Spain lurches to licentiousness
MADRID – Spain’s socialist government approved a bill to legalize same-sex “marriage,” but put off liberalizing the country’s abortion law until at least 2005. Parliament is expected to approve gay “marriage” in January, when Spain would become the third European country to legalize homosexual nuptials. The same bill includes a measure allowing adoption by same-sex parents. Meanwhile, a proposal to liberalize Spain’s abortion laws has been shelved until the new year. Currently, Spain’s abortion laws permit mothers to abort their children if the mother’s life is in danger, or for rape or fetal abnormality. The government proposed changing the law to allow abortion “when, in the judgement of the woman, pregnancy would result in personal, family or social conflict.” The proposal was shelved and will be part of a complete review of Spain’s penal code next year.
Pro-aborts make courts election issue
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Kate Michelman, former president of the National Organization of Women, and Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY), lent their voices to the national media campaign “Save the Court,” which seeks to have more pro-abortion judges appointed to the federal courts by getting socially liberal voters out on election day to support Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry. Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council responded: “The pro-gay ‘marriage’ and abortion advocates also understand how important the issue of judicial appointments is to cultural issues. They are not winning legislatively, but continue to have their liberal values imposed on the American people by activist judges.”
Kevorkian story hits silver screen
LOS ANGELES – Jack Kevorkian’s life story is to be the subject of a new feature-length documentary. Directed by Oscar winner Barbara Kopple, the story will be written by Kevorkian himself with two close associates, Neal Nicol and Harry Wylie. Kevorkian, a charlatan who boasts of helping more than 130 people kill themselves, is currently serving 10-25 years for the second-degree murder of Thomas Youk, who had Lou Gehrig’s disease. CBS’s 60 Minutes aired the video of Kevorkian killing Youk in 1998. Kevorkian has also been working on an autobiography, aptly named The Life of Dr. Death.
Costa Rican president calls for protection of life at UN
NEW YORK – Costa Rican President Abel Pacheco gave a spirited defence of the right to life before the United Nations General Assembly, although one wouldn’t know it from reading the offical UN transcript of the speech. Pacheco called for international protection for life “from the moment of conception.” He said: “As we have a duty to protect the oppressed and persecuted, we also have a duty to protect those who do not have yet a voice. In particular, there is a pressing need to agree on a normative framework, internationally binding, to uphold human dignity from the moment of conception. Necessarily, to defend life is to defend the very essence of man itself: all the promises, joys and hopes of the human being.” However, the United Nations press release covering Pacheco’s remarks totally omitted this call, as well as his call to join the comprehensive ban on human cloning. The release noted his call for ending poverty and war but, curiousl, omitted the strong pro-life message.
Polish president opposes abortion bill
WARSAW – Poland’s president, Aleksander Kwasniewski, announced he would oppose any attempt by lawmakers to legalize abortion on demand, as proposed by a new bill tabled by Kwasniewski’s own ruling Social Democrats. “I remain firmly opposed to abortion being considered as a radical means of contraception,” Kwasniewski said. The proposed bill seeks to allow abortion on demand by women until the 12th week of pregnancy. Polish law currently allows abortion for rape or incest, for irreversible fetal malformations, or if the mother’s health is at risk. He vows to not sign any such measure liberalizing abortion in law.
EDINBURGH – Ian Wilmut, the creator of the first cloned mammal, Dolly the sheep, announced he would seek permission to clone people, even though he vowed he would not seek to clone humans when publicizing his Dolly clone results in 1997. After he unveiled Dolly to the world, he told the online magazine Salon, “We would find it (cloning humans) ethically unacceptable to think of.” Wilmut, who leads a team of researchers at Scotland’s Rosland Institute, applied for a licence to clone humans for the purpose of studying motor neuron disease. “We owe it to the people who suffer from it, and are going to suffer from it in the future, to try and develop treatments for them,” he told the Associated Press.