Category: Life Network

Launch of the One of Us Federation

Saturday 12th March 2016 marked an important historical step for the defence of human life in Europe. An international new force for life and human dignity has been established under the name of “One of Us European Federation for Life and HumanDignity”, abbreviated as the “One of Us Federation”. This Federation is a non-profit apolitical and non-denominational organisation. The launching in Paris at the Salle Gaveau, included 1200 participants from the 28 European countries and 31 national organizations. There were participants from France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany, Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Poland, Slovenia, Spain, Italy, Bulgaria, Rumania, Slovakia, Czech Republic and Portugal. At this launching, Malta was represented by Life Network Foundation Chairman Dr Miriam Sciberras, and International Life Network Secretary, Dr Mark Sciberras.

The President, Jaime Mayor Oreja ( former Interior Minister of Spain), opened the Forum by stressing that Europe’s citizens are keen to reclaim the human values of their founders: the respect of each and every human being from conception to natural death.

The Aims of the Federation are:

a. The unconditional recognition of the inherent, inalienable human dignity as source of human and civil rights and freedoms. Human dignity should be inviolable and protected by public authorities.

b. The development of a culture of life in Europe, through promoting and supporting activities that involve the defence of human life, especially at its most vulnerable stages of development ( conception and gestation, childhood, maternity, sickness, old age and end of life).

The topics discussed during the one day forum included the American Planned Parenthood Scandal and its consequences for Europe, the Threat or Reality of Euthanasia in Europe, Surrogate Motherhood, Eugenics and sale of Gametes.

The panel of distinguished speakers included Jean-Marie Le Mene ( President of the Jerome Lejeune Foundation), Katalin Novak ( Minister of Family Hungary), Alberto Ruiz Gallardon ( former Minister of Justice Spain), Jean-Frederic Poisson ( French MP), Miroslav Mikolasik ( MEP and Chairman of EPP Working Group on Bioethics and Human Dignity, Slovakia), Carlo Casini ( former MEP Italy), Gian-Luigi Gigli ( President of Movimento per la Vita Italy), Phillipe de Villiers ( former French Minister), Jan Figel ( former European Commissioner Slovakia) and Konrad Szymanski ( Secretary of State for European Affairs, Poland).

The panel of fiery enthusiastic pro-life speakers spoke of the challenges facing Europe today, and how, by joining forces and with a clear target we must fight for the defence of any and all human life.

The day concluded with the One of Us Award Ceremony. The first award was given to Pattaramon Chanbua, a mother of a baby born with Down syndrome who generated an international emotional outcry when her story was revealed in summer 2014. Baby Gammy was conceived together with his twin sister through an agreement of so called “surrogate motherhood. “However, as diagnosis revealed that Gammy had Down syndrome, the mother was threatened to abort as the Australian couple who contracted only wanted to keep the healthy sibling.

Dr Mark Sciberras
International Secretary
Life Network Malta

Press Release

The recent and unwarranted call by the Prime Minister to introduce gay marriage and the quick endorsement of the same by the Leader of the Opposition, is another blow against the institution of marriage.

Life Network Foundation, would like to set the record straight and point out to the main political leaders that the issue of gay marriage never featured in their respective parties electoral manifestos.

It is presumptuous of both party leaders to make such statements without political mandate.

Maltese people who still cherish the traditional values of life and family are feeling left out.

As a result, a substantial part of the population – that part that believes that marriage should only be between one man and one woman and open to life – is no longer upheld by the leaders of the main political parties.

Do Dr Joseph Muscat and Dr Simon Busuttil presume that a substantial part of the people can be ignored?

Life Network appeals to the general public and especially to MP’s on both sides of the house to make their voices heard in defence of marriage

Letter to Head of Schools against Gender Indoctrination

Dear Parents,

Kindly download the document linked here, print it, sign it and give it to the headmaster/headmistress of your school.

The letter starts as follows :-

‘We would like to point out our grave concern regarding what is presently being taught in states schools without our previous consultation or consent.

Our children are already being taught acceptance, love and human dignity and to encompasses all both at home and through other acceptable means.

The LGBTIQ Action plan 2015-2017, however, seeks to impose a cross sectional gender indoctrination of all segments of the population including school children.’

Parents_ Letter to schools against Gender Indoctrination

Opening the Door to Abortion

Waste not, want not. So the story goes. Any leftover food is either frozen for when hunger strikes again or thrown away in the bin if one has had enough. This is how one of the proposed amendments to the embryo protection law wants to treat human life.

Create a surplus of human embryos; use as many as you will. The human embryos within the parental project, that is the ‘wanted ones’, will be gestated lovingly, nurtured and spoilt once born; the ‘extra’ human beings will be frozen indefinitely until someone decides on their bleak future. Most will remain suspended on ice, completely forgotten, thrown away or eventually destroyed. So many lost lives, lost loves, missed siblings, daughters or sons, never given a chance.

Why would we choose this kind of IVF? Why an IVF that devalues and destroys human lives by embryo freezing when we have another option that works just as well? I have met parents who had IVF overseas, their frozen embryos always at the back of their minds, parents who did not have the option of freezing unfertilised eggs (ova). Parents who know that they are not going to claim those human embryos, brothers and sisters to the children they already have, and this causes them a lot of psychological distress.

Any changes to the embryo protection law that endangers the life of the human embryo risks opening the door to abortion

What are the real reasons behind these sinister proposed amendments? We are a country that cares about life. We treasure our children, born and unborn. The Embryo Protection Act took a long time to come into force but now we are seeing results that compare well with the rates of other countries. We are helping infertile couples who choose IVF without undue risk to nascent human embryonic lives.

How can we risk removing protection from the human embryo?

Considering that great human rights causes of our time and all times have always had the cause of life as the point of reference as well as the dignity of the human person, of every human person, any changes to the embryo protection law that endangers the life of the human embryo risks opening the door to abortion.

Protection of life from the moment of conception to natural death cannot be compromised. There is too much at stake.

The human embryo is a vulnerable human being, voiceless and defenceless. This does not mean that he or she does not have the intrinsic right to life and human dignity as a member of our species. How can we consider freezing human lives as a capricious option just because an ill-advised local women’s group makes it their crusade?

Article 8 of the Universal Declaration of Bioethics and Human Rights speaks of respect for human vulnerability and personal integrity and states that, in applying and advancing scientific knowledge, medical practice and associated technologies, human vulnerability should be taken into account. Individuals and groups of special vulnerability should be protected and the personal integrity of such individuals respected.

In the same declaration, article 16 also speaks about protecting future generations and states that due importance has to be given to the impact of life sciences on future generations, including on their genetic constitution.

Has anyone bothered to ask children born from these technologies to speak? Does anyone care? Has anyone bothered to read about the pain and insecurity inflicted on children born from anonymous sperm donation, another amendment being suggested? Look up ‘Anonymous us’ on the internet and read their stories.

How are we to speak of protecting future generations when we are creating ‘surplus’ children and freezing them?

How are we to speak of protecting future generations when we, by surrogacy, create children to be intentionally separated from their birth mother, children who will intentionally never know their biological father, children brought up without ever experiencing the complementarity of motherhood and fatherhood?

What about the rights of the child conceived to know and be raised by the biological parents whenever possible? Malta is now the only country in the EU which still holds on to a completely pro-life culture. Other countries do not even value life in utero but justify abortion.

How can such countries care about what happens to human embryos? The human embryo is not respected, therefore it is graded, discarded, frozen or used in research.

We should know better. Backed by science, we affirm life from conception to natural death. Affirming human life we should not compromise the law which protects this life in the earliest stages.

Politicians are called to bravely resist the enormous onslaught to change our prolife laws and culture. The proposed changes to the Embryo Protection Act were not listed in the electoral programme of any political party. The absolute majority of the population do not want these changes.

I call on people of good faith to unite and resist these changes. Anonymous egg and sperm donation, embryo freezing and surrogacy are highly objectionable on moral, ethical and scientific grounds. They do not serve a child’s best interest.

Let us keep all human life in Malta safe. Hands off the Embryo Protection Act.

chairman@lifenetwork.eu

Miriam Sciberras is chairman of Life Network Malta

Humanity of human embryo

The Health Parliamentary Secretariat has announced it will be “evaluating IVF legislation within the context of outcomes of current regulations, new local legislation involving various sectors of the Maltese community and recent judgments of the European Court of Human Rights”.

The statement is in itself already misleading, because it should be referring to the Embryo Protection Act and not, in a general, sweeping manner, to IVF legislation. The title of the law enshrines the protection of the embryo in the law itself. It acknowledges the human right of the human embryo, who is none other than the pre-born child, to life. Any amendments proposed need to be loyal to this.

The title of the law enacted three years ago speaks for itself and should remain so, no matter what proposals are made.

The scope of the Embryo Protection Act is the protection of the human embryo and not access to IVF. Hence, although it provides a framework to regulating assisted procreation, it does so with the rights of the human embryo in mind.

It safeguards the human embryo from abuse, manipulation, selection and freezing. It is limited to couples, based on natural law, which, in itself, provides that a male and female are required for new life to ensue. Hence, the law does not de facto discriminate against gay couples because, by the same law, single people are also excluded from access to IVF.

The scope of the Embryo Protection Act is the protection of the human embryo and not access to IVF

Who, on the ad hoc Legislation Review Working Committee, is voicing the concerns of the unborn child and defending its human rights to be treated as a human being and not just as a commodity to be made use of, scrapped, used for experiments or thrown away on a decision taken by a few individuals?

It is pertinent to ask what the role of the Embryo Protection Authority, established three years ago as regulator, is in this legislation review.

The preservation of the female egg, instead of the embryo, considered to be the first cell of a new human being, eliminates legal and ethical problems of ownership. The female gamete (unfertilised egg) belongs to the female, as opposed to the embryo, which belongs to both partners.

The ethical and legal issues involved during the process of embryo freezing, which no court is comfortable with when deciding on the matter of who owns the frozen embryo, are eliminated when oocyte (egg) vitrification is opted for.

Complex problems of a legal nature result when split couples enter into acrimonious battles over ownership of the embryo, due to the negative aspects of embryo freezing.

The increasing lucrative business practices by groups that are making money out of surrogate mothers cannot be ignored either.

What about the consequences to individuals conceived through an IVF donor?

As has been already indicated in the local media, many adults aged 18 to 45 conceived in this manner struggle deeply with their identity as a result of not knowing their biological father and the lack of human dignity in the manner in which they have been conceived.

Besides these, there are other consequences, including depression, delinquency and substance abuse, among other problems, once they are aware that they exist only as a commodity for adults at the expense of their basic human needs.

Adoption should be an alternative that can offer a win-win situation respecting the dignity of the child if it provides the necessary environment for a child to be brought up in a stable environment, where there is no manipulation of nature and where the child’s basic need for love for his or her own sake are paramount.

This moves beyond the selfish needs of the adoptive parents, whether they are of the same sex or heterosexual.

It must be emphasised that the law, as it stands, respects the dignity of the human embryo.

It treats the unborn child with the respect that he or she deserves. Today, in Malta, we have a lot of children that have been born through IVF and they are themselves testimony to the humanity of the human embryo.

We have a law that works, that is giving great results without abusing the nascent human life.

It should not be changed to satisfy the whims of any ideology or individual if it is to remain true to its name and protect the human embryo as its primary prerogative.

Grace Attard is a member of Pro-life Network.

Does The Contraceptive “Pill” Affect Brain Functioning?

A recent research study has found that women taking oral contraceptives are attracted to faces that look less masculine. Anthony Little and colleagues found that after about three months on the “pill”, women started to prefer men who look more feminine. The figure below shows the face of a man (top row) and a woman (bottom row). The women on the “pill” preferred the man’s face on the left to the one on the right. They did not have any specific preference between the women’s faces however. The faces below are digitally altered so the right images look more masculine than the left ones.

Dr Craig Roberts of the University of Stirling and others have recently reviewed a growing body of research showing that the choice of partner a woman makes changes through the menstrual cycle. At the time of ovulation, when a woman is most fertile, she prefers a more masculine and genetically unrelated man. The “pill“ removes this natural preference and women on the pill show instead a preference for men with more feminine facial appearance and voice. Craig Roberts says that these studies taken together show that oral contraceptives alter women’s mate preference judgments. They have the potential to influence the partner that a single woman chooses. If a woman stops using oral contraceptives her attraction to her partner may also alter. A further factor that could affect the stability of marriage is that partnered women report higher levels of jealousy when on the “pill”. This was recently reported in the journal Evolution and Human Behavior by Kelly Cobey and colleagues. Oral contraceptive use could ultimately affect the stability of relationships.

It is possible that these factors could explain a link between the contraceptive pill and divorce. The contraceptive pill was first marketed in 1960 and by 1965, 26% of married women in the USA had used it. The divorce rate started to increase about 5 years later and doubled from 25% to 50%, between 1965 and 1975 (see figure). In 1978, Robert Michael of Stanford University showed that contraceptive use accounted for 45% of this increase in divorce. These new data make further research on the link between divorce and the “pill” essential and urgent. (Figure from http://www.thatmarriedcouple.com/2013/02/contraception-correlations.html)

Neurobiological research is beginning to reveal that oral contraceptives produce alterations in several fundamental brain processes. For example, combined oral contraceptives alter sexual desire in 23% of users (15% decreased and 8% increased). Also about 10% of women on the pill have disturbances of mood, like depression, and it was found that in these women, the normal response to emotion is decreased in some brain areas on functional brain imaging.

We are increasingly finding out that oral contraceptives have widespread effects on brain pathways, quite apart from their direct effects on the body. The fact that the pill is taken regularly on a daily basis for a long period of time, means that a woman’s behaviour is effectively altered over a very important part of their lives emotionally, a time when they are making choices about a lifelong partner. Since the brain pathways affected include those that are central to mate preference and emotional learning there is a danger that use of the “pill” may negatively influence the choice of partner. It is important that women are fully educated about these effects of the oral contraceptive and the potentially devastating effects they could have on their lives.

Dr Patrick Pullicino

42nd anniversary since Roe vs Wade

Since 22nd January, 1973, when the U.S. Supreme Court legalized abortion on demand through Roe v. Wade, abortion has been responsible for the deaths of over 53 million innocent American lives. It is estimated that the ongoing abortion genocide is the equivalent of five world wars running at the same time. Around 800 abortions are carried out every working day in the UK .Besides, for every child who dies in an abortion there is at least one other victim–the mother of that child. Most post abortive women find they have not only allowed the destruction of the lives of their unborn children but also damage to their own lives.

On this anniversary, a day written in the black history of humankind, Malta pays tribute to the victims of abortion worldwide and honours the children that others so fit to call “trash.” Life Network honours all the courageous pro-lifers worldwide who work to expose the brutality of abortion, for it is only in exposing abortion for what it really is that people can see the inhumane, barbaric procedures that slaughter the innocent babies in the womb in the name of “choice”.

As a newly registered pro-life, pro-family movement, Life Network, will endeavour to work towards promoting a culture of life in Malta. Malta has to withstand the increasing pressures from the other EU countries promoting abortion .We must also dare to be proactive and work towards reversing the tide outside our shores. Our European unborn brothers and sisters depend on us!

Dr Miriam Sciberras

Chairman Life Network

www.staging-lifenetwork.stagingcloud.co

Baby Screamed During Live-Birth Abortion, We Can’t Forget This Baby’s Cries

Members of Congress next week have an opportunity to right a travesty of injustice. Every day in the United States, babies are silently screaming in late-term abortions that deprive them of their right to life.

As Congressman Trent Franks told LifeNews.com recently, “More than 18,000 ‘very late term’ abortions are performed every year on perfectly healthy unborn babies in America. These are innocent and defenseless children who can not only feel pain, but who can survive outside of the womb in most cases, and who are torturously killed without even basic anesthesia.”

“Many of them cry and scream as they die, but because it is amniotic fluid going over their vocal cords instead of air, we don’t hear them,” he said.

Not all babies scream silently during abortions. The cries of some babies are hear loud and clear.

A former employee at the abortion clinic Kermit Gosnell ran in Philadelphia described how she heard a baby scream during a live-birth abortion. Abortion clinic employee Sherry West described an incident which “really freaked (her) out” and related to the jury how she heard a child scream who was born alive following an abortion.

West remembered how she referred to the dead children killed in these gruesome abortion procedures as “specimens” so she could avoid the mental trauma associated with knowing how they died. As local media reported:

Sherry West, of Bear, said she was loyal to Gosnell – who is now facing multiple counts of murder for allegedly killing children after they were delivered alive at his clinic – but said the incident “really freaked me out.”

When Assistant District Attorney Joanne Pescatore pressed the 53-year-old West for specifics about the incident, West struggled to answer, clearly uncomfortable with the memory.

“I can’t describe it. It sounded like a little alien,” West testified, telling a judge and Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas jury that the body of the child was about 18 to 24 inches long and was one of the largest babies she had seen delivered during abortion procedures at Gosnell’s clinic.

West said she saw the child, whose face and features were not yet completely formed, lying on a glass tray on a shelf and she told a co-worker to call Gosnell about it and fled the room.

Congress has an opportunity next week to hear the screams of aborted babies and take action. Republicans in the House of Representatives will hold a vote on the anniversary of Roe v. Wade late this month on a marquee bill to ban abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy because unborn children feel intense pain in abortions.

France Pushes Abortion Rights Beyond Its Borders – Malta mentioned

In an article by Julie Bhatia and Hajer Naili of WeNews, it was reported that a French delegation is pushing an abortion resolution which will have direct effect over Europe, under the premise of ‘France developing a profile as a European leader on abortion rights’.

Malta and Poland have been mentioned in the article as having the most restrictive laws in Europe together with Ireland and Andorra.

Please read more in this article: ‘France Pushes Abortion Rights Beyond Its Borders’ of WeNews.

Are Men’s And Women’s Brains The Same?

A recent magnetic resonance imaging research study has shown that it is possible to distinguish males and females with an accuracy of 93%, just using brain images. Duarte-Caravajalino and colleagues from UCLA used diffusion tensor imaging in a study reported in the journal Neuroimage. Diffusion tensor imaging is a new process by which connections between different parts of the brain (made by the white matter fibres, that are like tiny wires) can be imaged. They found that female brain connections were more symmetrical and had more connections from the left side of the brain to the right; male brains tended to be asymmetrical and had more connections between areas on one side of the brain. The researchers found no interactions with age between the ages of 7 to 22 (the ages of the persons studied) showing that these changes are not due to different cultural experiences.

Men are known to be better at visual orientation than women and this sex difference has been found in infants as young as three months. Men are better at rotating an object in their mind. Women have better verbal fluency and a better memory for objects. They remember better where things have been put. Men are better at navigating by cardinal direction (for example going northwards) whereas women tend to navigate using landmarks.

Personality differences between the sexes have been thought to be small but Del Giudice from the University of Turin, reporting in the journal PLOS One, found extremely large differences between men and women in a large US sample of over 10,000 persons. The authors state that personality differences between the sexes have been consistently underestimated in the past because of inadequate methodology.

One commonly quoted theory is that men and women start off with a single type of “intersex” brain and that individuals’ personalities are made up of a mosaic of “masculinizing” or “feminizing” influences. Larry Cahill, Professor of Neurobiology and Behaviour at the University of California, Irvine wrote in Cerebrum in April, that there is no evidence to support this. There is a limit to how much the brain can be changed by training, as for example a left-handed person who is forced to use their right hand will never be as good with their trained right hand. People’s brains are not just a “blank slate” that is mouldable, and we are just beginning to discover how large are the inherent differences in structure and function between the sexes.

New interesting research is also beginning to emerge on differences in moral judgments between the sexes. Fumagalli and colleagues from the University of Milan studied how men and women responded to several personal moral dilemmas. For example, they were told to imagine they were a doctor and they had five dying patients who could only be saved by transplanting five organs from a young man – but against his will, and that this would kill him. They had to give a quick yes/no answer. The researchers found that men were more likely to make “utilitarian” judgments than women and would be more likely to choose to transplant in this situation.

In a separate internet study, Bouhnik from Israel, writing in the Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology recently found girls were more likely to make a “humane” judgment and tended towards judgments that reflected adherence to peer-group conventions than boys.

These findings have implications for the new proposed legislation on gender in Malta. What is being proposed is that individuals who feel that they have the wrong gender can freely and easily choose to change their gender. “Gender identity” is defined in the Act as “each person’s internal and individual experience of gender, which may or may not correspond with the sex assigned at birth” This research is telling us that we have a hard-wired brain structure which underlies the sex-specific way we act. We can change the external way we act and look into that of the opposite sex, but it is likely that a lot of the actions and decisions of trans-sexual persons will be strongly influenced by the brain structure of their original sex. The definition of “gender identity” in the proposed Act appears to be superficial and seriously lacking. Something that is so deeply written in our brain should not be changeable by a simple application to the Director of the Public Registry. An unhurried period of consultation with experts, and assessments to ensure the right decision is being made and that the individual knows all the risks and implications should be mandatory.