Sarah Ryan

Sarah Ryan is a Young Scholar of HLI America. She is from Allen, Texas, and is currently a junior studying social work at Texas State University where she is President of “Bobcats for Life.” Sarah’s passion for defending life emerged through education on pro-life issues, beginning with personal research in high school and more recently cultivated through Texas Right to Life’s Generation Now Scholarship Program. After college, Sarah hopes to become a social worker and mother while continuing to further the pro-life message.

Women without Choices

Tuesday, March 20th, 2012

By Sarah Ryan

Implemented in 1979, China’s One Child Policy does just what its name would suggest: forcibly limit couples to have only one child. The policy was enacted in response to China’s purported overpopulation. Through excessive fines, forced abortions and sterilizations, the policy is strictly and violently enforced by China’s Family Planning Commission. Reflecting a society with a preference for sons, the government can force a woman to undergo a sex determination test for her unborn child and upon female results, force her to have an abortion at any point during pregnancy. This preference has led to the deaths of tens of millions of unborn girls. The society-damaging consequences of their deaths, however, echo even further beyond the tragedy of each abortion.

One of the leading promoters of population control and contraception, the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), claims to disapprove of the growing surplus of male births as a result of son preference and sex selective abortion. One of their organizational aims is actually to ensure that “every girl and woman is treated with dignity and respect.” However, their continued funding (and indirect support) of coerced abortion through their alliance with the National Population and Family Planning Commission of China, and their praise of the overall decrease in Chinese birthrate only perpetuates the growing disrespect of unborn life, particularly of unborn females. With the One Child Policy reaching its thirtieth anniversary, there is now a surplus of males reaching reproductive age with no women to marry. According to a recent study, the number males under the age of 20 exceeded the number of females by more than 32 million in 2005. In some provinces, 130 males are born for every 100 females.

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Belittled Women: UNFPA’s Misguided Efforts to Curb Pregnancy Among Youth

Tuesday, August 9th, 2011

By Sarah Ryan

HLI America Young Scholar

The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) states that its mission is to promote health and opportunity for every man, woman, and child; it attempts to ensure that “every girl and woman [be] treated with dignity and respect.” As a woman, I will gladly stand behind an organization that empowers me, dignifies me, and acknowledges the rights that accompany my femininity and humanity. The UNFPA’s idea of empowerment, however, seems to be limited to the promotion of birth control, and its dignity to the avoidance of children through sterilization. Its acknowledgment of rights is applied narrowly to those women who are “wanted” or who happen to be outside of their mother’s womb. In taking this tack, the UNFPA is in reality accelerating the very discrimination against women and children that they are purportedly trying to alleviate.

According to the UNFPA, one in five people alive today are between the ages of ten and nineteen, with 85 percent of these young people living in developing countries lacking basic education programs. One of the results of the concentration of undereducated youth in these countries is high rates of teen pregnancy; the result of the lack of options and prenatal health-care available for these girls is often abortion.

The solution to this problem is not the elimination of the next generation (which will undoubtedly face these same struggles) but rather the elimination of the catalysts for the current situation—lack of education, lack of prenatal treatment, and lack of postnatal assistance. As Dr. Susan Yoshihara of C-FAM succinctly put it in a recent interview: “[T]he best way to reduce maternal mortality is: skilled attendants at birth, emergency obstetric care, basic health care to include good neo-natal care. This is what dramatically improved maternal health in the developed world in the last century.” The provision of these essentials should me the mandate of the UNFPA. Real choice does empower women; killing our children does not.

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It’s Not a Sprint, It’s a Marathon

Friday, July 29th, 2011

By Sarah Ryan

When I joined the pro-life movement a few years ago as a high school senior, I thought the task at hand was clear, but daunting: overturn Roe v. Wade.  What I didn’t realize is that the movement to end abortion is just that – a movement, a shift, a gradual realignment of our society’s priorities.  This shift not only includes our laws, but the culture we live in – a culture that accepts and promotes acts of violence against the most vulnerable and innocent.  I quickly learned that overturning the unconstitutional Supreme Court ruling would not instantly create a life-respecting utopia where every child, planned or unplanned, would be seen as a blessing.  I realized that conquering the culture of death is not a sprint; it’s a marathon.

The tireless efforts of the American Pro-Life movement are not going unnoticed.  Through our passion and by maintaining a deliberate pace, we are advancing toward the finish line.  With eighty abortion restrictions enacted in the first six months of 2011, there is no denying that we are doing something right. The proof is in the report recently released by Planned Parenthood’s research wing, the Guttmacher Institute.  The report provides a snapshot of the recently enacted Pro-Life policies which both protect women and children, and hinder the abortion industry’s interests.

Efforts to empower women have been made in nineteen states by introducing bills that require that the sonogram image of the mother’s child be made visible to her.  Abortion advocates have rallied against ultrasound requirements, claiming that the sonogram would be an added cost to the procedure.  Yet, an ultrasound is necessary to accurately determine the child’s gestational age; when it comes to medicine and surgery, accuracy is always in the patient’s best interest.  The ultrasound not only helps the woman by giving her an awareness of her body and the body of her child, but also allows her to give her fully informed consent to the procedure.  An ultrasound is not an obstacle to overcome in the process of abortion, but rather a standard cautionary procedure to be considered on behalf of the doctor, mother, and child.  If the abortion industry were truly interested in a woman’s reproductive health, they would be more than willing to perform an ultrasound because doing so helps catch any potential reproductive issues, such as uterine cancer, in order to help her when she does feel ready for the “planned parenthood” they promote.

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