News,

US District Court Judge James Whittemore has refused to order the reinsertion of Terri Schiavo's feeding tube. [Yahoo News, 22 March] L'Osservatore Romano, the Vatican newspaper, has criticised the removal of Terri Schiavo's feeding tube. The article states: "In a Miami hospital there's a woman who is about to die from hunger and thirst. There is the slow dying of a person - not a 'vegetable' - which an impotent world is witnessing through TV and newspapers." [CathNews, 22 March] A feature on Lifenews.com has examined media bias in the reporting of the Terri Schiavo case, particularly the use of slanted language and the omission of the views of experts who believe that Terri could respond to therapy. Raimundo Rojas, the Hispanic outreach director for the National Right to Life Committee, said: "The press has the facts wrong, they have consistently used the wrong language, and there is a repeated effort in all that you read and hear in the media an urgency to sway the American people that Terri is somehow less than human." [Lifenews.com, 21 March] Tony Blair has attacked the pro-life movement in the UK, implying that it offers no alternatives to women in crisis pregnancies. The Prime Minister said: "The fact that the person lives in terrible housing, and has hopeless education and no choices in life and no-one invests in them - what has [the pro-life lobby] got to say about that? The Make Poverty History campaign (to increase aid to Africa), that is a pro-life agenda for me." David Blunkett, the former Home Secretary, said during a Radio 4 interview: "I would expect society to help people through when they make the difficult choice not to have an abortion and support them with either a severely disabled child or circumstances that they didn't foresee, and we don't do that well enough." [The Observer, 20 March] Anthony Ozimic, SPUC political secretary, commented: "SPUC has been actively alleviating the conditions in which pregnant women find themselves for decades. For example, SPUC lobbied successfully for an amendment to the Housing (Homeless Persons) Act 1977 to secure the priority entitlement of an expectant mother to housing. Tony Blair's false dichotomy between welfare for women and the sanctity of human life is simply his latest attempt to defend his indefensible position of claiming to be 'personally opposed' to abortion whilst promoting abortion at home and abroad. Far from promoting a pro-life agenda to increase aid to Africa, Mr Blair's government is exploiting the Make Poverty History campaign in order to promote universal access to so-called sexual and reproductive health - a technical term which includes abortion on demand - under the vague terms of the Millennium Development Goals. Meanwhile, good causes at home and abroad which both promote women's welfare and protect unborn children are denied government funding." The coordinator of the disability rights' group No Less Human has described eugenic abortion as 'fatal discrimination against those with disabilities. In a letter to the Daily Telegraph, Alison Davis reminded readers that the upper limit for abortion in the UK is not 24 weeks as abortion is permitted up to birth on grounds of disability, and that abortion at any stage of development is wrong. A letter by the author Ann Farmer argued that the 1967 Abortion Act did not end the practice of backstreet abortion and that deaths from illegal abortion began to fall prior to the legalisation of abortion because of the advent of antibiotics. [The Telegraph, 22 March] 500 frozen embryos have disappeared from a hospital in Zagreb, Bioedge reports. There is a black market in frozen embryos in Croatia, with embryos worth thousands of euros, which is being used by campaigners as a reason for widening access to IVF. [Bioedge, 22 March] A Mississippi abortionist who botched abortions on four women has been suspended by the state medical board. Three of the women suffered uterine perforations at the hands of Dr Malachy Dehenre and had to have hysterectomies, whilst a fourth woman died 18 hours after the abortion. Dr Dehenre said whilst giving evidence: "I found work in Jackson and it happened to be an abortion clinic in which an obstetrician was needed. I needed money to pay expenses and education for my children. It was supposed to be temporary but it turned out to be longer. I was in a position I didn't want to be in, but I needed work." [Lifenews.com, 21 March] Researchers from the University of Western Ontario, the London (Ontario) Health Sciences Centre and the University of Colorado, have suggested a link between abortion and abuse. Out of 1127 women surveyed at an Ontario abortion facility, 20% had suffered physical abuse at the hands of a male partner and over a quarter had a history of sexual abuse. A US study found that 31% of women seeking abortion have a history of physical or sexual abuse, with over half of this number having witnessed domestic violence as children. [LifeSiteNews.com, 21 March]

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