News,

Some of the most prominent pro-abortionists in the UK have been appointed to the British government's Independent Advisory Group on Sexual Health and HIV. Hazel Blears, the public health minister, announced yesterday that the chairman of the new body will be Baroness Joyce Gould, who is also president of the pro-abortion Family Planning Association (FPA) and chairman of the All Party Pro Choice Group in parliament. One of the two vice chairmen of the group will be Anne Weyman, currently chief executive of the FPA. Other appointments include Ian Jones, chief executive of the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (Britain's largest private abortion provider), Helen Axby, deputy chief executive of Marie Stopes International (a major promoter and provider of abortion around the world) and Jan Barlow, chief executive of the pro-abortion Brook Advisory Services. [Department of Health, 6 March]


It has emerged that one of the most senior cardinals in the Catholic Church personally intervened in an effort to protect a nine-year-old rape victim and her unborn child from abortion in Nicaragua. Cardinal Alfonso López Trujillo, president of the Pontifical Council for the Family, wrote to Cardinal Miguel Obando y Bravo, archbishop of Managua, to request that every effort be made to comfort "the innocent victims of such an execrable event". Cardinal López Trujillo went on to stress that "every innocent human being is absolutely equal to all others in the right to life" and that "the painful circumstances of this pregnancy, even though serious and dramatic ... can never justify the deliberate elimination of an innocent human being". [Zenit, 6 March]


The health ministers of Ghana, Mozambique and Namibia were among the participants at a conference on unsafe abortion hosted by the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) in Kenya this week. Prominent pro-abortionist Dr Eunice Brookman-Amissah, head of the African Alliance for Women's Reproductive Health and Rights, told the conference that between four and five million African women had unsafe abortions every year, resulting in as many as 30,000 maternal deaths. Her suggested solution was to abolish restrictive abortion laws inherited from former colonial powers. [Health24, 7 March] There is no firm data to support these figures. It is the usual practice of pro-abortion advocates to present spurious claims about un-safe / illegal abortion in support of demands for abortion to be promoted.


Today marks the first anniversary of the announcement that the people of Ireland had voted in a referendum to reject the government's proposal to weaken the constitutional protection of unborn life. In the final analysis, the proposal was defeated by 50.42% to 49.58%, a margin of only 10,556 votes. The result was welcomed by SPUC and other pro-life groups in Ireland and around the world because the proposals would have weakened protection for all unborn children, especially pre-implantation embryos. [See digest for 7 March 2002; final results from ireland.com]


It is reported that trials on a medical abortion pill [presumably RU-486] are underway at the All-India Institute of Medical Sciences with a view to making the drug available in the family welfare system. Sushma Swaraj, minister of health and family welfare, has inaugurated a national consortium to seek a national consensus on how to introduce the drug on prescription for abortions up to the 20th week of pregnancy. [The Hindu, 6 March] RU-486 is already available in India and is strongly supported by the government [see digest for 22 October 2002].


Dr Philip Nitschke, the prominent Australian campaigner for euthanasia, is taking time out from a speaking tour around New Zealand to support a woman charged with the attempted murder of her sick mother in 1999. Meanwhile, members of New Zealand's parliament are to debate euthanasia over the next month after a private member's bill on the issue was drawn from a ballot. [xtramsn news, 7 March]

To subscribe to SPUC's email information services, please visit www.spuc.org.uk/em-signup. The reliability of the news herein is dependent on that of the cited sources, which are paraphrased rather than quoted. Opinions expressed are not necessarily those of the society. © Society for the Protection of Unborn Children, 2018