World Briefs

WASHINGTON – Planned Parenthood has released its “service numbers,” reporting that it killed 264,943 unborn babies in 2005. As American Life League vice-president Jim Sedlak notes, that is 5,095 babies each week – a number representing more victims than either the attacks on Pearl Harbour (2,403) or 9/11 (2,985). Sedlak said that since PP began killing humans in 1970, it has “tragically snuffed out the lives of 4,068,749 children through abortion.” The abortion chain also receives $270 million a year from various levels of government. “Enough is enough,” said Sedlak. “Planned Parenthood is a dangerous organization that makes millions of dollars by selling sex to kids and killing babies through abortion. It is time to bring this reign of terror to an end.”

China criticized for organ harvesting

TORONTO – Reporting on a conference on the issue that took place at the University of Toronto, the National Post reports that foreign patients travelling to China for transplants are “likely receiving organs culled from political prisoners.” Doctors Against Organ Harvesting says that Beijing is taking organs from living donors, including from member of the outlawed Falun Gong, and leaving them to die. Dr. Torsten Trey, a founder of DAOH, says, “Each person who travels to China for an organ causes the death of another human.” The body has called for foreign universities to refuse visiting Chinese physicians and for medical journals to reject all research on transplants conducted in Red China. Trey said, “Medical science cannot build up any knowledge which is based on inhuman and unethical procedures,” as he compared harvesting organs from political prisoners to Nazi medical experiments conducted during the Holocaust.

Many British docs refuse to do abortions

LONDON – The Pulse, a medical professionals’ newspaper, reported that according to a national survey, one out of every four general practitioners will not take part in an abortion. In the United Kingdom, two doctors must sign a referral before a woman can get an abortion. Fully 24 per cent of respondents said they would not sign an abortion referral and 19 per cent said abortion should be illegal. The survey comes on the heels of a report by the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, which notes there was a growing shortage of doctors trained to carry out abortions. Mary Stopes, Britain’s largest abortion chain, claims that it has had trouble recruiting doctors to do abortions. A Department of Health spokesman said: “If GPs feel their beliefs might affect the treatment, this must be explained to the patient, who should be told of their right to see another doctor.” Yet, theGuardian reports that numerous pro-abortion health organizations deny the trend is the result of conscientious objectors. Rather, they claim, it stems from a lack of education among young doctors and the “intolerance” of people who do not use contraception. In four stories on this issue in the paper, not once was a pro-life source quoted.

French elect pro-family president

PARIS – Nicolas Sarkozy, leader of the centre-right Union for a Popular Movement, won a five-year presidential term on May 6 over Socialist candidate Segolene Royal, a supporter of abortion, euthanasia and gay “marriage,” with a convincing 53-47 per cent second-round victory. Last year, Royal announced that if the Socialists won, they would legalize same-sex “marriage” and permit homosexuals to adopt children as a matter of “equality, visibility and respect.” During the campaign, Royal promised to legalize euthanasia. Sarkozy declared at the time that, “Our model must remain that of a heterosexual family: children need a father and a mother.” Sarkozy, while not pro-life on abortion, opposed Royal’s cynical election campaign ploy. Furthermore, Sarkozy has called upon France to repudiate its anti-religious prejudice. In the closing days of the campaign, Royal attacked Sarkozy’s social conservatism.

Forced abortions in China

BEIJING – In late April, National Public Radio in the U.S. reported that dozens of women in southwest China had been forced to have abortions even as late as nine months into the pregnancy. While Beijing’s one-child policy limits urban couples to one child, although sometimes families can have a second child and pay a fine. NPR reported that some women in Guangxi Province were forced to abort their first child because they were unmarried. Liang Yage and his wife Wei Linrong had one child and believed that they would be able to keep their second child after paying a fine. But on April 16, when Wei was seven months pregnant, 10 family planning officials visited her at home. They informed her she had to have an abortion. Wei recalls an official telling her, “If you don’t go [to the hospital], we’ll carry you.” The couple report that the waiting room at the maternity ward in nearby Baise was full of women undergoing forced abortions and sterilizations. One of the women was He Caigan, who was nine months pregnant with her first child. Communist family planning officials said that at 19 He was too young to have children. She was also unmarried, in violation of Red China’s laws governing pregnancy.