July 18, 2012
From the Desk of Carol Soelberg:
This week we received distressing news of the election of Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma as head of the African Union. This is particularly unfortunate news for unborn children. Dlamini-Zuma is the former Health Minister of South Africa and authored the Choice on Termination of Pregnancy Bill (1996) – the legislation that legalized abortion on demand in South Africa. UFI and other members of the international pro-family coalition are preparing for an increased push for abortion on demand throughout the African continent. Dlamini-Zuma’s appointment will also make it more difficult for the many African nations that work courageously and consistently within the UN system to defend family and life.
We also want to make you aware of the conclusion of the London Family Planning Summit, an event sponsored by Melinda Gates. Gates has decided to make “family planning” her life’s mission and has committed vast amounts of the Gates’ wealth to the proposition. The London summit brought together heads of state, pro-abortion NGOs, UN agencies, and some private entities, all intent on making “family planning” a top priority. Oh that that kind of attention could be focused on the developing world to bring about more clean water, sanitation, nutritious food, and basic health care!
The organizers were intent on keeping the pro-life perspective out of their event. They didn’t want anyone pointing out the obvious disconnects in the “family planning/contraceptives solve all problems” mindset which strives to convince policy makers and citizens that:
· a nation can never properly develop or progress until their population is limited and controlled,
- the best way to reduce poverty is to ensure that poor people are never born.
· the best plan to reduce maternal mortality is not to provide pre-natal, delivery, and post-natal care to expectant mothers, but rather to make sure that women never become pregnant.
- the best way to lower infant mortality rates is to ensure that fewer children are ever born.
In the twisted world of the population control advocates, the end always justifies the means -people are expendable, personal freedom is expendable, and the unborn are always a target. That attitude can most clearly be seen in China. This week Melissa Anderson reports on a recent incident that has focused the world’s attention on China and their population control program known as the one-child policy. Unfortunately, China’s dogma has replaced respect for life. Melissa, however, points out that this unfortunate attitude isn’t just the domain of China.
Who has the Moral High Ground?
Melissa Anderson
I put much of my past focus on the pro abortion campaign of the United States. However, the organization I write for is United Families International. We focus on family everywhere in the world, attempting to raise awareness to the degradation of the family and the means we have to strengthen our own corners of the world. Lift where you stand, wherever you stand.
I’d like to turn our attention for a moment to China. China has been in the news recently after a picture surfaced of a woman lying next to her seven-month gestation preborn infant after she had undergone a forced abortion. (Warning! you can see it here, but extremely graphic!) The Chinese government has attempted to apologize and make amends for this atrocity, but only because the photo has garnered world-wide attention and outrage. This is only one of several well-known cases occurring over the decades since the one-child policy was put in place. Carnage committed in the name of population control.
Some time ago, my husband travelled to China on a study abroad trip in college. While exploring the Great Wall of China, he met a woman selling raincoats. As my husband was becoming fluent in Mandarin Chinese, he was eager to speak to the woman. She told him about her children. She had three. She related that after having her first child, a son, she felt the desperate desire to have more children. She lived in the city at the time and the one-child policy was strictly enforced in the city. This woman and her husband sold everything they owned and moved away from family in the city, to start a poor life in the squalor of the country. They wanted one thing: a baby. They hoped that the Chinese government would grant them a waiver to have another child if they farmed in the country. Their hopes were realized twice. The woman selling raincoats was granted a waiver, and then another after that. For her three children she gave away all she possessed in the world. She had ten minutes to tell a young American student the most important thing in her life, and she reveled in the three children her country had allowed her to have.
In many areas of China, the government is very strict in enforcing the one-child policy. They are so strict that officials force abortions on women found in violation of the policy. Women in China are forced to hide subsequent pregnancies from authorities and pay exorbitant fines to the government when they attempt to keep a child conceived in violation of the one-child policy. When the pregnancies are discovered, government officials have the authority to tie the woman down, still fighting, and force an abortion and sterilization. Chinese forced abortions are not new and are certainly not unknown to the international community who tends to look the other way.
The reality is appalling.
I always like to remind people to take a hard look at ourselves before we look for the faults in other people or other communities.
In many western countries, women flock to abortion clinics, demand states pay for their abortions with taxpayer funds, swear these funds aren’t being used for abortions while finding legal loopholes to pass the bill of the preborn dead onto people who neither condone nor tolerate the conduct.
So I ask you, who is worse, the lawmaker who openly forces an abortion, or the lawmaker who promotes abortion policy or sells his convictions to the highest bidder?
Which is worse, the mother breaking a law to carry a child and then being tied down while her preborn infant is killed, or the woman asking, paying, for someone to put an end to the life of her pre-born child?
While Chinese women fight for the right to keep their children, we fight for a right to kill ours.
Which is worse? Which community has the highest need for moral introspection and reflection?
I ask that we band together to stand with the women of China who desire to keep their babies. Stand with the women willing to sell all they possess for the chance at having another child. Stand with the women who courageously fight to have a family.
The Chinese Ambassador to the United States is Zhang Yesui. Email Ambassador Zhang at chinaembpress_us@mfa.gov.cn and kindly, politely, respectfully, voice your personal concern. Urge change. Then get involved in changing laws and stopping the abortion industry in your own state and country.
Melissa Anderson is a lawyer in San Antonio, Texas. She is the mother of seven crazily adorable children and an author of children’s books. In her spare time, Melissa volunteers extensively with Court Appointed Special Advocates educating the community on issues related to child abuse and neglect.