Bits 'n' Pieces
United States
At its annual awards dinner, U.S. Vice-President Dick Cheney
praised the National Right to Life Committee as "a
great movement of conscience" that "reflects the compassion of our country,
and our commitment to equality and dignity for every life" ... Leading
pro-abortion lobby group NARAL Pro-Choice
America has endorsed the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee,
Senator John Kerry. Carol Tobias,
the director of the National Right to Life political
action committee, was not surprised. "John Kerry supports partial-birth
abortion, he supports using tax dollars to pay for abortion and he will
only appoint pro-abortion judges to the Supreme Court" ... The Food
and Drug Administration is considering making the "morning-after pill"
available over the counter, without a doctor's prescription ... Michelle
Heinkel, a Fort Meyers, Fla, junior high school student, received
a detention for wearing a T-shirt that showed a graveyard and the words,
"46 Million Abortions Since 1973." Heinkel previously lost a court challenge
that sought to permit her to distribute pro-life literature at school
... Denver Post reports that Timothy Stoakes,
who is serving a six-year prison sentence, was denied the right to sue
the prison to get the right to be euthanized. Stoakes said that he lacked
human dignity in "Colorado's prison industry" ... The Pentagon has given
Sweden's Lund University $240,000 to fund embryonic stem cell research
into Parkinson's disease, ostensibly to help in the treatment of illnesses
caused by battlefield toxins
International
The United Nations Human Rights Committee has criticized Colombia for
not permitting abortion in cases of rape. Austin Ruse
of the UN watchdog C-Fam, said the committee's action "speaks to the
general overreaching of UN committees. It is precisely this kind of
radical overreaching that gives the UN a black eye" ... Sweden is considering
allowing so-called therapeutic cloning. The country already permits
embryonic experimentation ... The Society for the Protection
of Unborn Children gathered a 96,500-signature petition against
the distribution of the "morning-after pill" in schools to present to
the British Parliament. Among the MPs who presented the petitions to
the House of Commons was Kevin McNamara, the last MP
remaining in the house to have voted against the 1967 Abortion Act,
which liberalized abortion law ... The BBC reports that 24 per cent
of British 16- and 17-year-olds are on the birth control pill, according
to 2002 statistics. Family Planning Association spokeswoman
Melissa Dear said that increased sexual education has
led to an increase in contraceptive use and abortifacient use. It may
also be leading to increased incidents of sexually transmitted diseases.
The Daily Telegraph reports that the number of STDs among British
teens has doubled in a decade ... The West Australian reports
that girls as young as 13 are purchasing the "morning-after pill" over-the-counter.
The Australian Medical Association is questioning the
wisdom of making the pill available without a prescription, with reports
that young teens are using it repeatedly, sometimes within the span
of weeks ... South Korea will offer cash incentives to parents for having
children, in an attempt to reverse a decline in population.
Canada
Paul Martin staffers and other top Liberals have begun
attacking the Stephen Harper-led Conservatives as "socially
conservative extremists" ... The Globe and Mail runs a scare article
drawing attention to three prominent conservative Christians running
under the Conservative Party banner in the next election, including
the former Canadian head of Promise Keepers, David Sweet, Christian
Legal Fellowship founder Michael Menear and
former Canada Family Action Coalition director Peter
Stock ... Toronto Sun columnist Michael Coren
went down the list of political parties and enumerated their strengths
and weaknesses. Of the NDP, he said: "I admire the
party's stand on social justice, economic fairness, the rights of organized
labour and an ethical foreign policy. I cannot, however, vote for any
organization that is, to say the least, ambivalent about human life,
the family and sexuality. If it really believes in the dignity of the
individual, it will extend its concern to the dignity of the unborn
child and the elderly or ill person who has a right to live, not a duty
to die" ... The April 12 Maclean's reports that families with
stay-at-home mothers are penalized at tax time because of sizeable child
care deductions available only to working parents. Financial planner
Peter Merrick told the magazine, "The government doesn't
do anything to promote families ... the tax system makes it a disadvantage
to have children."
