The United Kingdom's Department of Health announces it will make it easier to obtain RU-486, by taking the abortion pill's distribution outside hospitals and into women's health clinics ... Scottish health officials say they will not follow the English lead on RU-486, noting that 46 per cent of abortions in Scotland are "medical" rather than "surgical." A spokesman said, "Nearly all of these medical abortions are done in a hospital setting. We don't want to take abortion out of the hospital setting" ... MSNBC reports that a Kenyan study finds a link between the use of oral contraceptives and being infected with multiple strains of HIV, with women who use them being five to seven times more likely to have such infections ... Ioannis Bodis, professor of gynecology at Aristotle University in Greece, estimates that 150,000 Greek women have been rendered infertile due to past abortions ... Australian euthanasia activists are marketing and manufacturing customized suicide kits similar to the Canadian-manufactured "exit bag," in an effort to get around government moves to ban the importation of the items from abroad. The kit, or "exit bag," comes with warnings but no instructions, in order to avoid legal complications. Euthanasia proponent Philip Nitschke said for the 50 people on waiting lists for the kit, suffocating in the plastic bag is "better than jumping off a bridge" ... The National Review's Rod Dreher on the problems facing Europe: "The plunging birthrate of native-born Europeans and thus their need to import foreign workers ... raises some doubt as to whether democratic Europe can survive in its present form."

New York state assemblywoman Deborah J. Glick (Dem - Lower Manhattan), admits that liberal legislators have used the Catholic scandal to get legislation contrary to Church teaching on abortion and birth control passed, including a bill that forces hospitals affiliated with the Catholic church to offer health insurance polices that include prescription birth control. ... Ten years ago, former vice-president Dan Quayle was criticized for taking on television character Murphy Brown, who proudly had an out-of-wedlock child, by saying the show mocked "the importance of fathers by bearing a child alone and calling it just another lifestyle choice." Talking to the Television Critics Association, Candice Bergen, who played Murphy Brown, now says Quayle was right: "His speech was a perfectly intelligent one about fathers not being dispensable ... All of us feel that family values have to sort of come back front and centre" ... Senator Sam Brownback (Rep - Kansas) in the Washington Post: "I think every life is sacred and beautiful, whether it's the unborn or whether it's Ted Kennedy."

Vancouver pro-life activist Kevin Pielak has been fined $575 for entering the bubble zone around Everywoman's abortuary. Judge Coni Bagnall also prohibits Pielak from entering the bubble zone surrounding the abortuary's new location at 2525 Commercial Dr., or otherwise impeding access to any abortuary, under threat of a $1,000 fine ... Regina Mayor Pat Fiacco, despite granting his official impramateur to the city's Gay Pride festivities, refuses a June 30 proclamation celebrating faith and family ... The Saskatchewan Human Rights Commission fines the province $5,000 for not recognizing Gay Pride in 2000 ... fab, Ontario's homosexualist entertainment magazine, calls Toronto's gay pride festivities, "Toronto's biggest sexfest," but complains that organizers originally banned condom distribution. Editor Mitchell Raphael says, "Many of the roots" of the gay rights movement "stem from gay men wanting to have sex in a safe environment." Raphael also urges the city to hire a full-time Pride organizer "as has been done in Montreal" ... William Heward Grafftey announces he will challenge Tory leader ` for the party leadership, saying it's time for new leadership and new ideas. The 73-year-old Grafftey, a cabinet minister in the short-lived Clark government of 1979, urges the party to run on "a fiscally conservative, socially progressive" platform - precisely the formula the Tories used in 1993, 1997 and 2000.