News, 21 February 2001
Pro-life campaigners picketed the Welsh Assembly yesterday to protest
against the legislature's financial and verbal support for the
provision of abortifacient morning-after pills to girls as young as
nine without the knowledge of parents [
see news digest for 15 February].
A contingent of about 100 members of the South Wales Region of the
Society for the Protection of Unborn Children gathered outside the
assembly in the Cardiff Bay area and spoke to various assembly members.
Gordon Kane, a spokesman for SPUC in Wales, said: "Morning-after pills
are not simply 'emergency contraceptives'; they frequently work by
making the lining of the womb hostile to newly conceived human life. In
other words, a chemical abortion takes place should the girl have
conceived." [SPUC South Wales, 21 February]
The leader of Roman Catholics in the Dominican Republic has
pledged himself to the defence of the unborn. Cardinal Nicholas de
Jesús López Rodríguez, archbishop of Santo Domingo, called on the
country's executive to promulgate a law passed recently by the national
congress establishing 25 March as the Day of the Unborn. The cardinal
said: "Those of us who believe in morality understand that the child
who is in the mother's womb has rights." [
Zenit news agency, 20 February]
President George W Bush has appointed a United Nations US ambassador
with an unknown stance on life issues. Pro-life observers had hoped
that the president would appoint a well-known pro-lifer to the key
position, but John D Negroponte's record is unknown and LifeSite
reports that some of his "past associations are seen as cause for
concern". Mr Negroponte has previously served as US ambassador to
Honduras, Mexico and the Philippines. [
LifeSite, 20 February]
Pro-lifers in Nigeria have presented a petition to the Abia House of
Assembly protesting against national proposals to legalise abortion. A
letter from the Owerri provincial council of the Catholic Women
Organisation was read out on the floor of the chamber by the deputy
speaker. The letter stressed that the rights of the unborn child should
be protected and that abortion "kills and dehumanises womanhood". [
Africa News Service, 20 February; via Northern Light]
A court in Arizona has convicted an abortion doctor of manslaughter and
an abortion clinic administrator of negligent homicide. LouAnne Herron
died three hours after an abortion in Phoenix, Arizona, in 1998. Her
uterus had been ruptured during the procedure. The court heard that
Carol Stuart-Schadoff, the administrator, had disregarded a sonogram
indicating that the unborn child to be aborted was more than 24 weeks
old, and that Dr John Biskind, the abortionist, had walked out of the
clinic as Ms Herron lay dying. [AP, from Pro-Life Infonet, and
Nando Times, 20 February]
To subscribe to SPUC's email information services, please visit www.spuc.org.uk/em-signup. The reliability of the news herein is dependent on that of the cited sources, which are paraphrased rather than quoted. Opinions expressed are not necessarily those of the society. © Society for the Protection of Unborn Children, 2013