News,

It is reported that police in England might lay two murder charges against the killer of a heavily pregnant woman who was hacked to death with a machete. The body of the woman, who was of Afro-Caribbean origin and between 30 and 40 weeks pregnant, was found last weekend dumped in a picnic area in Shipbourne, near Sevenoaks, Kent. [Daily Telegraph, 20 March] Under English law, murder charges could only be brought if the child had taken a breath outside of his or her mother and died subsequently. Otherwise, a charge of child destruction could be brought under the Infant Life Preservation Act 1929. An American man has become the first to be convicted of abortion in the state of New York since the supreme court invalidated state laws against abortion in the 1973 Roe v Wade judgement. Jeremy Powell, 20, pleaded guilty to the charge that he had deliberately beaten his pregnant girlfriend with the intention of killing their unborn child in January. The woman, also 20, had refused her boyfriend's demand that she have an abortion. [The Buffalo News, 16 March ] The Roman Catholic bishops of Canada have condemned plans by the pro-abortion group calling itself Catholics for a Free Choice (CFC) to mount a billboard campaign at this year's Catholic World Youth Day in Toronto. The letter from the president of the Canadian Catholic Bishops Conference to the director of the World Youth Day states that CFC is "usurping the Church's name; indeed, it is in no way recognized as Catholic". [LifeSite, 19 March ] The authors of a study on hysterectomies in Britain have suggested that as many as 75% of them could be avoided if doctors used other methods, including the fitting of abortifacient intra-uterine devices, to solve problems such as heavy periods. [BBC, 20 March ] An SPUC spokesman observed that many people may be unaware that the IUD, or coil, worked by causing early abortions and said that it was vital for women to be told the truth.