Yesterday turned out to have many indescribably depressing moments and a few better ones.

Most uplifting moment: attending a midday Mass for Peace and Justice with hundreds of my neighbors.

First horrifyingly sad moment: going to school and seeing the campus inundated with unspeakably vile posters of which I won’t speak more for now – if ever I do. (Was happy to see that a significant percentage of these were removed by the time I got out of class.)

Lighter moment: passing the bookstore and seeing a display of travel books in the window. One in particular caught my eye. It had the usual traits of a travel book cover: a photo of lovely scenery, an impressive building and someone in picturesque costume. The title was “Guide to Spam”. I thought this was an inspired piece of humor writing – making a faux travel guide about mystery meat all over the world! Alas, I was wrong. It was just bad typography for “Spain”.

Next series of horrors: Reading the assignment for a class on international public health only to learn that the UN estimates there are approximately 50,000,000 abortions in the world every year. Fifty million. Nearly as many people as died in the entire Second World War -- about one-sixth of the population of the United States -- killed in one year. Strike that. That many innocents are killed EVERY year. On average, every second sees more than one abortion. The problem in the U.S. is huge, but even it pales in comparison to so many other countries. Note: I’m not trying to diminish the American role in promotion of abortion. We bear grave responsibility for promoting the abortion/contraception culture worldwide. (N.B. These figures are estimates that include only “medical” abortions, not the even larger number of abortions wrought by abortifacient means of contraception – that being all but the “barrier” methods – but of course there’s no credible way to estimate the number of people killed by IUDs, pharmaceuticals and the like.) Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine! Miserere nobis, Domine.

Hard as it may be to believe, going to class it got worse. We were told the rules for conduct with our guest speaker – basically that we could not discuss any “political” issues and that the speaker was only going to “share facts” which we could discuss as long as discussion was “safe”. The implication was clear – no substantive questions were allowed. Our guest was from Planned Parenthood, speaking on the triumphs of international family planning.

She had studied Vietnam, since it has had “such great success in family planning” and since it currently has the highest reported rate of abortions in the world at nearly 3 abortions on average for each woman in her lifetime. (From what I have read, the former Soviet bloc was actually worse than this. Another reason to be glad that the wall came down and to hope, pray and work for the liberation of those countries that still maintain reverence for Marx)

We were told how Vietnam was “more clever” than China, as China’s one-child policy has “upset some people”. Vietnam has a “one or two child” policy. She actually said, “This gives people a choice.” So now I guess we find the deeper meaning for “pro-choice”.
The speaker bristled when asked what the consequences were for violation of the policy, but reluctantly admitted that they included loss of employment for those parents who work, directly or indirectly, for the state or the party (about 40% of the population) or reduction in farmland allocation for farmers (over 50% of the population and most of whom produce just enough to support four people at a normal land allocation). That’s right, less food for more people: starvation to enforce an unjust law. They punish not only the parents, but all of the children. There’s also severe ostracism for those who dare to have a third child. (No mention and no question as to what happens with multiple births – say a woman has one child followed by twins.) But wait, there’s more.

Since the early 1980s, “the foundation of Vietnamese health and economic policy has been to maximize the availability of contraception and reproductive health services [abortion]. Even when money has been short, family planning has been fully funded, unlike here in the U.S.” (Of course there had to be a dig that the U.S. doesn’t provide unlimited free contraception and abortion.) As a result, contraceptive dispensaries are located conveniently for everyone in Vietnam. Even people in the most remote areas have only a short trip to find an abortion. You’d think PP would be happy, but they aren’t. You see, the majority of those who obtain contraception are married women.

“One of the biggest problems in Vietnam is that there’s so much shame and guilt associated with pre-marital sex.” That’s not a typo. That’s the “enlightened” position – that it’s a bad thing that people realize when they do something wrong and act accordingly. PP isn’t happy with killing babies; they also need to kill what conscience is left in the living!

“There had been some resistance to family planning in the south because [former RVN President] Dien was Catholic.” Just because the long-deposed politician was Catholic, mind you. Never mind the consciences of the millions of Vietnamese Catholics.

A lengthy discussion of the necessity of “spacing births properly” followed. The underlying assumption was that only through use of contraception could births be properly spaced to maximize maternal and (selected) child health. That’s right, the goal of PP is that EVERY WOMAN use contraception other than at those few moments when she is actively seeking conception, which moments are not left to her discretion, but are dictated by some central authority.

The speech ended with a screed against the President for his executive order that federal funds not go to entities that (a) provide abortions or (b) advocate abortion.

We then got to see slides of her trip to Vietnam, including several children who were born with horrible birth defects that she attributed to Agent Orange. Of course I have no idea if her attribution of the cause of the defects is correct, but these poor children are in a heartbreakingly bad way. Given Vietnam's poverty, they're not likely to live long. Sad to say, they may ultimately be more fortunate than many of their contemporaries.