News, 26 September 2001
The RU-486 abortion drug will be tested in Italy for the first time
within a few weeks. The trials will take place at the Sant'Anna
hospital in Turin, which already carries out the highest number of
abortions in the country. [
FT Information via Northern Light, 25
September]
A judge in Ohio who sent a pregnant woman to prison in order to
prevent her from having an abortion has been suspended from practising
law for six months. The supreme court of Ohio took the action after
hearing that Patricia Cleary, who was a common pleas judge at the time
of the case, violated court rules by sentencing Yuriko Kawaguchi, who
had been convicted of using fake credit cards, to six months in prison
to save the life of her unborn child. The woman gave birth to her
child in early 1999. [
NewsNet5, via Yahoo! News, 19 September]
The US House of Representatives yesterday rejected an amendment which
would have allowed women deployed in American defence facilities
overseas to obtain abortions. The amendment was defeated by 217 votes
to 199 during consideration of a 343 billion-dollar defence spending
bill. [
AP, via Yahoo! News, 25 September]
It has been reported that the government of Manitoba, Canada, is
looking to expand abortion services in the province. The Canadian
federal health minister had threatened to penalise Manitoba and other
provinces for their failure to fund abortions in private clinics, but
Manitoba's provincial government continues to resist such a policy.
Terry Goertzen of the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority revealed that
the plan was instead to develop abortion services in a "non-profit,
community-based setting". [
LifeSite, 25 September]
A legal battle is being fought in the United States over who has
control over a research facility's human embryonic stem cell lines.
The Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation is fighting attempts by Geron
Corporation, a company based in California, to use the foundation's cell
lines, each of which are descended from a human embryo who was killed.
Geron financed much of the early research on the cell lines and is now
seeking exclusive rights to any research products developed using
them. [
AP, via Boston Globe, 25 September]
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