Canada
The Winnipeg Free Press reported that Dying with Dignity, a euthanasia advocacy group, is pressuring the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Manitoba to require doctors to refer patients for euthanasia. The College is seeking input concerning guidelines for euthanasia in the province, but Dying with Dignity is upset that the Manitoba College is not requiring doctors to refer patients for euthanasia. Dying with Dignity’s Shanaaz Gokool told the Free Press, “There isn’t a duty to refer and there’s also not a duty to provide a patient with information about physicians who would assist with dying” … Jocelyn Downie, a Dalhousie University professor, received a Trudeau Foundation Fellowship to conduct end-of-life research. She will be paid more than $200,000 to track incidences of assisted suicide in Canada. Alex Schadenberg, executive director of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition, noted that Downie is a “leading euthanasia activist … who is responsible for several ‘one-sided’ quasi academic reports” on the topic. He “challenge(d) her to accept and include legitimate opposing input and positions that are published within her ‘research’” … Manitoba Health Minister Sharon Brady said schoolboys will be given Gardasil, a vaccine against Human papillomavirus. HPV is connected to cervical cancer in women and throat and anal cancers in men and women, and all Canadian provinces offer the vaccine to girls before high school. Manitoba is the first province to offer it to boys. Critics say offering Gardasil sends a message that premarital sex is fine. They also point to numerous side-effects, including death … Abortion activist Julie Lalonde addressed the Regiopolis-Notre Dame Catholic High School in Kingston, Ont., on Oct. 19, as part of its “Healthy Relationships/Sexuality Retreat.” Lalonde, who sits on the board of the Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada and founded The Radical Handmaids group that promotes “reproductive rights” by knitting female genitalia, addressed the topic of sexting — sending naked pictures of oneself. She told Grade 10 students at the Catholic high school that is it acceptable to send such pictures to a boyfriend as long is both consented to the activity. Parent Colin MacDougall told LifeSiteNews that he would have liked his daughter to hear a message that would have simply discouraged people from sending any kind of explicit message or photos: “How about the message, ‘Don’t send them in the first place.”
United States
New videos released by the Center for Medical Progress continue to expose Planned Parenthood’s aborted baby body parts trade. In a video released Oct. 5, abortion workers reveal they enjoy looking at dissected body parts because their organs are “cute,” in the words of one abortion facility worker. Another abortionist admitted at the the 38th annual meeting of the National Abortion Federation in April, that “ignoring the fetus is a luxury of activists and advocates … If you’re a provider, you can’t ignore the fetus, right, because the fetus is your marker of how well — how good a job you did.” But the abortionist also said that “killing” is “the most important thing I could do with my life” … Texas has cut off Medicaid funding for Planned Parenthood following the release of undercover videos from the Center for Medical Progress showing the organization’s abortionists selling body parts and illegally altering abortion procedures to maximize profits. Governor Greg Abbott was asked on Fox News about a legal challenge from Planned Parenthood, and he replied: “I hope for a legal challenge here because I want to put these Planned Parenthood officials under oath and get them to swear about the practices that they were conducting in the state of Texas” … On Oct. 5, California Governor Jerry Brown signed into law “The End of Life Option Act” which is scheduled to go into effect during 2016. Anti-euthanasia lawyer Margaret Dore wrote in The Jurist, that “the bill, in fact, is about ending the lives of people who are not necessarily dying anytime soon and giving other people the ‘option’ to hurry them along. The bill is a recipe for elder abuse and family trauma” … New York state civil judge Joan Kenney rejected a legal challenge to the state’s prohibition on assisted-suicide, saying the statute is not in violation of civil rights, noting that patients may refuse “lifesaving medical treatment.”
International
John Smeaton, chief executive of the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children, was given the inaugural Father Paul Marx Pro-Life Award by Human Life International during HLI’s 7th Prayer Congress for Life in Fatima, Portugal. Smeaton joined SPUC in 1978 and became its chief executive in 1996. Smeaton is also vice-president of the International Right to Life Federation … A French court found emergency room doctor Nicholas Bonnemaison guilty of intentionally killing an 86-year-old patient and was given a two year suspended sentence. Bonnemaison was originally prosecuted for seven counts of intentionally killing patients, but the court acquitted him on the six other charges.