washington next Tuesday, Jan. 22, to mark the 35th anniversary of the outrageous Roe v.Wade and Doe v. Bolton edicts by which the Supreme Court commercialized abortion by blocking enforcement of long-standing state laws curbing it.

Preceded by a conference, the march will begin with a noon rally in the heart of the nation’s capital. More information may be obtained by calling March for Life at 1-202/543-3377.

Trampling on Conscience

A POWERFUL COMMITTEE OF THE LEADING GROUP OF OB-GYNS in the US has issued a new statement trampling on the consciences of members of the American College of Obstetricians & Gynecologists (ACOG) while claiming to respect them.

Dated November 2007, the new “opinion” of ACOG’s Committee on Ethics [sic] is published on the trade group’s Internet website at www.acog.org/from_home/publications/ethics under the title “Committee Opinion #385 ‘The Limits of Conscientious Refusal in Reproductive Medicine’.”

Under “Recommendations” on page 5 of the statement, ACOG’s “ethics” committee imposes on pro-life obstetricians and gynecologists several obligations: to “provide potential patients with accurate and prior notice of their personal moral commitments … [while] not us[ing] their professional authority to argue or advocate these positions;” to “impart accurate and unbiased information so that patients can make informed decisions about their health care;” to “refer patients in a timely manner to other providers if they do not feel that they can in conscience provide the standard reproductive services that their patients request;” and, in “an emergency in which referral is not possible or might negatively affect a patient’s physical or mental health, … to provide medically indicated and requested care regardless of the provider’s personal moral objections.”

The statement actually insists that pro-life doctors “either practice in proximity to individuals who do not share their views or ensure that referral processes are in place … .”

The issuance of such an extreme “opinion” by the ACOG Ethics Committee has serious implications for physicians in America, as professional organizations such as ACOG are usually cited in legal proceedings, as well as in professional training, as arbiters of medical practice standards.

Spanish Abortionists Give Victims a Break

ABORTIONISTS IN SPAIN WENT ON STRIKE last week to protest police raids and arrests, reports Matthew Cullinan Hoffman for LifeSiteNews.com, as well as “negative media reports against their abortion facilities.”

The abortionists’ league’s killing break was scheduled for four days last week, to end on Saturday, sparing, at least temporarily, “between 1,500 and 2,000 babies and their mothers,” reports LifeSite. The Assn. of Accredited Clinics for the Interruption of Pregnancy includes some 30 abortuaries, reports LifeSite, “and the Spanish media [were] reporting that they could be joined [in striking] by up to 20 more.”

A spokesman for the cabal said, according to Mr. Hoffman, “the members of the Assn. [would] be protesting the fact that they are treated as ‘monsters, mafiosos and delinquents’ for killing unborn children up to the sixth month of gestation, a practice they justify on their website,” writes Mr. Hoffman, “for preserving the ‘psychological and social well-being’ of the mothers.”

The website features a paper by a league member, reports LifeSite, “stat[ing] that the clinics operate under the World Health Organization’s broader definition of ‘health,’ which defines it as ‘the state of physical, psychological and social well-being and not the mere absence of illnesses or conditions.’”

Spanish authorities, following a hidden-camera expose of abortuary violations, apparently have a somewhat dim view of the WHO definition. Police have been pursuing an apparent campaign of raiding abortuaries and arresting “numerous clinic personnel … for systematic violations of Spain’s liberal abortion laws,” writes Mr. Hoffman. “Doctors and other clinic personnel are charged with fabricating diagnoses of a psychological health ‘risk’ for the women who come to them for late-term abortions and other legal violations.”

In notifying the public of its strike, the abortuary league “complain[ed],” writes Mr. Hoffman, “about the ‘belligerent attitude of certain groups that struggle to eradicate practices as important for young people as the usage of contraceptives in favor of a sexual abstinence that demonstrates,’” charged the trade group, “ ‘a profound ignorance of human sexuality.’ They are demanding instead,” reports LifeSite, “that the existing law be changed to suit the existing ‘demand’ for their services.”

A Spanish newspaper “ridiculed the strike,” reports Mr. Hoffman, “noting that ‘they ignore, much less criticize, the clinics that have been closed both in Madrid and in Barcelona for falsifying documents, principally of psychological reports, that permit abortion at any point of gestation, presumably illegal abortions and the use of food processors (to grind up the bodies of fetuses) or the practice of abortions later than the seventh month of pregnancy.

“‘Far from all of this,’” wrote the newspaper as quoted by LifeSite, “‘the clinics turn over the tortilla and present themselves as the great victims of the scandal that they themselves have provoked and promote a change of the law so that abortion can be even more permissive in our country.’”

Painting Lipstick on a Pig

HERE IN THE U.S.A., A LEADING WOMEN’s MAGAZINE is seeking to put a pretty face on the repugnant – and illegal – practice of late-term partial-birth abortion.

The January issue of Vogue magazine showcases one mother who underwent a partial-birth abortion, citing “complications” in the mother’s second pregnancy and defining her contracting for the partial delivery and killing of her struggling, vulnerable baby girl as “a painful decision.”

“Cleverly marketing legal abortion as a boon to women’s emancipation,” notes Hilary White for LifeSiteNews.com, “has been the most important task of the abortion industry and lobby for 30 years.” Certainly such media outlets as Vogue, by their complicity in such marketing campaigns, reveal themselves as members of the abortion lobby, but no disclosure of such a connection is required or ever offered.

In a feature which Vogue titles “Private Lives,” the magazine presents a woman named Lori Campbell, depicting her photographically, notes LifeSite, “as an archetype of the beautiful happy young mother, with both her and her daughter dressed immaculately in clothes strongly reminiscent of the idealized 1950s family.”

Mrs. Campbell “describes how her water broke at 22 weeks into her second pregnancy,” reports LifeSite, “and doctors told her and her husband that the child would be unlikely to survive. [Mrs.] Campbell,” reports LifeSite, “justifies her decision to kill her child [by] saying she was sparing her needless suffering. ‘I chose what I believe was the path of least suffering,’” said Mrs. Campbell in the Vogue feature quoted by LifeSite, “‘for myself, my husband, our future children and mostly for the baby inside me.’”

So she contracted for a so-called doctor to induce labor, turn the baby around into breech position, deliver the baby up to the head and then stab her little girl in the back of the neck with scissors and suction out the baby’s brain. (Of course, neither she nor Vogue actually described what she did in such accurate terms.) This act of vicious violence was to spare her baby suffering; right.

Readers who wish to inform Vogue of their opinion of the magazine’s function as a mouthpiece for the abortion industry may contact the Vogue offices via their toll-free customer service line at 1-800-234-2347 or may contact the organ of elitism via electronic mail at [email protected].

Beijing Still Blowing It

BEIJING’s TYRANNICAL ‘ONE-CHILD’ POLICYIS BEING DEFIED, reports Patrick Goodenough of Cybercast News Service (CNSNews.com), by “hundreds of thousands of Chinese. …

“In just one of [Red] China’s 22 provinces alone, Hubei,” writes Mr. Goodenough, “more than 93,000 people violated the controversial population-control policy in 2007, according to the provincial family planning commission.”

Some violators were dismissed from their jobs, reports CNSNews.com, “and 500 members of the Communist Party of China were expelled, the official Xinhua news agency reported. … According to the [US] State Dept.,” notes Mr. Goodenough, “party membership is an unofficial requirement for some jobs … .”

The one-child policy, which promotes sex-selection abortion because of the Chinese cultural preference for sons, is skewing the male-to-female ratio in the Communist Chinese society, and the pogrom against births is coercively aging the population.

“Last week, [Red] China’s statistics bureau released data from a sample census – one percent of the country’s total population,” reports Mr. Goodenough, “showing … the proportion of the population aged 0-14 had dropped by 3.3 percentage points, while that of the 65-plus age group rose by 2.1 percent.”

Basic Biology

Dec. 14, 2007, RNC/Life FaxNotes by Colleen Parro, director, Republican National Coalition for Life

It’s a matter of basic biology, the introduction to the study of human reproduction. Everyone should have learned it at least prior to the third year of high school. Astonishingly, many, if not most, Americans don’t understand it at all. So in covering events related in particular to the use of human embryos for stem cell research, terms like “fertilized egg” or “pre-embryo” are bandied about by the media as if human beings were not involved in the discussion.

The facts are these: Human beings, you and I, have 46 chromosomes in every cell in our bodies, except for the cells capable of generating another human life, the male sperm and female ovum, each having 23 chromosomes.

When a 23-chromosome sperm penetrates a 23-chromosome ovum, a new, individual 46-chromosome single-cell human being comes into existence. No more egg. No more sperm.

That’s it. Simple, isn’t it? Simple but miraculously complex as the little boy or girl, with a DNA structure different and independent from the father or mother, develops through several stages from embryo to birth. Anyone who has given even cursory study to the intricate workings of the human body (consider the structure of the human eye alone) has a hard time denying the hand of a Higher Power in the creation of a human life.

Currently, efforts are underway in Colorado, Michigan, Mississippi, Montana and Georgia to bring ballot initiatives before the voters that would recognize the existence of a human person from the moment of conception. In a column for LifeSiteNews.com (11/27/07), Hilary White pointed out that the facts about when a human being comes into existence have been known for more than 130 years. In 1875, the German zoologist Oskar Hertwig showed definitively that penetration of a spermatozoon into an ovum was the beginning of independent life and that the terms “conception” and “fertilization” are therefore interchangeable terms. Human embryologists have shown that once fertilization has taken place, neither the male nor female sex cells (often misnamed “eggs”), continue to exist.

The abortion lobby is keenly aware that the establishment of the personhood of the unborn child would signal the end to legal abortion in this country. Ballot initiatives like those currently being proposed draw intense and well-funded opposition from the abortion industry and the wealthy individuals and foundations that support it. It’s always a David vs. Goliath struggle, and oftentimes the pro-life side does not succeed. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to give the voters a chance to hear the arguments; sometimes you have to lose a few battles before you win the war.

After all, little boys and girls are at stake because there is no such thing as a “fertilized egg.” Never forget that you were once an embryo.

Advocating for Life: More from the Late Rep. Hyde

LIFE ADVOCACY BRIEFING IS HONORED TO REPRINT EXCERPTS from speeches delivered by the late Rep. Henry J. Hyde during the past 15 years. Here we reprint various quotes we have previously published from Mr. Hyde during House debate.

In debating the Child Custody Protection Act—HR-3682—105th Congress—July 15, 1998:

Why is it helping a young girl by assisting her to kill her unborn child and saddle her for the rest of her life with wondering what her first little baby might have looked like? … I have listened very carefully to this serious debate, and I have not heard one word about the little baby. … If abortion is killing an innocent human being, give some passing concern for that little baby.

In debating the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act—HR-3660—106th Congress—April 5, 2000:

We are knee deep in a culture of death. The cheapening of life is demonstrated in the high school shootings, the coarsening of our national conscience by our entertainment industry, the fact that since Roe v. Wade in 1973, there have been 35 million abortions. … The Declaration of Independence, an awkward document in this debate, proclaims the right to life is an endowment from the Creator and is an inalienable right. … When an abortionist plunges his scissors into the back of the neck of his tiny, squirming, struggling-to-live victim, he has obliterated and utterly, irrevocably destroyed that little infant’s right to life and his human dignity. … So long as we tolerate this dehumanizing procedure, so long as we do not draw a line in the sand, we become guilty accomplices in the slaughter. Lady Macbeth can speak for us when she says, “All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand.” … What crime has this tiny, struggling, four-fifths-born infant committed? The crime of being unwanted. … I recommend my colleagues avert their eyes and take solace in the fact that the torture of partial-birth abortion takes only the time it takes to stab the little baby in the back of the neck and the little flailing arms and legs stiffen at the moment of truth. … In this advanced democracy, in the year 2000, is it our crowning achievement that we have learned to treat people as things? We are not debating policy options. This is a debate about our understanding of human dignity. Our moment in history is marked by a mortal conflict between a culture of life and a culture of death. God put us in the world to do noble things, to love and to cherish our fellow human beings, not to destroy them. Today we must choose sides. … Support this excellent bill. Step back from the abyss.

In debating against the Sanchez Amendment to the Defense Authorization Act—106th Congress—May 18, 2000:

Our military is to defend life, not to exterminate defenseless, powerless, unborn life. I know lots of tough situations occur where a pregnancy is terribly awkward. It can even threaten your health. Those are serious, and we cannot minimize them. But I will tell you what is serious: taking a little life that has a future and exterminating it for any reason other than to save another life.

In debating the Unborn Victims of Violence Act—HR-1997—108th Congress—Feb. 26, 2004:

I assign personhood to a tiny entity, a fertilized egg; I guess it’s very small, even pre-microscopic. But it’s the beginning of human life, and if you deny that, you’re kidding yourself and you’re clinically primitive. … I will suggest to my friends on the other side, you’ll never get rid of this issue as long as there are people who are sensitive to the notion that all human life is precious and deserving of protection – especially the vulnerable, the weak, the small, the defenseless that can’t rise up in the streets, can’t escape, but is dispensable, by your ethic.