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God's Own Baby-Killers: Abortions Soar Where Religious Zeal Abounds

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Bianca
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« on: February 28, 2008, 08:00:16 am »









                     God's Own Baby-Killers: Abortions Soar Where Religious Zeal Abounds   




   
Written by Chris Floyd     
26 February 2008 

George Monbiot reports on a study revealing -- surprise, surprise! -- that countries with
the most fervent religious faith have the greatest number of abortions.

As Monbiot notes, this stems directly from one of the primary aims of organized religion:
the control of women, especially their fertility. The zealous pursuit of this goal leads to
rejection of contraception and sex education, which in turn gives rise to more unwanted
pregnancies -- hence more abortions. In fact, studies show that the country with perhaps
the most "liberal" and "permissive" sexual policies -- the Netherlands-- has the lowest
rate of abortion in the world. Monbiot:


A study published in the Lancet shows that between 1995 and 2003, the global rate of
induced abortions fell from 35 per 1,000 women each year to 29. This period coincides
with the rise of the "globalised secular culture" the Pope laments. When the figures are
broken down, it becomes clear that, apart from the former Soviet Union, abortion is
highest in conservative and religious societies. In largely secular western Europe, the
average rate is 12 abortions per 1,000 women. In the more religious southern European
countries, the average rate is 18. In the US, where church attendance is still higher,
there are 23 abortions for every 1,000 women, the highest level in the rich world. In
central and South America, where the Catholic church holds greatest sway, the rates
are 25 and 33 respectively. In the very conservative societies of east Africa, it's 39...
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Bianca
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« Reply #1 on: February 28, 2008, 08:03:34 am »









I am not suggesting a sole causal relationship: the figures also reflect changing demo-
graphies. But it's clear that religious conviction does little to reduce abortion and
plenty to increase it. The highest rates of all -- 44 per 1,000 -- occur in the former
Soviet Union: under communism, contraceptives were almost impossible to obtain.
But, thanks to better access to contraception, this is also where the decline is
fastest: in 1995 the rate was twice as high. There has been a small rise in abortion
in western Europe, attributed by the Guttmacher Institute in the US to "immigration
of people with low levels of contraceptive awareness". The explanation, in other words,
is consistent: more contraception means less abortion.

There is also a clear relationship between sex education and falling rates of unintended
pregnancy. A report by the United Nations agency Unicef notes that in the Netherlands,
which has the world's lowest abortion rate, a sharp reduction in unwanted teenage
pregnancies was caused by "the combination of a relatively inclusive society with more
open attitudes towards sex and sex education, including contraception". By contrast,
in the US and UK, which have the developed world's highest teenage pregnancy rates,
"contraceptive advice and services may be formally available, but in a 'closed' atmosphere
of embarrassment and secrecy"....The more effectively religious leaders and conserva-
tive [media] anathemise contraception, sex education and premarital sex, the higher
abortion rates will go.
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Bianca
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« Reply #2 on: February 28, 2008, 08:08:13 am »









Monbiot also points out that while these attitudes cause much suffering in rich
nations, "it doesn't compare to the misery inflicted on the poor":


Chillingly, as the Lancet paper shows, there is no relationship between the legality
and the incidence of abortion. Women with no access to contraceptives will try to
terminate unwanted pregnancies. A World Health Organisation report shows that
almost half the world's abortions are unauthorised and unsafe. In East Africa and
Latin America, where religious conservatives ensure that terminations remain illegal,
they account for almost all abortions. Methods include drinking turpentine or bleach,
shoving sticks or coathangers into the uterus, and pummelling the abdomen, which
often causes the uterus to burst, killing the patient. The WHO estimates that bet-
ween 65,000 and 70,000 women die as a result of illegal abortions every year,
while 5 million suffer severe complications. These effects, the organisation says,
"are the visible consequences of restrictive legal codes".


Monbiot goes on to note something we have been condemning here and elsewhere
for years: that the supposedly "pro-life" policies of George W. Bush and his ideolo-
gical fellow travellers are directly responsible for killing thousands of the most
vulnerable people on earth. As Monbiot says:


When the Pope tells bishops in Kenya -- the global centre of this crisis -- that
they should defend traditional family values "at all costs" against agencies offering
safe abortions, or when he travels to Brazil to denounce its contraceptive pro-
gramme, he condemns women to death. When George Bush blocks aid for family
planning charities that promote safe abortions, he ensures, paradoxically, that
contraceptives are replaced with backstreet foeticide. These people spread misery,
disease and death. And they call themselves pro-life.
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Bianca
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« Reply #3 on: February 28, 2008, 08:11:52 am »








I first wrote about this issue in 2003, after Bush had cut off funding to family plann-
ing services and health clinics all over the world to stoke the zeal of his religious base.
Nothing much has changed. As I wrote then:


The defining issue of modernity is control of women's fertility. It is this question – more
than religion, politics, economics or the "clash of civilizations" – that forms the deepest
dividing line in the world today. It is a line than cuts through every nation, every people,
from the highest level of organized society down to, in many cases, the divided minds
and emotions of individual men and women.

Control of fertility – and its active principle, sexuality – has always been an organizing
principle of human society, of course, but modernity has presented the world with a re-
volutionary concept that overthrows millennia of received wisdom and tradition: namely,
that an individual woman should control her own fertility. This notion destabilizes state
structures and religious dogmas, and uproots cultural mores whose origins reach back
to prehistoric times. It is a profoundly disturbing development in the life of humankind.

Little wonder, then, that anxieties over fertility and sexuality are the chief engines dri-
ving the frenzied and increasingly violent fundamentalist movements now sweeping
through the world. It is here that extremists of every stripe make common cause
against modernity. Almost every other aspect of "the modern" – science and tech-
nology, high finance, industrialization, etc. – has been absorbed, in one form or
another, by the most "traditionalist" societies. But what today's fundamentalists –
from Osama bin Laden to George W. Bush to Pope John Paul II, from the American-
backed warlords of Afghanistan to the anti-American mullahs of Iran – cannot accept,
at any cost, is the freedom of a woman's body.

This frenzy, this primitive fear – understandable perhaps in the face of such a wrench-
ing upheaval – does not in itself make a fundamentalist an evil person.

But it can – and does – lead them into evil: sometimes blindly, in ignorance and panic;
but sometimes knowingly, with eyes wide open, a willing embrace of primitive emotions
to serve selfish and cynical ends.
« Last Edit: February 28, 2008, 08:14:52 am by Bianca » Report Spam   Logged

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« Reply #4 on: February 28, 2008, 08:17:49 am »









And so: last month, George W. Bush quietly cut off funding for a highly praised
AIDS program for refugees from Africa and Asia. Why? Obviously, to keep his
helots on the Christian Right frothing with passion to do battle for him in 2004.
He has already given them control of American social policy, particularly in inter-
national negotiations, where they routinely form alliances with Iran, Sudan, Saudi
Arabia and other repressive states to derail treaties on women's rights.

But what was his public reason? Bush says he gutted the program because one
member of the non-profit consortium running the project is also working with a
UN program that was falsely accused of colluding with China's policy of forced
abortions. That charge was investigated not once but twice by Bush's own State
Department, as well as by the UN, and was shown each time to be completely
untrue. The only "evidence" produced to support the slander was an allegation
that in a single office in a rural Chinese province a few years ago, the desk of a
UN official touched the desk of a Chinese Health Ministry official. That's it. The
truth, of course, is that the UN program, and all the non-profit organizations
associated with it, are trying to end China's forced abortions.

Of course, this heinous practice that has never stopped Bush from granting
massive trade benefits to the "baby-killing Communists." Nor has it ever dis-
turbed the **** of investment in China's repressive regime by the corporate
barons of the U.S.-China Chamber of Commerce, headed by that genial old
aristocrat, Prescott Bush Junior – known as "Uncle Prescott" to the current
president. Naturally, any punishment for China's forced abortions must not
fall on the Beijing government itself – not when Uncle Press has choice deals
on the line. No, instead it must land – like a ravening MOAB – on the poorest
of the poor, in Angola, Congo, Rwanda, Somalia, Eritrea, and other poverty-
stricken areas where the Bush family has no investments.
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Bianca
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« Reply #5 on: February 28, 2008, 08:26:42 am »








READER'S COMMENT:




Grandma Jefferson:


                                      The **** of Women's Rights: Witch Craze


...Not that we've had too many, for very long.

Thank you for this, as perfect a description of the on-going, perpetual, and hidden holocaust
against women as I've ever read, in it's most recent, globally lethal form. But no tears from
the junta for them, just profits from China, and of course, the additional benefits of ethnic
cleansing by proxy, on the cheap, without wasting needed dollars or valuable war materiel
destined for Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Cuba...

Patriarchy is the religion of the world, administered by local cults, and always, the goal is the enslavement of women as brood sows and slaves. Politically, women's reproductive rights are
always the first things to be jettisoned, as the popularity of certified fruitcake Ron Paul among
many so-called "progressives" amply demonstrates, despite his anti-choice, bahbull thumpin'
stand:

"I'm surprised that I don't have more co-sponsors for my Sanctity of Life Act. It removes the jurisdiction from the federal courts & allows the states to pass protection to the unborn..."

How is this any different from the Taliban? "But somebody can be anti choice and still believe
in civil liberty if..." (insert whatever excuse here). Well, no. You cannot claim to support
"Liberty, freedom, equal rights, civil rights,"etc. on the one hand, and use government inter-
vention to deny women the right to control their reproductive lives at the same time.

Either women have the right to make their own life decisions, or they are, in fact, not free.

Embryos are not "people", women are. The rest is semantic headgames, structured to dis-
guise the real agenda (and consequences) of the anti-choice, pro-coathanger crowd behind
a tissue of pseudo-science, as concocted by themselves, lying myths, and bloody-shirt-
waving bathos.

But of course, Ron Paul is no different from the rest of the white Christiban males on the
NeoCon side, and it's all about power and control, not bleeding hearts for aborted embryos.
How many millions of living people, children, not embryos, among them, have these greedy
ghouls slaughtered, one way or the other? Chris's essay shows you yet another tip of that
horrific reality.

Women are the majority of the species, and are the gates of Life. Nobody gets here without
us, and I sometimes wonder if the men on the anti-choice trolley envy that awesome miracle
so much, hate us for that so much, that they're driven to attempt to usurp that prerogative,
insisting that only they can make those decisions. They own us, 'cause their bahbull says so.

Back in the day, I sported a Pro-Choice button that read,

                      "If men got pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament".

NO man would tolerate this sort of government-backed **** of his own personal liberty, life
options, or self-determination.

Typically, they ignore the other half of the equation: men. Did not gawd curse Onan for

                                     "spilling his seed upon the ground"?

I say we need new laws mandating 'Merkun men to breed, and support, a set quota of, say,
a dozen offspring each, to guarantee a steady supply of cannon fodder and cheap labor for
the Empire, a la Mittzie's lament about abortions. Naturally, monogamy would be out the
window, but that wouldn't faze the repthugs, as their track record amply demonstrates. If
sterile, the males must adopt, and raise, a dozen children. Oh, and no more vasectomies for YOUUUUUUUU either. They're a tool of the DEVIL. For those of you who have had them,
please report to the Vasectomy Reversal unit of your local hospital for immediate restructuring.

We know who you all are, so macht schnell!

ALL adult males will be subject to this. The Birth records will be tracked, and non-compliance
will result in prosecution, indefinite detention in a secure location, waterboarding, which isn't
as bad as you think, wear your Speedos, or deportation to the Front in....


That's fair, isn't it?
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Ceneca
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« Reply #6 on: March 01, 2008, 11:53:56 pm »

That's totally true, heaven help the world the day that religious zealots took hold in the U.S. 
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