NEWSLETTER No. 127, JULY 2007
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EXPORTING OUR PLAGUE
Australia is plagued with about 90,000 abortions each year. Not content with this loss of life in our own country, the pro-abortion claque in Federal Parliament is pushing to export this plague to hapless women in third world countries. The latest push comes from Dr. Mal Washer (Lib, WA) who is calling for Australian foreign aid to be used to fund abortion as a service to women! Dr. Washer claims that women who have illegal abortions have a 13% chance of death on average. However, according to witnesses to the Parliamentary Group on Population and Developments round table last year, the average figure for the maternal mortality rate for unsafe abortion in the developing world is 1 death per 300 abortions, which is just 0.33%. Dr Washer inflates this death rate 39 times. The wild exaggeration of deaths due to illegal abortions is not a new tactic. Prominent U.S. abortionist, Dr. Bernard Nathanson, admitted shortly after leaving his career as an abortion doctor that he and his abortion co-conspirators used to create hugely inflated statistics about maternal deaths caused by illegal abortions to soften the public to accept the legalisation of abortion. Since then, he said, the use of grossly inflated numbers of illegal abortions and deaths of mothers from those abortions, has been a tactic abortion activists around the world have used to change laws. "Repeating the big lie often enough convinces the public," said Nathanson. "The number of women dying from illegal abortions was around 200-250 annually. The figure we constantly fed to the media was 10,000. These false figures took root in the consciousness of Americans, convincing many that we needed to crack the abortion law." Endeavour Forum representatives at the UN Commission on the Status of Women meetings in New York have been informed that when Poland restricted abortion in the nineties, not only did maternal mortality decrease but so also did admissions to gynaecological hospitals, i.e. the reproductive health of Polish women improved. Eire, where abortion is illegal, has the lowest maternal mortality rate in the world. Furthermore, both in Finland and California where abortion is legal, mortality statistics show that women who have abortions are far more likely to die in the subsequent 12 months than those who give birth. To his credit, National Party Senate Leader, Ron Boswell, has strongly rejected Dr. Washer's proposal. He pointed out the inflated figures for illegal abortion deaths and said: "Maternal mortality is an important issue that deserves our support but it is not helped by increasing abortions in third world countries...... There are a thousand positive ways to increase maternal health and the social and economic conditions of living in third world countries without abortions." From February to April this year in the Guangxi region of south-west China family planning work squads were sent to round up women for pregnancy tests or, in the case of violations of China’s one-child policy, demand fines as high as 10,000 yuan (US$1300) - in an area where most annual incomes are about 1000 yuan. If people did not pay up in three days their belongings were seized and, if they resisted, their homes were destroyed. Do we want Australian foreign aid to subsidize such violations of human rights? Australian taxpayers’ hard-earned money should not be used to kill unborn babies in third world countries. Our aid should be spent on providing safe water supplies, sanitation, roads and electricity. There are many diseases that afflict third world countries and that impact severely on women - malaria and tuberculosis - to name just two. We do them no service to add our abortion plague to their countries. One church leader who has played an important role in opposing the culture of death at the United Nations and in Australia is Most Reverend Bishop Peter Elliott. We are delighted to honour him at a luncheon and everyone is welcome to join us.
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Member Organisation, World Council for Life and Family NGO in Special Consultative Status with ECOSOC of the UN
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