Red Cross May Advocate Abortion Rights

By Stefano Gennarini, J.D., and Susan Yoshihara, Ph.D.


New York, December 16 (C-FAM) A recently issued report from the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent has caused concerns that the organization may start advocating for abortion rights.

In a section of the report on human rights IFRC quotes a widely criticized document issued by Anand Grover, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Health, which said, "States must take measures to ensure that legal and safe abortion services are available, accessible, and of good quality." The IFRC report goes on to editorialize, "But the real challenge is to find out how many states will indeed change their policies accordingly.”

This may lead some to believe IFRC could eventually declare abortion a human right as Amnesty International did in 2007. Amid much controversy, Amnesty International simply announced that endorsing abortion as a right was a "natural" outgrowth of its 2-year campaign countering violence against women.

Initially an external relations manager at IFRC told the Friday Fax the organization “definitely” did not consider abortion a human right. Gabriel Pictet, the manager of IFRC’s community health unit said, "IFRC did not change its position on abortion as a human right. To my knowledge it never had one."

Pictet said IFRC quoted the highly controversial UN special rapporteur’s document "because the issue of safe abortion is relevant to public health, to health inequities and to human rights. By ensuring access to safe abortions, rather than making abortions illegal and thereby unsafe, the likelihood of reaching the Millennium Development Goal 5 [improve maternal health] increases.”

IFRC has adopted the same position as pro-abortion groups at the UN who equate "unsafe" with illegal abortion, and invoke international development agreements to promote legal abortion. In fact, abortion can cause maternal health problems and even death. Moreover, the world's lowest maternal mortality occurs in countries where abortion is illegal, such as Ireland and Chile.

What’s more, abortion is never mentioned in the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). UN member states rejected the term "reproductive health" within the MDGs on every occasion it was debated, precisely to avoid interpretations that it might include abortion. While UN agencies began asserting in 2008 that MDG5 includes a target on reproductive health, they cannot publicly assert that the target includes abortion.

For now, IFRC’s Pictet says, "Because abortion is a matter of personal conscience, it does not make sense for an international membership organization like IFRC to go beyond raising the issue."

The Geneva-based IFRC is a separate organization from the 150 year-old International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). Whereas ICRC works in conflict zones and adheres to the Geneva Conventions of 1949, IFRC is supposed to take the lead in post-conflict and non-conflict humanitarian emergencies.

Both IFRC and ICRC are part of the Red Cross Movement whose mission is "to alleviate human suffering, protect life and health, and uphold human dignity especially during armed conflicts and other emergencies."

Source:  Friday Fax

Noted Atheist Dead at Age 62

Christopher Hitchens is dead.

The prolific journalist, well-known public intellectual and noted contrarian, who is perhaps most famous in the eyes of many Americans for his best-selling exegesis against religion, passed away Thursday at the MD Anderson Cancer in Houston, Texas. He was 62.

Read more here.


Dr. William Witt has written an excellent piece on Hitchens.  Read it here.

For information on Christians who have debated Hitchens, go here.

Obama's Foreign Policy Directive: Promote LGBT Rights

By Wendy Wright


GENEVA, December 16 (C-FAM) All federal agencies dealing with U.S. diplomacy and foreign assistance must now promote lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) rights. This new priority puts U.S. foreign policy on a collision course with religious freedom.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced President Obama’s sweeping directive to UN diplomats in Geneva last week. Along with the full-force of the U.S. government, a Global Equality Fund will equip foreign LGBT groups to agitate within countries.

Every federal agency engaged overseas, and “other agencies as the President may designate,” is directed to “combat the criminalization of LGBT status or conduct abroad,” assist LGBT refugees and asylum seekers, leverage aid to advance LGBT nondiscrimination, respond swiftly to abuses of LGBT persons abroad, enlist international organizations “in the fight,” and report on progress.

A State Department official said, “We are not just having people . . . whose full-time job it is to occupy ourselves with concerns of human rights, but also people whose daily grind is, most of the time, spent on different things.”

This elevates LGBT above every other people group, including those persecuted for religious beliefs, promoting democracy and human rights, ethnic minorities, and women.

Asked by the Friday Fax if any other minority has this status, the State Department did not respond.

By one account, only nine countries do not discriminate in some way against LGBT individuals, such as donating blood or “higher age of consent laws.”

Obama’s directive comes as Nigeria debates a bill to protect marriage. The Catholic Medical Association of Nigeria denounced “the coordinated ferocity” by foreign governments and international groups “browbeating” legislators to adopt laws that are premised on “dubious science and ethical mischief.”

Reacting to Obama’s order, Oliver Kisaka with the National Council of Churches of Kenya told the CS Monitor, “God did not make a mistake; being gay is that person’s own perspective. Those who live as gays need help to live right and we should not be supporting them to live in a wrong reality.

“Society should reach out to gays and transgender people to help them out of their situation. They have not ceased to be God’s children and no one is a gone case.”

Clinton equated religious and cultural views on sexuality and gender identity with “violent practices toward women like honor killings, widow burning or female genital mutilation."

Tina Ramirez of the Washington DC–based Becket Fund for Religious Liberty told the Friday Fax, "The Administration is sticking its head in the sand when it comes to the conflict between gay rights and religious freedom. The failure of either the President or the Secretary of State to articulate how the international LGBT rights initiative will interact with religious conscientious objection is a recipe for conflict between the two. No one disagrees with Secretary Clinton's truism that religious freedom doesn't protect religiously-motivated violence against anyone. But the real issue, that neither the President nor Secretary Clinton talked about, is what happens when the LGBT initiative conflicts with sincere conscientious objection. Religious liberty is a fundamental human right protected in the United States Constitution, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and countless other human rights instruments; the Administration seems to be treating it as an afterthought."

Source: Friday Fax

Congress Not Respected by Americans

Congress Given Lowest Rating in Gallup History; Americans Rate Members' Ethics Low, Very Low

A record 64 percent of American adults -- surveyed by Gallup in a poll released yesterday (December 12, 2011) -- rated the honesty and ethical standards for members of Congress as "low" or "very low." Those numbers mark the lowest rating that Gallup has measured for any profession since it began polling the question in 1976, according to the Yahoo website.

The 64 percent rating ties members of Congress with the 64 percent low rating that lobbyists received in Gallup's 2008 survey.

The low ethics rating is in line with the overall low regard the American public has for its lawmakers.

Members of Congress, lobbyists, car salespeople, and telemarketers round out the bottom tier of professions ranked by public perceptions of their ethics in the Gallup survey. Professions earning high ethics marks in the poll were nurses, pharmacists, medical doctors, and high school teachers.

The November 28 to December 1, 2011 poll of adults had a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.

 

Source: Theology and Society

Dutch Crazy about Euthanasia

Straight from the “just when you thought it couldn’t possibly get any worse” files come reports that the Dutch Health Minister admitted in their parliament recently that her department is “considering” setting up mobile euthanasia death squads.

Minister Edith Schippers is quoted in the UK Telegraph as saying that mobile units "for patients who meet the criteria for euthanasia but whose doctors are unwilling to carry it out" was worthy of consideration.

Instantly, many will be reminded of the SS Einsatzgruppen death squads that moved through towns on the Eastern Front following the Nazi invasion of Russia in 1941. I hesitate to draw any further comparison with this dark and sinister period in European history, but this recent development is disturbing on a number of levels.

The suggestion that these mobile units would euthanase people where the local doctor was not willing to do the killing could constitute a serious breach of medical ethics. What if the doctor would not kill for sound medical reasons such as untreated depression or evidence of coercive pressure? Will his or her advice be sought and will his opinion and treatment plan prevail? It doesn’t seem that likely.

Already we have seen Dutch patients with Alzheimer’s being euthanased. But Dutch pro-euthanasia groups are known to want to expand the eligibility for euthanasia further; the UK Daily Mail reports the lobby as saying “that 80 per cent of people with dementia or mental illnesses were being ‘missed' by the country’s euthanasia laws’.” Missed? Is there a door-to-door search? Quick, hide Grandma in the cupboard!

Would the patient’s doctor even be told that the death squad was about to visit his patient? For the frail, elderly or those with depression or mental illness, the doctor may well also be the patient’s only advocate. Doctor shopping for a preferred diagnosis is one thing, but this is death as a door-to-door salesman!

A salesman it is. In Washington State, where assisted suicide is legal, advocates like the euphemistically titled “Compassion and Choices” provide advice to those seeking death in how to approach their doctor and what to do if he or she tries to talk the patient out of it or tries to defer the conversation. Their advice suggests that any answer other than supporting the provision of assisted suicide under their Dignity With Dying Act is unacceptable. But again, is it not a legitimate role of the doctor to avoid a direct answer on such a question with the aim of taking the time to conduct a proper medical and mental health assessment and the best outcome for the patient?

Of course, if you don’t get what you want, there’s always help at the other end of the phone: “... call Compassion; Choices of Washington and request a Client Support Volunteer who can help you achieve a peaceful, humane death.” One can easily imagine a similar line being adopted in Holland: “Your doctor said no. How terrible! Here, call the mobile hotline now!

Paul Russell is the Director of HOPE: Preventing Euthanasia & Assisted Suicide and is based in South Auustralia. He is also Vice Chair, International Euthanasia Prevention Coalition.
www.noeuthanasia.org.au

Quote of the Week - Charles Raven

"It would be a great tragedy if the reframing of Anglicanism that we are seeing take hold in Africa and the Global South was to be subverted by Lambeth rebranding." --British columnist Charles Raven

Kiir's Daughter Marries Ethiopian, Ayok Reports and is Threatened

SOURCE: Arabic Network for Human Rights Information/IFEX - 12 December 2011 - ANHRI expresses its concern about Sudanese journalist Dengdit Ayok, deputy editor of the English-language newspaper "Destiny", who received a death threat via email for publishing an article critical of the country's president, Salva Kiir.

In November, Ayok was detained for two weeks and "Destiny" was suspended after publishing its first two issues, after it reported on the marriage of the president's daughter to an Ethiopian. The authorities deemed the article as "unethical to the profession of journalism". One of the reasons given for the decision, which was signed by the director of the Internal Security Agency in Juba, Akol Koor Kuc, is that it is noted that on many occasions, the newspaper continued reporting on "isolated topics that should not be published for the public".

Although five months have passed since independence, journalists in Southern Sudan are working without any legislative instruments that regulate the press and publications, or any code that guarantees the rights of journalists and protects them from detention and fines. Hence, the ruling authorities have full power to assess what is professional and objective and what deserves to be sanctioned with a detention or brought to trial.

"The closure of a newspaper and death threats for a journalist are not the best start for the authorities in Southern Sudan when it comes to addressing journalistic freedoms. As a matter of fact, it is obliged to behave differently than Northern Sudan, in terms of newspapers being confiscated, websites being blocked, and the detention of journalists. It is quite unfortunate that this nascent state pursues the same infamous practices," said ANHRI.

"The authorities must introduce a law protecting press freedoms and guaranteeing freedom of opinion and expression in its peaceful form, so as not to drift to the list of restrictive anti-press states," added ANHRI.

For more information:

Arabic Network for Human Rights Information
10 Elwy Street
Apartment 5
Behind the Central Bank
Downtown Cairo
Egypt
info (@) anhri.net
Phone: +202 239 64058
Fax: +202 239 64058
http://www.anhri.net/