Woman’s death exploited by Nicaraguan pro-aborts
MANAGUA – Hot on the heals of Nicaragua tightening its already strong pro-life laws, abortion advocates have claimed Jazmina Bojorge and her unborn five-month baby died in a Managua hospital after she was admitted for an unknown cause with symptoms that included abdominal pains. Juanita Jimenez of the Women’s Autonomous Movement of Nicaragua claimed that doctors should have immediately aborted the baby. Julio Cesar Flores, director of the Fernando Velez Paiz Hospital, said Bojorge’s death “has nothing to do with the abortion law.”Abortion advocates often exaggerate the number of maternal deaths caused by limited access to abortion in order to advocate for liberalizing abortion laws.
Babies killed for stem cells?
KIEV – The BBC reported that healthy Ukrainian newborns might have been killed in order to harvest their somatic stem cells. Ukraine is already considered the “stem cell capital” for its trade in aborted baby fetuses, which are acquired for their fetal stem cells. Women in the city of Kharkiv say they gave birth to healthy babies, only to have them taken by maternity staff. Videotaped autopsies of the exhumed bodies of 30 fetal and newborn babies that had died at one hospital in 2003 suggest that surgery, probably to harvest stem cells from bone marrow, had taken place on them.
Stem cells found in hair follicles
ZURICH – A study published in Stem Cells: The International Journal of Cell Differentiation and Proliferation found that hair follicles have “characteristics that combine some advantages of embryonic and adult stem cells” without the ethical problems presented by embryonic stem cell research. Drs. Dr. Maya Sieber-Blum, Yao Fei Hu, and Zhi-Jian Zhang found that stem cells in the bulge of hair follicles have a high degree of plasticity, can be isolated at high levels of purity and can be expanded in culture. Furthermore, they are accessible with minimally invasive procedures and can be “donated” by the patient who requires the stem cells for treatment.
U.K. may liberalize biotech laws
LONDON – The Sunday Telegraph reported that British Health Minister Caroline Flint will issue a report calling for policy changes as part of an update to the 1990 Human Fertilization and Embryology Act. Under the proposed changes: researchers would be permitted to create chimeras, human-animal embryo hybrids, using test tube technology; the current requirement that a child’s need for a father must be considered when a woman seeks fertility treatment would be removed, thereby providing single and lesbian women with greater access to IVF; there would be liberalized rules on screening embryos for genetic conditions and creating embryos to be tissue matches for siblings facing life-threatening diseases; sex selection screening in fertility treatments wuld be disallowed. Said Flint: “The overarching aim is to pursue the common good through a system broadly acceptable to society.”
UN approves three radical gay NGOs
TURTLE BAY – Three gay activist organizations have promoted pedophilia and were all previously denied non-government organization status by the UN’s Economic and Social Council. The European Region of the International Lesbian and Gay Association (ILGA-Europe), along with two member groups, the Danish National Association for Gays and Lesbians and the Lesbian and Gay Federation in Germany, were granted consultative status by the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), giving the NGOs the right to represent their own interests at the UN and to participate in the UN’s work. ECOSOC disregarded the report of the committee on non-governmental organizations for 2006, which called on the council to withhold status from the homosexual organizations. The UN representative for Benin said the ECOSOC “created an unfortunate precedent by reducing the authority of the committee’s decisions.”
New Jersey approves same-sex civil unions
TRENTON, N.J. – New Jersey’s legislature voted to label same-sex partnerships allowed by the state’s Supreme Court as “civil unions,” becoming the third state to recognize such unions. The legislation will include civil union status in all areas of state law that pertain to civil marriage, including inheritance, divorce, custody and power of attorney. The bill also mandates the creation of a commission to explore whether New Jersey should legalize same-sex “marriage” in the future. Steven Goldstein, director of the gay rights organization Garden State Equality, said he thought that within two years, homosexuals in New Jersey will be able to get “married.”
Michigan seeks to prevent abortion coercion
LANSING, Mich. – Pro-abortion activists are battling a set of five bills, known collectively as the Coercive Abortion Bills, that aim to protect women from coerced abortion. The bills have already passed the state House and are now being considered by the Michigan Senate health policy committee. The Michigan branch of the National Organization of Women claims the bill’s proposed 24-hour waiting period is a violation of women’s rights. Kary Moss, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan, says if lawmakers want to help women “avoid pregnancy,” they ought to subsidize contraceptives. The bills were written after stories emerged that teenage girls were forced to have abortions by parents and women were coerced to have abortions by boyfriends or their families. One bill requires a physician to perform a coercion and intimidation ccreening and to include in the acknowledgement and consent form the statement: “I understand that it is illegal for anyone to coerce or intimidate me into seeking an abortion.” Another requires physicians to give patients information on how to contact law enforcement and domestic violence shelters if they are being intimidated or coerced. Child Protective Services must be contacted if a patient is under 18 and says she is being coerced or intimidated.
Childrens’ rights trump gay rights
MONTREAL – According to a poll conducted by Montreal’s MBA Research, 89 per cent of Canadians “strongly” or “very strongly” agree a child has a right to be cared for by his or her parents. Furthermore, 62 per cent of Canadians and 64 per cent of Quebeckers think marriage should remain between a man and a woman in order to protect the rights of the child, with legal recognition for homosexual unions, and a further 17 per cent support same-sex civil unions but not adoption rights. Nearly three-quarters (73 per cent) of Canadians say “strongly” or “very strongly” that governments should defend a child’s right to be cared for by his or her natural parents. That number is higher in Quebec (83 per cent).
