In This Issue:
- PRI in the Media
- Xi & Biden Meet
- China Aids Hamas
- Push for Sinicization
- Deepening Depopulation
- Population Projection
- Communist China
- Baby Trafficking Exposed
- Petition Fails
- UN Misdeeds
- UN Violates Mandates
- Science Gone Mad
- Unethical Conception
- Reproduction in Space
- Pro-life Around the World
- Rest in Peace Indi
- Clinic Coming to Cancun
- Charges Dismissed
- Pro-Life on the Home Front
- Maternal Mortality Decline
- Obstacles to Abortion
- Good News
- Pro-Life Victory in Peru
PRI in the Media
Xi & Biden Meet: Persevering through technical difficulties, PRI President Steven Mosher appeared on Varney & Company Wednesday to discuss Xi Jinping’s visit to the United States. Recorded just hours before Xi and Biden had their meeting, Mr. Mosher shared that Biden’s weakness as a leader will most likely lead to a lack of compromise on Xi’s part. The U.S. should take a strong stance against China, including boycotting doing business with the Communist nation, but Biden is unwilling to do this. As previously stated, the Biden administration has no plans to decouple with China.
China Aids Hamas: Mr. Mosher appeared on The Carl Jackson Show last week to discuss China’s role in the Israel-Hamas war. As Mr. Mosher pointed out in his most recent New York Post article, the CCP has been stoking conflict in multiple places around the world, including the Middle East. The CCP’s end goal is global domination, but along the way, it will cause chaos and distractions by igniting conflict in other countries. Such distractions serve to keep the focus off of the CCP as its military forces move closer to Taiwan, and keep its greatest opposition, the United States, busy putting out fires.
Push for Sinicization: A Chinese bishop is pushing for the sinicization of the Catholic Church in China. Beijing-appointed Bishop Joseph Shen Bin of Shanghai has declared that adopting socialist core values is “a fundamental requirement for the survival and development of the Catholic Church in China.” He further stated that sinicization will not change the faith, but help it “adapt and integrate into society.” Considering that adaptation intrinsically involves change, Shen’s words fail to reassure. Sinicization is a cover for the persecution of Christians, whose beliefs are diametrically opposed to the principles of communism. As Mr. Mosher has pointed out in the past, persecution has increased since the signing of the Sino-Vatican agreement and Shen’s declaration is evidence that this treatment will continue.
Deepening Depopulation
Population Projection: The U.S. Census Bureau has announced that the nation’s population will begin to decline in the second half of the century. The projections extend to 2100, which the Bureau has not done since 2000. They run four projections based on varying factors, but their “middle series” is the average that they consider to be the most accurate. This accuracy is debatable, as it is most likely that the immigration projections are too low and reproduction projections too high. Even now, U.S. population growth is largely driven by immigration, since the birth rates alone are well below replacement level. According to this middle series, the U.S. population will peak in 2080 at 370 million. It will then decrease to around 366 million by 2100. By the middle series estimate, immigration will contribute ~50 million to the projection.
“Perhaps it’s the result of three years of Covid and vaccine misinformation, but I am now skeptical of any pronouncements by the Biden administration,” says Mr. Mosher. “In this case, the report seems calculated to ease fears of a population explosion because of the open border. The future population of America, of course, depends not only on the level of immigrants we allow but also on the decisions of young Americans to have–or not to have–children. We should be encouraging Americans to have more children while closing our borders to illegal migrants.”
Communist China
Baby Trafficking Exposed: Six people have been arrested in central China’s Hubei province over alleged involvement in a baby trafficking ring linked to a hospital in one of the province’s biggest cities. An anti-trafficking volunteer, Shangguan Zhengyi, worked at the hospital undercover for a year and has just announced his findings. With help, the hospital’s director, Ye Youzhi, has been selling birth certificates, brokering the sale of babies, and facilitating surrogacy arrangements, all of which are illegal in China. Zhengyi revealed that a baby girl was sold in September for 118,000 yuan and later registered in Sichuan province. It is unknown how many babies are believed to have been trafficked through the hospital. However, this is not the first time that Ye Youzhi has been involved in a medical scandal. Most recently, in 2010, she was imprisoned for five months for performing sex-selective abortions.
“There are more babies aborted in China today than are born,” says Mr. Mosher. “This is despite the fact that the government wants to ramp up reproduction to offset the ongoing baby bust. As babies become ever rarer in China, I am afraid we will see more and more baby trafficking.”
Petition Fails: The Hong Kong government has harshly rejected a petition to release pro-democracy activist Jimmy Lai. The petition was put together by ten Catholic bishops from around the world, who desire freedom for their fellow Catholic. Lai has served over two years— more than a thousand days—of what may become a life sentence for violating the controversial National Security Law. In its response, given through a spokesperson, the Hong Kong government demanded that foreign Catholic leaders “immediately stop interfering in internal affairs.”
UN Misdeeds
UN Violates Mandates: UN human rights experts do not have the authority to press governments to change laws, but this does not stop them from trying. As the Center for Family & Human Rights notes, they are also getting more aggressive in doing so. The issues that the “experts” keep pushing involve abortion and LGBT ideology. A recent example involved the Human Rights Committee ordering the U.S. to “provide legal, effective, safe and confidential access to abortion.” None of the core UN human rights treaties mention abortion, sexual orientation, or gender identity, yet progressive individuals in the treaty bodies continue to push these items.
Science Gone Mad
Unethical Conception: Last month, for the “Battle of Ideas” Festival in London, Dr. Mehmet Çiftçi offered an argument that the creation of embryos in a lab is unethical. We here at PRI often share how the creation of little humans in a petri dish is both immoral and unethical, and Dr. Çiftçi sums up the latter quite concisely. It is a given that the general public believes reproductive technologies to be acceptable because they feel sympathetic for infertile couples. However, people generally do not consider how the procedures separate children from their parents at conception and the many embryos destroyed in the process. A better alternative, which is especially necessary in our world where 1-in-6 individuals are infertile, would be to find and cure the underlying reasons for infertility in couples.
Concluding his argument, Dr. Çiftçi stated, “Artificial reproductive technologies do not cure anything. All they offer is a way to make a lot of money from an adult’s desire for a child, at the callous expense of human life, and often at the expense of children’s need to know and be brought up by their biological parents.”
Reproduction in Space: There are so many problems on Earth that could be solved by research with the proper dedication and funding. But Dutch scientists have decided our priorities should be researching reproduction in space. It is unlikely humans will ever live on a planet besides Earth, but Spaceborn United is beginning research on space reproduction with the ultimate goal of natural conception and birth in a partial gravity atmosphere. Their research is beginning on immoral ground, however, with their first goal being the creation of a human embryo in a petri dish in space. They are currently only working with mice, but are aiming to create human embryos in five or six years.
Pro-life Around the World
Rest in Peace Indi: This week we have a sad update to the news regarding baby girl Indi Gregory. After the initial ruling that Indi could not go to Italy for treatment and would be taken off life support, her parents placed an emergency appeal. This delayed the NHS only a few days before the appeal was also rejected. On Monday, Indi’s life support was removed and she passed away. The U.K. government is responsible for the death of this baby girl, as they unnecessarily stole her chance at a longer life inexplicably. We pray for the repose of her soul and peace for her parents. Indi’s father released the following statement:
“Indi’s life ended at 1:45 am. Claire and I are angry, heartbroken, and ashamed. The NHS and the Courts not only took away her chance to live a longer life, but they also took away Indi’s dignity to pass away in the family home where she belonged.
“They did succeed in taking Indi’s body and dignity, but they can never take her soul. They tried to get rid of Indi without anybody knowing, but we made sure she would be remembered forever. I knew she was special from the day she was born.
“Claire held her for her final breaths.”
Clinic Coming to Cancun: The international abortion-providing nonprofit, MSI Reproductive Choices (formerly Marie Stopes International), is setting up a new abortion clinic in Mexico. This abortion mill will be the eleventh the organization has set up in Mexico and will be located in Cancun. According to the regional managing director of Latin America, Araceli Lopez Nava Vázquez, this location was chosen because it has the most direct flights from the United States. The goals of this clinic are to “help” American women and “decrease deaths.” But these goals are in complete opposition to the purpose of the clinic. Abortion harms women and always ends in at least one death.
Charges Dismissed: In 2021, a Finnish member of Parliament was charged with “hate speech” and “ethnic agitation” for publicly sharing her biblical, religious views on marriage as between one man and one woman in 2019. Päivi Räsänen was initially acquitted in 2022, but the prosecutors appealed her acquittal to the Helsinki Court of Appeal. This past Tuesday, the court unanimously ruled to uphold the 2022 acquittal. Räsänen has won a victory for free speech and no longer has the possibility of tens of thousands of euros in fines and two years in prison hanging over her head. We celebrate this victory but acknowledge that Räsänen’s case may still be used by the Left to deter Christians around the world from publicly sharing their beliefs.
Pro-Life on the Home Front
Maternal Mortality Declines: Pro-abortion activists claim that restrictions on abortion put women at risk. They claim that lack of access to abortion will increase maternal mortality. But in the year since Roe v. Wade was overturned, maternal mortality has actually decreased. While Dobbs did not cause this decrease, these statistics show that abortion restriction does not have a significant effect on maternal mortality. The most significant factor in this decrease is the availability of in-person care which improved as COVID-19 restrictions continued to be lifted.
Obstacles to Abortion: An interview with the former executive director of the American Association of Pro-life Obstetricians and Gynecologists (AAPLOG) revealed what pro-choicers view as obstacles to abortion. Dr. Donna Harrison, now the director of research for AAPLOG, shared her experience attending “incognito” at the first worldwide pro-abortion conference. The four key obstacles included: the Hippocratic Oath, the Roman Catholic Church, ultrasounds, and the lack of public support for elective abortion. Harrison was “astounded” by these findings, especially opposition to the Hippocratic Oath from medical professionals. Since that conference, Harrison has watched the attacks on these institutions and procedures by the pro-abortion lobby unfold.
Good News
Pro-Life Victory in Peru: Last week, with a majority in favor, the Peruvian congress passed a bill that expressly recognizes the rights granted in its constitution to unborn children. The first article of Law 785, the “Law that Recognizes Rights of the Conceived,” establishes the unborn as a subject of rights with full status as a human person. The second article guarantees the conceived child’s distinct genetic identity, unique and unrepeatable, independent of the mother, and endowed with its own personality. Article 3 of the new law recognizes the rights to life, health, moral, mental. and physical integrity, identity, free development, well-being, and other rights that benefit the unborn human being. This is a huge victory for life in Ibero-America!
“I am proud to say that PRI-Ibero-America played a major role in educating Peruvian legislators about the rights of the unborn,” says Mr. Mosher. “Declaring that unborn children have a constitutional right to life is a major step forward in protecting life from conception to natural death.”
Quote of the Week
“We must commit to a life of sexual purity within the sanctity of marriage or Holy Orders. We must be open to the bearing of children and love, protect, and champion those God sends us. In this way, we will create a civilization of life and love, beginning with the primary building block of that civilization, our own families.”
~ Mr. Mosher, The Devil and Communist China, (Now Available for Pre-Order!)
