Online Journal of the Hudson Valley Coalition for Life.
"Every human being is called to solidarity in a world battling between life and death" - Ignacio Ellacuria, Jesuit martyr in El Salvador
The shut-down of abortion clinics in the United States continues: there were 2,176 clinics at their peak in 1991, but today there are only 515. This trend is also happening at a time when abortions are concentrated in clinics rather than doctors’ offices or hospitals. In 2016, 22 clinics have closed so far – but in December of 2015 alone, there were 51 closures! All over the country, not just in the famous case in Texas. That may mean that clinics are more likely to close at the end of the calendar year, so we may see a good number yet to come next month. Add those to figures together, and that’s a total of 73 facilities closed since Thanksgiving of last year. In international news, the effort by pro-abortion groups to have the United Nations declare September 28 to be an “International Safe Abortion Day” failed. Pro-lifers were successful in their campaign against the idea.
On Wednesday, October 19th Mrs. Clinton went full throttle for abortion throughout pregnancy. It occurred early in her debate with Mr. Trump. Below is the dialogue; you can see the full article where this is excerpted from here at LifeNews. It was originally published in National Right to Life News Today. Below the excerpt we have responses to her support for what amounts to infanticide. Bear in mind that there is never a medical justification for late term abortion, because abortions after approximately 16 weeks are 2-3 day procedures. This is because of the necessity of dilating the cervix with laminaria, which are left in for at least one night. If it's a life threatening situation, the procedure should be an emergency caesarean section and an effort to save both patients.
Wallace (Chris Wallace, the debate moderator) drilled down another thousand feet on Clinton as well:
I wanted to ask you Secretary Clinton, I want to explore how far you think the right to abortion goes. You have been quoted as saying that the fetus has no constitutional rights. You also voted against a ban on late-term partial birth abortions. Why?
Clinton gave her usual answer–that Roe allows for some “regulation,” provided there is an exception for “the health of the mother.” Of course, for 43 years the health exception has swallowed the rule as thoroughly as a python gulps down its supper.
To his great credit, Trump called her out:
Well I think it is terrible. If you go with what Hillary is saying, in the ninth month you can take [the] baby and rip the baby out of the womb of the mother just prior to the birth of the baby. Now, you can say that that is okay and Hillary can say that that is okay, but it’s not okay with me. Because based on what she is saying and based on where she’s going and where she’s been, you can take [the] baby and rip the baby out of the womb. In the ninth month. On the final day. And that’s not acceptable.
Clinton responded that this is just “scare rhetoric,” as if what she supports doesn’t frighten mainstream America. “And I will stand up for that right,” she added.
Trump’s answer?
And honestly, nobody has business doing what I just said. Doing that as late as one or two or three or four days prior to birth. Nobody has that [right].
The NY State health department keeps extensive statistics on abortion in the State - age, race, ethnicity, gestation, number of prior abortions, where done, financial coverage, and operative procedures. according to the latest statistices (2014) there were 2,106 abortion at 20+ weeks.
Some rejoinders to Clinton -
This from the Catholic League - hit the link for the full PR -
Hillary Clinton showed something about her often-stated concern for children in the October 19 US presidential debate. For full protection, the children need to be entirely born. Being near birth isn’t good enough. She defended very late-term abortions for reasons including “something terrible has happened or just been discovered about the pregnancy.” Though not specific, this could mean when the child is discovered to have “fetal abnormalities” – at least, this is a common justification for very late-term abortions. Killing someone because she has disabilities is horrible enough, but a positive portrayal of aborting those with disabilities (as is common in the media) can be devastating to efforts to stop discrimination against disabled children and adults. But did that vague phrase mean that? The current Democratic Party Platform is extreme enough to suggest so. If only the press would dig down deeper and ask for clarification.
The NY Times had an op ed today (October 21, '16.) promoting just that - the baby destroyed at 22 weeks because of a disability.
In National Review today, touching on the Second Amendment and abortion - we only are concerned here with abortion -
But Hillary has been steadfast in her belief that a woman should be able to hire a doctor to kill her child at any moment before the child is entirely delivered. Yes, even when it’s halfway out, the doctor should be able to lawfully jam scissors into the back of the child’s skull. That’s Hillary’s belief. She cannot, however, own it honestly to the American people. Defending her vote against banning partial-birth abortion, she said this:
The kinds of cases that fall at the end of pregnancy are often the most heartbreaking, painful decisions for families to make. I have met with womenwho have, toward the end of their pregnancy, get the worst news one could get. That their health is in jeopardy if they continue to carry to term. Or that something terrible has happened or just been discovered about the pregnancy. I do not think the United States government should be stepping in and making those most personal of decisions. So you can regulate if you are doing so with the life and the health of the mother taken into account.
She’s counting on the fact that most Americans have no idea that when she’s referring to health, she’s referring not just to physical health — physical harm or injury to the mother — but also to the mother’s psychological, emotional, and even familial sense of “well-being.” How do we know this? Because it’s in the very Supreme Court jurisprudence, the Doe v. Bolton case, that she so proudly protects. Hillary’s tactics wouldn’t work so well in a functioning media environment. But when reporters largely agree with her policy positions, the various “fact checkers” and other watchdogs are off to the races to find some way, any way that her arguments have merit.
Lastly, The Eclipse of Reason is a video produced by the late Dr. Bernard Nathanson in 1987 showing an abortion at 20 weeks. Nathanson was an Ob-Gyn and secular Jewish atheist who was a co-founder of NARAL (National Abortion Rights Action League) an abortionist himself (he aborted one of his own children) and for several years the director of the largest abortion "clinic" in New York City. But he began to realize what he was doing, re-thought his own life, became pro-life and eventually became a Catholic. He is better known for the video The Silent Scream showing an abortion at 12 weeks, but he also produced the aptly named Eclipse of Reason. You can view the Eclipse of Reason either embedded below or hit the link above. Charlton Heston introduces the video.
Words also have the power to degrade the human dignity of born and grown people. A classic example is the pejorative term “vegetable,” referring to those with severe cognitive disabilities and impairments. Even the diagnostic term used to describe the condition of permanently unconscious patients—“persistent vegetative state”—is pejorative, perhaps the only explicitly demeaning medical term. (Why not use the perfectly accurate “persistent unconscious state”?) The V-word has the effect—and in some cases, indeed, the purpose—of excluding these human beings from the moral community and exposing them to oft-proposed forms of oppression and exploitation—such as allowing them to be used for live-organ harvesting and as subjects in medical experimentation.
We see the same phenomenon in our debates around end-of-life care and assisted suicide. The Dutch euthanasia practitioner Dr. M.A.M. Wachter, ethicist/director for the Institute of Health in the Netherlands, made this point explicitly when he appeared at a 1990 international euthanasia society convention. “The definitions build the road to euthanasia,” he stated, explaining that even the word “euthanasia” (“good death”) could harm the cause, because people naturally recoil from the killing act.
Thus, Wachter urged his audience to prevaricate and obfuscate: “Definitions are not neutral. They are not just the innocent tools that allow us to describe reality. Rather, they shape our perceptions of reality. They select. They emphasize. They embody a bias. Therefore, definitions constantly need redefinition.” This is precisely why the Hemlock Society, an assisted-suicide advocacy organization, changed its name to Compassion and Choices and now deploys the euphemism “aid in dying” in its media and advocacy materials.
Since most of the media likes some of what Pope Francis says, while ignoring his abortion statements, here's a good refresher. From Christianity Today, back in April.
In the headline the Holy Father is quoting Vatican II
He described the right to life as "first and most fundamental right" upon which all other civil rights are based on.
"It is therefore necessary to reiterate the strongest opposition to any direct attack on life, especially innocent and defenceless."
Quoting the Second Vatican Council, Pope Francis said: "From the moment of its conception, life must be guarded with the greatest care while abortion and infanticide are unspeakable crimes."
Taking the pro-life message in a different direction to many other pontiffs, Pope Francis linked the cause of fighting abortion to the establishment of global social and economic justice.
LifeSiteNews.com quoted the Pope as saying: "This economy kills. It considers the human being in himself as a commodity; a commodity that you can use and then throw away."
He described one of modernity's "most serious risks" as being "the divorce between economics and morality".
Sharing his view of the world, Pope Francis said he saw on the one hand "a market equipped with every technological innovation" and on the other "elementary ethical standards of human nature more and more neglected".
All human life, the Pope said, is "a gift from God" and that those who understand it as such see life as "a valuable and intangible asset, to be protected by all means and not to be discarded".
And more from the article -
he also urged those attending to not become so focused on the unborn child that care for the mother is forgotten.
Speaking about how to engage with women considering abortion, Pope Francis said: "I encourage you to always act with a style of nearness, of closeness: that every woman feels regarded as a person who is heard, accepted, and accompanied."
In this direction, he praised the work of the 'Gemma Project' which helps women facing crisis pregnancies, and helps facilitate long distance adoptions.
The government’s latest report confirms the good news reported by Guttmacher earlier this year. That not only the number of abortions in the U.S. have dropped to lows not seen since the earliest days of legal abortion in America, so, too, have abortion rates and abortion ratios.
... abortions from California or other states missing since 1998 might have given us somewhat higher rates. When numbers from California were available, the abortion rates for the U.S. were about 2 to 3 points higher than those calculated without them. But that does not change that the 2011 abortion rate of 13.9 has dropped by nearly half (44.4%) from what it was at its high point in 1980: 25 abortions per thousand women of reproductive age.
Likewise, the abortion ratio (the number of abortions for every 1,000 live births) is at a historic low, with 219 abortions for every thousand births (Ed. Note: This would put the abortion rate at 18%). [1] The same caveat mentioned above about missing California numbers applies here. But the enormous drop from 359.2 abortion for every 1,000 births in 1980 to the 219 for every 1,000 for 2011 cannot simply be explained by missing states with high abortion proclivities.
CDC versus Guttmacher
Around Thanksgiving every year, the CDC publishes its annual report of national abortion data. This year’s report “Abortion Surveillance – United States, 2011″ issued November 28, 2014 (it takes the government a few years to collect and process the state data), shows the number and rate of abortions dropping by 5% over the previous year. The ratio of abortion to live births declining by nearly as much, 4%.
The Guttmacher Institute’s report, issued earlier this year, showed similar significant drops in the number of abortions, though starting from higher numbers. As we have explained, Guttmacher surveys abortion clinics directly while the CDC relies on state health reports, meaning Guttmacher’s numbers will always be higher than CDC’s.
Despite efforts to address this imbalance, Indian society continues to prefer boys to girls, he said. And this leads to numerous abortions of girls. In Hindu religious practice, a son often has the responsibility of performing the last rites for family members. While sons inherit family wealth, girls are considered a burden as they need to be married off with dowries.
The reality is that Maafa 21 is a primer on power, corruption and betrayal. Ironically, within days after the first edition of Maafa 21 was released, U.S Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was being interviewed by a reporter for The New York Times and made the following statement when asked about Roe vs. Wade – the decision that legalized abortion: “Frankly, I had thought that at the time Roe was decided, there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don’t want to have too many of.”
A very useful article by theologian William May. Note especially his discussion of contraceptives as abortifacients and "Plan B", suggesting that this is an unresloved question.
Some object to the term pro-life on the grounds that it gives the anti-abortion movement an unfair advantage. Accordingly, a number of news organizations no longer use pro-life or pro-choice, the latest being National Public Radio. The thought here is that the word pro-life is fooling people.
Now, if this were 1973, that might be an argument. But isn't it just a wee condescending to suggest, after more than a generation of contentious moral and political debate, that the American people really haven't figured out what pro-life and pro-choice mean?
Americans have done so, moreover, without a great deal of help from the press. In news reporting, it's not unusual to encounter constructions such as this AP dispatch from the presidential campaign about Sarah Palin: "She has worshipped at a nondenominational Bible church since 2002, opposes abortion even in cases of rape and incest and supports classroom discussions about creationism."
That's fair as far as it goes. Just once, however, wouldn't it be interesting to see a leading newspaper write something like, "Nancy Pelosi, who opposes any restrictions on abortion, even in cases where a pregnant minor is taken across state lines without a parent's permission or where the fetus is halfway out the mother"?
In stark contrast, a lack of sexual inhibitions, or as some call it, "sexual freedom," has taken the caution and discernment out of choosing a sexual partner, which used to be the equivalent of choosing a life partner. Without a commitment, the trust and loyalty between couples of childbearing age is missing, and obviously leads to incidents of infidelity. No one seems immune.
The international human rights group, Amnesty International, currently takes no position on abortion.
However, that could very well change, as they are polling their national affiliates in different countries, as to whether the "right" to abortion should be viewed as a fundamental human right.
TAKE ACTION: Tell Amnesty International that you don't want it to become a pro-abortion organization fighting to make abortion legal worldwide. Go to http://web.amnesty.org/contacts/engindex to contact the group and express your opposition. Also, use the group's web site to find your national affiliate and tell them you oppose the idea.
One of our correspondents contacted Amnesty International with a query regarding thieir considerations. Here is the reply she received:
From: Betsy Ross <[email protected]> >Date: Fri, 5 May 2006 16:08:23 -0400 >> >Thank you for taking the time to share your concerns. > > Although AI does not currently take a position on abortion, you are > correct that the AI movement is contemplating whether and how to address > it. > > As you probably already know, our policy agenda, and the policies > themselves, are determined by AI members through a democratic process. > The reason that abortion is being discussed right now is that members > throughout the movement felt that AI's work to stop violence against > women and promote women's human rights necessitates that we consider > whether a more comprehensive policy on sexual and reproductive rights, > potentially encompassing certain abortion-related issues, would enable > AI to be more effective in these areas. This was expressed in a > decision taken last August at AI's 2005 International Council Meeting > (ICM), which is AI's highest decision-making body. > > The 2005 ICM decided that AI will develop a policy statement and a > strategy for defending and promoting sexual and reproductive rights. At > the same time, the ICM decided that an extended consultation process > should be undertaken to determine whether AI should adopt a policy on > abortion and how such a policy should be formulated. We have just > embarked on this process. The first stage involves considering whether > and when AI should develop policies on three specific issues that have > been identified as particularly urgent in the context of AI's campaign > to stop violence against women: 1) access to health care for the > management of complications arising from abortion; 2) access to abortion > in cases of rape, sexual assault, incest or risk to a woman's life; and > 3) the removal of criminal penalties for those who seek or provide > abortions. > > All other abortion-related issues, including whether a woman's right to > physical and mental integrity includes a right to terminate pregnancy, > will be considered by the 2007 ICM. The extended timeframe for > consultation and decision-making is a reflection of the recognition that > these are profound decisions that require reflection and discussion so > that the AI movement can move forward as one. > > Please let us know if you would like to receive an update on how this > process is unfolding. We expect that we may have some new information > in about six months or so.
Sounds bad!
Here is the reply sent to Amnesty International by our correspondent, who is a member of the Anglican clergy and a woman.
Dear Ms. Ross, Thank you for the statement on the situation regarding Amnesty International's deliberations concerning abortion advocacy. I certainly do wish to be kept informed at the developments in these deliberations in the future. A number of concerns in this area come to me. First, access to medical care for complications following a surgical procedure, whether the procedure is prohibited locally or not, does not strike me as a
specifically women's issue. Access to medical care seems to me to be something that can be considered a universal human right. To separate medical care for women in regard to sexual or childbearing health from an overall plan for human health care perpetuates the racist ideology of the population control movement of the 1960's. See Betsy Hartmann's book, "Reproductive Rights and Wrongs." Second, sexual abuse as experienced by women in rape and incest needs to be
addressed in culturally appropriate sanctions that concentrate on confronting and punishing the abuser. The use of abortion as a response to sexual abuse actually perpetuates the abuse by making the victim a victim yet once more. More likely than not, the recourse to abortion is a coverup for the male abuser and reinforces social sanctions that blame the woman and excuse the abuser. Killing the child in utero of an abuser does not provide justice to the victim. Third, placing the prohibition of abortion on demand in the context of violence aginst women strikes me as ethically untenable. Indeed, it is ethically repugnant. Violence against women as it is manifest in battering, honor killings, sexual trafficking, rape and incest relies on the availability of abortion, legal or not, to hide the real situation and protect the perpetrators. Abortion is yet one more tool in the kit of abusive male-dominated cultures to maintain dominance of women and avoid culpability for its tolerance of abuse. I am the mother of a domestic violence survivor and a former teacher in East Africa. These issues are close to my heart. But what I say here, I say not only from experience but from the evidence of researchers, for example, Nancy Nason-Clark of the University of New Brunswick in New Brunswick, Canada . The humane response to the situation of vulnerable women is not intensive chemicals or
invasive surgery, but the re-education of men. This is fundamental. If Amnesty International is really interested in the human rights of women, then it will confront the questions of appropriate health care, sexual abuse, and domestic violence head on. To all of these questions, legalizing abortion is not an answer. It is, rather, a continuation of abuse. Please forward these comments to those to whom they may be appropriate. I am willing to talk to anyone involved in these deliberations. And as I have said, I would appreciate being kept informed as to the deliberations of Amnesy International concerning this most serious topic. Sincerely, The Rev'd.
This is VERY important! If Amnesty International changes it's position from neutrality to pro-abortion, we can expect to see lawsuits in EVERY country which has laws protecting the right to life of the unborn.
Mississippi may be on the verge of legislation similar to that passed by South Dakota lawmakers. Abortion would only be alllowed in cases where the mother's life is at risk.