Hard hitting Synod intervention by Aechbishop Kaigama

Excellent and hard hitting intervention by Archbishop Kaigama of Jos Nigeria  during the Synod on the Family in Rome.

We are confronted with some issues, and sometimes [they are] quite perplexing. We recently had a big conference on pro-life issues, and in that conference, we came out very clearly to ascertain the fact that life is sacred, marriage is scared, and the family has dignity.
We get international organizations, countries, and groups which like to entice us to deviate from our cultural practices, traditions, and even our religious beliefs. And this is because of their belief that their views should be our views. Their opinions and their concept of life should be ours.

We say, "No we have come of age." Most countries in Africa are independent for 50, 60, 100 years. We should be allowed to think for ourselves. We should be able to define: What is marriage? What makes the family? When does life begin? We should have answers to those [questions].

We are wooed by economic things. We are told, "If you limit your population, we're going to give you so much." And we tell them, "Who tells you that our population is overgrown?" In the first place, children die -- infant mortality -- we die in inter-tribal wars, and diseases of all kinds. And yet, you come with money to say, "Decrease your population; we will give you economic help."

Now you come to tell us about reproductive rights, and you give us condoms and artificial contraceptives. Those are not the things we want. We want food, we want education, we want good roads, regular light, and so on. Good health care.

We have been offered the wrong things, and we are expected to accept simply because they think we are poor. And we are saying poverty is not about money. One can be poor in spirituality, poor in ideas, poor in education, and in many other ways.

So we are not poor in that sense. We may be poor materially but we are not poor in every sense. So we say no to what we think is wrong. And time has gone when we would just follow without question. Now, we question. We evaluate. We decide. We ask questions. This is what we do in Africa now.

The onward march of the Culture of death in the international institutions.

Completing our series on the Nigerian pro-life conference held in Abuja, Nigeria, on June 5th and 6, we report on a presentation by Patrick Buckley, UN lobbyist for the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC). 

Mr. Buckley in his presentation, ‘The onward march of the Culture of death in the international institutions’, told the audience of between 1500-2000 people that no United Nations Treaty or Convention includes a right to abortion, on the contrary he said, they uphold the dignity of every human life from conception to natural death.

Photograph shows Patrick Buckley with Antonia Tully and Jean Fleuron  of SPUC

In brief the agenda, aptly named, by St John Paul ii, the “Culture of Death’ attacks the accepted moral code based on natural law and Judaeo Christian principles, it can and does kill the body and it can also kill the soul.

The agenda in the International Institutions attempts to change society by changing sexual and gender norms through the introduction of, so called, ‘sexual and reproductive rights’ and seeks to:

• ·      Reduce population by making contraception available globally.

• ·      Deny the right to life from conception and attempt to declare abortion to be a human right.

• ·      Promote acceptance of diverse sexual activities, sexual orientations and gender identities.

• ·      Attack marriage and the family and undermine parental rights.

• ·      Sexualise young people by insisting on the teaching of so called ‘comprehensive sexuality education’.

• ·      Attack freedom of speech, religion and conscience.

In his 1993 Encyclical Evangelium Vitae (EV 28), Saint John Paul II wrote:

‘(…) we are facing an enormous and dramatic clash between good and evil, death and life, the "culture of death" and the "culture of life". We find ourselves not only "faced with" but necessarily "in the midst of" this conflict: we are all involved and we all share in it, with the inescapable responsibility of choosing to be unconditionally pro-life’.

Pope St. John Paul ii, in response to a demarché from US President Clinton in 2004 saying that the Cairo Conference would create a right to abortion on demand, called for civil society organizations to attend the conference and oppose that agenda, resulting in it being halted.

The Beijing conference in 1995 attempted to put a similar agenda in place but once again the attempt to declare a human right to abortion was halted and the gender agenda also included in the Beijing proposals was stopped.

When the attempts to attain the goal of a human right to abortion through the Cairo and Beijing Conferences, failed there was a high level decision in the UN to change the rules and to find other ways to achieve the complete agenda. Two alternative strategies were developed.

The first was a “stealth strategy” which commenced at a round table meeting in Glen Cove, New York in 1996. Participants from UNFPA the UN Population Fund, the office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights, representatives from the UN human rights treaty monitoring bodies and select NGOs met and developed a strategy to reinterpret existing treaties in order to find a so called 'right’ to abortion-on-demand, in universally accepted norms, such as the right to life.

The second strategy used by the pro-abortionists was that of attempting to establish customary international law by constant repetition of concepts such as ‘sexual and reproductive rights’.

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Both strategies failed to achieve their goal of abortion on demand.

Mr. Buckley told the meeting that we are entering into very challenging times in that a number of UN multi year programmes are coming to an end at the end of 2014 and 2015. The original ICPD (CAIRO) programme ends at the end of this year, 2014 and both the Beijing programme and the Millennium Development Goals finish at the end of 2015. The UN is therefore in the process of arranging the extension of these programmes and at the same time debating a new 15 year programme, which will be known as the ‘Sustainable Development Goals’ or SDG’s. Attempts are currently underway to include the entire culture of death agenda in the SDG’s

In a way he said, this period is rather like the time in 1994 when Saint JP ii called Civil Society together to oppose the agenda.

UNFPA and its associates including IPPF and IPAS carried out a review to determine what is standing in the way of implementing their complete agenda which involves abortion on demand, so called sexual rights, and comprehensive sexuality education for minors. They then developed a new plan to remove the obstacles and fully implement their agenda.

Briefly they identified the Holy See as the major obstacle standing in the way of their agenda and they decided to prioritize the sexualization of adolescents and youth.

The new approach can be seen in action when one looks at the recent attacks on the Holy See by both the Committee on the Rights of the Child and the Committee on torture, which are a blatant attempt to isolate and silence the Holy See at a critical time in order to ensure their deadly agenda is accepted.

The new approach can also be identified through the seemingly never-ending series of regional meetings on youth held at various venues throughout the world such as the UNFPA, UN ECA and African Union Commission meeting Addis Ababa in 2013, which published the Addis Ababa Declaration on Population and Development in Africa beyond 2014, The Colombo Declaration on Youth Mainstreaming in the Post-2015 Development Agenda’and the Bali Global Youth Forum Declaration December 2012, to name but a few.

Mr. Buckley then turned to the issue of Comprehensive Sexuality Education (CSE), which he described as a highly controversial, rights-based approach to sex education that encompasses much more than simply teaching children and youth about sexual intercourse and human reproduction.

CSE he said encourages:

•            Acceptance and exploration of diverse sexual orientation and gender identities,

•            Promotion of the use of condoms,

•            Promotion of abortion as acceptable and safe,

•            Encourages youth to advocate for sexual rights,

•            Teaches youth without parental knowledge or consent under the guise of confidentiality or      privacy rights,

•            Promotion of sexual pleasure as a right,

•            Promotion of masturbation as healthy and normal,

•            Claims that access to CSE is a human right,

•            Teaches children and youth they are sexual from birth,

•            Encourages sexual activities too disgusting to mention,

•            Encourages peer-to-peer sexuality education.

Comprehensive sexuality education is completely unacceptable, it is pornographic, it damages young people and robs them of their childhood.

Mr. Buckley finished by making a strong and urgent appeal to the international community to stand firm in the face of these attacks. He told the conference that we cannot let them win, because what we are dealing with is actually the lives of the children of this and succeeding generations, our children and our grandchildren.

Children, he said, have a right to a child hood and programmes like this are completely unacceptable.

Nigerian Pro-Life Conference Day 2

The pro-life conference organized by the Catholic Bishops Conference of Nigeria continued on Friday June 6^th with a keynote presentation by Congressman Chris Smith from the United States who told the meeting that as a member of Congress he like the Catholic Bishops believes that we have a profound moral duty to protect the weakest and most vulnerable from all existential threats. The right to life he said ‘the most basic of all human rights applies regardless of race, color, creed, sex, religion, disability, age, stage of development or condition of dependency, including unborn children.’

Congressman Smith continued by making a strong statement condemning the actions of Boko Haram in Nigeria with a particular focus on their abduction of the Nigerian schoolgirls and then turned to a number of other issues.

Smith told the gathering that when it comes to reducing maternal mortality, ‘it has been known for more than 60 years what actually saves women’s lives: skilled birth attendants, treatment to stop haemorrages, access to safe blood, antibiotics, repair of fistulas, and a venue or clinic to provide emergency obstetric care.’

The World Health Organization statistics he said show, a reduction of 52% for maternal mortality in Nigeria since 1990 but that much more needs to be done.

He then spoke of the need for each of us to promote and establish a genuine culture of life. He said that African Nations including Nigeria are under siege by the abortion industry and its numerous NGOs including IPAS, Planned Parenthood, Marie Stopes International, Centre for Reproductive Rights, many western governments including the Obama administration and UN agencies like UNFPA.

Someday, Smith told the conference;

future generations will look back on the United States and wonder how and why such a seemingly enlightened society, so blessed and endowed with education, advanced science, information, wealth and opportunity could have systematically enabled the dismemberment or chemical poisoning of millions of children. They he said, like many of us today, will be outraged knowing that the United States and others chose to export and integrate the culture of death with essential foreign aid and humanitarian assistance. 

African, Caribbean and Pacific States condemn western sanctions against Uganda and Nigeria

Following the enactment of recent anti homosexual legislation in Uganda and Nigeria, the response of the European Parliament to isolate them from the Cotonou Partnership Agreement and the response of Member States of the European Union, the United States of America and Norway in deciding to either withhold aid directed to the Ugandan Government or redirect aid away from the government to civil society organizations, the Parliamentary Assembly of the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) Group of States has issued a strongly worded declaration condemning the actions of the countries involved and expressing support for both Uganda and Nigeria.

The Parliamentary Assembly during its 35th Session in Strasbourg on 14 and 19 March 2014 point out in their declaration that 76 countries consider homosexuality a crime, and it continues by pointing out that one of the universally held cardinal principles of democracy is acceptance of differing opinions on matters of principle and that democracy and human rights do not allow forceful imposition of unilateral points of view by one country over another sovereign country.

The declaration states that the new laws in Uganda and Nigeria were enacted by democratically elected Parliaments following widespread consultation in each case, and reiterates the right of sovereign governments and their democratic institutions to reflect and respect the will of their people. Interestingly the declaration points out that the former British colonial governments in Uganda and Nigeria had enacted legislation to punish homosexuality with a 14-year prison sentence under section 145 of the Uganda Penal Code Act and with a 7-year sentence under section 214 of the Nigerian Criminal Code respectively.

The declaration asserts the right of a society to determine its own moral values and norms and accuses the European Parliament of double standards in addressing democracy and human rights issues as manifested in the reaction to the issue of sexual orientation and homosexuality in ACP Countries.

The declaration continues by calling on the EU to respect the democratic processes of sovereign States and to refrain from taking action which could undermine partnership with the ACP Group, and to desist from tying sexual orientation and homosexuality to development aid and cooperation. It also reaffirms its rejection of any attempt to pressure the ACP countries into accepting values contrary to the wishes and aspirations of their peoples.

The declaration also expresses regret that some ACP countries are being punished for observing and upholding the generally acceptable norms in their societies and urges the EU to accept that there is no common ground between it and Uganda and Nigeria on the question of sexual orientation and homosexuality.

Nigerian State legalizes abortion: Legalisation of Abortion in Imo.

 Vanguard report that Nigerian Imo State Governor, Chief Rochas Okorocha, and Catholic Medical Practitioners Association are at daggers-drawn over a new abortion bill the Governor just signed into law.

The law, according to the report, permits women to procure abortion on demand.

Sponsored by the Majority Leader and member representing Ahiazu Mbaise state constituency, Mrs. Adekunle Ihuoma, the law is to be cited as “Imo State of Nigeria, Violence Against Persons (Prohibition) Law Number 12 of 2012”.

The Archbishop of Owerri Dr. Anthony J. V Obinna in response has issued a statement calling for the immediate abrogation of the anti-life legislation.

“We are calling for immediate abrogation of all anti-life legislations in the state. Although the church will not be mirred in the nation’s murky waters of partisan politics, it will, however, continue to demonstrate interest in the nation’s democratic process for the common good of the citizenry.” 

Culture of Life Africa published a report on the new law which has been reprinted in full below an can be accessed on the following link

I just received a very disturbing news from my home state , Imo, situated in the south Eastern part of Nigeria where our State Governor (Governor Rochas Okorocha) and the State Assembly have signed an odious anti-life Bill into law.

Like most bills , it is very long and probably intimidating to read. But unlike most bills , it was kept secret- top secret. 

But it has now been brought into the light and it has been thoroughly read and  fully unpacked.

And what do you know? Buried under hundreds of paragraphs and thousands of words, was the Right to Abortion!

Yes indeed , the poisonous mix of Sexual and Reproductive Health plus family planning has in it the death potion - Abortion!

In this little known state in Africa , the Right to Abortion has been signed into law without public notice and without anybody finding out about it.

Without further ado let me give you the details of this disturbing Law that sent chills through my spine and brought tears to my eyes.

The Law entitled Imo State Law of Nigeria Violence Against Persons (Prohibition) law No 12 , was "sold" silently as a law to eliminate violence in private and public life, prohibit all forms of violence including physical, physiological, domestic, harmful traditional practices, discrimination against remedies for victims and punishment of offenders.

I know- a bit of a mouthful that sounds innocuous and even innocent enough but if you are learned, able and patient to read all the way to page 38 of the Bill, this is exactly what you will see in section 40 from paragraph (g) - (i) :

“Every woman shall have a right to health, which shall be understood to mean the enjoyment of the highest level of physical, mental and social well-being, health care services, including those related to family planning in particular, rural woman shall have the right to have access to adequate health care facilities, including information, counselling and services in family planning.

Every woman shall have the rights to take decisions about her health needs and requirement. In particular, she shall have the right to determine the process concerning reproduction in her body.

Every woman shall have the right to enjoy reproductive rights including the right to medical abortion in cases of sexual assault, rape, incest and where the continued pregnancy endangers the life or the physical, mental, physiological or emotional health of the mother”

(Emphasis added)

....

Here comes Legalised abortion in West Africa.For anyone who is in the pro-life movement will surely recognise these words as the "bump key" that opens the flood gates of abortion. It is crystal clear without ambiguity. This is the Right to Abortion.

"A right to determine the process concerning reproduction in her body"?

"Enjoying" the right to kill her own unborn child "where the continued pregnancy endangers her emotional health" ?

Wow! These could have just been the talking point of any pro-abortion proponent in Europe or America. 

In fact, this must be music to the ears of the wealthy pro-abortion cartel hovering over Africa like vultures waiting for the African leaders that will let them in to open up their violent business- the business of killing babies in the womb.

Surely they have been lobbing and pushing and prodding our leaders , and now one Nigerian Governor has capitulated to their lie that in order to eliminate violence against women, one has to declare violence against babies in the womb.

This is so distressing!

And ever since I heard it , I have interviewed many people in my home town. And one of those interviews was the one with Dr Philip Njemanze, who is undoubtedly one of the most prominent pro-life advocates in Nigeria, he said this law was signed quietly many months ago (May 2012) but was only brought to his attention within the last week.

Being a very eloquent and passionate proponent of the Culture of Life , he sprung into action and started to raise awareness across the state through the media .

And because most Nigerians are uncompromisingly pro-life, there is now a strong call from the masses for the Governor to immediately abrogate this violently offensive law that was insidiously woven into a bill on Anti-Violence.

How ironic that a Bill on Anti-Violence should be used to usher in the highest form of violence -violence against the unborn child.

As the Government is now under the heat of the people , one of the Government's spokespersons has done a press release, vehemently denying Dr Njemanze's allegations of legalised Abortion.

And so in response and good faith Dr Njemanze has sent me a copy of this odious law and I will share the most offensive page with you so that you can read it for yourself (as I did) and then raise your voice with us to ask for this law to be repealed for the sake of the unborn babies of Africa.                 

Africa remains a largely pro-life territory, and Nigeria remains a pro-life country with pro-life laws in place , so to have a State within Nigeria open its doors to the "Right" to Abortion is heart-breaking and gut-wrenching for all Africans,  because as Martin Luther King Jr said - "Injustice anywhere is injustice everywhere".

We should never attack and destroy life in the womb. That is the most shocking barbaric violence that many Africans living in the developed world find hard to reconcile with - that any government in any part of the civilised world would sanction and even support the destruction of tender life in the womb.

We know and understand that injustice in the womb is indeed injustice everywhere . And violence in the womb , is violence everywhere. 

We cannot allow this poisonous Culture of Death to seep into the African society not even through the smallest state or town or city in Africa. We cannot!

As a Nigerian woman in diaspora , I raise my own voice with millions of others, to ask, no- to beg the Governor of my State to repeal this law that is bound to claim the lives of countless unborn babies and scar the hearts of countless women.

I urge him to eliminate ALL violence in public and private life and yes even for those little ones who are enjoying  their private life in the womb!