http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/09/opinion/09kristof.html?_r=1&em=&oref=slogin&pagewanted=print
Can This Be Pro-Life?
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
The Bush administration this month is quietly cutting off birth control
supplies to some of the world’s poorest women in Africa.
Thus the paradox of a “pro-life” administration adopting a policy whose
result will be tens of thousands of additional abortions each year — along
with more women dying in childbirth.
The saga also spotlights a clear difference between Barack Obama and John
McCain. Senator Obama supports U.N.-led efforts to promote family planning;
Senator McCain stands with President Bush in opposing certain crucial efforts
to help women reduce unwanted pregnancies in Africa and Asia.
There is something about reproductive health — maybe the sex part — that
makes some Americans froth and go crazy. We see it in the opposition to
condoms to curb AIDS in Africa and in the insistence on abstinence-only sex
education in American classrooms (one reason American teenage pregnancy rates
are more than double those in Canada). And we see it in the decision of some
towns — like Wasilla, Alaska, when Sarah Palin was mayor there — to bill
rape victims for the kits used to gather evidence of sex crimes. In most
places, police departments pay for rape kits, which cost hundreds of dollars,
but while Ms. Palin was mayor of Wasilla, the town decided to save money by
billing rape victims.
The latest bout of reproductive-health madness came in the last couple of
weeks when the U.S. Agency for International Development ordered six African
countries to ensure that no U.S.-financed condoms, birth control pills, I.U.D.
’s or other contraceptives are furnished to Marie Stopes International, a
British-based aid group that operates clinics in poor countries.
The Bush administration says it took this action because Marie Stopes
International works with the U.N. Population Fund in China. President Bush
has cut all financing for the population fund on the — false — basis that
it supports China’s family-planning program.
It’s true that China’s one-child policy sometimes includes forced abortion,
and when traveling in rural China, I still come across peasants whose homes
have been knocked down as punishment for an unauthorized child. But the U.N.
fund has been the most powerful force in moderating China’s policy, and a
State Department team itself found no evidence of any U.N. involvement in the
coercion.
Mr. Bush’s defunding of the U.N. Population Fund — backed by Senator McCain
— has persisted since 2002. What is new is the extension of that policy to a
leading private family-planning organization like Marie Stopes International.
“The irony and hypocrisy of it is that this is a bone to the self-described
‘pro-life’ movement, but it will result in deaths to women who just want to
space their births,” said Dana Hovig, the chief executive of Marie Stopes
International. The organization estimates that the result will be at least
157,000 additional unwanted pregnancies per year, leading to 62,000
additional abortions and 660 women dying in childbirth.
That may overstate the impact. Kent Hill, an official of the U.S. aid agency,
insists that there will be no increase in pregnancies because the American
contraceptives will simply be routed to other aid groups in Africa.
That will work to some degree in big cities. But it’s a fantasy in rural
Africa. Over the years, I’ve dropped in on a half-dozen Marie Stopes
clinics, and in rural areas there’s typically nothing else for many miles
around. Women in the villages simply have no other source of family planning.
“This nearsighted maneuver will have direct and dire consequences,” a group
of prominent public health experts in America declared in an open letter,
adding that the action “will translate almost immediately into increased
maternal death and disability.”
Proponents of the cut-off are not misogynists. They are honestly outraged by
forced abortions in China. But why take it out on the most impoverished and
voiceless people on earth? Mr. McCain seems to have supported Mr. Bush,
mostly out of instinct, and when a reporter asked him this spring whether
American aid should finance contraceptives to fight AIDS in Africa, he
initially said, “I haven’t thought about it,” and later added, “You’ve
stumped me.”
Retrograde decisions on reproductive health are reached in conference rooms
in Washington, but I’ve seen how they play out in African villages. A young
woman lies in a hut, bleeding to death or swollen by infection, as untrained
midwives offer her water or herbs. Her husband and children wait anxiously
outside the hut, their faces frozen and perspiring as her groans weaken.
When she dies, her body is bundled in an old blanket and buried in a shallow
hole, with brush piled on top to keep wild animals away. Her children sob and
shriek and in the ensuing months they often endure neglect and are far more
likely to die of hunger or disease.
In some parts of Africa, a woman now has a 1-in-10 risk of dying in
childbirth. The idea that U.S. policy may increase that toll is infuriating.
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◆ From: 155.53.1.254
※ 編輯: falstaff 來自: 155.53.1.254 (10/10 13:39)
這篇是說 布希政府刪除對非洲人工避孕的補助
這會造成 不被預期的懷孕增多 會造成更多的墮胎
所以他說 這怎麼能算是pro life
前一陣子的新聞
美國現在的民主黨的副總統候選人
跟眾議院議長(跟我們的立法院長可能好像差不多大)
都是天主教徒
他們好像沒有完全支持pro-life
有一個主教說
如果 他們兩個來到他的教區望彌撒
他會叫他的神父 不准他們兩個領聖體
我們天主教的主教權力 看起來還蠻大的
這樣 也不可以領聖體
======