News,

The British government and pro-abortionists have welcomed yesterday's defeat of SPUC's legal challenge to sales of the abortion-inducing morning-after pill from pharmacists in the UK. Yvette Cooper, Britain's public health minister, said: "It is a victory for choice and for common sense." In welcoming the judgement, Anne Weyman, chief executive of the pro-abortion Family Planning Association, asserted that birth control pills and intra-uterine devices could interfere with the implantation of a newly conceived embryo. John Smeaton, national director of SPUC, will be undertaking a sponsored water-only fast from 20 to 28 June to demonstrate his concern and to raise money for the continuing campaign against the morning-after pill, which kills countless unborn children each year. [Daily Telegraph and SPUC, 19 April] The Roman Catholic bishops of the Netherlands have launched an international initiative to facilitate opposition to euthanasia. A book containing all the documents relating to euthanasia issued by the Dutch Catholic Church since 1983 is being sent to all the cardinals, bishops' conferences and Catholic faculties of theology in the world. In a foreword to the book, entitled "Euthanasia and Human Dignity", Bishop W Eijk writes that documents published by the Church have "become, in fact, a counter-movement against a tendency to legalise euthanasia". [Zenit, 18 April ] Pro-abortionists in the Republic of Ireland have complained that the government seems to be treating abortion as a closed issue since the defeat of its referendum on the issue last month. Pro-abortionists distributed letters outside the Irish parliament yesterday seeking a commitment to legislate for the so-called X case precedent [which established threatened suicide as a grounds for legal abortion]. Members of the governing coalition parties refused to accept the letters. [Irish Times, 19 April ] The manufacturers of the RU-486 abortion drug have written to doctors in the United States informing them that two women had died after taking the drug and a further four had become very sick. The letter from Danco Laboratories added that a direct causal link between the cases and the abortion drug, marketed under the tradename of Mifeprex, had not been established. Yesterday an official at the US Food and Drug Administration defended the RU-486 regimen, insisting that it had not caused the two deaths (one of which was due to an ectopic pregnancy, and the other by a serious bacterial infection) or most of the other reported complications. [CNSNews, 18 April ] The US House of Representatives has again passed a bill that would ban the transportation of minors across state lines for abortions with the intention of circumventing a parental notification law in the minor's own state. The Child Custody Protection Act was passed on Wednesday by 260 votes to 161 and will now be considered by the Senate. However, the Senate rejected the measure in 1998 and again in 1999. [Zenit, 18 April ] The pro-abortion group which calls itself Catholics for a Free Choice (CFFC) is being sued for deceptive advertising in the Philippines. A coalition of pro-life and pro-family advocates is arguing that a CFFC advertising campaign against the Catholic prohibition on condoms is dishonest and deceptive. The group claims that the campaign is deceptive for a number of reasons, including that CFFC is simply not Catholic. They ask: "Can a movement be called Catholic that openly rejects and distorts Catholic teaching, especially [with regard to] respect and protection of defenceless unborn human life?" [LifeSite, 18 April ] A member of the Canadian parliament is asking people to write to their MPs in support of his private members motion on unborn children. Mr Garry Breitkreuz, member of parliament for Yorkton-Melville in Saskatchewan province, is calling for the establishment of a standing committee to report on laws to protect the unborn. He said: "I understand that not all Canadians hold opinions similar to mine that life begins at conception; therefore, I want to use the democratic process to determine what the majority of Canadians do think about this important issue." [LifeSite, 18 April ] Canada's Supreme Court struck down the country's abortion law as unconstitutional in 1988, since when abortion has been unregulated under national law.