Written by Lyn Bender - Eureka Street. Used with permission.

 When it comes to grasping the right to life of any unborn or even unconceived living being, we are a dramatically split society. We celebrate conception, and, with compassion for the infertile, supportIVF programs. We also sanction, at a conservative estimate, 80,000terminations a year. 

This dichotomy was tragically brought home by the ghastly medical error that occurred last week at Melbourne's Royal Women's Hospital. A decision was made to terminate, at 32 weeks gestation, one unborn twin, who was diagnosed with congenital heart problems. In a horror medical error, the 'wrong' (healthy) twin was killed. An emergency caesarian was then performed to terminate the surviving twin.

This case is troubling, and the trauma and grief to all involved must arouse our empathy. We may also ask why a decision would be made at such a late stage of gestation to terminate a foetus.

The event highlights the extent to which medical advances allow us to decide who shall live and who shall die; who we shall mourn and who we shall discount. On what basis do we decide? Do we need to re-examine our views and values regarding the taking, denying or promoting of new life?

These decisions are made not only in consideration of health or emotional needs, but are influenced by socio-economic factors, social constraints and many other pressures and medical possibilities, including the rejection of disability.Late term abortions present us with a particularly shocking paradox. At 23 weeks we may place a premature newborn in intensive care to fight for its life, or terminate another foetus who may indeed have survived to full term.

The debate about abortion has reflected another split. On one side are those who champion the mother's right to choose. On the other are those who elevate the rights of the child.

Leslie Cannold, president of Pro Choice Victoria, and Margaret Tighe, veteran founder of Right to Life Victoria, personify these opposing positions. Cannold argues unflinchingly in favour of the pregnant woman's right to choose. Tighe argues on behalf of the unborn child, declaring that we must protect the rights of the vulnerable unborn above all other considerations.

The community vacillates between these views and often practices a form of denial. 'We' (society), by attitude and by law, discount the 'equality' of the unborn. We make it a lesser entity.

Ending a pregnancy becomes a 'decision', rather than an almost insoluble dilemma between two opposed sets of rights: those belonging to the already-born, especially the mother, and those of the voiceless unborn being.

In my view we can only come close to an authentic place in this moral quagmire by affording equal rights to the foetus.

Many will be horrified and see this as a promotion of the old order, of the enslavement of women to the birth-life cycle. But to say we should award human rights to the foetus is not to say we may not sometimes decide in favour of termination. However we must afford the foetus the right to be heard.

It is especially true for a foetus that could survive outside the uterus, albeit with medical intervention. If our decision rests on pretending that the unborn child is just a cluster of cells, or that some can be deemed fit and others unfit for life, we run the risk of a kind of moral madness.

I am not writing this from lofty heights. I had an abortion at age 30, which I deeply regret. The prevailing wisdom was that this was not a person, and that to have a baby in adverse circumstances was irresponsible. Had my unborn child been given the status of an equal being I may have been able to make a different choice. 

It is time that we face up to the inconvenient truth and grant rights to the unborn. This may be the last unexplored frontier in the implementation of human rights. 

---

Lyn Bender is a Psychologist and a former member of the Suicide Prevention Australia Board. 

 

Ruth Lamperd's article, 'The best doctors are only human', has been welcomed by pro life advocates who remain concerned that our society has only expressed outrage at the loss of one of the twin boys aborted two weeks ago today. It has become obvious that the outrage is because of a  "bungled abortion", that claimed the life of the "wrong baby". 

But what about the other baby boy - the "unhealthy twin"?

In her article, Ms Lamperd describes a contrasting outcome for a boy called Kush, who also had a serious diagnosis similar to that of the "unhealthy twin": "At 19 weeks gestation, medics discovered he had a serious congenital heart defect. They recommended termination because of the likelihood he would die early and painfully. But his parents would not consider abortion. When he was born prematurely at under 2kg they had no expectations. One minute? One day? One week? One month? A year was even too much to expect, even if they hoped".

The article says that "Kush will join classmates at a graduation dinner celebrating the end of his primary school years" and that "Last year, he qualified for his school's cross-country competition and he plays cricket every weekend. He's a kid who was never expected to live long enough to even start primary school, let alone finish it. This little chap functions on only three heart chambers. He's cheeky and smart and he has a mile-wide smile".

How is it possible to know what the possibilities may have been for babies lost to abortion - for our "unhealthy twin", who are simply not given any chance at life? There has developed a "cruel to be kind" mentality in our society that is fast removing any chance that these babies have to 'beat the odds'. And we can all tell a story of someone we know who has!   

Ms Lamperd closes by saying "You can't help notice the wildly contradictory ideas on what constitutes viable human life. Or human life full stop. People like Kush and his parents are in no doubt."

NB. According to the Victorian Health Department's Report - Infant Mortality and Morbidity, over half of the babies aborted late term in Victoria are performed on perfectly healthy babies - so the loss of "the healthy twin" is no different to what happens 'every other day' in Victoria.

Related article here.

 

By Debbie Garratt, Real Choices Australia - Used with permission.

This week we watched in horror as the story of the tragic death of two baby boys at the royal women's hospital  unfolded.  We are rightly horrified.  A healthy, viable, loved baby has been deliberately killed and the parents and other family members will have to live with the loss and grief for the rest of their lives.  It is a tragedy. 

One aspect of this story that will not make the news is that had the 'correct' baby been terminated he would have been simply a number in the 2011 Perinatal Morbidity Statistics.  We wouldn't have heard about him or his family. 

Is it because the baby was healthy that we are outraged and it made the news headlines? No, it can't be that because every year healthy babies are aborted after 23 weeks of pregnancy.  The Perinatal Morbidity Statistics reveal that of 328 late term abortions in 2008, 178 of them were performed on healthy babies whose mothers were experiencing psychosocial problems.  So it isn't that the baby was healthy that we are outraged, otherwise we would be outraged for all of these babies and their mothers.

Is it that the baby was apparently 'wanted' then?  Perhaps not, as research tells us that more than 70% of women having abortions do so feeling as though they have no other choice.  This suggests that if the women were provided social and emotionally supportive alternatives they would have continued their pregnancies.   It wasn't their babies that were unwanted, but the circumstances they found themselves in. 

Perhaps it is that the tragedy of abortion on the lives of babies, women and families has become so great that we don't really want to believe it when we hear it.  When something like this situation occurs it's a collective and cumulative outrage for all mothers and babies that we express.   We should be outraged with a society that continues to allow women to be told that their medically determined 'less than perfect' children are better off not being born or that their social problems are best 'fixed' by the termination of their child.  

The messages we send women and girls about their 'right' to pregnancy and motherhood are outrageous.  Teen mums in Wagga Wagga have been told this month that they must choose between their children and an education,  that abortion would have been a 'better' choice for them.  Instead of looking for ways to support young mums to build a positive future full of opportunities, local services fuss about the lack of surgical termination options available locally.  

Instead of getting the support and encouragement to embrace and love their 'less than perfect' child, even if he only lived a short while, a couple have now lost both their children.  

We should be outraged, but let's be outraged on behalf of every mother not offered what she needs to be able to hold her baby in her arms rather than an ache in her heart for the rest of her life.





Executive Director


Real Choices Australia

What Right to Abortion?

By Bill Muehlenberg - Used with permission.

Abortion is of course legal in many nations. Thus it is simply assumed that there is some sort of universal and binding right to an abortion. But this in fact is simply not the case. And a new document has appeared which proves this. A group of scholars meeting in San Jose, Costa Rica have made this quite clear.

In March of this year a team of international experts – lawyers, health workers, scientists, politicians, bioethicists, law professors, philosophers and others – produced the San Jose Articles to clarify what actual rights exist concerning abortion. As they state in their explanatory paper:

“It is now commonplace that people around the world are told there is a new international right to abortion. Those who receive this message are people who have the power to change abortion laws; parliamentarians, lawyers, judges and others. Those delivering this message are influential and believable people; UN personnel, human rights lawyers, judges and others.

“The assertion they make is false. No UN treaty makes abortion an international human right. Even so, the assertion is gaining traction around the world. The high court of Colombia changed their country’s abortion laws based on this false assertion. More are considering such a change.

“The purpose of the San Jose Articles is to provide expert testimony that no such right exists. The San Jose Articles were prepared by a group of 31 experts in international law, international relations, international organizations, public health, science/medicine and government. The signers include law professors, philosophers, Parliamentarians, Ambassadors, human rights lawyers, and delegates to the UN General Assembly.

“The purpose of the San Jose Articles is also to demonstrate that the unborn child is already protected in human rights instruments and that governments should begin protecting the unborn child by using international law.”

Although the nine Articles were drafted a half year ago, it was only this month that they were officially launched at the UN in New York. Ambassador Joseph Rees, former US Ambassador to East Timor and one time US representative to the UN Economic and Social Council and Professor Robert George of the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute launched the San Jose Articles at a UN press conference on October 8.

Charles Colson offers some backdrop to the Articles: “Colombia has a rich Catholic heritage and so it’s no surprise that Colombians are prolife. Their laws once reflected that, but thanks to the U.N. and others, abortion is now legal. In 2002, Colombia was sued for violating international treaties that supposedly demand legalized abortion. Colombia’s high court responded by overturning the country’s abortion laws. More recently, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Health reported that abortion is an international human right and the highest officials at the U.N. including the Secretary General agree.”

It was to combat such myths that these articles were produced. They need to be widely distributed and promoted. Here then are the nine Articles:

San Jose Articles

Article 1.  As a matter of scientific fact a new human life begins at conception.

Article 2.  Each human life is a continuum that begins at conception and advances in stages until death. Science gives different names to these stages, including zygote, blastocyst, embryo, fetus, infant, child, adolescent and adult. This does not change the scientific consensus that at all points of development each individual is a living member of the human species.

Article 3.  From conception each unborn child is by nature a human being.

Article 4.  All human beings, as members of the human family, are entitled to recognition of their inherent dignity and to protection of their inalienable human rights.  This is recognized in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and other international instruments.

Article 5.  There exists no right to abortion under international law, either by way of treaty obligation or under customary international law.  No United Nations treaty can accurately be cited as establishing or recognizing a right to abortion.

Article 6.  The Committee on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW Committee) and other treaty monitoring bodies have directed governments to change their laws on abortion.  These bodies have explicitly or implicitly interpreted the treaties to which they are subject as including a right to abortion.

Treaty monitoring bodies have no authority, either under the treaties that created them or under general international law, to interpret these treaties in ways that create new state obligations or that alter the substance of the treaties.

Accordingly, any such body that interprets a treaty to include a right to abortion acts beyond its authority and contrary to its mandate. Such ultra vires acts do not create any legal obligations for states parties to the treaty, nor should states accept them as contributing to the formation of new customary international law.

Article 7.  Assertions by international agencies or non-governmental actors that abortion is a human right are false and should be rejected.

There is no international legal obligation to provide access to abortion based on any ground, including but not limited to health, privacy or sexual autonomy, or non-discrimination.

Article 8.  Under basic principles of treaty interpretation in international law, consistent with the obligations of good faith and pacta sunt servanda, and in the exercise of their responsibility to defend the lives of their people, states may and should invoke treaty provisions guaranteeing the right to life as encompassing a state responsibility to protect the unborn child from abortion.

Article 9.  Governments and members of society should ensure that national laws and policies protect the human right to life from conception. They should also reject and condemn pressure to adopt laws that legalize or depenalize abortion.

Treaty monitoring bodies, United Nations agencies and officers, regional and national courts, and others should desist from implicit or explicit assertions of a right to abortion based upon international law.

When such false assertions are made, or pressures exerted, member states should demand accountability from the United Nations system.

Providers of development aid should not promote or fund abortions.  They should not make aid conditional on a recipient’s acceptance of abortion.

International maternal and child health care funding and programs should ensure a healthy outcome of pregnancy for both mother and child and should help mothers welcome new life in all circumstances.

We — human rights lawyers and advocates, scholars, elected officials, diplomats, and medical and international policy experts — hereby affirm these Articles.

www.breakpoint.org/bpcommentaries/entry/13/18110

www.sanjosearticles.com/

The pro abortion rhetoric "It is a woman's choice" ignores the plight of so many baby girls who do not reach womanhood because they are aborted, killed or abandoned - The United Nations estimates some 200,000,000 girls are missing due to sex selection as a result of family planning in China and India. 
It's a Girl Documentary here

Footage and information such as this is a big problem for groups such as EMILY's List who pride themselves on being pro "choice" and who claim to promote equal opportunity for women!

 Rebecca Kiessling is an international pro-life speaker from the U.S, an attorney, a wife and mother of five. Her life story is inspiring - having been conceived in rape, she has made it her mission to change the negative stereotypes and expectations surrounding pregnancies by rape and to advocate for lives like hers that are often aborted.
"I do hope that, as a child conceived in rape, I can help to put a face, a voice, and a story to this issue" - Rebecca Kiessling.

The following article has been used with permission.

We've all heard someone say "I'm pro-life, well, except in cases of rape . . ." or "I'm pro-choice, especially in cases of rape !"

Have you ever considered how really insulting it is to say to someone, "I think your  mother should have been able to abort you."?  It's like saying, "If I had my way, you'd be dead right now."  And that is the reality with which I live every time someone says they are pro-choice or pro-life "except in cases of rape" because I absolutely would have been aborted if it had been legal in Michigan when I
was an  unborn child, and I can tell you that it hurts. 
But I know that most people don't put  a face to this issue -- for them abortion is just a concept -- with a quick cliche, they  sweep it under the rug and forget about it. 

I was adopted nearly from birth.  At 18, I learned that I was conceived out of a brutal rape at knife-point by a serial rapist.  Like most people, I'd never considered that abortion applied to my life, but once I received this information, all of a sudden I realized that, not only does it apply to my life, but it has to do with my very existence.  It was as if I could hear the echoes of all those people who, with the most sympathetic of tones, would say, “Well, except in cases of rape. . .  ," or who would rather fervently exclaim in disgust: “Especially is cases of rape!!!”  All these people are out there who don’t even know me, but are standing in judgment of my life, so quick to dismiss it just because of how I was conceived.  I felt like I was now going to have to justify my own existence, that I would have to prove myself to the world that I shouldn’t have been aborted and that I was worthy of living.  I also remember feeling like garbage because of people who would say that my life was like garbage -- that I was disposable.

I've often experienced those who would confront me and try to dismiss me with quick quips like, “Oh well, you were lucky!” Be sure that my survival has nothing to do with luck.  The fact that I’m alive today has to do with choices that were made by our society at large, people who fought to ensure abortion was illegal in Michigan at the time – even in cases of rape, people who argued to protect my life, and people who voted pro-life.  I wasn’t lucky.  I was protected.  And would you
really rationalize that our brothers and sisters who are being aborted every day are just somehow "unlucky"?!!

Although my birthmother was thrilled to meet me, she did tell me that she actually went to two back-alley abortionists and I was almost aborted.  After the rape, the police referred her to a counselor who basically told her that abortion was the thing to do.  She said there were no crisis pregnancy centers back then, but my birthmother assured me that if there had been, she would have gone if at least for a little more guidance.  The rape counselor is the one who set her up with the back-alley abortionists.  For the first, she said it was the typical back-alley conditions that you hear about as to why "she should have been able to safely and legally abort" me -- blood and dirt all over the table and floor.  Those back-alley conditions and the fact that it was illegal caused her to back out, as with most women. 

Then she got hooked up with a more expensive abortionist.  This time she was to meet someone at night by the Detroit Institute of Arts.  Someone would approach her, say her name, blindfold her, put her in the backseat of a car, take her and then abort me . . . , then blindfold her again and drop her back off.  And do you know what I think is so pathetic?  It’s that I know there are an awful lot of people out there who would hear me describe those conditions and their response would just be a pitiful shake of the head in disgust:  “It’s just so awful that your birthmother should have had to have gone through that in order to have been able to abort you!”  Like that’s compassionate?!!  I fully realize that they think they are being compassionate, but that’s pretty cold-hearted from
where I stand, don’t you think?  That is my life that they are so callously talking about and there is nothing compassionate about that position.  My birthmother is okay – her life went on and in fact, she's doing great, but my life would have been ended.  I may not look the same as I did when I was four years old or four days old yet unborn in my mother’s womb, but that was still undeniably me and I would have been killed through a brutal abortion.

The nasty disposition and foul mouth of this second back-alley abortionist, along with a fear for her own safety, caused her to back out.  When she told him by phone that she wasn't interested in this risky arrangement, this abortion doctor insulted her and called her names.  To her surprise, he called again the next day to try to talk her into aborting me once again, and again she declined and was hurled insults.  So that was it -- after that she just couldn’t go through with it.  My birthmother was then heading into her second trimester – far more dangerous, far more expensive to have me 
aborted.

In law school, I’d also have classmates say things to me like, “Oh well!  If you’d been aborted, you wouldn’t be here today, and you wouldn’t know the difference anyway, so what does it matter?”  Believe it or not, some of the top pro-abortion philosophers use that same kind of argument:  “The fetus never knows what hits him, so there’s no such fetus to miss his life.”    And if a baby is aborted, and no one else is around to know about it, does it matter?  The answer is, “YES!  Their lives matter.  My life matters.  Your life matters and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise!

According to the research of Dr. David Reardon, director of the Elliot Institute, co-editor of the book Victims and Victors:  Speaking Out About Their Pregnancies, Abortions and Children Resulting From Sexual Assault, and author of the article "Rape, Incest and Abortion:  Searching Beyond the Myths," most women who become pregnant out of sexual assault do not want an abortion and are in fact worse-off after an abortion.  http://www.afterabortion.org. 
So most people's position on abortion in cases of rape is based upon faulty premises:  1) the rape victim would want an abortion, 2) she'd be better off with an abortion and 3) that child's life just isn't worth having to put her through the pregnancy. 

I hope that my story, and those following, will be able to help dispel that last myth.

For Life,
Rebecca
rebecca@rebeccakiessling.com

Rebecca's website has footage from three women who were raped and who defied pressure from society to abort their babies. Their stories are both beautiful and powerful - well worth watching.  http://rebeccakiessling.com/PregnantByRape.html

Article by Bill Muehlenberg
July 13, 2009

What do you call a continent which cares more about the rights and wellbeing of crabs, lobsters, and even the common octopus, than it does about unborn babies? Just in case you cannot come up with anything, let me suggest a few possibilities: deranged, degenerate, despicable and delirious. And just to keep the alliteration going: dumb, really dumb.

This is how the New Scientist begins its coverage of this bizarre story: “Animal welfare legislation generally applies only to vertebrates. There are, however, moves to include invertebrates. Proposed changes to European law, for example, would extend welfare laws to crabs and lobsters. Up to now the only invertebrate protected is the common octopus.

“‘Invertebrate rights’ has become a campaigning issue. Advocates for Animals recently produced a report which concludes that there is ‘potential for experiencing pain and suffering’ in crustaceans. The group is particularly concerned about boiling lobsters alive. The wider public is also showing interest. Research supposedly demonstrating that hermit crabs feel and remember pain received worldwide news coverage”

The author of the article in fact argues that such animals do not feel any significant pain. He concludes with these words: “Extending welfare to crustaceans would be a mistake. They are useful animals for research on nervous systems. Hopefully common sense and the basic scientific facts should dictate that invertebrates remain outside the legislation.”

While it is good to see a bit of sanity here, the very fact that this story was even raised shows just how far down the tubes the intellectualoids in Europe have gone. If the ruling elites in Europe can actually waste time ruminating over the rights of an octopus or a crab, then perhaps it is best that we just allow Europe to proceed in its terminal decline.

My European readers can correct me here, but I am not aware of any laws banning the killing of unborn babies. I am not aware of any legislation which confers rights on the unborn. I am not aware of any committees looking into ways to outlaw the pain unborn babies experience when undergoing abortions.

Interestingly, this article deals with one type of lobster death: “As for lobsters in boiling water, sensory nerves from crabs living in temperate waters fail irreversibly at 25 °C, about the temperature of tepid bath water. This procedure is not inhumane.”

I guess the European elites are not aware of how one abortion method entails burning a baby to death with a saline solution – now that’s gotta hurt. Other methods involve slicing the baby to pieces, sucking the brains out, and so on. If this is not bad enough, science has demonstrated that the unborn do indeed feel pain.

For example, surgeon Robert Shearin argues that unborn babies can experience pain at quite an early age: “As early as eight to ten weeks after conception, and definitely by thirteen-and-a-half weeks, the unborn experiences organic pain. . . . [At this point she] responds to pain at all levels of her nervous system in an integrated response which cannot be deemed a mere reflex. She can now experience pain.”

More recently a British review of the latest research has found that an unborn baby is definitely aware of pain by 24 weeks, and possibly aware as early as 20 weeks. But the pain of death is of course the biggest concern of all here. Even if the abortion procedure involved no pain at all, it still results in a dead baby.

But abortion is both painful and lethal. We rightly show pictures of young seals being clubbed to death, because we want to persuade civilised people to bring this awful practice to an end. It seems it is time we did the same with the awful practice of abortion, especially to those European bureaucrats.

The various buffoons and moral midgets running the show in Europe demonstrate why the continent is in such big trouble. This is simply one more indication of when the West rejects it Judeo-Christian foundations, the doors to the asylum are flung wide open, and mental and ethical haemorrhaging becomes endemic.

Used with permission.

Bill Muehlenberg's CultureWatch delivers reflective and incisive commentary on a wide range of issues, helping to sort through the maze of competing opinions, worldviews, ideologies and value systems.