News,
The US Senate has approved the Unborn Victims of Violence Act in a 61-38 vote. The bill, which grants unborn babies legal protection, will now be sent to President Bush for signing. Bill Frist, Senate majority leader, called the bill "powerful because this act is about simple humanity, about simple reality". Pro-abortion politicians warned that it could be used as the basis for legal challenges against abortion. [
Irish Examiner, 26 March]
A new study published in the British journal The Lancet claims that there is no link between abortion and breast cancer. The report, led by Dr Valerie Beral, an Epidemiologist at Oxford University, looked at 53 studies of a possible link involving 83,000 women. The report stated that 'retrospective' studies involving women who already had breast cancer were less reliable because women might be looking for a reason for their cancer and would be more likely to report an abortion or miscarriage. [
Medical News Today, 26 March] In a statement refuting the report, Professor Jack Scarisbrick, chairman of the UK charity LIFE said: "This latest paper is merely relying on studies that have been shown, time and time again, to be worthless. Professor Joel Brind of the Breast Cancer Prevention Institute, New York, has shown in his meta-analysis of the available literature that the ABC link does indeed exist, research that the RCOG has said is methodologically sound and cannot be disregarded." [
Independent Catholic News, 26 March]
Researchers at the University of Florida have cultured adult bone marrow stem cells to become insulin-producing cells, raising the hope that adult stem cells could eventually be used to treat diabetes. The experiments involving diabetic laboratory animals resulted in the animals achieving normalised blood glucose levels. [
Wistv.com, 24 March]
The Canadian representative at the UN Conference on Population and Development has expressed strong support for a global right to abortion in a speech delivered at the opening of the conference. Gilbert Laurin stated: "We should not rest until every woman, man and adolescent is able to meet all their family planning and reproductive health needs. Canada strongly supports the right to the highest attainable standard of health including the right to make informed choices about one's own sexual and reproductive health across the life cycles." [
LifeSiteNews.com, 25 March]
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