News, Legislators in the Australian state of Victoria may be given a free vote on the use of embryonic stem cells in medical research. It is reported that it would be the first free vote on a law in the state's legislature since a vote on capital punishment in 1976. Steve Bracks, the state's p...

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News, A prominent French pro-life leader has been shot dead during a city council meeting in Nanterre, near Paris. Mr Michel Raoult, leader and founder of Choisir la Vie, was a member of Nanterre's city council and was killed together with seven others when a gunman went on the rampage last ni...

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News, The Catholic Church in England and Wales has asserted that the recent case of Miss B, who was given a right to be taken off a life-support machine by the English high court, has nothing to do with euthanasia. Speaking in his capacity as chairman of the department for Christian responsibi...

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News, The Family Planning Association's legal challenge to Northern Ireland's abortion practice concluded on Friday at the high court in Belfast. The Family Planning Association (FPA) claimed that the law concerning abortion in Northern Ireland was unclear and therefore required clarification ...

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News, The English high court has ruled that a paralysed woman who is not terminally ill has the right to have her life support machine turned off. Dame Elizabeth Butler Sloss, president of the high court's family division, ruled that doctors had been wrong to refuse a request by a 43-year-old ...

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Miss B judgement threatens doctor-patient relationship London, --Today's decision in the Miss B case places the doctor-patient relationship under threat, according to the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC). Paul Tully, SPUC's general secretary, said: "We are profoundly concerned be...

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News, The Family Planning Association's legal challenge to Northern Ireland's abortion practice begins today at the High Court in Belfast. The FPA is arguing that ministers have acted illegally by failing to issue guidance on when abortions can be carried out in Northern Ireland under existing...

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News, It is reported that police in England might lay two murder charges against the killer of a heavily pregnant woman who was hacked to death with a machete. The body of the woman, who was of Afro-Caribbean origin and between 30 and 40 weeks pregnant, was found last weekend dumped in a picni...

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News, The European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France, will hear Mrs Dianne Pretty's request for assisted suicide today. Mrs Pretty's lawyers are arguing that the refusal of the English director of public prosecutions to grant her husband immunity from criminal prosecution if he helps...

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News, The final stage in Mrs Dianne Pretty's legal battle for assisted suicide will start tomorrow. Mrs Pretty's case that her husband should be allowed to help her to die was rejected last year by the House of Lords, England's highest court. She is now taking her case to the European Court of...

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News, It is reported that legislators in Nepal yesterday approved a bill to legalise abortion. A bill to legalise the procedure failed last year after it was rejected by the upper house of the country's legislature, but a new campaign to liberalise abortion law was launched last month. Any bil...

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News, The Court of Appeal in London ruled this morning that the BBC and other British television broadcasters were wrong to refuse to screen an election broadcast prepared by the Pro-Life Alliance, a British pro-life political party, which featured graphic depictions of abortions. The High Cou...

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News, The US House of Representatives yesterday voted in favour of a measure which would give full legal protection to babies who are born alive after attempted abortions. The Born-Alive Infants Protection Act would amend the legal definitions of "person", "child", "human being" and "individua...

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News, The Catholic diocese of Limburg in Germany has announced that it is withdrawing from a state-sponsored counselling scheme through which women can obtain certificates needed for a legal abortion. The announcement was made after Pope John Paul II removed responsibility for health centres i...

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News, Dana (Mrs Rosemary Scallon MEP) has called for Ireland's pro-life people to unite in calling for "the option to vote for clear and unambiguous protection of human life from the moment of conception". Mrs Scallon said: "As we approach a general election I will be working to make this prin...

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Committee pressures government on one-child policy following SPUC submission Westminster, --A parliamentary committee has called for coercive population control to become a key part of Britain's human rights dialogue with China, following a submission by the Society for the Protection of Unborn Chil...

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Pro life 'no' vote courageous witness to the world Pro-life 'no' vote "courageous witness to the world" London, --The UK's Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC) has congratulated the coalition of more than 20 pro-life groups which campaigned for a 'no' vote in yesterday's Irish ab...

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News, The Irish electorate has rejected an attempt by the government to amend the constitution so that abortion would be defined as happening only after implantation. 'No' votes in yesterday's referendum exceeded affirmative votes by around one percent. [Irish Times, 7 March ] SPUC has congrat...

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News, A Vatican meeting of the Pontifical Academy of Life has asserted that the right to life is not negotiable. The meeting's closing statement lamented how modern culture failed to acknowledge "a universal human nature [from] which the natural moral law stems". [Zenit, 4 March ] On the eve o...

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News, SPUC has urged Irish bishops and other pro-life people to re-consider their support for the government's proposed constitutional change, after a Dublin maternity hospital said it would destroy frozen human embryos if there was a 'yes' vote in Wednesday's referendum. Yesterday's Sunday Tr...

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