Tag Archives: Global: Sanctity of Life

LifeNews: The British Columbia Supreme Court has issued an opinion declaring the law in Canada against assisted suicides unconstitutional. Justice Lynn Smith issued a 395-page ruling Friday calling the law discriminatory in the case of Gloria Taylor, a British Columbia woman with ALS, or Lou Gehrig’s disease. | Carter v. Canada (Attorney General), 2012 BCSC 886

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.

ProLifeBlogs: “This is nothing less than a crime against humanity. Every innocent life deserves to be protected, and no woman deserves this type of barbaric, dehumanizing treatment,” said ADF Director of Global Activities Benjamin Bull. “ADF calls upon our leaders in Washington to thoroughly condemn China’s practice of forced abortion and demand that it stop immediately. This is one event, but it is undoubtedly only one example of many more such forced abortions that occur in China.”

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.

The Alliance Defense Fund is calling on U.S. political leaders to condemn the atrocity of forced abortion in China in the wake of graphic media reports that the government recently forced a woman seven months pregnant to have her baby aborted.

AFP: Graphic images posted online showing the bloody corpse of a baby whose mother was allegedly forced to terminate her pregnancy at seven months have caused an uproar in China.

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.

LifeNews: The officials asked for RMB 40,000 in fines from Feng Jianmei’s family and, when they did not receive the money, they forcibly aborted Feng at seven months, laying the body of her aborted baby next to her in the bed (seen in picture, right).

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.

Reuters: The province of Ontario was within its rights to press criminal charges against a grandmother who has spent 10 of the last 18 years in jail for defying court orders not to demonstrate outside abortion clinics, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled on Friday. | R. v. Gibbons, 2012 SCC 28

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” . . .

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: A Roman Catholic mental health worker who was sacked after expressing concern about the impact of abortion on women is suing the NHS.

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: Chilean medical researcher published a landmark study on the connection between the availability of abortion and maternal health. He found legal abortion does not contribute to maternal health and showed this using voluminous data from the extensive medical history of Chile.

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.

John D. Mueller at EPPC: There are four main reasons, then, for “demographic winter,” in order of importance: First, low rates of religious practice, which are associated with low birth rates and high incidence of abortion; second, social benefits so high as to displace gifts within the family, particularly the gift of life; third, legacies of totalitarianism; and finally, finally, heavy reliance on fiscal policies which penalize investment in people-: so-called “human capital.”

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.

Chen Guangcheng at the NY Times: The fundamental question the Chinese government must face is lawlessness. China does not lack laws, but the rule of law. As a result, those who handled my case were able to openly flout the nation’s laws in many ways for many years.

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.

Telegraph: A Christian mental health worker who was sacked over her opposition to abortion is suing the NHS accusing it of having a “dangerously totalitarian” approach to dissent on the issue.

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.

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

LifeNews: A Senate committee voted today to permanently force Americans to fund groups that promote and perform abortions in other nations using taxpayer dollars.

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.

India Today: Some doctors in Beed are disposing of female foetuses by feeding them to dogs in order to destroy evidence of female foeticide.

India Today: Some doctors in Beed are disposing of female foetuses by feeding them to dogs in order to destroy evidence of female foeticide.

BBC: Every year thousands of women are forced into prostitution and traded from Mexico to the United States. The BBC investigates the sex trafficking business, which makes some men very wealthy at the expense of vulnerable young women.

Catholic.org (includes video): In China, one thousand five hundred abortions occur per hour. Let that number sink in for a minute. These are the results of an investigative report that has been presented by Accuracy in Media and Women’s Rights Without frontiers (WRWF) have been presented in the online publication, The Blaze. The details are gruesome and shocking.

LifeNews: A father who worked as a personal trainer in England was recently discovered to have killed himself after his girlfriend said she planned to have an abortion of their child. The case reminds of the emotional fallout men face following a partner’s decision to have an abortion.

AP: Polish health officials say they will distribute free condoms to hundreds of thousands of fans attending Euro 2012 as part of a safe sex campaign.

AP: Britain’s health advisory agency says the government should extend free fertility treatment to women up to age 42 and same-sex couples, according to draft guidelines.

Turtle Bay and Beyond: Last month the Constitution Technical Committee of Zambia released the first Draft Constitution and Planned Parenthood of Zambia (PPAZ) has responded calling for the elimination of language that would protect the life of the unborn.

LifeNews: Chen Guangcheng has arrived in the United States, but his extended family, supporters and others working with him in China to stop forced abortions are still in danger as they face continued persecution.

Turtle Bay and Beyond: The Secretary of Gender, Youth and Child Development in Trinidad and Tabago, Verna St Rose Greaves announced this week that she supports not only the legalization of abortion but also the promotion of gay rights.

TheStar.com: The Supreme Court of Canada won’t quash an appeal over the withdrawal of life-support from a comatose patient.

C-FAM: The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) is taking advantage of the upcoming Rio+20 conference in June to promote population control and reproductive rights as the backbone of sustainable development and poverty eradication.

Austin Ruse and Stefano Gennarini at C-FAM: And it is true that while family planning is mentioned in three hard law treaties, it is not defined as including contraception. Does it follow that we have nothing to fear from these phrases and that we should in fact embrace them?

theStar.com: Over the last decade the number of mainland babies born in Hong Kong has risen from 620 in 2001 to more than 40,000 in 2010 — almost half the total 88,000 births in the territory. Some experts estimate that upwards of 60 per cent of these are second children.

Turtle Bay and Beyond: The New Zealand government is planning to offer free long-term contraception such as implants and IUDs to women who receive welfare payments and their daughters, the BBC reported last week.

ThanhnienNews.com: A baby that was aborted in a central Vietnam clinic Sunday after her parents were convinced by erroneous scans that she had congenital abnormalities survived the abortion but died later because she was too weak.

The Center for Reproductive Rights has issued this press release: Over 700,000 Petitioners Demand Honduran Congress Reject Law Criminalizing Emergency Contraception: Advocates, lawyers, and citizens gathered today in protest on steps of Honduran Congress

allAfrica.com: Rwandan legislature recently approved a bill legalising abortion in cases of rape, forced marriage or incest. The government hails the move as the promotion of women’s rights. Churches see it as a violation of the fundamental right to life.

The Australian: FIFTY women who contracted hepatitis C after having abortions at a Melbourne clinic yesterday launched a class action in the Supreme Court of Victoria.

Religion Clause Blog: Forum 18 reported yesterday on the continuing religious freedom problems relating to death row prisoners in Belarus . . .

Alan Sears at Townhall: However, when German scholars Karl Binding and Alfred Hoche reference a worthy life, they are differentiating between those whom they believe we are justified in killing (via abortion, euthanasia, etc.) and those whom we are not allowed to kill. And the book they’ve recently translated, “Allowing the Destruction of Life Unworthy of Living,” makes precisely these points.

LifeNews: After a second Congressional hearing, during which he called to update members of Congress on the current status of his tenuous situation in China, forced abortion opponent Chen Guangcheng may finally be close to getting his ticket out of the Communist nation.

Piero Tozzi at C-FAM: My colleagues at the Friday Fax reported last week that the “Latex Left” lost at the just ended UN Commission on the Population and Development, that they came away “empty handed.” With respect, I disagree with this assessment. International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) and its allies scored a victory. What they got was a (non-binding) declaration setting funding priorities that calls for “comprehensive” sexual education for youth and adolescents, marginalized parental involvement, and increased funding for “reproductive health-care services, commodities and supplies.”

LifeSiteNews: Canada “cannot afford not to have the conversation” about abortion and the protection of human life, urged Bruce Clemenger, President of the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada, on Parliament Hill at the National March for Life on Thursday.

LifeNews: Almost 20,000 pro-life people showed up in Canada’s capital to take part in the 2012 March for Life to demonstrate their opposition to unlimited abortions and taxpayer funding of abortions.

LifeNews: New figures from the United Kingdom show the British government spends one million every week in taxpayer funding for abortions for women who have having at least their second or more abortion.