Canada
Joyce Arthur of the Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada wrote to the Abbotsford, B.C., city council demanding that a pro-life display of white crosses on private property be removed from a field along the TransCanada Highway: “The city should foster a community culture that respects women’s rights and freedoms by not approving initiatives that directly oppose these values and existing law.” The display is a project of the Abbotsford Right to Life Society, whose spokesman Jared White said the 1,862 crosses represent the number of abortions committed in Canada each week. … Researchers from McGill University in Montreal led by Dr. Ghislain Hardy found that induced abortions were linked with later pregnancies ending in preterm births. Women with one induced abortion were 71 per cent likelier of having a preterm birth by 28 weeks and 117 per cent by 26 weeks. Dr. Brent Rooney, the research director of the Reduce Preterm Risk Coalition (RPRC) in Vancouver, told LifeSiteNews.com that the McGill findings expose abortion advocates’ claim that abortion is safer than childbirth as a lie … On Jan. 26, Kathleen Wynne was selected by the delegates at the Ontario Liberal Party convention in Toronto to become the party leader. She also replaced Dalton McGuinty as premier of Ontario, on Feb. 11, becoming the first openly lesbian premier in Canada … In celebration of Valentine’s Day, the City of Ottawa launched its “Sex it Smart” campaign that aims to curb the soaring rates of sexually transmitted infections. Young people from Ottawa can request that free condoms be shipped to their homes or they can pick them up at the city’s Sexual Health Centres … Rare, a play by Judith Thompson, was performed in February at the Yonge Centre for the Performing Arts using actors with Down syndrome. The play, about people with Down syndrome, references the fact that are fewer people with the genetic abnormality because of eugenic abortions. Globe and Mail theatre reviewer J. Kelly Nestruck said “Rare may, indeed, be a rarity – a pro-life play” and adds “perhaps Canadian theatre’s most notable lack of diversity is in terms of ideology.”
United States
Michael Schwartz, longtime chief-of-staff to Oklahoma Republican Senator Tom Coburn, and a co-founder of the March for Life in Washington in 1974, passed away at the age of 63, succumbing to ALS. Campaign Life Coalition national president Jim Hughes called Schwartz “one of the best political strategists I have ever met.” Two days prior to his death, Schwartz was awarded the National Pro-Life Religious Council’s Pro-Life Recognition Award during the 19th annual National Memorial for the Preborn and Their Mothers and Fathers … A Centers for Disease Control report says that one in nine American women have used the morning-after pill after sex. Americans United for Life president Charmaine Yoest called the use of this drug which kills human embryos the “sad result of deceptive mislabeling” … Bill SB 220, which would legalize assisted suicide in Montana, has been defeated by the Senate Judiciary Committee and tabled until 2015. Assisted suicide bills have also been defeated during the state’s last two legislative sessions.
International
France’s medical ethics council said that assisted suicide should be permitted for patients suffering from uncontrollable psychological or physical pain when they make “persistent, lucid and repeated requests” to end their lives. The council’s recommendations came upon the request of Socialist President François Hollande, who wants to put forward draft legislation by June … The Daily Telegraph reports that a child doctors said should have been aborted returned home after a year in the hospital. Despite being advised by doctors to have an abortion, a mother from Britain took home her child, Riley Clarke, more than 12 months after boy was born with an inside-out heart on the wrong side of the body and twisted bowels … The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice) in the United Kingdom is recommending that the National Health Service fund six cycles of artificial insemination for lesbian couples and, if that does not work, IVF. Heterosexual women from 40-42 who cannot conceive and never had treatment are to be offered one cycle of IVF … Despite repeated media reports in the West that Red China would abandon it’s one-child policy, Wang Xia, chairman of the National Population and Family Planning Commission, told a national conference on Jan. 14, “we must unwaveringly adhere to the One Child Policy as a national policy to stabilize the low birth rate as the primary task .. we need to keep the One-child policy and keep the national birth rate low. It’s our priority” … A 13-month-old baby died after being run over by a small bus belonging to Chinese family planning officials in Mayu Town in the eastern province of Zhejiang. Chen Liandi and Li Yuhong’s baby was dropped to the ground when a tussle broke out between the officials and the parents, who were ordered to go to the township government to pay a fine for having their third child.