It's been paralyzing as an NFP teacher and a lecturer on TOB from Connecticut to think about this and believe it is actually happening. But plenty of people in blogdom have plenty to say. Here's some of it:
The American Papist comments: ""Reluctant compliance", as Bp. Lori calls it, is hardly an ideal state of affairs....I think the precedent of giving "reluctant compliance" to intrusive laws is imprudent. Practically speaking, it is no different than full compliance."
The Curt Jester comments: "I think what I found most disappointing about the Bishop's letters is that it seemed all about the prudence of challenging and resisting the law and zero emphasis on possibly allowing Catholic hospitals to kill human beings in the name of prudence."
An anonymous poster at the Papist comments:"If an elderly relative of my grandmother had had an abortion after a rape, then 10 children of her child would not have been born, including a Catholic priest."
Blogger 'She Said' from The Connecticut Catholic reports: " 'For those very same bishops to do a 180-degree turnabout two days before the legislation becomes law, without any adequate explanation, is incomprehensible,' Cafero said. 'It shows apparent disregard and disrespect for the political process and those of us who worked in their behalf.'
She continues: "I wonder what changed. Why didn't the CT Conference change their Plan B protocols 2 years ago? It would have saved me and countless other loyal Connecticut Catholics time spent writing letters, talking to fellow parishioners, defending Catholic teaching, protesting with several small children at the Capitol. What a waste of time! A holy, Catholic friend of mine can only think of the poor souls lost. But me, I'm concerned with the egg on our collective faces."
matthew archbold at Creative Minority Report says:" The Bishop's argument is absurd mainly because it is so inconclusive. They're intentionally viewing the science as inconclusive because it's easier to do so. Without moral constancy, the Church is just a socially benevolent organization."
Diogenes at CWNews says: "Last week the bishops said the state law imposed a morally unjustifiable obligation on hospitals. This week they say it doesn't. If you don't perceive a change in teaching, get yourself fitted for a miter. "
Then there's the pity, prayers and punishment (courtesy of The American Papist):
"Let's pray for the people of Connecticut - especially women who are victims of rape. Perhaps they can be strong regarding Plan B where others are not."
"This has not been a good day for Catholics. For Knights, its especially sad to hear the news coming out of CT given that its Bishop Lori's turf. "
" As a pharmacist who left retail pharmacy rather than dispense birth control pills, and now after 8 years have returned because I have a conscience clause in place such that I do NOT dispense birth control pills nor plan b because of their abortifacient properties! So these bishops now say the reason I put my career on the line is null?"
"I wonder how all those people who marched to the Capitol in Hartford for Catholic Advocacy Day feel now? I'm in the Diocese of Bridgeport. Nothing about this story surprises me given the shambles we are in here."
" The modernist heresy continues in Connecticut."
" I am from the Hartford Archdiocese and I feel so betrayed. If there are "serious doubts" about how the pill works, then err on the side of caution. What can we *do* to help the bishops to stand up to the state??? We can't be afraid to suffer for the Kingdom of God."
" I hope that the Vatican speaks and acts quickly on this. Now we have the whole nation of Catholics thrown into confusion. Are the bishops complicit or not in grave sin? Are they automatically excommunicated or not? Are these bishops teaching the Truth, or have they become renegades? What are we supposed to believe?"
Showing posts with label emergency contraception. Show all posts
Showing posts with label emergency contraception. Show all posts
2.04.2006
The Human Pesticide That Kills Mother, Too
RU-486 is the drug that won’t die, no matter how many women who take it do. A recent article in the New England Journal of Medicine suggested that an RU-486 abortion was an astonishing ten times more likely to be fatal for the mother than a surgical abortion performed at the same point in pregnancy (RU-486 is not used for late-term abortions).
By Joseph A. D’Agostino
On January 28, Dr. Ralph Miech presented an explanation of how the RU-486 abortion pill kills women to a Florida conference of the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists (AAPLOG). RU-486, he said, has an anti-glucocorticoid effect, which promotes unhealthy inflammation in the body since glucocorticoid is naturally needed to suppress inflammation. This pro-inflammatory effect of RU-486 can lead to septic shock as the bacterium Clostridium sordellii multiplies in the body, sometimes causing death. And the funny thing is, the anti-glucocorticoid effect of RU-486 was known before the FDA approved the drug. Now, women by the hundreds are having potentially life-threatening complications, and at least a few have died.
RU-486 is the drug that won’t die, no matter how many women who take it do. A recent article in the New England Journal of Medicine (see PRI's Weekly Briefing, Dec. 2, 2005, "Time for a RU-486 Rollback") suggested that an RU-486 abortion was an astonishing ten times more likely to be fatal for the mother than a surgical abortion performed at the same point in pregnancy (RU-486 is not used for late-term abortions). The abortion pill, which has been used to kill over 500,000 unborn children in this country since the FDA officially rushed its approval in September 2000, has the advantage of promoting the abortionists’ goal of making abortion a humdrum, everyday affair, available from any doctor or pharmacist in the world instead of segregated into abortion slaughterhouses. As in America’s days of old, when folk tolerated slavery but didn’t like to see slave-trading going on in respectable parts of town or associate with slave-traders, we don’t like to think the clinics we visit or the doctors we know perform abortions. So abortion is largely shunted off into clinics located in poor minority neighborhoods.
Mifepristone, the scientific name for RU-486, promises to change all that. It’s a simple pill that can be taken at home. It requires no pricey vacuum cutterage equipment, no bloody surgical table in the doctor’s office. No dead fetuses in the health clinic’s medical wastebaskets to explain to any queasy souls. All it requires is the doctor to write a few words on a little square of white paper and hand it to his expectant patient—something he does many times a day as it is. A woman seeking to abort her child need not risk been seen entering or leaving an abortuary.
Abortion easy, abortion everywhere, without any clinics to be picketed by pesky child-huggers.
The one flaw in this inhuman and anti-human dream drug: It not only kills the baby, it sometimes harms or even kills the mother. Surgical abortion is safer for the mother, which is why even pro-abortion activists should favor the withdrawal of RU-486—but safety is not their No. 1 priority.
“RU-38486 was initially developed as an anti-glucocorticoid to treat Cushing's Disease and in the course of routine toxicology studies it was found to be an abortifacient,” Miech told PRI. “Under the name RU-486, it was developed as a medical abortifacient and its toxic effect on the innate immune system was not studied or was ignored.”
Two female physicians, Margaret M. Gary and Donna J. Harrison, just published a study in the February 2006 The Annals of Pharmacotherapy.
Harrison is chairwoman of AAPLOG’s Subcommittee on Mifeprex. “The choice of mifepristone termination over surgical termination is based mainly on patient perceptions of safety, convenience, and privacy, but these perceptions do not accurately reflect the realities of the regimen,” they concluded.
The two doctors examined 637 mifepristone adverse event reports (AERs) filed by health care practitioners after mifepristone (brand name
Mifeprex) was used by patients. It’s taken years to get these reports released, and they are incomplete—and many adverse events are never reported at all under America’s lax reporting system. Miech noted, “The way the FDA has set up the AER process is that it is voluntary, and physicians and nurses are too busy to take the time to fill out the simple paper work. Furthermore, most physicians and nurses do not know what an AER is.”
Wrote Gary and Harrison, “AERs relied upon by the FDA to monitor mifepristone’s post-marketing safety are grossly deficient due to extremely poor quality.” They do contain a lot of gruesome detail, however. The AERs included those on the four American women known to have died from RU-486 plus the death of a Swedish teenager.
Hemorrhage (237 reported) and infection (66) were the most frequent complications among the AERs. Among the hemorrhages, 168 were serious cases, 42 life-threatening, and one was fatal. Seven cases of septic shock were reported, four life-threatening and three fatal. Emergency surgery was required in 513 cases.
The inflammations resulting from taking RU-486 reported in the AERs may be due to mifepristone’s quality of suppressing anti-inflammatories, not allergic reactions as some believe, suggest the two. “These pro-inflammatory reactions reported as allergic reactions in AERs may be due to the action of mifepristone’s blockade of cortisol receptors,” they wrote.
The Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy, and Human Resources of the House Committee on Government Reform, chaired by Rep. Mark Souder (R.-Ind.), is already investigating RU-486’s safety. In the meantime, Rep. Roscoe Bartlett (R.-Md.) is trying to get Holly’s Law passed. Named after 18-year-old California girl Holly Patterson, a healthy young woman killed by RU-486, Holly’s Law (HR 1079) would revoke government approval of RU-486. South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint (R.) has a companion bill, S 511. “In his State of the Union Address last night, President Bush said, ‘A hopeful society has institutions of science and medicine that do not cut ethical corners, and that recognize the matchless value of every life,’” said Bartlett on February 1. “The President’s words and this research add more compelling justification for Holly’s Law because the FDA slashed ethical and procedural corners when it approved RU-486 under a special ‘restricted distribution’ approval process.”
Meanwhile, the manufacturer of misoprostol, which is often—maybe usually—used in conjunction with mifepristone to perform abortions, has again warned that such a use is not safe. And the Australian Senate is expected to vote next week on whether to override the Health minister’s decision to keep RU-486 illegal. In a submission to the Australian parliament, Harrison and the Family Research Council’s Chris Gacek warned that rural Australians would suffer most. “Finally, many of the women who underwent emergency procedures are alive because they had rapid access to surgical and hospital services. In a rural area, where medical and surgical access is limited, these women would likely have died. Women in rural areas are the most vulnerable to lethal complications from a mifepristone abortion,” they said.
The growing number of professional articles questioning RU-486’s safety haven’t slowed the drug’s well-funded and globally-aware advocates one bit.
Joseph A. D'Agostino is Vice President for Communications at the Population Research Institute.
_____
PRI
P.O. Box 1559
Front Royal, Va. 22630
USA
Phone: (540) 622-5240 Fax: (540) 622-2728
Email: jad@pop.org
Media Contact: Joseph A. D'Agostino
(540) 622-5240, ext. 204
Website: www.pop.org
_________
(c) 2006 Population Research Institute. Permission to reprint granted. Redistribute widely. Credit required. _________
If you would like to make a tax-deductible donation to PRI, please go to http://pop.org/donate.cfm. All donations (of any size) are welcomed and appreciated. _________
To subscribe to the Weekly Briefing, go to: http://pop.org/subscribe-weekly.cfm or email us at pri@pop.org and say "Add me to your Weekly Briefing." __________ The pro-life Population Research Institute is dedicated to ending human rights abuses committed in the name of "family planning," and to ending counter-productive social and economic paradigms premised on the myth of "overpopulation."
By Joseph A. D’Agostino
On January 28, Dr. Ralph Miech presented an explanation of how the RU-486 abortion pill kills women to a Florida conference of the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists (AAPLOG). RU-486, he said, has an anti-glucocorticoid effect, which promotes unhealthy inflammation in the body since glucocorticoid is naturally needed to suppress inflammation. This pro-inflammatory effect of RU-486 can lead to septic shock as the bacterium Clostridium sordellii multiplies in the body, sometimes causing death. And the funny thing is, the anti-glucocorticoid effect of RU-486 was known before the FDA approved the drug. Now, women by the hundreds are having potentially life-threatening complications, and at least a few have died.
RU-486 is the drug that won’t die, no matter how many women who take it do. A recent article in the New England Journal of Medicine (see PRI's Weekly Briefing, Dec. 2, 2005, "Time for a RU-486 Rollback") suggested that an RU-486 abortion was an astonishing ten times more likely to be fatal for the mother than a surgical abortion performed at the same point in pregnancy (RU-486 is not used for late-term abortions). The abortion pill, which has been used to kill over 500,000 unborn children in this country since the FDA officially rushed its approval in September 2000, has the advantage of promoting the abortionists’ goal of making abortion a humdrum, everyday affair, available from any doctor or pharmacist in the world instead of segregated into abortion slaughterhouses. As in America’s days of old, when folk tolerated slavery but didn’t like to see slave-trading going on in respectable parts of town or associate with slave-traders, we don’t like to think the clinics we visit or the doctors we know perform abortions. So abortion is largely shunted off into clinics located in poor minority neighborhoods.
Mifepristone, the scientific name for RU-486, promises to change all that. It’s a simple pill that can be taken at home. It requires no pricey vacuum cutterage equipment, no bloody surgical table in the doctor’s office. No dead fetuses in the health clinic’s medical wastebaskets to explain to any queasy souls. All it requires is the doctor to write a few words on a little square of white paper and hand it to his expectant patient—something he does many times a day as it is. A woman seeking to abort her child need not risk been seen entering or leaving an abortuary.
Abortion easy, abortion everywhere, without any clinics to be picketed by pesky child-huggers.
The one flaw in this inhuman and anti-human dream drug: It not only kills the baby, it sometimes harms or even kills the mother. Surgical abortion is safer for the mother, which is why even pro-abortion activists should favor the withdrawal of RU-486—but safety is not their No. 1 priority.
“RU-38486 was initially developed as an anti-glucocorticoid to treat Cushing's Disease and in the course of routine toxicology studies it was found to be an abortifacient,” Miech told PRI. “Under the name RU-486, it was developed as a medical abortifacient and its toxic effect on the innate immune system was not studied or was ignored.”
Two female physicians, Margaret M. Gary and Donna J. Harrison, just published a study in the February 2006 The Annals of Pharmacotherapy.
Harrison is chairwoman of AAPLOG’s Subcommittee on Mifeprex. “The choice of mifepristone termination over surgical termination is based mainly on patient perceptions of safety, convenience, and privacy, but these perceptions do not accurately reflect the realities of the regimen,” they concluded.
The two doctors examined 637 mifepristone adverse event reports (AERs) filed by health care practitioners after mifepristone (brand name
Mifeprex) was used by patients. It’s taken years to get these reports released, and they are incomplete—and many adverse events are never reported at all under America’s lax reporting system. Miech noted, “The way the FDA has set up the AER process is that it is voluntary, and physicians and nurses are too busy to take the time to fill out the simple paper work. Furthermore, most physicians and nurses do not know what an AER is.”
Wrote Gary and Harrison, “AERs relied upon by the FDA to monitor mifepristone’s post-marketing safety are grossly deficient due to extremely poor quality.” They do contain a lot of gruesome detail, however. The AERs included those on the four American women known to have died from RU-486 plus the death of a Swedish teenager.
Hemorrhage (237 reported) and infection (66) were the most frequent complications among the AERs. Among the hemorrhages, 168 were serious cases, 42 life-threatening, and one was fatal. Seven cases of septic shock were reported, four life-threatening and three fatal. Emergency surgery was required in 513 cases.
The inflammations resulting from taking RU-486 reported in the AERs may be due to mifepristone’s quality of suppressing anti-inflammatories, not allergic reactions as some believe, suggest the two. “These pro-inflammatory reactions reported as allergic reactions in AERs may be due to the action of mifepristone’s blockade of cortisol receptors,” they wrote.
The Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy, and Human Resources of the House Committee on Government Reform, chaired by Rep. Mark Souder (R.-Ind.), is already investigating RU-486’s safety. In the meantime, Rep. Roscoe Bartlett (R.-Md.) is trying to get Holly’s Law passed. Named after 18-year-old California girl Holly Patterson, a healthy young woman killed by RU-486, Holly’s Law (HR 1079) would revoke government approval of RU-486. South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint (R.) has a companion bill, S 511. “In his State of the Union Address last night, President Bush said, ‘A hopeful society has institutions of science and medicine that do not cut ethical corners, and that recognize the matchless value of every life,’” said Bartlett on February 1. “The President’s words and this research add more compelling justification for Holly’s Law because the FDA slashed ethical and procedural corners when it approved RU-486 under a special ‘restricted distribution’ approval process.”
Meanwhile, the manufacturer of misoprostol, which is often—maybe usually—used in conjunction with mifepristone to perform abortions, has again warned that such a use is not safe. And the Australian Senate is expected to vote next week on whether to override the Health minister’s decision to keep RU-486 illegal. In a submission to the Australian parliament, Harrison and the Family Research Council’s Chris Gacek warned that rural Australians would suffer most. “Finally, many of the women who underwent emergency procedures are alive because they had rapid access to surgical and hospital services. In a rural area, where medical and surgical access is limited, these women would likely have died. Women in rural areas are the most vulnerable to lethal complications from a mifepristone abortion,” they said.
The growing number of professional articles questioning RU-486’s safety haven’t slowed the drug’s well-funded and globally-aware advocates one bit.
Joseph A. D'Agostino is Vice President for Communications at the Population Research Institute.
_____
PRI
P.O. Box 1559
Front Royal, Va. 22630
USA
Phone: (540) 622-5240 Fax: (540) 622-2728
Email: jad@pop.org
Media Contact: Joseph A. D'Agostino
(540) 622-5240, ext. 204
Website: www.pop.org
_________
(c) 2006 Population Research Institute. Permission to reprint granted. Redistribute widely. Credit required. _________
If you would like to make a tax-deductible donation to PRI, please go to http://pop.org/donate.cfm. All donations (of any size) are welcomed and appreciated. _________
To subscribe to the Weekly Briefing, go to: http://pop.org/subscribe-weekly.cfm or email us at pri@pop.org and say "Add me to your Weekly Briefing." __________ The pro-life Population Research Institute is dedicated to ending human rights abuses committed in the name of "family planning," and to ending counter-productive social and economic paradigms premised on the myth of "overpopulation."
1.06.2005
UN Agency Elusive About Abortion Aid for Tsunami Victims
The UN Population Fund (UNFPA) describes itself as the "largest international public sector supplier of contraceptives, condoms and other reproductive health essentials," and states that such supplies are "critical to protecting reproductive health in emergency situations." Yet in press releases on its tsunami relief activities, UNFPA steers clear of directly stating that it provides contraceptives or abortion aids. UNFPA may be responding to past public criticism after disclosures that it was providing such supplies.
In its January 6 press release, the latest and most explicit to date, UNFPA has requested $28 million in donations for, among other things, "the reestablishment of basic reproductive health services" in Indonesia, the re-establishment of "reproductive health services," purchases of "reproductive health commodities" and promotion of "adolescent reproductive health" in the Maldives, and to meet "urgent reproductive health needs" and "restore" and raise awareness of "emergency reproductive health services" in Sri Lanka.
According to UNFPA's "Reproductive Health in Emergency Situations" manual, the "reproductive health needs" of refugees include "guaranteeing the availability of free condoms." Indeed, UNFPA's website says that "Free condoms are among the first reproductive health supplies to reach people caught in a crisis situation...UNFPA provides both male and female condoms in emergencies."
The manual also describes the "reproductive health kits" developed by UNFPA for "the initial acute phase of the emergency," which include "condoms," "oral and injectable contraceptives" including the abortifacient morning-after pills, and "IUD[s]." The kits also contain manual vacuum aspirators, portable abortion devices that are easily used in primitive conditions such as refugee areas.
The supplies in the kits are "stored by UNFPA in preparation for immediate distribution when an earthquake, flood...or other crisis arises." Thus, UNFPA is able to "mount a quick response to emergencies, especially in the initial stages [and] can ship out supplies of condoms and other commodities within a few days." In 2003, UNFPA shipped out over 300 of these "reproductive health kits" to 34 "emergency destinations." [Each reproductive health kit is designed to assist populations totaling between 10,000-150,000 for up to three months.] UNFPA has not disclosed whether it is providing these kits for tsunami refugees.
UNFPA's increasing caution in revealing the full extent of its activities may be the result of past public relations flops. In 1999, UNFPA faced public criticism after it was revealed that it had distributed reproductive health kits to Albanian refugee camps. The Population Research Institute, among others, claimed that UNFPA had "constructed a 'social marketing' campaign to fabricate demand" for contraceptives and abortifacients among a "captive audience" of refugees.
According to its mandate, UNFPA should not participate in any efforts to increase access to abortion or to provide the medical or technical expertise to facilitate abortion. However, numerous reports from both governmental and nongovernmental sources reveal that UNFPA aggressively promotes abortion.
Copyright 2004 - C-FAM (Catholic Family & Human Rights Institute). Permission granted for unlimited use. Credit required.
Catholic Family & Human Rights Institute
866 United Nations Plaza, Suite 427
New York, New York 10017
In its January 6 press release, the latest and most explicit to date, UNFPA has requested $28 million in donations for, among other things, "the reestablishment of basic reproductive health services" in Indonesia, the re-establishment of "reproductive health services," purchases of "reproductive health commodities" and promotion of "adolescent reproductive health" in the Maldives, and to meet "urgent reproductive health needs" and "restore" and raise awareness of "emergency reproductive health services" in Sri Lanka.
According to UNFPA's "Reproductive Health in Emergency Situations" manual, the "reproductive health needs" of refugees include "guaranteeing the availability of free condoms." Indeed, UNFPA's website says that "Free condoms are among the first reproductive health supplies to reach people caught in a crisis situation...UNFPA provides both male and female condoms in emergencies."
The manual also describes the "reproductive health kits" developed by UNFPA for "the initial acute phase of the emergency," which include "condoms," "oral and injectable contraceptives" including the abortifacient morning-after pills, and "IUD[s]." The kits also contain manual vacuum aspirators, portable abortion devices that are easily used in primitive conditions such as refugee areas.
The supplies in the kits are "stored by UNFPA in preparation for immediate distribution when an earthquake, flood...or other crisis arises." Thus, UNFPA is able to "mount a quick response to emergencies, especially in the initial stages [and] can ship out supplies of condoms and other commodities within a few days." In 2003, UNFPA shipped out over 300 of these "reproductive health kits" to 34 "emergency destinations." [Each reproductive health kit is designed to assist populations totaling between 10,000-150,000 for up to three months.] UNFPA has not disclosed whether it is providing these kits for tsunami refugees.
UNFPA's increasing caution in revealing the full extent of its activities may be the result of past public relations flops. In 1999, UNFPA faced public criticism after it was revealed that it had distributed reproductive health kits to Albanian refugee camps. The Population Research Institute, among others, claimed that UNFPA had "constructed a 'social marketing' campaign to fabricate demand" for contraceptives and abortifacients among a "captive audience" of refugees.
According to its mandate, UNFPA should not participate in any efforts to increase access to abortion or to provide the medical or technical expertise to facilitate abortion. However, numerous reports from both governmental and nongovernmental sources reveal that UNFPA aggressively promotes abortion.
Copyright 2004 - C-FAM (Catholic Family & Human Rights Institute). Permission granted for unlimited use. Credit required.
Catholic Family & Human Rights Institute
866 United Nations Plaza, Suite 427
New York, New York 10017
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