Category Archives: Global: Sanctity of Life

AP: But a national ethics council on March 12 ruled that authorizing sex surrogates would essentially “merchandise the human body” and could leave recipients emotionally vulnerable.

Christian Institute: Patients as young as 16 in Scotland would be able to tell their GP about their desire for assisted suicide, under controversial proposals from an MSP. Margo MacDonald MSP has been criticised for a revised assisted suicide Bill which would enable people aged 16 and over to have their end-of-life wishes on record.

LifeNews: Leading pro-life advocates in Canada are upset the Canadian Parliament will not allow members to vote on a motion to condemn the practice of sex-selection abortions.

AP: A group representing Brazilian doctors on Thursday urged federal lawmakers to change the country’s restrictive abortion law to allow abortions during the first 12 weeks of pregnancy.

C-FAM: The United States brought in veteran activist Adrienne Germain to direct their negotiators. She was instrumental for the Clinton administration at the 1994 Cairo Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) where “safe abortion” first became a rallying cry for the global abortion lobby. At this year’s CSW abortion groups found themselves stymied by that very landmark conference. ICPD does not recognize abortion as a right and says it should never be used as a backup to contraception.

LifeSiteNews: The Council of State, Colombia’s highest administrative court, has struck down a regulatory decree that would have mandated that the nation’s public and private hospitals perform abortion, according to reports in the local media.

LifeNews: A new study has found that women with a history of induced abortion were more likely to experience metabolic syndrome compared to women who had never had abortions, increasing their risk for cardiovascular disease, diabetes and stroke.

LifeSiteNews: A property owner in the small Niagara region town of Beamsville says he is facing pressure by the municipality to remove a sign showing an unborn child and a biblical verse that he agreed to display on his property.

BBC: The UK has moved closer to becoming the first country to allow the creation of babies from three people.

Washington Times: Vice President Joseph R. Biden and House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi both received Communion during the Mass to celebrate the installation of Pope Francis in spite of their pro-choice position on abortion.

Evangelical Fellowship: The British Columbia Court of Appeal is hearing a case that challenges Canada’s laws prohibiting assisted suicide. The EFC submitted written arguments in Carter v. Canada in December and its oral presentation before the court is scheduled for this evening. Learn more at theEFC.ca/carter.

The Local: Abortion figures in Sweden have increased since the introduction of the morning-after pill, with experts blaming the unwanted pregnancies on Swedes’ “careless” contraception habits

LifeSiteNews: The UK is ‘woefully under-prepared for the social and economic challenges presented by an ageing society, a House of Lords committee has warned this week.

LifeSiteNews: Cao Ruyi, a Chinese woman who was spared a forced abortion last June when she was five months pregnant, is thankful her baby boy is alive and well – but the couple still faces the grim prospect of persecution from the totalitarian state apparatus.

Wesley J. Smith at LifeNews: But back to Switzerland. Their suicide clinics seem to accept all comers, and the Swiss refused to shut the suicide tourism down. Which is why I call it Kevorkian as a country.

Scotland Herald: His actions were against the law, and should not be encouraged. Having worked as a medical practitioner in the NHS for 40 years I recognise that some patients do indeed suffer severely as they approach death. However, the way forward is not to take life but to do all in our power to mitigate their suffering and to compassionately care for the dying.

Christian Institute: An attempt to stop private clinics carrying out abortions in Northern Ireland was blocked on Tuesday – even though it won majority support. It was vetoed at the Northern Ireland Assembly by the Sinn Fein Party and two MLAs from the Alliance Party and the Green Party.

Telegraph: More than half a billion birth control procedures, including at least 336 million abortions, have been performed in the name of the one-child policy, China’s Health ministry revealed yesterday.

International Business Times: Researchers from the University of California-San Diego School of Medicine have just released a study in which they declared that the cultural preference for sons over daughters is even more of an intractable problem in Nepal than …

C-FAM: The Agence France-Press reported on March 5, the second day of the Commission, “Much has been made at [CSW] of a World Bank report which estimates that more women aged 15-44 are killed violently than die of malaria, HIV, cancer, accidents and war combined.” The statistic is used by multiple UN agencies and appears on the official UN resources for speakers. On March 13, it was cited in a New York Times editorial criticizing the Holy See and its allies for holding firm against feminist efforts to turn the CSW meeting into a call for global abortion access.

C-FAM: A last ditch effort by ambassadors and top UN officials failed last night to reach agreement on policies to end violence against women because powerful western developed countries want to scrap previous agreements that do not recognize abortion as a right.

Turtle Bay and Beyond: A common theme in criticisms of “unmet need” is the fact that it does not reflect actual demand. Women included in the totals include those who have religious or other objections to contraception.

Christian Concern: An amendment that would have made it illegal for abortions to take place outside the NHS in Northern Ireland has been blocked by Sinn Fein, despite being strongly supported by the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP).

Turtle Bay and Beyond: Last night, the US and EU called for deleting a reafirmation that every human being has the inherent right to life, liberty and security of persons. This year’s Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) has become the equivalent of D-Day for abortion hard-liners

LifeSiteNews: Raw video footage shows unconscious women in saris being unloaded from a filthy plastic stretcher and lined up like butchers’ carcasses on the ground to recover from surgeries at a “mass sterilization camp” in India.

LifeNews: On International Women’s Day, the United Nations is coming under criticism for a report claiming that nations that fail to allow legalized abortion are allowing the “torture and ill treatment” of women.

Guardian: The outcome document of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) must not undermine previous agreements that put women’s sexual and reproductive rights central to their empowerment, the head of the UN development programme said on Wednesday.

Catholic Culture: The Swiss bishops’ spokesman said that the use of the pill would be allowed only in cases when it would not have an abortifacient effect. The spokesman acknowledged the difficulty of determining whether a rape victim could already had ovulated

C-FAM: As UN delegates in closed rooms debate language regarding access to abortion for women who have been violated, two women at an event blocks away presented a powerful argument for breaking the cycle of violence by rejecting abortion even when the child’s conception is the result of rape.

C-FAM: The meeting has barely begun and UN member states are already deadlocked in negotiations at the Commission on the Status of Women this week at UN headquarters. The new line of attack appears to be a push to establish abortion for cases of rape as a right of reparation under humanitarian law.

CNA: Medical experts before the United Nations argued that abortion is not medically necessary to promote women’s health and can actually harm women instead. “Real medical care decreases maternal mortality; abortion does not decrease maternal mortality,” Dr. Donna J. Harrison told CNA on March 6.

CNSNews: Cardinal Raymond Burke, an American who serves as the top judge at the Vatican, recently stated that Catholic politicians who support abortion must not receive Holy Communion.

LifeSiteNews: A motion asking the Parliament of Canada to condemn the practice of sex-selective abortions is scheduled to be debated in the House of Commons on March 28, 2013.

Kristen Hatten at LifeNews: The horror of such a place is difficult for us to imagine, but it is a reality, every day, for over one billion people. How? How could such a nightmarish Orwellian state exist in 2012, when every day we pride ourselves on moving forward and becoming more and more enlightened? The answer is simple: Communism.

LifeNews: The Euthanasia Prevention Coalition (EPC), an intervener in the assisted suicide case at the BC Court of Appeal, wants the BC Court of Appeal to reverse the errors in the Carter decision concerning assisted suicide and euthanasia in Canada.

Turtle Bay and Beyond: As the 57th session of the Commission on the Status of Women begins today, two news stories are already disingenuously implying that the Holy See, the Russian Federation, and Iran are effectively enablers of violence committed against women. These and several other UN member states oppose the inclusion of language that could be used to support a right to abortion – a topic that is always controversial within the UN system.

The Express Tribune: Babies born to Indian surrogate mothers for gay and single Australians may be left stateless and unable to leave the country after New Delhi changed the rules on surrogacy, an expert has said.

LifeNews: One of the top pro-life concerns when multiple pregnancies occur is the advice doctors routinely give to mothers to consider an abortion in order to “save” one or more other children. Never mind that mothers frequently give birth to multiple children without complications — doctors still give the advice anyway. But, not every mother has a “selective reduction” to kill one or more of their unborn children in abortion.

Christian Institute: A man who has locked-in syndrome says it’s possible to “find meaning” despite being in a “shell of a body”. He wants to shift the focus of the assisted suicide debate and create a world where people like him feel encouraged to live.

BBC: Campaigners and politicians from NI and the Irish Republic have gathered at Stormont to oppose any change to abortion laws on the island of Ireland.

Foreign Policy: The initiative committe is led by politician Heinz Hürzeler, a member of the country’s Social Liberal Movement, and maintains that in Switzerland, where 12 percent of pregnancies end in abortion, the practice represents a huge blow to the economy (comparatively speaking, Switzerland has one of the lowest abortion rates in the world, with only 6.4 abortions for every 1,000 women between the ages of 15 and 44)

Guardian: SDLP’s Alban Maginness and DUP’s Paul Girvan to push for law that would make abortions available only via NHS in province

Christian Institute: It is a “great idea” to allow the morning-after pill to be handed out in schools, a leading GP in England has said.

C-FAM: As the UN Human Rights Council considers whether to endorse a report praising comprehensive sex education programs, a new review of the disputed curricula finds they can do more harm than good.

Turtle Bay and Beyond: A letter from Republican lawmakers seeking an accounting for the millions of dollars flowing to Planned Parenthood and its affiliates was sent this week to the Government Accountability Office (GAO).

Scott Yenor at Public Discourse: Jonathan Last’s new book attributes population decline and the birth dearth to two trends that started in the Enlightenment era–first, an effort to limit death; second, an effort to control birth. Both trends are guided by a desire to control nature.

Turtle Bay and Beyond: Grégor Puppinck, a frequent author on this blog, has published a legal analysis on the website of the renowned European Journal of International Law, in which he concludes that laws allowing abortion on demand are in clear contradiction to the European Human Rights Convention, which in its Article 2 protects the Right to Life.

LifeSiteNews: The same month that Germany’s bishops have backed the use of the morning-after pill for rape victims, one of the world’s leading authorities on the drug has said doctors have a duty to inform women that it could prevent a newly-conceived embryo from implanting in the womb, causing an abortion.

APS: Members of Edinburgh Life Society contributed to the defeat of a motion to renew their union’s existing policy to ‘Support a Woman’s Right to Choose and Affiliate to Abortion Rights’. This is a victory that will inspire pro-life student activists nationwide, a wonderful mark of the first-year anniversary for the Alliance of Pro-Life Students.

LifeSiteNews: A group of Quebec physicians have formed an alliance to convey their outrage over the pending legalization of euthanasia by the government.

C-FAM: A new Guttmacher Institute report on Uganda recommends increased access to contraception and abortion as a way to improve women’s health and reduce unintended pregnancies. Yet the abortion advocacy group uses questionable data to push its priorities onto people who, it acknowledges, want children and reject abortion.

AP: Police questioned 30 people on Tuesday and searched the homes of six employees of a private fertility clinic who are suspected of illegally trafficking human eggs and selling them to Israeli couples with fertility problems.

Turtle Bay and Beyond: October 18th 2011, the Court of Justice of the European Union delivered an important judgment in the area of the protection of the human embryo in the case C-34/10 Oliver Brüstle v Greenpeace e.V. In this case the judges in Luxembourg précised the legal definition of the human embryo, and relying on the respect due to human dignity, excluded from patentability all processes which would imply the destruction of human embryo, such as a processes using embryonic stem cells.

LifeNews: This highlights the little known fact that abortion is still effectively illegal in Northern Ireland but there is a situation tantamount to abortion on demand in the rest of the UK where there were over 200,000 abortions last year, 98% on mental health grounds.

Washington Post: A Canadian Medical Association survey found that 16% of 2125 doctors who completed a survey would be willing to euthanize a patient, if legal, while 44% said that they would refuse requests for euthanasia. 26% of the doctors were unsure how they would respond to requests for euthanasia and 15% of the physicians did not respond.

Christian Institute: The Government has refused to put measures in place that could catch illegal gender abortions – because it would cost too much and might upset mothers.

LifeSiteNews: A drama has been unfolding in Germany over the last month that has seen the leading conservative prelate in the country, Cologne’s Cardinal Joachim Meisner, seem to suggest that it is permissible in Catholic hospitals to administer the morning-after pill (MAP) to rape victims. The Bishops of Germany will be discussing the matter further at their next plenary meeting later this month.

NBC: A 13-month-old child was fatally crushed by a car containing Chinese officials after they went to collect a fine from the parents for breaching the country’s one-child policy, according to Chinese state media.

LifeSiteNews: A pro-abortion doctor is insisting there are strict protocols in place to avoid the awkward problem of having “to deal with a live, aborted infant.” In a letter printed in Tuesday’s National Post, Dr. Christiane Dauphinais seems to be trying to quell public concern after the mainstream media reported on StatsCan data suggesting hundreds of babies were left to die after being born alive following failed abortions between 2000 and 2009. But something tells me this isn’t going to help her cause.

LIfeNews: When twins Mackenzie and Cameron Glover were born 17 weeks prematurely on 17 June last year, they were so tiny that their mother said they could ‘fit inside a pint glass’.

Today, scientist may have turned urine into a different kind of gold, stem cell gold. Researchers in China have created neural stem cells from the cells found in urine. From Wired . . .

LifeNews: Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper opposes a call by three MPs to look into figures from a story LifeNews broke showing 491 babies have been born alive and subsequently left to die following failed abortions.

Catholic Herald: Soon, an abortion Bill will travel through the Oireachtas, the two houses that together make up Ireland’s government. Our prime minister, Enda Kenny, wants legal grounds for an abortion if the baby’s mother is suicidal. He’s arguing that this will not, in everyday clinical practice, become “abortion on demand”. For most people, pro-life or pro-abortion, Kenny lacks credibility.

Stefano Gennarini at C-FAM: A major disagreement among demographic experts threatens to upend efforts to include population control and family planning programs in the United Nations new development agenda. Experts who view population growth as an obstacle to development are criticizing the “laissez-faire attitude” of developing countries toward population growth and high fertility. Yet other experts disagree, saying that population control and family planning are not essential to development strategies.

Christian Institute: The mother of twins who survived after being born at just 23 weeks – a week earlier than the current legal abortion limit – has criticised the law.

The Sun: HUNGRY parents in North Korea have been caught eating their CHILDREN to avoid starvation, according to reports

LifeSiteNews: “Sadness, depression, fear of sterility, guilt,” drug abuse and suicide are just some of the effects suffered by women who have abortions in Mexico City, according to the country’s most eminent newspaper, El Universal. The newspaper ran an article openly acknowledging the psychological trauma associated with abortion on January 21.

C-FAM: Abortion advocates and others are concerned about the impending expiration of the Millennium Development Goals in two years. Some of them met last week to begin developing a manifesto to insert, among other things, universal coverage of abortion into the post-2015 development agenda.

Wendy Wright at C-FAM: A European court victory for environmentalists has inspired a continent-wide campaign to end European Union funding of embryo-destructive research and abortion.

LifeSiteNews: There is hope for women who have started a chemical abortion but then changed their minds and decided to keep their babies, according to a case study of six women.

LifeSiteNews: The political arm of Canada’s pro-life movement is urging the federal Justice Minister to use “whatever legal or punitive measures are necessary” to prevent Quebec from “legalizing euthanasia” and thereby violating the country’s Criminal Code.

LifeNews: Despite some reports claiming China may relax or even do away with its brutal one-child policy, that results in forced abortions, coercive sterilizations and other human rights abuses, Chinese officials are renewing its commitment to it.

Reuters: “If this goes on, there will be no taxpayers, no workers and no caregivers for the elderly,” said Gu Baochang, a demography professor at Renmin University.

LifeSiteNews: Pope Benedict XVI says Catholic agencies must sometimes refuse partnerships that would even indirectly support activities opposed to the Christian view of the human person.

CNSNews: Taro Aso, Japan’s 72-year-old finance minister, says he’s worried about the financial burden that end-of-life care is placing on his country.