[Pflienews] PharmFacts E-News Update: KofC takes no action on abortoholic pols last week;

Tue Aug 12 13:06:04 MDT 2008

*PharmFacts E-News Update -- 12 Aug 2008 AD

*
*_Concerned Roman Catholics Condemn Knights of Columbus_*

*_Do-Nothing, 'Wine and Dine' Convention_*

Contact: Kenneth Fisher, 714-491-2284

MEDIA ADVISORY, Aug. 11 /Christian Newswire 
<http://www.christiannewswire.com/>/ -- Concerned Roman Catholics of 
America, Inc. (CRCOA) today criticized Knights of Columbus Supreme 
Knight Carl Anderson for his hypocritical attitude toward unborn babies 
during the Supreme Convention in Quebec, Aug. 5-7. As the Knights and 
bishops feasted for three days, *10,000* innocent children died by 
abortion in the USA alone.

Ken Fisher, president and founder of CRCOA, asked, "Why is it that 
Anderson has not expelled the many pro-abortion and pro-homosexual 
politicians and members in the K of C, and why do councils continue to 
rent their halls to them? Actions speak louder than words. The danger to 
unborn children demands action, not empty rhetoric."

Fisher noted that Anderson said in his keynote speech, "It's time we 
stop accommodating pro-abortion politicians, and it's time we start 
demanding that they accommodate us."

Fisher said: "Anderson was half right! While the weakest go to the wall, 
with *50 million* babies aborted since Roe v Wade in 1973, the K of C 
have not really completely evolved into an action group to eliminate 
abortion. Anderson refuses to recognize that he and the Order are a 
massive part of the abortion problem, and that K of C politicians 
defeated an effort by a record 170,000 signatories to put traditional 
marriage on the ballot in Massachusetts in 2008. Not only that, but 
out-of-state homosexuals can now marry in Massachusetts and return to 
their home states to seek legal recognition, because K of C politicians 
just recently helped repeal a Massachusetts protect-marriage law."

Fisher continued, "Anderson has led the K of C for nearly eight years. 
He has happily followed in the footsteps of former Supreme Knight Virgil 
Dechant, who told me in August 2005 that pro-abortion politicians will 
'never' be expelled! Anderson, Dechant and Supreme Advocate Paul Devin, 
who ruled 'unconstitutional' a Massachusetts State Convention resolution 
by Grand Knight Joe Craven to suspend pro-abortion and pro-homosexual 
politicians, must go. To be taken seriously, Supreme Chaplain Bishop 
William Lori and the other bishops must excommunicate the pro-abortion 
and pro-homosexual politicians and members."

"CRCOA looks forward to the day when we can report that the K of C at 
supreme, state and local level enforce the resolutions they have 
repeatedly passed at their conventions," concluded Fisher.

------------------------------------------------------------------------
ABC Disparages Pro-Life Pharmacist's Choice to Have Large Family 
<http://newsbusters.org/blogs/matthew-balan/2008/08/11/abc-disparages-pro-life-pharmacist-s-choice-have-large-family>
NewsBusters - USA
*Contraception* is "essential health care"? Substitute anchor Kate Snow, 
hinted at ABC's liberal leanings on the topic when she introduced 
Stone's report: *...*

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Good article but the reality is Levitt and HHS may weasel out of this 
due to pressure from abortoholic groups:

*Pro-Life Medical Personnel Could Be Forced to Participate in Abortion*
http://www.cnsnews.com/public/content/article.aspx?RsrcID=33875 
<http://nvs.all.org/sendstudio/link.php?M=22016&N=407&L=1793&F=H>
Cybercast News Service
Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt has not yet decided if 
he will draft a new regulation to ensure that doctors who object to 
abortion are protected from discrimination and that federally funded 
medical entities comply with federal laws, according to his August 7 
blog on the HHS web site. "The Department is still contemplating if it 
will issue a regulation or not," Leavitt wrote. "If it does, it will be 
directly focused on the protection of practitioner conscience."

*'CONTRACEPTION' [sic] IS NEVER ABORTION?
IT DEPENDS ON WHAT THE MEANING OF "PREGNANT" IS*

by Colin Mason and Steven W. Mosher

Abortion advocates are up in arms about new federal regulations to 
protect pro-life health care providers.

According to a draft recently leaked to the New York Times, the 
Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is planning to propose 
regulations that would refuse HHS funding to health care providers who 
discriminate against employees on the basis of their pro-life beliefs. 
If an employee, or potential employee, says that he or she would not 
provide contraceptives or abortions, the bill states that the provider 
cannot fire them, or refuse to hire them, on that basis. The draft 
regulations have not yet been officially proposed.

There are already laws in place that guarantee freedom of conscience to 
medical personnel. The problem is that these guarantees have not been 
"operationalized" by means of specific, concrete regulations, and so 
remain a dead letter. The new HHS rules would remedy this defect, 
effectively shielding pro-life medical workers from discrimination, 
allowing them to practice without compromising their moral beliefs.

Abortion advocates are predictably outraged by this development, calling 
it a "restriction of reproductive rights," an "act of complicity with 
the religious right," among other things. A few of the more astute among 
them, however, have noticed the deeper threat to their cause, for the 
new regulations call hormonal contraceptives "abortifacients"--which 
they are--and talk about pregnancy beginning at conception--which it 
does. Both positions are anathema to Planned Parenthood and its minions.

To understand why we have to go back to 1965, when the American Academy 
of Obstetrics and Gynecology (ACOG) arbitrarily and redefined the terms 
"conception" and "pregnancy." The group first threw out the 
then-accepted definition of conception as occurring at fertilization, 
that is, when the sperm and egg cells unite. ACOG explained that, since 
conception could not be "detected," it was impossible to determine 
whether new life began at that point. It went on to decree that 
henceforth pregnancy would be defined as beginning only at implantation. 
This is the time, five to seven days after conception, when the newly 
formed person, only a few hundred cells in size, implants in the lining 
of the uterus.

Why did ACOG engaged in this pseudo-scientific sleight of hand? Its 
motives involved both morality and money. In 1965 Roe v. Wade was still 
8 years away, and abortion was illegal throughout the United States. 
Most Americans still equated abortion with murder and wanted nothing to 
do with it. If hormonal contraceptives prevented implantation--and they 
do--then most Americans would reject them on the grounds that they 
caused early-term abortions.

By redefining pregnancy to begin after implantation, ACOG attempted to 
avoid the charge that its members, in prescribing hormonal 
contraceptives, were actually encouraging, if not performing, early-term 
abortions.

Add to this the fact that--already apparent in 1965--that hormonal 
contraceptives would be big money. The obstetrician-gynecologists that 
we have spoken with estimate that half of an ob-gyn's practice--and thus 
half their profits--comes from prescribing pills and implants. Under the 
new definition of pregnancy, ob-gyns could write such prescriptions 
without bothering to tell their patients that they were actually 
violating the Hippocratic Oath by causing abortions.

To this day, most people do not realize that every form of contraception 
other than barrier methods (condoms or spermicides) work by thwarting 
implantation in at least some cases. Norplant, IUDs, Norplant, Implanon, 
so-called "emergency contraception," and, of course, the feminists' 
beloved "pill" are all abortifacient.

The new HHS regulations noncontroversially define "abortion" as "the 
termination of a pregnancy," but then go on to explain that there are 
"two commonly held views on the question of when a pregnancy begins," at 
conception and at implantation. Quoting a 2001 Zogby International 
American Values poll, the regulations state that "49 percent of 
Americans believe that human life begins at conception. Presumably many 
who hold this belief think that any action that destroys human life 
after conception is the termination of a pregnancy, and so would be 
included in their definition of the term "abortion."

HHS does not affirm either position, but simply contends that the views 
of those who still hold to the scientific position that life begins at 
conception must be respected.

This is what has the abortion movement and its feminist allies worried. 
They realize that many of their gains over the last 43 years rest on the 
ACOG's ideologically charged redefinition of pregnancy, and are loath to 
give back any ground. This is why they label, intimidate, bully and 
browbeat those who hold the traditional--and scientifically valid-view 
of when pregnancy begins.

Cristina Page of RH Reality Check accuses HHS of "dismissing medical 
experts and opting instead to accept a definition of pregnancy based on 
polling data." Page complains that pregnancy now begins "at some 
biologically unknowable moment (there's no test to determine if a 
woman's egg has been fertilized). Under these new standards there would 
be no way for a woman to prove she's not pregnant. Thus, any woman could 
be denied contraception under HHS' new science."

New science? Page forgets that her version of pregnancy is only 43 years 
old. Not to mention that there's no test to determine if implantation 
has occurred either. What pregnancy tests measure is the amount of human 
chorionic gonadotropin HGC (check spelling) in a woman's urine, not 
implantation.

According to Kathy Durkin of the liberal web site Workers' World, HHS is 
supposedly redefining abortion âEURoein such an overly broad way as to 
include many popular and effective forms of prescription birth control, 
including pills, patches, intrauterine devices and even emergency 
contraception. The document deliberately misnames them 'abortifacients' 
(abortion-causing) when, in fact, they are birth control methods."

No, Ms. Durkin. They are, in fact, methods of abortion.

Finally, there is Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY), who almost became the 
presidential nominee of the Democratic Party. Clinton indignantly blogs 
that the Bush Administration is "up to its old tricks again, quietly 
putting ideology before science and women's health . . . We can't let 
them get away with this underhanded move to undermine women's health and 
that's why I am sounding the alarm."

We believe this to be an apt description of what ACOG did in the 
sixties, and what abortion-minded feminists continue to do to the 
present day as they slavishly devote themselves to their dogma of 
abortion-on demand.

Coming back to essentials, it has been the consistent position of the 
Catholic Church, and of the best science, that pregnancy begins at 
conception, and that in uniting, the sperm and the egg create a new and 
unique human being.

This position has been restated time and time again by the late John 
Paul II and his successor, Benedict XVI. Benedict may be hailed as the 
"green pope" for his emphasis on stewardship of the environment, but the 
press seems tone-deaf to the context of the pope's exhortations. At the 
2008 World Youth Day in Sydney, Australia, Pope Benedict insisted that 
"concerns for non-violence, sustainable development, justice and peace, 
and care for our environment are of vital importance for humanity." But 
he went on to say that these concerns cannot be "understood apart from a 
profound reflection upon the innate dignity of every human life from 
conception to natural death: a dignity conferred by God himself and thus 
inviolable."

In other words, human life begins at conception, not at implantation. 
However important it is to stop environmental pollution, it is even more 
important to stop polluting the most sacred environment of all, the womb.

And abortifacient contraceptives not only pollute, they kill.

*/Steven W. Mosher is the President of the Population Research 
Institute, and the author of /Population Control: Real Costs and 
Illusory Benefits./ (Transaction, 2008)/*

*/Colin Mason is the Director of Media Production at PRI./*
------------------------------------------------------------------------
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