For America, England is the Mother Country, but motherhood has become dangerously rare among the English. Our friends across the Atlantic lag somewhat behind their neighbors in the trend toward national suicide, but native Britons have a birthrate below the replacement level. On the weekend of October 30–31, Family Life International (FLI), in partnership with PRI, held its first international conference aimed at reversing that trend. Its work is crucial to saving each nation by saving each unborn child and persuading adults to create the next generation of their peoples.
Worldwide Pro-Lifers
Not only Europeans attended the London conference, held at Sacred Heart High School in Hammersmith, but people of different races from countries once ruled by European powers. PRI President Steven Mosher of the United States, Gail Instance of Australia, Colleen Bayer of New Zealand, Dr. Claude Newbury of South Africa and Father Linus Clovis of St. Lucia in the Caribbean were among the speakers.
FLI-UK Director Greg Clovis, brother of Father Clovis, opened the conference. An American member of Miles Jesu, Stephen Ryan, served as master of ceremonies. Euthanasia, said first speaker Anthony Ozimic of Britain’s Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC), is spreading in Britain through “the current practice of euthanasia by neglect. We have the Hemlock Society and the Voluntary Euthanasia Society here in the UK.” He cited the case of Tony Bland, who was denied sustenance while “in a persistent vegetative state. He died of dehydration after nine days. You cannot die from this persistent vegetative state, in this persistent nonresponsive state as it may more properly be called. Food and fluids are not ‘life support,’ contrary to what the media may say. It’s basic nursing care.”
Unfortunately, said Ozimic, a new Mental Capacity Bill going through Parliament would, for the first time, “provide a statutory basis for doctors to perform euthanasia by neglect.” No living will endorsing euthanasia would be required, he said, although living wills directing doctors to perform euthanasia would be legally recognized under this law. The law could force pro-life doctors and nurses out of their professions, said Ozimic.
France and Euthanasia
Conference attendee Jacques Geliot, a member of the French pro-life group Droit de Naitre (Right to be Born), said that acceptance of euthanasia is seeping into French society. “The government wants to put euthanasia on the agenda,” he said. “The current prime minister said the French people should think a little bit about the problem of euthanasia.”
A Family Gathering
“This is a family gathering, I know so many people here,” said speaker Joanna Bogle, a noted British Catholic journalist. “I would like to thank the extraordinary Clovis family, which displays such family solidarity by putting on this conference.” Greg Clovis’ wife and ten children pitched in for the conference, doing everything from registering attendees to video-and audio-taping the conference. Mrs. Bogle insisted that when it comes to the political concerns of people, “I believe that the issues in Britain, and I believe this is true in the United States as well, arc not economic but cultural.”
Harmful Pro-Family Activists
Colleen Bayer and Gail Instance argued that the “harm minimization” approach taken by many pro-life and pro-family activists is actually harmful. “Know your enemy,” said Instance in her speech. “They do things incrementally. Many pro-lifers think we can do the same backwards. We can’t.” Instead of abolishing sex education programs, which is what should be done, said Instance, some pro-lifers seek to alter them to make them less damaging. Result: “There was a scheme to encourage oral sex among children to avoid teenage pregnancy,” she said. As for parental consent for abortion laws, she argued, “What kind of message are we sending?… ‘It’s okay to kill the child as long as you have a note from his grandmother’? We’re not fighting on the basis that they are human beings who need protection.”
AIDS in Africa
In one of his two speeches, Steven Mosher elaborated a dissenting explanation for the rapid spread of AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa. “Forty million of the 50 million AIDS cases in the world are in sub-Saharan Africa,” he said. The usual explanation is heterosexual promiscuity, yet somehow, other areas of the world have seen no such explosion, he continued. Instead, Mosher suggested, the epidemic spread of AIDS in Africa is caused by “bad medical practice.” Needles are used over and over — “In very poor areas, manufactured items are precious,” noted Mosher — and equipment is not properly sterilized after each use. Contraception and abortion, given to African women practically free by international organizations funded by Western nations, are particularly culpable. “Ten million [intravenous] doses of Depo-Provera are sent to Africa from the United States each year,” said Mosher by way of example. This may explain why two-thirds of AIDS cases in Africa are women.
More Speakers
Among the other presentations: Patrick Carrol presented statistics showing a strong correlation between abortion and breast cancer in England; Father Clovis explained how foreign pressure prompted St. Lucia’s government to legalize abortion this year; Andy Pollard described how everyone has a religion and that some religions foster life and survival and others death and destruction; Dr. Newbury delivered a jeremiad against the Culture of Death; Mosher gave another speech on the real effects of population control programs; and lawyer Jamie Bogie discussed the pro-death and anti-family trends in Europe, such as the fact that it’s now illegal for parents to hit their children but not the other way around.
Christ’s Victory
Outside the conference hall, several pro-life groups had tables set up, including the UK Life League; the Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family, and Property; and the Good Counsel Network, which runs crisis pregnancy centers. “It’s Christ’s victory already,” said Good Counsel’s Clare McCollough of the pro-life struggle. “It’s not our battle to win. It’s our job to tell the truth.”
