Purpose of IPPF: Keeping Money Flowing
Posted on | June 18, 2013 by Wendy Wright
What does the International Planned Parenthood Federation do?
According to a key official in the European Commission, the abortion and family planning group keeps money flowing – through advocacy and pressure – from funders (like her organization) to their shared priority. And that priority is making unhealthy sexual acts a norm, then, like whack-a-mole, demanding more funding for all the myriad of consequences, usually with solutions that exacerbate the problems (and create more needs).
For its 60th anniversary, International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) interviewed people who are part of its network of supporters.
Lieve Fransen, director of Social Policies and Europe 2020 at the European Commission, gave her view of the benefits of the federation.
First, she says, it has a presence locally and globally.
Second, IPPF has diversified their funding so they can be independent of just one funder.
In addition to funders, this implicitly refers to how IPPF dips its hand into a variety of tills, such as education budgets for their graphic sex ed propaganda, HIV/AIDS and other health budgets for sexually transmitted diseases, and maternal health budgets for family planning.
Lieve notes this allows IPPF to “be present throughout the cycle of politics,” apparently despite who is in office or the in the majority. She doesn’t think the European Commission “is vocal enough” on sexual and reproductive issues, but the U.S. is (under the Obama administration).
“Services should not depend on global political cycles,” she states.
This rather totalitarian view dismisses the true needs of people (like overall health care, clean water, jobs, healthy relationships) and their more knowledgable views of what is needed to solve problems. Instead, others are mere servants to fulfill her enlightened mission – and keep the money flowing to her agenda.
You can watch her short interview here.
Russia Imposes Tax on Homosexual PDA
Posted on | June 13, 2013 by Stefano Gennarini, J.D.
The whole media establishment is up in arms about Russia’s new law that prohibits the promotion of homosexuality, and other deviant sexual behaviors among minors. Reuter, AP, NY Times, BBC, have all complained about the law as a form of discrimination against gays, but this appears to be more hyperbole than anything else.
If you believed the NY Times you’d think the Russians had decided to send every homosexual in Russia to the Gulags. But the Russian law, which is expected to soon be passed by the Senate and signed by Putin, effectively acts as a tax on public displays of affection by homosexuals.
Here is how even the NY Times summarizes the law:
Without defining “nontraditional,” the new bill bans making available to children information “intended to form in a minor a nontraditional sexual foundation.” It also prohibits portraying “the attractiveness” of such relations and bans asserting “the social equivalence of traditional and nontraditional sexual relations.” Fines range from $155 for an individual to up to $31,000 for a media outlet.
155$ is hardly unmanageable for homosexuals who want to kiss in public.
While Russians certainly do not want to encourage homosexuality, by no means do they criminalize homosexuality, nor do they discriminate against homosexuals, as some media have claimed. Homosexuals enjoy the same privileges as all other Russians, but they may not promote homosexuality as something positive among children in the same way as Mayor Bloomberg wants to eliminate sugary drinks, and Michelle Obama wants to get unhealthy foods, out of school cafeterias.
The media has been portraying the law as an unreasonable measure pushed by “radical religious groups”. But this cannot account for why the lower house of the Russian parliament approved the bill unanimously (only one abstention). Russia can hardly be described as a religious nation, but the law has overwhelming support in the legislature. Russians have consistently denied homosexual groups parade permits, sparing its children and the public at large the ludicrous and disturbing behavior on show in the squares and streets of Europe and America. Similarly the news reports have highlighted episodes where some LGBT persons were victims of violence, without highlighting that the vast majority of the demonstrators at the parliament while the law was being passed were in favor of the law, and that the violence had nothing to do with the vast majority of demonstrators.
The law prohibiting the promotion of homosexuality among children simply codifies that Russia truly is interested in protecting its children, not that is interested in persecuting homosexuals. The fact is, that homosexuality is associated with almost 20 times higher risk of HIV/AIDS, and other bad health stats like higher incidence of drug and alcohol abuse, depression, and even suicide. It is no wonder that Russians want to protect their children from embracing homosexual lifestyles. What remains unclear is why the western media is so incensed with the Russians.
“Manifs pour tous”: denunciation of French police brutality to the Council of Human Rights at the UnN
Posted on | June 8, 2013 by Grégor Puppinck, Ph.D
intervention in the 24th Meeting of the 23rd Regular Session of Human Rights Council, denouncing police brutality in France against the demonstrators opposed to same-sex marriage and adoption.
VIDEO OF THE Denunciation at the UN of police brutality against French advocats for the family
On June 6, 2013 at the seat of the United Nations in Geneva, on the occasion of the process of the Universal Periodic Review of France, the ECLJ, represented by its director, Grégor Puppinck, addressed the Council of Human Rights in order to denounce the ongoing police brutality against the manifestation in favor of the family and the rights of children.
The Universal Periodic Review (UPR) is a mechanism of the United Nations whereby the Council of Human Rights periodically reviews the actions of each UN Member State in the area of human rights. Each State examined, is the object of critics and recommendations and each presents in return the measures in which they are undertaking for the amelioration of the situation in its territory.
The ECLJ as a Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) holds special Consultative Status before the United Nations with the ability of intervening orally before the Council of Human Rights. Its regular purpose is the defending and promoting, in particular, of religious liberty of conscience and of expression worldwide. This is the first time that the ECLJ intervenes to denounce violations of human rights by a European country. Such interventions enable the public exposure of violations of human rights and, as far as possible, contribute to the amelioration of the situation in the country concerned.
Concerning France, the recent events demonstrate in particular the grave abuse of the use of force and of the process of arrest and of identity checks against the protestors. With regard to custody by the police and abuse of identity checks, it is about a structural problem, also denounced by other NGO’s, and which must be resolved. As for the police violence, the victims must be able to have legal recourse against the authors of these violent actions.
Condoms for viral marketing and other social media awkwardness
Posted on | June 7, 2013 by Rebecca Oas, Ph.D
At the end of each day at the Women Deliver conference, the final plenary session was followed by a brief “Last Word” presentation. On Wednesday, the “Last Word” was delivered by Hugh Evans, CEO and Co-Founder, Global Poverty Project.
In reference to the oft-repeated statistic that 222 million women are designated as having an “unmet need” for contraception, Evans said:
“222 million women have no access to modern contraception.”
I’ve written about how self-reported lack of access is actually only a small component of what “unmet need” includes, but Evans is hardly alone in thinking his statement was a valid paraphrase – the UNFPA routinely uses the same phrasing. But then Evans went even further:
“What does it mean for this issue of family planning when 222 million women are denied access to contraceptives?”
“Denied access” implies that not only do these women lack contraceptives, but that they are actively being prevented from obtaining them. There is nothing in the Demography and Health Survey questions used to define “unmet need” that in any way implies the purposeful denial of contraceptives to women who want them, but the concept of “unmet need” gains much of its traction by manipulating or redefining words.
Scholarly reports have defined “total demand” for contraceptives as the sum of women with “unmet need” plus those currently using modern contraceptive methods. Since “unmet need” in turn includes women who personally oppose contraceptives for religious and other reasons, such women are therefore classified as simultaneously demanding and opposing contraception.
But these inconsistencies are generally the exclusive domain of academic types who view impassioned advocacy with a jaundiced eye and ask for citations in lieu of reaching for their checkbooks. As for the advocates themselves, they spin a heart-wrenching narrative about women being denied access to things they not only want but demand.
However, within Evans’ brief presentation, he referred several times to his goal of “increasing demand” for family planning worldwide. It would seem that the inconvenient truth behind “unmet need” is that the demand isn’t already there.
In fact, in a personal conversation, a representative of the UNFPA admitted that “it isn’t just about access; it’s also about behavior change.” This was after I asked him about the low percentage of women with “unmet need” who claim they lack access to contraceptives. Apparently, the UNFPA and its allies believe that when women in the developing world are educated about contraceptives and informed of their rights, they will get around to demanding that access which, unbeknownst to them, is being denied.
So Evans is launching a social media campaign called “It Takes Two” in order to manufacture some demand for family planning products through a combination of free concert tickets, a condom wrapper design contest, and other forms of “gamification”. This combined effort of Women Deliver and the Global Poverty Project (the eponymous “two”) is of course targeted at youth.
In any campaign to promote “slacktivism” among a population presumed to have a short attention span, there are more important things than consistency of message. And perhaps it would be wrong to expect too much from an initiative that displays a howler like this in its promotional video on Youtube:
High Representative Catherine Ashton: EU not to promote same-sex “marriage”
Posted on | June 5, 2013 by J.C. von Krempach, J.D.
A timely clarification of the EU’s position with regard to same-sex “marriage”.
The Commissioner’s letter has the additional merit of clarifying that fighting against discrimination does not imply pushing for absurd same-sex “marriage” laws.
Women Deliver: The Next Push to Get Abortion into Development Goals
Posted on | June 4, 2013 by Wendy Wright
One of the final announcements at Women Deliver, the global conference on family planning, was the launch of a social network campaign to demand countries include reproductive and sexual health and rights in the UN’s new development goals.
These new development goals will take over when the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) expire in 2015. UN agencies, countries, non-governmental groups and suppliers are busy now working to ensure their top issue or product is included.
I’m in Sri Lanka now, after attending Women Deliver, and met with faith-based aid groups. They, and other humanitarian groups I met at Women Deliver, highlight how their work fits in with the MDGs.
The MDGs created an international framework, not only for UN agencies and countries, but consequently nearly all humanitarian groups – they have to show how their work helps accomplish the MDGs to get attention and international funding.
So if reproductive health and rights and sexual health and rights is included in the new development goals, it will impact humanitarian work worldwide. Groups will be expected (especially by European countries, the US and UN agencies) to provide reproductive and sexual health services to get funding.
Until then, Melinda Gates’ campaign to spend over $4 billion on getting contraception to poor women, is establishing a new way to get supplies that the First World believes the Third World needs. It gins up demand for mass production of certain products, creates an efficient distribution system for that product into rural areas, and mobilizes activists to pressure governments and foundations to fund the system.
Gates’ campaign creates the procurement, distribution and funding system for contraception that could then be used to funnel abortion drugs like misoprostol and mifepristone to poor women. Many of these women suffer from malnutrition, anemia and other health problems that will increase the likelihood of experiencing complications.
Update on Croatia:
Posted on | May 31, 2013 by J.C. von Krempach, J.D.
According to latest news, the petition for a constitutional amendment to define marriage as the union between one man and one woman has already collected more than 700.000 signatures, which is close to 20% of the country’s electorate.
Greens in the European Parliament: they have learned nothing!
Posted on | May 31, 2013 by J.C. von Krempach, J.D.
Lesbian activist replaces paedophilia activist: European Greens remain true to their convictions
One candidate who is currently very busy promoting herself for the job is the Austrian MEP Ulrike Lunacek. Her selling argument is that she is a lesbian woman, which according to Greens ideology qualifies her as an expert for “human rights” and “gender equality”. Although unlike Cohn-Bendit she has never published any writings in which she boasts her experiences as seducer of underaged children, she nevertheless shares with him the agenda of subverting the family and marriage, in particular through the promotion of LGBT(P) rights, homosexual “adoption”, etc.
Indeed, she promises to be even more active as a promoter of diverse sexuality than Cohn-Bendit. While the latter (probably in order to avoid attraction any further attention to his paedo-propagandistic past) never joined in with the European Parliament’s official “LGBT-Intergroup”, Mrs. Lunacek is that group’s co-president.
Ulrike Lunacek would be the perfect choice to confirm the Green’s position as the leading LGBT(P) political movement in the European Parliament.
El Salvador Supreme Court Puts Out Abortion Fire
Posted on | May 31, 2013 by Stefano Gennarini, J.D.
The press is full of reports of a 22yr old woman in El Salvador who has lupus and is carrying an anacephalic child. The Supreme Court of El Salvador declined to issue an order allowing an abortion, saying that the unborn child’s right to life cannot be arbitrarily denied.
The court concluded that doctors had been able to contain the Lupus and did not find any risk to the life of Beatriz (the pseudonym under which the pregnant woman is known). The pregnancy is now 26 weeks along, and apparently the ministry of health of El Salvador has decided to carry out a C-section and deliver the baby prematurely instead. Perhaps it is a gesture to placate the militant abortion groups that have been waging a month long campaign against the Catholic Church in the country. Amnesty International, IPPF, and others have led the charge. Even the regional UN coordinator has petitioned the government to allow “Beatriz” to have an abortion. They hoped to shake things up in Ele Salvador, and instead have been dealt a devastating blow. Not only is beatriz not getting an abortion, she is getting a C-section to deliver the baby.
An interesting interview on NPR with a NY Times reporter suggests that had the C-section option not been available to Beatriz she would have been flown to the USA with a humanitarian visa. Apparently several US hospitals are willing to kill Beatriz’s baby as an act of charity — it goes to show how desperate abortion supporters are to make the case for abortion. It also shows how barbaric abortion is. The same baby that can survive (were it not for anancephaly) outside the womb at 26 weeks in Nicaragua could be killed in the USA for no reason at all.
I have yet to review the Supreme Court ruling, and look forward to doing so soon. This pro-life victory should be added to Supreme Court victories in Chile, Peru and Mexico.
Women Deliver: If it’s not Sexy It’s not a Right
Posted on | May 29, 2013 by Lisa Correnti
A side event at the Women Deliver conference last night featured an expert panel that reported on the serious discrimination and psychological harm millions of girls in developing countries experience due to the taboo subject of menstruation.
Cultural taboos surrounding menstruation alienates girls from their families and homes due to beliefs that girls and women are unclean during this time of month. In some regions girls and women are forced to sleep outside their homes, cannot use the family water tap and are at risk to violence as they travel to distant alternate water sources.
Limited hygiene products, lack of water sources and poor sanitation leads to regular absenteeism from school and work, with some adolescents leaving school permanently.
A teenage girl from Bangladesh who attended the event, gave a firsthand account of the challenges young girls face when they are menstruating. Some Bangladesh girls are so desperate to acquire hygiene supplies that they have been known to trade sex for clean cloths, she reported.
The Women Deliver conference held in Malaysia brings in sexual and reproductive rights stakeholders from around the world that are narrowly focused on expanding access to modern contraceptives including abortion to all girls and women in developing countries. With hundreds of meetings over a 3-day event only three visited menstruation hygiene.
Frustration was voiced by one of the panelists from WaterAid that has been pushing the issue for some years. “Menstrual hygiene is a core sexual and reproductive right” and “it is a core women’s right” – ” yet here we are in a 7:30pm time slot,” she added.
Raising awareness on this critical issue has mainly been left to clean water advocates to champion. These advocates are calling for the silence on this issue to end.
Reproductive rights gatekeepers largely ignore this issue which perpetuates the shame and unsafe practices that occur as millions of girls hide in the shadows when they are menstruating.
Please visit the resources below to learn more about this important issue and how you can help.
Late-term abortionist: “Abortion can never be late”
Posted on | May 29, 2013 by Rebecca Oas, Ph.D
Dr. Talemoh Dah of Soteria-Afrique Rural in Nigeria was speaking at a session at Women Deliver titled, “Service Delivery Innovations and Scale Up to Increase Access to Safe Abortion.” His segment was on late abortion.
During the question-and-answer session afterwards, an audience member asked him, “How late is late?”
He replied:
“How late is late? It depends on the definition of abortion in the country you’re considering. In Ethiopia, you can carry out an abortion up to 28 weeks. Other countries it’s 24 weeks. But, speaking as an obstetrician, and a gynecologist, there is – abortion can never be late. But as the gestational age increases, all the issues begin to come. Issues of fetal survival, social issues like if you expel a fetus that is well-formed, and some people who do not support abortion get to take pictures, it could cause a national scandal. And that’s where privacy, fetal disposal, all of those things, you have to take care of it. But it can never be late to expel any pregnancy. So there’s nothing like, it’s too late, or anything. But, try to work within country constraints; in some countries, you could expel the fetus but make sure it is not alive. Some people take care of fetal survival before expulsions, you could talk about partial birth abortion, but it can never be late to expel any pregnancy.”
Later, when the panelists were asked to give their “take-home messages”, Dr. Dah said:
“Medical induction is a very easy entry point when you want to introduce late abortions at any certain point.”
His fellow panelists, including one whose talk was a summary of the World Health Organization’s technical and policy guidance on “Safe Abortion,” did not dispute anything he said.
“Pushing” contraceptives in Senegal, but what about other medications?
Posted on | May 29, 2013 by Rebecca Oas, Ph.D
It’s become an increasingly common refrain in conversations at the Women Deliver conference: all we’re hearing about is family planning. Even people who support the effort to make contraceptives universally available are voicing their unease that other important topics are not being given a sufficient platform.
While this lopsided organization of priorities might be mildly frustrating for the conference attendees, it could have far more serious consequences elsewhere in the world.
During a plenary session Wednesday morning at the Women Deliver conference in Kuala Lumpur, philanthropist Melinda Gates showcased the initiative to ensure that women in Senegal have access at all times to their preferred modern method of contraception. In order to avoid stock outs and provide women with the widest array of choices, the Senegalese Ministry of Health is promoting a “push” distribution model, supported by funds from the Gates Foundation.
Stock outs of medicines are a problem in many parts of Africa, including Senegal. Among the products that are only intermittently available at many clinics are antiretroviral medications for patients with HIV and anti-malarial drugs.
Senegal’s Malaria Operational Plan for fiscal year 2013 [PDF] notes that:
“One of the greatest threats to the success of program implementation has been the poor management at the Central Medical Stores (CMS), including delays in procuring and distributing essential medications, inadequate quantification, and poor responsiveness to program needs…[Intermittent preventive treatment in pregnant women] has historically been procured and distributed through the CMS, however delays in procurement led to nationwide stock outs during the last two years and a fall in…coverage. Poor supply chain management affects the availability of [medications] at all levels, from hospitals to community health huts.”
Simply put, pregnant women are not getting the anti-malarial drugs they need because of breakdowns in the supply chain. If only there was an innovative new system to ensure that this didn’t happen.
Just for the record, the most recent Global Burden of Disease study reveals that among women and girls in Senegal, malaria accounts for 13% of deaths, while maternal disorders account for 4.2%.
Sounds like a great project for some “impatient optimists” with some interest and proven success in supply chain management.
ECHR: The way toward a right to assisted suicide
Posted on | May 29, 2013 by Grégor Puppinck, Ph.D
Comments on Alda Gross v. Switzerland (No. 67810/10) of 14th May 2013
Through the judgment of Alda Gross v. Switzerland (No. 67810/10), given on 14th May 2013, the Second Section of the European Court of Human Rights completed the edification of an individual right to assisted suicide (that is to say, consenting euthanasia) in the name of the right to the respect of private life guaranteed by the European Convention on Human Rights.
The Section, in a decision reached by only four votes against three, justified its judgment by referring to the general concern that “in an era of growing medical sophistication combined with longer life expectancies, many people are concerned that they should not be forced to linger on in old age or in states of advanced physical or mental decrepitude which conflict with strongly held ideas of self and personal identity” (§ 58)[1].
This decision follows the rulings of Pretty v. United Kingdom (No. 2346/02 of 29th April 2002), Haas v. Switzerland (No. 31322/07 of 20th January 2011) and Koch v. Germany (No. 497/09 of 19th July 2012), in which the Court progressively elaborated “an individual’s right to decide by what means and at what point his or her life will end, provided he or she is capable of freely reaching a decision on this question and acting in consequence” (Haas § 51). In Koch, the Court went a step further by ruling that judges should be able to consider the individual merits of a wish to resort to assisted suicide, even if it is prohibited by penal law, and so decide on a case by case basis.
Now, in Alda Gross v. Switzerland, the Section has, in substance, condemned the conditioning by medical norms of the effective exercise of the right to assisted suicide, and the exclusion by these norms, in principle, of assisted suicide by people in good health. In this case, the plea for suicide did not concern a “medical case” of an ill person wishing to end their life, but an elderly person with no clinical illness who had grown tired of living. This woman was refused the medical prescription of a fatal dose of poison (Sodium Pentobarbital), as her good health prevented her from fulfilling the conditions provided by the Code of Professional Medical Conduct and the Medical Ethics Guidelines adopted by theSwissAcademy of Medical Sciences.
According to Swiss law, incitation to and assistance in suicide are only culpable offences when they are committed for “selfish motives” (Swiss Criminal Code, Article 115). The Swiss Federal Supreme Court has specified, in the application of legislation relating to drugs and medication[2], that the poison can only be given by medical prescription and that this prescription is only valid on the condition that the doctor respects the rules of the profession, in particular the ethical guidelines adopted by the Academy of Medical Sciences (Judgment of 3rd November, BGE 133 I 58). These guidelines notably relate to the patient’s health – who should be ill and coming to the end of their life – and to the expression of their will; they aim to protect the patient against outside pressure and impulsive decisions. As in the rest ofEurope, medical practice is governed by norms of a diverse nature. In this case, as no specific statutory regime concerning the practice of assisted suicide had been adopted by the legislator despite its attempt between 2009 and 2011, it was these general rules of medical law that were applied, which exclude the issue of such a substance to a healthy person.
It was on this issue that the majority of the Section censored the Swiss system: it felt that the law, not deontological norms, should govern the conditions for the prescription of the poison. This judgment rests on the notion that suicide has acquired the quality of an individual right or freedom (§ 66), and so a deontological norm cannot impede its exercise: it is for the law to regulate, even if it is realised through the art of medicine.
If this judgment becomes final,Switzerlandwill have to adopt a legal framework defining the conditions of the exercise of the right to assisted suicide for everybody, regardless of their health. These legal provisions could just as easily confirm the deontological norms, as it could contradict them.
This conclusion logically follows from premises that human rights and medicine’s primary purpose is to serve the will of the individual, even if that individual wishes to die, rather than to protect and care for him possibly against his own will. In this regard, individual autonomy appears as the new primary value of the Convention, even above the respect of life. In practical terms, the judgment puts this liberal approach into action, by ruling that the prescription of poisons should be removed from the “paternalistic” field of medicine and placed in that of civil liberties. The Court has already done this with the regulation of abortion in Polandand Ireland(eee Tysiac v. Poland, No. 5410/03, 20th March 2007, and A. B. and C. v. Ireland, [GC], No. 25579/05, 16th December 2010).
Once again, the Court is divided on a social issue (see X and Others v. Austria, [GC], No. 19010/07, 13th February 2013). Four judges (Lorenzen, Sajó, Vučinić, and Keller) imposed their decision on three others (Jočienė, Raimondi and Karakaş), at the price of the Court’s unity and the prudence of its case law, both of which are essential conditions of its authority. What will be the authority of a judgment adopted by a majority of one vote on such a controversial subject, especially when it goes against the explicit wording of the Convention, where Article 2 outlines the State’s obligation to respect and protect the life of “everyone” and the principle according to which “no one shall be deprived of his life intentionally” ?
This judgment also goes against the vast majority of European legislations prohibiting assisted suicide; it ignored the national margin of appreciation as well as international norms such as the ones of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), which has recommended “upholding the prohibition against intentionally taking the life of terminally ill or dying persons” (Recommendation 1418 (1999)) and declared that “euthanasia, in the sense of the intentional killing by act or omission of a dependent human being for his or her alleged benefit, must always be prohibited.” (Resolution 1859 (2012)).
[1] Alda Gross v. Switzerland, No. 67810/10, 14th May 2013, § 58.
[2] Federal Law on Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances of 3rd October 1951, and Federal Law on Drugs and Medical Devices of 15th December 2000.
Tags: assisted suicide > euthanasia
Expanding Abortion Through Midwifery Programs
Posted on | May 28, 2013 by Lisa Correnti
At the Women Deliver conference held this week in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, sexual and reproductive rights advocates have convened to present strategies on how to expand access to contraception and abortion to poor women and girls in developing countries.
One such strategy is incorporating family planning and abortion as essential competencies provided by midwives. A full day symposium hosted by UNFPA and a subsequent follow-up meeting discussed how to help governments scale up midwifery programs.
During a breakout session some attendees expressed concern over the “continuum of care” being proposed. “If you want to reduce maternal mortality”, a woman from Malawi said, “than lets look at morbidity.” “Women are dying from lack of skilled birth attendants — this is the service they need to provide”, she continued. One of her colleagues added that additional midwives were needed but the country lacked the funding to train them.
Countries that have made significant progress in lowering maternal mortality have done so by scaling up midwives.
A heath care stakeholder from Ghana said that midwives in his country were already providing comprehensive abortion services.
While most maternal deaths occur from childbirth complications – family planning advocates primarily focus on increasing contraception prevalence to lower fertility rates and expanding access to abortion to reduce maternal mortality.
By supporting the scale-up of midwives, family planning advocates know modern contraceptive methods and abortion services will be more accessible and it allows them to tap into funding previously designated to maternal and child health services.
Because the Helms amendment prohibits US funds from being used to perform or promote abortion, this new continuum of care should disqualify midwifery programs from receiving USAID funding.
“D*mn the Statistics” Says IPPF Head at Women Deliver
Posted on | May 28, 2013 by Wendy Wright
“D*mn the statistics!” So says the head of International Planned Parenthood Federation. He was speaking at Women Deliver, a global conference on family planning and abortion.
This is striking considering his movement has relied heavily on manipulating statistics to gain backing for family planning and abortion. Planned Parenthood even created the Guttmacher Institute to craft statistics to influence policy debates.
“Why do we have to rely on statistics,” Tewodros Melesse asked, “D*mn the statistics! Do we have to use statistics when mothers and sisters are dying!”
The Women Deliver conference was conceived as a way to direct efforts to reduce deaths from childbirth toward family planning and abortion. They ran into problems when it was discovered the statistics for maternal mortality were inflated.
Update on Croatia: Petition to protect marriage wins huge support
Posted on | May 28, 2013 by J.C. von Krempach, J.D.
n update on our previous post on a citizens initiative in Croatia proposing a constitutional amendment to protect marriage and the family against spurious and arbitrary re-definitions:
The initiative, which asked citizens whether they were in favour of such an amendment, gathered over 500.000 signatures in just 15 days! This is clearly above the threshold of 10% of the electorate (in Croatia there are about 3,750,000 voters).
The Croatian Parliament is now expected to announce a referendum with the question: “Are in favour of including a definition of marriage in the Constitution of the Republic of Croatia, according which marriage would be a union of man and woman?” The referendum might take place in autumn.
Trouble for Abortion Stealth Campaign
Posted on | May 27, 2013 by Wendy Wright
Abortion groups’ plan to get the abortion-causing drug misoprostol widely used for post-partum bleeding has run into roadblocks. People in the targeted areas know what they’re up to, and the message that “misoprostol saves lives” is hyperbole intended to influence policymakers.
Leaders of this campaign gave an update at a seminar held in conjunction with the Women Deliver conference. While they agree with medical authorities that another drug, oxytocin, is the “gold standard” to treat hemorrhaging after birth, they want countries to adopt misoprostol into their national clinical guidelines.
But this is being resisted, mainly by religious leaders, who are concerned misoprostol will be “re-purposed for abortion,” said Ann Starrs, president of Family Care International.
She did not mock this belief. She couldn’t – because abortion groups have publicly advertised for women to use misoprostol in countries where abortion is unavailable or illegal. As reported in the Friday Fax, one group boasted of opening a clinic in Tanzania which “is not a health organization — it focuses on advocacy and women’s rights,” to dispense misoprostol for abortion.
Starrs’ suggestions to counter this resistance is to enlist medical professionals to be the voice for the campaign, and to come up with better messaging. “Evidence based information,” that is, studies designed for advocacy, should be distributed. And secure commitments from governments and others to include misoprostol in their budgets.
An audience member challenged the presenters that they “need a bit of honesty.” The message that “misoprostol saves lives” isn’t true. It will create a false assurance that will backfire when women still die after using the drug.
Surprisingly, Beverly Winikoff — a presenter and long-time activist for medical abortions — conceded, “We don’t know if it saves lives.” It could be other interventions taken in addition to misoprostol that are actually helping women.
Put on the spot, Ann Starrs, whose specialty is advocacy, admitted the slogan “misoprostol saves lives” is misleading. “The attention span of policy makers mean we need some hyperbole,” she stated.
At this, the moderator ended the seminar – 10 minutes early – because, he said, they had run out of time.
Germany: the Green Party and its murky past. A “Human Rights expert” promoting paedophilia.
Posted on | May 27, 2013 by J.C. von Krempach, J.D.
While Daniel Cohn-Bendit, the front man of the Green Party in the European Parliament, has announced that he will not run for re-election in 2014, it is becoming increasingly clear that he was not the only one in his party to have advocated the legalization of paedophilia. Indeed, the influence of paedophile networks on the party’s political programme was far greater than is generally known, as a recent report by the German weekly “Der Spiegel” has revealed.
Daniel Cohn-Bendit
It should be noted in this regard that homosexuals and self-declared paedophiles joined in a caucus called “Schwup” (=Bundesarbeitsgemeinschaft Schwule, Päderasten und Transsexuelle, i.e. the Federal Working Party of Gays, Pederasts and Trassexuals), which was financed by the Green Party.
On 10 March 1985 the Greens of North-Rhine Westphalia (the largest of Germany’s federal entities) decided to include into their electoral program a paper in which they requested that “all forms of non-violent sexual intercourse, including between adults and children, should be legal”. In that same paper, “non-violent sex between adults and children” (one is tempted to wonder: does “non-violent” mean “consensual”???) is described as “pleasurable for both sides, productive, conducive to development, in short: positive”.
According to Mr. Cohn-Bendit, this was not merely an opinion of a minority within the Party. “Just look at the various position papers regarding the age of consent. This was a mainstream position”, he said.
Later on, the issue was silently dropped – probably not out of conviction, but because the Party discovered that public morality had not yet eroded to such a degree as to make this part of their program seem acceptable. Instead, the Party focussed on the promotion of homosexuality and transsexualism, pretending that this was not part of one and the same agenda to subvert public morality.
Indeed, the linkage seems quite logical. Promoting homosexuality and transsexualism means to sever the link between sexuality and procreation, and to proclaim the enjoyment of physical pleasure as the sole purpose of sexuality. But if that view is accepted, it seems perfectly logical to accept “non-violent sex with children” as a legitimate form of sexuality. Which is exactly what the 1985 Paper says.
For a long time, the Greens have downplayed or even flatly denied their past involvement in the promotion of paedophilia. But in the wake of the scandal concerning Daniel Cohn-Bendit, they now want to make a PR effort to purify their image. For that purpose, they have announced that independent researchers will get access to their archives in order to find out the exact background of the Party’s controversial paedophile agenda.
Will that really be sufficient? As we have noted before, the problem is neither Mr. Cohn-Bendit (who very likely is not himself paedophile) nor the Party’s past, but the present: its consistent involvement in the promotion of unnatural sexual behaviours as part of its political agenda – not thirty years ago, but today! Thus, the Greens will not be credible on paedophilia if they do not re-think their current positions.
Volker Beck, a "human rights" expert with unusual ideas
Back in 1998 Mr. Beck wrote a contribution for a book with the title "Der pädosexuelle Komplex" (= The Paedosexual Complex), in which he made the following statement:
“The De-criminalization of paedo-sexuality is … urgently necessary, given that maintaining the existing criminal provisions against it stands in contradiction to fundamental principles oft he rule of law.”
Indeed, this is what one would expect a “human rights expert” to write on paedophilia, isn’t it?
Mr. Beck today says that his manuscript had been manipulated by the editors against his will and knowledge. However, there are no traces of any subsequent efforts on his side to rectify his alleged statements, or to distance himself from them. Which does not make his apologies seem very credible.
Thus it appears that the promotion of paedophilia, albeit having been dropped from the Party’s official program, is still part of the Green’s hidden agenda. The continued presence of a politician like Mr. Volker Beck as the Party’s spokesperson on “Human Rights” proves it: the link between “LGBT issues” and the promotion of paedophilia is a very close one.
Croatians fight back against imposition of sexual “education” and same-sex “marriage”.
Posted on | May 27, 2013 by J.C. von Krempach, J.D.
Like other European countries, Croatia is currently governed by a left-wing (in this case: ex-communist) government that, instead of implementing the economic reform policy that the country needs, has set the destruction of public morality as its first and foremost priority. But the population does not accept this.
This week, parents have obtained a major victory, with the Constitutional Court declaring a government-sponsored sex-education program, which inter alia alleged the “equality” and “normality” of homosexuality, as unconstitutional. The court stressed the primary role of parents as the educators of their children, which excluded this kind of indoctrination with anti-values.
At the same time, a parents’ initiative „U ime obitelji“ (In the Name of the Family) has collected 215.000 signatures in only four days in support for a proposal to change the constitution in order to clarify that “marriage” can only mean the union between one man and one women. This is a remarkable achievement in a country with only 4.5 million inhabitants. If more than 380.000 persons (i.e. 10% of the electorate) sign up to the initiative, then the government will be obliged to do what it fears most: to call a referendum that would likely set an end to all projects for introducing same-sex “marriages”.
FRA admits: the LGBT Survey does not reflect the real situation
Posted on | May 25, 2013 by J.C. von Krempach, J.D.
A short postscript to our reporting of the bogus “LGBT Survey” published by the EU Fundamental Rights Agency (FRA).
As our readers will remember, that survey was trumpeted in the mass media and by certain politicians as indicating that “discrimination” and “hate crimes” against people with unusual “sexual orientations” is widespread in Europe. But in actual fact the Survey was deliberately designed to produce exactly that outcome: in fact it was no real survey, but rather an electronic mailbox where LGBT could complain anonymously and without providing any verifiable facts about alleged discriminations.
The only insight this “Survey” provides is that we now know that there is a certain quantity of people who have made use of that possibility. But given the possibility of multiple replies, even this result is not certain.
With conspicuously less media and political attention the FRA has now released the Technical Report, drawn up by Gallup, the institute that has carried out this survey at a cost of 370.000 Euro for European taxpayers. (Apparently Gallup still sense the danger this kind of “research” poses for their own reputation…)
In this Technical Report we read (at p. 27):
“… it is not possible to confirm to what extent the sample obtained in the FRA survey corresponds to the true characteristics of the LGBT population.”
I should think this settles the matter.