Canada
On July 15, the Ontario Court of Appeal extended a stay on the ruling that struck down legal restrictions on prostitution. The court will hand down its final decision in the fall, though most legal analysts expect the case will eventually make its way to the Supreme Court of Canada … The Toronto Star reports that Rev. Brent Hawkes, who preformed same-sex “marriages” in Toronto two years before they were legal in Ontario, says that Toronto’s number of gay “marriages” have been declining since shortly after they were legalized. Numbers from City Hall concur, showing a nearly 30 per cent drop between 2003 and 2008 …The National Post reports that Stepping Stone, a Halifax-based prostitution advocacy group,is running adds designed to normalize prostitution, featuring family members of prostitutes saying how proud they are of their “tramps” and “hookers.” The public relations group who put the ad together was unable to find any people with a connection to prostitution, so they had to use their own family members and office staff … Canadian sports anchor Damian Goddard announced that he will be taking his former employer, Rogers Sportsnet, to a human rights commission. He was fired shortly after he wrote a message on Twitter supporting a hockey agent who criticized hockey player Sean Avery’s endorsement of same-sex “marriage” in a pro-gay TV ad. “I completely and wholeheartedly support Todd Reynolds and his support for the traditional and true meaning of marriage,” Goddard wrote.
United States
Kansas has set down stringent regulations on abortion facilties, which has caused two of its three private abortion mills to shut down. Only the Planned Parenthood of Kansas and Mid-Missouri was able to meet the higher regulations. Kansas joins South Dakota and Mississippi as the only other states with only one abortion mill … The Associated Press reports that $185,000 was spent in the District of Columbia over a two year period to pay for 300 abortions for low-income women. The abortions took place between 2008 and 2010, and since then a ban has been re-instated by Congress on tax-funded abortions in DC … A former head of NARAL Pro-Choice New York is pleading guilty to Class E felony for falsifying documents to cover up major financial malpractice. Kelli Conlin was using money from the organization to fund her own luxurious lifestyle … John Hopkins University sociology professor Andrew Cherlin has found that divorce is on the decline. He reports that having grown up in broken homes, many younger people want to put their children first, especially among the affluent and educated. Meanwhile, the New York Times reports that the National Marriage Project finds the 11 per cent of college graduate Americans divorce in the first ten years, compared to 38 percent of non-college graduates … The stars of Sister Wives, a reality show about polygamy, have launched a lawsuit to challenge Utah prohibition on plural marriage. Utah banned polygamy laws when it joined the United States in 1896. The polygamists are part of an extremist fringe of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which formally renounced the practice in 1890 … The Detroit Free Press reports that Michigan inmate Kyle Richards is suing the state for not allowing him access to pornography, claiming that pornography will relieve his chronic masturbation syndrome. A Facebook page on the issue claims that nine in ten inmates suffer from chronic masturbation syndrome.
International
The United Kingdom’s Broadcast Committee of Advertising Practice has set down new policy that will allow private abortion clinics to advertise on television. Joanne Hill, from UK pro-life charity Life, said, “by suggesting that abortion is another consumer choice, human life is trivialized” … The University of Aberdeen has released a study of over one million post-abortive women, showing a 34 per cent increase in the likelihood of premature birth in future pregnancy. Lead researcher Sohinee Bhattacharya said, the risk is “something that should be brought to the notice of women” … The Spanish Defense Association of Conscientious Objection and the European Centre for Law and Justice, with the support of the European People’s Party, arranged a public hearing at the Council of Europe where they presented a report illustrating how Spain’s abortion laws were violating the conscience rights of doctors. In Spain, doctors can only refuse to conduct or provide referrals for abortions if they registered ahead of time on a government list, while family doctors do not have the option of registering at all … Japanese health officials report that a super strain of gonorrhea has been discovered, dubbed H041, which is unaffected by antibiotics. Untreated, gonorrhea can cause neonatal infections, infertility, and other maladies … Cardinal George Pell of Sydney, Australia, issued an open letter opposing euthanasia. He wrote that, “dying with dignity means accepting the human condition and the love and support of others, as we wait for death to come naturally,” while with euthanasia, humans become “disposable, burdens, too expensive to keep.”