Pardon the hideous place that this news came from...

by Steven Ertelt
Buenos Aires, Argentina

Abortion Ship Likely Headed to Argentina in 2007 to Spark Debate

The European pro-abortion group Women on Waves is planning to bring its controversial abortion ship to Argentina during the first few months of 2007. Having gone to Poland and Portugal already, the group hopes to spark debate in the Latin American nation, which currently prohibits abortions.

The pro-abortion group typically anchors the boat in international waters, where the local nation's laws don't apply. There, abortion activists are free to do abortions, give women the dangerous RU 486 abortion drug or hand out the morning after pill.

According to the Dutch organization, two pro-abortion members of the Argentine Congress are working with it to organize the trip.

This will be the second time Rebecca Gomperts, the pro-abortion group's founder, will have been to Argentina in an attempt to persuade lawmakers to reverse the nation's pro-life laws. She was there in 2004 to promote abortion in the strongly Catholic nation.

Noemн Oliveto and Gerardo Romagnoli, members of the Self-Determination and Liberty party in Congress, say they have met with members of the group. They say they “are in conversations for her to come in 2007.”

The abortion boat will also be met by leaders of local pro-abortion organizations.

The crew of the Dutch converted tugboat, Borndiep, tried to sail for the Portuguese shore when it went to Portugal in September 2004 but the Catholic country's top officials called on a naval vessel to block the ship and prevent it from docking at a harbor in the northern part of the country.

The Maternidade e Vida pro-life group in Portugal and its director, Francisco Jose Coelho da Rocha, lobbied the Portuguese government to refuse it entry.

A Portuguese court upheld the decision.

Rev. Thomas Euteneuer, president of Human Life International, said his group worked with local pro-life advocates to place posters displaying an unborn child and the Portuguese words "Those who love do not kill" throughout the port of Figueira da Foz.

The abortion boat attempted to dock there.

Although the abortion ship failed to distribute any abortion drugs to Portuguese women, Gomperts appeared on a television talk show and instructed women on how to purchase an ulcer drug at pharmacies and misuse it to produce an abortion.

Searle, the company that manufactures the misoprostol ulcer drug, has written a nationwide letter to doctors in the United States, in conjunction with the Food and Drug Administration, saying the pills are not safe to be used in an abortion.

On their web site, Women on Waves encouraged women to lie about their medical condition, making it appear they needed the drug for stomach pain.

The pro-abortion group also admitted that using the drug as an abortion agent is dangerous, that it could cause women to require hospitalization for excessive bleeding, and that the makeshift abortion drug would fail at least 10 percent of the time.

The abortion boat traveled to Poland in 2003 and Ireland in 2001.