LIFE DIGEST: India’s prime minister decries sex-selection abortions
- May 6, 2008 - comment
Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh recently called for an end to sex-selection abortions in a country that has seen a huge gap develop between male and female babies.
“No nation, no society, no community can hold its head high and claim to be part of the civilized world if it condones the practice of discriminating against one half of humanity represented by women,” Singh said in an April 28 speech to a national meeting on saving girls. India lives “with the ignominy of an adverse gender balance due to social discrimination against women built into our societal structures,” he said.
“One of the most inhuman, uncivilized and reprehensible practices is the practice of female feticide,” Singh said. “The patriarchal mindset and preference for male children is compounded by unethical conduct on the part of some medical practitioners assisted by unscrupulous parents who illegally offer sex-determination services.”
Ultrasound machines are being used to identify the sex of children in the womb, fueling the abortion onslaught against girls and producing the growing imbalance between the sexes.
There are 927 females for every 1,000 males from birth to 6 years old in the populous Asian country, according to the 2001 census. The ratio is much worse in some Indian states. It is 798 girls per 1,000 boys in the state of Punjab, Singh said.
He called for an increased “social awareness” and enforcement of the law to conquer the problem. “I earnestly urge all concerned to help in putting an end to this practice adopted by misuse of otherwise life-saving, modern technology,” he said.
Communion for pro-choice pols not pope’s fault, Novak says
No, Pope Benedict XVI has not gone soft on abortion, but the archbishops of Washington and New York have disobeyed the leader of the Roman Catholic Church, columnist Robert Novak wrote April 28.
After papal masses in April at Washington’s Nationals Park and New York’s Yankee Stadium, some Catholics wondered if the pope had reversed his long-standing view that politicians who support abortions rights should not receive communion. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Democratic Sens. John Kerry, Edward Kennedy and Christopher Dodd received communion in Washington, while former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani did so at Yankee Stadium, Novak reported. All favor abortion rights.
The decisions to invite the pro-choice politicians were made not by the pope but by Donald Wuerl, the archbishop of Washington, and Cardinal Edward Egan, the archbishop of New York.
“At Yankee Stadium, Benedict spoke of the ‘inalienable dignity and rights’ of ‘the most defenseless of all human beings, the unborn child in the mother’s womb,’” Novak wrote. “In parishes across the country, the faithful hear their priests echo the [pope’s] words. Those professions ring hollow when pro-choice politicians are honored as they were during the pope’s visit.”
Egan said, however, he was surprised and displeased Giuliani took communion. He said he agrees with the Catholic Church’s teaching that abortion “is a grave offense against the will of God” and has taught that view during his years as archbishop of New York.
“Thus it was that I had an understanding with Mr. Rudolph Giuliani, when I became Archbishop of New York and he was serving as Mayor of New York, that he was not to receive the Eucharist because of his well-known support of abortion” Egan said in an April 28 written statement. “I deeply regret that Mr. Giuliani received the Eucharist during the Papal visit here in New York, and I will be seeking a meeting with him to insist that he abide by our understanding.”
Smith: Dutch euthanasia rise only ‘half the story’
Euthanasia cases reported by Dutch doctors increased by nearly 200 in 2007, bioethics specialist Wesley Smith reported.
The number went from 1,923 in 2006 to 2,120 last year, Smith said, citing a report by ANP, The Netherlands’ national news agency.
Those figures don’t even tell “half the story,” Smith wrote at his weblog, www.wesleyjsmith.com.
They “do not include the about 900 ‘termination without request or consent’ non-voluntary euthanasia deaths that Dutch studies have reported doctors commit each year with nary a significant legal or professional consequence to the death doctors, and which are not counted as official cases of euthanasia in Dutch death bean counting,” Smith said. “And, if the manner of keeping statistics is consistent with previous years, they don’t include assisted suicides, which generally number about 500 per year. And they also don’t include intentional overdosing with pain control with the intent to kill—rather than palliate—which the Dutch government’s ‘Remmelink Report’ showed to be above 4,000 in 1990. Nor do they include the increasing numbers of terminal sedations, which I reported earlier are on the rise in the Netherlands and are an abuse of a proper palliative procedure. And, they don’t include eugenic infanticides, which number about 90 per year according to two reports in ]British medical journal] The Lancet. And while we are on the subject, it doesn’t by definition include the cases not reported, which studies have indicated total about 40 percent or more each year, meaning that there were probably another 1,000 or so that the authorities don’t know about.”
Kansas Senate fails to overturn veto of pro-life bill
The Kansas Senate failed April 30 to override a veto by Democratic Gov. Kathleen Sebelius of a bill that would have increased restrictions on second- and third-term abortions in a state some have called “the late-term abortion capital of America.”
Senators voted 25-14 for the measure, leaving proponents short of the two-thirds majority required for an override.
Mary Kay Culp, executive director of Kansans for Life, said “women and teens coerced into Kansas abortions were revictimized” by the action, The Wichita Eagle reported.
The Comprehensive Abortion Reform Act included a provision that would have permitted a woman or family members to bring legal action against a doctor who they believe has performed or is prepared to perform an illegal, late-term abortion. It also would have mandated an abortion provider give a woman an opportunity to view an ultrasound image of her child before the procedure and required the posting of a notice that a woman has a right not to be coerced into an abortion.
Kansas has become a primary destination for women seeking abortions late in pregnancy largely because of George Tiller, the country’s best known late-term abortion doctor. Tiller’s Wichita clinic, Women’s Health Care Services, advertises on its website it has “more experience in late abortion services over 24 weeks than anyone else currently practicing in the Western Hemisphere, Europe and Australia.”
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