Category Archives: Global: Sanctity of Life

Wall Street Journal: “I came to Beijing in search of help,” Mr. Deng told The Wall Street Journal after meeting with reporters Friday afternoon in the office of a Beijing-based lawyer who has been assisting the family.

The Epoch Times: The husband of a woman from China’s Shaanxi Province who was forced by officials to abort a seven-month fetus this month said he will sue the local authorities, according to his lawyer.

CBC.ca: At least one person has brought the anti-abortion argument to the CAW’s home turf in Windsor, Ont. Connie Thomson is a registered nurse who belongs to a group opposed to abortion. Instead of standing in front of Windsor Regional Hospital to demonstrate against it, she has been spending time outside Chrysler’s nearby Windsor Assembly Plant, where she hands out pamphlets to workers.

The Hindu: Ms. Feng’s case has reignited debate about whether China should persist with its controversial family planning policies. According to Yang Zhizhu, a professor at the China Youth University for Political Sciences who has challenged the legality of family planning penalties, an increasing number of scholars, activists and ordinary citizens — with growing awareness of their rights — are questioning the enforcement of family planning rules, particularly with declining fertility rates across most cities.

Wendy Wright at C-FAM: The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation wants to gather commitments of billions of dollars from heads of state and other leaders for contraceptive programs aimed at poor women. The Gates Foundation also wants governments to help overcome what they consider to be “barriers” to contraceptive use such as parental involvement. These efforts will take place at a Gates-sponsored Family Planning Summit on July 11 in London.

LifeSiteNews: A campaign by Peru’s Planned Parenthood affiliate to lower the age of sexual consent to fourteen years of age is being condemned by the nation’s Catholic bishops as a potential boon for sex trafficking of minors, as well as an incentive to abortion and other vices

LifeSiteNews: Nick McKim, the leader of the Greens in the Australian state of Tasmania has announced that he will be introducing a euthanasia bill that will be co-sponsored by Premier Lara Giddings, the leader of the Labour party.

Christian Institute: A coordinated push from pro-euthanasia activists is underway which includes emotional court cases and a bid to neutralise doctors.

Christian Institute: Doctors have reiterated their opposition to assisted suicide and voted down a motion calling for their union to adopt a ‘neutral’ stance on the issue. Professor Raymond Tallis tabled a motion calling for the British Medical Association (BMA) to drop its opposition and move to a “neutral position” on the issue.

Daily Mail: Women considering abortions should be offered free advice on the NHS, according to doctors.
Members of the British Medical Association want them to have unbiased counselling from experts who aren’t connected to the clinics performing terminations.

LifeSiteNews: More than one third of women seeking an abortion in public institutions change their minds and choose life for their unborn children in response to alternatives offered by the Mexico City government, according to statistics released yesterday.

Times of Malta: A Bill regulating in-vitro fertilisation will be presented in Parliament “in the coming weeks”, according to the Social Policy Ministry.

FRC Blog: The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), a five-year recipient of the funding, has an Anti-Trafficking Services Program through its Migration and Refugee Services division, which has proven highly effective for more than ten years. Despite this program’s proven track record of helping people escape slavery and start a new life, when the USCCB re-applied for grant funding in 2011, the application was denied. The only explainable reason? The program fails to offer victims sterilization, contraception, and abortion.

ColomboPage.com: Sumithra Rahubadda, Secretary to the Ministry of Child Development and Women’s Affairs has told Xinhua that amid the rapid increase of illegal abortions and incidents of rapes, the government has taken measures to ease the abortion laws but the opposition from the church has become a snag.

LifeSiteNews: The Society of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists of Canada (SOGC) said in a position statement released last month that they are “troubled” by a private members motion that seeks to determine when human life begins.

Stock and Land: “Abortion is an unpleasant and harrowing experience for women and to hear it is happening repeatedly makes your hair stand on end,” Josephine Quintavalle, of the UK’s Pro-Life Alliance, told the Daily Mail. “These figures show that sadly, abortion is being seen by many as a form of contraception.”

CAW Local 444 split on abortion issue

BBC: A group of 100 parents in China who have lost an only child want to sue the government for better financial compensation as they grow older.

AP: The Chinese father of a forcibly aborted baby whose case prompted an international outcry has been beaten and forced into hiding . . .

Daily Mail: IVF treatment early in adulthood dramatically increases a woman’s chance of developing breast cancer, research suggests. Women who started taking fertility drugs and went through IVF around their 24th birthday were found to have a 56 per cent greater chance of developing breast cancer than those in the same age group who went through treatments without IVF.

Wesley Smith at First Things: When IVF began, we were told it was only to permit infertile married couples have children. It has since expanded geometrically to become an industry that also includes eugenic options, commercialization of gametes and uteruses, and facilitation of what were once called alternative lifestyles.

The Economist: But no loophole could help Feng Jianmei. On June 14th the provincial government apologised to Ms Feng, and said family-planning officials in Shaanxi would be fired. But that deals with the symptoms not the cause. “I had no money to pay the fine,” says her husband. “But does that mean we should suffer the grief of losing a child?”

Christian Science Monitor: The UN’s Rio+20 earth summit set only modest goals, but sparked controversy over the Vatican’s successful effort to remove reference to ‘reproductive rights’ from the final document. Hillary Clinton vowed the US would ensure ‘those rights are respected.’

Rukhsana Hasib at Huffington Post: Last week, a GOP Selective Abortion Bill, which banned sex-selective abortions and was said to have targeted Asian-Americans, did not pass. This exercise, however, brought this serious issue into the limelight and put those who are guilty of this practice on notice.

LifeNews: The World Health Organization (WHO) has released a second edition of “Safe abortion: technical and policy guidance for health systems.” This document is updated from the original 2003 publication and runs 134 pages; it can be found here.

C-FAM: In an astounding show of solidarity, a diverse group of countries rallied together with the Holy See to successfully remove any mention of reproductive rights or population control from the final outcome document produced during the last round of UN negotiations at the Rio +20 conference this week.

International Herald Tribune: Hu Xijin, the editor of Global Times, a populist pro-government newspaper, criticized the abortion on Sina Weibo, the Twitter-like microblogging service in China . . . But he also suggested the one-child policy was still necessary, saying that “world resources cannot afford to feed a China with billions of people.”

LifeNews: The number of abortions performed in New Zealand decreased in 2011, Statistics New Zealand said today. A total of 15,863 induced abortions were performed in New Zealand in 2011, 767 fewer than in 2010.

Life News: Two abortion practitioners who fed the bodies of girl babies killed in abortions to dogs to hide the sex-selection abortions they were performing have been charged with homicide. The charges are in connection with a legal abortion they performed that resulted in a woman’s death.

Christian Post: Texas-based Christian human rights organization ChinaAid has launched a defense fund to fight against forced abortions in China in light of the recent case involving a seven-month pregnant woman forced by family planning officials to undergo the procedure.

New Statesman: There are 300,000 officials whose job is to enforce the one child policy, backed up by a network of 92 million members who assist with enforcement and informing.

The Christian Institute: Abortions for women in their early 30s have risen by 10 per cent between 2009 and last year – with career ambitions contributing to the rise.

LifeSiteNews: The head of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops, as well as the Archbishop of Vancouver, have issued statements decrying the recent decision by the B.C. Supreme Court that found Canada’s ban on assisted suicide unconstitutional.

LifeNews: Members of Human Life International (HLI) Switzerland are helping to organize a pro-life conference in Zurich, Switzerland on June 15 in opposition to a meeting of euthanasia activists from around the world.

LifeNews: In the coming months, the Council of Europe and the European Court of Human Rights will once again have to rule on the issues of euthanasia and assisted suicide. Two cases, currently pending, will soon be decided by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR – Koch v. Germany and Alda Gross v. Switzerland).

NY Times: The actor Aamir Khan opened a significant chapter in gender politics in the first episode of his show, “Satyamev Jayate” (Truth Triumphs), last month when he took on the topic of female feticide. Media coverage of the subject exploded afterward, highlighting India’s shocking record on female feticide — 10 million aborted over two decades, according to a 2006 study by the British medical journal The Lancet.

Washington Times: City officials in China have apologised to a woman who was forced to have an abortion and suspended three people responsible, state media reports.

Turtle Bay and Beyond links to the paper and provides an excerpt.

Turtle Bay and Beyond: “The Future We Want” will not be a binding document. It is a political document without legal import. Whatever goals and ideals make their way into the document will not change the world over night. But, the outcome document of this conference will have political significance. It is an indication of the direction in which the political elites of the world want our future to go. For the most part, its success will only be assured if policies from the document become hard law through national legislation.

Daily Mail: Doctors must end their opposition to assisted dying for terminally ill people and move to a position of neutrality, says the British Medical Journal. A major bid to shift the stance of the medical establishment is signalled today by the influential publication, which calls for a change in the law. The journal, published by a subsidiary of the British Medical Association (BMA), says legalisation of assisted dying is a decision for society, not doctors, so royal medical colleges and the BMA should become neutral on the issue.

Assisted dying
BMJ 2012; 344 doi: 10.1136/bmj.e4075 (Published 14 June 2012)
Cite this as: BMJ 2012;344:e4075

C-Fam: The CEDAW Committee, charged with monitoring the implementation of the Convention for the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), has warned Brazil that its democratic lawmaking process is a threat to “sexual and reproductive rights,” and the Committee continues to insist that illegal abortion has a negative impact on maternal mortality.

Ilya Somin at the Volokh Conspiracy: New Zealand economist Eric Crampton recently posted an interesting interview on organ markets that he did with Radio New Zealand. Like the United States, New Zealand faces a shortage of organs available for transplant, as a result of which many people die before appropriate organs can be found for them.

GulfNews: A conference in the Moroccan capital Rabat on Tuesday launched a call for the legalisation of abortion in the north African country to end the “real tragedy” of back-street terminations.

UPI: A proposed abortion bill to be submitted to Turkey’s cabinet seeks middle ground between a woman’s right to choose and a fetus’ right to life, officials said.

AP: Right-to-die campaigners are meeting in Switzerland amid signs that the practice of assisted suicide is gaining acceptance in Europe.

Turtle Bay and Beyond: Two groups that work to prevent human rights abuses in China, China Aid and All Girls Allowed, have reported that a woman who is five months pregnant from the Hunan Province is being held at a hospital in Changsha city for violating China’s one-child policy and faces an imminent forced abortion if she does not consent to a voluntary abortion or pay a fine. Cao Ruyi, 37, and her husband Li Fu have a six year old daughter.

LifeSiteNews (video embedded): Turner had to answer for his history of provocative statements, and made a few new ones, when members of the website WeAreChange.org caught up with him on camera late last month.

Turtle Bay and Beyond: In the last months leading up to the Rio +20 summit, yet another report was released promoting population control as essential in the fight to eradicate world poverty. The report, published by the Royal Society of London, titled “People and the Planet” . . .

Christian Institute: A schoolgirl aged 15 was helped by teachers to have an abortion without her parents’ knowledge.

LifeSiteNews: Prime Minister Stephen Harper is pressuring Conservative MPs to vote against Stephen Woodworth’s motion to review the legal definition of a human being, reports the Globe and Mail. The motion was supposed be debated on Thursday and voted on next week, however the debate and vote have been postponed until the fall after Woodworth’s mother fell ill.

Christian Institute: The fertility and embryology regulator has announced a consultation on a controversial technique which could lead to children with three genetic parents.

Catholic Culture: Women in the Beed district of India’s central Maharashtra state have been forced to undergo abortions late in pregnancy when they were discovered to be carrying female babies, AsiaNews reports.

Turtle Bay and Beyond: While EU governments are currently discussing “Horizon 2020″, the 8th multiannual framework programme for research, several countries have announced that they were not going to support the EU funding of research projects on embryonic stem cells, which is ethically controversial because such cells are obtained from embryos that have been aborted or created in vitro. The move was led by the Austrian government, which was joined by Malta, Lithuania, Slovakia, Poland, Ireland and Slovenia.

Guardian: Drug firms oppose an EU call for controls on potent chemicals that have been blamed for the gender mutation of freshwater fish . . .

Turtle Bay and Beyond: But the rights-in-childbirth movement also considers the fact that the unborn child may have rights beyond survival, that is, the right to be born in a way that is best for her.

LifeSiteNews: Despite the uptick in new births, Statistics Canada demographers are warning that without a “substantial increase in fertility,” Canada’s population growth in 20 years will be “close to zero.”

LifeSiteNews: The board of the student union at the oldest university in Australia has voted 6-5 to approve the only pro-life student society in Australia. The decision has been met with outrage by stunned pro-abortion students . . .

LifeNews: Two doctors who fed the bodies of aborted baby girls to dogs in order to hide cases of sex-selection abortions in India has been arrested.

The Center for Reproductive Rights has this post indicating that the United Nations is targeting Peru over its abortion policies.

Turtle Bay and Beyond: If you thought it was costly to have a child, consider how much one couple in China paid. For violating China’s one-child policy by having a second child, the parents were fined 1.3 million yuan ($204,114).

NC Register: As Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng prepared to give his first speech in the United States, a group of Chinese expatriates gathered in New York City May 29 to discuss abuses in their homeland’s one-child-per-family policy.

C-Fam: A newly released research paper charges that medical journals and researchers are burying data that shows a link between abortion and dangerous preterm births in later pregnancies. Dr. Byron Calhoun makes these charges in “Abortion and Preterm Birth: Why Medical Journals Aren’t Giving Us The Real Picture,” released by C-FAM (publisher of the Friday Fax).

Tim Ferguson at Forbes: That’s because Chen in rural Shandong province was fighting, among other things, application of China’s one-child policy that has included pressure or worse to end pregnancies. In the hubbub of Chen’s escape from Shandong and eventual flight to New York, Bob Fu, a Texas activist for Christian causes in China, was seen playing an active role. But in the secular world in which Chen is now ensconced, this part of his struggle now draws little conversation.

Christian Institute: More women are having repeat abortions, according to new official figures for England and Wales which have been met with concern from pro-lifers.

LifeSiteNews: After pro-life activists discovered that the Ontario government had quietly passed a bill blocking access to the province’s abortion data even with a Freedom of Information request, the Ministry of Health and Long-term Care has defended that exemption in a statement emailed to LifeSiteNews.

Washington Post: Australia’s attorney general on Wednesday introduced legislation that would broaden the legal definition of slavery to include organ trafficking and forced marriage.

AP: Turkey’s health minister said Tuesday that the government wants to reduce the number of abortions, days after the prime minister likened the practice to murder.

C-FAM: The World Health Organization (WHO) has just released an important new study looking at the growing and harmful medical phenomenon of “pre-term birth.”

Turtle Bay and Beyond: A recent article in a medical journal in Mexico completely debunks the Guttmacher Institute numbers on “unsafe” abortions in several latin american countries.

XINHUANET: With most Chinese provinces experiencing a serious gender imbalance, a government official in charge of family planning has pledged the country will work hard to ameliorate the problem.

Turtle Bay and Beyond: They were inspired by the reports of the Club of Rome, a think tank that unites Heads of States, UN bureaucrats, diplomats, scientists and business leaders who claim they “share a common concern for the future of humanity and the planet.”

Telegraph: A judge on the island of Majorca ordered the unnamed gynaecologist to pay the mother 150,000 euros (£120,000) in “moral damages” for his negligence and a monthly maintenance of 978 euros (£780) until the child reaches its 26th birthday.

Wall Street Journal: Hungary won’t allow abortion pills because they pose health risks, the country’s senior official responsible for healthcare issues said this week, sparking a new debate among the public, politicians and NGOs, some of who voiced concerns that the Hungarian government could go further and restrict or ban abortion.

LifeSiteNews: Hereditary Prince Alois of Liechtenstein has threatened to step down from his royal duties if a citizen-led initiative to limit his vetoing power proves successful

LifeSiteNews: The Vatican is backing a petition campaign in the European Union that seeks a debate about enshrining personhood for the unborn from the moment of conception.