Life Advocacy Briefing

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Speaker to Meet Archbishop

HOUSE SPEAKER NANCY PELOSI (D-CA) HAS AGREED to meet with the Roman Catholic Archbishop of San Francisco, George Niederaurer, reports Tim Waggoner for LifeSiteNews.com, concerning her recent public misrepresentations, beginning with her Aug. 24 appearance on NBC-TV’s Meet the Press, of Catholic doctrine on abortion and the fact of when life begins.

Mrs. Pelosi calls herself a Catholic yet holds and promotes radical views on abortion and a variety of cultural issues which differ sharply from the Church’s teachings. Public declaration and promotion of such views is considered scandalous under Catholic canons.

When Archbishop Niederaurer recently “released a public statement agreeing with the 10 US bishops who have already rebuked [Mrs.] Pelosi for her comments,” writes Mr. Waggoner, “he also invited [Rep.] Pelosi to a personal meeting with him to discuss the correct Church teaching on human life.”

Citing the San Francisco Examiner as source, LifeSiteNews reports the Speaker sent Archbishop Niederaurer a letter Sept. 5 indicating “she would ‘welcome the opportunity for our personal conversation and to go beyond our earlier most cordial exchange about immigration and needs of the poor to Church teaching on other significant matters.’”

One of the canons of the Catholic Church, Canon 915, “pertains to the denial of communion to pro-abortion politicians,” notes Mr. Waggoner.  Mrs. Pelosi has persisted in partaking of communion without apparent remorse and has publicly expressed distress at the prospect of being denied. Whether Archbishop Niederaurer will invoke or even raise the withholding of communion from the abortion advocate in his conversation with Mrs. Pelosi is not clear.

The Catholic Archbishop in Denver, Charles Chaput, released a book late last month in which he laid out the following course of action, reports John-Henry Westen for LifeSiteNews, in the event a pro-abortion Catholic politician within his diocese presented him- or herself for communion: “‘As a bishop, I have a duty in charity to help Catholic officials understand and support Church teaching on vital issues. That’s never a matter for public theater; it’s always a matter of direct, private discussion. If that failed, I would ask the official to refrain from receiving Communion. If he still presented himself, then I would publicly ask him to not take Communion and publicly explain why to my people and brother priests. If he still persisted then, and only then, I would withhold Communion from him – because of his deliberate disregard of the rights of other Catholics and the unity of the Church.”

Pro-Life Ads Available

THE PRO-LIFE ARM OF THE U.S. CONFERENCE OF CATHOLIC BISHOPS (USCCB) is offering, free-of-charge, the designs of four print ads on stem cell research and abortion. The ad templates are available, according to Catholic News Agency (CNA), to Catholic “dioceses and other pro-life groups.

“One ad focuses on scientific advances in stem cell research, claiming the discovery of induced pluripotent stem cells (IPS) render obsolete the use of stem cells derived from destroyed human embryos. … Another advertisement discusses the use of adult stem cells in treatments, directing readers to www.stemcellresearch.org,” the definitive Internet-based source of current information on adult stem cell therapies.

Yet another ad is offered in full color and, notes CNA, “examines the permissiveness of abortion laws under Roe v. Wade bearing the word, ‘the human heart begins to beat at 22 days. Roe v. Wade says a doctor can stop it for the next 244. … Have we gone too far?’ The ad directs readers to http://www.secondlookproject.org for more information.”

The final ad takes aim at the abortion lobby’s Freedom of Choice Act (FOCA). The ad “exhorts,” reports CNA, “‘You can’t reduce abortions by promoting abortions. If you agree, oppose the ‘Freedom of Choice Act.’”

The ads are available at www.usccb.org/prolife/media for unaltered printing.

Britain Feting UK’s Sanger

A PIONEER OF EUGENICS BY ABORTION, Marie Stopes, has been chosen for honor on a postage stamp in her native Britain. The follower of Adolf Hitler was the British equivalent of Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood. Britain’s version of PP is named “Marie Stopes International” and works notoriously and tirelessly to suppress non-Caucasian populations in underdeveloped countries.

Ms. Stopes’s life work pushed eugenics, a Hitlerian doctrine defining some human lives as not worth living. Though Hitler is long gone and Nazism defeated and disgraced, the eugenics doctrine has arisen again in the abortion lobby and in elitist circles, making it possible for such a notorious hater and disdainer to be honored now by the British government.

“Marie Stopes was a major figure,” writes Hilary White for LifeSiteNews.com, “in normalizing eugenics doctrines in Britain and abroad, one result of which has been that, under current British legislation, a child deemed by a doctor to have a ‘serious’ defect may be legally killed by abortion up to the end of the natural gestation period.” (As distressing as that may seem – and is – reality in America, under the edict of the 1973 Supreme Court, is even more radical, permitting abortion for any reason to the day of birth.)

“Following [Ms.] Stopes’s death in 1958,” reports LifeSiteNews, “a large part of her personal fortune went to the Eugenics Society, the organization that lives today as the Galton Institute. The Galton Institute,” adds LifeSiteNews, “continues to promote eugenics through artificial reproduction techniques such as in vitro fertilization, pre-implantation genetic diagnosis and direct manipulation of human beings and their genome at the embryonic stage.”

The disturbing news that such a person would be featured positively on a postage stamp demonstrates yet again the importance of national elections and the cultural slide of western civilization.

Alaska Hospital Seeks to ‘Off’ Patient

AN ATTORNEY IN ALASKA HAS FACED DOWN THE DEATH-DEALERS at an Anchorage-area hospital, securing an agreement to continue to feed a hospitalized patient rather than killing her by dehydration.

“‘No one should be allowed to decide that an innocent life is worthless,’” said Alliance Defense Fund-allied attorney Kenneth Kirk, quoted last week in an ADF news release. “‘We regret the tragic events that have befallen this woman and are pleased to have been able to help her husband protect her life. He should have been able to see that his wife was cared for,’” said Mr. Kirk, “‘without having to fight hospital staff who wanted to starve her to death.’”

The woman’s husband filed suit against one doctor and the hospital in May, reports ADF, “to keep the medical staff from removing his wife’s life support, which would have terminated her life. … The motion,” notes ADF, “was granted, and the Alaska Supreme Court issued a temporary restraining order on May 30 prohibiting the hospital from discontinuing life support pending appeal … . The hospital then determined that it would remove her feeding tube instead,” reports ADF, “which would have caused the woman to starve to death” – a stubborn circumvention of the court ruling which we at Life Advocacy find astounding.

“Following additional proceedings and effortsby [Mr.] Kirk,” reports the ADF release, “the hospital changed positions and will now allow continuation of the patient’s nutrition, hydration and pain treatment.”

Said ADF senior counsel Joe Infranco, quoted in the ADF release, “‘A man is caring for the wife he loves. A hospital should be working with him, not against him – giving every benefit of the doubt regarding life.’”

Quoteworthy

Syndicated columnist Kathleen Parker, in a column excerpt cited Sept. 5, 2008, by Center for Individual Freedom (CFIF) as its quote of the week: “Should Palin and McCain prevail come November, feminism can curtsy and treat herself to a hard-earned vacation. The greatest achievement of feminism won’t be that a woman reached the vice presidency but that a woman no longer needed feminists to get there.”

Standing Truth on Its Head

Sept. 5, 2008, Friday Fax by Samantha Singson for Catholic Family & Human Rights Institute (C-Fam)

Last week, the [UN] Office for the High Commissioner on Human Rights, which is responsible for overseeing treaty compliance committees, released the concluding observations of the most recent sessions of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) Committee and Human Rights Committee (HRC). Both committees used the July sessions to pressure countries appearing before them to liberalize abortion laws, even though no UN human rights treaty mentions abortion.

The HRC, which monitors state compliance with the International Covenant on Civil & Political Rights (ICCPR), told Ireland that it “should bring its abortion laws into line with the Covenant” so that women “would not have to resort to illegal or unsafe abortion that could put their lives at risk or to abortions abroad.” The HRC cited Article 6 of the ICCPR, which states “every human being has the inherent right to life,” as justification for the concluding observation.

Since 2003, HRC has pressured at least 14 countries to legalize abortion or liberalize laws by misinterpreting the ICCPR provisions like the “right to life.” Abortion rights advocates claimed victory in the HRC in 2005, when the Committee made an unprecedented ruling against Peru for allegedly violating the rights of a woman who was denied permission by the government to obtain an abortion.

According to an analysis by Focus on the Family’s Thomas Jacobson, who has been monitoring the work of the CEDAW Committee and the HRC, “The HRC now interprets this article to mean that the ‘right to life’ of a pregnant woman is violated if she is not permitted to terminate the life of her preborn child. Pregnancy has come to be viewed as life-threatening (instead of life-giving). To the HRC, the ‘right to life’ has become the ‘right’ to abortion.”

No binding UN treaty includes a right to abortion. Observers are becoming increasingly concerned, however, by how mainstream committees like the HRC are following the CEDAW trend of misinterpreting treaty articles and questioning nations about their abortion laws. Over the last 10 years, CEDAW has pressured over 60 nations on abortion.

At the last CEDAW session alone, CEDAW Committee members questioned Lithuania, Nigeria, Finland, the United Kingdom and Slovakia on their abortion laws, using lowering maternal mortality as a pretext. CEDAW Committee members blasted Lithuania on a draft law which would limit when and in what circumstances abortions are allowed. Committee members also sharply criticized Slovakia’s concordat with the Holy See, which protects the right of health care workers to conscientiously object to participating in abortions.

While the rulings of treaty bodies are technically non-binding, abortion activists have brought litigation throughout the world citing the ruling of UN human rights treaty bodies, like the CEDAW Committee, in challenging laws against abortion. Such arguments helped convince the Colombian constitutional court to liberalize that country’s restrictions on the practice.

Both the CEDAW Committee and HRC are scheduled to hold their next sessions in October in Geneva.

Making the Case for Defunding Planned Parenthood

July 9, 2008, special order speeches in the U.S. House; source: Congressional Record. Please note: We at Life Advocacy Briefing are not expecting that this Congress will actually take up the Pence Amendment to defund Planned Parenthood in this election year; nevertheless, we find the “special order” speeches a compelling tool for educating the American people about the injustice in the massive subsidies taxpayers are forced to remit to Planned Parenthood. This week’s excerpt is by Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-CO).

REP. LAMBORN: … I rise with my colleague, Rep. Chris Smith, and others to strongly oppose funding Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers with federal taxpayer dollars.

Today in America, in order for a minor girl to receive an aspirin at school or to pierce her ears or to get a tattoo, she must not only inform her parents, but they must give written permission or be there in person. Shouldn’t mothers and fathers be involved in their daughter’s decision about something as major as getting an abortion?

Abortion is a major surgical procedure. It is dangerous and wrong to cut parents out of this significant medical decision. Over half the states have realized the necessity of parental involvement in this life-changing decision and have passed laws requiring parental involvement. In polls, 80 percent or more of Americans want parental involvement in a decision by their minor girl in getting an abortion.

Planned Parenthood and the abortion industry, however, seek to remove minors from the guidance of their parents. For example, Planned Parenthood illegally performed an abortion on a 14-year-old girl in Ohio without the knowledge or consent of her parents. As a result, this 14-year-old girl, a victim of statutory rape, had no guidance or support besides that of the abortionist and the 21-year-old boyfriend who had impregnated her.

Planned Parenthood is actively working against parental involvement laws. They recently worked with others to defeat a parental notification initiative in California, which barely lost. They want to keep mothers and fathers in the dark while their daughters undergo a life-changing event alone.

For these reasons, the federal government has absolutely no business funding Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers, especially not with our taxpayer dollars. Congress must pass HR-4133, which would prohibit federal funding for these abortion providers.

I urge Members of Congress to think about their own daughters and ask, Wouldn’t you want to be there with your daughter when she’s faced with this life-changing decision?