Mother fights birth-control law

BEIJING - A 28-year-old Chinese mother is taking a courageous stand in challenging her country's birth-control policies through the court system. Sun Lili lost her job in 1996 because managers of the government-owned Workers Family Hotel, where she was employed as a maid, declared the timing of her pregnancy to be "inconvenient," and ordered her to get an abortion. When she refused, they penalized her with heavy fines and eventual dismissal.

"They told me that I had two options: one, have an abortion, or two, resign from my post," said Sun. Guo Jianmei, executive director of the Centre for Women's Law Studies and Legal Services at Beijing University (which has taken on Sun's cause), said the case is the first related to family planning that has progressed so far through China's judicial system.

CANBERRA, Australia - The legislative assembly of the Australian Capital Territory has passed a bill that requires women seeking abortions to wait out a 72-hour cooling period. However, the bill is a watered-down version of independent member Paul Osborne's original proposal to outlaw all abortions, except in cases of severe medical or psychological danger to the mother.

Margaret Tighe, chair of Right to Life Australia, said she was "reservedly pleased," but realized that the bill was only a small step, and there was still a long way to go before the unborn are protected. "Some babies will live and their mothers will be thankful. This legislation is forcing people to be reminded of what is involved in an abortion," she said.

HAVANA - One of Cuba's foremost pro-life activists has over the past several months been the victim of frequent attacks thought to have been perpetrated by vandals associated with Cuba's secret police. Because of the attacks, Dr. Oscar Elias Biscet Gonzalez sent his wife and son to live with an elderly woman in Havana. However, on Halloween night, a gang of ruffians smashed windows, destroyed locks with acid and spraypainted the woman's house with graffiti, including a message saying, "Traitor."

BUDAPEST - Hungary's constitutional court has ruled that the country's parliament must pass stricter legislation on abortion, since the wording of the current law is too loose. The court said the six-year-old law now in effect allows abortion on demand, without obliging mothers to provide any evidence of a need for an abortion, and this must be changed by the year 2000.

PRAGUE - During a three-day conference in the capital of the Czech Republic last month, the International Planned Parenthood Federation not surprisingly concluded that there is "a gross neglect of women in family planning" worldwide. "It is a basic human right for people to be able to plan the number and spacing of the children they want to have," asserted IPPF president Attiya Inayatullah, spouting a familiar line.

The meeting, the first of its kind in post-Communist Eastern Europe, was last held in the Philippines in 1995. This time around, attendees discussed topics including the securing of access to abortions and "family planning services," violence against women and the access of young people to sexual information.

ROME - Italy's supreme appeal court has ruled that a mother who opts to undergo an abortion is the sole judge of her own decision-making and that husbands cannot seek damages for the violation of "paternity rights."

KUALA LUMPUR - A new Malaysian organization called the People's Voluntary Anti-Homosexual Movement is calling for severe penalties against homosexual sex and the closing of homosexual nightclubs.

In Costa Rica, protesters used tires and wood to block a tour bus carrying 300 homosexuals from reaching the Blue Bay Village Papagayo resort. The bus went through later after police cleared the road.

In Spain's Catalonia region, a new "registered partnership" law passed in October grants co-habiting homosexual and heterosexual couples many of the rights of marriage, except for adoption rights for homosexuals.

LONDON - A new study suggests as many as 27,000 people may have been helped to die, apparently at their request, by British doctors who withheld treatment or prescribed lethal doses of drugs. The findings suggest euthanasia may be more widespread than even supporters of the practice have previously claimed.

Three hundred doctors submitted confidential replies to the study, and one in seven of them admitted he or she broke the law by helping their patients die. On average, each general practitioner admitted to five assisted deaths. One doctor acknowledged he helped 10 patients die, while another recalled the administration of a lethal dose of the painkiller diamorphine to a dying patient as a defining moment in his medical career. It was the "most delightful and delicious way to die," he said.

EDINBURGH - New, three-dimensional images of babies in their mothers' wombs will, for the first time, reveal what a baby's face looks like. New ultrasound scanning techniques, shown to obstetricians in this Scottish city at a conference last month, will, with further refinement, allow doctors to perform "keyhole" fetal surgery, instead of potentially more dangerous invasive surgery.

Professor Stuart Campbell, of St. George's Hospital Medical School in London, England, said it would allow parents to bond with their unborn children. Ominously, however, the technique will also improve diagnosis of fetal abnormalities.

MELBOURNE - An Australian woman, identified only as "Ellen" to protect her privacy, has, in an out-of-court settlement, won undisclosed compensation from the Royal Women's Hospital and a gynecologist for their failure to warn her of the harm abortion could cause to her mental health. Ellen's lawyer, Charles Francis, said the case may encourage hundreds of other women to sue over the poor counselling they received prior to their abortions.