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Priests for Life Canada Volume 2003, Issue One                                           Spring 2003  We can rely on our patrons Our Lady of Guadalupe, St. Joseph & St. Michael

A New Look

HIDDEN ANTI-FAMILY AGENDA

    The search and destroy agenda that is characteristic of anti-life and anti-family tactics has become more and more exposed since the historical origins of Planned Parenthood have become known. ‘Unholy Alliances’ continue to support this destructive agenda (see supporting group chart page). The founder of Planned Parenthood Federation, America, (1942), Margaret Sanger originally called her organization the American Birth Control League. It had one specific goal in mind: to reduce the number of people being born.

    When the first clinic was opened in 1916 in Brooklyn, NY, her basic plan was to promote free sex, eugenics and birth control. These programs are still in effect to this day. They include contraception, birth control, abortion, sterilization, etc. The strategy is the same but the verbiage has changed and deceives many under the umbrella of ‘family planning’, hiding the real intent of the anti-life programs. What is really happening through the anti-family agenda is the using of various birth control devices, chemicals, means and methods to disrupt natural law, and God’s plans for mankind. Their agenda is to make these anti-life devices and birth control information available to all people in the world.

    The drive for international birth control intensified after World War II, when in 1948, Margaret Sanger and several other persons formed the International Committee on Planned Parenthood, with representatives from Britain, Holland, Sweden, and the United States. In 1952, the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) was formed, under the leadership of joint presidents: Margaret Sanger (USA) and Lady Rama Rau (India), with members from the Netherlands, Hong Kong, India, Singapore, Sweden, United Kingdom, United States, and West Germany. As most countries had laws that held that promoting birth control would be promoting immorality, they had to work secretly, keeping a low profile and depending on word of mouth methods. 

    Latin America was targeted as the first goal for the so-called ‘family planning’ according to Margaret Sanger, which involved basically four steps: sex education, birth control, so called safe abortions for everyone, and eventually to legalize abortion. Beginning with Chile and Uruguay in the 1960s, they spread into Columbia in 1970 and set up its largest community-based distributors (CBDs) in Brazil in 1972. In 1994 the statistics show that IPPF operated 2,100 clinics, 26,000 outposts and 12,000 other service points, with 42 private family associations in North and South America and the Caribbean (Rizzuto R, IPPF/WHR Region, 1994).

The Overall Goal

    The two largest Federations of Planned Parenthood are in the United States (PPFA) and Canada (PPFC). The overall goal is to ensure programs are in place to increase access to what they designate as ‘safe abortion’. PPFA has 158 affiliates with 938 clinics, 126 perform surgical abortions on sight. It operates in 180 countries. PPFC was formed in 1964  with 29 offices and 68 affiliates operating now in nine Canadian provinces, promoting Sanger’s philosophy of sex education, the availability of birth control, and access to abortion. It also raises money internationally for easy access to abortion - Family Planning. This is  directed toward Pakistan, Brazil, El Salvador, and Jamaica. It also includes Columbia with other targeted areas such as Mexico and the Caribbean. Teens are the main target, implementing ‘Under 20 Clubs’ in Belize, Dominica, Grenada, Guyana, St. Lucia, and St. Vincent, instructing them about birth control and training them to teach IPPF/WBR philosophy (James Sedlak, Deadly Deception, p. 15).

False Claims

    IPPF, under the false claim that the use of birth control lowers unplanned pregnancies and abortions, seeks to get support for reproductive health projects, which are anti-life and anti-family. Dr. Alfred Kinsey at a PPFA conference in 1995 stated: “We have found the highest frequency of induced abortion in the group which, in general, most frequently uses contraceptives” (Ibid., p. 20). 

    The consequences are clear: if someone chooses to use the IPPF’s solutions, birth control devices or contraceptives, more pregnancies take place, as well as an increase in teen sexual activity and an increase in teen pregnancies (Teenage Pregnancy, A. Guttmacher Institute, 1991).

Other Deceptive Strategies

    Other deceptive strategies of IPPF include the use of devices that are not contraceptives but cause abortions - instruments of death (e.g.: IUDs, mini-birth control pills, Depo-Provera, Norplant, Morning After Pills). They cause the death of human beings during their first week of existence. IPPF maintains that pregnancy begins at implantation, not at conception. The truth of the matter is that these devices prevent implantation of already conceived human beings. 

    In the last 25 years, IPPF has killed over 3 million innocent unborn babies and has made over 815 million dollars from its abortion business alone.

    Other IPPF deceptive propaganda claims that providing their family planning programs actually saves money. The problem with this reasoning is that, of course, one can save money if no children were ever born, but this means that there would be no families, no society, and no future of mankind. Actions have consequences. IPPF advocates that the world is overpopulated in order to promote their hidden eugenics agenda. A real reason is that: “rich countries perceive population numbers in the third World as a threat to their security” (Dr. Michael Schooyans, The New World and Demographic Security, 1995). It is a question of who will have world control. The world population today is in the six billion area and the world can support 100 billion with everything needed for life. The problem is lack of technological development and food distribution as well as political, economical and social justice problems. The overpopulation rhetoric is used by IPPF to justify their programs, which are really eugenics. When people are asked to reduce their family size, it is not for the benefit of the family. It is to achieve their goal of control and divert attention from social justice.

Common Sense Rejected

    IPPF adopted the choice to help young people obtain sex satisfaction before marriage stating that this will prevent fear and guilt, as well as provide them with sex education programs and contraceptives (Charles Donovan, The History of Sex Education,  1994). IPPF claims that sex education to teens will reduce teen pregnancies. The contrary is the actual fact: “Every scientific study that has been done shows that sex education is correlated to nothing else but systematically increased use of contraception” (“News Talk, TV”, New York Civil Liberties Union, 1995). IPPF is in the business of selling birth control products and has a financial stake in promoting the use of birth control by children and teens. IPPF tries to substitute condom sense for common sense. They advocate ‘safe sex’ through promoting various safe sex kits with birth control products that do not stop viruses, such as the Pill, which has been shown to actually increase the chances of getting or transmitting AIDS (Family Planning Perspectives, Vol. 25, #6).

Hidden Agendas

    IPPF orchestrates international meetings to develop hidden agendas, which are then imposed on various countries through pressure tactics on government and legislative branches (Copenhagen, Cairo, Beijing, Istanbul, Bangkok). They depend largely on international bodies such as the United Nations Population Fund, World Health Organizations, and the World Bank for their funding (see ‘Groups that donate’ on this page). Leaders are being blackmailed if they wish to receive loans or grants to improve their country’s standard of living. They must accept and implement population control programs to reduce the size of their families (e.g.: China’s policy- maximum one-child per family- city and two children per family - countyryside). They must agree to decrease births and therefore limit the future of a developing country. This means in some cases, as in China, coercive abortion, and  sterilization programs. Recently US President Bush blocked the transfer of $34 million previously designated  for UNFPA.

Simple Pro-Life Plan

It is important to recognize that parents are the primary teachers of children and that they should be the ones to teach sex education in a one-on-one setting. Chastity, charity and courage; abstinence and self-control are the natural ways to train children and to prepare them for a future of lasting marriages. When there are sufficient serious reasons, married couples use Natural Family Planning. This means   acknowledging and using God’s biological laws of fertility and procreation. In this way they continue to respect natural law and act in harmony with God’s creative intention. (Fr. Joseph Hattie, WOOMB Canada).

The Truth

The truth is that birth control causes death to human beings, is against natural law, and is against God’s plan for mankind. There is never a reason for killing a child in the womb. Abortion is never the answer - it creates greater problems. Contraception leads to the slippery slope of abortion, sterilization and a ‘death culture’, which is anti-family, anti-future, and anti-God. V

Notes:

1. For further reference, see: Margaret Sanger, Women and the New Race online at: http://www.bartleby.com/1013/

2. It is estimated that the following deaths of pre-born children occur each year in the USA:

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Fr. Paul Burchat, a priest of Madonna House

    The reason an article such as this is appropriate is because Planned Parenthood (PP) is one of the largest and best-known promoters of the culture of death. It has a very strong anti-life mentality and practice. If we are to be successful in halting its agenda, we must be able to recognize the flaws in that mentality, and do whatever we can to curtail its activities. At the very least, we can in no way compromise with any of its advocates. The culture of life and the culture of death are directly antagonistic and cannot coexist peacefully.

    One example of such warranted resistance happened in the summer of 2002 in Medicine Hat, Alberta. Fr. John Maes, of St. Patrick’s Church, refused to marry Celina Ling and her fiancé, Robert Symmonds. Miss Ling was (is still?) an employee of PP and when this came to the attention of Fr. Maes, he called off the wedding, which had been scheduled to take place on Sept. 21. Fr. Maes was supported by his Ordinary, Bishop Henry of Calgary. Ultimately it is hoped that Miss Ling will reconsider her decision to stay employed with PP and return to a properly ordered practice of her faith. The Church never places such restrictions on people’s activities for punitive reasons, but primarily for remedial ones. She earnestly desires the person’s rehabilitation and prays that they will come to their senses sooner rather than later.

    In order to counteract the mentality of PP, which is so prevalent in our greedy, hedonistic society, we must begin by promoting the dignity of the human person and the fact that God is the author of life, not us. The Holy Father has been relentless in putting forth these ideas, before and during his pontificate. PP flourishes because we have lost these fundamental truths of human existence; that we have been created in the image and likeness of God, that we share His life in this world, and are destined (it is hoped) to share that life much more intimately in the next. Our lives do not end definitively at the grave, our souls live on and at the end of time, we will rise bodily from the grave just as Christ Himself did. We must also remember that human sexuality is a divine gift from God to us. By it we become sharers in the work of creation, specifically the work of creating new human life. Conjugal love, as the Pope has stated in many of his writings, is a reflection and to some degree a manifestation of the Trinitarian life of the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit (cf. “Theology of the Body” - address of Nov. 14, 1979,  On the Dignity and Vocation of Women, #7, Aug. 15, 1988). Its primary purposes are both procreation and the unity of the spouses.
These too show forth the work and the life of the three Divine Persons, which is to be fruitful and creative while they maintain their own inner communion and cohesiveness. When we lose sight of these realities a purely humanistic, mechanistic and utilitarian approach to life and sexuality emerges. An approach, which ends up degrading the human person, and in the extreme, sees life itself as an evil, which must be suppressed if not eliminated altogether.

    So the philosophy of Planned Parenthood runs completely contrary to these truths of human existence and the truth of who God is. It denies that God is the author of life, that sex and all human life is sacred and that we do have the power to control our sexual urges, difficult as this may be at times (but with God’s grace it is always possible). Instead, PP tries to uphold and reconcile the contradiction that, on the one hand, we are autonomous and completely independent, and on the other, that we are slaves to our own lustful impulses. If this were true (and it is not) we would be like animals, who cannot control their instincts, and so must resort to the use of some form of mechanical, surgical or pharmaceutical intervention in order to regulate our fertility. It also endorses the myth of overpopulation, that fertility is a disease and children are not a good but an evil.

    Besides promoting abortion, PP also strongly endorses and pushes contraception and bad sex education programs for teens and young adults. This in turn creates a greater demand for abortion and not a decreased demand for it because the increased promiscuity generated by these programs ultimately leads to more pregnancies and not less, despite the availability of contraceptives. The other tragic result of this increase in sexual activity is the proliferation of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), many of which are not stopped even by barrier methods of contraception. A young girl may not end up pregnant when a condom is used while having sex but she may get a deadly disease. PP is completely unwilling to look at these facts because their endorsement of condoms and the income generated by making them available is substantial. “...the only people still manipulating facts about condoms, apart from UNAIDS, are International Planned Parenthood, condom manufacturers, and those wishful thinkers who would like to believe that reliance on vinyl (or whatever) will protect them” (Catholic Insight, Jan/Feb. 2003, p. 22).

    Therefore if we are to successfully oppose Planned Parenthood we must not only directly confront the agency and its agents wherever we find them, we must (and this is the more important element in the fight) continuously challenge the mindset and the attitudes in our society, which are a manifestation of the culture of death and which are enshrined in the philosophy of Planned Parenthood. Concretely, this means denouncing abortion and upholding the sanctity of all life. It means a refusal to let our children participate in any sex education program, which lacks a sound moral component, does not respect the individual needs of the children and insists on presenting explicit information prematurely, which disrupts the child’s normal rate of psychosexual development. Finally, we must oppose contraception at every opportunity because, “The contraceptive mentality is not the cure, but the cause of the abortion mentality” (D. DeMarco, “The Contraceptive Mentality”, Life Ethics, 1982). The ultimate answer and rebuttal to the underlying mindset of organizations like Planned Parenthood is self-control, not birth control. The Holy Father, Pope John Paul II, states this very well in The Church’s Position on the Transmission of Life, General audience of August 22, 19841 when he says, “This extension of the sphere of the means of ‘domination of the forces of nature’ menaces the human person for whom the method of ‘self-mastery’ is and remains specific. The mastery of self corresponds to the fundamental constitution of the person; it is indeed a ‘natural’ method. On the contrary, the resort to artificial means destroys the constitutive dimension of the person. It deprives man of the subjectivity proper to him and makes him an object of manipulation.”

1 http://www.ewtn.com/library/PAPALDOC/JP840822.htm 

THE MYTH OF ‘SAFE SEX’

If there is such a thing as ‘safe sex’…

Why do we have a major epidemic of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs)?

Why are there 630,000 pregnancies per year among women in the United States who are on the pill?

Why does the rate of pregnancies and abortions continue to rise in areas where there is an increase in the promotion and use of condoms?

Why does teenage pregnancy increase in areas where sex education is promoted?

Why do 36 million people suffer from HIV/AIDS?

Why have 22 million people died of AIDS?

    The general public does not realize that the risks involved in promiscuous sex are very serious, involving disease and death. Why is this so? The answer is all around us. It’s found on TV, billboards, in magazines, styles of clothing… everywhere! We have bought into the ‘hard sell’ of those who are making millions using sex as their tool.
Simply put, sex sells ‘because we buy’. What we are buying is a way of life. What we are not told are the statistics mentioned earlier - and these are but a few. Instead, people are convinced that they can safely engage in activities known to put a person’s health or even life at risk. This deception involves a high price for those who buy into this lie when condoms fail to deliver the promised protection as promoted.
   
    What must we do to fight this situation? Yes, we must pray, but I believe the answer lies in our ‘comfortable pews’. When we pray, we often feel that we’ve done our part. The problem, however, is that in doing only prayer, we can become apathetic. The world in which we live is accepted as being OK. We must do more than pray! We must be pro-life active.

    It is good to ask ourselves to what extent we are consumers of what the world is selling. Are we allowing our children to be formed by this deceptive world of consumption? Are we, or our children, ‘in the world’ or ‘of the world’?

    Let us not judge others, but instead look at our own lives, and critically review to what extent we are part of the problem.

    “A man is marked out as God’s enemy if he chooses to be the world’s friend” (Jas 4:4).  V

CALGARY BISHOP FRED HENRY INTENDS TO ISSUE A ‘WAKE-UP CALL’

CALGARY, January 27, 2003 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Calgary Bishop Fred Henry has announced that he intends to send a wake-up call to Catholic politicians who fail to support “non-negotiable” church teachings on life and family issues. 

In an interview with the Calgary Herald, the bishop said he was planning to send out the recent Vatican document calling on Catholic politicians to support pro-life and pro-family laws.  “Once I get an official copy, I’m likely going to send it to a select number of politicians for their edification and study”, said Bishop Henry.


See the full Vatican document at: http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_20021124_politica_en.html

Diocese of Calgary

A Letter of Support: Parish Pro-Life Mission

    Presently, Priests for Life, Canada produces the following regular publications:

     In the past, mailings have been sent to supporters four times per year. In addition to the ‘Priests for Life, Canada’ newsletter, sample copies of both the ‘Catholic Life and Family’ and ‘The Facts for Life’ have been sent. In response to requests from members, and with the additional support provided by our new Ottawa Pro-Life Centre, mailings will now be increased to six times per year as follows:

                                           Month                             Newsletters being mailed

                                            September                       Priests for Life, Canada

                                            November                       Catholic Life and Family
                                                                                   Facts for Life

                                            December                        Priests for Life, Canada

                                            February                         Catholic Life and Family
                                                                                   Facts for Life

                                            March                             Priests for Life, Canada

                                            June                                Priests for Life, Canada

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Priests for Life Canada - Parish Pro-Life Mission: Saturday, March 22-26, 2003. Our Lady of the Annunciation Parish, Richmond Hill. Fr. Jim Whalen presiding

National March for Life: Wednesday, May 14, 2003. Parliament Hill, Ottawa, ON,
Pro-Life Mass: 10:00 am, St. Patrick’s Basilica. For more details, call: (613) 729-0379
Pro-Life March: 1:00 pm

Reaching Minds Through Media Campaign: Media Fund Raising Banquet: Tuesday, May 27, 2003. A joint effort by Alliance for Life Ontario and Action Life Ottawa, and supported by the Archdiocese of Ottawa: St. Elijah Centre, Ottawa. Contact: Carol Rees at 613-798-4494

National Pro-Life Conference: November 6-8, 2003. Edmonton AB, hosted by Alberta Pro-Life, Life Canada and Campaign Life Coalition: contact Life Canada at  1-866-780-LIFE

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