News,

An English high court judge yesterday deferred judgement in the judicial review being brought by the ProLife Alliance regarding the UK parliament's vote to authorise so-called therapeutic cloning. A spokesperson for the ProLife Alliance said: "We are genuinely optimistic. We feel the judge absorbed our arguments very quickly." The judgement is expected to be given next week. [Reuters, via ABCNews, 1 November ] The full hearing of SPUC's legal challenge to sales of the abortifacient morning-after pill from British pharmacists has now been postponed until 12 February next year. [SPUC, 2 November] The US government has warned that doxycycline, an antibiotic being prescribed to people who may have been exposed to anthrax, can harm unborn children. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) advised doctors to prescribe Cipro to pregnant women instead, despite fears that Cipro is being overprescribed in the general population causing common bacteria to become resistant to it. The CDC said that no formal studies had confirmed the safety of Cipro to unborn children, but that it was unlikely to pose any substantial risk. [Boston Herald, 1 November ] A prominent Canadian pro-abortionist has conceded that abortions are not medically necessary procedures. In a submission to the finance committee of the Canadian House of Commons, Marilyn Wilson, executive director of the Canadian Abortion Rights Action League (CARAL), said that women sought abortions "for socio-economic reasons". Mr Jason Kenney, a member of the finance committee, said that her admission was very significant because CARAL had always claimed that abortions were medically necessary and should therefore be financed by provincial governments. [LifeSite, 1 November ; also see news digests for 1 June 2000 and 12 January 2001 ] The US senate has dropped an amendment on human embryo research from an appropriations bill after President Bush said that he would veto the legislation if it remained [see yesterday's digest ]. Pro-life senators had proposed other amendments intended to nullify Senator Arlen Specter's attempt to give a right to the president to ignore a clause which protected human embryos. However, discussion of these amendments would have delayed other spending bills and anti-terrorist legislation, so Senator Specter agreed to withdraw his amendment until the issues of stem cell research and human cloning could be debated in greater depth. [AP and National Review, 1 November; via Pro-Life Infonet ]