BIRTHRIGHTPositively Protecting Life

The Pro Life Campaign is a non-denominational lobby group, drawing its support from a wide cross-section of Irish society. The Campaign promotes pro-life education and defends human life at all stages from conception to natural death. It also campaigns for resources to support and assist pregnant women and those in need of healing after abortion.

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› PLC LAUNCHES NEW POSTCARD CAMPAIGN

The Pro Life Campaign has launched a new postcard initiative encouraging supporters to make their voices heard by sending postcards to their local Oireachtas representatives making it clear that they will only vote for candidates or parties with a record of defending life in the next election. In 2007, a similar initiative helped persuade many people to use their votes to protect human life.

In the current political climate, with a General Election possibly just around the corner, it is vital that pro-life people make their concerns known to politicians.

Dr Ruth Cullen, Stephanie McNamee and Caroline McSharry at the launch of the postcard campaign

The postcard initiative is also timely because human life in its earliest and most fragile stage faces two very different threats in the coming months. First, cases in the European courts are likely to lead to pressure on the Government to provide abortion here. And second, following the Supreme Court ruling last December, in R-v-R, involving frozen embryos, Health Minister Mary Harney stated publicly that she intends bringing forward legislation in the next few months largely based on the Report of the Commission on Assisted Human Reproduction, which recommended legalising deliberate destruction of human embryos in clinics and laboratories.

To order postcards please phone (01) 662 9275 or email info@prolifecampaign.ie

In southern Italy, earlier this year an abortion was carried out on a mother after a prenatal scan suggested her baby might be disabled. The baby boy survived the abortion procedure at 22 weeks but was left to die by the doctors in the Rossano Calabria Hospital. The hospital chaplain found him 20 hours after the abortion, still living, wrapped in a sheet, his umbilical cord still attached, still moving and breathing. The chaplain raised the alarm and the baby was moved to the intensive neonatal care unit in a nearby hospital, but died there the next day. This was the second reported case in three years in Italy of a baby aborted at 22 weeks because of suspected disability who survived the abortion living for 3 days.

Italy’s 1978 law allows abortion on demand for the first three months of pregnancy but on the grounds of suspected disability it is permitted also in the second three months of pregnancy, but its infanticide law imposes a legal obligation on doctors to attempt to preserve the life of a child who survives abortion.

Bad and all as Italy’s laws are on this point, in England however, there is no time limit at all for abortions where disability is suspected. They can be aborted right up to birth. The Confidential Enquiry into Maternal and Child Health (2007), commissioned by the UK Government, found that 66 infants survived NHS termination attempts in hospitals in England and Wales during 2005. Instead of dying as intended, they survived, able to breathe unaided but were cruelly left to die.

Media coverage of stem cell research, promising medical advances, often blurs the distinction between embryonic stem cell research which destroys human embryos, and adult stem cell research which doesn’t. All the advances in medical treatment so far have come from adult stem cell research.

As Associated Press science writer, Malcolm Ritter recently put it:

“For all the emotional debate that began about a decade ago on allowing the use of embryonic stem cells, it’s adult stem cells that are in human testing today.”

In September a Harvard Medical School team announced major breakthroughs in producing induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), ethically acceptable alternatives to embryonic stem cells.

These breakthroughs show science and ethics can work together in a win-win solution, with no lives taken, promising medical treatments all can live with.

Despite this, the EU recently agreed in principle a new Directive requiring Member States to use alternatives to animal testing where available. Five of the alternative methods listed by the EU Commission (Alternative Testing Strategies – Progress Report 2009) involve human embryo destruction.

The Pro Life Campaign recently opened an online page on the hugely popular social networking site, Facebook. Already, over 9,500 people have joined the page, the majority aged 18-44 and based in Ireland. Facebook creates phenomenal opportunities for groups like the Pro Life Campaign to reach new audiences.

The number of young people joining our page far outstrips the numbers of young people joining the Facebook pages of, say, the main political parties.Twice a week we upload pro-life news and videos for this key demographic group, keeping them posted on important pro-life developments that the mainstream media mostly ignore.

'Babies' is a new documentary released to rave reviews in the US. It tracks the first year of life of four babies in four continents and the footage is both life-affirming and hilarious in parts. An Irish release date is set for early 2011. A trailer for the documentary was one of the recent posts on our Facebook page. To join us on Facebook and to view other recent posts simply log into Facebook and type ‘Pro Life Campaign Ireland’ in the Search box.

This amounts to the EU promoting animal welfare at the expense of human life. Even though it may not immediately affect Ireland the Government should not have assented to it.

The Directive is a reminder of what happens when societies lose sight of a pro-life ethos and brings into sharp focus the urgent need for legislation in Ireland to protect the human embryo.

› BABY BOY WHO SURVIVED ABORTION LEFT TO DIE IN ITALIAN HOSPITAL

› ADULT STEM CELL RESEARCH FAR AHEAD OF EMBRYONIC

› JOIN US ON FACEBOOK!

In August, the Chinese government stated there would be no easing up in its infamous one-child policy. On October 10th, Xiao Aiying, aged 36, who was eight months pregnant, was dragged from her home in Siming near the city of Xiamen in southwest China and forced to have an abortion. Twelve government officials forcibly entered her home assaulted her and took her off screaming to hospital where she was restrained for doctors to give her an injection to kill her unborn baby.

Filmed in hospital with large bruises on her arms and her dead child still inside her, she said,

"Before I had this baby, I felt it moving around and around my belly. Can you imagine how I feel now?"

Her husband, Luo Yanquan, a construction worker, told how the officials burst into his home:

"They held her hands behind her back and pushed her head against the wall and kicked her in the stomach. I don’t know if they were trying to give her a miscarriage. Our ten-year-old daughter was excited about having a little brother or sister - I don’t know how I can explain to her what has happened."

This incident is by no means isolated. It is a common feature of the horrific one-child-policy in China and another aspect of the debate on abortion on which our media are largely silent.

› CHINA FORCES WOMAN TO ABORT BABY EIGHT MONTHS INTO PREGNANCY

Please remember the PLC in your will - providing for your family will be the most important part of your will. If you are then in a position to leave something to a good cause, we hope you will consider the Pro Life Campaign’s work over the years. Good causes rely on bequests as a source of income. Big donations are marvellous but the smallest gift makes a big difference.

104 Lower Baggot Street, Dublin 2, Ireland01 6629275 / info@prolifecampaign.ie / www.prolifecampaign.ie

The result has re-invigorated the pro-life community, showing that people of conviction and persistence can make a real difference both outside and inside the corridors of power.

08/11/2010

Honorary President: Des HanafinChairperson: Dr Joe McCarrollDeputy Chairperson: Cora SherlockLegal Adviser: Professor William BinchyMedical Adviser: Dr Berry KielyLegal Consultant: Caroline SimonsSecretary: John O’ReillyEducation Officers: Geraldine Martin / Dr Ruth Cullen

In a dramatic surprise victory spearheaded by independent Senator Rónán Mullen and Italian MP Luca Volonté, Chairperson of the European People's Party group in the Council of Europe, an attempt to subvert doctors' and nurses' right of conscientious objection to performing abortions was roundly defeated.

The attack was in a Resolution proposed by Christine McCafferty of the UK Socialist Group, using a Report she had rapporteured. The resolution, widely expected to be carried, would have pressurised Council of Europe Member States to introduce measures requiring healthcare professionals to perform or facilitate abortions or go on a State blacklist.

In the surprise reversal, however, Luca Volonté, Senator Mullen and other Council of Europe colleagues turned the tide of opinion and the following amended resolution was agreed:

"No person and no hospital or institution shall be coerced, held liable or discriminated against in any manner because of a refusal to perform, accommodate, assist or submit to an abortion"

› MAJOR PRO-LIFE VICTORY AT COUNCIL OF EUROPE

ASSISTING THE PRO LIFE CAMPAIGN

The Pro Life Campaign needs all the support it can get to bring its message to the wider community.Perhaps you are willing to devote some of your free time to finding new ways of bringing the pro-life message to your community?Perhaps you are willing to make a small financial commitment to secure the implementation of the Pro Life Campaign programme over the next three years? Perhaps you have your own ideas on how you can best help the campaign?Regardless of how you wish to help, please take the time to call us today and we will send you more details.

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Senator Rónán Mullen