CONTRACEPTION or ABORTION ?

The Pill.

Did you know that the Pill, because it inhibits but does not always prevent ovulation, has a back-up effect of stopping the implantation in the uterus of any human life which has been conceived after break-through ovulation? This is in effect a very early abortion. Another way the pill causes early abortion is to slow down the passage of the fertilised egg through the fallopian tube, so that it dries out and dies before it can implant.This also increases the risk of ectopic pregnancy. The ovulation breakthrough rate is much higher in the mini-pill, but also occurs in all other combined pill brands. (see Postfertilization Effects of Oral Contraceptives and Their Relationship to Informed Consent by Walter L. Larimore, MD; Joseph B. Stanford, MD, MSPH )
This information is in the literature found in any pill packet, and has been written about by pharmacist John Wilks in his book "Consumers guide to the Pill and other drugs".
Physician package inserts for the Pill use language that indicates the Pill, Depo provera and Norplant inhibit implantation.  These chemicals "harden" lining of the womb (uterus) creating a hostile environment and thus make it harder for the tiny multi-celled human being from implanting in the wall of the womb. This constitutes abortion at approximately one week of life.

Safety issues also arise from association of the Pill with cancer of the cervix, breast cancer, stroke due to blood clots, birth defects and infertility."Women sue drug firms over pill risks," Reuters, 10/1/01,this class action lawsuit alleges that third-generation birth control pills produce an increased risk of blood clots.
THURSDAY, Feb. 7 2001(HealthScoutNews) -- Despite lower levels of estrogen, the new generations of birth control pills double the risk of stroke for women who take them, a new study shows.In the first look at the risk of ischemic strokes from the latest generation of oral contraceptives, Dutch researchers say the newest pills are no safer than the older versions when it comes to clotting problems. In fact, they argue, the third-generation pills may be more dangerous than the second-generation ones. Risk of stroke was increased 2.3-fold for women on any type of oral contraceptive.

2003 "Mothers, prevent your daughters from getting breast cancer" by Sherill Spellman (Get Well International, $31.95), investigates the alarming rise in breast cancer in younger women, and its link to Pill use.She says "Australian statistics from the National Breast Cancer Centre show that young women on the Pill have more than a 25% increased risk of breast cancer...Breast cancer is increasing in australia by 2 % every year and every year, 10,000 women are diagnosed with it."

WHAT'S WRONG WITH CONDOMS?

The medical hole in the "safe sex" argument! Natural holes are present in latex up to 5 microns wide - holes 50 times bigger than the AIDs virus, larger than STDs and even sperm.  In 1992 a Food and Drug Administration study showed detectable leakage of HIV-sized particles in one-third of all condoms tested. The "failure rate" is 2.5% breakage -13-15% of women whose partners use condoms alone fall pregnant in one year - HIV particles are much smaller than sperm -that's like playing russian roulette with your health! A University of Miami Medical School study showed 3 out of 10 women whose HIV infected husbands used condoms faithfully, contracted AIDS Related complex in an 18 month period. (Quoted in "Facts of Life" by  Brian Clowes)( See also "Quick facts on 'safe sex' " by Focus on the Family)(Also "Condoms and Sexually transmitted diseases" by Gene Rudd  in  The Annals of Pharmacology vol35 no 9 , 2001, p 1135)

The Truth about Condoms joint medical statement.On Friday, July 20,2001 the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services released an official government document detailing the research on condom effectiveness. This document supports Congressman (Ret.) Tom Coburn, M.D., Congressman Dave Weldon, M.D., Physicians Consortium, and Catholic Medical Association's contention that condoms offer extremely limited benefit to patients. Specifically, the government document, based on all available peer-reviewed clinical research, details the following facts about condom effectiveness:
STD             Condom  Effectiveness
 HIV             Relative risk = .15
Gonorrhea    Women — No clinical proof of effectiveness       Men — Some effectiveness
Chlamydia     No clinical proof of effectiveness
Trichomoniasis   No clinical proof of effectiveness
Syphilis              No clinical proof of effectiveness
Genital Herpes   No clinical proof of effectiveness
Human Papillomavirus   No clinical proof of effectiveness 

Condom-use programs that have been used to educate an entire generation. Because they believed condoms would protect them during intercourse, millions of women now suffer from the ravages of STDs , including pelvic infections, infertility and
cervical cancer.

Other contraceptives:

IUDs, Norplant , RU-486 and Depo-Provera attempt to stop implantation of the already fertilized zygote.
Norplant rods are almost impossible to remove. Thousands of Louisiana women have filed a class action lawsuit against American Home Products, manufacturer of Norplant,charging that the birth control implant harmed them. Source: WDSU-TV, 10/3/01. http://www.africa2000.com/SNDX/norplant.htm
New research has confirmed that those women who choose the injectible birth control chemical (also an abortive agent) Depo-Provera may suffer significant bone loss. Experts say the younger you are when you begin using it, the more likely you are to have problems later on. "Birth control shot may weaken bones," Health Scout News, 10/5/01
A 1996 study by Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center in New York found an elevated HIV infection rate in monkeys who were given subdermal progesterone implants. It found that the presence of progesterone thins the vaginal wall, making it more vulnerable to abrasions and infection by STDs or HIV during intercourse. This has obvious implications for the bombarding of Africa with Depo Provera doses, possibly actually  making the spread of HIV and STDs more easy in its users.
It was reported in the New York Post that the new Ortho Evra patch has caused the death of 17 young women since 2002, plus scores of other serious cases of blood clots.

By itself, RU486 is "only" 64-85% effective in inducing abortion, leading to use of other drugs in conjunction, or need for direct abortion afterwards. RU486 has killed women with massive hemorrhages, and 30 FDA cited cases of uterine rupture in three years when Cytotec is used in conjunction with RU486. On August 23, 2000, Searle Drug company warned against use of Cytotec in this fashion. Legalized in the United States in September 2000 the pill has been responsible for the deaths of at least four women in North America, most recently 18-year-old Holly Patterson. http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2004/feb/04022606.html
In 5-8 percent of cases, RU-486 causes severe complications. Danco, the drug's manufacturer, has reported at least 400 adverse events since RU-486 was approved in the U.S. In response to at least two women dying after using the abortion pill RU-486, the FDA and Danco Laboratories, which markets RU-486, issued a warning letter to physicians "that six women have developed serious illnesses and two have died after taking the drug to induce abortions."
2004 the FDA (USA) strengthened its black box warning labels on the RU 486 drug, making them the most severe the agency issues. The abortion pills have been responsible for the deaths of three women.It rejected a proposal by Barr Pharmaceuticals last year to allow the drug, which sometimes causes abortions, to be sold to anyone without a doctor's visit.

Adverse Events Reports

Women who suffer, or doctors who treat, complications caused by RU-486

CANADA: A Canadian woman died during testing of the abortion pill RU-486, and enrolment in the study has been temporarily suspended, the pro-abortion Population Council reported.The Population Council, which has the U.S. rights to the dangerous abortion pill, mifepristone, said in a statement Monday that the death has been reported to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and Canadian authorities.The FDA approved the abortion pill for use in the United States a year ago;
it has not been approved in Canada.The Canadian study was testing mifepristone, also known as RU-486 or Mifeprex, and a second drug used in tandem, misoprostol. Mifepristone blocks the action of progesterone, vital for an unborn child to develop;
misoprostol causes contractions to cause a miscarriage of the dead baby.Only women in the first seven to nine weeks of pregnancy are candidates for the drugs. Studies show the combination fails to produce an abortion 5 percent of the time; serious bleeding is one of many problematic side effects. (Report in Lifeissues.net Newsletter  September 23, 2001)

"China bans abortion pill," CNS News, 10/22/01 for health risk reasons!

Morning-after pill
"Morning after pills"such as Preven work like a double or triple dose of high oestrogen pill, causing the womb to shed its lining, destroying any early embryo that may have been conceived.
The 'morning after pill' Postinor-2, was in July 2002 been made available on prescription only for use in Australia. It is a progestogen-based drug with a high abortifacient action by working to prevent implantation of any newly-conceived child. See Vatican statement on 'morning-after pill'
"Postfertilization Effect of Hormonal Emergency Contraception," by Chris Kahlenborn, MD, Joseph B. Stanford, MD, MSPH, and Walter L. Larimore, MD, appeared in the March 2002 issue of The Annals of Pharmacotherapy, and is  available online at www.theannals.com . Morning-after pill regimens use the same active ingredients found in birth control pills, hormones such as levonorgestrel and ethinyl estradiol. It has been widely assumed that these ingredients work mainly by preventing ovulation. However, this report describes evidence that the drugs may sometimes fail to prevent ovulation and rely instead on an after-fertilization effect, causing abortion of the newly formed embryonic life.
Evidence that morning-after pill drug regimens may cause the death of a living embryo by blocking its attempts to attach inside the uterus. Kahlenborn and colleagues conclude that based on the data reviewed, an after-fertilization, early-abortion effect of these drugs is probably a more common event than is recognized by most physicians or patients.
For as many as 21 days of the average 28-day cycle a woman is normally infertile.Using an emergency contraceptive pill such as Preven at this time is unnecessary anyway, and may disrupt the next ovulation cycle. Once the fertile phase has begun, however, "taking a high level of estrogen via ECPs within 72 hours of intercourse ... may, in fact, precipitate ovulation. This would make it more likely, rather than less, that fertilization will occur," according to Dr. Klaus. ECPs taken promptly could fail to prevent fertilization and thus result in the death of an embryo who is unable to implant successfully due to ECP-induced changes in the endometrium. Also, the risk of a potentially fatal ectopic pregnancy has also been shown to increase. (Morris, J.M. and G. Van Wagenen, "Interception: the use of postovulatory estrogens to prevent implantation," Am. J. Obstet. Gynecol., 115:101-6 (1973); Diana Rabone, M.D., "Postcoital contraception—coping with the Morning After," Current Therapeutics, p.46 (1990)
If an ovum is in the Fallopian tube, the process of fertilization may begin within 15 to 30 minutes after intercourse. The "morning after" is already too late for any contraceptive effect to intervene. Thus some researchers conclude that "post-coital drugs act principally to terminate a viable pregnancy by interfering with the endometrium. scientifically-proven risks of
levonorgestrel (the sole active ingredient of Plan B MAP). Well-documented adverse side effects include significant weight gain (on average 15 pounds), depression, ovarian cyst enlargement, gallbladder disease, high blood pressure, respiratory disorders, increased risk of ectopic pregnancy and death. In some women, these serious adverse effects of levonorgestrel-type MAP could lead to further health risks for bulimia, anorexia, or clinical depression.

RELIGIOUS STANCE
No Christian Church accepted contraception before 1930. The leaders of the Protestant reformation were strongly opposed to unnatural forms of birth control.

EFFECT ON SOCIETY
Contraception's promise of pleasure without parenthood offers the possibility of promiscuous sex without commitment, which in turn has hugely contributed to the epidemic of STDs and AIDs in our time. STDs, which do not always show symptoms, are a leading cause of infertility.

Francis Fukuyama states in The Great Disruption that the use of contraception has "been accompanied by an explosion of illegitimacy and a rise in the rate of abortions." He finds that if contraception has freed anybody, it has freed men who "felt liberated from norms requiring them to look after the women they had gotten pregnant."
Contraceptives do regularly fail, as a 1999 Family Planning Perspectives article reported that 18% of couples using condoms and 12% on the Pill get pregnant within two years. This failure rate causes many to use abortion as a backup remedy rather than face their responsibility for the new life.
Which leaves us with the answer proposed by African president Museveni of Uganda in 1991 addressing the 7th International conference on AIDS, "a return to our time-tested cultural practices which emphasized fidelity and condemnation of premarital or extramarital sex". (Quoted in "Risky Sex" by Stephen Genius, from our library) Chastity, purity, wait until marriage, and fidelity in marriage are making a comeback because medicine shows they are the answer religion has always proclaimed them to be...
Dec 2004 While the HIV virus continues to spread unchecked across the rest of sub-Saharan Africa, the HIV infection rate in Uganda dropped from 15 percent to 5 percent. In 1991, 21 percent of pregnant women had the deadly HIV virus. Ten years later, that figure had dropped to 6 percent," Roberts wrote in the Times article.In fact, only 6.2% of Ugandans in the 15-49 age group are now HIV-positive, compared with more than 15% in the early 1990s. Washington-area investigative writer Carey Roberts took a look at the Ugandan success story.

Uganda's First Lady, Her Excellency Janet K. Museveni, explains how her country's aggressive effort to promote abstinence outside marriage, and fidelity within, was the engine behind Africa's only success story in fighting AIDS. View full article at http://catholiceducation.org/articles/sexuality/se0106.html

A recent book by Australian NRL footballer  Jason Stevens,  gives an insight into the advantages of waiting for sex within marriage. "Worth the Wait: True Love And Why The Sex Is Better." is now available at bookshops.
 

To live the pro-life ethic in a Catholic marriage ,  you may wish to visit these sites:

What is Natural Family Planning?
EWTN's Q&A NFP Forum http://www.ewtn.com/vexperts/forum11.htm
Human sexuality and natural law - why it is meant for marriage, and why actions which violate this are disordered http://www.christianity.com/CC/article/0,,PTID4211|CHID102753|CIID258417,00.html
Billings Family Life Centre: http://www.billings-ovulation-method.org.au/act/actindex.shtml     Home page of the Billings Family Life Centre ACT Inc., a voluntary Australian organization dedicated to the promotion of family life and responsible parenthood through research and education in fertility and natural family planning.
Pope Paul VI Institute ("Creighton Model" - ovulation method of NFP) - www.popepaulvi.com/
WOOMB - World Organisation Ovulation Method Billings ("Billings Method" - ovulation method of NFP) - www.woomb.org

Australian Council of Natural Family Planning
Queensland instructors
or contact NFP Instructor ,Centacare, 10 Bolsover St. Rockhampton

JOSEPH G. PASTOREK II, M.D.: This outstanding pro-life Catholic physician is available to respond to your questions via his web site.  Dr. Pastorek specializes in obstetrics, gynecology and teaching natural methods for spacing children: http://www.pastorek.com/consultant/index.html.
 
 

INFERTILITY
Avoidable causes of infertility include multiple sexual partners, sexually transmitted diseases, endometriosis, and aging of the cervix accelerated by use of contraceptive hormones, as well as "lifestyle" choices which include smoking, alcohol and previous septic abortions.
The Catholic Church allows the use of fertility drugs as long as the fertilization of the eggs takes place in the natural way.
The 1994 "Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services" issued by the US
Bishops Conference sums up Catholic moral teaching on this matter:

          "Those techniques of assisted conception that respect the unitive and procreative meanings of sexual intercourse and do not involve the destruction of human embryos or their deliberate generation in such numbers that it is clearly envisioned that all cannot implant and some are simply being used to maximize the chances of others implanting, may be used as therapies for fertility."

The marital act, holy within marriage, contains the unitive and procreative reciprocal self-giving of each spouse—"that the two may become one flesh." The dignity of the husband and wife are important, as is the dignity of the child to be created.

          The human person must be accepted in his parents’ act of union and love; the generation of a child must therefore be the fruit of that mutual giving  which is realized in the conjugal act wherein the spouses cooperate as servants and not as masters in the work of the Creator who is Love "(Donum Vitae, #45, 46).

     Check out this site of the US Bishops http://www.nccbuscc.org/prolife/programs/rlp/98rlphaa.htm

Such conditions as endometriosis, pelvic adhesions, obstructions of the fallopian tubes, hormonal dysfunctions, ovulation-related problems, previous chlamydia infections, polycystic ovarian disease, hypothalamic amenorrhea, etc. are all organic or functional causes of infertility. They can all be relatively easily evaluated and treatment approaches exist for each one of these conditions.
Infertility program for Catholics http://www.popepaulvi.com/infertility1.htm
  

IVF Facts: Women who delay having children until other  career and personal goals are reached can find they have waited too long. Miscarriage rates also increase with age (9% at age 20. 18% at 35 ,and 36% by 40s). Experts say that by 42, the chances of having a baby using one's own eggs, even with advanced medical help, are less than 10%.
At 35 the IVF success rate per round is as low as 55% "Then it falls in a straight line; from the age of 45  the chances of success are zero" Dr Robert Jansen, Sydney IVF (quoted in "You can't have it all"  Courier Mail Sat March 1 2003) "As infertility professionals we are very aware there is a false perception that people can have babies at any age. Nobody seems to have told them that fertility declines quite early" Dr Younger Monash IVF Sunnybank (quoted in same article).

The moral objections to early IVF experimentation were even more pronounced than they are now due to the initial extraordinarily high embryo wastage rate and the dubious nature of early research.    Doctors Edwards and Steptoe, who produced Louise Brown, the world's first "test tube" baby, discarded 99.5% of their fertilized ova over a period of 12 years.  This means that they had failed in the first 200 attempts at transferring the embryo to the uterus. It is often forgotten that for every child brought to birth using these techniques, several embryos will have died, been frozen or destroyed in the process.
Even now, IVF "statistics from the Infertility Treatment Authority of Victoria show that for 1998 in all of Victoria, only 11.9% of cycles resulted in confinement or an ongoing pregnancy. Of all the embryos brought into being in 1998 only 2.8% reached live birth or were still developing in utero.(quoted in QRTL newsletter Sept 2000) 

There is also the ethical problem that far too many embryos have been created and frozen. Australian national statistics have indicated that there are currently 65,518 embryos in frozen storage across the country, a threefold increase on 1994.
( http://old.smh.com.au/news/0106/12/national/national1.html ) Some of these embryos will be 'lucky' enough to be thawed, transferred to their mothers, and mature to term. But many die in the process or are left indefinitely in a state of 'suspended animation'.Many of their parents no longer want them, and the expiry date for their usefulness leads to them being discarded. Scientists now want to use them for research experiments. They were created because their parents desperately wanted children. Is it right that while their brother/s or sister/s enjoy the sunshine and their parents' love, they be cut up in labs?

Because the IVF process involves external conception brought about by medical intervention, it does not have the approval of the Church, which wishes conception to happen within the context of the conjugal act. For more details of Church teaching on embryo experimentation, IVF and surrogate motherhood, see Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith's "Instruction on respect for human life in its origin and on the dignity of procreation"(in our library plus online copy )
"Those who resort to artificial methods must be held responsible for illicit conception, but whatever
           the mode of conception—once it happens—the child conceived must be absolutely respected. The
           life of the fetus must be protected, defended and nurtured in the mother's womb because of its
           inherent dignity, a dignity which belongs to the embryo and is not something conferred or granted
           by others, whether the genetic parents, the medical personnel or the State."( FETAL LIFE MUST BE PROTECTED AND NURTURED Pope John Paul II 3/4/2000)

Re Frozen embryos , the Holy Father recently had this to say:
"I therefore appeal to the conscience of the world's scientific authorities and in particular to
             doctors, that the production of human embryos be halted, taking into account that there
              seems to be no morally licit solution regarding the human destiny of the thousands and
              thousands of "frozen" embryos which are and remain the subjects of essential rights and
              should therefore be protected by law as human persons. I also call on all jurists to work so
              that States and international institutions will legally recognize the natural rights of the very
              origin of human life and will likewise defend the inalienable rights which these thousands of
              "frozen" embryos have intrinsically acquired from the moment of fertilization." (I APPEAL TO WORLD'S SCIENTIFIC AUTHORITIES: HALT THE PRODUCTION OF HUMAN EMBRYOS! Pope John Paul II
 Given to those attending a Symposium on "Evangelium vitae and Law", and the 11th International Colloquium on Roman and Canon Law, when he received them in audience on Friday, 24 May 1996.)

Melbourne Diocese's IVF ethics page http://www.melb.catholic.aust.com/topics/topicnew.htm(currently being revamped)

Australian national Statistics have indicated that there are currently 65,518 embryos in frozen storage across the country, a threefold increase since 1994.

Ethical concerns:
 2003 NEWS
IVF and increased risk of defects
A recent study has shown that there is worrying statistical evidence that IVF children have an increased risk of defects, perhaps due to some little understood part of the IVF culture process. Report can be found on transcripts of the ABC Catalyst program
www.abc.net.au/catalyst/stories/s904186.htm

Many scientists believe that as many as 40 percent of all sperm are damaged or abnormal, and that almost all of these are screened out in nature by the difficult trip through the uterus and Fallopian tubes. This is one of the reasons that most IVF clinics insist upon  prenatal diagnosis and abortion if the resulting baby is defective in any way.  In fact, the parents of the first IVF baby, Baby Louise, signed a contract that required abortion if prenatal testing revealed their preborn to be handicapped.

Effectiveness Per Embryo.  Pro-life activists object to in-vitro fertilization primarily because it involves the intentional and inevitable destruction of many human embryos for the sake of pure efficiency.  For example, only four percent of 14,585 human embryos survived to birth in a 1984 European study, and another study done in 1987 at the United States' largest IVF center in Norfolk, Virginia, concluded that only five percent of 4,500 embryos survived to birth.
Resulting embryos that appear to be defective in any way are simply discarded as garbage.  If a woman becomes pregnant with multiple embryos, a `doctor' will many times perform a "pregnancy reduction," which is a fancy way of describing selective abortion.  The unwanted children are killed with a shot of potassium chloride to the heart, and they are simply reabsorbed by the mother's body.
     Naturally, some other researchers hate to see all of these perfectly good embryos go to waste, so they extract them alive and experiment upon them.

According to a report in the Courier Mail in the year 2000, Brisbane's Wesley Hospital, like many other IVF clinics, now offers "pre-implantation diagnosis, which enables doctors to identify embryos testing positive to defects... During PGD, fertilised eggs develop for three days before one or two cells are removed for genetic testing. This enables the identification of disorders such as Downs syndrome, haemophilia, muscular dystrophy, and cystic fibrosis. The test, which involves DNA analysis, results in only abnormality-free embryos being transferred into the uterus to establish a normal pregnancy"
The eggs are harvested, then united in the laboratory with the husband's sperm.The resulting fertilized eggs are allowed to develop to a four- to six-cell stage. Then, before the physicians implant the early embryos in the mother, one of the cells, or blastomeres, is delicately lifted from each embryo with a microscopic needle at the end of a syringe. Using molecular biology techniques, the cell is analyzed for the presence of a disease gene. (Since all the cells at this stage have the same potential for developing into a human, removal of a single cell won't jeopardize normal development.) The patient then receives the "embryos that do not bear the worrisome gene" .
Those who offer this test do not regard the pre-implanted embryo as a pregnancy termination, and so do not feel ethical scruples about discarding these "defective" humans.
This standpoint comes from the recently engineered push to define a new human life as beginning at implantation, not at conception as is the truth of the matter. Pro-lifers are dismayed by this lack of protection for these tiny embryos, which is opening the doors for experimentation on embryos deemed "in excess of need" by IVF clinics or frozen embryos no longer "wanted".
Many IVF clinics offer this procedure which means that "pre-implanted embryos" with these conditions  have a high chance of having their lives terminated at this point, showing discrimination against the right of humans with any such genetic predisposition (which may not ever develop into these disabilities) to exist. Will those with dwarfism, Downs syndrome, even diseases which may have a "chance of developing" late in life, now become ripe candidates never to be born? Will such screening become routine during IVF? As existing pregnancies are already routinely tested for some disorders(many positive result tests have later proved utterly wrong), will there now be pressure from the medical "experts" for the mother to abort?

"A Down Syndrome affected child is a human being who is just as human as our other children. He has just one extra chromosome. But they are human beings suffering from a disease - but just as human as we are. I do not see any logical reason to destroy them because they have Down Syndrome . I have never understood that." said Jerome Lejeune, the geneticist who discovered the cause of Down Syndrome.

"No individual should be subjected to unfair discrimination by a third party on the basis of having had a genetic test or receiving an abnormal genetic test result."states a NIH Task Force report "Promoting Safe and Effective Genetic Testing in the United States" , but strangely enough it is seemingly not willing to extend this rule to pre-natally tested embryos, preferring to let parents decide. The Task Force, created by the National Institutes of Health (NIH)-Department of Energy (DOE) Working  Group on Ethical, Legal, and Social Implications (ELSI) of Human Genome Research to review genetic testing in the United States and make recommendations to ensure the development of safe and effective genetic tests, in its final report September 1997, does say
           "the Positive test results might not mean the disease will inevitably develop. This is particularly a
             problem for the common disorders. For those who get the disease, the age at which it occurs
             and its severity and response to treatment cannot always be predicted. These problems arise
             in some Mendelian disorders, as well as in the common disorders. For instance, the severity of
             the lung disease, the most life-threatening aspect of cystic fibrosis, cannot be predicted by the
             mutations a person with CF possesses."
New research casts doubt on the reliability of ultrasound in detecting Downs syndrome in the womb. The cystic fibrosis test can also be misinterpreted leading to abortion.  "Genetic test blunders risk needless abortions"  30 April 03  New Scientist http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99993675

What does the ACT Right to Life Association say about ultrasound tests to detect the unborn disabled?

Australian Family Association spokesperson Richard Egan says: "A society that seeks to weed out those 'unworthy to live' is on a path to self-destruction. Who chooses which of us don't make the grade? Selection on the basis of disability whether by abortion, infanticide or embryo disposal is all the same" (AFA Family Update,May 1999)

Prenatal diagnosis is permitted when the procedure does not threaten the life or physical integrity of the unborn child or the
mother and does not subject them to disproportionate risks; when the diagnosis can provide information to guide preventative
care for the mother or pre- or postnatal care for the child; and when the parents, or at least the mother, give free and informed
consent. Prenatal diagnosis is not permitted when undertaken with the intention of aborting an unborn child with a serious defect. (Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services National Conference of Catholic Bishops [U.S.A.]
November 1994 part4 Issues in Care for the Beginning of Life)

As Queensland Right to Life would explain,
"From the time of fertilisation, the human embryo is a human being.
The definition of the embryo must include fertilised ovum/egg with life beginning at conception, not with the implantation at some other point in time.
We are opposed to the in-vitro fertilisation program which causes embryonic human beings to be treated as objects or products, for reasons which include:
1. Any embryo not perceived to be satisfactory is aborted.
2. Women with multiple embryos are offered selective abortion.
3. Freezing the embryo subjects this delicate and fragile being to greater risk of damage or death and, even if implantation is successful it contravenes the embryo's right not to have his/her potential delayed or deliberately interfered with.
4. Excess embryos are produced but discarded or used in experimental research. These embryos are considered only for their usefulness, or to explore or to expand upon IVF techniques or to be used in cloning procedures.

The Catholic Church says re the rights of the person,
"among such fundamental rights one should mention in this regard every human being's right to life and physical integrity from the moment of conception until death" CCC2273
The State must uphold the equality of all before the law, including the unborn. While prenatal diagnosis is good when it helps to safeguard or heal the unborn child, "Prenatal diagnosis...is gravely opposed to the moral law when this is done with the thought of possibly inducing an abortion, depending upon the results: a diagnosis must not be the equivalent of a death sentence."CCC2274
"It is immoral to produce human embryos intended for exploitation as diposable biological material" CCC 2275

Eugenics is the elitist theory of improvement of the human race through selective breeding and weeding out the unfit, as advocated by Margaret Sanger, and practised by the Nazis. British science writer Matt Ridley in his book "Genome" says this:
"In most countries, amniocentesis is now offered to, perhaps even imposed upon, all older mothers, to check whether the foetus carries an extra chromosome. If it does, the mother is offered - or cajoled into - an abortion. The reason given is that, despite the happy demeanour of these children, most people would rather not be the parent of a Down child...If you are of one opinion, you see this as a manifestation of benign science, miraculously preventing the birth of cruelly incapacitated people at no suffering. If you are of another opinion you see the officially encouraged murder of a sacred human life in the dubious name of human perfection and to the disrespect of disablility."
Thus Prenatal screening, often proven inaccurate, is the cause of many abortions, all in the same mold of fear of parental responsibility for a disabled child and the eugenics search for the perfect child product.
 

IVF LINKS:

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