News,

A British government minister has said that Professor Severino Antinori's expected application to conduct reproductive human cloning research in Britain will be rejected. Ms Hazel Blears, a health minister, said: "Worldwide, this is not considered acceptable and it will remain illegal in the United Kingdom. The government is absolutely clear that reproductive cloning cannot take place in the United Kingdom." [AP, via WorldNews.com, 7 November ] A spokesman for SPUC pointed out that all forms of human cloning would be reproductive since an individual human being would be created in every case. The British government supports cloning for so-called therapeutic purposes. The ProLife Alliance is currently awaiting the High Court's ruling on whether UK law does cover reproductive cloning. The UK's main opposition leader has reaffirmed his support for pro-life policies. Addressing the Evangelical Alliance's conference in Cardiff, Mr Iain Duncan Smith, leader of the Conservative party, described his personal opposition to abortion and his party's official policy against euthanasia. [Catholic Herald, 9 November] A study has suggested that many doctors in France oppose the country's recently liberalised abortion law. The law which came into effect on 7 July raised the gestational time limit for abortion from 10 to 12 weeks and allowed minors to obtain abortions without parental consent. The Jérôme Lejeune Foundation has found that many doctors feel uneasy about later term abortions, and that some hospitals are finding it almost impossible to recruit doctors who are willing to perform them. When administrators at the Edouard Herriot hospital in Lyons told medical staff in the gynaecology department to implement the new law, all the doctors resigned. [Zenit, 7 November ] The state of Oregon is to take the US federal government to court in an attempt to defend its assisted suicide law. On Tuesday, Mr John Ashcroft, the US attorney general, ruled that federally controlled drugs could not be used to cause death under Oregon's law, a move which made the law unworkable. The office of Oregon's attorney general has since filed motions in a district court to block the ruling. The US Christian Medical Association and the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops have been among the bodies to welcome Mr Ashcroft's decision. [LifeSite, 7 November ] Kenya's ministry of public health is to organise a conference to discuss the legalisation of abortion. The announcement was made during heated exchanges in parliament over the true rate of maternal mortality in Kenya and the extent to which illegal abortions contributed to this rate. [East African Standard, 7 November ] A Canadian judge has said that stillborn twins who were buried in an unmarked grave with other stillborn babies were not accorded a decent and dignified burial. Justice Polowin, an Ontario superior court judge, made her comments as she ruled that the case brought by the parents of the twins against a hospital and funeral home in Ottawa could proceed. [Ottawa Citizen, 4 November ]