What's wrong with HB 3773? A LOT!!! (New Online Petitions added!)

[iloveyou4ever]

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Pls stop taking contraceptive pills. The effect is really bad!

[mannyamador]

What is more restrictive of women's rights, taking away abortion-on-demand or taking away unborn girls' lives?

Restricting Women's Rights
By Joseph A. D'Agostino

Western feminists insist that women have the right to abort an unborn
child for any reason they choose, at any point in pregnancy, and this
indeed is the law of the land in America as invented by the U.S. Supreme
Court in 1973. Abortion-on-demand in the early months also exists de
facto in most of Europe. These same feminists and other Western leftists
want to impose this abortion-on-demand regime upon the entire Third World
as well. But what have they to say when tens, if not hundreds, of
millions of women in Asia choose to exercise their abortion rights to
abort girls more often than boys, leading to a massive shortage of women?
What have they to say then?

It's a quite a dilemma for any right-thinking lib- I mean,
correct-thinking liberal to contemplate. It's very politically correct
to say women have a right to control their own bodies as they please, but
it's very politically incorrect to prefer to have sons rather than
daughters. So, perhaps, a woman's right to control her body isn't so
important after all. But who can admit that and still get invited to
parties with the right- I mean, correct people?

A nice way out is to shift the discussion and blame the patriarchy, as if
a shortage of women was somehow beneficial to all the Asian men who will
be unable to find wives. As Isabelle Attané wrote in the August 2006
edition of Le Monde Diplomatique, "Until the early 1980s, boys and girls
were born in normal proportions in China, India, South Korea, and Taiwan."

Now, there are dramatic gender imbalances in those nations and many
others-and keep in mind that China and India together have more than
one-third of the world's people, so gender imbalances in those nations
have an enormous global impact. What has changed since 1980? Have these
nations become more patriarchal, with more discrimination against women?

Of course not. What has changed is the availability of abortion and
ultrasound technology that can detect ***, combined with the desire for
smaller families. So the many Asian couples who want to have only one
child--and sometimes are legally allowed to have only one--want to ensure
it's a son. Others who want two but have a daughter already ensure that
the second is a boy. ***-selective abortion is illegal in China and
India, but widely practiced as such a ban is unenforceable since
ultrasounds are routinely used.

Some nations, such as China and India, discriminate in law against
families with more than one or two children, making even those couples
who desire more children conform to the small-family dogma. And modern
economics and feminism push married women into the workplace, causing
them to have difficulty raising large families.

This week, India's prime minister called for a halt to the growing danger.
After an Indian couple was arrested for making a business of aborting
girls, he spoke out. (Attention Ms. Magazine: Wasn't this couple just
helping facilitate women's private choices? Aren't they prisoners of
conscience?)

"We must end the crime of female feticide. We must eliminate gender
disparity," Manmohan Singh said in a national address on India's
independence day, according to AFP. "We have a dream of an India in
which every woman can feel safe, secure and empowered. Where our
mothers, sisters and daughters are assured a life of dignity and personal
security."

So far, India is missing 5 to 10 million women, with a gender disparity
that is worsening every day. And that's 5 to 10 million young men who
will be unable to marry. India has 927 girls under age six for every
1,000 boys. The world average is 1,050 girls for every 1,000 boys. In
Punjab state, there are only 798 girls for every 1,000 boys.

"In China, the birth ratio of boys to girls is now 12% above normal
levels," wrote Attané. "In India, it is 6%. . . . The demographic
implications of all this are immense because of the size of populations
involved. The first results will be felt around 2015, when huge numbers
of men reaching marriageable age will be unable to find a wife. The
imbalance in the Chinese marriage market will worsen after 2010, and by
2030 there will be a 20% surplus of men -- every year 1.6 million will be
unable to find wives."

Historically, large numbers of unmarried men in a society has meant
destabilization and war. With so many potent powder kegs in Asia--Taiwan
and Kashmir are just the best-known--are massive wars in the continent's
near future?

Contrary to what one might think, the status of women does not seem to be
rising along with their increasing scarcity. Instead, trafficking in
women is on the tremendous increase across Asia, with many reports of
women being kidnapped from cities in order to be sold to farmers in rural
areas. In some places, daughters are being hoarded and circumscribed
like stocks of gold -- a trend that, looking on the bright side, could
lead to more female births as young women become more valuable to sell off
as wives.

The Chinese government has announced plans to crack down on ***-selective
abortion and promote the worth of raising girls. India's prime minister
is concerned. Yet such efforts have failed in the past and are unlikely
to succeed in time to avert a major crisis, if it is not too late
already. The massive social changes underlying this trend--desire for
small families, the expense of raising children in the modern world, legal
discrimination against larger families, the easy availability and
acceptance of abortion -- must be addressed.

_________________________________________________
Joseph A. D'Agostino is Vice President for Communications at the
Population Research Institute.

(c) 2006 Population Research Institute. Permission to reprint granted.
Redistribute widely. Credit required.

Alternative Information and Opinion at:

[mannyamador]

Holy Father Reminds Chile of Right to Life
Receives New Ambassador to Holy See

VATICAN CITY, SEPT. 8, 2006 (Zenit.org).- Benedict XVI said to the new Chilean ambassador to the Holy See that the right to life at all
stages is the first and foremost of all the inalienable rights.

The Pope met today with Pedro Pablo Cabrera Gaete, who has also served as Chile's ambassador to China, the Russian Federation and Great
Britain.

After sending his greetings to Chile's president, Michelle Bachelet, the Holy Father acknowledged that the Catholic Church "shares the
yearnings for a justice that is not diminished by insufficient respect for the dignity of man and the inalienable rights that derive from
it."

"These rights are inalienable precisely because man possesses them by his nature and, therefore, they are not at the service of other
interests," the Pope said, "above all, the right to life in all the phases of its development or any situation in which it finds itself."

The Pontiff added: "[The] right to form a family, based on the bonds of love and fidelity established in marriage between a man and a woman,
which must be protected and helped to fulfill its incomparable mission to be source of fellowship and basic cell of every society.

"In it, as natural institution, resides moreover the primary right to educate their children according to the ideals with which the parents
wish to enrich them after receiving them with joy in their lives."

Bishops' lament

In a statement released Thursday, the Chilean bishops' conference expressed its disappointment at the National Norms on Regulation of
Fertility, issued by the Ministry of Health.

The bishops deplored both the spirit of the document, as well as some of its programs, specifically, the decision to distribute the
"morning-after pill" -- a known abortifacient -- to 14-year-old girls who request it in consulting rooms.

The distribution of this medication can entail "an attack on life which begins from the very instant of conception," the bishops' statement
said.

According to the prelates, "the normative document reminds of public policies fixed in totalitarian regimes which attempted to regulate
people's intimate life according to authoritarian criteria, not agreed upon, and at odds with respect for the dignity of the human person."

The statement was signed by, among others, by Bishop Alejandro Goic Karmelic, president of the bishops' conference, and Cardinal Francisco
Errázuriz Ossa, archbishop of Santiago.


Alternative Information and Opinion at:

[mannyamador]

Left and Right Agree, UN Compliance Committees
New Front Line in UN Abortion Debate
By Susan Yoshihara, PhD

(NEW YORK — C-FAM) Leading scholars on both sides of the abortion debate agree that the push to make abortion an international human right has shifted from the UN General Assembly, where treaties are negotiated, to the inner-workings of UN compliance committees, where treaties are monitored.

In an article in Human Rights Quarterly, “Feminist Influences on the United Nations Human Rights Treaty Bodies,” law professor Rachael Lorna Johnstone found that the committees responsible for monitoring human rights treaties have successfully adopted the feminist agenda. Countries that have ratified human rights treaties are required to report to the treaty bodies every few years. While the bodies have no power to enforce their recommendations, the format of the process is like that found in a court in which the country is judged by the committee and their “recommendations” and comments are handed down like decisions.

Proof that the treaty bodies are now promoting the feminist agenda, Johnstone said, is that members of the treaty monitoring bodies are taking states to task on issues that are not addressed in the actual treaties that the country ratified. “State action that the HRC [Human Rights Committee] noted as failing to respect human rights included the criminalization of abortion,” she said. In fact, abortion is not mentioned in any of the human rights treaties. Johnstone also noted that the committee for the Convention on the Rights of the Child is pressuring states to use primary education to push gender sensitivity, change attitudes about girls’ sexuality, and promote population control.

Johnstone said that while the treaties that nations ratify do not change, the monitoring bodies are constantly changing the way they interpret the treaties, under the influence of NGOs and other unelected officials in the UN system. Examples of terms that the committees are reinterpreting include the meaning of “the right to life,” she said. Increasingly, Johnstone notes, “The concerns of the committee reach well into the private sphere.”

Andrew C. McCarthy, a constitutional lawyer and former chief federal prosecutor, noted these trends with alarm in a recent article in Commentary magazine. He had grave concern that the agenda “erodes the concept of consent that undergirds international legal arrangements” and threatens to create “the NGO dream of supranational tribunals that will supersede national court systems”. McCarthy identified “interlocking networks” of powerful judges, international organizations, NGOs, law professors, and bureaucrats that translate the controversial agenda into national social policies that bypass representative government and national sovereignty. Noting the importance of these networks, Johnstone said, “The work of the human rights treaty bodies is the foundation for discourse in the language of rights…. If feminists refuse to engage with this language, we can be assured that those opposed to our claims will.”

The divergence of views is not just academic. In Geneva, the new Human Rights Council is in its second week of a three-week meeting. The Council’s politicized predecessor was disbanded after it lost the confidence of the General Assembly. On the agenda this week are reports including the controversial issues of a “right to health,” and sexual orientation.

_________________________________________________
Copyright 2006 - C-FAM (Catholic Family & Human Rights Institute). Permission granted for unlimited use. Credit required.

Alternative Information and Opinion at:

[mannyamador]

This is a scientific article from Jordan Family Planning Reproductive Health Care. 2006 Jul;32(3):161-4:

Intrauterine contraceptive device discontinuation among Jordanian women: rate, causes and determinants.

Authors: Khader YS, El-Qaderi S, Khader AM.

Its objective was to determine the intrauterine contraceptive device (IUD) discontinuation rate and its causes and related factors among women attending UNRWA health centres in Jordan. METHODS: The study cohort comprised 371 women who had an IUD inserted during 1997 and who were interviewed during their visits to the health centres in the period January-March 2003. The main outcome measure was IUD discontinuation.

Of the 371 women, 39.6% discontinued IUD use because of a desire to conceive, 18.6% because of side effects, 4.9% because they were sexually inactive and 1.6% because of opposition from the woman's family. The most common side effects reported as reasons for discontinuation were bleeding, infection and pain.

_________________________________________________
Alternative Information and Opinion at:

[weedmeister2]

hey, im just new to this thread... hope you dont mind me snooping around, but what methods of contraception are being discussed here...? does this include the condom...? or just pills, iud, etc...?

[mannyamador]

hey, im just new to this thread... hope you dont mind me snooping around, but what methods of contraception are being discussed here...?

It includes all contraceptive methods included in HB 3773. But this thread has grown into a general population/prolife discussion thread.

[mannyamador]

African Health Ministers Reject Abortion in New Policy Paper

African Union (AU) health ministers gathered in Mozambique this month to
adopt a continental policy on reproductive health and rights. Though
some participants wanted to include abortion in a range of issues, they
were defeated. The African states, most of which prohibit or strictly
limit abortion, raised the issue of including abortion, but participants
could not reach a consensus.

The draft version of the document had attempted to include "unsafe"
abortion in tackling the issue of maternal mortality. The draft had
called on member states to "provide safe abortion services to the fullest
extent of the law," to provide for the training of "service providers in
the provision of comprehensive safe abortion care services where national
law allows," and to "refurbish and equip facilities for provision of
comprehensive abortion care services." AU member states failed to reach
an agreement on a unified policy to address unsafe abortion and opted
instead to take up the matter individually.

The African document did call on Member States to seek action on "sexual
and reproductive health." At the international level, the term "sexual
and reproductive health" has caused heated debate over the past many
years though it looks like the General Assembly (GA) is becoming less
concerned with the term. UN delegates told the Friday Fax that they are
less concerned because they are confident that it does not include
abortion. While conservative UN experts note that the AU decision
reaffirms the GA position, they remain concerned because UN agencies,
radical NGOs and human rights treaty bodies continually misinterpret the
term, and then use it to pressure states to liberalize their abortion
laws.

Abortion proponents have long argued that a right to abortion should be
guaranteed by international law because restricting abortion leads to
high maternal mortality. However, UN reports such as the 1991 WHO (World
Health Organization) report "Maternal Mortality, A Global Factbook,"
conclude that decreased maternal mortality rates in the developed world,
"coincided with the development of obstetric techniques and improvements
in the general health status of women." Subsequent WHO reports have
identified low social and economic status, unskilled birthing attendants,
and poor nutrition as underlying causes of maternal mortality. They also
identify anemia and malaria as primary indirect causes of maternal deaths
in Africa.

Of the 53 member states of the AU, 25 prohibit abortion altogether. An
additional 12 members allow abortion for the protection of the health of
the mother. Only 3 African countries allow abortion on demand.
Conservatives are concerned that some will use the issue of "unsafe
abortion" under the guise of reducing maternal mortality to pressure
African countries to liberalize laws and restrictions on abortion.

In a paper published by Ipas entitled "Access to Safe Abortion: An
Essential Strategy for Achieving the Millennium Development Goals to
Improve Maternal Health, Promote Gender Equality and Reduce Poverty,"
authors Barbara Crane and Charlotte Smith argue, "While making abortion
safe where 'not against the law' is a very significant positive step,
many women still have no access to abortion and are even subject to
criminal prosecution and punishment. In this context, it is not ethically
justifiable for leaders in the international community to continue to
maintain such a neutral position on abortion laws and policies."

[mannyamador]

Pro-Lifer Sr. Versoza recognized at the Catholic Mass Media Awards

The Jaime L. Cardinal Sin Serviam Award was conferred upon Sr. Mary Pilar Verzosa, RGS. Sr. Pilar is Founder and National Coordinator of Pro-Life Philippines. She was cited for her dedication and constant advocacy in the promotion and defense of life and her shepherding of men and women in crisis.

Read the Pro-Life Philippines news story http://www.prolife.org.ph/article/articleview/647/1/91/"]here.[/url]





Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo giving the
Catholic Mass Media Award trophy (Jaime Cardinal Sin Serviam
Award from institution) to Pro-Life Philippines‘ Board of Trustees
Member Marita Wasan and Executive Director Jaime Leornas
who received the award on behalf of Pro-Life Philippines as His
Eminence Gaudencio Cardinal Rosales, Archbishop of Manila
and Ambassador Antonio Cabangon Chua look on.


Excerpt: "Our warmest gratitude to the Catholic Mass Media Awards 2006 for choosing Pro-Life Philipines Foundation,Inc.
and Sr. Mary Pilar Verzosa,RGS as recipients of the most presitigious Jaime Cardinal Sin Serviam Award for
institutional and individual, respectively, in recognition for their role to propagate values through the use of media.
The award was given during the CMMA 2006 Awards Night held at the Carlos P. Romulo Auditorium, Yuchenco
Tower, RCBC Plaza, Makati City."

[The_Child]

Catholics, CHristians, Muslims and all Pro-life everywhere should respond with utmost Vigilance to this Bill. Do not believe the lies of those who considers that the bill is not coercive or not indirectly link to abortion especially under the pretense that they really know whats going on.

Oh please, if i know, there are people here who came as students from that certain department in a University here in Cebu that adheres to population control, influenced by their professrs probably. It adheres to population control, is it perhaps because their research sponsors from the USA are bent for Worldwide population control?. apil na cguro sila ana.

but then again, that isnt the issue is it? the Population Myth is propagated by these people, and to think many of them are in the Academia.