Tag Archives: abortion

News Flash! UN Officials Wrong. No Right to Abortion. New Expert Document Issued at United Nations

Posted on October 6, 2011 by | Leave a comment

Tomorrow morning at the UN press briefing room, internationally recognized scholar Professor Robert George of Princeton and former US Ambassador Grover Joseph Rees will challenge claims made by UN personnel and others that there exists an international right to abortion in international law.

As recently as a few weeks ago the UN Special Rapporteur on Health, the High Commissioner for Human Rights and the UN Secretary General have all said such a right exists. And, according to Human Rights Watch the CEDAW Committee has directed 93 countries to change their laws on abortion.

Professor George, Ambassador Rees and 30 other international experts are releasing the San Jose Articles to refute these claims and to assert the rights of the unborn child in international law.

Other signatories to the Articles include Professor John Finnis of Oxford, Professor John Haldane of the University of St. Andrews, Francisco Tatad, the former majority leader of the Philippine Senate, Javier Borrego, former Judge of the European Court of Human Rights, and Professor Carter Snead of UNESCO’s international committee on bioethics.

“The San Jose Articles were drafted by a large group of experts in law, medicine, and public policy. The Articles will support and assist those around the world who are coming under pressure from UN personnel and others who say falsely that governments are required by international law to repeal domestic laws protecting human beings in the embryonic and fetal stages of development against the violence of abortion” said Professor George.

Ambassador Grover Joseph Rees, former US Ambassador to East Timor, said, “When I was in Timor I witnessed first-hand a sustained effort by some international civil servants and representatives of foreign NGOs to bully a small developing country into repealing its pro-life laws. The problem is that people on the ground, even government officials, have little with which to refute the extravagant claim that abortion is an internationally recognized human right. The San Jose Articles are intended to help them fight back.”

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International Right to Abortion, Global Elite Group Presents Contrary Evidence

Posted on October 5, 2011 by | Leave a comment

This week a global elite of political, legal, and health care professionals joined by pro-life activists will present legal evidence proving the pro-abortion advocates at the United Nations have no legal standing in their assertions of an international right to abortion.

International efforts to legalize abortion-on-demand has been going on for many years. Planned Parenthood International has been among those lobbying the United Nations since its existence. The goods and services provided by abortion providers like Planned Parenthoods amount to a multi-billion dollar enterprise. Sadly, the United States gives billions of tax payers dollars to such organizations though the USAID program.

Dr. Ligaya Acosta is right: If the billions given by the United States to promote abortion in Asia and throughout the world were used to actually help the poor, there would be no more poverty in the world.

The most recent effort to legalize abortion came from the U.N. Secretariat. In a Human Rights Council policy statement, the Secretariat seeks to make abortion as a unfettered global health right. If adopted, all members nations will be obligated to decriminalize their abortion-related laws. Doing so will enable organizations like Planned Parenthood to sell their goods and abortion-on-demand services without legal hindrance.

Here is the worst example of the bureaucratically instituted form of free enterprise.

Among those expected to participate in the U.N presentation this week are Robert George of Princeton University, Ambassador Grover Rees (Ret.), and Austin Ruse of the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute.

(For more information about the U.N. policy report, read C-FAM article titled “UN Official Says Abortion is a Human Right, Secretary General Endorses Report”, visit the blog Turtle Bay, and/or read the UN Report .)

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Ohio Senate Approves Pro-Life Legislation

Posted on September 28, 2011 by | Leave a comment

(COLUMBUS, OH) – The Ohio Senate passed House Bill 63, Ohio Right to Life’s Judicial Bypass legislation, by a 23 to 9 bipartisan vote this afternoon. This pro-life legislation will protect minors and their unborn children by closing loopholes and raising the bar to protect parents’ ability to care for their children.

“We thank Senate President Tom Niehaus and the pro-life members of the Senate who continue to advance life-saving policies,” said Mike Gonidakis, Executive Director of Ohio Right to Life. “H.B. 63 strengthens parents’ ability to care for their children and prevents lawyers and others from taking mom and dad’s place when the child needs them most.”

Current Ohio law states that parental consent is required before a minor can obtain an abortion, but a loophole exists which allows judges to bypass parental involvement and allow a minor to obtain an abortion. H.B. 63 puts an end to this “rubber-stamp” judicial approval.

Today’s vote on the Senate floor follows the overwhelming 64 to 33 bipartisan vote of support it received in the Ohio House earlier this year. After the House concurs with today’s passage of the legislation, the bill will be sent to pro-life Governor John Kasich to be signed into law.

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Research Shows US and UN Diplomats Promoted Abortion as Population Control

Posted on August 31, 2011 by | Leave a comment

By Lauren Funk

(C-FAM) The new book by journalist Mara Hvistendahl on sex selected abortion shows how American diplomats and politicians were active in promoting abortion, often through UN channels, as a means of population control in the developing world.

A body of historical evidence connects the advocates of abortion and population control with US development aid policy, organizations such as Planned Parenthood, and the United Nations secretariat.

General William Draper Jr., a World War II general turned US diplomat, was a “staunch proponent of abortion,” Hvistendahl writes in her controversial new book “Unnatural Selection.” General Draper directed the government’s interest in population control to coincide with issues of security and international development in the post World War II world by connecting high fertility rates with poverty, and poverty with the possible rise of communism in Asia. Draper promoted abortion as a viable method of birth control, and encouraged it for the sake of decreased fertility, which was expected to have positive economic effects in the targeted nations, thus avoiding conditions favorable to popular revolutions.

General Draper continued to advise numerous presidential administrations in the 1950’s and 1960’s on the threat to US national security posed by explosive populations in the developing world, suggesting abortion and “family planning” as the solution. General Draper was “responsible for the first official recommendations that the U.S. government help other nations, on request, to deal with population issues,” wrote Planned Parenthood when they honored him with the Margaret Sanger Award in 1966.

General Draper also advocated for the creation of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) in 1969. International observers have criticized UNFPA for promoting “family planning” and access to abortion as a solution to the issue of poverty in countries with large populations and/or high fertility rates.

General Draper’s son, William H. Draper III, became one of the most significant figures at the United Nations during the following decade. Draper III was made head of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) in 1986. Under Draper’s tenure, UNDP expanded its fundraising to new levels and began a “Women in Development” division, a division which now focuses on achieving universal access to contraception, sex rights and HIV, and gender mainstreaming.

Draper III is also a member emeritus of Population Action International (PAI) board of directors. PAI was originally founded as the “The Population Crisis Committee” by General Draper, and continues to play an active role in supporting population-related programs, including activism at the Cairo Conference on Population and Development in 1994.

Research from Hvistendahl and others also revealed that prominent politicians like Henry Kissinger also promoted abortion abroad as a tool to reduce fertility around the world. Kissinger claimed in a 1974 government memo that abortion is vital to the solution of world population growth. “No country has reduced its population growth without resorting to abortion,” stated the memo, which was signed by Kissinger.

US presidents, including Lyndon Johnson, John F. Kennedy, and George H.W. Bush, similarly supported the promotion of population control in poorer countries, for the sake of American security and international stability

By Lauren Funk writes for C-FAM. This article first appeared in the Friday Fax, an internet report published weekly by C-FAM (Catholic Family & Human Rights Institute), a New York and Washington DC-based research institute (http://www.c-fam.org/). This article appears with permission.

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Book Review: Unnatural Selection: Choosing Boys Over Girls and the Consequences of a World Full of Men

Posted on August 27, 2011 by | Leave a comment

By Susan Yoshihara, Ph.D.

Part II: How “Complicit” is the UN in Asia’s Sex Selective Abortion Crisis?

(C-FAM) A new book has raised hackles among abortion advocates about just how much the UN Population Fund is to blame for more than 160 million missing girls in Asia: aborted in the quest for sons.

Mara Hvistendahl’s Unnatural Selection: Choosing Boys Over Girls and the Consequences of a World Full of Men is “one of the most consequential books ever written in the campaign against abortion” according to a Wall Street Journal review; the book’s scholarly credentials bolstered by a standing-room-only event with demographer Nicholas Eberstadt at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington.

While conservatives hail the book’s breakthrough research, Hvistendahl’s fellow progressives haggle over its findings. The liberal Guardian’s review elicited a terse letter from UNFPA condemning Hvistendahl’s conclusion that UNFPA and feminist organizations have done little to stop the practice. In the letter UNFPA claims credit for persuading the Chinese to outlaw sex selection in 1994.

That law has done little, however. Sex selective abortion persists despite a similar ban in India, resulting in extremely skewed sex ratios at birth. Normally there are around 105 males per 100 females born, but China now reports a ratio of 120 boys to 100 girls and that has led to trafficking for prostitution and widespread bride buying.

In her response to the UNFPA letter, Hvistendahl dodges direct conflict with the agency and instead criticizes the Guardian’s review as “misleading” readers into thinking she had proven UNFPA’s direct complicity in the one-child policy that fuels sex selective abortion. “There is a difference between outright funding an injustice and ignoring injustice once it occurs,” she argues. Readers may not be so convinced.

Hvistendahl ably demonstrates that despite UNFPA’s touted mission to fight gender discrimination, the agency deliberately refrains from taking a position on sex selective abortion. UNFPA officials told her privately this is because they are “in a bind” since, as one demographer working with UNFPA put it, “the right to abort remains UNFPA’s ‘priority issue.’”

“How do you hold on to this discrimination tag and at the same time talk about safe abortion access to it?” a UNFPA officer told her: “It has been a huge challenge to us…We are walking a tightrope.”

Internal UNFPA directives tell officers to shift the blame, emphasizing “women whose husbands beat them or threaten divorce if they don’t produce an heir.” One pamphlet directs advocates to “avoid language that holds the mother responsible…she has very little control over the decision…choice in the absence of autonomy is no choice.”

Hvistendahl cites a 2010 internal staff memo warning UNFPA country officers to stay away from the 1995 UN Beijing statement on women that condemned “prenatal sex selection and female infanticide” and to avoid associating the practice with human rights.

As soon as they acknowledge how many women go through numerous abortions to get a boy, a Canadian sociologist told her, “the Vatican will be the first one to say, ‘Ban abortion, make abortion illegal!’”

“Fear of the ‘A-word’,” Hvistendahl concludes, has “immobilized the very people who should be crying oppression.”

By Susan Yoshihara writes for C-FAM. This article first appeared in the Friday Fax, an internet report published weekly by C-FAM (Catholic Family & Human Rights Institute), a New York and Washington DC-based research institute (http://www.c-fam.org/). This article appears with permission.

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Pro-Abortion Legislation Introduced, Targets Pro-Life Healthcare Professionals

Posted on June 23, 2011 by | Leave a comment

(Columbus) – Planned Parenthood and pro-abortion legislators gathered at the Statehouse today to promote the so-called “Prevention First Act”. The bill would force pro-life pharmacists, religious hospitals and pro-life taxpayers to provide or subsidize the morning-after pill despite religious or moral objections. The legislation would also require persons who took and adhere to the original Hippocratic Oath to violate its requirement that “I will not give to a woman an abortive remedy”.

“The abortion industry, yet again, attempts to characterize this recycled legislation an effort to prevent unintended pregnancies. In fact, it will prevent the exercise of freedom of conscience,” said Mike Gonidakis, Executive Director for Ohio Right to Life. “Violating the conscience rights of health care professionals could force some people to leave the profession, and ironically, decrease access to health care, rather than increase it,” said Gonidakis.

Although proponents claim requiring the provision of “emergency contraception” will decrease unintended pregnancies and abortions, a January 2007 Obstetrics & Gynecology study by leading proponents of the drug found that increased access to “emergency contraception” had not reduced the rates of abortion or unintended pregnancy.

Further, the so-called “Prevention First Act” would require hospitals to provide misleading information stating that “emergency contraception” does not cause an abortion or interrupt an “established” pregnancy. Pro-life Ohioans oppose the morning-after pill because it sometimes ends the life of a human embryo after fertilization by preventing implantation.

Ohio Right to Life expresses its opposition to the legislation for its blatant disrespect for the rights of pro-life Ohioans, and for its failure to respect the dignity of life by forcing increased distribution abortion-causing drugs.

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Gallup: American Public is Pro-Life

Posted on June 21, 2011 by | Leave a comment

By David E. Smith

A new national opinion survey reveals growing support for the pro-life viewpoint on the subject of abortion. That survey, conducted by the Gallup Organization, shows a decisive majority believe that unborn children should be protected under the law.

Sixty-one percent of those surveyed said they believe abortion should be illegal in all circumstances or legal only under certain circumstances. Thirty-seven percent of respondents believe abortion should be legal under all circumstances or most circumstances.

Under the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton decisions, abortion is currently legal in the United States under all circumstances.

Support for providing legal protection to preborn children was consistent regardless of age or gender. Sixty-one percent of men and 60 percent of women said all or most abortions should be illegal. Pro-life views were also expressed by 59 percent of those in the 18-34 age category, 58 percent of those aged 35-54, and 64 percent of those over the age of 55.

In its analysis of the results, the Gallup Organization provided this assessment: “The results make it clear that, despite their labeling of their own abortion views, a majority of Americans clearly not only oppose abortion and believe it to be a morally improper ‘choice,’ but they believe the legal status of abortions should change, and all or virtually all abortions should be prohibited.”

The Gallup organization even offered the pro-life movement some advice: “Pro-life groups need to educate Americans on what constitutes a pro-life position — and to encourage them to call themselves pro-life when they want all or almost all abortions made illegal.”

First published by Illinois Family Institute (June 18,2011) where David Smith Executive Director.

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Live Action President Lila Rose On Planned Parenthood Defunding in NC

Posted on June 17, 2011 by | Leave a comment

(RALEIGH) Lila Rose, president of the pro-life youth organization Live Action, issued the following statement yesterday morning on North Carolina’s defunding of Planned Parenthood:

“North Carolina is now the fourth state this year to step up to the plate and ensure that no taxpayer dollars go towards funding the biggest abortion business in America, Planned Parenthood. This corrupt organization is responsible for killing over 332,000 defenseless unborn children each year. Planned Parenthood manipulates women to choose abortion and routinely aids and abets the sexual exploitation and trafficking of young girls. Governors of other states should take note of how Gov. Perdue’s legislature has decisively rejected her veto and realize that the American people do not want to subsidize abortionists.”

Indiana, Kansas, and New Jersey have recently passed laws to prevent taxpayer funds from going to Planned Parenthood. Planned Parenthood is challenging the Indiana law in federal court, although a federal judge has already denied the abortion business’s request for a temporary injunction.

Over the past four years, Live Action has released undercover videos revealing Planned Parenthood clinics across the country covering up the sexual abuse of children and violating mandatory reporting laws for statutory rape. In February, Live Action released new undercover footage showing 7 Planned Parenthood clinics in 4 states willing to aid and abet the commercial sex trafficking of underage girls. The videos prompted the House of Representatives to vote twice to defund Planned Parenthood of all federal taxpayer subsidies.

“North Carolina joins Indiana, Kansas, and New Jersey in standing up for the rule of law, human rights, and responsible government,” says Rose. “While we wait for Congress to defund Planned Parenthood at the federal level, responsible state governments should do their part to protect women and unborn children and end local public subsidies of this lawless abortion chain.”

To see the videos, visit: liveaction.org/traffick

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WHO-Approves Abortion Drug Promises Life, and Death

Posted on June 11, 2011 by | Leave a comment

By Susan Yoshihara, Ph.D.

NEW YORK (C-FAM)  By authorizing the use of a single drug, the World Health Organization has simultaneously raised hopes for saving thousands of mothers’ lives and raised fears that the drug will also be used to kill perhaps millions of unborn children. Misoprostol is used to help stop bleeding during delivery, the main cause of maternal deaths, but it can also be used to induce at-home abortions, which are very dangerous, particularly in rural areas that lack primary or emergency medical care.

The fears are grounded in the fact that WHO approved use of the drug by unskilled personnel and that both WHO and Gynuity Health Projects, the organization which sought the drug’s approval, advocate the use of misoprostol for abortion outside the hospital setting.

WHO says its “work over the past three decades has contributed significantly to the emergence and wide acceptance of the current recommended regime” of medical abortion, according to one of its recent reports. WHO has trained midwives throughout the developing world to perform abortions in order to eliminate the need for physicians, the report says. In Vietnam alone, the trials included 1,734 women, and its misoprostol-induced abortions are conduced up to 63 days, WHO says.

Gynuity is working to mainstream the use of misoprostol for self-induced abortions. According to a 2009 Gynuity report, the organization works at the community level to cast self-induced abortion in a positive light, and to “oppose legislation introduced at the state or federal level that furthers the concept of fetal personhood.”

The WHO’s decision is similar to Federal Drug Administration approval in the U.S., ensuring that the drug is legitimized for use without a doctor and that it will be stocked in pharmacies all over the world.

Another concern is that use of misoprostol causes birth defects. Gynuity’s own 2002 report shows that when misoprostol is used for abortion, the risk of birth defects increases, most commonly causing clubfoot, cranial nerve abnormalities, and absence of the fingers.

When used to reduce post-partum hemorrhaging, pro-life physician Joe DeCook says misoprostol is a “wonder drug” since it does not have to be refrigerated or injected in non-sterile, rural environments. “But it’s like morphine. It can be used for good or for evil.”

Other physicians are even more skeptical. Maternal Life International (MLI) advised the WHO that approving the drug outside the hospital setting sets a double standard. “Women in resource limited settings are expected to give birth with unskilled or semi-skilled birth attendants,” MLI’s Dr. George Mulcaire-Jones said, “This fact alone leads to higher maternal and infant mortality rates than those in developed countries” and gives women “the false assurance that their deliveries will be ‘safe’.”

A quarter of all medical abortions fail and require medical attention in a hospital setting, DeCook said, and after seven weeks, risks to the life of the mother increase dramatically. “They may be able to show a decrease in the number of maternal mortalities because they will decrease the number of deliveries by abortion,” DeCook said, “but they will have no idea how many women will die in their wake.”

This article first appeared in the Friday Fax, an internet report published weekly by C-FAM (Catholic Family & Human Rights Institute), a New York and Washington DC-based research institute (http://www.c-fam.org/). This article appears with permission.”

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Ohio Case Roe v. Planned Parenthood is Resolved — What is There to Hide?

Posted on May 10, 2011 by | Leave a comment

Life Legal Defense Foundation (LLDF) is pleased to announce that the Ohio case, Roe v. Planned Parenthood, Case No. A0502691, Hamilton County Court of Common Pleas, has been “resolved and dismissed,” according to a statement by the attorney for the plaintiffs, Brian Hurley (Crabbe, Brown & James LLP).

Resolution of the case comes just months after a major blow to Planned Parenthood’s (PP) defense on the applicability of Ohio’s informed consent statute. Judge Jody Luebbers ruled that the doctor for PP of Southwest Ohio breached her legal duty by not having an “informed consent” meeting with Jane Roe 24 hours in advance of her abortion, and by failing to obtain written informed consent from Jane and at least one of her parents since Jane was a minor at the time.

In addition to the lack of informed consent, the plaintiffs sought compensatory and punitive damages against PP for failure to comply with their statutory duty to inform Jane Roe’s parents of her intended abortion. Jane, at age 14, had been impregnated by her 21-year-old soccer coach, also the man who brought her in for the abortion. Instead of notifying Jane’s parents, as required by Ohio law, PP phoned the sexual predator. PP’s failure to notify Roe’s parents and to gain informed consent resulted in Jane not only undergoing the abortion, but also in the continued cover-up of the sexual abuse, demonstrating a disturbing trend in PP clinics: disregard for the health and wellbeing of women and children.

“Resolution of this case must have been an act of desperation on the part of PP,” states Dana Cody, LLDF’s President and Executive Director. “They went, in a matter of months, from litigating every inch of their defense to a sudden willingness to resolve the matter. I would speculate that had PP gone to trial there would have been too much exposure of how they do business. After all, they are currently experiencing public outrage over their apparent willingness to cover up the sexual exploitation of children. What more might they have to hide?”

LLDF commends Brian Hurley for his tremendous work on Roe. His diligence and perseverance continues in another Ohio case, Fairbanks v. Planned Parenthood, case no. A0901484, Hamilton County, Ohio, where Mr. Hurley is representing Denise Fairbanks. The claims include PP’s failure to report statutory rape by Ms. Fairbanks’ father when at age 16 she was taken to PP for an abortion. The complaint states that although she informed PP staff of the abuse, they did not report to local law enforcement, and for more than a year she continued to suffer abuse that PP could have prevented by simply complying with the law.

Life Legal Defense Foundation was established in 1989, and is a nonprofit public interest law firm composed of attorneys and other concerned citizens, committed to the sanctity of human life. LLDF provided support for Jane Roe’s case and continues to provide assistance in Ms. Fairbanks case.

Source: Christian Newswire, April 27, 2011.

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