News, The Nuffield Council on Bioethics, one of the UK's most influential bioethics forums, has recommended that babies born at 24-25 weeks' gestation, most of whom can survive with neo-natal intensive care, should not receive such treatment if the "level of suffering outweighs the baby's interest...

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24 Nov Top storiesThe government has published a bill to make sex education compulsory in all state-run primary and secondary schools in England. The Children, Schools and Families bill also sets out the principles under which schools must teach sex education. The principles require that sex educat...

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24 Sep Archbishop Charles Chaput of Denver has described Catholic politicians who try to separate their personal convictions from their political duties as doing 'a deal with the devil'. Quoting Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the Lutheran pastor and theologian, Archbishop Chaput argued that abortion is not a...

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News, Abortion20,000 people have staged a pro-life march in the African country of Cameroon. The march was organised in opposition to the Maputo protocol, which seeks to force all 53-member states of the African Union to legalise abortion. A petition against abortion, signed by 30,000 people, was ...

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News, Muslim doctors in Britain are protesting over proposals to cause patients to die according to so-called living wills. Under the new Mental Capacity Act, patients with life-threatening diseases will be allowed to refuse life-saving treatment and give their friends and relatives the power to s...

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News, The United Kingdom government says it has no plans to change Northern Ireland's restrictive abortion law and would expect the province's assembly to take over legislation in this area. Mr Paul Goggins MP, a UK minister responsible for Northern Ireland, declared the policy in written answers ...

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News, The European Parliament's Committee on Environment, Public Health and Food Safety is to vote on 30 January on a proposal for a unified market in medical products and therapies, which would mean such products would be legal in all Member States once given central authorisation. The group CARE...

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News, An Australian bishop has told his country's parliament that Catholic hospitals will not use therapies developed from embryonic stem cells. Most Rev Anthony Fisher OP, auxiliary in Sydney, said that the church could not co-operate with the use of cures based on "parts taken from very early hu...

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News, The Australian senate's decision to remove ministerial control over applications to use the abortion drug, RU486, does not represent the views of Australian women, according to a study by the Southern Cross Bioethics Institute (SCBI) in Adelaide. Fr John Fleming, who commissioned the researc...

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News, A UK doctor has died in Zurich with the aid of the assisted suicide organisation Dignitas, BBC reports. Dr Anne Turner, 66, a retired family planning expert, had the degenerative disease supranuclear palsy and claimed she attempted suicide with drugs before but failed. In an interview with t...

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News, 25 February 2015 Amendment against sex-selective abortion defeated in Parliament British MPs voted yesterday to reject an amendment put forward by Fiona Bruce MP to clarify the law regarding sex-selective abortion. The Conservative MP said that her amendment would "clarify beyond doubt in s...

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News, President Bush has pledged to ensure the right to life of all unborn children following the Supreme Court's decision to uphold the country's partial-birth abortion ban. "The ... decision is an affirmation of the progress we have made over the past six years in protecting human dignity and up...

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News, Comments on life-related issues by Carlo Maria Cardinal Martini, the retired archbishop of Milan, in an Italian newspaper, have attracted widespread attention in both the Catholic and secular media. [L'espresso, 21 April] Some reports interpret Cardinal Martini's comments as at variance with...

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News, The House of Commons science and technology committee is holding an inquiry into the current UK law on abortion. The cross-party committee is looking at issues such as the upper time limit for abortion, whether to abolish the need for two doctors to sign abortion referral forms, the possibil...

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News, SPUC has condemned Tony Blair's endorsement of embryonic stem cell research in his farewell speech to the Labour party conference. Mr Blair said: "America does not want stem cell research, we do, we welcome it here." Mr Blair was referring to embryonic stem cell research, which kills embryon...

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27 Sep Scientists have created 'biological' pacemakers using human embryonic stem cells, the Independent reports. Researchers from Israel and the US grew the embryonic stem cells and coaxed them into becoming heart muscle cells, which were then injected into the hearts of pigs. However, before any ...

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News, Mr David Cameron MP, leader of the British opposition Conservative party, has declared his support for reducing the legal abortion limit from 24 weeks to between 20 and 21 weeks. Mr Cameron said: "I would like to see a reduction in the current limit, as it is clear that, due to medical advan...

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28 August 2009 AbortionSPUC launches new petition against abortion ads on TV [SPUC, 25 August] http://is.gd/2DBZc New petition launched by Amnesty for Babies [SPUC director's blog, 21 August] http://is.gd/2DCaU Op-ed on the significance of this Saturday's funeral for Edward "Ted" Kennedy, the pro-ab...

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29 Oct Top storiesSPUC is calling upon supporters to lobby a committee of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe in order to stop two radical pro-abortion reports. The reports, authored by Christine McCafferty, the veteran anti-life British MP, will be debated by the assembly's Social,...

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28 Sep Professor Ian Wilmut, one of the scientists who cloned Dolly the Sheep, has applied for a licence to clone human embryos. Professor Wilmut of the Roslin Instititue in Edinburgh has emphasised the fact that his team wants to use embryos for research purposes only and will destroy them after e...

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