News, weekly update, 6 to 12 April 2006

The UK government has extended free provision of the morning-after pill to girls as young as 12 without their parents' knowledge. The programme to allow pharmacists to provide the pill without prescription had been tried experimentally, but is now to be extend to any area where local health officials perceive a problem of under-age pregnancies. [Daily Mail, 7 April] Anthony Ozimic, SPUC political secretary, commented: "The culture of promiscuity fuelled by the morning-after pill is causing immense harm to countless teenagers as well as killing unborn children they may have conceived. Beverley Hughes, the minister for children, admitted last year that the government's strategy was not working, yet they continue promoting the same discredited and lethal approach."

Most British care homes are not giving adequate care to the dying, according to a government study. 99% of care homes have not revised their procedures for looking after the dying, despite guidelines issued a year ago as part of a £12m three-year NHS end of life care programme. These guidelines set out the standards of treatment that should be carried out for dying patients and also advise on how to involve families in decisions before death as well as detailing a new written statement that patients can make about where they wish to die. [The Guardian, 11 April]

Part of the coalition Belgian government has called for euthanasia rights to be given to under-18s. The Flemish Socialist party said yesterday that under-18s and the parents of younger children should be given the right to have assisted suicide. Euthanasia is legal in Belgium for adults who request it more than once, are terminally ill and are constantly suffering. [The Guardian, 6 April]

Pro-life campaigners in America are planning to submit a petition to investigate the death of a woman who died after having an abortion at a clinic in Kansas. Christin Gilbert, 19, who had Down's syndrome, underwent an abortion on 11 January 2005 when she was 28 weeks' pregnant. She died two days later of complications caused by the abortion. The petitioners say that she did not have the mental capacity to consent to the abortion and accuse the clinic of mistreatment of a dependent adult and involuntary manslaughter amongst other charges. [Medical News Today, 10 April]

The American pro-life campaigner Gianna Jessen, who survived when her mother attempted to abort her, has spoken to a local newspaper in the north of England about her life and her work. She spoke in the Civic Hall in Leeds this week at an event organised by local Catholics and pro-life groups. Despite doctors predicting that she would "be a vegetable", she is a singer, writer and is planning to run the London Marathon in support of a cerebral palsy charity, a condition that she suffers from as a result of the abortion. She told her interviewer, "I just love to be alive. I was aborted, but I did not die. ... Thinking about my story, you have to question the basis of abortion being about a woman's right to choose. What about my rights as a baby? If the abortionist had still been in the building, he would have made sure I did not survive after delivery, and my rights would have been ignored. It is not our right to murder children." [Yorkshire Post Today, 12 April]

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, 2012


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