Sunday, February 19, 2017

Two years in prison for running pro-life website signals French crackdown against pro-lifers

FEB 18TH 2017 BY DEACON NICK DONNELLY  EUROPE
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The Socialist-dominated French National Assembly has passed a law banning free speech online about abortion by criminalising any pro-life websites judged to be seeking to dissuade women from killing their unborn children. French pro-life campaigners are comparing the decision with the totalitarian pro-abortion regime of communist China. 
The new law imposes a maximum of two years imprisonment and a fine of £26,517/ $33,600 on any pro-life website judged to in "any manner of “spreading or transmitting allegations or indications liable to intentionally mislead, with the purpose of deterring (from abortion), on the characteristics or medical consequences of a voluntary interruption of abortion.”
Apart from the obvious injustice of this pro-abortion law, it leaves unclear, and therefore open to abuse, the definition of "information" judged to be seeking to dissuade a woman from having an abortion, and it does not define who has the authority to judge if the information falls foul of the law. It is though that even health and government officials will have the power to apply the law.
In the run-up to the vote in the National Assembly François Holland's socialist government has been using the French press to demonise pro-life websites. Laurence Rossignol, minister of families, children, and women’s rights, described popular pro-life websites, such as ivg.net as "fanatic" for seeking to give women all the facts about abortion. She said:
"A woman facing an unwanted pregnancy is sometimes vulnerable. The sites we are talking about take advantage of the complexity of situations and emotions to get them to renounce abortion. These people are a minority. They are fanatics. So you have to limit their impact on society, and I do not know what the future holds.”
Marie Philippe, a spokeswoman for ivg.net, explains the purpose of their website that is now under threat of criminal sanction:
"The site provides help for women who suffer from an abortion who finally find a place here to express their pain, ideologically denied in our country. These women receive support and the opportunity to be recognized and understood in their pain. We offer help and support to every woman who in her heart would keep her child and undergoes outside pressure. We are shocked by the number of testimonies of women who were obliged to abort under the pressure and constraint of their community."
Jean-Marie Le Méné,President of the pro-life Jérôme Lejeune Fondation, protested the oppressive decision of the National Assembly by declaring on their website that "Yes, we are dissuasive!" directly defying the new law:
To paraphrase the famous quote in the movie Casablanca, the Jérôme Lejeune Foundation is put in the box of “usual suspects”, with those who get stigmatized by default. Indeed, as professionals, we do try to beat evil, dissuade our patients from unhappy deeds and maybe unhappiness. We try to give hopeless parents a reason to hope, give specialized consultations to people other doctors don’t care about, encourage researchers to fight diseases that science no longer wishes to fight against because it is easier to give into eugenics, welcome the lives of those whose lives don’t deserve to be lived in the eyes of the world. Indeed, we do. Actually, it is the only thing we do. But what can you do? Offering life is dissuasive from death. By nature.
Forgive us for listening to those who cry, who suffer or are afraid. Forgive us for reassuring them, accompanying them, helping them. Forgive us also for sometimes managing to dissuade people of carrying out an unrepairable deed. To us, it is just a question of good manners ! »
The French bishops appealed to French President François Holland before Christmas to stop the legalisation of the new crime of "digital obstruction of abortion", but sadly to no effect. 
Comment
229,000 babies were killed through abortion in France in 2013. One French woman in three of childbearing age has had an abortion. As the President of the Jérôme Lejeune Foundation puts it, "abortion has become one of the first markers of modern politics." All of France's political parties promote or collude in the provision of abortion as a  "human right", running rough shod over the fundamental right to life of pre-born babies. 
Having said this, Front National populist politician Marion Maréchal-Le Pen has been outspoken in her opposition to this legalised persecution of the pro-life movement in France. In December 2016 shetold the lower house of French parliament:
“In reality, the government seeks to kill any alternative to its official propaganda that aims at trivializing abortion,” she said.
The politician also stated that it is patronizing and insulting toward women to suggest they cannot handle contact with alternative opinions on abortion. “Women are responsible beings who should be treated as such,” she said.
This is “an aberration and total censorship of freedom of expression,” Maréchal-Le Pen declared, adding that the attack on pro-life websites is a last-ditch attempt of the dying Left to reassert itself.
She also said that women currently “receive full government reimbursement for all abortion expenses repayment of all acts related to abortion,” while noting the irony that “an ultrasound of a woman who aborts is better reimbursed than an ultrasound of a woman who wants to keep her child.”
https://www.ewtn.co.uk/news/latest/two-years-in-prison-for-running-pro-life-website-signals-french-crackdown-against-pro-lifers

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