World Family Policy Center Newsletter

* News relative to protecting the family worldwide *

Volume 4 Issue 28 - July 26, 2005

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Quote of the Day: PARENTS' DAY, 2005

BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

A PROCLAMATION

Parents are role models for their children. With patience, sacrifice, and

love, they teach their children life lessons and prepare them for the future.

On Parents' Day, we express our gratitude for the hard work of parents

throughout America and reaffirm our commitment to promoting a

culture of responsible parenthood.

Mothers and fathers love their children unconditionally and make daily

sacrifices to provide for them. Parents create a safe, nurturing

environment in which their children can grow and learn. By instructing

their children to make right choices, parents instill lifelong values and

prepare their children for the challenges and opportunities ahead.

Parents experience the great joy of watching their sons and daughters

mature into responsible adults and good citizens.

On Parents' Day, we recognize the boundless love and generosity of

all parents, including the foster and adoptive parents who demonstrate

the compassionate spirit of America. We honor parents for their

dedication to providing our Nation's children with the love and support

they need.

NOW, THEREFORE, I, GEORGE W. BUSH, President of the United

States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the

Constitution and laws of the United States and consistent with Public

Law 103-362, as amended, do hereby proclaim Sunday, July 24,

2005, as Parents' Day. I encourage all Americans to express love,

respect, and appreciation to parents across our

Nation. I also call upon citizens to observe this day with appropriate

programs, ceremonies, and activities.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this twenty-first

day of July, in the year of our Lord two thousand five, and of the

Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and thirtieth.

GEORGE W. BUSH

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Today’s Contents:

A. Featured Articles:

1. Sexual Health Expert Criticizes Pediatrics Group's New Teen Pregnancy Guidelines

2. Abortion: Just the Data

3. Wisconsin High Court: Premature Babies Deserve Care

4. Websites promote group suicides

5. Christianity Vanquished in Britain?

6. Author Warns Parents of Casual Sex Pitfalls Awaiting College Students

7. Population Control Comes to the Philippines

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FEATURED ARTICLES

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1. Sexual Health Expert Criticizes Pediatrics Group's New Teen Pregnancy Guidelines

By Mary Rettig and Jenni Parker

July 19, 2005

(AgapePress) - The founder and chairman of the Austin, Texas-based Medical Institute for Sexual Health says he's very disappointed with the American Academy of Pediatrics' updated policy on teen pregnancy. Medical Institute CEO Dr. Joe McIlhaney, M.D., feels the AAP is sidestepping the very serious consequences of teen sex. He says the report from the national pediatricians organization acknowledges that teen pregnancy is a problem, but then immediately starts talking about contraceptives.

AAP officials "ignore the fact that when kids become sexually active, it really affects them emotionally," McIlhaney contends. "As a matter of fact," he says, "the biggest study ever done on that ... reported that sexually active girls are three times more likely to be depressed than girls who are still virgins; and boys are twice as likely to be depressed if they're sexually active than if they are still virgins."

Also, the Medical Institute spokesman notes, research has shown that among adolescent boys and girls, "both groups are much more likely to have attempted suicide if they've become sexually involved." Yet, the doctor says, the AAP ignores the psychological effects that sexual activity has on these developing young people, as if teen pregnancy were the only real problem to be addressed.

McIlhaney says the AAP's new guidelines also attempt to separate teen pregnancy from the risk of sexually transmitted disease (STD). But he believes when one of these problems is addressed without taking the other into full consideration, once again another aspect of the health risks associated with teen sexual activity tends to get minimized or overlooked.

To read entire article:

http://headlines.agapepress.org/archive/7/192005e.asp

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2. Abortion: Just the Data

With High-Court Debate Brewing, New Report Shows Procedure's Numbers Down

By Naseem Sowti

Washington Post

July 19, 2005

A new analysis of the most recent abortion data shows that the number of U.S. women having the procedure is continuing its decade-long drop and stands at its lowest level since 1976.

In the year 2002, about 1.29 million women in the U.S. had abortions. In 1990, that number was 1.61 million.

The data, collected by the Alan Guttmacher Institute, a nonprofit group that collects information from abortion providers and public sources, show that for every 1,000 pregnancies that did not result in miscarriage in 2002, there were 242 abortions. This figure was 245 in 2000 and 280 in 1990. The institute's mission is to protect reproductive choice, but its reports are considered accurate across the political spectrum.

To read entire article:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/18/AR2005071801164.html

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3. Wisconsin High Court: Premature Babies Deserve Care

by Josh Montez

Citizen Link

July 18, 2005

Hospitals are required to help anyone with an emergency, including newborns.

When a Wisconsin hospital allowed a premature baby to die without any effort to care for him, the mother sued the hospital. The Wisconsin Supreme Court has ruled the hospital was legally obligated to provide care to the baby under federal law.

The case involved Shannon Preston, a poor, pregnant woman who delivered a premature baby, just under 24 weeks, at Meriter Hospital in Madison, Wisc. Jordan Lorence, senior counsel for the Alliance Defense Fund, which helped fund the case, said the hospital staff followed the existing policy.

"And the hospital's policy basically said that it would not provide any treatment at all to any baby born prior to 24 weeks gestation," he said. "So the baby wasn't old enough, essentially, to get any treatment and they let the baby die."

He said the hospital's policy conflicted with a federal Good Samaritan law that requires hospitals to help anyone who comes in with an emergency.

"The hospital essentially killed baby Bridon with red tape," he said, "because their policy made them willfully walk away from a child that they were obligated by this federal law to treat."

To read entire article:

http://www.family.org/cforum/fnif/news/a0037222.cfm

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4. Websites promote group suicides

By Matthew Rusling

The Christian Science Monitor

July 19, 2005

TOKYO – One of the virtues of the Internet is its ability to create bonds, and even establish digital communities across the planet. But in Japan, a darker use is emerging.

Young people in a nation with a underlying suicide culture are now tapping the Web to spawn a lethal trend: group suicides.

Suicide websites, with black backgrounds and foreboding imagery, offer detailed instructions on ways to take one's own life. The sites display postings such as "looking for a friend to kill myself with," as well as calls for mass suicides on specific dates in designated areas.

"This is the first time that people are meeting strangers for the purpose of committing suicide together. It is truly a modern phenomenon," says Yukio Saito, one of the founders of a Tokyo suicide hotline.

In just the first three months of 2005, there have been 20 cases in Japan of group suicide after individuals met on the Web, resulting in 54 deaths. That compares to 19 such cases and 55 deaths for all of last year.

Lonely young men from various walks of life comprise the bulk of the suicide sites' users, most of them seeking out others with whom to commit suicide. "People [posting on the sites] do not want to die alone," says Mr. Saito, a Methodist minister.

To read entire article:

http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0719/p01s04-woap.html

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5. Christianity Vanquished in Britain?

Believers in the U.K. Demand Changes from the Church

by Ed Vitagliano

July 18, 2005

(AgapePress) - When Lord Bromley Betchworth returned to the United Kingdom (U.K.) after living in the U.S. for 12 years, he returned to a culture that had dramatically changed.

"I was shocked at how moral values had changed in such a short time and how church attendance in mainstream denominations was in free fall," he said. "Four out of five churches were either declining or simply static."

Betchworth wrote those words in the forward to a fascinating new report that seeks to explain the moral breakdown in a once vibrant Christian nation.

A Moral Collapse

In many ways, what has happened in the U.K. may be in the future for the U.S., because the two nations have had a similar religious past, according to Christie Davies, professor emeritus of sociology at the University of Reading, England, and author of The Strange Death of Moral Britain.

"At the end of the 19th century, there were comparable levels of religiosity in Britain and the United States. The British lived in a culture in which the assumptions of Protestant Christianity were taken for granted," Davies wrote in The New Criterion.

But he said that, generally beginning after World War II, the nation's morality collapsed, and the U.K. saw dramatically worsening trends in illegitimacy, substance abuse, crime and other sorts of behavior that were once considered sinful.

In 2000, the Anglican archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. George Carey, also noted Britain's moral decline. "A tacit atheism prevails. Death is assumed to be the end of life. Our concentration on the here-and-now renders a thought of eternity irrelevant."

To read entire article:

http://headlines.agapepress.org/archive/7/182005a.asp

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6. Author Warns Parents of Casual Sex Pitfalls Awaiting College Students

By Jim Brown

July 20, 2005

(AgapePress) - Dr. Jennifer Morse, a popular writer and speaker on family issues, says modern patterns of dating on college campuses are destructive when it comes to finding life-long married love.

Morse has written a new book called Smart Sex: Finding Life-long Love in a Hook-up World (Spence Publishing Company, 2005). In it, she warns parents who are sending a child to college this fall that most can expect casual sexual encounters, co-ed dorms, and even co-habitation to be part of their kids' lives for the next four years.

The author says hookups -- that is, encounters involving casual, recreational sex -- are not conducive to making a proper judgment about who will be one's lifelong partner. "If you start off with the idea that sex is a recreational activity with no moral or social significance," she asserts, "you're going to be drawn to the wrong persons, you're going to be doing the wrong kinds of things -- you're just not going to be in the right kind of mode for finding somebody with whom you can share life-long love."

At schools with co-ed dormitories and sometimes even co-ed rooming groups, it is not uncommon for students who live in close proximity to begin having sex. Again, Morse says this can be relationally damaging in the long term, as social science research has shown that couples living together before marriage are more likely to divorce than couples who do not co-habit before marriage.

To read entire article:

http://headlines.agapepress.org/archive/7/202005c.asp

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7. Population Control Comes to the Philippines

by Kim Trobee,

Citizen Link

July 22, 2005

The heavy hand of the U.N. is again trying to bolster abortion worldwide through coercion and threats.

Next month the Philippine Congress will vote on legislation that could have serious consequences for the family. Under the Responsible Parenthood and Population Management Act, Filipinos would be limited to two children per family. The U.N. is behind the intimidation.

In the Philippines, the fertility rate among women is 2.8 children over the course of their lifetimes. Why the need for population control? Eileen Macapanas Crosby, who is with the Filipino Family Fund, points to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA).

"The population control movement is now putting emphasis on the Philippines in a way—and at a time—where they're under a lot of pressure to accept foreign aid because of the financial burden of the debt," Crosby said. "The money that the UNFPA is promising the Philippines is a pretty attractive benefit."

The government claims the plan is not coercive, but there are reports of involuntary contraception. Lea Sevcik, who is with the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute, is concerned that pro-life healthcare workers may be at risk.

"One of the things that the bill prohibits," she said, "(is for individuals to) to 'act from conscience.' It actually threatens up to six months imprisonment."

To read entire article:

http://www.family.org/cforum/fnif/news/a0037287.cfm

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Note: The preceding article excerpts are highlights of current events and

do not necessarily represent the views of the World Family Policy Center

or Brigham Young University.

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Newsletter created and distributed by:

World Family Policy Center

J. Reuben Clark Law School

Brigham Young University

Managing Director: Richard Wilkins

Executive Director: A. Scott Loveless

Newsletter Editors: Joy S. Lundberg and Gary B. Lundberg

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