News, A Guernsey politician has called for a referendum on euthanasia after Guernsey's Policy Committee decided not to change the law, which bans euthanasia in the island. Lyndon Trott admitted however that the vote might not be legally binding. [BBC, 21 September] A couple in China have been fine...

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News, The British government's Human Fertilisation and Embryology bill continues to advance, passing its latest House of Commons stage this week. There were attempts to reduce the time-limit for abortion on the non-disabled from 24 weeks to 12, 16, 20 and 22 weeks; all failed. Dr John Pugh, Libera...

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News, A bill that would have required a teenager's parents to be notified before she was given an abortion or contraceptive advice has been defeated in the House of Commons by 159 votes to 87. Such laws in the US have been shown to halve the number of teenage abortions. Mrs Angela Watkinson, the b...

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News, President Bush has been due to sign a bill into law which would increase the availability of umbilical cord blood cells in the US. Cells from the umbilical cord offer an ethical source of stem cells as an alternative to human IVF embryos, and research involving them has already proved fruitf...

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News, Lobby to keep anti-life sex ed out of this parliament and the next SPUC is calling upon its supporters to continue to lobby parliament against the government's sex education plans. The Children, Schools and Families bill is before the House of Lords, awaiting committee. SPUC warns that what...

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News, Pope Benedict spoke of the dignity and rights of "the most defenseless of all human beings, the unborn child in the mother's womb" at Mass in Yankee Stadium, New York, NY, on Sunday. Faith was not separate from political life, he said, as he encouraged pro-life work. [Spero News, 20th April ]...

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News, A survey of General Practitioners is being used by pro-euthanasia campaigners to call for physician assisted suicide to be legalised in Britain. A report in Pulse magazine states that 42% of the 309 doctors who took part in the survey said they would be prepared to help a terminally ill pati...

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News, A UK peer spoke out strongly against the dangers of Lord Joffe's Assisted Dying for the Terminally Ill Bill at a public debate at the Middle Temple Inn of Court, London. Lord Brennan called the bill "wrong in principle, unworkable in practice and a serious danger to the common good of our so...

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23 Sep West Mercia police have sent a file to the Crown Prosecution Service following their investigation of a late abortion involving a baby with cleft lip and palate. Joanna Jepson won her judicial review of the case earlier in the year after police refused to prosecute the doctors involved. The ...

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News, AbortionThe European Parliament has voted against pro-life amendments to stop EU money being spent on coercive and sex-selective abortions. The amendments were partly motivated by opposition to China's one-child policy, which involves compulsory abortions, and to the abortions of unborn girl...

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News, The House of Lords on Monday debated the UK's government's Human Fertilisation and Embryology bill during the second day of its report stage. [Official Report, 21 January] John Smeaton, SPUC's national director, wrote: "Those moving more ethically-conscious amendments don't have the force of...

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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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