Pro Life Campaign

Lord David Alton corresponds with Your Rights Right Now ‘endorsing’ organisations

2011-05-06T14:34:00.000-07:00

The Your Rights Right Now group has made a submission to the UN Human Rights Council which calls for abortion to be made available in Ireland.

Some Irish organisations had put their name to this submission and have been reported as ‘endorsing’ the Submission. Since the Pro Life Campaign and others have raised this issue, a number of organisations have completely withdrawn their endorsements of the submission. However others have sought to defend their inclusion as an ‘endorsing’ organisation on the basis that the report included a disclaimer and that the Your Rights Right Now submission merely calls for ‘clarification’ of the abortion law rather than legalisation of abortion.

Many people have corresponded with the various organisations to challenge these points, one of whom is a member of the House of Lords and long-time advocate for the unborn Lord David Alton of Liverpool.

In response to the contention that the Your Rights Right Now submission did not in fact promote abortion, Lord Alton quotes the paragraph of the report itself which said “By restricting abortion, the State disproportionately interferes with women’s rights to health, privacy, life, freedom from inhuman or degrading treatment and non-discrimination” and he states “Here is not the place to debate the truth of this statement which I believe to be groundless and profoundly ideological. I quote it merely to illustrate the position of Your Rights Now draftsmen with regard to abortion. Restricting the killing of another human being is here described as an “interference” – a far from neutral statement. I feel, therefore, that it is reasonable to assert that any attempt to claim that Your Rights Now is anything other than a pro-abortion institution is disingenuous”

Regarding the recommendation in the Your Rights Right Now Submission to “immediately repeal the 1861 Offences Against the Persons Act”, Lord Alton states “This is the Act which still forms the basis upon which abortion remains illegal in Ireland. Repealing it removes restrictions on abortion. To those who argue that Your Rights Right Now calls for clarification as opposed to legalisation of abortion I would pose a question as to what they feel the abolition of legal restrictions on abortion would achieve if not permissible abortion?”

In response to the contention that the disclaimer at the start of the Your Rights Right Now report is sufficient to justify the ‘endorsements’ by Irish organisations of the submission, Lord Alton says “..an endorsement (as I have always understood it) denotes support. Certainly, the strong claim in the Your Rights Now website that “more than 100 organisations have already signed up to the report” surely indicates that said organisations are pleased with its contents. He also says “In the absence of a clarification as to which parts of the report reflect the policies of which group, endorsees ought to be alert to the fact that their approval of the report as a whole implies support for its radically pro abortion stance”

He continues “To take an analogy, I highly doubt that, if this report contained a line recommending that we reinstitute slavery or the death penalty, organisations would feel they could be proximate to such reprehensible practices, even if the document were otherwise a wonderful reflection of that organisation’s policies”

You can read the full text of Lord David Alton’s excellent correspondence with Your Rights Right Now groups here.

Thanks to his intervention and that of a significant number of people throughout Ireland emailing and telephoning the ‘endorsing’ organisations, the Your Rights Right Now report has been seriously undermined. We expect that organisations will continue to withdraw their support of the submission over coming days and weeks.

You can view the organisations that have withdrawn their support of the Your Rights Right Now report and download the report here

Your Rights Right Now submission to UN Human Rights Council “has lost all credibility” after falsely implying support of other groups for abortion

2011-04-29T14:31:00.000-07:00

The recent submission to the UN Human Rights Council from the umbrella group Your Rights Right Now is now completely compromised according to the Pro Life Campaign following the revelation that many of the groups who signed up to the submission were not consulted about the section endorsing abortion. In recent days, several high profile organisations, including Trócaire and the Children’s Rights Alliance, have distanced themselves from the submission over its abortion stance.

Commenting on the latest revelations, Dr Ruth Cullen of the Pro Life Campaign said:

"The Your Rights Right Now submission has lost all credibility. Given the highly sensitive nature of the abortion issue, it is inexcusable that the authors of the report did not see fit to inform the various NGOs about the controversial section on abortion.

It is clear that the main organisers behind the Your Rights Right Now alliance exploited the goodwill of reputable organisations to further a pro-abortion agenda. This is shameful behaviour and thankfully it has now been exposed."

Regarding the specific call from Your Rights Right Now for abortion to be made available in Ireland, Dr Cullen said:

"It makes absolutely no sense for a self-professed human rights group to be advocating the denial of the most basic human right of all – the right to life.

It is also an affront to genuine human rights to ignore all the latest peer reviewed research highlighting the negative consequences of abortion for women and the fact that Ireland, without abortion, is a world leader in terms of safety for pregnant women."

Ends

Abortion advocacy group falsely claims support of other groups in UN Submission

2011-04-24T14:13:00.000-07:00

The newly formed Your Rights Right Now group has made a submission to the UN which calls for abortion to be made

available in Ireland.

A significant number of Irish non-governmental organisations have put their name to this submission, many of which appear to be unaware that their name is being used to promote abortion. Since the Pro Life Campaign and others have raised this issue, the following organisations have withdrawn their endorsements of the Submission;

Trócaire, Crosscare Migrant Project, the Vincentian Refugee Centre, A.C.T.S Transport, EFL Ireland, A.P.S., The National Council for the Blind, Social Inclusion Ireland, and the Integration and Support Unit for New Communities.

Additionally, the Childrens Rights Alliance (an alliance of over 90 non-governmental organisations in Ireland) has stated that they do not support the call for abortion which is contained in Section 12 of the Submission.

However many other groups have yet to clarify their position.

It appears clear that the main organisers behind the Your Rights Right Now report are exploiting the goodwill of reputable organisations to further a pro-abortion agenda. However, given the fact that many of the organisations which are listed as endorsing the report are involved in separate areas of advocacy, we expect that there will be many more groups opting out of the report over the coming days.

We urge those who are interested in ensuring that a report prepared by an ideologically driven minority does not gain credibility to contact the endorsing organisations and request clarification on this matter.

The list of organisations which endorsed the report was removed from the Your Rights Right Now website on Wednesday 27th April after a number of groups contacted the authors seeking to withdraw their endorsements. However you can download the report here

Below are the email addresses of some of the main groups which have yet to withdraw their endorsements

Organisation Name Email

Adoption Rights Alliance info@adoptionrightsalliance.com

A-Z Children's Charity info@azkids.ie

Barnardos info@barnardos.ie

Comhlámh info@comhlamh.org

Disability Federation of Ireland info@disability-federation.ie

Dóchas anna@dochas.ie

Educate Together info@educatetogether.ie

Foroige info@foroige.ie

Friends of Londiani, Kenya info@friendsoflondiani.com

Galway Traveller Movement maria@gtmtrav.ie

Habitat for Humanity Ireland info@Habitatireland.Ie

Immigrant Council of Ireland admin@immigrantcouncil.ie

Irish Association of Social Workers office@iasw.ie

Irish National Teachers' Organisation feedback@into.ie

Irish Refugee Council info@irishrefugeecouncil.ie

Irish Senior Citizen's Parliament seniors@iol.ie

Irish Translators and Interpreters itiasecretary@gmail.com

ISPCC ispcc@ispcc.ie

Mercy Justice Office mercyjusticesc@eircom.net

Ruhama admin@ruhama.ie

Simon Community info@simoncommunity.com

Somali Irish FA somali-irishfriendship@hotmail.com

Teachers' Union of Ireland tui@tui.ie

Treoir info@treoir.ie

YMCA Cork ymcaroi@indigo.ie

Pro Life Campaign makes submission to UN Human Rights Council and challenges Your Rights Right Now submission

2011-04-24T14:07:00.000-07:00

The Pro Life Campaign has a made a submission to the UN Human Rights Council, which in October 2011 is due to examine Ireland’s record on human rights as part of its Universal Periodic Review.

Among other things, the PLC calls on the UN group to recognise abortion as a violation of human rights and “to acknowledge Ireland’s outstanding record of care in protecting the lives of women during pregnancy while at the same time affording legal protection to unborn babies.”

The submission takes issue with the claims of pro-choice groups and points out that the recent European Court of Human Rights’ decision in A, B and C v. Ireland “does not require Ireland to introduce legislation authorising abortion.”

The Pro Life Campaign cites the fact that “the judges in the X case heard no medical evidence” and that “any revisiting of the X decision would need to take on board the evidence from new studies that abortion involves significant risks for some women.”

Responding to the recently published “Your Rights. Right Now” submission to the United Nations from a coalition of non-governmental organisations, calling for abortion to be made available in Ireland, Dr Ruth Cullen of the Pro Life campaign said:

"The Your Rights. Right Now report regards abortion as a human right. It’s an incredibly strange and narrow definition of human rights to deny the humanity of the unborn child throughout the entire nine months of pregnancy. How can genuine human rights be protected if we ignore the most basic right of all, namely the right to life?

The pro-choice movement is very vocal in pushing abortion legislation but shy away when confronted with the latest peer reviewed evidence showing the negative effects of abortion for women and the fact that Ireland, without abortion, is renowned for being a world leader in terms of safety for pregnant women.

Pro-choice groups are doing their best to create the impression that Ireland is obliged to legislate for abortion following the recent European court ruling on abortion. This is simply not true. The court told Ireland to address the issue but it didn’t instruct the Government to legislate for abortion. The judgement fully respects the right of the Irish people to determine how the lives of unborn children should be protected."

Ends

William Reville, 'Euthanasia will always be cheaper than multidisciplinary care of the dying'

2011-03-11T01:49:00.000-08:00

In an alarming article documenting the abandonment by contemporary medicine of the Hippocratic oath and the rise in its place of a cost-saving mentality, headed Worrying undercurrent of economics in debate on euthanasia, published in The Irish Times on 16th December 2010, ethical medical commentator, biochemist William Reville, observes 'we hear more and more arguments in favour of euthanasia. Whatever about other dimensions, there is a strong economic undercurrent to this debate. ... Euthanasia will always be cheaper than multidisciplinary care of the dying.' And it is not just the elderly who are vulnerable to the new economically driven pressure for euthanasia. 'today, medical technology is very effective. Not only can medicine heal, it can improve healthy but “sub-optimal” bodies using a wide range of technologies'.

You can read the article here

Programme For Government and the Pro-Life issue

2011-03-11T01:27:00.000-08:00

The week before the General Election, Fine Gael gave a written commitment to the Pro-Life Campaign stating it is “opposed to the legalisation of abortion” and “Fine Gael is opposed to research conducted on human embryos, and favours alternative stem cell research that does not involve human embryos such as adult stem cell and umbilical cord research.” The Fine Gael statement also gave a commitment that “women in pregnancy will receive whatever treatments are necessary to safeguard their lives, and that the duty of care to preserve the life of the baby will also be upheld.”

Now that they are in coalition with Labour, Fine Gael must be firmly encouraged to hold to their commitments. The Fine Gael commitment to pro-life values reflects the view of the majority as evidenced by the latest Red C poll showing 68% of the Irish public support constitutional protection for the unborn.

The Labour Party, on the other hand, is still relying uncritically on the increasingly outdated X case decision allowing abortion right up to birth, which heard no medical evidence and which has been over taken by the ever-growing balance of medical research showing negative consequences of abortion for women.

The Pro Life Campaign also acknowledges the significance of the written commitment it received from Fianna Fáil.

Starting over a year ago, the Pro Life Campaign reached out to involve not only its supporters but the wider pro-life community by means of an intensive nationwide billboard, newspaper advertising, online and leafleting campaign urging voters to only vote for candidates and parties willing to give a public commitment to protect life. The campaign also included an email and physical postcard campaign to election candidates and party leaders. The valuable pro-life commitments received from both Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil are a tribute to the thousands of people whether involved in formal politics or as committed citizens who are prepared to work hard and speak out in defence of life.

The challenge now is to stay focussed to ensure that those in Government who favour legislation allowing abortion and embryo-destructive research don’t succeed. We have a positive message to bring to the decision-making process - our new Government has a golden opportunity now to make Ireland a centre of excellence for ethical stem cell research that does not involve the destruction of human embryos, and to consolidate Ireland's ranking as world-leader in safety for women in pregnancy, by taking on board the studies showing the negative effects of abortion for women, and breaking through the ‘pro-choice’ denial of the harm and heartbreak abortion involves for many women and the injustice of the unborn children's lives taken.

Sizeable majority supports legal protection of unborn child

2011-02-16T04:37:00.000-08:00

Comments by Dr Berry Kiely at the Pro Life Campaign Press Conference,

Buswells Hotel, Dublin, 12.00pm, 16th February 2011

The latest research on abortion shows a sizeable majority of the public supports legal protection for the unborn child, while at the same time ensuring that women receive all necessary medical interventions in pregnancy.

The Pro Life Campaign commissioned Red C to carry out the survey on a quota controlled sample of 1,025 people aged 18+ between 8^th – 10^th February 2011.

Question 1 reads as follows:

Are you in favour of, or opposed to, constitutional protection for the unborn that prohibits abortion but allows the continuation of the existing practice of intervention to save a mother’s life in accordance with Irish medical ethics?

The finding shows that 68% support constitutional protection for the unborn, 26% oppose it and 5% don’t know or have no opinion. When the don’t knows/no opinions are excluded, 73% of the public support legal protection and 27% are opposed to it.

The Pro Life Campaign believes that the new poll findings confirm the existence of widespread public support for an approach to protecting the unborn child based on the important distinction between ensuring women receive all necessary medical treatments in pregnancy and prohibiting abortion, where the life of the baby is deliberately targeted.

The success of the Irish medical profession in providing the treatments women need in pregnancy without recourse to an abortion regime is confirmed yet again in the latest Report on Maternal Mortality [1] by the World Health Organisation which shows that Ireland, without legalised abortion, is the safest country for pregnant women, out of 172 countries.

Today’s poll finding comes in the wake of the European Court of Human Rights judgment in A, B & C -v- Ireland which led to calls from some politicians and abortion advocacy groups for abortion to be made available in Ireland. The judgement, however, does not require us to legislate for abortion but leaves it up to Ireland to decide its own laws on abortion.

Question 2 reads as follows:

In a recent Supreme Court decision, judges said that human embryos are not protected by the Constitution but deserve respect and their protection is a matter for the Government. Do you think the Government should legislate, or not, to protect human embryos in the area of stem cell research and assisted human reproduction?

The poll findings show that 62% support legal protection of the human embryo, 27% oppose it and 11% don’t know or have no opinion. When the don’t knows/no opinions are excluded, 69% of the public support legal protection and 31% are opposed to it.

This finding is also very reassuring. The fact that it is adult stem cell research, involving no destruction of human embryos, that is yielding all the breakthroughs we read about on an almost daily basis proves it is possible to work towards a win-win solution for both ethics and science in the area of stem cell research.

Before Election Day, the Pro Life Campaign calls on candidates and parties to state where they stand on the right to life of the unborn child and on legal protection for the human embryo. Voters are entitled to know where candidates and parties stand on these vitally important issues. How we treat the most vulnerable defines how committed we are as a society to an authentic vision of human rights.

Ends

[1] Report on Maternal Mortality by the World Health Organisation, UNICEF, UNFPA and the World Bank (2007, 2010)

RTÉ doesn't report Philadelphia doctor, K Gosnell, charged for killing babies surviving his late term abortions

2011-01-28T07:32:00.000-08:00

Dr. Joseph McCarroll PhD
Chairperson
Pro Life Campaign

In Philadelphia, Dr K Gosnell, a licensed family doctor and practising abortionist, has been charged with killing one women during an abortion, and seven babies who survived his late-term abortions.

Like the dog in the Sherlock Holmes story, the curious thing about RTÉ's coverage of this story is that RTÉ didn't cover this story.

It was covered in the Daily Mail, ABC, CBS and AOL. But not by RTÉ.

It was covered by the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal and Associated Press, but not by RTÉ.

Searches on RTÉ's website under world news yielded the following: 'Your search yielded no results.' Indeed.

This is an important story for several reasons. It shines a national and international searchlight into what is involved in later term abortions. It is an example of the way in which abortion targets poor and minority women.

But it also gives the lie to the abortion advocates false claim that it is they who care for women by ensuring the availability of safe and legal abortion for poor women who couldn't otherwise afford them.

The Grand Jury Report shows how pro-choice political pressure brought blocked the implementation of State rules requiring state inspection s oif abortion clinics on the grounds that such inspections would deter poor women from accessing abortion.

As Marian Wang reveals in her piece for ProPublica,

'In the mid-1990s, the administration of Pennsylvania governor Tom Ridge, a pro-choice Republican, ended regular inspections of abortion clinics—a policy that continued until just last year.

According to the Grand Jury Report released this week by Philadelphia prosecutors, Pennsylvania health officials deliberately chose not to enforce laws to ensure that abortion clinics provide the same level of care as other medical service providers.

The Pennsylvania Department of Health abruptly decided, for political reasons, to stop inspecting abortion clinics at all. The politics in question were not anti-abortion, but pro.

With the change of administration from Governor Casey to Governor Ridge, officials concluded that inspections would be “putting a barrier up to women” seeking abortions.

“Even nail salons in Pennsylvania are monitored more closely for client safety,” the report states. "Without regular inspections, providers like Gosnell continue to operate; unlawful and dangerous third-trimester abortions go undetected; and many women, especially poor women, suffer."

According to the report, the policy change occurred after 1993 when attorneys under the administration of then-governor Tom Ridge "interpreted the same regulations that had permitted annual inspections for years to no longer authorize those inspections." Thereafter, only inspections triggered by complaints were authorized.

You can read the Grand Jury's Report here

You can read the Associated Press article here

You can read the New York Times article here

You can read Marian Wang's ProPublica article here

A search in the World section on RTÉ's website, however, yielded the following:

'Your search for Dr K Gosnell, abortionist charged with 8 murders in Philadelphia did not return any results.'

They sure got that right. For this ideological censorship we pay our TV licences.

Pro Life Campaign billboards go up across the country

2011-01-28T07:05:00.000-08:00

On billboards across the country, between now and Election Day, the Pro Life Campaign is bringing its pro-life message to the voters -

Ireland, without abortion, is the safest country in the world for pregnant women. Let's keep it that way.

The billboard references the latest WHO,Unicef Report on Maternal Mortality (2007,2010) which shows that, of the 172 nations where figures were available, Ireland leads the world in safety for pregnant women. The message is supported by a dramatic black and white photograph of a young mother protecting her child.

If you see one while you're motoring around the country and have a thought on them you'd like to share, give us a call us at 01 662 9275, but not while driving! And let your local General Election candidates know if you see one in your area - nothing concentrates the mind like a billboard.

Ireland, with no abortion, is the safest country in the world for women in pregnancy - Let's use our vote so we keep it that way

2010-12-19T23:45:00.000-08:00

After the European Court of Human Right’s decision in

A B and C, where do we stand?

Dr. Joseph McCarroll PhD

Chairperson of the Pro Life Campaign

Our national office has been taking calls since yesterday’s European Court of Human Rights ruling in A, B and C v Ireland asking what it means, where do we go from here, and what steps do we need to be taking right now to progress the pro-life cause.

It’s important to make a couple of things clear – which may not have been clear from yesterday’s reporting of the decision.

Ireland does not have to legalise abortion because of the ruling

In the considered view of Professor William Binchy, the most important point is that the judgment does not require Ireland to introduce legislation authorising abortion. On the contrary, it fully respects the entitlement of the Irish people to determine legal policy on protecting the lives of unborn children.

Article 40.3.3 says the State should pass laws protecting the unborn’s right to life. We need to recall how we got here. In 1983, the Irish People voted to insert into the Irish Constitution Article 40.3.3 that said the State acknowledged the right to life of the unborn child as equal to the right to life of the mother. It also said the State ‘guarantees in its laws to respect, and, as far as practicable, by its laws to defend and vindicate that right.”

Politicians didn’t bring in such laws, fearing pro-life voters at the polls and the pro-abortion voices in the media

But the Oireachtas since then did not bring in such laws - the politicians were unwilling to bring them forward. They were aware that a consistent majority among the general public wanted clear abortion laws so any politician taking an opposite view ran the risk of paying a high penalty in votes lost at the ballot box.

On the other hand, the politicians were also aware that the dominant voices in the media were largely pro-abortion, so politicians taking a pro-life view ran the risk of paying a high price on the box in the corner of the living room.

18 years on, the medical assumptions underpinning the Supreme Court’s decision in the X case are outdated. It was left to the Courts to address the issue in the X case in 1992. In Professor Binchy’s words, “It is crucial to note that the judges in the X case heard no medical evidence.” The evidence over the past 18 years contradicts the medical assumptions of the X case decision.[1]

In the years since the ruling, the evidence has steadily built up confirming the opposite of what the judges had assumed - women who have abortions are more likely to commit suicide than women who continue with their pregnancy.[2]

The Supreme Court’s X decision has to be revisited and revised. To clear the way for the kind of laws protecting the unborn that Article 40.3.3 calls for, the Supreme Court’s medically out-of-date judgment of eighteen years ago has to be revisited and revised. Again, to quote Professor Binchy’s words,

“The Irish people must now make a choice. If they were to choose to endorse the Supreme Court decision in X, this would involve legalising abortion contrary to existing medical practice and the best evidence of medical research. If on the other hand, the Irish people choose to endorse the current medical practice, they will be ensuring the continuation of Ireland’s world-renowned safety record for mothers and babies during pregnancy.

Any revisiting of the X case decision would need to take on board the evidence from these new studies that abortion involves significant risks for some women. Based on the current state of medical evidence alone, it would be irresponsible simply to introduce legislation along the lines of the X ruling as it would put at risk the mother’s life as well as taking the baby’s”

So where does the pro-life community go from here?

Quite simply, we go to the politicians and let them know we are pro-life and that, in the forthcoming General Election, we will only be voting for Parties and Candidates with a clear public commitment that they will not introduce or support legislation providing for abortion to be carried out here.

Starting with … the Pro-Life Campaign’s initiative to send postcards to your local politicians. Click here to send yours.

The political reality is this – the ECHR ruling is as was widely expected, and it was in anticipation of just such a ruling that the Pro Life Campaign started rolling out its political initiative to build up pressure on local politicians using postcards stating our voting intentions as pro-life voters.

Now that the decision is out and the election only months away, we need to redouble our efforts to see that everyone we know who is pro-life sends these postcards to their own local politicians.

This is how real political change comes about – by showing one local politician after another that there is a palpable dividend for them in giving you a public commitment to support your demand, and a political cost to failing to do so.

The Pro Life Campaign sees the A, B and C ruling as an opportunity for the pro-life community to bring home to their local politicians the breadth of pro-life commitment in their constituency. Coming only months before a General Election, it is an opportunity not to be missed.

To see Professor William Binchy’s Statement click here

To read and send our online postcard to your local politicians, click here

To donate to the Pro Life Campaign – we really need your support now more than ever, please click here

[1] [David M. Fergusson, L. John Horwood and Joseph M. Boden, "Abortion and mental health disorders: evidence from a 30-year longitudinal study," British Journal of Psychiatry (2008), 2008, pp. 444-451. ‘Position Statement on Women’s Mental Health in Relation to Induced Abortion, Royal College of Psychiatrists’, UK (2008)]

[2] [Mika Gissler, Cynthia Berg, Marie Helene Bouvier-Colle and Pierre Buekens, ‘Injury deaths, suicides and homicides associated with pregnancy, in Finland, European Journal of Public Health 2005 15 (5): 459-463]

European Court of Human Rights finding in the case of A B and C v. Ireland must respect human life at all stages of development.

2010-12-19T23:36:00.000-08:00

Remarks by Professor William Binchy at the

Pro Life Campaign Press Conference

Buswells Hotel, Dublin 2

12.30pm, 16^th December 2010

Today’s judgment from the European Court of Human Rights will require detailed analysis over coming days but some clear points emerge immediately. The most important is that the judgment does not require Ireland to introduce legislation authorising abortion. On the contrary, it fully respects the entitlement of the Irish people to determine legal policy on protecting the lives of unborn children. The Irish people must now make a choice. If they were to choose to endorse the Supreme Court decision in X, this would involve legalising abortion contrary to existing medical practice and the best evidence of medical research. If on the other hand, the Irish people choose to endorse the current medical practice, they will be ensuring the continuation of Ireland’s world renowned safety record for mothers and babies during pregnancy.

The evidence over the past 18 years contradicts the medical assumptions of the X case decision. [1] [2] It is crucial to note that the judges in the X case heard no medical evidence. In the years since the ruling, the evidence has steadily built up confirming the opposite of what the judges had assumed - women who have abortions are more likely to commit suicide than women who continue with their pregnancy. [3]

The suggestion that because of this country’s pro-life ethos pregnant women are denied necessary medical treatments is simply not true. In fact,

Ireland is a world leader in safety for pregnant mothers. The latest UN report on the safety of mothers during pregnancy found, of all 172 countries for which estimates are given,

Ireland

leads the world when it comes to safety for pregnant women.[4]

Women are safer in Ireland when pregnant than in countries like Britain and Holland, which permit abortion on demand. Given our record in maternal care, the question has to be asked, why are some people proposing to blur the time-honoured distinction between necessary medical treatments in pregnancy and the deliberate targeting of the baby in the womb with the aim of ending its life?

The most recent opinion poll findings show that 70% of the public support constitutional protection for the unborn,13% oppose it and 16% don’t know or have no opinion.[5]

What marks this finding out from polls showing support for abortion is the distinction it makes between necessary medical treatments in pregnancy and induced abortion, where the aim of the procedure is to target the life of the unborn child.

By all means, let us debate the abortion issue openly, honestly and with all the facts in front of us. But equally, we cannot shy away from the implications of what legal abortion would involve and the brutal reality of abortion, legal up to birth, in countries like

Britain

What’s at stake in this debate is the value of life, and the sad experience is that once laws permitting abortion are introduced, they diminish the society’s respect for the inherent value of every human life, born or unborn.

What we need now is a calm, respectful national discussion, in which the latest medical and scientific evidence is fully considered leading to a solution at a Constitutional level, which will ensure the full protection of all human beings, mothers and unborn children, on the basis of respect for their equal dignity and worth.

ENDS

[1] David M. Fergusson, L. John Horwood and Joseph M. Boden, "Abortion and mental health disorders: evidence from a 30-year longitudinal study," The British Journal of Psychiatry (2008), 2008, pp. 444-451

[2] Position Statement on Women’s Mental Health in Relation to Induced Abortion, Royal College of Psychiatrists, UK (2008)

[3] The European Journal of Public Health 2005 15 (5): 459-463, Injury deaths, suicides and homicides associated with pregnancy,

in Finland by Mika Gissler, Cynthia Berg, Marie Helene Bouvier-Colle and Pierre Buekens.

[4] Report on Maternal Mortality by World Health Organisation, UNICEF, UNFPA and the World Bank, (2007, 2010)

[5] Millward Brown Lansdowne survey on a quota controlled sample of 950 people aged 18+ between 27th January and 6th February 2010.

Donegal By Election - Use Your Vote to Protect Human Life

2010-11-10T15:15:00.000-08:00

The Donegal South West constituency by-election will take place on Thursday 25th November 2010.

The Pro Life Campaign urges those who believe in the right to life and who will be voting in this by-election to only vote for candidates or parties with a record of defending life from its earliest beginnings.

The Pro Life Campaign will be seeking the views of each candidate in the by-election. We will then publish the answers from each candidate on this website and via our Facebook and Twitterpages.

The threats to unborn human life at present in Ireland are as grave as Ireland has ever faced. The Supreme Court has ruled in the R-v-R case last december that the lives of human embryos in clinics or laboratories are not protected under Article 40.3.3 of our Constitution. The Government is preparing new legislation on this and unless pro-life people act now, we could be faced with legislation allowing the destruction of human embryos in clinics and laboratories. And it is possible that the outcome of the A, B & C -v- Ireland case in the European Court of Human Rights will trigger a new push for legislation allowing abortions to be carried out in Ireland.

It's essential that pro-life people send a strong and united message to our politicians telling them that our vote cannot be taken for granted and urging them to protect human life from its fragile beginnings.

To inform yourself of the stance of the various candidates and parties in the forthcoming election, visit our website before voting or follow us on Facebook or Twitter.

Chinese mother forced to abort baby in eighth month of pregnancy

2010-11-10T15:10:00.000-08:00

We have all heard of China's 'one child policy' but have we ever thought through how it translates into family life? Have we made the imaginative effort to feel how it would be to live as a family under such a regime? Maybe we imagine we would be forced to listen to a lecture by an earnest official? Surely they wouldn't break into a family home and drag a pregnant woman out the door screaming and kicking, bring her to hospital and forcibly inject her to kill her baby?

On October 10th, in southwest China, Xiao Aiying, who was eight months pregnant, was put through just such an experience of assault, abduction and forced injection to punish her and her husband for having a baby, and intimidate others into obeying this obscene law.

Click here to watch the two minute news report which features a profoundly disturbing interview with Aiying's husband.

Major pro-life victory at Council of Europe. Ireland's Senator Rónán Mullen plays key role

2010-10-08T04:51:00.000-07:00

Yesterday evening, in a dramatic surprise victory spearheaded by Luca Volonté, Chairperson of the European People's Party group in the Council of Europe, and Ireland's independent Senator Rónán Mullen, an attack on doctors' and nurses' right of conscientious objection to performing abortions was roundly defeated.

The attack was contained in a Resolution proposed by Christine McCafferty of the UK Socialist Group based on the Report for which she had been the Rapporteur. It proposed draconian limitations on the freedom of conscience which has always been recognised by law as a sacrosanct right of doctors, nurses and other healthcare professionals, and a cornerstone of the trust we have in them to act according to their honest conviction as to what is really in their patient's interests.

The McCafferty Resolution, which was widely expected to be carried, would have put pressure on Council of Europe Member States to bring in measures requiring healthcare professionals to perform or facilitate abortions or be officially blacklisted by the State.

In a shock reversal, however, the interventions co-ordinated and led by Luca Volonté, Senator Mullen and other Council of Europe colleagues turned the tide of opinion and in the dry words of the official record,

'At the end of a debate on the subject during which the text presented by the Committee on Social Affairs was substantially amended, the adopted resolution states that "no person and no hospital or institution shall be coerced, held liable or discriminated against in any manner because of a refusal to perform, accommodate, assist or submit to an abortion"'

The result has been widely and warmly welcomed by the pro-life community as a victory for common sense and good professional ethics and medical practice, and as an encouraging example of people of conviction, courage and persistence, making a real and significant difference, not only lobbying outside in the corridors of power and on the airwaves all over Europe, but also in the Chamber of the Council of Europe itself.

Read the Resolution reaffirming doctors' and nurses' right of conscientious objection to taking part in abortion here

Read the original draft report here

Virginia Ironside says a 'good mother' would put a pillow over the head of a disabled child!

2010-10-08T04:48:00.000-07:00

Columnist with The Independent Newspaper (London) Virginia Ironside has said that a 'good mother' would put a pillow over the head of her baby if he/she had a disability. Naturally this has caused outrage in Britain even though abortion is legal there up to birth where the baby has a disability. The comments were made on a BBC morning television show last week. What’s worse is that the other studio guest is Vicar Joanna Jepson, who was born with a birth defect which was corrected by surgery in her teens.
Click here to watch the 1 ½ minute video.

"this is a game-changer" Scientists hail giant leap forward in adult stem cell research

2010-10-08T04:43:00.000-07:00

An article by researchers at the Harvard Stem Cell Institute, published at the end of last month in Cell Stem Cell, presents a series of ground-breaking advances used to take skin cells, de-specialise them into induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS cells), and re-programme them into muscle cells, overcoming drawbacks in earlier methods such as inefficiency and genetic interference that led to fears they might cause cancer.

The pro-life community has welcomed the breakthroughs as showing yet again how the advances in science are made without deliberate destruction of human embryos. It is to be hoped that Minister Harney and her officials will take this on boards as they prepare the legislation due out, we are told, before Christmas.

Robert Lanza, a stem cell researcher at Advanced Cell Technology, Worcester, Massachusetts, who was not involved in this study, commented, “All I can say is ‘wow’ – this is a game-changer. It would solve some of the most important problems in the field.’

Marius Wernig, from Stanford University, another stem cell researcher not involved in this study, if other researchers confirm their methods of generating iPS cells without any genetic modification, ‘then it would be a big advance’ and ‘would be the first practical method for generating iPS cells that could be used for transplant therapies.’

Kathrin Plath of UCLA, said the research was ‘very impressive’, and seemed to be the best way yet developed for generating iPS cells for transplant tissue. She said they would be trying out these techniques at UCLA.

Shinya Yamanaka of Kyoto University, Japan, one of the original researchers who first produced iPS cells said the same, adding that the processes described in the article if validated could become the standard method for generating iPS cells.

You can watch Dr Derrick J. Rossi, lead researcher, explaining the breakthrough here

You can read the breakthrough article here

"How the first nine months shape the rest of your life"

2010-09-29T10:21:00.000-07:00

In the cover headline to its current issue, Time magazine invites the reader to identify with the child before birth - How the first nine months shape the rest of your life. The opening page of the article does the same, placing three lines of text over the mother's womb that read

The Womb.

Your Mother.

Yourself.

The writer, Annie Murphy Paul, is a journalist who covers science. Her article is about how science is now understanding the many ways in which our experience in the womb before we are born affects our health prospects and probabilities throughout our lives.

She comments, 'two years ago when I began to delve more deeply into the field, I had a more personal motivation: I was newly pregnant. If it was true that my actions over the next nine months would affect my offspring for the rest of his life, I needed to know more.' (p. 46)

The full-page cover photo shows a woman 10 days before birth. The unborn baby sucking her thumb is there in all her full-colour, icon-like golden glow on page 47, and on the contents page there is a photo of a newborn being weighed with the caption, 'the baby shortly after she left her first formative environment'. (page 5)

A small red box at the top left of each double page of the article carries the woird SCIENCE to remind you that this is science not opinion.

And the whole opening page (p. 44) of the article is taken up with a photograph of the pregnant mother's tummy 'great with child', photographed from the side, with only three, dramatically stark lines of text, like a poem:

The Womb.

Your Mother.

Yourself.

The article explores different ways our experience before we are born may affect us - pollutants, drugs or infections the mother is exposed to, and her health, stress level and state of mind; and the areas of possible impact currently under studt include heart disease, obesity, diabetes, depression and schizophrenia.

To see the online version of the article click here

Revised EU Directive on animal testing highlights Ireland’s urgent need to ban human embryo-destructive research

2010-09-24T04:35:00.000-07:00

The European Parliament passed a draft Directive earlier this month, requiring Member States to use alternatives to animal testing where available and rejected calls to rule out methods using cells of human embryos involving the deliberate destruction of those human embryos.

Johanna Touzel, speaking for the Commission of the Bishops’ Conferences of the European Community, said it was paradoxical to protect animals from suffering by methods requiring the destruction of human embryos, and warned that Member Sates that did not have an explicit ban on embryo destructive rsearch could find themselves forced by EU law to use alternative methods requiring the destruction of human embryos.

This comes as a wake-up call for Ireland, which has no law protecting the human embryo outside the mother following the Supreme Court ruling in the frozen embryos case, R -v- R.

Background

On 8th September 2010, the European Parliament voted to revise Directive 86/609/EEC on the protection of animals used in research. Where alternatives methods exist to testing on animals, the Directive requires Member States to introduce legislation making the use of these alternative methods obligatory.

The European Commission issued a set of questions and answers on the revised Directive. The thirteenth question is, ‘Would it be obligatory to use alternative methods involving human embryonic stem cells if these present themselves as alternatives to animal tests?’

The answer makes it clear that ‘the requirement to use alternative methods in place of an animal method’ is ‘a legal obligation that has been in place since 1986.’ And Articles 4.1 restates this.

The answer also says that where a Member State has legislation prohibiting the use of human embryonic stem cells ‘the revised Directive cannot overrule any such national prohibitions.’

The answer also says that the use of human embryonic stem cells as an alternative method of testing to using animals would be obligatory if it was recognised as an alternative testing method by EU legislation.

It seeks to reassure by saying, ‘No such legislation exists, nor is its adoption to be expected in the light of the above considerations.’ But Article 13.1 explicitly envisages legislation recognising alternative methods of testing. And the European Centre for the Validation of Alternative Methods is part of the European Commission as may be seen from its website.

The Commission of the Bishops’ Conferences of the European Community, however, point out in their Press Release that in the European Commission’s own Alternative Testing Strategies – Progress Report 2009, which discusses the alternative testing strategies that are currently being developed, 5 of the 21 new methods involve the use of human embryonic stem cells obtained by deliberately destroying human embryos.

Furthermore, the Press Release points out that these new technologies based on destroying human embryos have been financially supported by the EU through the 6th and 7th Framework Research Programmes.

The Commission of the Bishops’ Conferences of the European Community had asked for an amendment to be introduced into the revised Directive that would have excluded human embryonic stem cells testing from the alternative testing methods, but the European Parliament did not make any such amendment.

Further resources click here

Brendan O’Connor’s inspiring article on the birth of his daughter with Down Syndrome

2010-09-24T04:33:00.000-07:00

On 12th September, the Sunday Independent carried an inspiring article, ‘A prayer for my daughter’ by its columnist and RTÉ personality, Brendan O’Connor, on the birth only weeks before of his second daughter, Mary. It evoked a huge reaction from readers – the following week, 13 of the letters received were published.

The day before the Irish Independent’s Weekend magazine had carried another shorter, yet profound article by columnist, Mary Kenny, about looking after her husband who is deteriorating following a stroke.

What the articles have in common is a visceral bluntness, a shocking directness and honesty in articulating difficult dimensions of intimate human experiences, but an authenticity that connects with us as we read them, a ring of truth that involves us in the family stories they are telling. What is surprising about the two articles is that each leaves us with the same impression of a toughness of character in the writer and a highlighting kindness in the writing.

Mary Kenny’s piece describes the difficulties of taking care of her husband who is suffering from a progressive condition. Almost defiantly she sets before us the hard reality of her life caring for him – ‘I carry out my carer’s duties because it’s my duty: I’m the obvious person to do it.’ Right after she asserts how this has changed her. ‘Caring changes your value system. Kindness has become much more important to me than almost anything else. Abstract talk about “rights” and “equality” strike me as containing a great deal of hot air, whereas “kindness” and “genuine respect” for the person really do mean the world.’

And that’s just the right phrase, isn’t it, kindness means the world - gives us the right meaning of our world. ‘Governments have legislated to support the disabled, but no amount of law will produce kindness. And it’s kindness that matters. It lifts my heart, nowadays, when I encounter kindness – and it does happen.’

Brendan O’Connor’s piece is more extraordinary in the way it captures, as it were, in slow motion, his heart’s u-turn following the birth of his daughter, the way it turned his life inside out and upside down, dismantling the perspective he had lived out of up to that moment, and, to his surprise, landing him in a wider world, a world with a richer meaning, a world whose outer extent and inner atmosphere are defined by kindness.

‘Thursday two weeks ago, we went into Holles Street in the morning, tentative but full of hope; and by two o'clock, our hearts were broken and our lives were turned upside down.’ The discovery that Mary had Down Syndrome was a before-and-after moment. Looking back, he sees ‘life before Mary’ as ‘a different life indeed, when we were innocent and foolish and thought we knew what worries and troubles were.’

Like Mary Kenny, kindness has taken on a new importance. ‘I have learnt many things in the last few weeks. One thing is that kind words can be so important and such a consolation. I never gave much of a damn for kind words before.’ The consultant’s words to them, “Mary is Mary”, struck just the right chord. ‘But with those three words he came through for us in the most unexpected way. For some reason it soothed us as we stood there dazed, and in a waking nightmare.’ Kind words from all sorts of doctors, nurses, friends and some unexpected sources would help get us through the next few days.

He gives the example of a text message from the woman in their older daughter’s creche – ‘she sent the most beautiful text about how they looked forward to welcoming Mary there. For Sarah, it meant a lot that these people, who have embraced Anna so much, were also going to embrace Mary.’

In a series of amazing sentences he describes the transformation he was undergoing.

After we had our first child, I thought I saw the world very clearly for a while -- I saw clearly who my friends were and who I valued. After Mary, I thought I could almost see the difference between good and evil. And some people you just didn't want near you and some people you knew were good.

So now I know that people are amazing. And I have more of an idea what love and friendship and family and kindness are. Some days, in my more elated moments, I would think that having spent 40 years looking for the meaning of life, sometimes in the most self-destructive ways, Mary had taught it to me in a few days.

I don't know that I can put it in words yet but I think the meaning of life may be about now, and love, and not giving a damn about things that don't really matter.

The texture of the new world he has entered is one of greater realness, compared with where he was before. ‘Real life has begun. I have woken up. It's not all easy but it is real.’

And the principal reality that has entered his life is the new person, his daughter, Mary. It is she who has brought him into this new world. ‘But do I wish she had never been born? Do I wish that we had just been happy with one? Do I wish we could have our old life -- which I have idealised out of all proportion -- back? Not any more. She's here now, a part of our little family. And we'd be lost without her. She has burrowed her way into our hearts so there is no imagining the world any other way. And even if she broke our hearts a bit when she came first, she's fixing them up a bit every day.’

The concluding paragraph of this amazing article is a ringing affirmation, of trust in the new world he has entered, in which the word ‘okay’ is repeated like the word’ yes’ in Molly Bloom’s soliloquy:

The funny thing is, you know very quickly when something happens whether everything is going to be okay. And even in my shock and agony in that operating theatre, I think I suddenly knew everything was going to be okay. And it is. There might be sadness ahead and there might be challenges ahead. But everything is going to be okay. Everything is going to be okay. Better than okay.

Every human being brings something new into the world with them, the very mystery of their unique being as a human person, thereby making the world a bigger, better place. Kindness is the larger, better part of humanity, and vulnerability invites kindness from the human heart. Brendan O’Connor’s article gives us a rare opportunity of observing this expanding of world and deepening of heart as it happens.

Read Brendan O’Connor’s article here

Pro Life Campaign calls Irish Times Poll on Assisted Suicide 'misleading'

2010-09-22T06:53:00.000-07:00

The Behaviour & Attitudes poll on assisted suicide published in The Irish Times on 17th September claims that 55% of the public support assisting terminally ill patients to end their lives with 32% opposed.

The question was posed as follows: “Doctors in some countries are allowed under strict circumstances to assist terminally ill patients who are in intense pain and who repeatedly express the desire to end their own live to do so. Should doctor assisted suicide be legalised under such circumstances in Ireland?”

Responding to today’s findings, Dr Ruth Cullen of the Pro-Life Campaign said:

"The result is not surprising as the question posed was highly emotive and was clearly going to elicit a predictable response. Also, given the wording of the question, I feel it was misleading for the Irish Times to headline the result with ‘Majority believe assisted suicide should be legal.’

If there were a fully informed debate on this issue, I have no doubt a majority would oppose what amounts to de facto euthanasia. If doctor assisted suicide were legalised in this country it would completely change the nature of medicine and the doctors’ duty to preserve human life.

It would also inevitably lead to some of the most vulnerable people feeling they were a burden on society and had a duty to die as the State would be sending out a clear message that it was legitimate to hasten the end of some lives.

There is a marked difference in the ethos of care of terminally ill patients in countries like Ireland where assisted suicide is not legal and countries like Holland where a once restrictive euthanasia regime has quickly escalated in scope" Ms. Cullen concluded.

Ends.

For more information contact the Pro-Life Campaign Press Office on 01-6629273

Judge blocks US funding of destructive embryo research - And what Ireland must do

2010-08-27T09:20:00.000-07:00

This week in Washington DC, a federal judge blocked the implementation of President Obama's executive order allowing federal funding of research requiring the destruction of human embryos, saying it was against federal law.

Judge Royce C Lamberth said the legislation enacted in 1996 by Congress, the Dickey-Wicker Amendment, prohibited ‘research in which a human embryo or embryos are destroyed, discarded, or knowingly subjected to risk of injury or death greater than that allowed for research on fetuses in utero.’

In 1999, in an attempt to get around this clear ban, Harriet S Rabb, a lawyer with the US Department of Health and Human Services came up with an argument that the ban only covered the killing of the embryo, but that the research involving the cells that the embryo was killed to extract was not banned.

Judge Lamberth rejected this: ‘The language of the statute reflects the unambiguous intent of Congress to enact a broad prohibition of funding in which a human embryo is destroyed. This prohibition encompasses all “research in which” an embryo is destroyed, not just “the piece of research” in which the embryo is destroyed’, which was Rabb’s argument.

The Obama administration has pledged to appeal the decision.

The decision by UCC and other Irish third level colleges to allow research on their campuses using cells that needed human embryos to be deliberately destroyed to get them relies on the same ethically phoney distinction.

And the same thirst of the embryo research industry to get their hands on a steady supply of human embryos to extract elements for use in research is evident in the ghoulish recommendations of the 2005 Report of the Commission on Assisted Human Reproduction which the Irish Supreme Court deferred to so conspicuously in its R -v- R decision. The Ethical, Scientific and Legal Issues concerning Stem Cell Research: Opinion, issued in 2008 by the Irish Council for Bioethics, made similar recommendations based on equally fallacious arguments.

Every year since the Commission on Assisted Human Reproduction published its discredited Report, however, in one professionally conducted opinion poll after another carried out for the Pro-Life Campaign, the Irish public has shown itself, by a substantial majority, to be consistently and coherently in favour of the Dáil enshrining protection of the embryo in legislation, as has been done in other EU jurisdictions like Germany and Italy.

Not only that, it is the ethically non-controversial adult stem cell research that is bringing in the breakthroughs in the clinical management and treatment of a range of conditions, not the ethically objectionable embryo-destructive research.

This was confirmed in a review piece by Associated Press Science Writer, Malcolm Ritter, at the start of this month. With the heading, ‘Adult stem cell research far ahead of embryonic’, the article states:

"For all the emotional debate that began about a decade ago on allowing the use of embryonic stem cells, it's adult stem cells that are in human testing today. An extensive review of stem cell projects and interviews with two dozen experts reveal a wide range of potential treatments.

Adult stem cells are being studied in people who suffer from multiple sclerosis, heart attacks and diabetes. Some early results suggest stem cells can help some patients avoid leg amputation. Recently, researchers reported that they restored vision to patients whose eyes were damaged by chemicals.

Apart from these efforts, transplants of adult stem cells have become a standard lifesaving therapy for perhaps hundreds of thousands of people with leukemia, lymphoma and other blood diseases".

You can read the Associated Press article here

Let’s hope the ethical difference between treating someone with their own cells, on the one hand, and on the other hand, destroying another member of the human family in order to get some of their cells to use in research or treat someone else, will be grasped by the Minister for Health and Children, Mary Harney and her officials as they draft the embryo legislation expected this autumn. And let’s hope, too, that they will see and seize the golden opportunity to promote Ireland as an international centre of excellence in adult stem cell research.

'Save the Baby Girl' - Monitors put on Ultrasound Machines in India to prevent female foeticide

2010-08-27T09:14:00.000-07:00

A recent BBC News interview showed a doctor in India doing ultrasounds with mothers. Behind him on the wall was a large sign Disclosure of sex of foetus is prohibited under law. But the 2003 law has been largely ignored, with doctors colluding with mothers wanting to identify baby girls before birth so they can abort them.

The report showed a new device called the Silent Observer which records all use of the ultrasound units and uploads it onto a government website where it can be monitored.

Further research yielded a report on this initiative which requires all ultrasound centres in the Indian state of Maharashtra to install and use the Silent Observer and requires online reporting and uploading of the testing done with the ultrasound – a sort of spy in the clinic, to deter doctors from facilitating female foeticide.

The scale of the gender imbalance is highlighted in the fall in the relative number of girls under six years of age. ‘A defining indicator of the grim scenario is the sharp decline over the last decade in the child sex ratio for the age group 0-6 years … from 945 in 1991 to 927 in 2001. Alarmingly, the urban areas, more literate and therefore perceived as being more modern, have shown a huge 29-point drop from 935 in 1991 to 906 in 2001.’ In the state where the ‘Save the Baby Girl’ pilot project was started, Maharashtra, the female sex-ratio fell from 946 in 1991 to 917 in 2001 and the drop was found to correlate with the number of ultrasound centres.

‘The gender composition in south and East Asian countries has worsened over a period of time. The skewed sex ratio indicates gross violation of women’s rights.’ And they acknowledge exacerbation of the problem by modern technologies – ‘The sex determination of foetus by technologies like ultrasound scanning, amniocentesis and in vitro fertilisation has aggravated the situation to an alarming level’ adding ‘if Asia’s sex-ratio was the same as [the] rest of the world, in 2005 Asia’s population would have included almost 163 million more women and girls.’

The root cause, however, is the social and cultural view of the woman as inferior to the man that leads girls to be seen as a costly burden which families have to pay heavily to get rid of in a dowry so that ‘the birth of a girl is seen as a calamity to be avoided.’

The violence against women that gendercide is described as ‘A pernicious form of violence against females in some parts of India has been - and still is – the elimination of the girl through female infanticide. Various methods have been used to extinguish the girl after birth, such as starving, poisoning or crushing her under the bed, etc. We should note that the task of female infanticide was laid upon the woman/mother, as she was considered responsible for bringing the baby girl into existence.’

This ‘Save the Baby Girl’ project is to be welcomed as a step in right direction towards equality of treatment of baby girls in India before and after birth.

You can watch the 4 minute BBC News report here

You can read the full article about this initiative here

'A kind of miracle' - Ciaran Finn-Lynch, the first child in the world to receive a windpipe transplant helped by his own stem cells

2010-08-13T07:59:00.000-07:00

Earlier this month, 11-year-old Ciaran Finn-Lynch, originally from Castleblaney, Co. Monaghan, was discharged from Great Ormond Street Hospital in London having made medical history, the first child in the world to undergo a trachea transplant in which his own stem cells were used to ensure a donor windpipe would not be rejected by his body

He was born with Long Segment Tracheal Stenosis, which narrows the windpipe. Previous interventions, starting when he was two-and-a-half, had included attempts to rebuild his airway and inserting metal stents. Last November, however, the erosion of a stent caused a ‘massive bleed’, prompting the specialists to look at a treatment using his own stem cells to build up a donor windpipe so as to prevent rejection of it by his body.

The operation, carried out in March, was declared a success when the medical team found that the blood supply had returned to the trachea. Professor Martin Elliott, the leader of the Transplant Team, said Ciaran ‘is a wonderful boy who has become a great friend to us all, and he and his infinitely patient family have charmed us all. … 'His recovery has been complicated, as one might expect for a new procedure, and we have kept him under close surveillance, hence the length of time he has been here. … It is wonderful to see him active, smiling and breathing normally.’

This kind of operation, a donor transplant where the patient’s own stem cells are used to prevent organ rejection, was first carried out on Claudia Castillo, a 30-year-old tuberculosis patient, in Barcelona, Spain in June 2008. Professor Martin Birchall said that the success of that operation left us 'on the verge of a new age in surgical care'.

The Irish Independent reports further comments of Professor Birchall on Ciaran’s operation. He said 'This is a completely new approach … the first time this has ever been done in a child. … He is left with a healthy organ made with his own stem cells which in a way is a kind of miracle.’

To read more and watch a 1 minute interview on Ciaran’s operation by Professor Martin Birchall, Professor of Laryngology from University College London, click here.

Saved by the blink of an eye

2010-07-16T07:13:00.000-07:00

Last October, Richard Rudd, who is 43 years of age and has two teenage daughters, was severely hurt in a motorbike crash. He was kept breathing by a ventilator. He seemed completely paralysed and non-responsive. His family remembered him saying he wouldn’t want to live in such a state and gave permission for the medical team to switch off the ventilator.

He was in Britain’s leading brain care unit at Addenbrook’s Hospital in Cambridge, under the care of Prof. David Menon. Prof. Menon held open Richard’s eyelids and asked him could he move his eyes, and when he did, a lifeline of communication for Richard was opened. Using eyes right for yes and left for no the language therapist was able to establish that he was able to understand and remember, and eventually he was able to signal clearly that he did not want the ventilator to be switched off.

The discussions and feelings of the family and medical team were the subject of a BBC documentary Between Life and Death and it is a ‘must see’ for anyone concerned about the decisions such cases raise.

Prof. Menon explains that Richard is not ‘brain dead’ but has a form of paralysis termed ‘locked-in syndrome’, the condition that is described so well in the book The Diving Bell and the Butterfly by Elle editor, Jean-Dominique Bauby, who suffered a similar paralysis, later made into a a film with the same name in 2007, which follows the marginal recovery that enabled him to dictate the book.

The BBC documentary raises all kinds of disturbing questions. In the background is the troubling issue of money. Long term care is very expensive so as a society we need to be clear and strong in resisting any ideology providing rationalisations for the deliberate taking of human life. A disturbing issue in the documentary is the suggestion that the medical team is not asking for the families permission to switch off the ventilator, that they, the medical experts will decide what the appropriate treatment is, and that the family is only giving them information about what the patient’s wishes might have been. This implies that basic care, like feeding and assistance to breath is a treatment.

More to the fore in the documentary are the arguments for deliberately ending the lives of helpless people because they have no quality of life. Early in the documentary, his father says Richard has no quality of life, he is making no responses, that he’d said he wouldn’t want to life like that. But in time he is able to move his eyes and his father accepts that he is now able to smile. And he chose not to have the ventilator switched off. Towards the end of the documentary, his father reconsiders his earlier view. It’s all hypothetical, he said, imagining how you think you’d feel if you were in a similar situation. But now he has seen his son’s eyes light up when they are conversing together, and he smiles. When you find yourself in that situation, his father said, the will to live kicks in. And about the decision to switch off the ventilator when his is not brain dead after all, ‘you probably have no right to do that.’

If society is not willing to put the resources into respecting life in its most vulnerable moments, then how will the breakthrough advances and discoveries ever be made – Richard was completely unresponsive at first for months, but then he began to respond, and as the film The Diving Bell and the Butterfly shows, people working with patients in this condition invent ways to enhance the communication. Respect for life at risk is where the developments happen.

Click here to watch eight minutes of the BBC documentary which includes Richard’s father responding to his son’s wish not to be taken off the ventilator

By 2020, 24 million Chinese men will be 'bare branches', unable to find wives

2010-07-16T07:06:00.000-07:00

Gendercide is in the news again. The current issue of Time (19th July 2010) has a piece by Hannah Beech reflecting on the scale and the unanticipated consequences of the Chinese government’s one-child policy.

In Chinese culture a principal source of a man’s self-esteem is his ability to marry and found a family, and bear children, thereby becoming a fruitful ‘branch’ of the family ‘tree’. But in ten years time, the mutual reinforcement of the Chinese government’s compulsory one-child policy and the cultural discrimination against baby-girls will leave 24 million Chinese men as ‘bare branches’, that is, unable to find women with whom to found a family.

Ms Beech observes that China’s fertility rate at 1.6 births per woman is ‘well below the normal replacement rate of 2.1’. But ‘the country is also saddled with one of the planet’s worst gender imbalances, largely as a result of women aborting female fetuses due to a traditional preference for male offspring.’ And why are Chinese women destroying their girl babies – ‘the pressure to bear a son is all the greater in China precisely because many families are limited to just one child.’

This is having a huge unintended side-effect – ‘by 2020 there will be at least 24 million ‘bare branches’ – men destined to stay single because there are not enough wives to go around.’ And this in turn is likely to lead to escalating criminal trafficking in women.

A second unforeseen outcome of the Chinese compulsory one-child policy is a radical unbalancing of the age-structure that puts China’s economic development at risk. Beech notes that ‘factories are now facing shortages of young skilled labour.’

A third never forecast social crisis coming down the tracks for China from this ill-judged and unjust social policy concerns the elderly. As there are fewer people being born and not enough women to go around for the forming of families, there are going to be more elderly people to maintain and less workers to maintain them. ‘By 2050, one-third of Chinese will be elderly.’ And the pension support for the elderly is very poor in urban areas and immeasurably worse in rural areas.

The situation is actually far worse than Beech acknowledges but it is encouraging to find that a significant awareness of the nature of the crisis and its scale is percolating into the mainstream international magazines.

Read Time Magazine article here

Latest US Opinion Poll - Trend showing opposition to abortion continues

2010-06-21T12:01:00.000-07:00

Gallup’s 2010 Values and Belief’s poll carried out in May 2010 has confirmed that opposition to abortion in the US has grown in recent years.

The opinion poll found that 50% of people polled said they regarded abortion as ‘morally unacceptable’, while only 38% said they regarded it as ‘morally acceptable’, a gap of 12%. Fewer women than men (36% to 41%) said they considered abortion is morally acceptable. Holding abortion to be morally acceptable is now a minority view in the States.

But is this just a polling hiccup or a trend? Interpreting the findings for Gallup, Lydia Saad recalled that ‘in nearly all readings on this question since 1995, and each survey from 2003 to 2008, more Americans called themselves pro-choice than pro-life.’ When, however, this year’s result, is taken together with two taken last year, Ms Saad says, ‘it represents the third consecutive time Gallup has found more Americans taking the pro-life than pro-choice position on this measure since May 2009, suggesting a real change in public opinion.’

Support for abortion ‘legal in any circumstances’ falling in all age groups since 1990

Support for abortion being ‘legal under any circumstances’ has been falling since 1990 in all age groups. Among 18-29 year olds, it has dropped by 12% from 36% to 24% since 1990. Among 30-49 year olds, it has dropped by 7% from 34% to 17% since 1990. Among 50-64 year olds, it has dropped by 2% from 28% to 26% since 1990. And 65 year olds and over, it has dropped by 9% from 25% 60 16% since 1990.

This suggests that the age cohorts that sought and saw abortion on demand legalised in Roe v. Wade are clinging to it most, whereas the older people who never really bought into that are ever less supportive of it, and the younger generation are now less supportive of it than the now-ageing abortion-on-demand generation.

What do these results mean?

The law on abortion in the US was determined by the Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade and in effect it involves abortion being ‘legal in any circumstances’. That is the significance of that question in the Gallup poll. It is in effect asking people do they support the law as defined by the Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade. And the poll findings show the most people do not. Most people favour abortion being allowed in some cases, but nowhere near as widely as the Supreme Court allows. In the words of Lydia Saad, on behalf of Gallup, “On the one hand, the majority of Americans do not want to see Roe v. Wade overturned, and think abortion should be legal in at least a few circumstances. On the other, most Americans favor legal restrictions on abortion that go way beyond current law.”

But they surely mean more than this. A majority now regard abortion as morally unacceptable and only a minority see it as morally acceptable. The number who see themselves as pro-life is slowly edging ahead of those who see themselves as pro-choice. And the number who support the Roe v. Wade regime of abortion being legal in any circumstances is shrinking while the number who believe abortion should be illegal in any circumstances is increasing.

There is a growing disconnect between the law and the majority. And this means that moves to bring American abortion law into line with what most people want are likely to find a resonance and traction in the public domain.

But any such democratic recalibration is likely to be delayed by another disconnect, that between the news and entertainment mainstream in the US. In his article on the poll results, ‘Gallup’s Pro-Life America: When will our media reflect America on abortion?’ William McGurn comments, “If there is one extraordinary fact here, it is this: notwithstanding a pro-choice orthodoxy that dominates our film, our television, our press and our colleges and universities, strong moral qualms about abortion have not gone away...Over all, Gallup’s findings about Americans and abortion reflect less a political prescription than a sensibility. Apart from talk radio or the religious media, however, it’s a sensibility almost entirely lacking in our news and entertainment world. So the next time you watch the pro-life community dismissed as a fringe element, ask yourself – who’s really out of touch with the American people here?” (Wall Street Journal, 1st June 2010)

Pro Life Campaign welcomes reduction in abortion rate

2010-05-26T13:41:00.000-07:00

The latest Irish abortion figures released today by the British Department of Health* show another reduction in the number of Irish women travelling to Britain for abortion.

In 2009, 4,422 Irish women travelled to Britain for abortions, down from 4,600 for the previous year. It is the eighth consecutive year that Irish abortions have declined after more than a decade of upward trends.

Commenting on the latest figures, Dr Ruth Cullen of the Pro-Life Campaign said:

The Pro-Life Campaign welcomes the downward trend in Ireland's abortion rate.

Some have suggested the reduction in abortions may be as a result of more Irish women opting for abortions in other European countries. But this is purely anecdotal as there is no statistical evidence to back up these claims. Holland is often mentioned as a country where more Irish women may increasingly travel for abortions but the official Dutch figures in recent years show little or no change in the number of abortions on foreign nationals.

Groups advocating abortion in Ireland claim that we need to introduce abortion here to “confront the reality of crisis pregnancy.” This attitude completely ignores the humanity of the unborn child and the latest peer reviewed research showing the negative consequences of abortion for women. Rather than seek to have abortion introduced in Ireland, we should see the latest reduction in the abortion rate as very encouraging and work together to ensure this downward trend continues.

Ireland’s abortion rate is now 4.4 per 1,000 female residents aged 15-44 where Britain’s is 17.5.

*Statistical Bulletin, Summary Abortion Statistics, England and Wales: 2009 (Published 25/05/10)

Sign the Stop Gendercide Now Petition - Help end the lethal bias against baby girls

2010-05-20T03:22:00.000-07:00

100 million baby girls are missing - and the number is rising. They were aborted or killed at birth. Why? Because of a preference for baby boys.

It is a human rights violation on a massive scale perhaps the most widespread form of violent anti-female discrimination in the world today.

The mission of Stop Gendercide Now is to highlight the fact that so many baby girls have disappeared through abortion, infanticide, or neglect and to work for political change to remedy this.

By signing the Stop Gendercide Now Petition, you’ll be joining others in sending a strong message to the leaders of countries like China and India, which have deplorable records in defending the rights of baby girls, born and unborn. Your voice can really make a difference.

The number of baby girls’ lives lost through gendercide has risen sharply as cultural pressures against the birth of baby girls are reinforced by harsh inhumane traditions, coercive population control policies as well as political ideologies.

As a result of this, 100 million baby girls who should have been born have been aborted, killed or left to die. It is a human rights violation on a massive scale.

Boy-preference leading to dramatically fewer baby girls being born and surviving is concentrated primarily in China but also in India and other countries.

The mass destruction of girls has produced a systemic gender imbalance in whole populations for example; there are more unmarried young men in China than the entire population of young men in America.

The Stop Gendercide Now Petition puts pressure on the governments of countries with significant sex ratio imbalances:

- To introduce measures to ensure that the killing, fatal neglect or abandonment of baby girls because they are girls is ended.

- To carry out and publish an annual audit giving the sex ratio, the measures put in place to address it, and the progress or otherwise of these measures.

The Stop Gendercide Now Petition will also be copied to the Secretary General of the United Nations calling on the UN to adopt a meaningfully proactive leadership role in ending the horrific practice of signalling out baby girls for abortion and infanticide.

Many steps can be taken. Initiatives can be developed to encourage education for girls: reform of laws and customs that exclude or disadvantage daughters in property inheritance; facilitation of women’s participation in all dimensions of public life; requiring family planning officials, midwives and hospitals to publish the birth sex ratios, and reward advances towards the normal balance of girls to boys.

To read about Stop Gendercide Now and to sign the Petition click here

To join this Cause on Facebook click here

To visit the Stop Gendercide Now blogspot click here

Baby boy who survived abortion left to die in Italian Hospital

2010-05-06T13:39:00.000-07:00

In ancient Rome, a newborn baby unwanted because of disability or otherwise was legally allowed to be disposed of by exposure as res vacantes, an unwanted thing.

Often they were left in the Velabrum, a busy street in the middle of the oil and cheese markets or at the columna lactaria in the Forum Olitorium.

In modern Europe, of course, such things would never happen. Certainly not. Nowadays when we are exposing a child born after an abortion has failed to kill them, they are abandoned exposed in a hospital. Much more civilised.

In southern Italy, last month, an abortion was carried out on a mother, pregnant for the first time, after a prenatal scan suggested he might be disabled. The baby boy, born at 22 weeks, despite the abortion procedure, was left to die by the doctors in the Rossano Calabria Hospital.

He was found 20 hours later by the hospital chaplain still alive wrapped in a sheet, his umbilical cord still attached, still moving and breathing. The priest raised the alarm and the baby was moved to the intensive neonatal care unit in a nearby hospital, but died there the next day.

This is the second case in three years in Italy of a baby aborted at 22 weeks because of suspected disability who survived the abortion living for 3 days.

Italy’s abortion 1978 law allows abortion on demand for the first three months of pregnancy but allow it on the grounds of suspected disability in the second three months, but its infanticide law imposes a legal obligation on doctors to attempt to preserve the life of a child who survives abortion. In England, however, there is no time limit at all for abortions where disability is suspected. They can be aborted right up to birth.

Since the purpose of abortion is the deliberate and direct procuring of the destruction of the life of the baby, the doctors expose babies who survive so that they will die.

Since medical ethics require that a patient be informed about the nature of the procedure to which they are to be subjected and consent to it. Are women considering abortion on the grounds of suspected disability informed by their doctor that the abortion involves inducing the birth and that if their baby survives the doctors will be hiding it away and exposing it so that it will die for lack of due care. Are the mothers asked to consent to this protocol of exposure without care where a baby is born alive after an abortion?

The Confidential Enquiry into Maternal and Child Health, 2007 commissioned by the UK Government, found that 66 infants survived NHS termination attempts in hospitals in England and Wales during 2005.

Instead of dying during the abortion procedure as intended, they survived, able to breathe unaided. They were exposed without medical care, left to die, some living for half an hour, one for ten hours.

The only way to step back from this horror show is to reaffirm the first principle of medical ethics – primum non nocere – first do no harm. Do not deliberately destroy human life in the womb or after birth. Once we step away from that principle of respect for life we find ourselves sliding back down to the columna lactaria in the Forum Olitorium.

Time and Newsweek Magazines highlight 'waning' influence of pro-choice movement

2010-05-06T13:33:00.001-07:00

‘Remember Roe!’, an article by Sarah Kliff in Newsweek (21st April 2010), paints a dramatic picture of a greying abortion rights leadership in the US racked by a growing anxiety about who will take over the torch from them when they retire.

One of the strongest abortion rights groups in the US is the National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws (NARAL), founded in 1969.

Its current president, Nancy Keenan, described in the article her response to the huge crowds flocking to the March for Life in Washington DC this January - ‘my gosh, they are so young - there are so many of them and they are so young.’

There were 400,000 at the March for Life. Two months earlier, the pro-abortionists held a rally against Congressman Bart Stupak’s proposed abortion opt outs in the Health Care Bill and only 1,300 turned up. Over 300-times as many activists came to the March for Life as bothered to turn up to oppose restrictions on abortion in Obama’s health-care package.

In her Newsweek piece, Sarah Kliff says that the difficulties encountered by pro-choice activists during the recent US health care debate marks ‘the day when they became aware of their waning influence in Washington.’

The Newsweek article said that research carried out by the National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws found that 51% of under 30s opposed to abortion see it as a ‘very important voting issue’. Only 26% of young people who support abortion see it as a very important voting issue. Their research found a similar though lesser difference among older voters.

This means that it is a live political issue for the pro-life voters especially the young, whereas it is not a hot issue for those who are pro-abortion. So the pro-life activists are pushing an open political door that the pro-abortion activists are not holding shut.

In a separate article in the current Time magazine (3rd May 2010) Terry O’Neill, President of the pro-abortion National Organization for Women, concedes in passing that those on the pro-life side ‘are winning the abortion fight.’

Her intuition was reflected in a number of polls in the last year suggesting that a tipping point may have been reached in American public opinion with the pro-abortion view on the brink of slipping into a minority position as the trend edges in a pro-life direction.

Polls by Gallup and Pew have found rises in the numbers taking a pro-life position and falls in the numbers taking a pro-abortion position. Gallup’s poll exactly a year ago, found ‘51% of Americans calling themselves “pro-life” on the issue of abortion and 42% “pro-choice”.’

Gallup says “this is the first time a majority of US adults have identified themselves as pro-life since Gallup began asking this question in 1995.”

At a time when pro-choice campaigners should be exulting in their current successes – the election of the most pro-abortion politician in America as President, control of Congress by the Democrats, pro-abortion since 1980 - they are instead keenly aware that things are not going their way. Without becoming complacent, pro-life supporters should take heart from these encouraging and uplifting developments.

News corporations impose pro-abortion newspeak on reporters

2010-04-23T08:07:00.000-07:00

US National Public Radio has just issued a mandatory censorship protocol for reporters.

They are no longer allowed to use the word ‘pro-life’ to those campaigning for the right to life of unborn children. They have to call them ‘abortion rights opponents’.

In describing those who support abortion, reporters have been forbidden to use the phrase ‘pro-abortion.’ They may, naturally, describe those who oppose abortion as ‘anti-abortion’.

Similar thought-control policies have been adopted by major US news corporations Associated Press, Washington Post, New York Times, Philadelphia Inquirer, CNN, CBS and NBC.

Dictats on what words reporters are allowed to use? Prescribed words? Forbidden words? Sound familiar?

This kind of ideological censorship was chillingly diagnosed by George Orwell in his final novel, 1984. The totalitarian society seeks to suppress and eventually eliminate dissent from the officially desired thoughts by gradually imposing a new obligatory official language called Newspeak so that dissenting opinion, not only cannot be articulated in a publicly approved way, but, in the end, cannot even be thought privately.

As Orwell put it, the purpose was not only to provide a medium of expression for the ‘proper’ worldview and mental habits, ‘but to make all other modes of thought impossible’ – it was intended that when Newspeak.had been adopted for once and for all, an unorthodox thought ‘should be literally unthinkable.’ This was done, he says, ‘chiefly by the eliminating undesirable words and by stripping such words as remained of unorthodox meanings.’ The imposed words, Orwell says, ‘had been deliberately constructed for political purposes’, that is, they ‘were intended to impose a desirable mental attitude upon the person using them.’

What a terrible irony – major news organizations in the free world are imposing Newspeak on their reporters.

Now we have major news outlets in the free world succumbing to the ideology of abortion rights which renders the unborn child what in Orwellian Newspeak presciently calls an ‘unperson.’

In Nazi Germany, gleichschaltung was the process by which one institution after another conformed to the totalitarian ideology in power, sometimes without even having to be compelled - they just saw the way the wind was blowing and got in line voluntarily.

The fact that major news institutions in the US are engaging in a self-imposed pro-abortion gleichschaltung is hard not to read it as a move of desperation on the part of the pro-abortion ideological elite.

They sense public opinion gradually shifting from majority pro-abortion to majority pro-life. They see this reflected in polls showing a majority in the US for the first time in recent years describing itself as pro-life rather than pro-abortion.

They see one movie after another exploring unexpected pregnancies in a positive light and showing ways forward, movies like Waitress, Knocked Up, Juno, Precious and Leonera, and on the other hand, the even more radical emergence of movies showing the dark side of abortion, movies like 4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days.

They see women who’ve been through abortion coming forward together asking for their experience to be heard and heeded.

They’re losing the debate, so they’re changing tack. ‘If we can’t win the debate, let’s not have the debate, let’s suppress it’, they seem to be saying.

If news outlets opt to turn themselves into a pro-abortion echo-chamber – talking to one another in a fake language designed to pretend that abortion is not destroying a human life - they will lose half the public.

With the click of a mouse, the days of this kind of censorship are well and truly numbered.

Groups pressure Lancet editor to delay publication of maternal mortality research

2010-04-23T05:00:00.000-07:00

Lancet, a leading medical journal, has just published a new study of international maternal mortality rates, which finds that the World Bank, the WHO and UNICEF statistics for maternal mortality were over 100,000 too high due to reporting and methodological problems.

But in a corrupt and brazen, and thankfully, unsuccessful, attempt to subordinate science to politics, ‘advocacy groups’ lobbied the editor of Lancet, Dr Richard Horton to delay the publication of the new study until after upcoming meetings of the UN Commission on Population and Development, the Women Deliver Conference and the next UN Assembly, which are scheduled to discuss maternal mortality.

What’s bugging these ‘advocates’? Dr Donna Harrison, President of the American Academy of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, said of the new Lancet article:

"The study uses the best statistical methods currently available and clearly demonstrates that worldwide legalization of abortion is unnecessary to bring about significant decreases in maternal mortality. The American Academy of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynaecologists encourages the UN member nations to continue to develop even better statistical information by improving the identification of maternal mortality causality, especially induced abortion related mortality, which is most often underreported or misreported".

Where the UN bodies have been pushing for ‘safe’ and ‘legal’ abortion as the key to bringing improving maternal mortality rates, the new Lancet article does not. It found key causal factors improving maternal mortality – falling pregnancy rates in some countries, higher per capita income, higher education rates for women, and increasing availability of basic medical care, and in particular, ‘skilled birth attendants’.

You can read more about the new research in the New York Times here

You can access the Lancet article here

Cannes Film Festival to feature pro-life movie

2010-04-23T04:56:00.000-07:00

The Cannes Film Festival next month is to premier a new film called 22 Weeks. It tells the true story of Angele, a woman in her 30's who had an abortion in Florida in 2005.

She chose what was called a 'labour and delivery' type of abortion , which was to take two days. She opted for this rather than other forms of abortion, which she felt would be more distressing and harmful for her baby.

The film is significant for a number of reasons.

Firstly, it will show graphically the mindset of the abortionists in action. An abortion is a procedure the entire intention, aim and purpose of which is that the baby does not survive. Sometimes a baby does not die during the procedure but is deliberately left to die after it.

Secondly, it will give us a sense of how profoundly misguided some politicians are on the issue. As a State senator in Illinois, President Obama voted against a Bill to protect babies who survive abortions.

But thirdly and most importantly, it is a testimony to the confused and suddenly traumatic experience of the mother.

Driven by who knows what pressure to opt for abortion, Angele allowed herself to be seduced by the soothing reassurances of the abortionists, which at one level she wanted to believe.

She asked them what would happen if the baby were born alive and they said ‘they would guide a needle into his heart and it would put him to sleep, and he wouldn’t feel anything.’

She took pills to induce labour and by the time she arrived at the abortion clinic she was experiencing painful contractions, but it was not open. The contractions were getting closer. Eventually she got in and delivered her son, apparently on her own.

Then suddenly she sees. She sees her baby for the first time in the flesh. Fighting for his life. And her motherliness awakens and she calls for help. Surely they will look after him.

When a women working in the abortion clinic staff arrived, she refused the give her baby emergency medical care or to call a 911 for medical help for him. Angele called a friend to ring for an ambulance, but the clinic staff turned them away when they arrived and he died.

That terrible journey made at the speed of light from dreamlike denial to full waking, seeing her baby face to face, real at last but too late, is a precious part of women’s experience of abortion.

22 weeks is yet another straw in the wind that shows the cultural consensus on abortion is turning.

Pro Life Campaign Opinion Poll on Abortion

2010-04-15T04:41:00.000-07:00

Survey finds overwhelming support for

legal protection of unborn child

Comments by Dr Berry Kiely at the Pro-Life Campaign Press Conference,

Buswells Hotel, Dublin, 11.30am, 15th April 2010

The latest research on abortion shows a substantial majority of the public supporting a prohibition on abortion, while allowing necessary medical interventions in pregnancy to save the life of the mother.

The Pro-Life Campaign commissioned Millward Brown Lansdowne to carry out the survey on a quota controlled sample of 950 people aged 18+ between 27th January and 6th February 2010.

The question reads as follows:

“Are you in favour of, or opposed to, constitutional protection for the unborn that prohibits abortion but allows the continuation of the existing practice of intervention to save a mother’s life in accordance with Irish medical ethics?”

The finding shows that 70% support constitutional protection for the unborn, 13% oppose it and 16% don’t know or have no opinion.

What distinguishes this finding from polls showing support for abortion is the distinction it makes between necessary medical interventions in pregnancy and induced abortion where the life of the unborn child is directly targeted.[1]

This is a critical ethical distinction which abortion advocates constantly seek to blur. Some abortion advocates claim that legalised abortion ‘confronts the reality of crisis pregnancy.’ However, this contention ignores the humanity of the unborn child throughout the entire nine months of pregnancy and the latest research highlighting the negative consequences of abortion for women.[2]

If we are to have a genuinely honest debate on abortion we cannot arbitrarily airbrush the unborn child out of the debate or the many testimonies of women who regret their abortions.

As a country we should be immensely proud of the fact that Ireland without abortion is currently listed as the safest country in the world in which to be pregnant, according to the latest UN survey on maternal health.[3]

All human beings share a common dignity by virtue of their humanity. To deny the right to life simply because the unborn child is at an early stage of development completely undermines an authentic vision of human rights.

The Millward Brown Lansdowne research published today is hugely reassuring as it points to overwhelming public support for an ethos of care for both mother and baby during pregnancy.

Ends

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[1]YouGov online poll showing support for abortion conducted for Marie Stopes, released on 08-03-2010

[2] David M. Fergusson, L. John Horwood and Joseph M. Boden, "Abortion and mental health disorders: evidence from a 30-year longitudinal study," The British Journal of Psychiatry, 2008

[3]Report on Maternal Mortality by World Health Organisation, UNICEF, UNFPA and the World Bank, 2007

To view this article on our website and view the poll result click here

March For Life held in Brussels

2010-04-09T12:30:00.000-07:00

The first ever pan-European March for Life was held in Brussels on Sunday, 28th March. The event was organised by university students from Belgium who collaborated with pro-life advocates and organisations throughout Europe.

The March was addressed by pro-life representatives from around Europe and the world. According to the official website of the organisers the idea of the March was born out of a “desire to express our solidarity with and compassion for those women who have been forced to abort. We also want to lend our voice to the unborn children that have been sacrificed”

As with the March For Life in Washington DC in January last, looking at the photos of this event the youthfulness and for that matter cheerfulness of the participants is striking. The March started at the Royal Palace and participants marched to the Palais de Justice.

No doubt this event will go from strength to strength and plans are already underway for next years March For Life which is scheduled for March 27th, 2011.

Conjoined twin boys a "wonderful gift" sent to their family

2010-04-09T07:31:00.000-07:00

What an inspiring story the Benhaffaf family from Cork has to share. For those who haven’t already heard, the Benhaffaf’s youngest children – twin boys Hassan and Hussein - were born conjoined at the chest last December.

Yesterday the baby boys underwent a 14 hour operation at Great Ormond Street Hospital in London in an intricate surgery to separate them led by Cork born paediatric surgeon Edward Kiely. Thankfully the boys are stable after the surgery and doing well though their doctors have warned that getting through the next few days is key to their survival. The incidence of conjoined twins surviving separation operations and dying thereafter is high and so the Benhaffaf babies family are praying that their boys will endure.

The story of Hassan and Hussein’s lives in the womb is as sensational as their young lives have been so far. Their mother Angie Benhaffaf said her family’s world was turned upside down when they realised the babies were conjoined. She explained how the boys interacted in the womb “they were holding hands and were helping each other – they always mind one another” She explains that despite the struggles and doubts of her pregnancy, the children have been an extraordinary gift to their family.

“The first day I held the two boys in my arms I knew I was chosen. They were a gift. We do feel blessed by them. It was never expected that they would live or do as well as they have been doing so hence their name, "the little fighters".

Angie Benhaffaf wrote a poem to her babies as a tribute to them no matter what the outcome of the operation. In it she imparts in an ordinary way the struggles and joy of their lives from the moment she first knew the babies would be conjoined at just four weeks gestation

“I loved you both from the very start, when doctors thought you shared one heart. I cried so much during that time, we did not think, that all would be fine. Your two big sisters got me through the worst; I really felt that I had been cursed. For eight months I was in such a lonely place, as the birth was something I thought I couldn't face. But then came that beautiful winter's morn, on the 2nd of December my "little fighters" were born!”

She continues “You both have given me courage and strength, What a wonderful "gift", we have been sent!.... Boys - you have filled us all with love and hope, Without you both, we would never cope….No matter how this will all end, I am forever grateful for the time we did spend".

Speaking to the media yesterday after the operation Mrs. Benhaffaf said “We are so proud of the courage and strength Hassan and Hussein have shown and they have both made the world a much better place with them in it”

The attitude of the Benhaffafs is inspiring. They are treating their time with the baby boys as a gift to be celebrated. As we reflect on the lives so far of the Benhaffaf twins we should also consider the many children who are not born because pre-natal diagnoses result in their parents choosing abortion.

The Benhaffaf’s story proves that every life no matter how short or threatened is a gift to celebrate and a life worth living. The Benhaffaf babies have certainly brought inspiration to their family and to the country. Let’s hope ‘the little fighters’ persevere.

Human Rights China - Babies bodies found in river

2010-04-09T07:26:00.000-07:00

As highlighted on SKY News last week, the bodies of 21 babies, believed dumped by hospitals, recently washed ashore on a riverbank in eastern China.

Video footage showed that the bodies "stashed in yellow plastic bags, at least one of which was marked 'medical waste'" included some infants several months old.

Some wore identification tags with their mothers' names, birth dates, measurements and weights. The official Xinhua News Agency said there were also female unborn babies among the bodies.

While this particular incident made the news the story itself is not entirely surprising given the imposition in China of the one-child policy which results in 13 million babies being aborted annually. As the recent cover story in The Economist magazine pointed out, the practice of gendercide or female foeticide means that female children are targeted both before and after birth through abortion, infanticide or neglect.

In addition to the massive human rights violations involved in ending the lives of children born and unborn the specific targeting of female babies has also created a huge gender imbalance where there are more unmarried young men in China than the entire population of young men in America.

How come radical feminist groups are turning a blind eye to this widespread gender based human rights abuse? Where is the genuine sense of outrage and concern for women’s rights? The truth is there is logic behind the silence. Marianne Mollman, spokesperson for abortion advocacy group Human Rights Watch* has publicly advised pro-choice groups not to campaign against laws permitting sex selection abortion. The reason is clear - if abortion advocates concede that the lives of some unborn children should be protected it would completely undermine their rigid dogma that unborn children have no rights throughout the nine months of pregnancy.

It is incumbent therefore on pro-life groups to continue to pressure the Irish government to adopt a more robust stand in opposition to human rights abuses in China.

*Human Rights Watch is the same group that recently critisised Ireland’s pro-life status.

Abortion in Ireland - Pro Life Submissions far outnumber opposing side in public consultations

2010-03-29T08:45:00.000-07:00

For a number of years now Government backed bodies have sought public submissions on life-related issues hoping to boost their claim that their recommendations are in line with public demand. The public have responded in massive numbers, and encouragingly, the majority of submissions have been pro-life, with most people wanting human life in its most vulnerable stages protected by law, matching the findings of professional polls commissioned yearly by the Pro-Life Campaign.
However, it's been disturbing how often the recommendations of these bodies have gone the opposite way, raising the question how come the government who appoints most members of these bodies picks people unrepresentative of the majority view in the general public?

It points to a need for democratic oversight of such appointments to clarify why people with views differing sharply from the majority are appointed more often than those who share the commonly held pro-life views.

And in the run up to legislation in relation to frozen embryos the pattern has been repeated in the Commission on Assisted Human Reproduction and the Irish Council for Bioethics.

For example, in the report of the Irish Council for Bioethics published in 2008, Council members were unanimous, 13 to 0, in recommending allowing that human embryos to be destroyed to extract stem cells for research, but 77% of the members of the public who responded to their question on this issue took the opposite view*

Another recent example of a preponderance of public submissions being pro-life now seems to have been the Medical Council’s advertising for public submissions in its preparations for the seventh edition of its Ethical Guide. Recently, in preparing an article for the Irish Medical Times, Dara Gantly discovered that the Council received “more than 6,500 submissions from members of the public”, “the overwhelming majority” of which were pro-life. You can read this article which includes some analysis of the Pro Life Campaign’s submission here.

In the run up to the publication of government proposals following R v. R, it is politically significant that the preponderance of pro-life submissions mirrors Pro-Life Campaign poll findings that most people support Dáil legislation to protect human embryos.

Or to look at it the other way round, the fact that the majority of submissions match what the majority of the general public think bespeaks a political energy and organisational commitment in the pro-life community likely to translate into a political dividend for election candidates supporting legislation protecting embryos and a political cost for those who don’t.

* Ethical Scientific and Legal Issues Concerning Stem Cell Research: Opinion (2008), (p. 94)

Philip Nitschke's Creepy Career

2010-03-26T10:58:00.000-07:00

Dr Philip Nitschke was in Dublin last week to run a workshop on assisted suicide. He felt it was worth his while because he reckoned about 20 people wanted to hear him.

He first came to public attention in Australia when, on 25^th May 1995, a law was passed enacted in Australia's Northern Territory allowing assisted suicide, partly as a result of Nitschke's campaigning for it. The Federal Parliament overturned this law in March 1997 by a knife-edge vote in the Senate, with 38 against assisted suicide being legalized and 33 for. In the brief period the law was in force, however, Nitschke helped four people to kill themselves.

Nitschke's subsequent career makes for creepy reading. Before his promised return trip to Ireland, possibly later this year, it is important to take a closer look at the euthanasia debate and the arguments that helped turn the assisted suicide legislation in Australia on its head.

Humanist and founder and director of the pro-euthanasia group Exit, Nitschke's ghoulish death gadgets and projects are a death-bag, best used together with their death-inhaler device, a death-machine, a death-drug testing-kit, a death-tent, a death-pill - and even a death-ship to provide off-shore facilities!

What is inspiring about the overturning of Philip Nitschke's law in the Northern Territory, by the edge of the seat majority of 5 votes, is the role played in that Senate decision by a talk and a submission given by Luke Gormally of the British pro-life Linacre Centre for Healthcare Ethics. The Linacre Centre comments: "several Senators said they had been influenced to change their minds and oppose the legalisation of euthanasia by a talk given in 1995 by Luke Gormally at the John Plunkett Centre in Sydney, which the Centre subsequently published and distributed widely". He also made a Submission to the Senate Legal and Constitutional Legislation Committee, which reported on the issue of legalisation prior to the Senate vote.

Gormally's talk, Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide: Seven Reasons Why They Should Not Be Legalized, is a model of calm clear responsible reasoning based on human equality and justice. If reading the list of Nitschke's projects gives you the shivers, then you may want to take a few moments to follow Luke Gormally as he sets out step by step the case for respect for human life and for rejecting calls for euthanasia or assisted suicide.

You can access Luke Gormally's talk here.

Visit by euthanasia campaigner Dr. Philip Nitschke a 'publicity stunt' devoid of concern for the most vulnerable in society

2010-03-19T07:14:00.000-07:00

19th March 2010

The Pro-Life Campaign has described today’s visit to Dublin of Australian euthanasia campaigner, Dr Philip Nitschke, as a publicity stunt that has the potential to cause distress to some of the most vulnerable members of our society.

Commenting on his proposed visit, Dr Ruth Cullen of the Pro-Life Campaign said:

"Dr Philip Nitschke’s message, ‘talking up’ the acceptability and desirability of assisting people to end their lives is the antithesis of social solidarity and there is a very real danger that the effect of his propagandising will cause distress to some of the most vulnerable members of our society".

"Dr Nitschke’s visit is first and foremost a publicity stunt. No doubt he also sees himself as some sort of human rights advocate. However he doesn’t seem the slightest bit bothered about the pressure he is placing on vulnerable people to end their lives".

"As a society, we have a duty to reassure vulnerable groups in society that we are totally opposed to euthanasia and cherish the dignity and worth of every human life", Dr. Cullen concluded.

Stories of Loss and Love: The shocking truth about China’s treatment of baby girls

2010-03-12T08:07:00.000-08:00

The book Message from an Unknown Chinese Mother: Stories of Loss and Love* by Xinran eloquently and poignantly tells individual stories and uses them to explain the traditional cultural and modern ideological and consumerist forces behind the abortion and killing at birth of girls, and why they are also given away or allowed to die through neglect.

Chapter 3, for example, tells how, when Xinran’s bike got a puncture, she brought it to a woman who ran a small bike repair shop near the radio station in Nanjing where she presented the Words on a Night Breeze programme on women’s issues. They got talking.

The woman told her that before she opened the bike repair shop she had worked as a travelling midwife. Her rate varied for different kinds of birth. For a boy who was a firstborn “I could quote three times the normal rate for that. If the mother was the wife of the eldest son, the birth was very auspicious because it continued the family line, and then it was six times.” And what if it was a girl and the family didn’t want a girl? ‘”If they wanted it put out of the way, you charged sky high”.

Xinran asked her how she killed the girls and the midwife listed three different ways, and then said, ‘”And for women who’d never had a baby boy, just girl after girl after girl until the family were fed up with it, it was simple enough to chuck it in the slops pail”.

Over ten chapters each focusing on different situations where a baby girl was not wanted, Xinran lets us see and feel what it is like to be a woman in China subject to the immense cultural, legal, bureaucratic and ideological pressures that combine to force pregnant women to have their girls aborted, destroyed at birth or neglected or given away.

Any pro-life person who wants to get a feel for the causes of the pressures behind the 100 million missing baby girls needs to read Xinran’s Message from an Unknown Chinese Mother.

* Xinran, Message from an Unknown Chinese Mother: Stories of Loss and Love, Chatto and Windus, 2010, London.

Pro Life Campaign and Family and Life host Stem Cell Experts in Dublin

2010-03-12T08:01:00.000-08:00

In an important visit to Ireland, co-hosted by the Pro-Life Campaign and Family and Life, Professor Robert George of Princeton University and Professor William Hurlbut of Stanford University were in Dublin last week meeting with politicians, academics and pro-life supporters to discuss the need for protection of human life at its earliest stages of development and to make the case for ethical stem cell research that does not involve the destruction of human embryos

Professors George and Hurlbut met with members of the Dáil and Seanad and addressed academics and students in the Royal College of Surgeons, DCU and UCD. On Friday evening, they addressed several hundred pro-life supporters in the Davenport Hotel where they outlined to the audience the scientific and philosophical arguments underpinning a respect for human lives from the moment of fertilisation. Professor William Hurlbut , a professor in Human Biology at Stanford University explained the application and potential of adult stem cells in particular the procedure by which pluripotent stem cells (adult stem cells with the capacity to differentiate into different germ layers) can be used in a way that emulates embryonic stem cells. The significance of this is that no embryonic human being need be used for research and at present non-controversial adult stem cell research is having more success at treating diseases. Professor Robert George who is McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence at Princeton University picked through the popular arguments used to de-humanise the embryonic human being and explained why the embryonic human life is deserving of full protection of society and the law. The event was chaired by Senator Rónán Mullen.

The three-day visit of the Professors to Ireland was a great success and Professor George was interviewed on Today with Pat Kenny on the morning of Friday 5th March. You can listen to his interview here

Gendercide: The Economist’s cover story on the forced killing of baby girls in China

2010-03-12T07:47:00.000-08:00

The current issue of The Economist shows how the personal tragedies of women forced to abort girls, have them destroyed at birth, or let die through neglect, are leading to catastrophic social situations in China. The mass destruction of girls has left a systemic gender imbalance in the population where there are more unmarried young men in China than the entire population of young men in America.

The Economist, as its name suggests, looks at the world through the unsentimental lens of economic realities. It specialises in taking a hard look at the facts and figures that are newsworthy. This makes the cover story on its 6th March 2010 issue, all the more astonishing.

On a full-page funeral-black front cover is a pink pair of baby girl’s shoes and over them in huge pink letters a single-word banner headline, GENDERCIDE* and under that a subheading asking What happened to 100 million baby girls? There is a full-page editorial, again headed Gendercide, and the story runs over 4 full pages and a long review of a new book on the same phenomenon. It’s must-read stuff.

The Economist supports legal abortion. But there is something new. It now acknowledges, that ‘the cumulative consequence of such individual actions is catastrophic’, describing the results as 'carnage’.

It’s a breakthrough article for the pro-life community, mainstreaming information and analysis that has been available for 20 years. The 100 million missing baby girls of The Economist’s front-page comes from an article** by Indian economist, Amarta Sen who won the 1998 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his work on welfare economics.

So what happened to this unimaginably large number of baby girls? The subheading of the editorial sums it up, ‘Killed, aborted or neglected, at least 100m girls have disappeared – and the number is rising’. They were killed by their parents, or given away by them, or died through selective neglect by their parents, especially the mothers under crushing pressure from the traditions and ideologies of their families and local and national communities.

The lethal cultural bias against girls is concentrated primarily in China but also in India, Taiwan and Singapore, in South Korea until the 1990s, in some ex-communist countries and also seems to be reflected in the gender imbalance among Chinese-Americans and Japanese-Americans.

The huge numbers are due to the mutual reinforcement of false and dysfunctional traditional disvalues and modern ideological disvalues, both communist and those of the emerging middle classes. China’s one-child policy, The Economist says, ‘profoundly perverts family life’.

The harrowing effect on the mothers themselves surfaces in China’s shameful suicide rate for women. The Economist article notes China’s female suicide rates are among the world’s worst. ‘Suicide is the commonest form of death among Chinese rural women aged 15-34; young mothers kill themselves by drinking agricultural fertilizers which are easy to come by. The journalist Xinran Xue thinks they cannot live with the knowledge that they have aborted or killed their baby daughters.’

Every pro-life person needs to study this article and the accompanying editorial. You can read The Economist headline article here

* The dramatic word ‘gendercide’ is from Mary Anne Warren’s 1985 book, Gendercide: The Implications of Sex Selection.

** Amarta Sen, ‘More Than 100 Million Women Are Missing’, The New York Review of Books, (Vol. 37, No. 20, 20th December 1990; http://ucatlas.ucsc.edu/gender/Sen100M.html, accessed 11th March 2010)

__________________________________

Marie Stopes - yet another misleading abortion poll in Ireland

2010-03-12T07:26:00.001-08:00

When it waddles like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it’s a duck. Abortion-provider Marie Stopes’ YouGov poll on abortion, released earlier this week, scored high on quackery.

If you ask a loaded question, you get a loaded and so worthless answer. Loaded with what? Loaded with false presuppositions that are never spelt out to the respondent.

The latest Marie Stopes poll claims three quarters of the Irish public support abortion in certain circumstances. The poll makes no distinction between necessary medical interventions in pregnancy and induced abortion, where the life of the unborn baby is directly targeted.

When a poll asks misleading questions, the answers measure how far the questioner has misled the respondents. If your question implies that women’s lives and health are at risk because abortion is not available, then you are inviting the answer, ‘Of course, abortion should be available to save those women’s lives.’ But that’s a loaded question. It is loaded with a false presupposition.

The truth is that Ireland is the safest country on planet earth for a woman having a baby. We have the best, the best, maternal safety for the lives of mothers having babies in the world.

Opinion polls are supposed to be snapshots of public opinion not tools of ideological propaganda. When the public are asked straightforward not misleading questions on abortion the answer is overwhelmingly pro-life. In a 2009 IMS/Millward Brown poll commissioned by the Pro-Life Campaign, 63% of the public supported a prohibition on abortion while ensuring the continuation of existing practice of intervention to save a mother’s life. Only 16% said they were opposed to such a prohibition on abortion.

The pro-life community needs to understand what Marie Stopes and similar abortion advocacy groups are working at. The fact that their polls are misleading doesn’t seem to bother them. The fact also that a sizable chunk of the media is prepared to run with these type of polls without asking the tough questions makes it easier for Marie Stopes and others to create a public expectation that abortion legislation is inevitable. This highlights the necessity for groups like the Pro-Life Campaign to avail of every opportunity to set the record straight with the public.

Everyone must play their part to ensure we achieve legislation to protect human embryos in Ireland

2010-03-02T07:20:00.000-08:00

A massive international propaganda machine is already campaigning effectively for legislation to allow research involving the deliberate destruction of human embryos.

In Ireland, two State-supported bodies have already issued reports supporting the deliberate destruction of human embryos, the Commission on Assisted Human Reproduction and the Irish Council for Bioethics.

At EU-level the replacement of animal testing with testing of pharmaceutical products on human embryos has already been discussed.

In 1983, the Irish people voted in a referendum for Article 40.3.3 to protect the unborn but in 2009 the Supreme Court ruled that frozen human embryos in IVF clinics are not ‘unborn’. So the same embryo whose right to life is protected under our Constitution in the womb can be deliberately destroyed the day before in the clinic because, the Supreme Court has decided, its right to life is not protected as long as it is in a clinic or laboratory.

What’s to be done, then, now that the Supreme Court has decided that there is no legal protection for the right to life of human embryos in laboratories and clinics? It’s not rocket science – we have to bring in legislation to protect them. This is quite literally a matter of life and death so we need to impress on our politicians that for us, democracy means equality for all, even human beings in the first days of their lives who find themselves in clinics or laboratories through no choice of theirs. We need to inform our elected representatives as well that we will use or withhold our vote in the next election depending on the stances of individual parties and candidates regarding protection for early human life.

To view the Pro-Life Campaign press release on the R v R decision, click here

Medical care not abortion improves maternal mortality rates in developing countries

2010-03-02T03:10:00.001-08:00

Since the late 1960s deaths of mothers having children have fallen dramatically -- “current rates for developed countries are between one-fortieth and one-fiftieth of the rates that prevailed 60 years ago”, a peer reviewed article by Irvine Loudon published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition found.[1]

What brought about this ‘dramatic’ improvement in the safety of mothers in pregnancy and birth? Was it permissive abortion laws? Loudon’s survey of the relevant factors concludes, “The main factors that led to thisdecline seem to have been successive improvements in maternalcare rather than higher standards of living.”

This suggests that the way to improve safety for mothers and their children during pregnancy and birth is not the introduction of permissive abortion laws, but improving the availability and quality of care and education for mothers having children.

This is confirmed by preliminary findings presented by Chilean epidemiologist, Dr Elard Koch, of the University of Chile faculty of medicine. He was addressing the inaugural meeting of the International Group for Global Women’s Health Research in Washington DC last month.[2]

Maternal mortality in Chile fell from 275 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births in 1960 to 18.7 in 2000, the largest fall in any Latin American country. What caused this dramatic improvement?

Dr Koch said, ‘From 1960 onwards, there has been a breakthrough in the public health system and primary care’ in Chile. Resources, he added, were put into the development of ‘highly trained personnel, the construction of many primary health centres and the increase of schooling of the population.’

Chile protects unborn life in its constitution and laws - the improvement in maternal safety was not brought about by legalising abortion.

In Latin America, Chile which has pro-life legislation also has the lowest maternal mortality rate, while Guyana which brought in more liberal abortion laws in the mid-1990s putatively because of high maternal mortality rates, has the highest maternal rates, suggesting that they are applying the wrong solution to the problem, wider abortion instead of improving maternal care and education.

While International Planned Parenthood, the international abortion advocacy multinational, recently noted ‘a huge surge in maternal deaths’ in South Africa between 2007 and 2007 .[3]

They quoted the South African Report, ‘Saving Mothers 2005 – 2007’ which accepted a 20% increase in maternal deaths over the period, and acknowledged that nearly 4 out of every 10 of these deaths ‘were clearly avoidable within the health care system’.

Also mentioned in the report are ‘deaths due to complications of abortion’. South Africa has a permissive abortion legislation so it is not unreasonable to see in here a wrong solution becoming part of the problem.

It is becoming clearer by the day that the way to improve maternal mortality rates in developing countries is to improve the availability and quality of maternal care and education, and that legalising abortion in developing countries is part of the problem not part of the solution.

________________

[1] Maternal mortality in the past and its relevance to developing countries today’ American Journal of

Clinical Nutrition, Vol. 72, No. 1, 241S-246s, July 2000

[2] Friday Fax, the C-Fam Institute, Vol. 13, No. 9, 11th February 2010, http://www.c-fam.org/publications/id.1571/pub_detail.asp, accessed on 23rd February 2010.)

[3] http://www.ippf.org/en/News/Intl+news/South+Africa+Huge+surge+in+maternal+deaths.htm

New Project shows abortion as part of the history of racial oppression

2010-03-01T07:56:00.000-08:00

The Endangered Species Project is a bold new multi-media campaign launched last week in the US State of Georgia to raise public awareness about the way groups like Planned Parenthood disproportionately target African American communities when locating their abortion clinics. The new project involves high profile media events, political lobbying and advertising - including a striking billboard campaign throughout the State. The project is a collaborative effort between the Radiance Foundation, an educational group that uses the media to illuminate the intrinsic value of each person, and Georgia's Operation Outrage.

It is mainly the brainchild of Radiance Foundation Director Ryan Bomberger, himself born as a result of rape. He hopes the project will make fellow African Americans much more conscious of the fact that the abortion industry specifically targets their communities.

Using well-documented statistics, historical perspectives, highly effective videos and personal testimonies, the Endangered Species Project brings home to African-Americans the shockingly disproportionate impact of abortion on Black neighbourhoods. The initiative is causing quite a stir in the US and putting abortion advocacy groups like Planned Parenthood on the defensive. It's about time too!

The figures are shocking indeed

•Nearly 40% of all black pregnancies in the US end in induced abortion.

•That’s over three times the rate for white women

•And twice the rate of all other races combined.

•Since 1973 more than fourteen million black babies have died by abortion in the US.

The word ‘project’ in the name the Endangered Species Project echoes the name of the infamous Negro Project established by Planned Parenthood founder and eugenicist, Margaret Sanger in 1939. The aim of Sanger’s vile Negro Project was to ensure that poor black families were not reproducing. As she herself shamefully stated: “…we are paying for and even submitting to the dictates of an ever increasing, unceasingly spawning class of human beings who never should have been born at all.” –Margaret Sanger, Pivot of Civilization, Chapter 8, p. 187.

Needless to say abortion advocacy groups are attacking the Endangered Species Project fearing it will lead African American women especially, to reject their claim that access to abortion is part of ‘reproductive justice’. Thankfully, the initiative is causing quite a stir in the US and the shocking facts it reveals is putting pro-abortion groups like Planned Parenthood on the defensive despite their protests.

Endangered Species Project billboards click here

90 second video of Ryan Bomberger’s life story here

The Negro Project and Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood, click here

RTÉ - Scannal Programme Pro-Abortion Promo

2010-02-24T15:13:00.000-08:00

Mícothrom agus claonta i ngaeilge agus i mbéarla araon.

It's no secret that RTÉ the tax-funded State broadcaster is openly hostile to the pro-life position. The station doesn’t even bother anymore to create the pretence of balance when covering life issues. The latest manifestation of this was on Scannal, broadcast on RTÉ 1 last Monday, 22nd February at 7.30pm. You can watch it on the RTÉ player if you care to.

Even the description of the programme on the RTÉ website lets the cat out of the bag. It states: “Scannal looks back at a story that gripped the nation and raised the issue of abortion once again, an issue subsequent Governments have failed to fully deal with through legislation”

The so-called failure to deal with the issue through legislation might have something to do with the fact that the majority of Irish people are opposed to abortion and that the controversial X case decision by the Supreme Court in 1992 failed to set any time limits for abortion and if legislated for would have to allow abortion up to birth.

Were the producers of Scannal remotely interested in balance they could have invited reasoned pro-life voices to make these and other points in defence of the right to life.

RTÉ insists on turning a blind eye to the compelling arguments against abortion. Whilst we heard about the difficult circumstances surrounding the X case and the injunction sought by the Attorney General at the time - and nobody belittles the emotional difficulties that faced Miss X and her family - we heard nothing on Scannal about the fact that the X case judges heard no medical evidence to justify the Supreme Court decision.

Similarly, we heard nothing about the health of women in the wider context of the abortion issue. For example in recent years, several studies have been published, and in particular a study from Finland in 2005, showing that women are more likely to commit suicide after having an abortion than whilst pregnant. One horrifying case that illustrates this is that of Emma Beck, a 31 year old English artist who committed suicide in 2007 after aborting her twins. Emma's suicide note read: "I told everyone I didn't want to do it, even at the hospital. I was frightened, now it is too late. I died when my babies died. I want to be with my babies: they need me, no-one else does."

In fact the link between abortion and negative mental health consequences has become so clear that the British Royal College of Psychiatrists recommended that abortion counselling leaflets be updated to include information about the latest studies showing the negative effects of abortion on women. Separately, research published in the British Journal of Psychiatry in 2008, concluded that induced abortion is linked to an increased risk of mental illness in later life.

Importantly, the fact that Irish women receive all necessary medical treatments during pregnancy here - even if it unintentionally results in the loss of the unborn - was not highlighted on Scannal. Nor was the fact that despite having no abortion in this country, Ireland is rated number one in the world in protecting women’s lives during pregnancy, according to the latest UN/WHO report on maternal mortality. Ireland, for example, is a much safer country in which to be pregnant than say Britain or Holland, where unrestricted abortion regimes exist.

But RTÉ didn't see fit to take on board any of that. Why? Because it wouldn't have helped the agenda that RTÉ constantly pushes in favour of abortion.

RTÉ never reports on the brutality of what abortion regimes entail in other countries, like for example the fact that abortion is legal up to birth in Britain. Do we want to follow England's abortion regime - one of the most liberal in the world - where babies are aborted simply because they have 'disabilities' like hare lips and cleft palates? RTÉ seems to think we should considering the open way it promotes abortion without limits.

RTÉ has never once presented a programme that set out to challenge abortion advocates who believe that unborn children are deserving of absolutely no protection throughout the entire nine months of pregnancy. Surely there is something very suspect here?

On every occasion without exception RTÉ builds it coverage of the issue around challenging the pro-life side to justify its position. This is a genuine scandal that the programme Scannal, if it was doing its job would investigate!

The way RTÉ treats the pro-life issue is becoming a major story in itself. If the station continues along the path of openly promoting abortion, pro-life activists will have no choice but to devote all their energies into making the public aware of the culture of ideological bias in RTÉ in favour of abortion.

You can view the Public Service Broadcasting Charter which contains a statement of principles that clarifies what is expected of RTÉ as the national public service broadcaster, including accountability to its audience here

Minister Harney should learn from California's experience - Money spent on embryonic stem cell research is money wasted

2010-02-15T02:47:00.000-08:00

There are three billion reasons not to allow the Supreme Court ruling in R v. R to be used as a cover to legalise research here involving human embryo destruction.

In 2004, Californian taxpayers agreed to fund embryo stem cell research to the tune of $3 billion in the hope of finding cures for chronic diseases and disabilities. But since then, not a single breakthrough has taken place.

Now the Los Angeles-based Investor’s Business Daily magazine is reporting that the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine set up to administer the $3b has started diverting the funds earmarked for embryo research into the ethically non-controversial adult stem cell research.

Minster for Health Mary Harney may well try to rush through a regulatory framework allowing embryo destruction to meet the interests of the IVF and embryo research industries. She is on record as saying she has asked her officials to prepare heads of legislation and it is expected the proposed legislation will follow the recommendations of the Commission on Assisted Human Reproduction’s 2005 Report. The membership of this Commission was outrageously biased in favour of allowing embryo destruction – they voted 24 to 1 for it, only Professor Gerard Whyte of TCD dissenting, click here to see his closely reasoned dissent.

Clearly the recommendations of such a biased body are not a fitting basis for legislation in a democracy, all the more so when such run contrary to the balance of opinion among the general public, measured time and again in professionally carried out opinion polls every year since the biased Report was issued, which have found a majority of around 70% support the Dáil passing legislation protecting embryos against destruction in clinics and laboratories.

But Minister Mary Harney may also defend legislation allowing the destruction of human embryos in vitro on the grounds that embryo destruction is needed to provide embryonic stem cells for research to produce new medical treatments.

This argument, however, has turned out to be as flawed as an appeal to the biased Commission on Assisted Human Reproduction Report. For years we have been bombarded by propaganda saying killing human embryos has to be allowed so research using stem cells got by that way may lead to new medical treatments. But now we are finding out this simply ain’t so. It’s been all promise, but no product.

In 2004 California approved Proposition 71, a ballot measure allowing the State to borrow US $3 billion to fund stem cell research using stem cells obtained by destroying human embryos. The money was to be used, its proponents said, to develop new treatments based on embryonic stem cell research. The State agency set up to manage this was the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine.

On 12th January this year, the Los Angeles-based Investor’s Business Daily magazine reported that because the research using stem cells obtained by killing human embryos has not produced any breakthroughs in medical treatments, the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine ‘is diverting funds’ to the research approach that ‘has produced actual therapies and treatments : adult stem cell research.’

Adult stem cell research, the Investor’s Business Daily comments, ‘not only has treated real people with real results it also does not come with the moral baggage embryonic stem cell research does.

It goes on to comment that advocates of embryonic stem cell research have engaged in a sort of three card trick:

To us this is a classic bait and switch, an attempt to snatch success from the jaws of failure and take credit for discoveries and advances achieved by research (which) Proposition 71 supporters once cavalierly dismissed. We have noted how over the years that when funding was needed, the phrase “embryonic stem cells” was used. When actual progress was discussed, the word “embryonic” was dropped because embryonic stem cell research never got out of the lab. You can read the Investor’s Business Daily magazine article in full here

So if Minister Mary Harney or the voices of the IVF and embryo research industries in Ireland start arguing that we need a regulatory framework allowing embryo destruction in order to open the door for research promising breakthroughs in medical treatment, the answer is we already know what lies down that path. California three US $ 3 billion at it and there were no results and now the agency set up to get results is diverting the money into adult stem cell research so it will have some results to show.

The real message of the Californian experience, then is that Ireland has a golden opportunity to put substantial resources into adult stem cell research to make Ireland an international centre of excellence in this field of research which is actually producing the goods.

In the wake of the Supreme Court ruling in Ireland stripping Constitutional protection from human embryos in vitro, the latest developments from California take on a significant added meaning.

With her experience in other ministries, Minister Harney is in a position to appreciate the economic as well as the medical knock-on effects of making Ireland an international centre of excellence for the ethically non-controversial adult stem cell research.

A Storm in a Superbowl!

2010-02-15T02:20:00.000-08:00

If you haven't been following the controversy that has blown up in the US recently over a pro-life ad aired during the US Superbowl, the premier sporting event on US television, it's definitely worth a look as a classic example of abortion advocates shooting themselves in the foot.

The ad, sponsored by Focus on the Family, highlighted the circumstances surrounding the birth of US football star, Tim Tebow. Tim's mother was advised to have an abortion on the grounds that her baby could be born with a severe disability. However, she continued with her pregnancy and gave birth to one of the most gifted football players in US history.

The ad begins with Pam Tebow holding a baby picture of Tim with a football and doesn't even mention the word abortion. It didn't need to. In the weeks leading up to the Super Bowl, pro-abortion campaigners created such a stir trying to have the ad banned that most Americans were already familiar with the details of the Tebow family's life-affirming story.

The ad has been described as 'folksy, funny, and fabulously effective' and gently but effectively conveyed a pro-life message to the over 106 million people who viewed it.

The entire episode shows how much the pro-life movement in the US has developed in terms of media savvy and its ability to generate weeks of positive publicity leading up to the Super Bowl. In contrast, the pro-choice movement looked hysterical and reactionary in trying to censor a genuinely inoffensive ad from US citizens. It bodes well for the future.

Watch the ad for yourself here

Why Minister Harney shouldn't follow unbalanced CAHR recommendations.

2010-02-12T02:54:00.000-08:00

Minister Mary Harney is expected to publish proposals allowing destruction of human embryos in vitro following the Supreme Court decision (R -v- R) before Christmas that they are not protected under Article 40.3.3 of the Constitution. She will consider the recommendations of the Commission on Assisted Human Reproduction (CAHR), set up by the Government. It issued its report in 2005. The Commission had 25 members. The recommendations included proposals involving the deliberate destruction of human embryos in vivo.

The question may be asked 'Why not just implement the recommendations of the CAHR Report? Here's the answer.

It would be undemocratic for four reasons:

(i) The make-up of the Commission was unbalanced. Only one out of 25 members opposed the deliberate destruction of human embryos. The composition of the Commission decided on by the government guaranteed a majority proposal supporting embryo destruction.

(ii) Professional opinion polls carried out for the Pro-Life Campaign show a majority year after year favouring legislation protecting embryos. So the recommendations of the stacked Commission do not reflect the balance of opinion in the general public. Already some of its arguments claiming deliberate embryo destruction was needed are being overtaken by scientific developments.

(iii) The Commission advertised in 2001 for submissions from the public and received 'over 1700 responses' (p.38) but the Report didn't reveal how many opposed embryo destruction and how many supported it. Why not?

(iv) Only one member of the Commission disagreed with its recommendations, Professor Gerry Whyte, Associate Law Professor in the Law School, Trinity College Dublin. To read his carefully thought out case rejecting the proposals allowing for the deliberate destruction of human embryos, click here

USA : Massive turnout of young people march against abortion at March For Life in Washington DC

2010-02-10T08:16:00.000-08:00

Thirty seven years ago, the US Supreme Court legalised abortion in every state in Roe v. Wade. The pro-life community immediately responded and has gone from strength to strength, year by year. On 22nd January last, an immense crowd, at least 200,000 strong, filled four blocks of the National Mall in Washington D. C. for the annual March for Life.

Observers were struck by how young most of the participants were. Self-confessed abortion supporter, Robert McCartney writing in the Washington Post (24th January) went to the March ‘expecting to write about its irrelevance’, but goes on, ‘How wrong I was. The anti-abortion movement feels like its gaining strength … and Roe supporters (including me) are justifiably nervous.’

He continues, ‘I was especially struck by the large number of young people among the tens of thousands at the march. It suggests that the battle over abortion will endure for a long time to come.’

He points to recent political pro-life successes in the US, the insertion of ‘a remarkably strong anti-abortion provision’ in the health care bill in the House of Representatives, and the election of pro-life candidates in the November governor polls in Virginia and New Jersey.

He adds that ‘fewer than 100 abortion-rights supporters’ turned up for a demo supporting Roe outside the Supreme Court. One of them, Erin Maston, of the National Organization for Women said ‘the current political climate is “terrifically hostile” to abortion rights’. She obviously means among the people, because President Obama is vehemently pro-abortion and the Democrats have a substantial majority in Congress. Another abortion rights activist at the 200-weak demo was Amanda Pelletier, a 20 year old from a university abortion rights group who said ‘Unfortunately, I feel my generation is a little complacent. … It just doesn’t seem to be a very hip issue.’

The persistence and growth of the pro-life community over the past 37 years should serve as a huge inspiration to us here in Ireland.

You can read the full text of Robert McCartney's article here

Who's behind the push for Abortion in Ireland?

2010-02-10T08:09:00.000-08:00

IFPA and Irish Examiner helps Human Rights Watch push for abortion in Ireland

Human Rights Watch is a renowned abortion advocacy group so the news that it recently issued another document giving out about another country not having introduced a liberal abortion regime is yawnfully predictable.

This time it’s Ireland’s turn. Imagine the surprise on reading that a pro-abortion lobby group thinks it’s awful we don’t have abortion!

It does, however, have one interesting fact. A note on page 53 states, ‘Human Rights Watch is particularly grateful for the information, support, expertise and feedback provided by many staff members of the Irish Family Planning Association.’

Another disappointment and something which must be addressed is the way the Irish Examiner newspaper gave the story top billing two days running and failed to report a single word from the Pro Life Campaign taking issue with the report. The decision of the Irish Examiner to give the story such prominence lacks all credibility and highlights its strong ideological bias in favour of a pro-abortion position.

Honest debate necessary to address real issues sorrounding Abortion in Ireland

2010-02-05T01:41:00.000-08:00

The way in which the Irish Examiner presented the result of a RED C online survey on abortion published on 21st January was misleading and did not make an honest contribution to the debate on abortion in Ireland.

The poll claiming that 60% of 18-35 year olds support legalised abortion in Ireland was presented by the Irish Examiner in a misleading way on its front page on

Given the question posed, the results were not at all surprising. The survey made no distinction between necessary medical treatments in pregnancy and induced abortion, (where the life of the unborn child is directly targeted). This in effect renders the findings meaningless and sheds no new light on public attitudes to abortion.

Polls, including one in 2009, that distinguish between standard medical treatments and induced abortion consistently show majority opposition to legal abortion according to Millward Brown IMS market research 2005-2009. and 2009

The Red C survey confined its interviews to 18-35 year olds. Clearly then the findings are not representative of the general population. Also, only 36% of the 18-35 year olds interviewed 'strongly' approve of legal abortion and not 60% as the Irish Examiner claimed.

The report also failed to draw attention to the known fact that 18-35 year olds start to increasingly identify with the pro-life position as they get older. This is borne out in all surveys on the issue.

All things considered, it was extremely misleading for the paper to run with today's front page headline declaring: 60% In Favour of Legal Abortion

The abortion debate is a very serious one and deserves more objective treatment than it received in the Irish Examiner.

Human Rights Watch Ireland Abortion Report Ridiculous

2010-02-02T05:42:00.001-08:00

The New York based advocacy group Human Rights Watch released a document on 28th January entitled 'A State of Isolation: Access to Abortion for Women in Ireland'.

Among other things, it claims that Ireland is in breach of its international human rights obligations for not allowing legalised abortion in this country.
Human Rights Watch cannot credibly claim to be a human rights organisation while at the same time denying the rights of unborn children throughout the entire nine months of pregnancy. Any authentic vision of human rights has to include the right to life. Otherwise it is meaningless.

Human Rights Watch may talk a lot about the issue but it does not have a monopoly on concern for women's health. Ireland without abortion is a recognised world leader in providing medical care for women during pregnancy. Human Rights Watch and likeminded abortion advocacy groups need to reflect on this reality instead of creating unnecessary fears about women's health simply to have abortion imposed on Ireland.

Human Rights Watch is also in complete denial regarding the latest peer reviewed studies showing the extremely damaging psychological effects of abortion on women. Women deserve better from an organisation claiming to serve its best interests.

It is ridiculous to claim that Ireland is in breach of its international human rights obligations because it respects the right to life of unborn children. It is embarrassingly obvious from today's publication that Human Rights Watch has little or no knowledge of the situation in Ireland. As an abortion advocacy group, it may see a political value in using over the top terms to describe Ireland's abortion laws but this approach does nothing to serve the cause of informed and reasoned debate.

Seeking to protect both mother and baby during pregnancy is not a violation of any human right. In fact it is the complete opposite. Abortion is legal up to birth in some countries. Human Rights Watch supports these barbaric laws. As a group, it even opposes laws prohibiting sex-selection abortions, specifically targeting female unborn children. This alone completely undermines its claim to be a defender of women's rights.

Rather than discriminating against certain categories of human beings, we need to work together to build a more welcoming society where the value and dignity of every human life, born and unborn, is respected

Adult Stem Cell research trumps embryonic every time.

2009-12-29T03:41:00.000-08:00

It's just amazing - the number of scientific breakthroughs in adult stem cell research recently. Why are we are still discussing the destruction of human embryos - human persons at their earliest stage of life - when all the science backs the use of adult stem cells?