As president of the International Right to Life Federation, let me take the liberty of bringing to you greetings from the many countries around this globe who are not represented here today. There are many more who wanted to come. I was personally in receipt of a number of requests from as far away as Bangladesh and India, asking for financial help to get here. Unfortunately, my organization’s treasury is unable to even pay for expenses of our own board members, and so I could not help them, but many are here with us in spirit.

Another year has passed – a tumultuous one in many of our countries. Things have happened. Some progress has been made; some losses have been recorded. Let me, therefore, look across the globe, specifically at the two major issues that impact on the value of human life – on euthanasia and on abortion. Let me offer some highlights of countries from whom you will be hearing more details. Let me offer a few more details from other countries and specifically from my own, where we have just had a national election.

Euthanasia

All eyes remain on The Netherlands and its legalization of euthanasia. Authorities like Dr. Karel Gunning have given us a very complete and accurate picture of this sad state of affairs in this beautiful little country. During this past year, there has been an intense debate in the Dutch Parliament. The purpose of this ostensibly is to pass a law to legalize what has already been legal for the last decade through judge-made law. As many of you know, it hasn’t really been a question of whether to put a final stamp of legal approval on euthanasia. Rather, the main argument has been whether a child of 12, or only a child of 16 or OLDER would be given the legal right to ask to be killed if he or she so desired. The fact that age was set at 16 and that this was a pro-life victory gives sad testimony of the depths to which this country has fallen. We’ll hear much more of this in the next few days.

We also will want to hear of the situation in Belgium. We have little reason for optimism, but let us hear from those who have carried the fight for we, and the rest of the world, await what Belgium will do.

And of course, also, Switzerland. We have been told that assisted suicide has come out of the closet and is now more openly practiced by our neighbors in Switzerland.

South Africa is at a crisis point also on the subject of euthanasia. After the tragic way in which a pro-abortion law was jammed through the South African Parliament, there were deep forebodings as to whether or not the same would occur with euthanasia. I was privileged to spend some time there a year ago and others have also visited to offer their help. Dr. Albu van Eden, the new editor of the brief newsletter from the World Federation of Doctors Who Respect Human Life is here to give us the latest information on the struggle that he and others are leading in that country.

There was another major attempt to legalize assisted suicide and euthanasia in one of the United States. It has been legal now for two years in the west coast state of Oregon. The mid-western state of Michigan had an initiative referendum on this issue. The good voters of that state said no to euthanasia by almost a 3 to 1 margin. Undeterred, the Hemlock Society, the death peddlers, obtained enough signatures in the northeastern state of Maine to put this on the ballot this month. The issue there was hard fought and the vote was very close, 51 to 49, but it was pro-lifers who triumphed and the state of Maine has now said no to euthanasia. This was a close call. I’m sure the pro-death people will try again. A bad omen was the fact that our very prestigious Princeton University relieved our Australian friends of a painful thorn in their side. Princeton appointed Peter Singer as a tenured professor. Singer, as you know, believes that a newborn pig has more value than a newborn human. He believes that there should be a ceremony one month after birth to decide whether an infant shall continue to live, that is if he is perfect enough, or whether his life is to be snuffed out because he doesn’t measure up to some elitist standard of physical or mental perfection. We’re not proud of having him aboard, but I know the folks in Australia were delighted to say good-bye to him.

Genetic

The mapping of the human genome was completed this past year. This is certainly a marvelous achievement and it holds much potential for solving human disease processes. But, as we all know it has a darker side also, and it can, and sadly probably will be used to eliminate those who don’t measure up to someone else’s standards.

Cloning has moved ahead in this past year - cloning of various animals, but also, very probably, some undercover human cloning. This has been thoroughly denounced in most quarters, certainly across all of Western Europe with the exception of the United Kingdom. It may never be financed by a government, but it could go ahead under private auspices, and very possibly is. I’ll merely touch on this, but call attention to the fact that Dolly was the only healthy lamb born from 277 embryos created. In mice, only 17 out of 800 mice made it to birth and only ten of these survived to reproduce.

We should also publicize the fact of the premature aging of Dolly, the sheep. That was completely unexpected. We should publicize the high percentage of fetal deformity among animals resultant from attempted cloning. We should publicize the high mortality rate of animals from attempted cloning. And we must certainly then, in pointing to these negatives, continue to ask the questions as to whether a civilized society can afford this amount of human carnage, this incredibly high percentage of mortality, of deformity, and wastage of human lives that would be involved in any serious attempt at human cloning.

We are seeing human genes implanted into animals. The scientists are running away with this area. It is my belief that there must be some definitive government intervention and regulation in this field.

Abortion

In the field of abortion – an area that has occupied much of our attention in this past year has been at the United Nations. You will be hearing from Peter Smith, details of Cairo Plus Five. I must compliment him, Jeanne Head and Austin Ruse, for the marvelous work they did in mobilizing and training the pro-life, pro-family volunteers who were able to stop the anti-life, the anti-family, the destructive forces that had full intentions of sweeping away any and all shreds of traditional morality remaining at the United Nations. These forces had full intentions of completely changing the traditional moral code that we value so much and imposing their radical anti-life, feminist and mixed-up genders on the rest of the world.

Considering what we were anticipating a year ago, and now knowing the result of Cairo Plus Five, we have profound reason to be grateful to a small band of people from every continent, from many nations, and from all religious, ethnic, and racial backgrounds, who carried our flag so nobly this past spring and summer at the U.N. in New York.

We’ll be hearing from Poland. I was privileged to spend two weeks there this spring and have since not stopped publicizing the marvelous record that they have achieved. They have been the first major western nation to move from an abortion on demand society, that was killing 160 to 180 thousand Polish babies every year, to a society that killed only 151 last year. I’ve been publicizing that in doing this, they have not reaped a harvest of illegal abortions and women hurt, but rather have found that the health of their women has improved. There are fewer admissions to Polish hospitals today for miscarriages, for obstetric and gynecologic problems than there were when they were aborting. The number of babies dying after birth has dropped precipitously. Poland is a far healthier nation today because abortion has ceased. And yet, their premier would turn the clock back. There are elections coming up and we pray that Poland will be able to maintain the progress it has made.

A new problem has arisen in Mexico. The ruling party has been replaced. The new president coming in is presumably pro-life. And yet in the face of this, the federal district in Mexico City has voted to legalize abortion. This will soon be voted on in a referendum. We have sent much help south of the border, from my country. The battle is engaged. Their law protecting the unborn is in grave jeopardy. We must pray for them.

United States of America

We will be hearing from many other countries about abortion, but let me turn to my own country. For better or for worse, what happens in America often leads the way and other nations follow. First, happenings in the past year. The issue of killing babies during delivery, that is of partial-birth abortion, continued to rage. An attempt was made to forbid this type of late term abortion, which actually is thinly disguised, newborn infanticide. But, while our viciously pro-abortion President Clinton prevented this from becoming law, we can look at the struggle as a major triumph for the pro-life movement. Let me list what this silver lining has been.

Ever since legalization in the United States, our strongly pro-abortion media has continued to maintain the fiction that abortion was only legal for three months. The controversy over this new type of abortion has laid that to rest and everyone who has watched the struggle is now aware that abortion is legal for all nine months in the United States. In practice it is even a bit after, for it is now commonly known in informed circles that the procedure of partial-birth abortion does not always succeed in killing the child prior to delivery, but that, before his brains can be sucked out, sometimes the mother pushes the baby out and there is a live child in the arms of the abortionist. That is answered by putting the child in a bucket of water and drowning him or her.

And so we know that infanticide is happening. In response to this, we have had a law introduced into our congress entitled the “Born Alive Infant Protection Act.” This passed one of our houses overwhelmingly, but was lost at the end of the session. It will come back next year.

The bad thing was that our Supreme Court ruled on partial-birth abortion in a blatantly political decision. It ruled that this type of abortion was legal. In ruling on this, it confirmed its earlier decisions that a woman in my country has the right to become unpregnant. But, the ruling foreshadows a new and broader interpretation in that she is not only entitled to cease being pregnant, but that she can be guaranteed a dead baby.

A major happening was the breaking of the story of selling of fetal body parts. Almost no one had known that this was going on, but an entire industry was uncovered. We revealed that abortionists were choosing the type of abortion that would preserve as much of the infant’s body as possible, that they were then handing these dead, or almost dead, babies to a technician who would dissect out various body organs and parts. We uncovered a price list. Body parts were being purchased by universities, by researchers and even by some government institutions. Do you want to experiment on infant eyeballs? You can buy them intact for $100 each. Do you want an intact brain? That’s the most expensive - $900. How about livers, kidneys, lungs? They are all available. How about a hindquarter, that is an entire leg including the buttocks? Four hundred and fifty dollars, please. And so, researchers could order whatever parts they wished. These would be guaranteed to be free of infection. They could be put in preservative; they could be put in ice; they could be frozen. They would be delivered by Federal Express, by United Parcel, by DHL. And all of this was revealed this past year. The shock was profound, but the Democrat administration in Washington stacked a committee hearing in the congress, which effectively cut off any further investigation. We’ll let you know how things proceed.

The other major happening in the U.S. has been the legalization of the RU 486 pill. Unable to find a drug company to manufacture and sell the drug, the Population Council funded the start up of a brand new company, which has an office in a few rooms in a New York City office building. The company was chartered in the Cayman Islands. The factory that will produce the medicine is in China. They located both of these offshore for the specific purpose of avoiding any legal entanglements, lawsuits and payments for injuries. But in the face of this, an interesting thing has just happened. As you know, abortion by this chemical method takes two drugs, the first is RU 486. The second is a prostaglandin, misoprostol. In my country, its trade name is Cytotec. It is made by the Searle Company. It has been on our market for 15 years with a legitimate use of preventing stomach ulcers. So, it is available. Our Food and Drug Administration asked that company to change its labeling, for its label forbad the use of this pill in a pregnant woman. The Searle Company refused. The Food and Drug Administration applied pressure. In response to this, that drug company sent a letter to most of the doctors in the United States. I have copies of this letter here, for anyone who is interested. The Searle Company has told us, as doctors, in very specific terms, that it does not want this Cytotec prostaglandin drug used to induce abortion. Furthermore, it speaks of the problems the drug can cause. These include maternal death, fetal death, amniotic fluid embolism – that’s like a blood clot to the brain, hemorrhage, rupture of the uterus and others. This is in the hands of every doctor in the United States, and of every lawyer. We pro-life leaders are delighted, for we believe that with this in hand, there will not be many doctors in our country who will risk using this drug. For if they had a catastrophe and the woman was injured, or if she failed to abort and went on to deliver a child who was deformed, the doctor would be brought into a court of law and could not defend himself because of this letter from the company. And so it would be my guess that this pill will only be used by the already established abortion clinics. It may very well not be used by ordinary doctors in their offices.

United States’ Election

Now, a word about our national election. In the United States, under President Clinton for eight years, we have literally lived through hell. This man is a pathologic liar; has no personal morals, and has been a total disgrace. We, who are moralists, shudder at the image he has created. But there are other reasons for fright from his administration as he has completely defied the traditional rule of law in our United States. He has flouted the law whenever it was convenient for him. He has vastly increased the power of the federal government over our states and over ordinary citizens. As a paradox, he just happened to be president during the electronic revolution that has taken my country and propelled it to heights of prosperity that had been undreamed of. It was not Clinton who gave us this prosperity. It was the microchip. It was the computer. And it was all of the vast and marvelous technology that these have made possible. These advances have eliminated entire layers of middle management. They have created entire new industries. Our unemployment rate is at an historic low. In spite of the moral chaos that you have seen coming from Hollywood and our federal government, paradoxically it has been the best of times, but just as in France many years ago, it was also the worst of times.

Ordinarily, on the wings of this prosperous time, the incumbent administration should have been overwhelmingly re-elected, for the major reason leading the average person’s vote is economic. But, the debauchery of his administration, the loss of our personal freedoms, the war against religion in our country, the radical feminist revolution, the increasing political strength of homosexual activists, the continuing slaughter of our unborn and the deterioration of our schools, have all added up to a deep concern among vast numbers of our good people and have led to a very quiet revolt. These people went to the polls a few weeks ago in vast numbers and in spite of the prosperity, voted against the incumbent administration. Oh, it was a close vote, and the two sides were literally millimeters apart.

The conservatives in the election spoke of abortion, spoke of what Clinton and his counterparts had done to influence the United Nations. The conservatives wanted to break the monopoly of the teachers’ unions and give parents more of a choice in education. They wanted to stop the scandal of our retirement Social Security program and put it on a sound basis. They were appalled at the hollowing out and the feminization of our once strong military position and wanted to rebuild it. They wanted less government. And, most important for many, they wanted protection for our unborn.

On the other side, Mr. Gore, as a major thrust of his election campaign, revived class warfare. He pitted unions against management. He pitted trial lawyers against ordinary people, the media and Hollywood against churches, against parents and it was hard fought. In the end, Republicans retained control of the Senate and of the House, however by a very slim margin. What that means, however, is that they are able to organize the various committees, to set agendas and to either promote or attempt to prevent bills from being introduced, and once introduced, from being voted upon. So, there is considerable power to having control of both houses.

The presidency, as has been well publicized, came down to a razor thin margin. It came down to the votes of a single state and that state stood on the edge of uncertainty for far too long after what should have been the close of the election.

However, Mr. Bush did win and he is our next president. What are the differences that we are primarily interested in here? The first and most important is abortion. I knew his father, President George Bush, and worked with him when I was president of America’s Right to Life Committee. President Bush was a pro-life president, but I didn’t think his heart was truly in it. For him, it was a partial conviction, but certainly a political reality, whereas Barbara Bush was not pro-life.

George W. Bush, our new president, is pro-life. I know him less well, but have always felt, as do my colleagues, that he is more pro-life in his heart, and certainly his wife Laura, is pro-life. Mr. Cheney, our new vice-president is strongly pro-life as is his wife Lynn Cheney. She is a very strong woman, a good mother, a good wife, but also has occupied executive positions and has shown herself to be solidly pro-life.

Appointments here will be everything but because of the closeness of this election, President Bush will not have a whole lot of freedom. It will only take a handful of pro-abortion Republicans to stop legislation in the Congress. But, assuming his nominees are confirmed by the Senate and assuming he does nominate the type of people we hope and pray that he does, we will have a new era at the United Nations. For, as you know, there have been three big bad forces in the U.N. One has been the European Union; the other, the United States, and then that attack dog, Canada. Bush could sweep out all of the U.S. anti-life, anti-family, anti-Christian delegates who have been plotting with similar evil forces in the European Union. This could change the entire picture. We prayerfully hope so. He can reinstitute the Mexico City policy, which would mean the end of money flowing to international Planned Parenthood and its like for promoting abortion overseas. Whether he would stop exporting contraceptives and change the misguided population control policies of our country, I don’t know. He would certainly sign any and all pro-life legislation that we can manage to pass through our Congress, our Parliament.

But rest assured, the pro-life movement in my country continues to grow in sophistication and outreach. In the last ten years we have seen a ten percent change in public opinion. We now have ten percent more people opposed to abortion than we did.

An Analogy

In closing, let me offer an analogy and perhaps a prediction. I am a student of American slavery. I wrote a book about this. I see it very much as an analogy to abortion today. Then, there was the subjugation of an entire class of living humans on the basis of skin color. Today, it’s on the basis of where they live – still living in their mother. Then, this entire class was denied legal protection under the law. Today, the unborn are. Then, our Supreme Court gave to the slave owner the absolute right to choose to own a slave, to mistreat, to even kill, and today that absolute right has been given to a mother over her own child.

But slavery was an evil and during the first half of the 1800’s, opinion opposed to it in America grew and grew. But, there was a geographic boundary. The free states in the north, becoming increasingly prosperous, could afford, in many ways, to ignore what was happening in the south. Yes, they knew about slavery, they had heard of its abuses, but it wasn’t happening in their neighborhood. It wasn’t bothering them and they could choose to ignore it just as many people in Germany ignored the trains going to Auschwitz. But then, a law was passed – ‘The Fugitive Slave Act”. Let me give you an example of how it worked. South of the Ohio River was slavery country. North of it, were free states. Let us say that a slave from the south escaped across the river, traveled north through the state of Ohio until he got near the border of Canada. Once in Canada, he was secure. But, the slave owner pursued that slave all the way up and near the border, captured him, put an iron collar around his neck, chained him to the back of his wagon, and led him back down through this free state, and across the bridge to a lifetime of servitude. That law was draconian. It levied a fine of $5,000 against anyone who would try to help that slave. Five thousand dollars then would have bought a mansion. Further, if you tried to help that slave, you were hauled before a judge, you were denied any legal counsel yourself, and only the slave owner could testify against you. It was an outrage, but it was the law. My point is that poor slave walked back through this free state in the sight of free people, who had, so to speak, their very noses rubbed into the actuality of the evil of slavery. This was too much. This aroused deep feelings of anger in these northern states and was a major factor in leading to our civil war.

There was something intrinsic in the evil of slavery that compelled it to continue to get worse and worse. I believe that if the slavery culture had cleaned up its act, so to speak, had stopped some of the abuses, had offered at least a bit of protection to the body of the slave, that we would have had slavery in our country for several more decades. But, the evil could only worsen. It could not allow itself to be reformed in any way and in getting worse and worse, it finally reached a point of explosion and our civil war began.

I see somewhat of the same dynamic in abortion. Originally, it was only for those hard cases of rape and her life. And then it became abortion in the first three months, but often only after a committee hearing. Then it was abortion on request. Then it wasn’t limited to three months, but it went into the mid-trimester. And now, in some of our countries, it’s legal until birth. And, as I’ve stated, now we are perilously close to legalizing infanticide. Now we are dissecting the bodies of live, or almost yet alive, babies to sell their parts. And now, we have a Peter Singer telling us that a child could still be killed until he is a month old. We find that those who protest this are being arbitrarily arrested, imprisoned. We find that, while we have freedom of speech to protest anything and everything in countries like my own, there is no real freedom of speech in front of a facility that does abortions. In other words, this situation is becoming more brutal, more extreme, and more profoundly evil.

The Future?

I’ve been an observer of this scene for more than three decades now, and certainly don’t claim any more knowledge than many of you, and I probably am not going to live to see its resolution, although I hope my children do. Nevertheless, in a world that is changing its technology unbelievably brilliantly so, frighteningly so, at the end of a century that was unparalleled in its brutality, of man’s inhumanity to man, while admitting the rays of light, the good things that are beginning to happen, the beginnings of reform that we do see, nevertheless I wonder, could it be that we are nearing the end of time? I don’t know, but I do know that we must not stop, that we must continue to try. For, in the end, before the judgment seat of almighty God, we will not be asked. “Did you succeed?” We will only be asked, “Did you try?”

John C. Willke, M.D.

President

Life Issues Institute

International Right to Life Federation

1721 W. Galbraith Road

Cincinnati, OH 45239, U.S.A.

phone +1 513 729-3600

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