News,
A woman who became Britain's oldest mother in 1995 has expressed her support for the Romanian woman, Adriana Iliescu, who has given birth at the age of 66. Mrs. Lyon, of Cambridgeshire, lied about her age in order to obtain treatment at an IVF clinic when she was 51. She said: "I don't think it is wrong... it is hard to say if there really should be an upper age limit...I think it is down to whether the person is healthy, not their age". Mrs. Lyon already has seven grandchildren. [EDP24 News, 18 January]
Archbishop Raymond Burke, the Catholic Archbishop of St Louis, USA, led a procession of 400 Catholics from St Louis cathedral to the nearby Planned Parenthood facility last Saturday. Paula Gianino, the local Planned Parenthood president, said that next week a group of clergy (of unspecified denominations) will escort women into the facility. "It will show our patients that many churches and many clergy are supportive of a woman's reproductive rights and privacy." [LifeSiteNews.com, 17 January]
The United Nations Committee that oversees compliance with the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) raised concerns last week about Paraguay's compliance with the Convention based on "criminal penalties for abortion under national law". The Minister for Paraguay's Women's Secretariat, Maria Jose Arguana Mateu was told that this legislation should be amended and was questioned as to whether her Government was complying with requirements to address maternal mortality and clandestine abortions. Mateu responded by pointing to prenatal care and safe birthing techniques introduced by the Ministry of Health. She added that the problem of illegal abortions was addressed from "a prevention perspective." [LifeSiteNews.com, 18 January]
On the day when the assassinated civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is remembered across America, his niece Dr Alveda King is voicing her concerns about the effects of abortion on the black American community. "I join the voices of thousands across America who can no longer sit idly by and allow this horrible spirit of murder to cut down," Dr King said. "If the Dream of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., is to live, our babies must live." [LifeNews.com, 17 January]
Among twenty-two organisations which were granted NGO status at the UN last week are the National Abortion Federation and Feminists for Life of America. The NAF was instrumental in the lawsuits blocking the implementation of the partial-birth abortion ban signed into law by President Bush. In 2001, it also launched a $2 million advertising campaign in popular women's magazines to promote the abortion drug RU-486. The inclusion as an NGO of Feminists for Life, which campaigns for the rights of women and children from conception onwards, was objected to by Germany and Cuba. [CWNews, 17 January]
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