Illinois Right to Life Committee
MAY 2008
May, 2008 Pro-Life News (see articles below): 05/30/08 New IRLC radio messages on end of life concerns 05/27/08 Another victory for Choose Life plates 05/23/08 Agenda-driven actions that ignore reality 05/06/08 HPV cancer concern as profit generator
Illinois Right to Life News for Friday, May 30, 2008 New IRLC radio messages on end of life concerns Illinois
Right to Life Committee is again preparing some truthful radio messages on end of life
issues. These messages are called “End of Life Choices?” and
“Persistent Vegetative State and Living Wills.” These
two messages on end of life issues will be aired on WIND 560 AM along with messages on the
topics of Natural Alternative
to In Vitro Fertilization, The Deception of Choice, Abstinence is the Right Choice, Defund
Planned Parenthood, and Focus on Successful Stem Cell Research. While
the push for assisted suicide and euthanasia continues, especially on the west coast, the
need to protect disabled and aging people from such false compassion gains importance. Here is the text of these two radio messages: End of Life Choices? This is Bill Beckman with Illinois
Right to Life. Have you heard the latest push for choice? Right-to-die advocates are pushing assisted
suicide and euthanasia as “end-of-life choices.”
Though they push for a right to die, the end result becomes much closer to a
duty to die. Depression is known to lead to thoughts of suicide, but rarely is
an Oregon patient referred for psychological
evaluation before receiving their prescription for lethal drugs. Oregon claimed legalized assisted suicide was necessary because
patients with uncontrolled pain needed a choice. Of
the 341 people who have chosen assisted suicide in 10 years under this law, none indicated
uncontrollable pain. In contrast, 100% mentioned loss of autonomy. Doesn’t that suggest they viewed themselves
as too much of a burden and felt obligated to end their lives? In addition to assisted suicide, Oregon’s
suicide rate among the elderly has also increased. Legalizing assisted suicide is a bad
choice. For real choices, call 312-422-9300. Persistent Vegetative
State and living wills This is Bill Beckman with Illinois
Right to Life. Last year studies of
persistent vegetative state (or PVS) in Belgium and Britain revealed rates of misdiagnosis
over 40%. These findings are consistent with
frequent news reports about recovery of patients deemed beyond hope. Terri Schiavo was not given the chance to recover. In 2005, she died after 13 days of starvation and
dehydration. Recent studies of patients in a vegetative state have discovered
responses in their brains consistent with those of conscious volunteers. Other studies of people in minimally conscious
states have found cells in relatively undamaged areas of their brains had begun
self-healing, seeking out new ways to re-establish functional connections. Where there is life, there is hope. A living will lets any doctor decide what health care to deny you. Signing one could be your death warrant. Instead, choose the Patient Self-Protection
Document from Illinois Right to Life. Call
312-422-9300. Listen for these and other IRLC radio messages on WIIND 560 AM beginning on June 9th.
Illinois Right to Life News for Tuesday, May 27, 2008 Another victory for Choose Life plates It has taken over seven years to accomplish, but the time has arrived. The Choose Life license plate has been approved in South Carolina. This success should be another indication of an ultimate victory for Choose Life plates in Illinois, where a positive court ruling is currently under review by the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. This delay comes thanks to an appeal by the State of Illinois of Federal Judge David Coar’s ruling that the Choose Life plates should be produced in Illinois. South Carolina suffered the only court ruling that blocked issuance of Choose Life plates. The ruling, in a lawsuit filed by Planned Parenthood, rejected a state law authorizing Choose Life plates because the plates were discriminatory since it was not possible to display the opposing viewpoint. I’m sure there is pent up demand to have plates that say Choose Death! When the U.S. Supreme Court refused to review the lower court ruling, South Carolina citizens went back to the drawing board and requested that the legislature change the request process to an administrative process. Since anyone who complies with the administrative requirements qualifies to get a specialty plate, no discrimination can be claimed to block another plate. Once that process was enacted into law, it still took time but approval has finally come for South Carolina’s Choose Life plate. The new plate is likely to go into production by fall 2008. Actually, the ruling of discrimination planted the seed for proponents of Choose Life plates in states like Illinois to go to court based on that exact issue. Since the State of Illinois was issuing many other specialty plates, they were practicing discrimination against the Choose Life message. That was the basis of Judge Coar’s ruling. Similar rulings have occurred in California, New York, and Arizona. Hopefully, Illinois will be the first state to get Choose Life plates on the road on this basis. Efforts to establish Choose Life plates have been ongoing in Illinois since 2002.
Illinois Right to Life News for Friday, May 23, 2008 Agenda-driven actions that ignore reality The campaign against abstinence education has been ferocious with accusations flying in all directions. The proposed solution is “safe sex” and it is packaged for indoctrinating children under the label “comprehensive sex education.” The premise given is that since everyone will be having sex, abstinence will fail, but training in use of condoms and other contraceptives will prevent pregnancies and sexually transmitted disease. Reports from Africa have provided statistics from Uganda compared to most other African nations. AIDS cases have been reduced significantly in Uganda with emphasis on abstinence before marriage and fidelity within marriage. Other African nations that push condoms have not reduced AIDS cases, and many have continued to experience further increases. In fact, African nations with the highest condom usage, often encouraged or coerced by the United Nations AIDS (UNAIDS) program, including Botswana, South Africa, and Zimbabwe, are the nations with the highest HIV infection rates. Nations with less condom use and organized abstinence programs in their schools, such as Uganda, Senegal, and Kenya, have much lower HIV rates. Does that deter the condom pushers? Of course not! They claim that more condoms are needed in the other African nations and are still trying to push condoms in Uganda. A recent letter from Human Life
International (HLI) presented another convincing case with a shocking comparison of
results of "safe sex" with condoms versus abstinence and marital fidelity.
HLI cites the case of two Asian countries with similar populations: Thailand ( pop.
63,753,000) and the Philippines (pop. 88,351,000). Both nations saw their first
cases of AIDS appear in 1984. Both embarked on campaigns to combat the threat and
spread of this deadly disease. That’s where the similarity ends.
The Philippine government educated its people and stressed the importance of
chastity, fidelity in marriage and abstinence outside of marriage. Thailand, on the
other hand, embraced “King Condom” and distributed massive numbers of condoms to
its people, without any attempt to change people’s behavior. Here are the results. As of 2007, there have
been a total of 2,965 individuals infected with AIDS in the Philippines, over 23 years.
In Thailand, the number is a shocking 1,106,000 infected with AIDS. In other
words, one out of every 21,850 Phillipine citizens have become infected with AIDS while
one of every 90 citizens of Thailand are infected. As a comparison, here in the
U.S.A., one out of every 200 citizens contracts AIDS. The next time you hear the charge that abstinence does not work, remember how well the condom works in Thailand versus abstinence in the Philippines -- proof that "safe sex" is not safe! Is it possible to bring the agenda-driven
condom pushers back to reality? Not likely! The loss of human life in Myanmar is hard to
imagine. Cyclone Nargis left at least 133,000 people dead or missing. The
International Federation of the Red Cross estimates 2.5 million people are in desperate
need of clean water, food, medicine and shelter with 500,000 of them being children.
In the face of these overwhelming needs, the
United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) is working to provide 220,000 condoms
"to help needy survivors with no access to contraceptives." UNFPA aid
advisor Chaiyos Kunanusont said 72,800 condoms had so far been delivered to
"survivors struggling to maintain their family planning after the storm hit in early
May." For these millions left homeless and in
desperate need of food, the idea of allocating limited distribution resources to pass out
condoms must seem absurd; or might we say, insane? Even
the reality of a disaster where lives are hanging in the balance will not deter these
condom pushers from carrying out their agenda.
Illinois Right to Life News for Tuesday, May 6, 2008 HPV cancer concern as profit generator A recent Chicago Tribune headline (4/22/08) read, “New HPV test puts cancer screening in ‘state of flux’.” The article explained that a new HPV test may be more effective than the Pap smear in screening for cervical cancer. However, this HPV test detects HPV infections that often clear on their own. Thus, further testing is needed to determine whether the first test should raise any concern. Of course, Merck’s heavily marketed HPV vaccine Gardasil should prevent all this testing, right? Not at all! The vaccine is only effective against HPV strains that have been associated with about 70% of cervical cancers so women still need the Pap smear, and now the HPV test, to see if other HPV infections might be present that have not been prevented by the vaccine. When you think about it, why bother with a vaccine that is nowhere close to 100% effective and does not reduce the need regular testing? Besides, taking those regular tests can detect any problem early enough that it can be treated long before it has the potential to cause cervical cancer. Beyond that, why take a vaccine that has been found to have some very undesirable and even dangerous side effects (even 11 deaths) when it will not reduce the need for other recommended ongoing tests? Even worse, the HPV vaccine amounts to using young girls as guinea pigs because the long-term effectiveness of the vaccine is unknown. If young girls receive the vaccine at the recommended age of 11, the vaccine may need a booster to be effective when they reach an age where sexual activity is more likely. Of course, that raises another important question. Why take a vaccine that is only potentially useful when sexual morality is violated? That topic led to a survey that found “most moms balk at HPV vaccine for young girls” as reported in the May 5, 2008 Chicago Sun-Times. Of course, given the Sun-Times editorial board’s conviction to promote “safe” sex, they jumped on this news in a May 6th editorial to push parents to get their 11-year-old daughters vaccinated before it’s too late. Before you decide to follow the Sun-Times recommendation, you may want to learn more about the side effects of Gardasil by checking the following articles: FDA Knew
It: Cervical Cancer Not Caused by HPV Virus Get even more inforation at the IRLC web site (www.illinoisrighttolife.org) by selecting “Pro-Life Issues” and then selecting “Vaccines”. The best course is to practice moral behavior, save sex for marriage, and decline to enrich the drug companies and doctors by foregoing risky vaccines and ongoing tests that never end.
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