ACT Right to Life Association N E W S L E T T E R

Fourth Quarter 1999 October - December

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Inside This Issue ..........

ISAD Day: Not Respected but Rejected
Continuing the Fight Against Abortion
Right to Reply
As Simple as A-B-C
Informed Consent Booklet

ISAD Day: Not Respected but Ejected
Members of the International Society of Abortion Doctors (ISAD) view Right to Life representative as a "security risk"

I now really wonder what the abortion doctors were going to discuss that was so sensitive that they did not
want anyone from outside the abortion industry to hear…

SPOKESPERSON for the Australian Federation of Right to Life Associations, and president of the ACT Right to Life Association Nicola Pantos, was ejected from the Abortion in Focus conference held at the Hyatt Regency in Coolum, Queensland. Ms Pantos, a registered delegate at the conference, was attending as an observer, but was ejected as a "security risk".  The conference held from November 12th-15th included speakers from the International Reproductive Rights Action Group, International Planned Parenthood Federation, various Family Planning Associations and doctors Tiller and Hern.

"US late term abortionist [and former president of the International Society of Abortion Doctors (ISAD)] Dr Warren Hern has been reported in the press as calling Australia a fascist police state because he was asked by immigration officials to agree not to incite illegal activity. I merely tried to listen to what Dr Hern had to say at a conference that I had paid to attend, and was escorted from the building by police", said Ms Pantos. "I now really wonder what the abortion doctors were going to discuss that was so sensitive that they did not want anyone from outside the abortion industry to hear. Perhaps they realise that Australians don't like abortions at six months.

"Dr Hern was due to speak about a number of issues including 'induced foetal demise' and 'surgical evacuations in late term abortion'."

Ms Pantos commented that "another of the conference participants, Dr George Tiller from the United States, says on his website (gynpages.com/whcs/) that he performs abortions up to 26 weeks, or over six months into a pregnancy. There are babies born prematurely who routinely survive at ages that are weeks younger than that."

Continuing the Fight Against Abortion
Niamh Nic Mhathuna

Niamh (pronounced Neave) is the President of Youth Defence, the largest Irish pro-life group. She was one of the keynote speakers at the National Conference of the Australian Federation of Right to Life Associations. Following is an edited copy of her address to the Conference.

It is a very great and sincere pleasure for me to be here today to speak at this pro-life conference, partly because those of you who are involved in the pro-life movement are to meamongst the best people in the world. You have dedicated yourselves to a cause as unpolitically correct as it is worthy and your perseverance and commitment is to be admired and encouraged. But it is also such a pleasure to come to Australia and meet the founders of Youth Defence Australia, who were fast becoming something of a legend in Ireland until Ben Smith arrived in Dublin last week to speak at our 2nd International Pro-life Activists Conference, where I'm delighted to say he did you all proud.

The conference was a great success in terms of attendance. More than six hundred people registered to attend, and media coverage was fairer than usual - a pleasant change but the real success of our conference will be measured in the year ahead. The conference had three objectives - to inform the pro-life movement, to bring them together for a unifying weekend and most importantly to motivate every person who attended towards pro-life activism.

Pro-life activism is the expression of a real and active desire to protect our mothers and babies from the horror of abortion. It is what gives us a renewed determination to make sure that the future of our country is shaped by the Irish people whose ancestors fought long and hard and paid most dearly for the freedoms we now enjoy.

One of the freedoms we enjoy is the right to freely express our convictions and to demonstrate our anger at oppression and injustice - which has no more extreme or brutal example than abortion. Pro-life activism is the modus operandi of Youth Defence in Ireland because we believe that we show how much we love our unborn children by our actions rather than by our words. St James said that faith without actions is as a body without breath. I believe that the pro-life movement owes it to those tiny children to offer more than words as protection. We owe them more than words as defence against the culture of death that claims more than 50 million of their innocent lives every year.

Abortion was outlawed in Ireland by the Offences against the Persons Act of 1867, an ancient law which had easily been overridden in England to allow abortion on demand. To prevent the same thing happening in Ireland the pro-life movement proposed an Amendment to the Irish Constitution which was approved by a 2 to 1 majority in 1983 and there, so we believed the matter rested. In February of 1992 the complacency which had overtaken the pro-life movement was shattered with the emergence of the X case where a 14 year old rape victim sought to have an abortion in England. The case went to the High Court, and was subsequently appealed to the Supreme Court, who passed judgement on March 5th 1992, and declared that the pro-life Amendment of 1983 was to be interpreted as allowing for abortion in any case where a mother threatened to commit suicide rather than continue with her pregnancy.

What I remember most from that time was the dreadful silence on behalf of the growing child in the womb who was being nominated as a candidate for State approved murder. It was as if the pro-life majority in Ireland had been frozen by the hysteria of the media and the visible hatred of the anti life movement, who were manipulating the situation to press for legalised abortion in our country. Seven of us came together at that time because we couldn't bear that silence - because we wanted to somehow to be a voice for that helpless baby - because we didn't want our country to become state-sanctioned killers of our own children.

But I understand one thing very well from that time - that those who should have spoken for the child didn't because they were afraid, and Youth Defence exists for many reasons but mostly for this reason - that never again in my country will the pro-life movement be afraid to speak out for a child who is being dragged towards her death. And never again will we allow the future of our mothers and babies to be dictated by a savagely anti-life media and a cowardly sycophantic government.

So we formed Youth Defence in February of 1992 to be an immediate voice for that voiceless child and to put an end to the madness. It was time for young people to make their

Right to Reply
Dealing with anti-life slogans

Slogan #6: Every child should be a wanted child. It's not fair to bring a child into the world when it isn't wanted

The thrust of this slogan is that if all unwanted pregnancies could be aborted then only wanted children would be born; they would therefore be welcomed into a warm, loving home and would live happily ever after. The chilling reality is far different, however.

While there may be unwanted pregnancies, there are no unwanted children. Many children who are 'unwanted' by their mothers in the early stages of pregnancy are wanted later in the pregnancy and much more so at birth. After birth, if the mother still does not want the responsibility of a child, there are literally thousands of couples who wait for years to be able to adopt children. The waiting time partly explains why there is a thriving black market in babies and why there is so much interest in surrogacy and IVF. And it is not just healthy and physically perfect babies who are wanted. Some couples wishing to adopt children specifically request children with Down's syndrome or spina bifida. In short, every child is wanted by someone, somewhere. The term 'unwanted' refers, not to any condition of the child, but to an attitude of the parent(s) at a particular point in time.

What are the consequences if we allow government to remove protection from people simply because they are unwanted? Who decides when someone is unwanted? Is it the mother, the mother and father, the government, the medical profession, the legal profession? Arguments could be put forward for any and all of these. And what are the criteria to determine 'unwantedness'? Should it be based on the psychological or financial health of the mother? Or perhaps the genetic make-up of the child? Or to simplify things, perhaps it could be based just on number of children (as is done in China)?

The next question is: If people can be declared to be unwanted before birth, then why not after birth? (This, by the way, is the philosophy expounded by Prof. Peter Singer.) Why not when the infant is teething and waking up at all hours of the night, or a tantrum-prone toddler, or a somewhat truculent teenager? In fact, why have any age limit?

This slogan is very misleading as it portrays abortion as being in the best interests of the baby! In essence, pro-aborts are saying: Well, I can't give this child a good life, so I'll take away the only one he has. Obviously this is a ridiculous sentiment and it admirably captures the ideas of Newspeak and DoubleThink as outlined by George Orwell in his novel, 1984..

Advising abortion on the basis of unwantedness or deformity of the child robs society of their contributions. The story is told of a medical school lecturer who gave his students a case study. The facts were: the father had syphilis; the mother had tuberculosis; there were 4 other children of whom the first was blind, the second died, the third was deaf and dumb, and the fourth had tuberculosis. He then asked whether they would advise an abortion. One student gave what seemed the obvious answer and said he would advise abortion.  "Congratulations," the professor replied, "you've just killed Beethoven."

Further Reading:
Dr J.C. Willke, Love Them Both, 1997, Hayes Publishing, Ohio, ISBN 910728-21-6

As Simple as A-B-C
THE ABORTION-BREAST CANCER LINK

In August this year, Dr Joel Brind visited Australia and New Zealand talking on the link between abortion and breast cancer. There is convincing evidence that a link does exist despite denials from other quarters. A synopsis of his talk follows

Dr Brind gained public attention in October 1996 when he co-authored a meta-analysis of 23 studies of the Abortion-Breast Cancer link. The analysis which was published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health found a 30% increased risk of breast cancer among women who had aborted or miscarried over women who had not. According to Dr Brind, there is very real evidence of a connection between abortion and breast cancer despite the contrary claims of the medical community, and what is even more worrying, this evidence is being ignored -- to the detriment of women.

In his talk Dr Brind pointed out that eleven 1-11 out of twelve 12 case-control studies on US women -- of African, Asian and European ancestry -- show an increased risk of breast cancer in women who chose abortion (eight with statistical significance 3-9,11). In addition, twenty-five out of thirty-one1-31 worldwide case-control and cohort studies show increased risk. Strong correlations between breast cancer incidence and abortion exposure have been reported (e.g., in Washington State 32, California 33, Russia 34, Sweden 35 and Denmark 36)

While the exact mechanisms are not completely understood yet, there appears to be a strong endocrinologic basis for the abortion breast cancer link. Oestrogens are hormones which can stimulate the growth of the breasts and other female tissues. Of these, the most important and most abundant is oestradiol. After a woman reaches puberty, the levels of oestrogen rise and fall twice with each menstrual cycle. Most breast cancer risk factors are attributed to some form of oestrogen excess which is why early menarche and late menopause are known to increase breast cancer risk.38 During pregnancy, maternal oestrogen levels start rising before implantation39 and these increased levels can be detected as early as 5 days after conception. By the end of the first trimester the amount of oestrogen (and specifically oestradiol) will have risen twenty-fold. At puberty oestradiol causes the breasts to grow. Then during pregnancy it causes the breasts to undergo a second growth phase to reach mature size . The cells in the breast at this stage are known as primitive or undifferentiated cells. Under the influence of oestradiol during the first two trimesters of pregnancy, these undifferentiated cells proliferate but are not capable of milk production. It is during the third trimester, that terminal differentiation into milk producing cells occurs and the breast cells can no longer be stimulated to proliferate.

So how does abortion lead to breast cancer? Cancer is an uncontrolled proliferation of cells and undifferentiated cells which are susceptible to further proliferation are thus much more vulnerable to carcinogens. During a normal pregnancy the undifferentiated breast cells grow (or proliferate) during the first two trimesters and then become differentiated during the third trimester or last 8 weeks (by factors not entirely understood). If, however, the pregnancy is terminated the differentiation does not occur. This means that the breast is left with more cancer-vulnerable cells than were there before the pregnancy occurred. All this translates into a statistically greater probability that a cancer may arise.

A full term pregnancy, on the other hand, results in full differentiation of the breast tissue for the purposes of milk production thereby leaving fewer cancer-vulnerable cells than were there before the pregnancy began. This is why full term pregnancies actually lower breast cancer risk.42 Pregnancies that result in spontaneous abortions (or miscarriage) generally do not increase breast cancer risk44 because those pregnancies typically produce subnormal oestrogen concentrations.39-41, 43 These oestrogen levels do not exceed the levels which occur during the normal menstrual cycle. In fact a team of Swiss obstetricians, as far back as 1976, was able to predict spontaneous abortions with 92% accuracy from just a single measurement of oestradiol. This makes sense as the very reason for a spontaneous abortion is an inadequate supply of progesterone from which oestradiol is made.

The question arises then as to why the medical profession has been so slow to warn women of the risk. As Dr Brind noted, most of the key studies connecting abortion with breast cancer have been published in journals which would not normally be read by clinicians, eg, the International Journal of Epidemiology, the American Journal of Pathology and the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health. Further, many physicians genuinely believe that abortion in a hospital or clinic is safer for women than a full-term pregnancy. More worrying is the fact that the American National Cancer Institute (NCI) has disparaged the very evidence of the abortion breast cancer link despite the fact that most NCI and NCI-funded studies have verified the the link. As a result of the propaganda spread by pro-choice activists and the advocates of political correctness, few physicians are aware of the serious risk which women subject themselves to when they undergo an abortion. During his tour Dr Brind spoke to many of the medical fraternity and on many occasions was told that his talk was "very informative", the information was "very professionally presented" and gave them "much to think about."

References

Further information
Dr Brind publishes the Abortion Breast Cancer Quarterly, subscriptions to which are available from Endeavour Forum, c/- Mrs B Francis, 12 Denham Place,
Toorak VIC 3142.
More information is also available from Dr Brind's web site at http://www.abortioncancer.com/

Informed Consent Booklet Now Available

THE ACT's abortion informed consent booklet, updated with foetal photos, has been printed, released and distributed to health practitioners. ACTRTLA president Nicola Pantos thanked Attorney General Gary Humphries MLA and Urban Services Minister Brendyn Smyth MLA for their leadership on this issue. Ms Pantos welcomed the inclusion of foetal photographs as this would "… help [women] to consider the full implications of an abortion decision and hopefully will help many avoid the regret of a rushed and pressured decision".

Although the ACT Legislative Assembly voted on 2nd September 1999 to ensure that foetal photos and a number of other amendments would be included in the abortion information booklet, questions were subsequently raised, by opponents to the amendments, about some of the information included in the section on foetal development. For example, the age of each foetus pictured was measured from conception, rather than from the date of the mother's last menstrual period which is a more common method.

After some discussion, Attorney General Gary Humphries MLA and Urban Services Minister Brendan Smyth MLA agreed to make further regulations to enable minor amendments to the booklet in response to some of these comments. These regulations were subsequently tabled in the Assembly and once again faced a disallowance motion from Wayne Berry MLA. Mr Berry's disallowance motion was debated on 21st October 1999 and was yet again defeated.

The booklet, called Considering an abortion? What are your options? What are the risks? is a sixteen page document covering such issues as parenting, adoption, abortion, the law with regard to abortion and the medical risks of abortion and of carrying a pregnancy to term. It contains three foetal photographs. Details are also given of counselling agencies including the Pregnancy Support Service, Karinya House for Mothers and Babies and the Family Planning Association.

The booklet is far from perfect, but is a significant step forward with regard to information previously available as it is information independent of the abortion facility and its owner, the Family Planning Association. Until now the main sources of information easily available to women considering an abortion have been pamphlets and counsellors from those two organisations.