Pro-Life Families Vary
Thank you, PRI, for continuing your good work. I was prompted by the survey article [see “The Coming Demographic Victory,” PRI Review, November /December 2003] to make comment. My wife and I are pro-lifers and did practice NFP for a time after my son’s birth; however, he is the only child God has blessed us with thus far, and possibly for our lives. Our fertility levels are lowering as we age, I would not want someone to read this survey and then automatically assume that families with one child are not pro-life. Please make that clear in further reporting of otherwise encouraging news.
God Bless, Patrick H. Flynn
Dear Patrick,
Thanks for your comment. I couldn’t agree more. I have a number of pro-life friends who are childless, and not by choice. Ted Turner, on the other hand, wound up with five children, although he now says that he should have stopped at one. The numbers are generalizations, and cannot be applied to specific cases.
Steve Mosher
Euthanasia is on the Way
Yes, there are indications that America is choosing life in regard to abortion [see “The Coming Demographic Victory, PRI Review, November/December 2003] but sad to say the opposite is true in regard to euthanasia and assisted suicide. I just received an article today that the Hemlock Society has changed its name to End of Life Choices and has targeted Florida with a right to die campaign as a result of the Terri Schiavo case.
Also, Howard Dean is an advocate of legalizing assisted suicide. With high costs related to medical treatment and hospitalization in addition to the increasing number of physicians, allied medical professionals, and nursing home staff who basically lack the true sense of compassion, we are not headed in the right direction. If abortion were to end tomorrow, that would not necessarily change the opinions of those who would want to make “end of life choices” for themselves, their patients, or relatives. Even though not legal at this time in the U.S. (except assisted suicide in Oregon), euthanasia and assisted suicide is taking place every time a doctor refuses an antibiotic to an elderly or disabled patient or refuses food and hydration to someone who is not dying: and frankly I hear about this all the time.
What I found most alarming while looking through the websites and especially at the board of directors of right to die organizations throughout the country is that they are made up of extremely influential and well respected people: well known university professors, lawyers, public health administrators, health care administrators, doctors. These are trot your typical “extremists.” The words they use, such as “physician assisted dying,” are very clever — confusing and misleading to the public. The organizations are very heavily funded.
Thank you for all that you do for the Culture of Life.
Ellen Sarnecky, Ph.D.
Associate Director Pro-Life Office
Archdiocese of Washington, D.C.
Drug Trials & Birth Control
Dear Mr. Mosher
Just wanted to mention that I saw you on EWTN this morning. What a terrific program!
In the early ’90s, I got a hold of what was to me, very powerful information regarding the forced abortions going on in China, wrote a paper about it and threw my professor quite a curve. He was pro-abortion at the time (may still be), but couldn’t argue what I’d written. I believe that the article I referred to was one you’d written, and I want to thank you for information that I’ve used time and time again when discussing life issues.
I now monitor investigational drug trials here in the U.S. That means I travel across the country ensuring that subjects who volunteer to take drugs (that have yet to be approved) are treated “humanely.” One thing I see constantly in protocols (and there are hundreds of drugs being tested at any given time) is that subjects usually have to agree to be on some form of birth control if they have not had some form of sterilization. I’m lucky in that I work one of the rare trials that does not require birth control. However, I know for a fact that the U.S. is going to fund expansion of research in Asia and Africa, supporting trials that will require women to use birth control. So, they use these peoples’ desperate need for medication and medical attention by getting them in medication trials (where medical attention and drugs are free) as a way to promote birth control. I’ve added your site to my “favorites” list, and look forward to referring to it frequently.
Very best regards,
Name withheld by request
Thanks
Dear Sarah,
Thank you very much for your very line review of Sterilization Reversal: A Generous Act of Love and for contrasting the realities of life in the USA with life in lesser developed countries. At least here we have the freedom to be stupid.
The cost of reversal will continue to drop as more physicians are trained and more couples seek healing. $5000 for a tubal reversal is common as is $2000 for a vasectomy reversal, Of course, we would hope the major effect of John’s book would be to discourage sterilization. May God bless you, Steve Mosher and PRI.
Steve Koob, Director
One More Soul, Dayton. Ohio
