News,

School-nurses in France can now give abortifacient pills to girls as young as 12 without their parents' consent. Condoms have been widely available in schools for some years yet France has one of the highest abortion-rates in Europe. The Norvelo pill is being described as late contraception. [Washington Times quoted in Pro-Life E-News (enews@interlife.org), 14 February, 2000]


Society should no more accept abortion, sterilisation or euthanasia as inevitable than it should accept war or ethnic cleansing as inevitable, the pope told a Vatican meeting on the fifth anniversary of Evangelium Vitae, his encyclical on human life. [Zenit news (www.zenit.org), 15 February, 2000]


Legislatures in six American states are discussing ways of encouraging mothers of unwanted newborn children to take their babies to a place of safety instead of abandoning them. [Pro-Life E-News (enews@interlife.org), 14 February, 2000]


Attitudes among US presidential candidates to abortion have become the litmus-test of whether a politician is pro-family or "sound on women's issues", according to Ms Danielle Crittenden, the political columnist, who is quoted in today's Guardian.


A pro-life obstetrician and reformed abortionist has called for all pregnant women to have an ultrasound scan at 18 weeks in order to cut the number of late abortions. Dr Bernard Nathanson told US congressional staff: "[It] may not cut the rate of abortion by much ... but at least it would cut these so-called partial-birth abortions down, and ... it allows more time for us pro-life people to do the appropriate counseling to allow her to carry the pregnancy to term and then have the congenital defect repaired." [Washington Times quoted in Pro-Life E-News (enews@interlife.org), 14 February, 2000]


A survey of British youth suggests that just 30% of people under 21 attend a family-planning clinic or visit their family-doctor before having sex for the first time. [study by Centre for Sexual Health Research, Southampton University, reported in The Express, 15 February, 2000]


The parents of septuplets who miscarried have lain them to rest in a small white coffin. Mrs Ivette Zapata-Smalls of New Jersey took a fertility-drug and, when advised to abort some of the babies to save the others, refused on principle. [Jersey News reported in Pro-Life E-News (enews@interlife.org), 14 February, 2000]


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To subscribe to SPUC's email information services, please visit www.spuc.org.uk/em-signup. The reliability of the news herein is dependent on that of the cited sources, which are paraphrased rather than quoted. Opinions expressed are not necessarily those of the society. © Society for the Protection of Unborn Children, 2018