Politics
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Tuesday February 21, 2006
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Print- Forced Abortion on Poor Ethnic Women Proposed in Holland
- Philippines Bishops Institute Mandatory Pro-Life Course Without Which Sacraments Denied
- Poland University Bans “I didn’t cry when the Pope died” T-Shirts
- Britney Spears, Beyoncé, Blasted by Body Shop Founder for “Pimp Culture”
- “Pro-Choice” Position is Heresy Says Oregon Catholic Bishop
- US Supreme Court Takes on Partial-Birth Abortion Ban: Likely to Approve
- UK Out of Wedlock Births: 1980 12%, 2004 42%
- Hwang’s US Collaborator Exonerated by University Probe
- Nova Scotia Premier is Pro-Life
Forced Abortion on Poor Ethnic Women Proposed in Holland
TODAY'S HEADLINES
By John-Henry Westen
ROTTERDAM, Holland, February 21, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Marianne van den Anker, an alderman in the Rotterdam city council in charge of public health and security has proposed forced abortion and forced contraception for teenage mothers whose origin is in the Antilles and on drug addicts and people with mental handicaps. The alderman suggested that such mothers are nearly always guilty of child abuse.
While several reports have referred to van den Anker and her Leefbaar Rotterdam party as "right wing", the alderman is the furthest thing from the right side of the social conservative spectrum. In addition to being pro-abortion, van den Anker has set up a program in the schools to counter intolerance of homosexuality. (see her website here for that info -Dutch only - http://www.rotterdam.nl/smartsite2088108.dws?Menu=2020151&MainMenu=267127&am... )
Van den Anker told the NRC Handelsblad paper that children from these mothers run an "unacceptable risk" experiencing "violence, neglect, mistreatment and sexual abuse." She added, "The exceptions, and there are some, can be counted on a pair of hands."
Her announcement of her plan came during a workshop on child abuse where she pressed her case for forced abortion saying, "What do you think of a 24-year old Antillean mother who visits the doctor, is 19 weeks pregnant, has three existing children , then abuses one of her children in the hospital, before announcing to the doctor that she wishes to proceed with her pregnancy , even though she doesn't know who the father is, has no idea how she's going to raise another child, take care, feed and dress the child, and on top of that is HIV positive?"
The politician noted that street gangs of Antillean youths were terrorizing the city.
Her colleague, Alderman Leonard Geluk of the same party has blasted her ideas as "absurd and idiotic".
To express concerns:
Rotterdam Mayor Ivo Opstelten
Marianne van den Anker
Back to TopPhilippines Bishops Institute Mandatory Pro-Life Course Without Which Sacraments Denied
By Gudrun Schultz
MANILA, Philippines, February 21, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The bishops of the Philippines have responded emphatically to growing pressure from anti-life activists, calling for accountability from Catholics on moral issues.
The Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) have rallied Catholic leaders throughout the country to educate parishioners on the immorality of artificial birth control methods, in response to a concerted onslaught by population control advocates.
Supported by the United Nations, activists for population control have launched an aggressive assault on the country, pushing for anti-life legislation that would limit family size to two children, increase the social acceptance and availability of artificial birth control and give greater access to abortion.
House Bill 3773, the responsible Parenthood and Population Management Act of 2005, is now before parliament.
"There's a hidden agenda behind the population bill," Archbishop Fernando Capalla of Davao, president of the Roman Catholic Bishops' Conference of the Philippines, told reporters. "All this is being done in the name of business."
Capalla accused foreign companies that manufacture contraceptives of backing the strong lobby for the passage of Bill 3773, reported Ecumenical News International.
A US$1.4 million grant was given by the United Nations to help finance the population control program.
"The bishops were appalled by the swift release of the grant and the filing of the reproductive health bill and the launching of the health department's population control programs," said Jo Imbong, legal counsel of the Catholic Bishops' Conference.
In response, the bishops have called for greater accountability from parishioners on moral issues. Those Catholics who promote or utilize artificial birth control methods may not be able to receive communion or other sacraments.
The bishops have instituted a course for parishioners on the fundamentals of Church teaching, called the Basic Ecclesiastical Communities seminar. Catholics are required to take the course, which runs for eight consecutive Sundays, before receiving sacraments for themselves or their children, and upon entering adulthood.
The course includes teachings on the basics of the faith, Bible study, Christian leadership, family and life apostles, salvation history, and the changing Church.
Sister Regina Arguelles of the Daughters of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart, who works with the CBCP in offering the seminars, said the Catholic bishops have been alarmed by the “continuing moral decay” that was eating up the society.
The bishops are firm on the necessity of participating in the seminars before being allowed to receive sacraments.
“That’s the idea. That’s exactly the Church’s message. If you want to be a Catholic, act like one and follow the Church’s teachings,” Sister Arguelles said.
A prominent mayor was not allowed to receive Catholic burial rites in the Church, after failing to participate in the course. The Manila Standard reports that following the incident, all government officials in the region signed up for the course.
Although there have been a number of reported situations where individuals have been denied communion or access to other sacraments, the decision is not mandated by the CBCP, who says it is up to the individual priest or bishop to decide.
See related LifeSiteNews coverage:
Thousands Rally in Philippines to Protest Population Control Bill
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2005/mar/05030705.html
PHILIPPINE BISHOPS VOW EXCOMMUNICATION FOR RU-486
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2000/oct/00100402.html
Poland University Bans “I didn’t cry when the Pope died” T-Shirts
By Terry Vanderheyden
LUBLIN, Poland, February 21, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A university in south-eastern Poland has banned a controversial “T-shirt for freedom” campaign expected to occur simultaneously with a campus human rights film festival.
The t-shirts, which were to be worn through campus during the campaign by celebrities, boasted such things as “I had an abortion,” “I didn’t cry when the Pope died,” “I have AIDS,” “I don’t go to church,” “I masturbate,” or “I am gay,” according to a Radio Polonia report. The predominantly Catholic student population found the t-shirts offensive and complained that they were insensitive to people living with AIDS, or who suffered post-abortion trauma.
UMCS University President Wieslaw Kaminski said, “The texts printed on the T-shirts could have offended the feelings and beliefs of many people,” as reported by the AFP.
“To write ‘I’ve got Aids’ or ‘I’ve had an abortion’ on a T-shirt, you would have to be devoid of all human feelings,” added Lublin bishop Jozef Zycinski.
After cancellation of the t-shirt campaign, the International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights cancelled their so-called human rights film festival in protest.
Britney Spears, Beyoncé, Blasted by Body Shop Founder for “Pimp Culture”
By Terry Vanderheyden
LONDON, February 21, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Body Shop founder Anita Roddick has criticised pop stars such as Britney Spears and Beyoncé for glorifying a “pimp and whore” culture through their sexually suggestive performances and lyrics.
“A lot of people seem to think it’s cool to be a pimp or a whore,” she told London’s Evening Standard. “It’s not cool. The reality is dark and evil and appalling and unregulated.”
Roddick condemned the pop culture icons for portraying prostitution as glamorous. “The reality is sexual trafficking, which is about young women being forced into rooms to have sex however many times a day so the pimp can take all the money,” she said. “I don’t get it.”
Last year a Vatican document condemned prostitution as “a form of modern day slavery.” The document, released during a First International Meeting of Pastoral Care for the Liberation of Women of the Street, said “Sexual exploitation, prostitution and trafficking of human beings are all acts of violence against women” that “constitute an offence to the dignity of women and are a grave violation of basic human rights.”
In June last year the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) decided that US funds allotted for combating AIDS cannot be used “to promote the legalization or practice of prostitution or sex trafficking” and also that groups receiving such funds “agree that they oppose prostitution and sex trafficking.”
“Pro-Choice” Position is Heresy Says Oregon Catholic Bishop
Previously emphasized, “I answer to the Holy See, I don't answer to the USCCB"
by Hilary White
BAKER Oregon, February 21, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Robert Vasa, the Catholic bishop of the Oregon diocese of Baker, has written a letter to his diocesan newspaper clearly identifying the so-called “pro-choice” position among Catholics as a “heresy”. For decades, many Catholics have argued that “primacy of conscience” allows them to dissent from basic Church teaching, including the right to life, and still consider themselves “good Catholics.”
He said he does not seek to justify “vigilante theology,” and that the word needs to be applied with care, “but we do need strong words to combat erroneous and fallacious teaching.”
“There is a very strong word, which still exists in our Church, which most of us are too ‘gentle’ to use. The word is ‘heresy.’”
To the many Catholics who publicly profess that one can be both a good Catholic and “pro-choice” on abortion, Vasa says, “The teaching of the Church in the area of life is clear and unequivocal. Human life must be respected and protected from conception to natural death. Those who maintain that any and all decisions about the disposition of pre-born human beings are exclusively the right of the mother or the parents, at least implicitly, reject the clear and consistent teaching of the Church.” This rejection, he writes, is heresy, as defined in the Church’s canon law.
Those Catholics who hold the “pro-choice” position, he writes, “reject the clear and consistent teaching of the Church.”
Vasa blows away the usual claim that asserting the right to life or the sinfulness of homosexuality is ‘intolerant.’ Jesus, the bishop writes, was “meek and humble of heart,” but not tolerant of sin. “I wonder if those who heard Jesus say, ‘Whoever leads one of these little ones astray, it would be better if he had a millstone tied around his neck and be cast into the sea,’ nodded approval and said, ‘He is so tolerant and accepting.’”
He writes, “There is a point at which passive ‘tolerance’ allows misleading teachings to be spread and propagated, thus confusing or even misleading the faithful about the truths of the Church.”
In 2004, Vasa was cheered by faithful Catholics when he instituted a requirement for diocesan staff to publicly adhere to Catholic teaching on abortion and other major issues. He said, "A failure on my part to verify a person's suitability for ministry would be judged as seriously negligent."
Vasa, bishop in a state where assisted suicide is legal, was also among the few US bishops to vocally condemn the court-ordered dehydration killing of Terri Schiavo.
During the presidential election, Vasa was also among that small cadre of US bishops in agreement with then-Cardinal Ratzinger that pro-abortion politicians must be refused Holy Communion. When challenged that he was putting himself at odds with his fellow bishops, he responded, “I answer to the Holy See, I don't answer to the USCCB (Conference of Catholic Bishops).”
Read Bishop Vasa’s complete letter:
http://sentinel.org/articles/2006-7/14481.html
To Contact Bishop Vasa:
Mailing Address: Box 5999
Bend, OR. 97708
541-388-4004
Fax 541-388-2566
Email:
US Supreme Court Takes on Partial-Birth Abortion Ban: Likely to Approve
By John-Henry Westen and Gudrun Schultz
WASHINGTON, D.C. United States, February 21, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The legality of partial-birth abortion will come under the scrutiny of the U.S. Supreme Court, the court announced today. The Court will hear arguments and decide the case during its next term which begins in October.
An analysis by National Right to Life notes that the federal law now stands a good chance of being approved and the decision will rest on Justice Anthony Kennedy. Among currently sitting Supreme Court justices, five have voted in favor of Roe v. Wade -- that is, in support of the doctrine that abortion must be allowed for any reason until "viability" (about five and one-half months), and for "health" reasons (broadly defined) even during the final three months of pregnancy. Two justices (Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas) have voted to overturn Roe, and two (John Roberts and Samuel Alito) have not voted on the matter. Justice Kennedy, although a supporter of Roe, voted in the 2000 Stenberg case to allow Nebraska to ban the partial-birth abortion method.
Commenting on today's Court announcement, Douglas Johnson, legislative director for the National Right to Life Committee (NRLC), said, "Unless the Supreme Court now reverses the extreme position that five justices took in 2000, partly born premature infants will continue to die by having their skulls punctured by seven-inch scissors."
In 2000, five justices of the Supreme Court, including retired Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, ruled that the abortion right originally created in Roe v. Wade allows an abortionist to perform a partial-birth abortion any time he sees a 'health' benefit, even if the woman and her unborn baby are entirely healthy. (Stenberg v. Carhart, June 28, 2000). This ruling struck down the ban on partial-birth abortion that had been enacted by Nebraska, and rendered unenforceable the similar bans that more than half the states had enacted.
Nevertheless, in 2003 Congress approved and President Bush signed a national law, the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act. When he signed the ban, the President called partial-birth abortion "a terrible form of violence [that] has been directed against children who are inches from birth."
The federal law bans "partial-birth abortion," a legal term of art, defined in the law itself as any abortion in which the baby is delivered "past the [baby's] navel . . . outside the body of the mother," OR "in the case of a head-first presentation, the entire fetal head is outside the body of the mother," BEFORE being killed. The complete official text of the law, in a searchable format, is here: http://www.nrlc.org/abortion/pba/partial_birth_abortion_Ban_act_final_language.h...
The law would allow the method if it was ever necessary to save a mother's life.
The federal law has faced legal challenges in three different federal circuits, and its enforcement has been blocked by court orders. Federal district courts in all three circuits ruled that the federal law violated the 2000 Supreme Court ruling. In all three cases the adverse judgments were affirmed by the appellate courts.
(with files from National Right to Life)
UK Out of Wedlock Births: 1980 12%, 2004 42%
By Terry Vanderheyden
LONDON, February 21, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The number of children born outside of marriage has skyrocketed to 42% from 12% previously in 1980, according to statistics released from the UK’s Office for National Statistics.
“Although most children are born to married couples, this substantial rise in births outside marriage is a reflection of the rising trend in cohabiting parents,” said ONS editor Hayley Butcher, according to a BBC report.
The UK is fourth in Europe for number of births outside marriage, after Sweden, Denmark and France. The trend not only reflects higher rates of unwed partnering, but also higher rates of single mother parenthood.
Dr Peter Brierley, executive director of Christian Research, commented to the UK’s Telegraph that if current trends continue, more than half of UK children will be born out of wedlock by 2012. “If we get to the stage where more than half of children are born outside marriage, we are fundamentally changing the basis on which society has worked for centuries,” he warned. “A whole range of traditional thought about ‘home,’ ‘marriage’ and ‘living together’ will have to be re-examined.”
Dr Brierley cautioned that the big problem is the effect that unstable families will have on children. “Psychologists say the children from single-parent families do not achieve so much or behave so well as those raised by married families,” he said. “There is much more at stake here than statistics,” he added. “The implications are quite frightening.”
Children born from cohabiting couples are half as likely to be raised by both parents as those born to married parents, according to Essex University professor John Ermisch, who wrote a report for the Economic and Research Council.
Hwang’s US Collaborator Exonerated by University Probe
By Hilary White
PITTSBURGH, February 21, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The US collaborator of disgraced Korean cloning doctor Hwang Woo Suk, has been found by an independent investigation to be innocent of participating in the fraudulent cloning “breakthroughs,” of his university.
Dr. Gerald Schatten of the University of Pittsburgh was among the first to blow the whistle on the Korean cloning scandal and had asked that his name be removed from the Science journal articles on the bogus research.
The University of Pittsburgh conducted an investigation into Schatten’s role in the affair and has concluded that he “did not deliberately fabricate data himself,” though he committed “a serious failure that facilitated the publication” of the paper by Hwang.
The university has recommended no disciplinary action against Schatten who serves as vice chair for research development and professor of obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive sciences and cell biology and physiology at the university’s medical school.
The scandal has been receiving some critical examination in the research community since it broke late last year. Some researchers described the debacle as a “PR disaster” while others are taking the opportunity to rethink the problem of media hype surrounding stem cell and cloning news, as well as the temptations presented by the possibility of huge research funding grants.
Read related LifeSiteNews.com coverage:
Cloning Whistleblower says Korean Cloning Breakthrough “Fabricated”
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2005/dec/05121404.html
Nova Scotia Premier is Pro-Life
By Gudrun Schultz
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, February 21, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Nova Scotia’s new premier has openly declared himself to be pro-life.
Rodney MacDonald, who was elected as leader for the Nova Scotia Progressive Conservative party on Saturday, said twice that he is pro-life, in an interview with Steve Murphy of CTV News.
As Charles Moore pointed out for the Halifax Daily News, it is “extraordinary courageous” for any politician, particularly one newly elected, to take a definitive stand on the side of life in Canada these days.
MacDonald, 34, will be the youngest premier in Canada after his swearing-in on February 24.
Atlantic Canadians outnumber the rest of the country in support for some form of legal protection for the unborn and an end to the public funding of abortions. In a 2004 nationwide poll by Environics, 72% said they want to see some form of legal protection for unborn children,. 79% said abortion should only be paid for by medicare in cases of medical emergencies, rape or incest.
Across the country, 68% of Canadians said the law should protect human life before birth, and 33% said legal protection should begin at conception.
Macdonald made it clear that he does not intend to initiate legislation on abortion.
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