News,

Harrowing photographs of a newborn baby girl lying dead in a gutter in a small town in central China have focused attention on China's population control programme. The photographs were smuggled out by a visitor who was shocked at the indifference of passers-by who ignored the body on their way to work. The visitor waited for more than three and half hours before the child's body was eventually taken away, and then the police confiscated most of her photographic film. The Chinese government's one-child policy means that female children are often killed before or after birth because only sons represent security in old age to Chinese couples. Nuala Scarisbrick of the Life charity said of the photographs: "Nothing could depict more vividly the depths that China's so-called family-planning policy has sunk to." [The Mirror, 14 February; Daily Mail, 13 February] 60 groups claiming to represent medical workers and women will today petition the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to reclassify the abortifacient morning-after pill as a drug available off the shelf without a doctor's prescription. Preven and Plan B morning-after pills have been available in the United States on prescription since 1998, and trials are currently being planned in Washington state and California to assess the effects of easier availability of the drug. The FDA declined to comment on the petition. [Miami Herald, 13 February ] Christian women's groups in Nigeria planned to march to the Lagos State House of Assembly today in protest against the proposed legalisation of abortion. The march is being organised by the Christian Association of Nigeria, an interdenominational group which includes Catholics, Pentecostalists, Baptists, indigenous ecclesial groups and others. [Africa News Service, 13 February; via Northern Light ] A large majority of Americans oppose all forms of human cloning, including for so-called therapeutic purposes. A Time/CNN poll conducted by Yankelovich Partners indicates that 72% of Americans "think cloning would not be justified if it were to produce vital organs used to save the lives of others". 80% of respondents opposed cloning for reproductive purposes. Many respondents cited religious beliefs as a factor in their opposition, with 69% saying that they thought it was "against God's will to clone human beings". [Reuters, 12 February; from Pro-Life Infonet] A tiny premature baby who weighed only one pound and 11 ounces [765 grams] when he was born in Nevada last October is now active and alert and weighs nine and a half pounds. The boy, named Fallon Thompson, should be off oxygen within a couple of weeks after spending four months in the premature baby unit at St Mary's Regional Medical Center, Reno. He was born after only five months inside his mother and was originally given very little chance of survival. Charlotta Sullivan, Fallon's grandmother, said: "I had never seen anything so little but yet so perfect." [Las Vegas Sun, 13 February ] The Canadian province of Manitoba appears set to approve over-the-counter sales of the abortifacient morning-after pill after the Manitoba Pharmaceutical Association requested the move. [LifeSite, 13 February ] Pope John Paul II has urged Austria to develop a culture of life founded on respect for all human persons. Addressing the new Austrian ambassador to the Vatican, the Pope said that "man is now in the situation where he can manipulate and clone human life, and not just observe the first stages of its development". He stressed that such threats to human life should not be met with a sense of resignation. [EWTN News, 13 February ] Dr Nafis Sadik, the former executive director of the pro-abortion United Nations Population Fund, has taken up a new appointment with the Center for Reproductive Law and Policy (CRLP). LifeSite dubs the CRLP "the legal arm of the pro-abortion movement in the US". [LifeSite, 13 February ]