PRI sponsors a profamily conference in Australia that draws participants from all over the world; Russia's leader of the World Congress on Families visits our studio; and Jonathan Abbamonte reports that the pro-abortion lobbyists are at it again, this time in Latin America.
Steve Mosher reports from Australia; Alexei Komov Reports on Pro-Family Movement in Russa; Jonathan Abbomonte Reports on Zika Virus in South America.
PRI President Steven Mosher sends in this report from Australia on how pro-family groups down under are working to Defeat the Enemies of Natural Marriage
The conference, sponsored by the Population Research Institute and our Australian partner, Family Life International, was held in Albury, Australia.
Here is Mr. Mosher’s report:
One of the best talks at the conference was given by Vice Bararelo, who led the fight in Croatia to defend natural marriage.
Dr. Bararelo was also a natural to invite to our conference, since he was born in Sydney to Croatian immigrants and grew up Down Under. After he completed a BA and MA at Macquarie University, however, he decided to return to the country of his ancestors, which had just won its freedom from Serbian domination in communist Yugoslavia. He earned a Ph.D. there and went to work as the director of the Family and Life Office of the Archdiocese of Zagreb.
The sexual libertines were on the march, having convinced a sympathetic left-wing government to start moving towards the legalization of homosexual unions. They had the support of the major media, and even many of the larger Croatian businesses.
But Dr. Bararelo decided they would not win. He said, “This is not going to happen in my country, which has a Catholic culture and which throughout history has been the eastern frontier of Christianity.” He could draw upon the fact that 90 percent of Croatia’s population of 4.2 million is Catholic, of whom some 30 percent attend Mass weekly. Indeed, more than half are in Mass at least once a month, one of the highest percentages in any European country.
He know it would be a David vs. Goliath struggle. After consulting with other pro-life, pro-family leaders in Croatia, such as Marijo Zivkovic, he decided that it would be better to take the fight to the liberal-left opposition in a popular referendum. This had a greater likelihood of succeeding than trying to defeat the homosexual juggernaut in the legislature, where gay activists, supported by the government and the media, could threaten and suborn elected representatives.
When they first announced that they were gathering signatures for a referendum, the reaction of the of Left was simply to dismiss the effort to preserve traditional marriage. “You are from the Middle Ages,” they said. “You’re so backward. You will never succeed.”
The law required that the supporters of the marriage referendum gather 145,000 signatures in a mere 15 days. The media kept reporting, falsely, that they were far from their goal. In fact, with the support of 6,000 volunteers they gathered more signatures than were required. A referendum was automatically triggered.
“We knew that, in order to win the referendum, we needed to think strategically and act boldly,” remarked Dr. Bararelo. “We were in a chess match and we needed to think many moves ahead.”
The first thing that Dr. Bararelo and the other organizers did was to meet with the Catholic bishops. They wanted to asked for their support—they did, and they got it—but they also wanted the bishops to stay in the background. They didn’t want to give the opposition the advantage of dismissing their concerns as religious. In religious settings they used arguments based on Catholic doctrine as well as natural law arguments, but in public they relied solely on the latter.
“In the public setting we used only natural law arguments,” Dr. Bararelo recalled. “We reminded people that marriage has been around for 5,000 years, and that it is found in every culture, in every place and in every time.”
They said that the battle over the definition of marriage had nothing to do with homosexuals per se, but had to do with defeating radical leftist ideology. This approach worked very well in Croatia, where people remember the bad old days of Communism. It also reminded people that the liberal-Left government was supporting a redefinition of marriage.
They also were very careful to adopt a positive tone in their public pronouncements, as well as in private conversations with friends and neighbors. “We didn’t want to portray homosexuals as the enemy,” said the good doctor. “We called them our friends on the Left. But we did want to make clear the advantages to society and children of protecting natural marriage.”
They were relentlessly positive, crafting their arguments for natural marriage based on the natural law, arguing the positive benefits of marriage between a man and a woman. They actively avoided talking about the negative consequences for society and children of legally recognizing homosexual liaisons. Natural Marriage = a Woman and a Man, their flyers read. Everything else is something else.
They also were able to reduce the media bias in favor of homosexual unions by carrying out a study of the media broadcasts, which showed that their was a bias against natural marriage. After the study came out, the major media were somewhat fairer in their reporting.
Finally, they were able to neutralize the media bias in another way as well, by turning to the social media. “If you don’t have the mass media on your side,” says Dr. Bararelo, “then use the social media.” By Tweeting, Facebooking, and YouTubing, they were able to create a media presence in the social media that won over large numbers of people to their cause.
At the end of the day, the referendum succeeded. A majority of those who voted—voting is not compulsory in Croatia—voted in favor of natural marriage.
The next big challenge, according to Dr. Bararelo, will come over the Life issue. Abortion is still legal in Croatia, having been introduced in the Communist era. But with the organization they have built in defending natural marriage, says the good doctor, “We will succeed in protecting Life from conception.”
The marriage victory in Croatia is a model for such grassroots movements in other countries. It proves that the homosexual lobby can be defeated by a well-planned, well-organized campaign.
When we come back, we’ll hear a first-hand report from pro-family groups in Russia.
This is PRI Review from www.pop.org. We’ll be right back.
First Break
Here’s some great news. PRI has now released the notorious Planned Parenthood Organ-Trafficking Videos in Spanish!
That’s right – the struggle against Planned Parenthood needs to go global, and you can help make it happen!
If you have Spanish speaking friends, at home or abroad, please let them know!
Here’s the story.
This summer, the Center for Medical Progress revealed to the world the deep-seated corruption pervasive in Planned Parenthood, one of the world’s largest abortion providers. To date, ten videos have been released showing senior executives of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA) at various stages in the process of harvesting and selling the organs of aborted babies.
Planned Parenthood, a taxpayer-funded organization that receives over half a billion dollars annually from the U.S. Government, is supposed to be dedicated to the health and welfare of women. But as many have pointed out lately, PPFA doesn’t do a single mammogram—their clinics aren’t licensed to. What Planned Parenthood does do is abort hundreds of thousands of unborn Americans every year. And we now know that many of its clinics are in the business of selling baby body parts, generally without the consent of their mothers.
In their greed, Planned Parenthood clinics even put women’s lives at risk by altering abortion procedures so that especially lucrative parts and pieces of the aborted children can be delivered intact and sold.
The videos released by the Center for Medical Progress have had a huge impact in the English-speaking world. Each video has garnered over 1 million views on the Center for Medical Progress webpage alone, while tens of thousands have seen the entire three hours of footage.
Unfortunately, slow internet speeds and language barriers have prevented people outside the United States from watching these videos. This is why Population Research Institute has produced a series of videos with Spanish subtitles, short enough to be viewed with ease in the Spanish-speaking world.
Now, all of Latin America will have the opportunity to learn the truth about Planned Parenthood.
Each video unveils a new level of corruption within the abortion business.
In the first video, Deborah Nucatola, Senior Director of Medical Services, can be seen sipping wine and eating salad while she describes how she obtains intact organs: “I’m going to basically crush below, I’m gonna crush above, and I’m gonna see if I can get it all intact.”
Another shows the President of Planned Parenthood’s Medical Directors’ Council haggling the price of organs. “I want a Lamborghini,” she says.
In another, a former Stem Express employee describes how she was forced to cut the brains out of a baby’s head while its heart was still beating.
Now that PPFA’s illegal organ sales have been exposed, they are starting to backtrack. The organization recently announced that it will no longer accept “monetary reimbursement” for procuring baby parts. Instead they will harvest the organs of babies for free! This is tantamount to admitting that they were earlier breaking the law. And it is still not “free,” at least to the American taxpayers who pay hundreds of millions of dollars to fund the evil empire of abortion.
Finally, there is the issue of informed consent. As the videos make clear, Planned Parenthood’s employees routinely harvest the organs of their little victims without asking their mothers for permission. Isn’t it the woman’s body? We also see how abortionists modify the abortion procedure in order to better obtain a “specimen.” We even hear them admit to performing illegal partial-birth abortions, where babies are delivered alive so that their organs can be extracted fresh and intact. Isn’t it the woman’s choice whether her baby’s remains are to be treated this way?
These women don’t choose, and they don’t consent. And the little girls and boys who are being butchered for their organs have no say at all.
Please help PRI let Spanish-speaking mothers all over the world see these videos! Just go to our website, www.pop.org, and click the “donate” button today.
Second segment
Your friends at the PRI review are admirers of the legacy of Dr. John Howard, longtime president of Rockford College and a pioneer in defending freedom, the faith, and the family.
Some twenty years ago, Dr. Howard added to his credits by spearheading the founding of the World Congress on Families, which has become a vital worldwide network working to advance the cause of the freedom and flourishing of the family, as well as protecting the family’s fundamental role in civilized society from radical attacks from the Left.
I was pleased to discover that Alexei Komov, President of the Russian affiliate of the World Congress, was visiting the United States a few days ago. Here is our interview, conducted in Washington, D.C.
[transcript unavailable]
We’re grateful to Mr. Komov for his very inspirational remarks. We look forward to hearing from other parts of our worldwide network in coming days as well. In fact, when we come back, we’ll hear from PRI’s Jonathan Abbomonte on what’s happening in Latin America right now.
This is PRI Review from www.pop.org. We’ll be right back.
Second Break
By now we all know that Planned Parenthood is accused in the U.S. of allegedly violating the law by, among other atrocities, selling baby body parts.
But what you might not realize is that Planned Parenthood’s affiliates, Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA) and International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF), are still getting away with murder overseas.
Around the world, and especially in Latin America, the baby-killing giant shades the truth about its abortion-related activities. It Runs roughshod over local anti-abortion laws. And violates local pro-life sentiment. All with seeming impunity.
But not anymore.
With your tax-deductible gift, PRI will throw the book at the abortion giant overseas, just as pro-life groups are doing here at home.
Did you know that PPFA spends about $38 MILLION a year lobbying to legalize abortion in countries around the world?
If they’re successful, they can kill as many, if not more, babies overseas as they do in the United States!
But there’s a hitch. Because abortion remains illegal in most Latin American countries, neither IPPF nor PPFA is eligible for governmental funding for abortion-related activities, as they are in the U.S.
So PPFA/IPPF gets around it as only they know how to do. By lying. With a wink and a nod, they disguise the programs they are funding as “education or health programs,” “women rights/human rights protection or promotion,” and “anti-discrimination initiatives aimed at protecting vulnerable groups, such as women or LGBTs (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender)”.
Catholic bishops throughout Africa and Latin America complain about this – they call it “ideological imperialism” – but their voices are not heard in Congress because America’s bishops depend on billions in government funding for their own charities. They don’t want to bite the political hand that feeds them.
PRI receives no government funding – so we aren’t hampered by golden handcuffs.
That’s why your tax-deductible gift to PRI is so important today.
As the lead group investigating Planned Parenthood’s activities overseas, PRI’s Latin American office has uncovered PPFA’s thinly disguised efforts to undermine pro-life laws and legitimate abortion on demand.
But we’ve only found the tip of the iceberg, and there is more work to be done, work that we can’t do alone.
Your tax-deductible gift will help PRI hire a seasoned pro-life legal team to help us expose, investigate, and prosecute Planned Parenthood’s affiliates everywhere they prey on women. Especially overseas.
Together, we’ll expose, investigate, and prosecute PPFA and IPPF everywhere it tries to hide the truth. This two-prong attack, complementing the hearings taking place in Washington, will force Planned Parenthood to fight on two fronts.
What better way to strike a blow against the real Planned Parenthood – the one we all saw in those horrific videos – than to come at them here and abroad
So please tax-deductible gift to support this and all of PRI’s baby-saving efforts around the world.
Yes, they’re big, and powerful. But Remember David and Goliath: the bigger they are, the harder they fall.
Third Segment
Abortion Activists will use any pretext to advance the abortion cause. And the Zika virus has given them the chance to follow the counsel of Obama’s first Chief of Staff, Rahm Emmanuel: Never let a crisis go to waste.
So today we learn that the United Nations has joined the chorus Using the Zika Virus Outbreak to fortify their demand to Legalize Abortion.
PRI’s Jonathan Abbamonte reports that the rapid spread of the Zika virus in the Western Hemisphere has many expectant mothers in hard-hit countries deeply concerned.
And that means that abortion activists, never letting a crisis go to waste, have seized upon this public health crisis to promote more killing of innocent children.
The media have devoted more coverage to Zika than they ever did to Planned Parenthood’s supermarket for baby parts. And naturally the Left wants to present Planned Parenthood and its abortion lobby as Florence Nightingale, not Josef Mengele.
So now the abortionists come to the rescue of all those beleaguered, concerned mothers – all unborn children who may have been exposed to the virus should be aborted!
Zika is only rarely hazardous to children or adults. It temporarily causes itchy rashes, joint pain and conjunctivitis. In rare cases, it can cause a bout of Guillain-Barré syndrome.
But recently Zika has been linked to microcephaly, a birth defect that has devastating effects on fetal brain and cranial development.
Since May of last year, reported cases have skyrocketed in Brazil and have spread to countries across Central and South America and the Caribbean. The World Health Organization (WHO) now estimates that up to 4 million people could become infected by the end of 2016. This past Monday, the WHO declared the Zika outbreak a Public Health Emergency of International Concern.
Instead of advocating for solutions to fight against the spread of the virus, the usual suspects are seeking to play into fears and exploit the crisis by advancing the legalization of abortion in Latin American countries.
According to reports from the BBC, pro-abortion advocates are preparing to petition Brazil’s highest court to legalize abortion in cases where women may have contracted the virus. Among the organizations pushing for the legalization of abortion in Brazil is ANIS: the Institute of Bioethics, Human Rights and Gender, a partner organization of the International Women’s Health Coalition based in New York City.
In 2012, ANIS and the National Confederation of Health Workers were effective in petitioning Brazil’s supreme court into legalizing abortion for infants with anencephaly (a severe birth defect where large portions of the infant’s brain are missing).
The radical pro-abortion group Women on Waves has also been pushing for abortions. It is now publishing advertisements offering abortion-inducing drugs free of charge to women in countries affected by the Zika outbreak.
Women on Waves claims that it will ship the abortion-inducing drugs by mail — anywhere.
That includes countries that protect unborn life without exception – countries like El Salvador, the Dominican Republic, and Chile.
Even though there haven’t been any confirmed cases of Zika transmission in Chile!
The pro-abortion Center for Reproductive Rights, based in New York City, has also started an online petition aimed at the government of El Salvador, asking President Sanchez Cerén to legalize abortion for women who contract the Zika virus.
Researchers are currently investigating the association between Zika and birth defects. While there is little doubt the Zika infection places infants at risk of developing microcephaly, the science is still unsettled as to cause and effect. That has not stopped pro-abortion groups — they will use any pretext to to promote their ultimate goal – universal, free, abortion on demand until after the baby is actually born.
They do it piecemeal, of course, constantly pushing at the edges, using every pretext, every lie, and, in this case, every “crisis.”
The condition called microcephaly is not usually detectable by ultrasound until the third trimester or, possibly, late into the second trimester. It is so elusive that often, the condition cannot be diagnosed until after birth.
But consider this: most states in the U.S. limit abortions at viability – that means, the middle of the second trimester, except in cases where the mother’s life or health is at risk.
That means that legalizing abortion for microcephaly cases would likely require the authorization of brutal and controversial late-term abortion procedures that involve dismemberment of the baby, burning it alive with saline, or simply killing it with a lethal injection.
Providing concessions for early-term abortion for any pregnant woman that contracts Zika could have even worse, far-reaching and long-lasting consequences, Mr. Abbamonte reports.
Legalizing abortion for women who have confirmed infection by the virus would not solve the problem, because it is not clear what percentage of Zika infections result in microcephaly.
Moreover, only 20% of people who contract the Zika virus show signs or symptoms of infection at all. That means that the vast majority of cases where infants might be at risk of microcephaly are simply unable to be detected.
Allowing abortion for any suspected cases of Zika infection would essentially make abortion available on demand — after all, there would be no means of verification.
Legalization for this purported cause would lead to one inescapable result: the abortion lobby’s goal, a large increase in the number unborn lives terminated through abortion.
To put it bluntly, unless abortion on demand is made legal, it is unlikely that abortions would reduce the incidence of microcephaly to any significant extent.
Of course, that would mean that thousands of perfectly healthy babies would be aborted – which is, after all, the goal of the pro-aborts.
But even the attempt to reduce the incidence of microcephaly by aborting the babies who suffer from the condition is an egregious violation of human rights and fundamentally discriminatory. After all, there are other diseases that are much more common — Downs Syndrome, for instance, or birth defects. Shouldn’t mothers be able to abort any child who isn’t perfect?
Microcephaly is a serious condition, no doubt about it. The infant’s head and brain are significantly smaller than normal. Children with microcephaly can suffer from a range of symptoms (depending on the severity of the condition) including impaired cognitive development, difficulty with speech, balance, learning, and motor functions, physical distortion of the skull or club feet, and seizures.
Some infected infants, however, do not suffer from any intellectual disabilities and are able live completely self-sufficient and happy lives as adults.
Ana Carolina Cáceres , a 24 year old journalist in Brazil, was born with microcephaly. When Ana was born, as the BBC reports, the doctors told her mother, “she will not walk, she will not talk and, over time, she will enter a vegetative state until she dies.” Not only did Ana prove the doctors wrong, but she finished school, graduated college, plays the violin and now has a fulfilling career as a journalist.
Simply put, aborting children simply because they have microcephaly would be a profound injustice.
How can we deprive these children of the opportunity to have fulfilling lives? Abortion would deprive their families and their communities of the love they have to offer — and ask any family that has the opportunity to care for a “special child.” As one father wrote your host several years ago about his daughter with Downs Syndrome, “she is forty years old. She wears a helmet. She can’t sin and she is the love of our lives.”
But Zika is undoubtedly a serious health problem. Currently, there is no cure, vaccine or effective treatment. Medical researchers are racing to develop effective therapeutics for the infection. Big pharma company Sanofi Pasteur has announced a project to develop a vaccine from its newly approved dengue vaccine. Gene One Life Science, a Korean based company, also announced that it is teaming with Inovio Pharmaceuticals to develop a DNA based vaccine. The National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Disease hopes to begin trials by the end of 2016 on yet another vaccine prospect based off previous work done on the development of a West Nile Virus vaccine.
While the international community anticipates the development of an effective Zika therapeutic, its clear that pushing the legalization of abortion on pro-life Latin American countries will have no effect on protecting the unborn from microcephaly. Focusing on harmful abortion policies will only take attention away from real and tangible solutions that will have an effect on the ground.
What is to be done? Well, for pregnant women in at-risk areas, perhaps the international community might work to provide aid in accordance with the current World Health Organization recommendations for infection prevention. Pregnant women should be provided with insecticide treated mosquito nets which are highly effective in preventing infection during sleeping hours. And clearly, pregnant women should be equipped with information and counselling on how to best prevent infection, instead of pushing them towards the abortionist’s door.
For instance, expectant mothers can greatly reduce their risk of infection by wearing long sleeved garments, avoiding stagnant water, and using effective insect repellant. For instance, the World Health Organization recommends Icaridin, and the Center for Disease Control recommends DEET and oil of lemon eucalyptus.
There are many other means of control: disposing of cartons, glass, tires, potted plants, and other magnets that offer mosquitos the opportunity to breed. Special precautions should be taken, especially in the early morning and late afternoon hours when the Aedes aegypti mosquito, the primary vector for Zika, is most likely to feed.
Homes, aircraft, ships, and public facilities should be fumigated according to locally approved protocols where protective measures are insufficient and in areas that are naturally damp.
Worried mothers, not to mention the public at large, need to understand that abortion activists are not concerned about their health, or the health of their children. As for the abortion lobbies, as usual, they have simply seized upon the Zika situation as a pretext to promote their agenda.
We should recognize their campaign as a thinly-camouflaged effort, conducted by the usual taxpayer-funded suspects, to advance their goal of universal, free, and unrestricted abortion on demand.
This has been PRI Review from www.pop.org. I’m Christopher Manion, thanks for listening.
