In This Issue:
- PRI in the Media
- Unreliable Investments
- Communist China
- Expensive Children
- Abuse Continues
- Disconnected from Family
- Science Gone Mad
- Suicide by Sarco
- Dangerous & Unregulated
- Pro-Life Around the World
- Stay-at-Home Motherhood
- Marching in Manila
- Pro-Life on the Home Front
- Musk Goes Viral
- Ignoring the FDA
- Embryos are People
- Good News
- 89,000 Saved
PRI in the Media
Unreliable Investments: Last October, PRI President Steven Mosher joined Jan Jekielek on American Thought Leaders to discuss the CCP’s collapsing economy. In the last year, major Chinese building companies have started going bankrupt, before their projects are completed. The Chinese citizens who invested in these companies on spec, buying an apartment that was not yet built, will now never get what they paid for. Subsequently, and rightfully, the Chinese are no longer willing to sink their funds into an unreliable real estate investment. With real estate making up approximately 60% of China’s economy, this does not bode well for future economic development in the country.
Communist China
Expensive Children: According to the Beijing-based YuWa Population Research Institute (no relation to PRI), China is one of the world’s most expensive places to raise a child. The cost of raising a child until they are 18 relative to per capita GDP is around 6.3 times in China compared to 2.08 times in Australia, 2.24 times in France, 4.11 times in the United States, and 4.26 times in Japan. The YuWa Institute also looked at the childrearing costs that particularly affect mothers in China. Women generally see a reduction of 2,106 working hours when looking after children aged 0-4 and face an estimated wage loss of 63,000 yuan ($8,700) in that period. Leisure time is also impacted, with a 12.6-hour reduction for mothers with one child aged 0-6 and 14 hours for two children. Based on these factors, the YuWa Population Research Institute believes there is an “urgent need” for social policies to improve the ultra-low fertility rate.
Abuse Continues: Two years ago, the United Nations released a damning report exposing the abusive forced labor of the Uyghurs in Xinjiang. Yet, the abuse continues. According to a new report, “forced labor transfers” of the Uyghur Muslim workforce in 2023 “exceeded those from the previous year and surpassed state-mandated quotas.” Beijing has not stopped its forced labor and mass internment of the Uyghurs. To date, up to 1.5 million Uyghurs are believed to have been sent to internment camps. The European Union has taken no action in response to the news of these continued abuses yet, though a bloc-wide ban on imports of products made with forced labor is under consideration.
Disconnected from Family: Members of China’s younger generation are feeling disconnected from their families. Both the phrases, “cutting off family ties” and “rural families quietly cut ties,” were trending on Chinese social media over the Lunar New Year holiday. According to Radio Free Asia, “Economic woes, a competitive culture and parental pressure to tick off traditional milestones like a partner, a career, marriage, a mortgage, and children are making the youth feel disconnected from their families.” These young Chinese are already known for “lying flat,” a movement for minimal effort. Now, this movement has spread to family ties.
Science Gone Mad
Suicide by Sarco: The inventor of a suicide capsule has revealed further information about the machine. In 2019, Dr Philip Nitschke unveiled his invention, the “Sarco machine.” In 2021, Nitschke shared details on how his self-operated suicide machine would work. The suicide occurs by “hypoxia and hypocapnia, oxygen and carbon dioxide deprivation, respectively” after the machine replaces the oxygen in the air with nitrogen. Recently, Nitschke revealed the three questions that the machine will ask the user before their death: “Who are you?”, “Where are you?” and “Do you know what happens if you press the button?” The correct responses to these questions will result in the murder of the user. The pod has not yet been approved for use, but Nitschke hopes to roll it out in Switzerland where assisted suicide is legal.
Dangerous & Unregulated: The fertility industry is booming, yet it is still largely unregulated. With the popularity of genomics companies, like 23andMe, more doctors are being exposed for fertility fraud they perpetrated decades ago. One affected individual, Victoria Hill, discovered she had twenty-two siblings, all fathered by the same fertility doctor who was using his own sperm in his patients. Victoria’s experience is just one of many. More than thirty doctors around the U.S. have been caught or accused of covertly using their own sperm to impregnate their patients, though advocates say they know of at least 80. These are the dangers that go along with the fertility industry, which preys on vulnerable couples who wish to build a family. Ultimately, even the fertility practices deemed “acceptable” by modern standards are often immoral.
Pro-Life Around the World
Stay-at-Home Motherhood: A new poll shows that a majority (69%) of Irish mothers with children under 18 would prefer to stay at home if they could afford it. These results came from an Amarach Research opinion commissioned by the Iona Institute. In addition, 76% of women shared their belief that society values women in the workforce over women who are stay-at-home moms. The final question on the survey showed that 71% of women do not feel valued by society for the work they do as mothers. These questions were based on a similar survey in 2017, which yielded the same results. On behalf of the Iona Institute, Professor Patricia Casey stated, “If the Government was really on the side of mothers, it would make it easier for them to stay at home with their children if that is their wish, and it is the wish of the vast majority of them, as the Amarach poll tells us. But the Government seems to be on the side of the economy, not mothers.”
“For decades, America has compensated for its falling birth rate by inducing women to join the workforce in large numbers,” says Mr. Mosher. “But this is a self-limiting proposition. It turns out that the higher the rate of female participation in the workforce, the lower the birth rate. And now we also learn that the long-time feminist mantra of ‘you can have it all’ meaning work, marriage, family, and children doesn’t work for the vast majority of working women with children.”
Marching in Manila: Last weekend, thousands joined the annual Walk for Life in the Philippines. More than eighty pro-life groups participated, marching from Quezon City to Manila, the nation’s capital. At the Grandstand España of the University of Santo Tomas in the capital, Cardinal Jose F. Advincula, Archbishop of Manila, led a Eucharistic celebration. In his homily, Cardinal Jose urged the participants to “rethink” pro-life strategies to adopt approaches that avoid judgment and condemnation. The president of the Pro-Life Foundation of the Philippines, Bernard Canaveral, also spoke. He stated, “In this year’s Walk for Life, we advocate for the sanctity of every precious human. Walking together towards the same ideal as a family brings unity and strengthens our love. But the greatest ideal is to strive for holiness. One of the ways that we can grow in holiness is by respecting the God-given dignity of every human person.”
Pro-Life on the Home Front
Musk Goes Viral: Last Friday, Elon Musk posted a short, honest comment about the side effects of hormonal birth control on X. Musk’s post read, “Hormonal birth control makes you fat, doubles risk of depression & triples risk of suicide. This is the clear scientific consensus, but very few people seem to know it.” This post caused a wave of responses from women who shared their negative experiences with birth control. They were thankful that Musk has shined a light on the dark side of birth control, which doctors push on women as a band-aid solution for a host of issues.
“Who knew that Elon Musk would turn out to be an ally in the fight for life,” says Mr. Mosher. “First he decries falling birth rates, then he encourages people to have more babies, and now he’s criticizing hormonal contraception. Not to mention he runs one of two free speech social media platforms on the Internet, X/Twitter, the other being Truth Social. I am tempted to say that God draws straight with crooked lines, but of course that is true of all of us fallible human beings, isn’t it?”
Ignoring the FDA: Companies that provide the abortion pill don’t care about FDA safeguards, and they aren’t being secretive about it. Pro-life activist, Megan Gibson, ordered abortion pills online from two companies to see how difficult the process would be, but it wasn’t difficult at all. The first group, AccessMA, provided the drugs free of charge with no proof of pregnancy required beyond an estimation of how far along the baby was. The second group, Aid Access, required a copy of her ID and a photo of an ultrasound if one was available. Both groups were willing to send the drugs past the FDA’s limit, to which Megan commented, “These are people and companies EAGER to provide the means to murder someone. So much so, that they won’t let a little thing like the FDA get in their way.” These companies are providing dangerous drugs with little regulation to women who may improperly use them. Babies will be killed and women will be hurt by these companies which are determined to push abortions.
“This week’s Weekly Briefing ably summarizes the lengths to which the Biden administration is going to mail abortion pills all over the country in a frenetic effort to abort as many babies as possible,” says Mr. Mosher. “This not only violates state pro-life laws, but is putting the lives of young women at risk. Hopefully the Supreme Court will put some of the earlier safeguards back in place, such as mandatory doctor’s visits, rather than continue the ‘poison by mail’ approach.”
Embryos are People: The Alabama Supreme Court has upheld that frozen embryos are legally children under the state’s law. This ruling was part of LePage v. Center for Reproductive Medicine, P.C., to answer the question of whether or not parents could sue after their cryogenically frozen embryos were accidentally destroyed by an employee at a fertility clinic. The Alabama Supreme Court declared that “the Wrongful Death of a Minor Act applies to all unborn children, regardless of their location” last Friday, after a 7-2 vote.
Good News
89,000 Saved: The National Right to Life Committee (NRLC) has released its estimate of babies saved since Roe v. Wade overturned, as part of its February 2024 “State of Abortion” annual report. According to the NRLC, 89,000 babies have been saved from abortion since the overturn. The report was based on data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Guttmacher Institute, the Society for Family Planning, and an academic paper that found 32,000 babies were saved from abortion in the six months after Dobbs. The NRLC recognizes that there is still much work to be done though, as the pro-abortion movement has the monetary backing to fund “abortion travel” all across the country.
Quote of the Week
“Ultimately, we have to believe that the battle will be won not by the ones who have the most money or the most influence with the media, but by those who demonstrate with word and deed their love for both mother and child. They’re the ones who really count most of all.”
~ The National Right to Life Committee, source
