Posted by Maddog in HB 5043, Prolife Issues, Religion and Social Issues.
Tags: abortion, GABRIELA, Human rights, pro-life, women's rights
The following “Open Letter to GABRIELA” was written by Ma. Andrea Mendigo, a member of the Ang Kapatiran Party. In it she notes the inconsistency in GABRIELA’s position on women’s rights and calls for true protection of the rights of all.
Well said, sister!
An Open Letter to GABRIELA
Dear Gabriela,
From your position paper entitled “Women N.O. to US Troops”, I am lifting the following questions:
Why sanction this rape of our national sovereignty? Why sanction this rape of our territory? Why allow the U.S. to impose its will on our country as a sovereign, independent state? The U.S. has declared an indefinite, borderless global war….We cannot be made a lame excuse for the U.S. to spread and strengthen its imperial designs in the whole of Southeast Asia, including the Philippines.
I am confident that most Filipinos, not just women, share your sentiments. I share them too. But the physical presence of US troops is just a small part of a continuum of US designs on our country motivated by their national self-interest. I invite you to research online the declassified National Security Study Memorandum 200, commissioned by Henry Kissinger during the Nixon administration. You will be surprised to learn that its title is: “Implications of Worldwide Population Growth for U.S. Security and Overseas Interests.” In this paper, 13 countries were targetted for depopulation, among them the Philippines. The “overseas interests” are mainly access to our natural resources like mining and fuel.
The current push of the U.S. and all its allied organizations like the the World Bank and the U.N. and its various agencies for the reproductive “health” bill is the strategy by which the U.S. will realize its objective.
If you were to cut and paste specific statements from NSSM200 and put them side-by-side with the Reproductive Health Bill, you will notice an uncanny correspondence.
Women are the specific targets of this campaign for population control. Gender equality at work and other opportunities, female education, the choice of when to have babies — all good in themselves — have been calculated to bring the fertility index down. You can argue: “What’s so bad about that? We are really overpopulated anyway.” Well, this is the myth and the carrot that we are being offered. If we don’t believe the myth and reject the carrot, the STICK will be quick to follow. (Should you wonder why there are more and more U.S. troops here? … Other sticks are the withholding of foreign aid packages. ) Oh, and the carrot? Billions of dollars for “incentives.”
I don’t know about you, but I am bothered by the rapid increase in permissiveness and the rapid decline of morality in our country. Many sectors in our society are encouraged to put religious principles aside. Why am I bothered, you ask? Because this has a direct impact on our perception of who can be considered human, and who cannot. You, my dear sisters at Gabriela, are so concerned about human rights. And rightly so. And you are specially concerned about women’s rights. Of course! You should be. And I applaud you for this. But our exercise of our rights should not be at the expense of another’s rights, lest we become the violators of the very principles we hold so dear. My right to swing my arm anyway I want to, ends where your nose begins because, if I continue, I would be guilty of assault when I hit your nose. Right? A woman’s right to do what she wants with her body has limitations. She cannot use her body to snuff out the life of another human being, whether that person is outside or inside her body.
A country that does not respect and defend the life of the most defenseless member of society — the preborn — will not succeed in upholding the right to life of the rest. It will self-destruct. And that’s what our enemies (friends?) want. That is part of the rationale behind the Church’s opposition to the Reproductive Health Bill.
A country that is morally weak will easily fall.
There are so many other issues connected with the RH Bill, but I will stop here.
Love,
A sister who cares
Posted by Maddog in HB 5043, Politics and Law, Prolife Issues, Religion and Social Issues.
Tags: abortifacient, abortion, Human rights, murder, pro-life, reproductive rights, reproductuve health
The Ang Kapatiran Party (AKP) has issued a statement on the call by a foreign law firm for the legalization of abortion in the Philippines. The text is below.
PRESS STATEMENT
Ang Kapatiran Party
August 6, 2010
Legal abortion violates human rights
The Ang Kapatiran Party (AKP) condemns in the strongest possible terms the reckless, irresponsible, and inhuman call for the legalization of abortion in the Philippines by the Center for Reproductive Rights (CRR). A foreign law firm, the CRR has released a report where it wrongly blames the continued criminalization of abortion as a source of women’s rights violations.
Our nation’s pro-life laws do not violate the rights of women. Rather, they protect the inalienable right to life of all persons, including the unborn, around half of whom are female. Abortion is the murder of the weakest and most innocent of all human beings. It is the ultimate violation of human rights.
The abortion industry is a worldwide monstrosity that has killed more human beings in just 40 years (approximately ONE BILLION unborn children) than all the wars in the history of mankind (around 400 million). This form of mass murder must not be made legal in the Philippines.
The CRR’s call for legal abortion also reveals the hidden agenda of the pro-RH advocates who are pushing for the passage of Congressman Edcel Lagman’s RH/Abortion Bill. No less than U.S. Secretary of State Hilary Clinton has publicly acknowledged that the Obama administration’s worldwide reproductive health agenda — whose many agents in the Philippines receive its financial support either directly or indirectly — includes the promotion of abortion.
It is not surprising, therefore, that the Lagman bill explicitly funds the procurement and distribution of abortifacient contraceptives. Such contraceptives have been shown to cause early-term abortions by preventing the implantation and development of the fertilized egg — which is already a newly-conceived human being — in the womb. This is clearly against the Philippine Constitution which protects the unborn from conception which begins at fertilization (the union of sperm and egg).
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Posted by Maddog in Politics and Law, Prolife Issues, Religion and Social Issues.
Tags: abortion, choice, edcel lagman, Human rights, poverty, pro-life, reproductive health
A New York-based law firm, the Center for Reproductive Rights, has released a paper blaming the Philippines’ pro-life laws criminalizing abortion for endangering women. The group alleges that current laws force women to turn to illegal abortions that can result in complications and — in around 1000 cases annually — even death. The report basically ties the laws against abortion to what it says are human rights violations.
This is nothing new. Pro-abortion forces used the same deceptive tactic to get abortion legalized in the U.S. The deception lies on many levels, some of which we will examine.
Who’s rights?
The CRR sees access to abortion as a human right, and in their view the denial of such is effectively a violation of a woman’s rights. This claim, however, is extremely ironic because abortion is itself a violation of human rights: it is a denial of the unborn child’s right to life. Since the situation therefore involves the alleged “rights” of a woman over the right to life of an innocent child, we must ask: whatever rights a woman may have regarding choices about having children, can these be more important than the right to life itself?
Life is the most paramount right. Without it no other rights can be exercised. Therefore, even if choosing an abortion is part of a woman’s rights — as claimed by the CRR — it is necessarily a lesser right than the right to life, a right which will be denied to the victim of an abortion, the unborn child.
Human life
To get around this dilemma, many pro-abortion groups sinply deny that unboirn children are people. Doing so, however, requires ignoring basic biology and scientific evidence. Once a human egg is fertilized, it can naturally develop only into a human being. It will not become a dog or a cat. It is definitively a human being. Furthermore, science tells us that the 46 chromosomes that define a unique human individual come together at fertilization. The fertilized ovum will become only a specific human individual and not another. It is clearly then a human person.
Aside from the scientific evidence, those that deny that the unborn are people have to face another problem: if the unborn are not human, then when do they become human? Obviously, birth is just an arbitrary defining point since the transfer of location and physically parting from another person (which is what a birth involves) does not define humanity. Other changes in the embryo or fetus are also not sufficient defining points since these are simply stages in the development of a unique individual already defined at fertilization. Even born human beings are still undergoing development. An infant is physically different from an adult. Later stages in development of an already unique individual cannot therefore define the beginning of human life and personhood.
The price of “safe” abortion
There are many laws that result in difficulty and hardship. Enforcing our laws against murder, for example, often result in shootouts and great expenditures to catch murderers. Enforcing our laws against drug trafficking also results in many deaths and a host of other problems. Does that mean we should legalize murder and drug trafficking? Of course not. We should not legalize these because thyey are wrong and the hardship entailed in enforcing our laws is nothing compared to the greater evils that will befall our nation should these crimes be legalized.
In the same way, abortion is in itself a great evil, a crime against the unborn, and a violation of human rights. If indeed continued criminalization of abortion can lead to other hardships. these are little compared to the mass butchery and massive moral degradation that would occur should abortion be made legal.
We must also note that there are other ways to alleviate the alleged plight of women who find themsleves turning to abortion. There are alternatives such as adoption, pregnancy crisis centers, and even foster homes for expectant mothers. There are also other measures that can be implemented by the government that can help, as we shall see.
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PHNix Network Advocate 