TRAUMATIC IRISH ABORTION CASE
The Irish Supreme Court, by a majority of four to one, recently rendered a decision concerning abortion under Article 8 of the Irish Constitution. Article 8 reads: “The State acknowledges the right to life of the unborn and, with due regard to the equal right to life of the mother, guarantees by its laws to respect and, as far as practicable by its laws, to defend that right” (The New York Times, 27 February 1992).
The case before the court concerned a 14-year-old girl who was alleged to have become pregnant as the result of a rape. No forensic or medical evidence was presented to substantiate the claim which therefore remained an “allegation,” according to Justice Anthony Hederman. On several occasions, in front of witnesses, the girl expressed a desire to solve the problem by ending her life. A clinical psychologist assessed her emotional condition and, without corroborating professional or medical testimony, concluded that “she was capable of such an act.”
The majority of the court held that where “it is established as a matter of probability that there is a real and substantial risk to the life of the mother as distinct from the health of the mother which can only be avoided by the termination of her pregnancy, that such termination is possible” (per Finlay C.J. at p. 33, & p. 38).
Justice Hederman, in his dissent, said: “There cannot be a freedom to extinguish life side by side with a guarantee of protection of that life” (Diarmaid MacDermott, The Associated Press, 5 March 1922).
Professor Patricia Casey of the Department of Psychiatry at University College, Dublin, commented on the ruling: “As far as I am aware, there has never been a case in Ireland where a termination of pregnancy would have been recommended as part of the treatment of a suicidal patient.” In her work as a consulting psychiatrist, she has seen a number of patients actively suicidal following an abortion (Irish Medical Times, 13 March 1992).
IPPF IN CZECHOSLOVAKIA
Former “sexologists” in Czechoslovakia have initiated the “Society for Family Planning and Sexual Education” (SFPSE) in that country. The organization is a branch of International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF). Financial assistance for SFPSE is provided by IPPF, the National Health Center and other government institutions. Government support for IPPF is based on patronage of IPPF by the World Health Organization (WHO). Czechoslovakian citizens who oppose the presence of IPPF in their country find themselves facing the threatening economic superiority of the international population control cartel.
NO “CHOICE” IN BRITISH COLUMBIA HOSPITALS
British Columbia Health Minister Elizabeth Cull announced new regulations on 20 March 1992. The regulations will ensure “regional access to abortion services” in 33 regional hospitals — even in hospitals which are opposed to the surgeries. As part of the new regulations, $1 million in “core financing” will be provided for Vancouver’s abortion centers at Everywoman’s Health Center and Elizabeth Bagshaw’s Women’s Clinic. In addition, the regulations will provide for the funding of “education and information” programs, and the establishment of a panel on “access to contraception and abortion.”
Under the previous administration, the government refused to provide operating funds for abortion clinics. Hilda Thomas, president of the British Columbia (B.C.) Coalition for Abortion Clinics said the change in policy could result in “abortion clinics opening throughout the province.”
However, B.C. Health Association President Herman Crewson said the policy raised some questions. “If the governing board [of the hospital] doesn’t toe the line, they are in jeopardy, yet legislatively they are supposed to be able to [control the hospital],” he observed (The Weekend Sun, 21 March, 1992, “Just-do-it policy for hospitals”).
What happened to “choice”?
DIE OR STARVE — U.K. DOCTOR’S PROPOSAL
Dr. Maurice King of the University of Leeds, U.K. has suggested that India consider withdrawing life-saving public aid programs from infants and children to stem population growth.
He argued that because public health measures are technically possible, they should not necessarily be introduced on a public health scale. “They could make the condition of the community worse and increase the man-years of human misery…”
According to Dr. King, a demographic trap is set when the population in a community rises and the death rate declines. Oral rehydration and mass immunization are examples of technologies that save lives of children and “increase entrapment.” Dr. King said the India’s projected population will be 1.4 billion by 2025 and if the country cannot import food, the people will starve (The Times of India, 20 November 1991).
LONDON “LIVING WILL” BILL DRAFTED
A meeting of the All-party Parliamentary Euthanasia group was held in the House of Lords on 10 February to discuss the draft “Medical Treatment (advance directives) Bill.” The bill, in 14 sections, aims to give legal force to the Advance Directive issued by the Voluntary Euthanasia Society, or any other such document.
The draft bill would have the effect of turning non-euthanising doctors into criminals. Section 4 of the bill states that: “upon determining that the declarant is in a terminal condition, the attending physician who knows of an advanced directive made by the declarant shall record the determination in the patient’s medical record.” Failure to do so is an offense (sec. 8, (5), and offenders may face six months imprisonment (6) (a). When a dying declarant is “no longer able to make decisions” he must be deprived of “life sustaining treatment,” which includes assisted nutrition and hydration. A doctor who is unwilling to treat patients in this way “shall as promptly as practicable take all necessary steps to transfer the care of the declarant to another physician” or risk jail (sec. 8, 4, 5, 6).
It is assumed that the other “physicians” will fall into line (Alert, Euthanasia Update, No. 2, March 1992, p. 1).
U.S. ABORTIONIST THINKS THERE ARE TOO MANY HISPANICS
“Hispanics are particularly enraged over the statements by Dr. Edward Campbell Allred, a Long Beach physician who runs more than a dozen abortion clinics in Southern California, many of them in Hispanic neighborhoods. In a copyrighted story in the San Diego Union newspaper, Allred was frank about some of the reasons he opened abortion clinics.
“Population control is too important to be stopped by some right-wing prolife types,” Allred told the newspaper. “Take the new influx of Hispanic immigrants. Their lack of respect for democracy and social order is frightening. I hope I can do something to stem that tide; I’d set up a clinic in Mexico for free if I could. Maybe one in Calixico would help. The survival of our society could be at stake” (Carmine Rodriguez, Special Correspondent).
ATTEMPTED SUICIDE AMONG U.S. HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS
Suicide rates for U.S. adolescents 15–19 years of age have quadrupled from 2.7 per 100,000 in 1950 to 11.3 in 1988. The national school-based Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS) is one component of the Center for Disease Control’s Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance system. YRBS used a three-stage sample to obtain a representative sample of 11,631 students in grades 9–12 in the 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands.
For the 12 months preceding the survey, 27.3% of all students in grades 9–12 reported that they had thought seriously about attempting suicide. Fewer students (16.3%) reported that they had made a specific plan to attempt suicide. About half the students who made a specific plan (8.3% of all respondents) reported that they actually attempted suicide. Two percent of the students reported that they made a suicide attempt that resulted in an injury or poisoning requiring medical attention (Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, Massachusetts Medical Society, 20 Sept. 1992, Vol. 40, No. 37).
CONDOM CONFUSION
“The distribution of condom in Uganda — promoted by the government to fight the AIDS epidemic — has enraged a woman whose husband received them from his employer. She took her complaints to the government-owned New Vision of Kampala. The paper reports that she feared that husbands “are being encouraged to go womanizing everywhere” and that broken or violent marriages could result from infidelities.
“She appeared to have been abused, New Vision says, and knew wives with similar complaints. She said, ‘We request the government to listen to us on this matter, because it’s painful to us’” (Barry Shelby, World Press Review, June 1991, “Regional Report Africa,” p.36).
RUSSIAN DEATHS INCREASE, BIRTHS DECREASE FOR FIRST TIME
The Russian population rate is dropping for the first time since World War II due to a lower birth rate in combination with an increase in the mortality rate.
According to the state statistical agency Goskimstat, the birth rate in Russia has fallen by 30 percent during the past five years while deaths have exceeded births in the nation since November 1991.
The difference during November totaled 4,000 more deaths than births, but the disparity increased to 20,000 in January. Statistics reveal that life expectancy in Russia has now reached an average of 69.2 years after falling since 1965.
The fall in the birth rate is attributed by officials to the economic crisis, which has created widespread fear and uncertainty about the future (Moscow, UPI, 1 April 1992).
INCREASE IN CHILD PROSTITUTES DUE TO AIDS SCARE IN BANGKOK
Because of the belief that younger sex partners will be free of AIDS, more children are being forced into prostitution in Thailand, according to a minister of the Thai government.
According to Saisuree Chutikul, a minister in the prime minister’s office, “The ages of both male and female prostitutes become younger and younger.”
“Many customers seek child prostitutes to serve their sexual needs with the belief that these living commodities are virgin and therefore free from the disease,” he said (Sinfah Tunsarawuth, Bangkok, Reuter, 1 April 1992).
“MAJORITY OF U.S. MALE TEENS EXPOSED TO HIV”
Journalist Douglas A. Levy reports that researchers say “American youth are so sexually active that a majority of 15 to 19 year old boys at least potentially have been exposed to the virus.”
He goes on to say, “The nationwide scientific survey of teen behaviors also found that condom use nearly tripled from 1979 to 1988 and that black youths use condoms more than white youths” (Douglas A. Levy, Reuter, 1 April 1992).
However, statistics for 1990 reveal that the actual number of AIDS cases among all American youths, male and female, from the age of 10 to 19 in 1990 were 208. This number includes male/female contact, homosexual/bisexual contact, persons with a history of intravenous drug use, persons with hemophilia and transfusion recipients” (Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, Massachusetts Medical Society, publishers of the New England Journal of Medicine, 7 June 1991, Vol. 40, No. 22, emphasis not in the original).
The scientific survey reported by Levy represents a persistent drumbeat of propaganda intended to drive Americans to agree to the distribution of condoms in schools throughout the country.
“McCONDOMS” BLOCKED BY McDONALDS IN QUEBEC
McDonald’s Corporation Canadian affiliate has obtained a court order blocking a Montreal sex shop, La Capoterie — named after the French name for condoms — from the selling of McCondoms.
La Capoterie is also required by the court injunction to turn over all unsold prophylactics and McCondoms, to be destroyed.
The accusation by McDonalds Restaurants of Canada Ltd. — which sells McRibs, McCones, and McColas — charges La Capoterie with using “its propriety language with the Mc prefix” (Montreal, Reuter, 26 March 1992).
RIO EARTH SUMMIT THREATENED BY SCANDAL
The resignations of top organizers, confusion over the starting date and numerous other difficulties plague planning efforts for the environmental summit 10 weeks before it opens.
Newspapers linked one senior Brazilian official to irregularities, causing his resignation, and the government’s top environmentalist was fired. In the meantime, negotiations in New York over the treaty to curtail global warming are mired down as a result of opposition from the United States.
Environmentalists fear the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), known as the Earth Summit, could degenerate into a disappointing global failure (Michael Stott, Rio De Janiero, Brazil, Reuter, 26 March 1992).
ABORTION ADVICE BAN PARTLY LIFTED BY BUSH ADMINISTRATION
Reversing a long-standing policy, the Bush administration has decided to permit doctors, in federally funded “family planning” clinics, to counsel pregnant women to choose abortion.
The decision, announced in a memo governing the federal “Family Planning” program, and sent to regional offices of the Public Health Services, leaves the prohibition on abortion recommendations by nurses or non-physician health care personnel in place (Spencer Rich, Washington Post Staff Writer, 21 March 1992, HWP).
WOMEN’S WORLD CONFERENCE TO BE IN CHINA
In a shockingly insensitive move, U.N. officials have decided to hold the next World Conference on Women in China, the world’s most aggressive and coercive national violator of women’s rights.
The decision on the 1995 Conference site was made at the annual meeting of the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women.
“The World Conference on Women is very much a human rights conference,” according to Kay Stanley, government coordinator on the Status of Women in Canada (The Associated Press, Vienna, Austria, “UN-Women,” 21 March 1992).
CONTENTIOUS NIGERIAN CENSUS
Nigeria’s census last year showed the West African nation’s population as 88,514,501 on census day in November.
The highest population was recorded in Lagos State, with almost 5.7 million inhabitants, while Abuja, the new capital city located in the center of the country, had a population of 379,671 (Lagos, DPA, 20 March 1992).
The head of the Nigerian Labour movement warned that the census — which showed a smaller population than previously estimated — should not be used by donor nations to reduce international assistance to the Nigerian people.
“We may be statistically richer now but the reality on the ground has not changed. Most Nigerians remain desperately poor,” according to Pascal Bafyau, president of the Nigerian Labour Congress (Tunde Obadina, Lagos, 20 March 1992, Reuter).
FRENCH KISSING AND AIDS IN ITALY
Possible linkages between AIDS and deep kissing is under official investigation in Italy.
A commission was formed in March to determine if fact sheets on Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome should warn against so-called French Kissing (Reuter, 20 March, Rome).
BAN ON FETAL TISSUE RESEARCH LIFTED IN U.S.
The U.S. Senate lifted a federal moratorium on fetal tissue transplant research with a majority vote that could override a threatened presidential veto.
In the critical vote, the Senate turned down an amendment that would have allowed only tissue from miscarriages or ectopic pregnancies to be used in human transplant research. The amendment, which also provided for a registry and tissue bank, was defeated 77–23 (Washington Times, 3 April 1992, A3).
AIDS FIGHT IN AFRICA COULD BE HELPED BY HIV-2 STUDY
“A less virulent strain of the AIDS virus discovered in Africa appears to act more slowly, promising important clues in the search for a vaccination against the deadly disease. However, African researchers at the sixth International Conference on AHJS in Africa complained that the virus, HIV-2, has been largely ignored by their Western counterparts because victims were African.
“Americans and Africans working on the HIV-2 project said it could answer questions about HIV-1, the virus plaguing the West.”
Dr. Tidiane Siby, a member of the research team, said in an interview, “Though we discovered HIV-2 in 1985, it is only this year that we have forced Western scientists as a body to believe our studies that show the progression of the disease is much slower and different than HIV-1.”
According to the World Health Organization, more than 7 million Africans are infected with the AIDS virus — 1 million more than it had previously projected (The Washington Times, 12 December 1992).
