News, 15 February 2000
School-nurses in France can now give abortifacient pills to girls as
young as 12 without their parents' consent. Condoms have been widely
available in schools for some years yet France has one of the highest
abortion-rates in Europe. The Norvelo pill is being described as late
contraception. [Washington Times quoted in Pro-Life E-News
(enews@interlife.org), 14 February, 2000]
Society should no more accept abortion, sterilisation or euthanasia as
inevitable than it should accept war or ethnic cleansing as inevitable,
the pope told a Vatican meeting on the fifth anniversary of Evangelium
Vitae, his encyclical on human life. [Zenit news (www.zenit.org), 15
February, 2000]
Legislatures in six American states are discussing ways of encouraging
mothers of unwanted newborn children to take their babies to a place of
safety instead of abandoning them. [Pro-Life E-News
(enews@interlife.org), 14 February, 2000]
Attitudes among US presidential candidates to abortion have become the
litmus-test of whether a politician is pro-family or "sound on women's
issues", according to Ms Danielle Crittenden, the political columnist,
who is quoted in today's Guardian.
A pro-life obstetrician and reformed abortionist has called for all
pregnant women to have an ultrasound scan at 18 weeks in order to cut
the number of late abortions. Dr Bernard Nathanson told US
congressional staff: "[It] may not cut the rate of abortion by much ...
but at least it would cut these so-called partial-birth abortions down,
and ... it allows more time for us pro-life people to do the
appropriate counseling to allow her to carry the pregnancy to term and
then have the congenital defect repaired." [Washington Times quoted in
Pro-Life E-News (enews@interlife.org), 14 February, 2000]
A survey of British youth suggests that just 30% of people under 21
attend a family-planning clinic or visit their family-doctor before
having sex for the first time. [study by Centre for Sexual Health
Research, Southampton University, reported in The Express, 15 February,
2000]
The parents of septuplets who miscarried have lain them to rest in a
small white coffin. Mrs Ivette Zapata-Smalls of New Jersey took a
fertility-drug and, when advised to abort some of the babies to save
the others, refused on principle. [Jersey News reported in Pro-Life
E-News (enews@interlife.org), 14 February, 2000]
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