LifeZine No. 385: 27th Apr 06
Crisis Pregnancy Agency Has No Specific Policies to Reduce Abortions. Figures Challenged.
Teenagers concerned about unwanted pregnancies in the past three years have used a State-funded mobile phone text service to get help, it was revealed recently. The Crisis Pregnancy Agency’s (CPA) Positive Options text service, mainly used by women aged 15 to 20, have received allegedly received 373,000 text messages since it was launched in April 2003. Women looking for help receive a list of six national agencies including the Irish Family Planning Association, LIFE, One Family, Pact, CURA, and the Dublin Well Women Centre and are then asked to reply for more information. Three of these six are pro-abortion agencies and there is a question mark over a fourth, CURA, because of its handing out of the CPA’s pro-abortion Positive Options leaflets. A pro-life spokesman however challenged... Details: CLICK TO READ MORE.....
Woman Hurt by Abortion Break their Silence in Northern Ireland
On this Saturday coming, April 29th 2006 at 1.00pm outside Belfast City Hall, women from Northern Ireland will stand together and hold signs that say ‘I Regret My Abortion’, sharing publicly how they were wounded by abortion. The testimonies of these women will be read out from the platform. The women from the Silent No More Awareness Campaign will be taking part in Precious Life's annual 'Life Chain' to commemorate the 39th anniversary of the UK’s 1967 Abortion Act. Lynn Coles, who had an abortion at age 18, is the Regional Co-ordinator of Silent No More Awareness. She said, “This Campaign started in America and is gathering momentum as thousands of women have registered to share how abortion has negatively affected them. Precious Life. CLICK TO READ MORE.....
Abortion Survivor in London Marathon
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 had spoken in the Civic Hall in Leeds recently 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.” She walks with a pronounced limp, but she is running the London Marathon and she said she would complete the race “if I have to crawl”. Yorkshire Post Today. April 12. CLICK TO READ MORE.....
Care Homes Accused of Failing the Dying
Fewer than 1% of nursing care homes in the UK have revised their procedures for looking after dying people despite new guidelines issued a year ago to give the terminally ill greater control over the final stages of their lives. A government evaluation last week concluded that people dying in care homes are missing out on the improvements because the homes operate largely outside of National Health Service control. Ian Philp, the ombudsman for older people, found 8%-10% of the 500,000 deaths every year in England occur in care homes but their experiences are not always positive. The Guardian. April 11. CLICK TO READ MORE.....
Shift Urged in UN Population Policies
The Holy See has appealed to the international community to replace the failed population policies of the past with programmes that focus on respect for human dignity. Archbishop Celestino Migliore, permanent observer of the Holy See to the United Nations, made that appeal recently when addressing the session of the UN Commission on Population and Development of the Economic and Social Council on “National Experience in Population Matters: International Integration and Development”. “In years gone by, dire predictions as to the future composition and sustainability of the projected human global population led to radical population policies, which have in turn been responsible for different but equally grave dilemmas”, Archbishop Migliore said. In particular, he mentioned, “the serious problems brought about by failing birth-rates”. He added: “If the development of the world's peoples is to be both sustainable and sane, such flawed policies will have to be replaced by truly people-centred ones.” Zenit. CLICK TO READ MORE.....
The ‘Cold-hearted’ IVF ‘Baby Business’
People who spend thousands of pounds on IVF treatment are vulnerable to exploitation, according to Debora Spar of Harvard Business School in the US. Professor Spar, who has written a book on the IVF market in America called “The Baby Business” and is to address the UKs Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority on the subject, said that patients need to “get rid of sentimentality” and see themselves as “consumers” in an industry that now makes £500 billion a year. She said, “We have to acknowledge that we have created a baby business, and to move away from emotion towards thinking rationally. It sounds cold-hearted, but it's actually more humane for the patients to see the commercial elements of the transaction, rather than to see it purely in emotional terms.” The Times, March 29. CLICK TO READ MORE.....