Friday, August 10, 2012

Lifeissues Newsletter #588

Lifeissues.net: clear thinking about crucial issues

Dear Friends For Life,

Some 9,000 Filipino Catholics braved drenching rains on Saturday, July 28, to protest and pray against the 'Reproductive Health' legislation. The legislation is the result of years of Planned Parenthood's insidious work in the Philippines. LifeSiteNews reports that thousands converged on a Marian shrine in Manila to pray and protest against HB 4244, which follows Planned Parenthood's carefully laid plan for the predominantly Catholic residents of the Philippines. For a complete insight, read the article "Planned Parenthood behind two-child 'Reproductive Health' bill in Philippines".

Another article of interest is "Obamacare mandates free contraceptives and sterilization for preteens".  Building a child predator's dream scenario, Obamacare now provides - at taxpayers' expense - free contraceptives and sterilization for all women with reproductive capacity. That means your neighborhood child predator can take his 12-year-old (or younger) victim to Planned Parenthood, assuming she has had her first menstrual period, and get contraceptives or even sterilization free of charge, smoothing the way for continued and protracted child sexual abuse.

An excellent website bringing you the latest news on the fight against Planned Parenthood is called STOPP (Stop Planned Parenthood). To view it, click here.

God Bless,
Jerry Novotny, OMI

(The Difference is LIFE) "Each child is sent into this world by God with a unique message to deliver, a new song to sing, a personal act of love to bestow." -John Powell, S.J.

*---*(Due to volume of spam received, do not reply to this message but instead send all emails to jerry@shirt.ocn.ne.jp. Thank you!)

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Lifeissues.net Newsletter #588
August 12, 2012

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(TABLE OF CONTENTS):

1. Surgery scam leaves thousands of Indian women unable to bear children
2. Doubts emerge about Dutch guidelines for terminal sedation
3. Scores of IVF babies terminated because of abnormalities in UK
4. Controversial pre-natal Down's syndrome testing gets go-ahead in Switzerland raising fears of a spike in abortions
5. Sexnomics: Japan's 100 Billion Dollar Sex Industry And The Pink Zone
6. Sex in Films Can Harm Children, Study Finds
7. 10 Reasons Why Homosexual "Marriage" is Harmful and Must be Opposed
8. Religious Freedom, Conscience and the Sanctity of Human Life
9. A Desperate Act, Born of Depression
10. Iran's Islamists orchestrate a baby bust: who would have imagined?
11. INSIGHTS by Dianne N Irving, Ph.D
12. Anderson in First Things: Bioethics, Abortion, Political Economy, Leon Kass


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(Myths): "Cracking the Contraceptive Myths" -  Mary Eberstadt is the go-to woman for the social arguments against contraception. She also discusses the painful inability of the academic establishment and the culture to face the dreadful consequences of the sexual revolution: "There's more censorship and self-censorship about the legacy of the sexual revolution than about any other current issue out there. The fact is that people today are less free to talk candidly about this legacy than people were half a century ago. That tells us a lot. A mind can be a terrible thing to change."

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ITEM #1: Surgery scam leaves thousands of Indian women unable to bear children

As if exploitation of poor Indian women as surrogate mothers and egg donors were not enough, surgeons may have removed the wombs of 7,000 healthy women in Chhattisgarh - a poor and largely rural state in central India - to enrich themselves by making fake claims under a national insurance scheme. Officials believe that about 2,000 women were persuaded to have hysterectomies in the last six months alone.

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ITEM #2: Doubts emerge about Dutch guidelines for terminal sedation

Although euthanasia - which ends a patient's life immediately - is the most visible and controversial aspect of end-of-life care for international observers, the innocuous-sounding treatment called "palliative sedation" (also called "terminal sedation" by some authors) also has been the centre of controversy in the Netherlands. In 2003, the then-attorney-general argued that the death of a deeply sedated patient because water was withheld was culpable homicide. However, his view did not prevail.

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ITEM #3: Scores of IVF babies terminated because of abnormalities in UK

Nearly 130 IVF babies were aborted in the UK last year because an abnormality was detected before birth. According to the Daily Mail, out of 127 babies, 31 were aborted because of Down syndrome, 19 because of foetal abnormality, and 15 because of Edward syndrome.

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ITEM #4: Controversial pre-natal Down's syndrome testing gets go-ahead in Switzerland raising fears of a spike in abortions

The test involves screening blood samples from the pregnant woman for the presence of foetal Down's syndrome. Pregnancy: The makers of the PrenaTest claim it is 95% accurate in the first trimester.

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ITEM #5: Sexnomics: Japan's 100 Billion Dollar Sex Industry And The Pink Zone

Japan's semi-legal sex industry exists on a mind-boggling scale, yet there are very few books or articles which even give a rudimentary idea of how big a role it plays in the national economy. Japan has laws which forbid prostitution but set no punishment for the prostitute or the customer. Selling uncensored pornography depicting sexual intercourse is a crime but paying for actual sexual intercourse at an established Soapland establishment is not. It's not that the sex industry exists in a grey zone in Japan, it exists in a pink zone - it's overwhelmingly legal except for when the authorities decided to make token crack-downs.

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ITEM #6: Sex in Films Can Harm Children, Study Finds

New research confirms, what most people intuitively recognise: exposure to sexual content in movies at an early age is likely to influence adolescents' sexual behaviour. While a great deal of research has shown that adolescents who watch more risky behaviours in popular movies, like drinking or smoking, are more likely to drink and smoke themselves, surprisingly little research has examined whether movies influence adolescents' sexual behaviours.

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ITEM #7 10 Reasons Why Homosexual "Marriage" is Harmful and Must be Opposed

(1). It Is Not Marriage: Calling something marriage does not make it marriage. Marriage has always been a covenant between a man and a woman which is by its nature ordered toward the procreation and education of children and the unity and wellbeing of the spouses. The promoters of same-sex "marriage" propose something entirely different. They propose the union between two men or two women. This denies the self-evident biological, physiological, and psychological differences between men and women which find their complementarity in marriage. It also denies the specific primary purpose of marriage: the perpetuation of the human race and the raising of children. Two entirely different things cannot be considered the same thing.

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ITEM #8: Religious Freedom, Conscience and the Sanctity of Human Life

People often hear the advice that they should "follow their conscience." But what does that mean? For many people, conscience is based on what they feel about what is right or wrong; they perceive conscience as an opinion about a particular matter. For others, conscience is based on their political view or what appears personally beneficial. Most people think conscience is something private, subjective and personal. As a Church we recognize that conscience is much more than a feeling or opinion.

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ITEM #9: A Desperate Act, Born of Depression

Comment: The New York Times has long been in support of assisted suicide and, I fear, this is just another way to garner public support by portraying these 2 "hard cases" (not so hard when you consider the dangers of elder abuse and murder by spouse) as showing a "need" for assisted suicide. Also note that the article quotes Dr. Timothy Quill and identifies him as " a professor of medicine and psychiatry at the University of Rochester School of Medicine" but does not identify the Dr. Quill in 1997 US Supreme Court Vacco vs Quill decision on assisted suicide nor as a current board member of the Death with Dignity National Center that works for assisted suicide laws in individual states. Also not mentioned are Dr. Quill's articles supporting terminal sedation/withdrawal of food and water and his current position as president of the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine. -Nancy Valko, RN

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ITEM #10: Iran's Islamists orchestrate a baby bust: who would have imagined?

Iran's fertility rate has crashed over the past few decades of Islamicist rule. So much so that the mullahs who run the country are now calling for more babies to be born.

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ITEM #11: INSIGHTS by Dianne N Irving, Ph.D

(a). Brisbane surrogacy judge makes world-first "conception" ruling - IMPLANTATION

[Note: Outrageous! Note that she didn't ask testimony from any human embryologists. "When a human being begins to exist" and "when pregnancy begins" are two totally different issues. A new embryo can begin to exist in the woman's body (usually in the fallopian tube, not the uterus) or outside the body in labs and clinics. Either way, once the embryo is there, he/she already exists -- whether implanted into a woman's uterus or not. "Pregnancy" in normal reproduction begins when the new human being begins to exist in the woman's fallopian tube. It is only when IVF/ART is involved that "pregnancy" begins with implantation. However, the term "conception" has often been deconstructed to mean various things, including "fertilization" and "implantation" (5-7 days post-fertilization). The term also does not include any human beings asexually reproduced (which are usually those implanted after ARTs), and has been formally rejected by human embryologists precisely because of this verbal ambiguity. To define "conception" as "in the womb" would also justify the use of abortifacients, as well as the destruction of any human embryo before implantation. A "fertilized egg" IS a new human embryo, and most so-called "conceptions" fail precisely because they are genetically malformed -- Nature's way of removing them from the gene pool -- or because of some infertility problem with the mother. This judge's ruling is absolutely totally political in order to justify gay and other "surrogacies", and bears no resemblance to the real empirical facts of when "conception" actually begins or when all asexually reproduced human beings begin to exist. For extensive scientific documentation, see Irving and Kischer, "Scientific Response to Criticism of the California Human Rights Amendment as ‘Protecting Fertilized Eggs'" (December 9, 2009). -- DNI]

(b). How many parents would your child like?

 [Note: Indeed, time to read again, and for people to clearly understand, several ways that ARTs (asexual reproduction) have reproduced new embryos using only cells -- any cell -- for reproductive purposes (implantation): "Any Human Cell - iPS, Direct Programmed, Embryonic, Fetal or Adult - Can Be Genetically Engineered to Asexually Reproduce New Human Embryos for Purposes of Reproduction (‘Infertility')" (November 2011), based on UN report. When will Mercatornet more explicitly address that? -- DNI]

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ITEM #12: Anderson in First Things: Bioethics, Abortion, Political Economy, Leon Kass

Here are 4 Briefly Noted books: on bioethics, on abortion, on political economy, and on Leon Kass.

(a) Bioethics with Liberty and Justice: Themes in the Work of Joseph M. Boyle edited by Christopher Tollefsen Springer, 190 pages, $139

(b) The Ethics of Abortion: Women's Rights, Human Life, and the Question of Justice by Christopher Kaczor Routledge, 246 pages, $39.95

(c) Wilhelm Röpke's Political Economy by Samuel Gregg Edward Elgar, 216 pages, $115

(d) Apples of Gold in Pictures of Silver: Honoring the Work of Leon R. Kass edited by Yuval Levin, Thomas W. Merrill, and Adam Schulman Lexington, 296 pages, $80


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YOU CAN CHANGE SOCIETY:

1. BE INFORMED: "My people are destroyed from lack of knowledge." Hosea 4:6. Visit Lifeissues.net Website for insights into current Life Issues www.lifeissues.net. Access to all prior Newsletters is located in the Archives on main page.

2. PRAY DAILY: for the courage to be God's presence in society and to strongly support those who are deemed "unworthy of life". "If My people who are called by My Name, will humble themselves and pray and seek My face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land." 2 Chronicles 7:14

3. BECOME INVOLVED: Several years ago Fr. Jerry created a project entitled, "Journey for Life into the Heart of Asia". The project appeals for donations to help finance plane travel for lectures and seminars to developing countries in Asia. Strong focus is centered on reaching Asian Catholic Major Seminaries, Universities, Parishes, Hospitals and Family/Pro Life related groups. The lectures place emphasis on "The Asian Family at Crossroads: Life Issues, Trends and Challenges".

For information about no-cost Pro Life Talks to your group in Asia: contact Fr. Jerry at jerry@shirt.ocn.ne.jp.

To become a supportive Missionary participant for this Asian project, kindly send your donations to:

** Fr. Jerry Novotny, OMI

** LifeIssues.net, Editor

** Akebono-cho 1-15-9

** Kochi City, Japan, 780-8072

(or transfer donation directly to ProLife bank account: Jerome Novotny, Shikoku Bank, Asakura Branch, No. 102-1-0080824)

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Contact EDITOR:

Jerry Novotny, OMI

Akebono-cho 1-15-9

Kochi City, Japan, 780-8072

[tel/fax: 088-843-0406]

[email: jerry@shirt.ocn.ne.jp]

["Due to volume of spam received, we're asking you not to reply to this message but instead send all correspondence to jerry@shirt.ocn.ne.jp. Thank you! Editor"]

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Websites by Editor:

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