Celebrate the Unconditional Value of Human Life!
How can we develop a moral stand on a debate that seems to be polarized by those who consider abortion simply a matter of private choice and those who support no legal abortions save those very rare ones necessary to save a mother’s life?
The prolife movement rightfully fears that in time "pre-choice" will become, especially for poor women, less a choice of moral freedom and more an act compelled by economic necessity. Not only the young and the poor confront severe social pressures to abort. Lower-middle income women have felt similar coercion.
The picture of a bloody fetus, torn apart by a surgeon's scalpel is a sad way to die. This is not a male vs female issue, with gender testing widely available, female babies are the most likely victims.
Women on the fast track, in white-collar careers, learn that male competitors consider pregnancy an indication that women are not seriously seeking corporate advancement.
Is it any wonder that abortion of convenience
is the way unborn babies will die?
World PRO LIFE
News updates from '06
CANADA:
Canadian Abortion Group Demands Increased Abortion Access
Two provinces, New Brunswick and Quebec, do not use taxpayer funds to pay for abortions at all abortion facilities. The abortion advocates also lament that just 20 percent of the hospitals in Canada perform abortions, which they claim makes access to abortion difficult for rural and low-income women.
INDIA:
Girls Face Sex-Selection "Female Infanticide" Abortions
LifeNews.com Note: Swami Agnivesh, a former education minister of Haryana State, is president of the Arya Samaj. Rama Mani is course director at the Geneva Center
for Security Policy. Angelika Kцster-Lossack is a former member of the German Parliament for the Green Party. The views expressed in this article, which originally appeared in the International World Herald, do not entirely represent those of LifeNews.com.
In recent years, the world has been shocked by the Taliban's ruthless suppression of women in Afghanistan, the practice of female genital mutilation in parts of Africa and the abuse of female domestic labor in places like Saudi Arabia. Yet it is the world's largest democracy that is the undeclared winner in the contest of violence against women.
In India, female feticide - the sex-selective abortion of girls - has led to an alarming "gender gap" in the country's population. In 1990, when the census showed that there were 25 million more males than females in India, the government reacted by introducing a law making it illegal to detect the sex of a fetus through ultrasound examination. By 2001, the gender gap had risen to 35 million, and now experts estimate it as high as 50 million.
The practice of female infanticide has a long history in India: Because of the wide cultural preference for sons, many baby girls used to be killed after birth. But modern technology, particularly the ultrasound machine, has made it easier for parents, and highly profitable for doctors, to practice female feticide without great risk of detection and punitive legal action.
CHINA:
Blind Chinese Pro Life Activist imprisoned
A blind Chinese attorney and activist who exposed a forced abortion and sterilization scandal in the city of Linyi is still under house arrest and has been beaten twice by thugs hired by local officials.
Chen Guangcheng has been under house arrest in his one-story brick home for four months. Since September, Chen and his wife and 71 year-old mother have been prevented from leaving his home. The officials have cut his telephone lines and used specialized equipment to prevent him from using his cell phone. Chen has been beaten twice when he's attempted to leave and attorneys and supporters who have taken up Chen's case have been attacked as well.
Chen's freedom was restricted and he was arrested from a hiding place in Beijing by Linyi officials who say he provided "intelligence" to foreigners. That refers to his meeting with reporters from Time Magazine and the Washington Post to expose the atrocities of a forced abortion and sterilization campaign. In the months before he spoke with reporters, Chen said 7,000 women had been forcibly aborted or sterilized. Anyone who attempted to flee was apprehended, beaten, and held hostage in city prisons until their relatives came and paid large fines for their release.
USA:
Charges Filed for Selling of Body Parts in New York, Philadelphia
New York, NY (LifeNews.com) -- One district attorney called it “something out of a cheap horror movie.” He's referring to a case in which the owner of a biomedical supply house and three others have been charged with selling human body parts for use in transplants. Investigators say the defendants earned millions of dollars forging death certificates and organ donor consent forms to make it look like the bones,
skin, tendons, and heart valves they obtained from bodies from funeral homes had
been obtained legally. The case marks the first set of charges from a scandal
involving hundreds of bodies, including that of “Masterpiece Theatre” host
Alistair Cooke, who died in '04. Some of the body parts could spread disease
to transplant patients. The bodies came from funeral homes in New York City, Rochester, Philadelphia, and New Jersey that contracted a funeral home
for embalming. The Food and Drug Admin. recently closed Biomedical Tissue Services, noting that the company had failed to screen for contaminated tissue.
The FDA said patients who received the company's products could have been exposed to disease, although the risk might be minimal.
PAKISTAN:
Pakistani Nurse Raped for Refusing to do Abortions
Punjab, Pakistan (LifeNews.com) -- A nurse who refused to do illegal abortions in Pakistan has become the victim of an alleged gang rape. Authorities say 26-yr-old Rubina Kousar was attacked by three men who burst into her lodgings at a rural
health center in the western Punjab last Wednesday. Three men have been arrested
in connection with the crime, but they deny that they were the ones responsible. Kousar told the press, “I was constantly put under pressure over the course of six months to carry out illegal abortions on two women but I refused. And so revenge was taken.” Kousar added, “They have threatened my family with dire consequences if we do not settle this. But this is not the past when we can get pushed around. God will give me the courage to fight them.” In Pakistan, abortion is illegal except when the life of the mother is at risk. The attack on Kousar has sparked a firestorm of controversy over the treatment of rape victims in Pakistan.
IRELAND:
Pro-Life Advocates Picket Amnesty International in Belfast
Belfast, Ireland (LifeNews.com) -- Pro-life groups have been picketing an Amnesty International meeting at Queen’s University in Belfast. The pro-life group known as Precious Life is calling on Amnesty International to actively work on behalf of the unborn child. The human rights organization is perhaps best known for its campaigns against capital punishment. Precious Life says that if Amnesty begins working for abortion as a human right, it will be opposing the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. The organization is reportedly consulting its members to determine its future policy on abortion. Director Patrick Corrigan was quoted as saying that Amnesty cannot work on “sexual reproductive rights” without discussing the issue of abortion, and is now working to develop a policy position regarding the issue. Meanwhile, a spokeswoman for Precious Life, Bernie Smyth, was quoted as saying that abortion can never be described as a right. “Abortion is a needless act of violence that kills babies and hurts women,” Smyth said. Numerous studies indicate that women can suffer serious physical and emotional complications from abortion.
AUSTRALIA:
Australian Couples Travel to U.S. for Embryo Gender Screening
Canberra, Australia (LifeNews.com) -- Wealthy Australians who are actually fertile
are traveling to the U.S. for in vitro fertilization treatment in order to select the gender
of their babies. Published reports say they're spending as much as $25,000 for a controversial embryo gender screening procedure that's been banned in Australia. News Limited newspapers say a California fertility center has performed the
high-tech process on about 14 couples from Australia. The procedure is believed
to be 99 percent accurate. Australians can skirt their laws banning sex selection.
