PRI and Its Enemies

I was waiting at Kaiser to see a doctor had never met before. As I waited I became aware of a need to pray. There were doctors and patients in all the examination rooms that surrounded me. My guardian angel must be nudging me to pray for someone who is close by, I thought.

The doctor turned out to be a nice-looking Chinese man with an outgoing manner and an easy smile. He carried out his examination and discussed treatment. As he was wrapping things up he asked if I worked or was a “lady of leisure.”

“I’m a consultant to an international non-profit group,” I replied.

This piqued his interest. “Do you mind if I ask which one?”

“Population Research Institute.”

He turned abruptly in his chair and, looking directly at me, said, “PRI!”

“Yes,” I replied. “PRI works to protect women from coercive sterilization and abortion…”

An Enemy Revealed

I was about to say more when he quickly and emphatically declared, “We are enemies! Your group seeks to prevent doctors like me from performing abortions around the world!”

I was really quite stunned by his admission. But I quickly said, “Yes, you’re right.”

“Do you know Malcolm Potts?” he asked.1

“I know who he is. I have never met him,”

“He and I share an office at UC Berkeley,” he said, as though it were a badge of honor.

I asked him if he knew that Steve Mosher had recently been invited to speak at the University of California at Berkeley. He replied in the affirmative.

Several older men had been in the crowd, I told him, agitators who made false statements. “But the students were smart enough to see through them.” Then I asked him what he thought about Chinese women being forcibly aborted and sterilized.

“Fortunately I don’t have to think about it,” he said. “I work for the Chinese Ministry of Health.”

“So what do you think about Bush cutting $34 million from the UNFPA budget?”

“That was just a drop in the ocean,” he replied offhandedly. “It won’t make a difference.”

Just the Start

“That was just the beginning,” I smiled. “We’ll be seeing more of the same.”

I went on to ask him if he knew that every developed country in the world is a dying country, and that all the developing countries are headed in the same direction because of the population controllers and our tax dollars.

He made no response.

“Isn’t this funny?” he asked finally.

“I don’t think it’s at all funny,” I replied

“No. Isn’t it funny that we arc talking in a friendly manner yet we’re on opposite sides?”

“Yes, I guess it is funny.” As opposed to China, I thought, where they shoot people who disagree.)

“We can continue this discussion and share information in the future,” he said. “I can still be your doctor and we can agree to disagree on these philosophical issues. It’s just a difference in philosophy.”

“Oh, no!” I replied. “It’s much more. It’s a matter of life and death.”

Upon leaving I shook his hand and thanked him for his time. I think we both knew that this would be the last time we would meet as doctor and patient.

Returning home I checked the UC Berkeley website to find information on the classes taught by this, my now former doctor. He is a faculty member of the School of Public Health and specializes in “international health.” The mission statement for this department includes the following … “to develop and apply knowledge… for the promotion and protection of the health of the human population giving due consideration to principles of human rights and cultural perspectives.” [italics added]

Doctor’s Background

This doctor’s bio states that he is an “obstetrician with a special interest in maternal and child health management in developing countries. He has established a center at Berkeley to encourage entrepreneurial ventures to improve the flow of family planning and reproductive health commodities to developing countries.” In other words, he has made a business out of promoting abortion, contraception and sterilization overseas.

And he is also a signatory to a letter circulated in December 2002 by Frances Kissling of Catholics for a Free Choice and Marge Berer of Reproductive Health Matters. The letter, which was presented to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, was written in support of the “Program of Action” that came out of the 1994 Cairo “Conference on Population and Development.” The actions of the Bush administration are a danger to this consensus, they say.

In their own words:

Today we are facing a major threat to this global consensus [in the Cairo Program of Action], posed by one of the most powerful countries in the world, whose national and foreign policy has become actively anti-abortion, anti-sex-education, anti-reproductive health and increasingly restrictive of family planning provisions under George W. Bush.

I understand now that the prayers that seemed so urgent before my doctor’s visit were for the doctor himself, for he is no bit-player in the global plan to eliminate those deemed unworthy of life.

Endnotes

1 Malcolm Potts is the former director of the International Planned Parenthood Federation.

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