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