file: /pub/resources/text/ProLife.News: PLN-0407.TXT ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Life Communications - Volume 4, No. 7 May, 1994 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This newsletter is intended to provide articles and news information to those interested in Pro-Life issues. All submissions should be sent to the editor, Steve or the assistant editor Sean =============================================================================== SPECIAL NOTE: The distribution method for the ProLife News will be changing so that subscriptions as well as archive requests can be handled automatically. This will happen via the mailing list, which has been set up exclusively for the ProLife News. The server has been configured so that only the moderator can make postings and the subscription addresses remain completely private. The transition to the new method should happen gracefully with v4n8. For more information on the new service, please send an email message (a null message body is OK) to . =============================================================================== 1) FACE Faces the President After passing both houses of the US Congress, the FACE Bill will await President Clinton's signature. His signature will make it a federal crime to block access to abortion clinics or places of worship. Sen. Orrin Hatch, (R-Utah) commented, "This is the first time I've seen us punishing nonviolent civil disobedience." Others claim that the bill is a necessary response to clinic violence. Compared to the original bills, the Federal penalties for protesters who block abortion clinic or church entrances, damage clinics or churches or intimidate patients, worshippers, staff, or clergy have been lowered. Different versions of the bill passed both the House and the Senate last November, and a Capitol Hill conference has been resolving the differences between the two versions ever since. The Senate version of the legislation had been amended to impose the same penalties on protesters at churches, and the House had directed its representatives to the conference committee to accept that change. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2) On the International Front *Dublin, Republic of Ireland* The Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC) has now received the interim legal costs of almost IR30k awarded in a case against the Union of Students in Ireland (USI). Almost half of the money was handed over by Trinity College, Dublin, out of funds which were earmarked for it's students' union. The balance was raised by a Student Support Trust established for the purpose. SPUC had used the courts to prevent USI from printing and distributing literature that advertises or otherwise encourages abortions. [ From the May 9th Issue (No.379) of _THE IRISH EMIGRANT_ Editor: Liam Ferrie. To subscribe contact Liam at . Ed.] *Vatican City* Dr. Anna Rizzi of Milan, a practicing Catholic, recently drew fire from colleagues and politicians for refusing to prescribe the pill because contraception clashed with the Church's teachings. The Pill is also well known for being an abortifacient. _L'Osservatore Romano_, the official Vatican newspaper, came out in favor of Dr. Rizzi's stand in an editorial on contraception. Stating that doctors were entitled to religious freedom, including the right *not* to prescribe the pill, the editorial said: "The pharmacists, the doctors, the health workers who refuse to prescribe _products that degrade man and his dignity_, in line with the church's teachings are to be respected," it said. "They cannot be discriminated, derided or insulted for their religious faith." *Washington DC, United States* The Clinton administration is pushing for broader availability of abortion in UN population control plans. According to State Department Counselor Tim Wirth, "women ought to have access to safe abortions. It's not just rape or incest." The National Right to Life Committee accused the administration of "accelerating efforts to legalize abortion on demand as a population-control method in less-developed countries." ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3) On the National Front *Cincinnati, Ohio* At the end of April, U.S. Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders congratulated and thanked abortion providers. In her talk at the National Abortion Federation's 18th annual meeting, Elders praised people in attendance for providing services to women despite sometimes violent opposition. She claimed that the United States has the highest pregnancy, abortion and birth rates of any developed nation because it has not provided enough health education, easy-to-use contraceptives and access to health care. Elders cited the following statistics: o By age 19, 75 percent of women and 88 percent of men are sexually active. o In 1990, there were an estimated 1 million teen pregnancies in the United States. One of every 10 teen-age girls becomes pregnant each year. o Seven of 10 black women will become pregnant by age 20; four of 10 white women will become pregnant by that age. She followed these statistics with the assessment, "Yet we in America still have not accepted the fact that our children are sexually active.... Just telling them to say `no' isn't enough. We've done nothing to reduce the need for an abortion." The US Surgeon General supports condom-based sex-education for teens and the wholesale distribution of condoms. Despite statistics that demonstrate the effectiveness of abstinence-based sex education in reducing teen sexual activity and pregnancy, Elders has repeatedly opposed such programs. *Tampa, Florida* Margaret Bonnell won a $85,000 judgment against her ex-employer, Altman Management Co.. She had testified that her bosses put a basket of pennies on her desk to pay for an abortion. She also claimed the company doctored her spotless record as a $25,000-per-year leasing agent to try to justify firing her in May 1992. She gave birth to a son that fall. *Seattle, Washington* A day after Dr. Jack Kevorkian was acquitted of of violating Michigan's ban on assisted suicide, U.S. District Judge Barbara Rothstein struck down a WA state law against doctor-assisted suicide, declaring that terminally ill people have the right to hasten death. Not surprisingly, she said that `right' to assisted suicide is the same as the right to choose an abortion or refuse life support. This is the first ruling of its kind anywhere in the United States. Currently, about 30 states ban assisted suicide. In 1991, Washington voters defeated an initiative to legalize doctor-assisted suicide and euthanasia of terminally ill patients. *Washington, DC* At the beginning of April, Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA) launched a $10 Million advertising campaign. The nationwide campaign stresses one message for members of Congress: Health Care reform must cover all women's medical needs, including contraception and abortion, or lawmakers will pay at election time. The campaign will air ads in every state by the end of the year. Of course, PP's ads don't directly mention abortion, instead saying that all reproductive health care must be covered under any national health system. They also do not mention that PPFA is the largest single abortion provider in the US, and would benifit greatly from abortion being included in any of the National Health Care proposals now before the US Congress. *New York, New York* The Population Council, an abortion rights organization signed an agreement with Roussel-Uclaf of France to produce a generic equivalent of the RU-486 abortion pill. The FDA has approved the drug for animal testing. At the beginning of May, clinical trials of RU-486 at San Francisco General Hospital were announced under the guise of an "emergency contraceptive." ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4) Breast Cancer Research Update Scott Somerville reports that there is a great deal of progress on the abortion/breast cancer front. Three recent studies have recently been reported, all of which show a significant breast cancer risk from at least some abortions. Scott welcomes direct contact at "scott+amember%HSLDA@mcimail.com". ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 5) Pro Life Resources on the World Wide Web Bethany Christian Services now has gopher/World Wide Web servers up and running. The servers are at and respectively. For those of you who have WWW hyplans, please consider adding the link to Bethany. We need to let people know that there is a caring, compassionate alternative to abortion and Bethany can help women make choices that are good for both mother and child. The link to Bethany Christian is - and is really worth looking into. Take a look, and encourage others to do the same. My URL is - Lara Ray [ The ProLife News in now also available on the web - check out URL - Ed.] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 6) Legislative Alert - For American Readers: ABORTION IN HEALTH CARE: HELP COUNTER PRO-ABORTION CALL-IN The Washington Research Council has informed us that pro-abortion forces are planning a massive grassroots call-in campaign to support the inclusion of abortion in health care for May 18, 1994. Feminists for Life is coordinating a counter campaign on May 17 and 18 and has asked for our help. We ask you to call and write your congressman and senators to express your opposition to the use of taxpayer and employer funds to support the abortion industry. Let your elected officials know that you do not want your tax dollars to pay for abortion. Please encourage your friends, relatives, and church groups to do the same. Please call your Senator and Congressman. [ If you do not have access to these numbers, please request the information from the editor. ] Please call even if you think you know how they will vote. It is important that they be able to cite the volume of calls as a gauge of the wishes of their constituents. Do it now! - Ed Gehringer [ This item from the May issue of North Carolina Family Policy, published by the N. C. Family Policy Council (to subscribe, call 919-834-4090) ] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 7) Reader Questions Does anyone know of any pro-life mailing lists? - Chris Stamper [ Hi Chris, I've been working with Steve Frezza for the last 10-12 months on developing a pro-life mailing list. We've made substantial progress and are just about to go on-line with several different lists and a very large (probably the largest currently available on the Internet) pro-life archive of materials. We're currently getting indexes and cross-references built for them also. Our first three mailing lists are going to be: ProLife News - Steve Frezza's newsletter Steve's going to be transitioning his distribution to this mechanism. Internet Prolife Journal - Arkansas Collegians for Life sponsored newsletter. Information Net - a mailing list to update subscribers from national pro-life organizations including legislative alerts and hopefully NRTL newsletter articles. Regardless of which list you subscribe to you'll be able to have access to the entire archive when it gets indexed and completely on-line. The info files at prolife.netcentral.net are currently being edited for accuracy and changes to the system, But you can get a feeling for the different mailing lists by sending an email message to o for the ProLife News, o for the Internet ProLife Journal, and o for the Infonet List. If you have any problems getting the INFO files or getting subscribed, please drop me a line. Thanks. - Landon Cox ] -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- Condom Effectiveness: Since abortions kill unwanted per-birth people, I find myself asking how effective condoms (and other barrier methods) are at preventing pregnancy in the first place. Without (hopefully) starting a debate on whether condoms are good or evil, does anyone have information on success rates for condoms? I've heard as low as 70% effective, but cannot find hard facts on this. If people could hear "condoms are only 70% effective" instead of "condoms are good enough", there might be some change in perception. Thanks for any information, - Bryan Ewbank -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- ProLife Job Hunt Help: Does anyone know of any groups in the Los Angeles area that might need a lawyer-to-be for the summer? - Thanks! Lesley ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 8) Reader Responses A Modest Proposal - [v4n5] > > Over the years it has regularly been suggested that pro-lifers read _A Modest > Proposal_ by Jonathan Swift. Written in 1729, with tongue firmly planted in > cheek, it gives suggestions of what can be done with children who are deemed > inconvenient to the general populace... The writer-filmmaker Frank Schaeffer saw this prospect too a few years ago, and penned his own "A Modest Proposal", together with the Evangelical author Harold Fickett. In the tongue-in-cheek book, presented as a bureaucrat's white paper on population trends, he proposes the recycling of aborted fetuses into nutrient-rich "homomass". - Richard Chonak ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 9) Help Wanted Your editor and assistant editor are extremely swamped with work. Help is desperately sought to help clear up the back log of news and especially the backlog of resource articles. If anyone has some time to spare for such work, even on a temporary basis, it would be much appreciated. No special skills required, just a working email address and a desire to help. Also, if anyone wants to help out with the WWW Page, that would be much appreciated as well. For more information, please contact the editor Steve at . ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Quote of the Month: "It is not acceptable to take part in attacks against life or the integrity of the individual, against procreation or the moral and mental health of humanity." - Pope John Paul II, in a speech to 250 Italian Catholic pharmacists given in January, 1994. +-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | Credits: | |QOM - Many thanks to Eric Ewanco | +-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ Anyone desiring information on specific prolife groups, literature, tapes, or help with problems is encouraged to contact the editor.