Chesterton Knew The Importance of Ecumenical Dialogue

Chesterton Knew The Importance of Ecumenical Dialogue

Monday 18 October 2010

Urgent; Please respond to UK government consultation seeking to promote abortion


I lifted this from John Smeaton's blog.

Paul Tully (pictured), SPUC's General Secretary, is appealing to pro-lifers in Britain and worldwide to participate on a UK government consultation - the clear aim of which is to promote abortion overseas. Paul writes:

The UK Department for International Development is promoting abortion in a new public consultation – please respond urgently, whether you're in the UK or abroad. The deadline for consultation responses is 20 October.

Please go to this page: http://consultation.dfid.gov.uk/maternalhealth2010/ then click the links in either or both of the boxes:
"People around the world: Take our survey" (This leads to a ‘surveymonkey’ online survey) and "Development partners: Have your say" (this will lead to a set of questions to which people can respond with comments – scroll to the bottom of the comments displayed to add your comment.)

If you can, please respond to both of these sets of questions.

As you will see, the issues of abortion and contraception dominate the approach to reproductive health in this consultation.

The consultation mentions some positive measures (like early breastfeeding) to reduce infant mortality, but does not mention measures that protect maternal health such as promoting marriage and stable families, continence and responsible sexual behaviour. Nor is there any effort to help people resist unsafe practices like pre-marital sex, promiscuity or prostitution. The survey also presumes that abortion can be “safe” for women – whereas it always carries risks.

Please respond to this consultation before Wednesday (20th October), and encourage others to do so too.

Further information that may be helpful in responding to the consultation:

A short briefing on maternal death and the Millennium Development Goals:
http://www.spuc.org.uk/campaigns/un/matmorbrief201008

A useful British Medical Journal article, pointing out that rising rates of maternal death in southern Africa are largely due to HIV: http://www.bmj.com/content/341/bmj.c5068.full (This article also cites Margaret Chan of WHO, saying that training midwives and improving healthcare facilities are the effective measures being taken to reduce maternal deaths.)

American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynaecologists letter about maternal mortality, Millennium Development Goal 5 and human rights: http://www.c-fam.org/docLib/20091217_AAPLOG.pdf

A WHO article which does not distinguish between spontaneous abortion (miscarriage) and induced abortion, but suggests that maternal deaths due to abortion are overestimated in surveys where the data is of poor quality: http://centre.icddrb.org/images/WHO_Analysis_of_Causes_of_Maternal_Death_-_Khan_&_co..pdf

1 comment:

epsilon said...

I have responded to the survey, but it is so heavily biased towards contraception/abortion as a utopian dream for all women's problems that it makes one wary of inadvertently colluding with their agenda.

My comment in response to their final "why?" was as follows (I hope they don't twist it to their own devious ends):

We can see the affects of contraceptive/abortion usage in developed countries: medical / mental health problems as a result of using contraceptives and aborting babies. Serious decline in population / out of proportion ageing populations. Women feeling they have to act like prostitutes in order to "keep their man". Emotional insecurity of children due to unstable adult relationships. Schoolchildren being encouraged to have sexual relationships by the media and the educational system when they are not emotionally ready for such intimate commitment, and having to deal with emotional trauma when these relationships inevitably dissolve. Huge increases in sexually transmitted diseases.

Modern Natural Family Planning methods for both controlling the occurrence of pregnancies and enabling pregnancy for people with reproductive difficulties have been proven more effective than artificial methods, are a lot more cost effective and encourage caring, sharing relationships between couples.