News,

Police in the Republic of Ireland are investigating death threats made to Mrs Dana Rosemary Scallon, a prominent pro-life member of the European parliament, during her unsuccessful Irish general election campaign. Dana received a letter and a number of menacing phone messages because she had campaigned for a 'no' vote in the recent abortion referendum. However, Dana has said that the reasons for her opposition to the referendum proposals have been misrepresented. She and many other pro-lifers were against the proposals because they would have weakened legal protection of unborn children, especially pre-implantation embryos. [The Irish Examiner, 22 May ; SPUC] An American pro-life organisation has claimed that the abortion industry in the US is consistently failing to adhere to state and federal laws on the reporting of child sexual abuse and parental notification. Mark Crutcher, president of Life Dynamics Inc., will present the findings of his organisation's investigation next Saturday. The report, entitled "Child Predators", claims that between 60% and 80% of girls aged 15 or younger who become pregnant were impregnated by adult men, but that abortion providers often conceal these crimes when an underage girl requests an abortion. [LifeSite, 21 May ] A survey of doctors in Michigan has found that 95% believe that pregnant women have a moral obligation to protect the health of their unborn child by abstaining from excessive alcohol consumption or the use of illicit drugs. An analysis of questionnaires completed by more than 800 doctors in Michigan in 1998, and published in the April 2002 issue of the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, indicates that a majority of all family doctors, obstetricians and paediatricians would support mandatory alcohol screening of pregnant women, and over half consider that the use of illicit drugs during pregnancy should be legally defined as a form of child abuse. [Reuters, 17 May; via NWHIC ] Researchers have suggested that American teenagers are becoming more sexually responsible, with rates of sexual activity, pregnancy and abortion all falling among 15 to 17-year-olds. A study published in Context, a journal of the American Sociological Association, indicates that the number of boys aged between 15 and 17 who are sexually active has fallen by 8.5% in the past decade. The teen pregnancy rate is now at its lowest since 1975, and the abortion rate for teenagers fell by 31% between 1986 and 1996. [AScribe Newswire, 21 May; via Northern Light]