The Kyiv Post republished an article from openDemocracy (the official media engine of George Soros’ Open Society Foundations network). The article begins without any subtlety: “Abortion has been legal in Ukraine for decades – but groups empowered by Trump’s White House are misleading vulnerable women about their options.”
Already in the first sentence, we can see that this article is a gem of misinformation!
First of all, it conveniently “omits” any mention that abortion was legalized in Ukraine, as elsewhere in the former Soviet bloc, by the Communist Soviet regime—a grim memory for Ukrainians, where the Holodomor (the deliberate genocidal starvation policy orchestrated by Stalin and his minions) killed around five million Ukrainians during the 1930s.
Second, who is really misleading vulnerable women? Is it pro-life organizations which offer to help them to keep their babies, or Planned Parenthood which pretends that abortion is a trivial operation without any consequences?
I’m always fascinated by the conspiracy theories of anti-conspiracy-theory-people: from this first sentence of the openDemocracy article, one would think that Ukrainian pro-life organizations receive official or financial support from the White House. But this notion is insane. Of course, Donald Trump supports the pro-life movement morally, but supposing that the collaboration between pro-life groups all over the world is decided in the Oval Office is a very different idea – and a crazy one!
The remainder of the article is no more serious than its opening. The “journalist,” Tetiana Kozak, explains how she placed a phone call to the Karkhiv Pregnancy Assistance Center (a center publicly and officially supported by the beautiful organization Heartbeat International). As one might imagine, Kozak’s phone call involved lying: she pretended to be a young student and an “internally-displaced” person (i.e. a de facto foreign refugee) who had become pregnant due to rape and was now considering abortion. (I would remind readers here that international journalistic standards and ethics generally prohibit this kind of deceitful practice. Outside very rare cases—like filming warlords or mafia criminals—a journalist should normally introduce himself as a journalist when conducting investigations. But, of course, Ms. Kozak probably thinks that pro-lifers are dangerous criminals!)
Naturally, the woman on the phone advised Kozak against abortion, spoke to her about her baby, about post-abortion syndrome risks, and other things.
Kovak’s article hardly disproves the claims of the pregnancy workers. The only arguments she can come up with are these:
- We don’t have any proof (in her reading of the data) that breast cancer risks are higher after an abortion;
- The Karkhiv Pregnancy Assistance Center is supported by powerful foreigners (including the White House), a claim for which she offers no evidence;
- The website of the Center doesn’t make clear that it’s a faith-based operation.
These arguments are less than persuasive.
Firstly, it doesn’t take religious faith to see that abortion kills a human being. One only needs just a little bit of biology from school to know this is true.
Furthermore, her “reasoning” about breast cancer risks associated with abortion is pure sophistic evasion. First, there IS published medical data available linking increased breast cancer rates to abortion. Second, the onus shouldn’t be on pro-life people to prove that abortion is risky beyond reasonable doubt, but rather for pro-abortion people to prove abortion is indeed harmless. (Good luck!) There is simply no preponderance of evidence that abortion is risk-free to the mother. And, by the way, Soros’s friends speak often about precautionary principles when it comes to dealing with animals or plants; that we should err on the side of doing no harm. Yet it seems they are unwilling to apply the same principles to dealings with human beings!
Regarding the matter of “foreign support” of the Karkhiv Center, I have admitted already that Heartbeat International is in fact an official supporter of the center. But is a Planned Parenthood clinic in a foreign country subject to the same scrutiny and charges of “foreign support”? I won’t even mention again the matter of the supposed support from the White House: it’s too patently absurd. I’m sure Donald Trump is happy to learn that some babies are saved in Karkhiv, but do you think he doesn’t have enough to do In the United States? If Ms. Kozak is still unconvinced, I can assure her that American pro-lifers have plenty of work to do at home where almost 1.3 million abortions are performed every year. Kovak is simply and deliberately conflating moral support (and, of course, every pro-life organization all over the world shares this kind of common and mutual support) with an imaginary broad conspiracy from the Oval Office. Moral support exists, indeed it is growing and becoming stronger—thanks, in particular, to the huge work of the World Congress of Families. But it is idiocy to imagine the global pro-life movement as a monolithic (and managed-from-Washington) network. Perhaps Kovak can be forgiven this mix-up, given the way America’s liberal elites funnel their money around the world to spread abortion and same-sex “marriage” in countries that want no part of this ideology.
I particularly love this sentence in Kovak’s article which follows the summary of her phone call to the Center: “A woman in trouble and looking for help may not realize that the Kharkiv center has an agenda – or such powerful foreign friends.”
It freezes the reader’s blood! One envisions an underground network of dangerous terrorists! But, the truth is quite the opposite: the agenda is to save babies and the reach of Heartbeat International is nowhere near as powerful as George Soros’s international cabal and, what’s more, it—unlike Soros’ network—doesn’t hide its values!
Kovak’s propaganda piece continues with her lamenting that the Karkhiv Center operates independently from the State Health Ministry. She probably ignores that there are some countries which are not (or, like Ukraine, are no longer) communist. I guess this is sad for her, but around the world religious congregations and private philanthropy offer more health care than Governments.
The funniest aspect of Kovak’s article, though, is this: that her “inquiry” is part of a broader project funded by openDemocracy (which is – as I already mentioned – a foundation funded by George Soros: that is clearly a sign of scientific objectivity!). And the article goes on (after detailing Kovak’s so-called “inquiry”) to quote Hillary Margolis, Human Rights Watch Senior Researcher on Women’s Rights in Europe and Central Asia, mentioning that Margolis thought Kovak’s findings are “disturbing.” Well! Surely the world is ending: Kovak’s found a single “expert” who considers her “research findings” to be “disturbing”! But Margolis isn’t just any researcher: she works for the very liberal Human Rights Watch—which is (shock!) heavily funded by George Soros. Margolis’ “expert opinion” is no more a valuable comment on Kozak’s work than Kozak’s own opinion of her findings. What wonderful and objective journalism!
But let’s come finally to the criticism in Kozak’s piece for… us. Yes, dear readers, in this wide pro-life conspiracy, centered at the White House, the World Congress of Families, and “ultraconservative group” chaired by iFamNews founder and publisher, my friend Brian Brown, is a central cog.
Do you want proof? Brian was, just a fortnight ago, in Kiev for a meeting of the “Values, Dignity, Family” caucus of Ukrainian parliamentarians, which involves lawmakers from across the Ukrainian political spectrum, and is run by another friend of mine, Oleg Voloshin. Horror! If the Ukrainian pro-life movement is also supported by Ukrainian pro-life politicians, what is the world coming to?
This is the shocking finding from the “investigative journalism” of our friends in Soros’ pocket. They are clearly worried. But, at least in that they are probably not mistaken… Yes, we can tell them: we are indeed happy that—particularly thanks to the work of the International Organization for the Family, with its World Congress of Families events and this very news service—the culture of life worldwide is growing. And we make no pretense about our public and explicit hope that, in the future, all women in every country will be able to benefit from the work of pregnancy centers like the Karkhiv Center and be able to welcome and embrace their babies—for their own joy and the joy of all society. This isn’t a shocking global conspiracy. But it is a part of our work, and we’re proud of it!
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