Category Archives: Global: Sanctity of Life

LifeSiteNews: “The government of Rwanda is planning to launch a sterilization campaign with the goal of rendering 700,000 men, or about one seventh of the male population, infertile within three years.”

AP: “Britain’s High Court has rejected an attempt to loosen the law so that women can take a second dose of a pill at home to complete early abortions.”

LifeSiteNews: “The Portuguese Federation for Life (FPV) is calling for a revision of the nation’s abortion legislation after a nurse was given a suspended sentence of three years years in prison for running an illegal and clandestine abortion clinic in the city of Matosinhos.”

Christian Science Monitor: “We have about 40 years before the jury renders its final verdict on Malthus. The population of the planet is currently 6.9 billion. By 2050, it will hit 9.2 billion, according to the US Census Bureau. Because of declining birthrates, population specialists believe that will be the peak. Whether you think more population growth is good or bad, that’s the predicted trajectory.”

AP: “An official says that there is evidence that the parents of 25 children found abandoned in a northern Mexican border city were kidnapped.”

LifeSiteNews: “Aníbal António Cavaco Silva, the Catholic politician who approved a law that led to the liberalization of abortion and another that instituted gay ‘marriage’ in Portugal, has been reelected as the country’s president in general elections on Sunday, January 23.”

Times of India: “A woman acting as surrogate mother in India cannot be less than 21 or over 35 years. Also, she cannot give more than five live births, including her own children. With India fast emerging as a hotspot for rent-a-womb phenomenon, the Union health ministry has now finalised the Assisted Reproductive Technologies (ART) Regulation Bill 2010, which has been sent to the law ministry for its approval.”

Bill Muehlenberg writing at Christian Today: “While many adults applaud the new reproductive technologies, many children conceived by these means are far from thrilled with them. Many are left not knowing who their actual mother or father is. And many go though lifelong agony and grief as a result. They have become the new stolen generation, deprived of the most important people in their lives.”

Daily Telegraph: “While seven women died as a direct result of IVF between 2003 and 2005, two died as a result of having abortions in 2007, note the obstetricians, in an [article published in the British Medical Journal].”

Bloomberg: “The British Pregnancy Advisory Service, the U.K.’s largest abortion provider, asked a London judge to modify the interpretation of a 1967 law to allow women to take drugs to terminate pregnancies at home.”

LifeSiteNews: “Labour Party leader Eamon Gilmore told Irish public radio earlier this month that the Irish parliament must ‘face up to its responsibilities’ and make abortion fully legal according to the English model. In Ireland the right to life of the unborn is included in the constitution, where it was placed by a popular referendum.”

Associated Press: “A Spanish association of people searching for lost children or parents filed a petition Thursday with the attorney general to investigate allegations that newborns were stolen from their mothers and sold to other families for decades, including as recently as the mid-1990s.”

LifeSiteNews: “Catholic leaders in the Philippines are cautiously optimistic after the country’s government appears to have backed off of its hard-line stance on the controversial ‘reproductive health’ bill.”

The Slovak Spectator: “Bratislava University Hospital has rejected allegations that its new policy effectively ending abortion procedures was introduced based on a demand or call from Health Minister Ivan Uhliarik (Christian Democratic Movement (KDH)), hospital spokesperson Zuzana Čižmáriková told the TASR newswire on Tuesday, January 25. She was responding to a report published in the Pravda daily. Many KDH members have religious objections to abortion.”

LifeSiteNews: “The French government is opposing two bills under consideration in the country’s Senate to legalize euthanasia and assisted suicide.”

MercatorNet / Careful: “A group of Belgian doctors are harvesting ‘high quality’ organs from patients who have been euthanased. This is not a secret project, but one which they described openly at a conference organised by the Belgian Royal Medical Academy in December.”

LifeSiteNews: “European abortion activists are annoyed with the tiny Balkan state of Macedonia for telling women that abortion is something that carries risks, and that they can do without.”

Associated Press: “The leading medical association and key pharmaceutical companies in Germany, where anti-death penalty sentiment is strong, said Monday they would not support exporting a drug to the U.S. that is needed for lethal injections there.”

Independent: “London’s Beth Din, which is headed by Lord Jonathan Sacks and is one of Britain’s most influential Orthodox Jewish courts, caused consternation among medical professionals earlier this month when it ruled that national organ donor cards were not permissible under halakha (Jewish law).”

LifeSiteNews: “The leader of the Russian Orthodox Church has offered Russian authorities suggestions on how to reduce the nation’s staggeringly high abortion rate.”

LifeSiteNews: “A scientist recently appointed to the Vatican’s prestigious Pontifical Academy of Sciences has confirmed in an interview that he supports the legalization of abortion and civil unions for homosexuals, as LifeSiteNews.com and other websites had reported earlier this month.”

LifeSiteNews: “The extremism and stupidity of Canada’s top political leadership on the matter of abortion was on display again today with Liberal and NDP leaders reacting to Conservative Prime Minister Harper’s comments on the issue yesterday. The message from both of the opposition parties has remained the same: ‘ooooh, we’re scared Harper is secretly pro-life.’”

USA Today: “Now, former Swiss Justice Minister Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf wants to make assisted suicide more difficult by requring the process be supervised by doctors who aren’t affiliated with one of the country’s four right-to-die organizations. And Zurich voters are due to decide in May whether to ban assisted suicide, the article says.”

Swiss Info: “Switzerland did not violate any human rights when it refused to give a mentally ill man over-the-counter access to a drug in order to end his life. In a ruling on Thursday, the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg dismissed an appeal by the 58-year-old man, who after two suicide attempts in 2004 turned to Dignitas, a Swiss assisted suicide organisation.”

Christian Concern: “The current compensation limit for undergoing the complex process of donating human eggs is £250. However, five years after its last review of the rules on the practice, the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) is testing public attitudes on whether payments should be sharply increased. HFEA has launched a three-month public consultation on the issue calling for the widest possible participation from the British public.”

Times of Malta: “The Professionals Against Embryo Freezing – as the group is called – said today that it was disappointed by the recommendations of a parliamentary committee, which, it said, was calling for the setting up of a national embryo freezing service. ”

Dutch News: “The Dutch voluntary euthanasia society is looking for a partner to open a special clinic later next year where people can go to end their lives, the Volkskrant reports.”

C-FAM: “Will a new $40 billion maternal and child health fund include abortion? A just-announced UN commission will decide. The new commission is supposed to ‘make transparent’ funds slated for the UN Secretary General’s Global Strategy for Women’s and Children’s Health, announced last September at a UN summit.”

GMA News: “To come up with a win-win solution on the much-debated reproductive health (RH) bill, President Benigno Simeon Aquino III decided to have his own version and called it the ‘responsible parenthood’ (RP) bill.”

Wall Street Journal: “House Speaker John Boehner (R., Ohio) issued a statement saying the group discussed a range of issues including the need for China to provide stronger intellectual property protections and curtail North Korea’s aggressive behavior. It said the lawmakers ‘raised our strong, ongoing concerns with reports of human-rights violations in China, including the denial of religious freedom and the use of coercive abortion as a consequence of the “one child” policy.’”

LifeNews: One activist, former Tiananmen Square student leader Chai Ling, pointed out, “As we gather here in Washington, over 35,000 forced and coerced abortions are taking place today in China.”

ABC News: “ACT Chief Minister Jon Stanhope says a Greens bill to restore the Territory’s right to make euthanasia laws will not pass.”

Ynetnews: “In a preliminary reading, the Knesset has rejected a law proposal that would have allowed terminally ill patients to take drugs that would cause them to die.”

ChristianNewsWire: “In China, there are at least 37 million more men than women, and that gap is growing each year . . . This gendercide is waging a war against Chinese girls every day, primarily as a result of the One-Child Policy.”

Congressman Chris Smith writing at LifeNews: “I urge President Obama to join us in speaking out for all those in China whose basic human rights are violated – for political prisoners . . . ”

LifeSiteNews: “In the keynote address to the mHealth Summit held in November last year, Bill Gates introduced a plan to use cell phone technology to register every birth on the planet in a newborn vaccination database . . .”

Sydney Morning Herald: “The NSW’s Surrogacy Act, which was passed in November but has not yet come into force, will impose penalties of two years’ jail, a $110,000 fine, or both on parents who pay for a surrogate here or abroad to carry their child . . . Commercial surrogacy is illegal in Australia. But under the new law, NSW residents face prosecution for using commercial surrogacy overseas.”

LifeSiteNews: “The Catholic Bishop of San Cristobal de las Casas, in the state of Chiapas, Mexico, has condemned a group that the Canadian bishops’ Canadian Catholic Organization for Development and Peace (D&P) currently lists as its featured Mexican ‘partner’ on its website, LifeSiteNews has learned.”

Telegraph: “The author, who caused an outcry last year when he called for euthanasia booths to be installed on every street corner, says that he now regards euthanasia as nothing less than ‘an evolutionary inevitability.’”

Mail & Guardian: “She is the most powerful politician to advance an explicitly feminist agenda. Even in that most delicate and crucial relationship with China — on which the world’s attention will be fixed this week for the Chinese president’s visit to the US — Clinton has gone out of her way to press feminist issues. In China’s case, she has highlighted the country’s growing gender imbalance caused by the high abortion rate of female foetuses.”

Yahoo News (AFP): “More than 1,000 infants — most of them girls — were killed or abandoned to die in Pakistan last year according to conservative estimates by the Edhi Foundation, a charity working to reverse the grim trend.”

Northwest Asian Weekly: “The leaf-strewn median on Eternal Peace Road hides a grim secret. Numerous tiny fetuses lie in unmarked graves dug by women from the abortion clinic across the street. The staff at the small clinic in the heart of this ancient city don’t bury most of the fetuses — only those that have reached three or four months, when they clearly resemble miniature babies.”

Telegraph (includes video): “BPAS has launched the legal action to have the interpretation of law changed so that instead of saying the all medication must be prescribed and administed in the clinic, it says it must be just’ prescribed and issued’.”

Telegraph: “Damien Hirst has used an infant’s skull to create his latest work, For Heaven’s Sake. The skull, which is believed to be that of a child who died before it was two weeks old, is cast in platinum and studded with more than 8,000 pink and white diamonds by the royal jewellers Bentley & Skinner.”

The Australian: “A contraceptive device fitted in women’s arms has misfired, with more than 400 Australian users becoming pregnant. And women in Britain have received thousands of pounds in compensation for unwanted pregnancies. Thousands of Australian and British women used the Implanon implant, which was designed to stop them getting pregnant for three years by releasing hormones into their blood from a tiny tube in their arm.”

LifeSiteNews: “RU-486 abortions are allowing more and more women in Finland to abort their children at home, a practice that has become a nationwide trend, Finnish authorities said this week.”

LifeSiteNews: “Labour Party health spokesman Jan O’Sullivan said that legislation must now be introduced to provide for ‘the right to the termination of a pregnancy’ in the very limited circumstances specified in the judgment. O’Sullivan said the absence of legislation providing for abortion in circumstances where the mother’s life was at risk left those with crisis pregnancies and doctors in an ‘impossible position.’”

Daily Independent: “Results of a study by a group of researchers have identified the use of Manual Vacuum Aspiration (MVA) as a cost-effective and safe abortion procedure for Nigeria. They, however, note that the procedure must be carried out in during the first trimester and in a certified clinic operated by highly trained health experts.”

Associated Press: “Brazil’s national association of doctors has approved new rules for in vitro fertilization that let same-sex couples and single people qualify for the process.”

Irish Medical Times: “Following the recent European Court of Human Rights ruling, the Medical Council has clarified its position in relation to abortion. Doctors should undertake a full assess­ment of any ‘real and substantial risk to the life (as distinct from the health) of the mother. Under current legal precedent, this exception includes where there is a clear and substantial risk to the life of the mother arising from a threat of suicide,’ the Medical Council stated.”

IRIN: “Six anti-slavery activists are in prison in Mauritania in a case rights experts say points to the challenges of ensuring a 2007 law criminalizing slavery is more than just words on paper.”

Jonathan Mirsky reviews [full text via Google News] Cultivating Global Citizens: Population in the Rise of China “By Susan Greenhalgh in the Wall Street Journal: “In the quest for ‘superior’ children and mothers, Ms. Greenhalgh explains, Beijing put aside social, cultural and political factors, and discriminated against whole classes of low-quality people . . . Official pressure to curtail and ‘improve’ births resulted in infanticide and selective abortion, which in turn led to a gender gap among newborns of at best 120 boys to 100 girls. Many Chinese men, therefore, will not find brides, and fewer elderly Chinese will have daughters to comfort and support them.”

Telegraph: “Pharmacists fear that many women are taking to ‘unnecessary risks’ with their health by using the morning after pill after losing control on nights out. A poll of 3,000 people by The Co-Operative Pharmacy found that 20 per cent of women aged 18 to 35 have taken the emergency pill in the last year.”

LifeNews: “According to the Catholic News Agency, the bishops released a statement on December 28 through the Bishops’ Conference of Chile saying there is never a justification for an abortion and that it is never medically necessary for women.”

LifeSiteNews: “Chilean President Sebastián Piñera is urging his ministers to stand firm in their defense of pro-life values as the nation’s congress confronts two new legislative proposals to decriminalize the killing of unborn children.”

LifeNews: “Last week the UN announced the members of a new commission to enforce its guidelines on women’s and children’s health . . . If the make up of the commission and the website launching it are any indication, it will [include abortion promotion]. ”

The Stir: “In news that is unlikely to surprise much of anyone, a recent UK study has shown that girls from wealthier families are more likely to terminate than girls from poorer ones. Did we really need a study to tell us that?”

CTV: “Emotionally charged hearings into the controversial issues of dying with dignity and euthanasia are set to resume in Quebec.”

Swiss Info: “The acquittal of a doctor accused of euthanasia has rekindled the debate on assisted suicide in Switzerland, ahead of votes at the cantonal level on the issue.”

ABC News: “A foetus has been found in the bathroom of a plane that arrived in the Philippine capital of Manila.”

Times of Malta: “Nationalist MP Jean Pierre Farrugia’s statement that he would be allocating part of his MP salary rise towards fiscal incentives to encourage couples to implant or adopt frozen human embryos left over after IVF treatment is being strongly objected to by the Gift of Life Foundation.”

The Philippine Star: “The European Union (EU) hopes the House of Representatives and the Senate will approve the Reproductive Health (RH) bill despite lawmakers’ pronouncements that the measure is not among the priority legislations in 2011.”

Irish Times: “The abortion issue should be dealt with by an all-party Oireachtas committee, according to Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny, who has ruled out giving any pre-election commitment to hold a referendum on the matter.”

Deutsche Welle: “Religious leaders in Germany have spoken out against recent moves by parliamentarians to force a relaxation of laws on the genetic screening of embryos as part of in vitro fertilization.”

National Post: “Selective reductions are typically carried out for women pregnant with triplets or greater, where the risk of harm or death climbs sharply with each additional fetus. The Ontario couple is part of what some experts say is a growing demand for reducing twins to one, fuelled more by socio-economic imperatives than medical need, and raising vexing new ethical questions.”

Asia News: “Chinese women have no power of choice over their body and are subjected to constant humiliation and suffering because of the one-child law. At least three times a year they must report for a mandatory pelvic examination (to verify that they are not pregnant); after the first child, they are forced to use an intrauterine contraceptive device, they are subjected to forced sterilization and abortion (up to nine months).”

ynetnews: “Israel’s Chief Rabbis Yona Metzger and Shlomo Amar on Monday called on all Israeli rabbis to fight the ‘abortion epidemic in our country.’”

BBC: “A nine year old girl from Norfolk has had a life-saving transplant from a so-called saviour sibling . . . Megan’s parents, Katie and Andy from King’s Lynn, said they always wanted another baby, but natural conception would have given then just a one in four chance of having a child that was a perfect tissue match.”

LifeNews: “In the aftermath of the vote in the Canadian House of Commons on a bill the prevent forced and pressured abortions, Prime Minister Stephen Harper is coming under fire for opposing the measure . . . The legislation would have made it illegal for anyone to coerce a woman into an abortion through threats of violence, withdrawal of financial resources or denial of a place to live.”

New York Times: “Thirty years after it introduced some of the world’s most sweeping population-control measures, the Chinese government continues to use a variety of coercive family planning tactics, from financial penalties for households that violate the restrictions to the forced sterilization of women who have already had one child, according to a report issued by a human rights group.”

Independent: “The evidence is clear. Legalisation increases abortion rates dramatically. Irish figures for abortion remain comparatively low because we have not legalised abortion in this country. We have an average rate of approximately 6,000 abortions per annum (4,422 performed last year in the UK).”

Times of Malta: “Malta’s strict anti-abortion laws will not be affected by the recent judgment of Europe’s supreme court relating to abortion in Ireland, according to a Maltese judge who sat on the case.”

Irish Central: “A woman who was terminally ill with cancer was refused an abortion at Cork University hospital and had to travel to Britain to have the procedure.”

E. Christian Brugger writes at the Culture of Life Foundation: “The bioethics website BioEdge (www.bioedge.org) just reported that an appeal’s court in Belgium recently upheld a similar suit brought by parents against doctors on behalf of their disabled son. The Court of Appeal of Brussels ruled that because of a faulty prenatal diagnosis, which led to a disabled boy being born, the doctors ‘have injured [the boy’s] certain and legitimate interest in being the object of a therapeutic abortion.’ In other words, the boy had a right to be killed through abortion, and that right was violated when, because of the doctors’ misdiagnosis, he was born alive.”

Lord Nicholas Windsor writing at First Things: “Is it still possible then that we can point to anything of any real significance that had been overlooked, anything dangerous smuggled into this new phase of history that has caught us unawares? I would say that this is indeed the case, and I would like to focus especially on a matter and a practice that constitutes the single most grievous moral deficit in contemporary life: the abortion of our unborn children . . . All else that we concern ourselves with in the lives of human beings derives from the inescapable fact that first we must have human lives with which to concern ourselves. By disregarding this self-evident fact of the debt owed immediately to the unborn—which is to be allowed to be born (and let us not forget that all of us might have suffered just the same fate before our birth)—humanity’s deepest instincts are trampled and shattered.”