GOOD NEWS!

LINK to online version

Good news! According to the 2024 abortion report - as compiled by the Department of Public Health and Social Services Bureau of Vital Statistics - no one identifying as Chamorro (the report uses this spelling) procured an abortion in 2024.

That’s good news because between 2008 - when The Esperansa Project began requesting the reports - and 2017, the last full year an established abortion practitioner practiced in Guam, women identifying their ethnicity as Chamorro accounted for 1,502 abortions - about 60% of the total.

After the last abortion doctor retired in 2018, no local doctors were willing to openly offer abortion services, so there wasn’t much data for a few years. However, that changed a couple years ago when two doctors in Hawaii got Guam medical licenses and now do chemical abortions via teleconference and mail-order abortion drugs.

A Freedom of Information Act request to Jayne Flores, Director of Bureau of Women’s Affairs, turned up documents demonstrating that Jayne (and presumably her boss) actively recruited the Hawaii physicians to abort Guam babies, and beyond that, to initiate a lawsuit against our own government with the help of the ACLU.

The two doctors are Shandhini Raidoo and Bliss Kaneshiro, and their services are advertised on our taxpayer funded Bureau of Women’s Affairs website. The medical practices of Raidoo and Kaneshiro are private businesses and they are getting free advertising thanks to Jayne and our tax dollars. What a deal!

Moving on.

The thrust of the suit from these two doctors was to get rid of Guam’s in-person counseling requirement for women seeking an abortion. The Guam District Court initially ruled in favor of Jayne and her abortion friends, however, the Ninth Circuit vacated the District Court ruling and upheld Guam law.

The short of it is that these doctors can oversee chemical abortions in Guam from Hawaii so long as women seeking abortions get the required local counseling first. According to the 2024 report there were 36 abortions in Guam but no information about who is providing the required in-person counseling.

Meanwhile, whoever is providing the counseling is very probably counseling local women to identify their ethnicity as “Pacific Islander” and not “Chamorro.” This appears to be the only explanation for how Chamorro abortions went from 60% of the total for at least a decade down to nothing, and Pacific Islander abortions, since 2017, jumped 625% and now account for 80% of the total.

The dramatic shift in the ethnic numbers appears to be a response to the increasing cries of “Chamorro genocide” by myself and others. What else can it be called? According to census numbers, Chamorros account for only 30% of Guam’s population, yet the abortion reports, at least up until the latest report, show Chamorros accounting for 60% of all abortions.  

So, the response to our cries of “Chamorro genocide” from the pro-aborts appears to have been “stop checking the Chamorro box and just check Pacific Islander.” And voila! No more abortions of Chamorro children.

This is rather sad and laughable given that the biggest public promoters of abortion are also the biggest public promoters of distinguishing the cultural and ethnic identity of the Chamorro from the generic “Pacific Islander.”

Even the U.S. Census makes this distinction: “In 2020, Guam’s population was 153,836…The Chamorro population was the largest detailed Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander group.”

However, when it comes to abortion reporting, or at least now in 2024 and presumably going forward, suddenly the Chamorro is just a “Pacific Islander.”

Why do they want to hide? Didn’t our governor and culture warriors like Michael Bevacqua preach to us about how abortion was and is a venerable cultural practice and in fact a demonstration of a Chamorro woman’s “symbolic societal power?”

Quoting Bevacqua: “[W]omen in Guam were more than merely vessels for their communities—they were empowered to make decisions about their bodies and families…we see clear matrilineal/matrifocal dimensions, where lineage and symbolic societal power resides primarily with women…research has also found evidence dating back to the 18th century showing that women in Guam…have utilized a variety of methods to induce miscarriage or end their pregnancies, as well as to use birth control and other methods to control their fertility.”

Given that as of 2024 the number of abortions for Chamorro women was zero, women in Guam are apparently no longer interested in asserting “symbolic societal power” by exterminating their own offspring. They’re leaving that to the “Pacific Islanders.”

Tim Rohr has resided in Guam since 1987. He has raised a family of 11 children, owned several businesses, and is active in local issues via his blog, JungleWatch.info, letters to local publications, and occasional public appearances. He may be contacted at timrohr.guam@gmail.com     

KLITZKIE: "NOW IF YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND THIS...AND WHERE'S BEVACQUA WHEN WE NEED HIM?

...then this whole Neocatechumenal Way (issue) might not be as important to you as it ought to be." - Bob Klitzkie, Tall Tales, Friday, March 10, 2023.

Hear Bob's entire expose, titled "Frenchie vs the Neocats" starting here. And read the whole CERTIFICATE OF TITLE FIASCO here on JW.

Meanwhile, the real import of Bob's message is that the Neocat thing is not just an internal Catholic Church squabble. 

If the Neocats can reach into the Department of Land Management - and even all the way up into the office of the AG via at least one very powerful Guam-Barred attorney (as demonstrated in FIASCO) - and manipulate Certificate of Titles to properties valued at mega-millions of dollars, then what else can they do, or even, what else have they already done - especially given the Neocats intimate connection with the Bank of Guam?

The Neocat matter is NOT just an internal Church squabble. It's a mafioso-like takeover of the internal workings of everything in both our church and government that Kiko-Guerillas intend to control - a realtime assault by realtime Neo-Colonists. 

Where's Bevacqua when we need him? 

Oh yah. Never mind. 

BTW, just to keep things clear, the Director of DLM whom Bob sued (and won) was Michael Borja, not "Juan Borja" as Bob stated on his show. 

Again, read about the whole mess on JW in CERTIFICATE OF TITLE FIASCO....and be afraid for what the Neocats can do to your own title. 

Meanwhile, it looks like they are ready to scoop up several properties that they caused to be forfeited via their forced bankruptcy of the Archdiocese of Agana - which is detailed in the ongoing series: HIGH DRAMA IN THE AOA

Bob's commentary was interrupted by the "half-time show." His commentary after the half-time show continues here. 

FRENCHIE AND CARL TAKE ON BEVACQUA

COMMENT BY FRENCHIE 

Frenchie January 18, 2023 at 4:38 AM

Bevacqua has two major problems:

1) he lacks intellectual honesty, because he is willing to argue any which way to further his narrow and flawed sense of history, and his revisionist understanding of said history

2) His lack of deep research on issues of ethnology, civilisations, and again history, makes him conclude wrongly on the reasons of certain events. Not surprising, since this is not his background of studies.

In the history of the world, it has been underlined that societies living in highly challenging environment, mostly desert settings, tend to be matriarchal. Within these very few matriarchal societies, IE: the Touaregs of the Sahara, the Tubus of the Tibesti, or to a lesser extent the Bushmen of the Kalahari, it has been established that the lack of food and liquid resources has led these tribes to regulate the number of births in the tribe according to the annual living conditions. These are exceptional conditions, which cannot be superposed to other civilizations and/or situations.

Dr Rubinstein never equated these known examples of population control to the situation in the Marianas, which were very different.

The situation facing Chamorros then, are more in line with the aborigines on larger islands like Taiwan, which also faced a brutal military colonization, and subsequent subjugation. In this case, it was noted the same high ratio of suicide and infanticide as a form of refusal of their loss, rather than a matriarchal enlightened approach to population control. Bevacqua is here again being petulant and dishonest.

Bevacqua's tactic of trying to fit a political argument to an historical narrative is not new, but it is certainly highly reprehensible.

COMMENT BY CARL

Carl Borja Nelson January 23, 2023 at 1:49 PM

I posted this article to Bevacqua's "Guahan Politics) page over a week ago. He eventually responded, of course denying Tim's points in his opinion piece (without offering serious evidence refuting Tim's points).

I responded to that and then he responded again; and then, for some reason he (or, he says, one of his co-administrators) kicked me off of the site and took down the article.

I messaged him asking him for his reason for kicking me off of the site and talking down my post (and our comments). He messaged me back that it was one of his co-administrators that did it. Possible but I'm skeptical.

He said he would look into it and try to get me back on the site as soon as possible.

He came back and said that he needs a copy of the post because FB won't let him see it. I don't have a copy of it. It was taken down . Lol. SMH.

I just sent him a link to Tim's above article refuting Bevacqua's argument that abortion was accepted and considered positive by indigenous Chamorros.

I don't understand why he criticizes America and other Western capitalist countries but invests so much energy trying to make us copy those countries' practice of killing innocent, unborn infants (62M+ in America alone since Roe v Wade in 1973).

LAURA SOUDER VS MICHAEL BEVACQUA

By Tim Rohr

As already demonstrated multiple times in this blog, Guam "historian," Michael Bevacqua, insists that the killing of Chamorro children by their own mothers is a practice "consistent with CHamoru values" - and, in fact, is a functionally proud expression of "matrilineal" authority and power. 

Fellow CHamoru historian, LAURA MARIE TORRES SOUDER (as Souder sets out her own name in a sworn affidavit) presents a radically different view from Bevacqua's.

In support of what we now know as "Belle's Law," P.L. 20-134, Souder filed an affidavit stating:

I have personally interviewed in-depth in Chamorro...traditional Chamorro healers, known as ‘suruhana’ to document their practices, methods of healing, and also the social attitudes and consequences of specific treatments including those which induce the termination of pregnancy. One suruhana admitted that she administered abortive treatments. She told me that she knew what she was doing was not culturally acceptable…In other words, she recognized the deviancy of her behavior. The suruhana and all others I have interviewed informed me that while a few healers were known to dispense treatments for abortion, none of them associated that type of treatment with healing or curative “amot” (medicine).

My informants spoke honestly about the shame and abhorrence that was associated with the practice of intentionally destroying a life. It is a well established fact that when abortions are practiced by suruhana they are always performed in secret and with shame. This secrecy has been and continues to be a significant indicator that those who perform or have abortions recognize that the act is defined as culturally deviant. They feel shame and do not wish to be known for fear of social reprisal. 

Historical evidence further indicates that incidences of collective acts of abortion and suicide in the darkest moments of Chamorro history during the Spanish era were aberrant and must be interpreted for what they were - - acts of ultimate defiance against genocide, total subjugation, and colonial servitude.

 It would be no surprise if Mr. Bevacqua "pooh-poohed" any of my intrepid expositions of his warped version of CHamoru history - given that I am a "haole."  However, the sworn interjections of Ms. Souder, a person whose curriculum vitae (as set forth in her affidavit) appears to heavily outweigh Mr. Bevacqua's, is another matter. 

Whether Ms. Souder still stands behind what she filed under penalty of perjury thirty years ago is a question. But given the resurgent importance of "Belle's Law" in the wake of Dobbs...

Well. We shall see.

***

Listen to Bob Klitzkie on Tall Tales address this HERE

POPE PAUL III VS MICHAEL BEVACQUA

Lumping the expansion of Catholicism in with the excesses of the Spanish Conquest of the New World is an ad nauseum thing amongst agenda-driven activists who masquerade as historians. And sometimes, as is the case with Michael Bevacqua, this leads to some very twisted positions.

Given that CHamoru's - already an ethnic minority in their own land - are aborting their children at many times the rate of other ethnicities, Bevacqua's abortion advocacy equates to a push for the self-extinction of the very people he portends to champion.

But beyond Bevacqua's historical contortions of abortion, there is the fact that the Catholic Church and its missionaries were not one and the same with the Conquistadors and in fact were often their antagonists.

The excerpt from the 18th century Jesuit historian's journal as set out in a previous post relative to Bevacqua's twisted history is an example. Let us examine it again here:

[T]hey cannot abide the yoke of the Spaniards because of their great pride and haughtiness, and that they would like to live as they did in the past, in freedom and [following their] barbarous customs. Because of this, many hang themselves and others kill themselves [each other?]…The women, likewise, purposely sterilize themselves; or if they conceive, they find ways to abort, and some kill their children after birth in order to save them from the subjugation of the Spaniards. 

The very large diminution of population comes from the subjugation imposed upon them by the force of arms. As lovers of liberty they could not tolerate a foreign yoke. This became so painful for them that, not being able to free themselves of it, they preferred to lose their lives by hanging and by other desperate means. The women purposely sterilized themselves, and they threw their newborn children into the sea, convinced that an early death would free them of travails and a painful life…[in death] they would be fortunate and happy. Subjugation was so despicable that, for them, it was the ultimate and most deplorable calamity.

Other than referring to Chamorro customs as "barbarous," the Jesuit priest (Joannis Joseph Delgado) is blatantly critical of "the Spaniards." Given that Delgado himself is a Spaniard, it is clear that there is a separation between the Church and the Crown. 

Delgado speaks of "the yoke of the Spaniards, of their "great pride and haughtiness," and of "subjugation" by the Spaniards of the Chamorros that is "despicable...a deplorable calamity." The whole tone of Delgado's entry is one of lament. 

Delgado's lament is consistent with the official Catholic Church position relative to the colonization and evangelization of "the Indians of the West and the South" as promulgated in the papal bull Sublimis Deus - On the Enslavement and Evangelization of Indians by Pope Paul III in 1537.

Writing more than two hundred years before Delgado recorded his observations in Guam, Paul III characterized the mistreatment of "the Indians" as the work of Satan:

"The enemy of the human race, who opposes all good deeds in order to bring men to destruction, beholding and envying this, invented a means never before heard of, by which he might hinder the preaching of God’s word of Salvation to the people: he inspired his satellites who, to please him, have not hesitated to publish abroad that the Indians of the West and the South, and other people of whom We have recent knowledge should be treated as dumb brutes created for our service, pretending that they are incapable of receiving the Catholic Faith."

The pope then goes on to declare:

"Desiring to provide ample remedy for these evils, We define and declare by these Our letters...the said Indians and all other people who may later be discovered by Christians, are by no means to be deprived of their liberty or the possession of their property, even though they be outside the faith of Jesus Christ; and that they may and should, freely and legitimately, enjoy their liberty and the possession of their property; nor should they be in any way enslaved; should the contrary happen, it shall be null and have no effect."

Certainly excesses and cruelty existed but it cannot be said by the likes of Bevacqua and others that this was the will and intent of the Catholic Church. It was not. 

***

Listen to Bob Klitzkie on Tall Tales address this HERE

CHALLENGING THE "ANCIENT-NESS" OF CHAMORU ABORTIONS

CHamoru activists like Michael Bevacqua and the governor herself have maintained that abortion is historically consistent with Chamoru values. 

In his declaration in support of the current ACLU lawsuit challenging Guam's informed consent for abortion law, Bevacqua writes:

...ensuring access to safe and legal abortion in Guam is consistent with Chamoru values, culture and history and, indeed, there is substantial evidence that Chamoru women have long exercised autonomy and moral authority to make decisions about their pregnancies.

Bevacqua leans on the cultural phenomenon of matriarchal power for the historical roots of abortion in Chamorro culture:

Ancient accounts tell us that Chamoru women in Guam were more than merely vessels for their communities but were empowered to make decisions about their bodies and families. We see a matrilineal focus, where lineage and symbolic societal power resides primarily with women, in many traditional Micronesian Island cultures, but in the Chamoru culture of the Marianas, that it has historically being the strongest. This is something which the earliest accounts of contact with Europeans highlight. Chamoru women in ancient times had authority over themselves and men in many ways that frankly appalled the early Catholic missionaries, who saw as part of their evangelism the reduction of this social and cultural power.

Bevacqua goes on to support his view by referring to research by Dr. Donald Rubinstein describing "ancient" Chamoru abortifacients: 

Dr. Rubinstein has found historical, ethnographic and linguistic evidence dating back to the 18th century showing that, over time, women in Guam and throughout the region have utilized a variety of methods to induce miscarriage or end their pregnancies, as well as to use birth control and other methods to control their fertility.

However, Bevacqua fails to reference a significant entry in Rubinstein's research that traces abortion in CHamoru history - at least on a genocidal scale - to the Spanish period, which means that abortion in CHamoru culture is not so "ancient," and also reveals that abortion was not an exercise of matriarchal power but a desperate response to colonial subjugation.

In a paper titled "Culture in court: notes and reflection on abortion in Guam," Rubinstein recounts a journal entry by a Jesuit priest historian in 1751 describing what Rubinstein labels: "the catastrophic depopulation of the Chamorro people:"

[T]hey cannot abide the yoke of the Spaniards because of their great pride and haughtiness, and that they would like to live as they did in the past, in freedom and [following their] barbarous customs. Because of this, many hang themselves and others kill themselves [each other?]…The women, likewise, purposely sterilize themselves; or if they conceive, they find ways to abort, and some kill their children after birth in order to save them from the subjugation of the Spaniards. 

Later, in 1788, the same Jesuit historian, as quoted by Rubinstein, writes:

The very large diminution of population comes from the subjugation imposed upon them by the force of arms. As lovers of liberty they could not tolerate a foreign yoke. This became so painful for them that, not being able to free themselves of it, they preferred to lose their lives by hanging and by other desperate means. The women purposely sterilized themselves, and they threw their newborn children into the sea, convinced that an early death would free them of travails and a painful life…[in death] they would be fortunate and happy. Subjugation was so despicable that, for them, it was the ultimate and most deplorable calamity.

Regarding the reference to “purposely sterilized themselves," Rubinstein writes that it "is usually interpreted to refer to intentional abortion."

At least according to the above observations from the 18th century, abortion in CHamoru history was not and is not an "ancient" indigenous value but a relatively recent response to colonial subjugation wherein self-genocide was preferable to a "foreign yoke." 

But is that the reason today's Chamorros still kill their babies at many times the rate of other ethnicities? 

SOURCE