NEWS SHORTS FOR FRIDAY
Disclaimer: The linked items below or the websites at which they are located do not necessarily represent the views of The Illinois Federation for Right to Life. They are presented only for your information.
Pro-Lifers Relieved with Outcome of Geneva UN Human Rights Council Meeting
The United Nations (UN) Human Rights Council (HRC), meeting this month in Geneva, Switzerland, has adopted a resolution on maternal mortality and human rights that relieves concerns pro-lifers had during the early stages of negotiations.
The battle over the final text concerned two points: how broad a reference to "sexual and reproductive health" would the document contain, and whether member states would retain oversight over a report on maternal mortality from the UN Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights (OHCHR) called for by the resolution.
As Patrick Buckley, who covered the Geneva conference on behalf of the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC), told C-Fam's "Friday Fax," the reference to "sexual and reproductive health" is qualified by placing it in the context of the right to enjoy "the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health," and does not expand the meaning of the phrase nor create any new rights.
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Hospital of Horrors in UK Killed Hundreds
An obsession with financial and administrative concerns over the welfare of patients led to such shoddy care at a U.K. hospital that hundreds of patients died unnecessarily. "This is a story of appalling standards of care and chaotic systems for looking after patients," said Sir Ian Kennedy, who chaired a Healthcare Commission investigation into the hospital, the Mid Staffordshire NHS foundation trust. "Those are words I have not previously used in any report. There were inadequacies at almost every stage in the care of emergency patients. There is no doubt that patients will have suffered and some of them will have died as a result."
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Abortions on Mental Health Grounds a Farce
The Abortion Law Reform Association, [ALRANZ] on 16 June issued a media release in response to the release by Statistics New Zealand of the abortion statistics for 2008. Dr Margaret Sparrow, President of ALRANZ stated: "We would like to see the abortion law reflecting what happens. We totally agree with the anti-abortion groups who say that it is ridiculous that 98 per cent of abortions in New Zealand are done on mental health grounds, because that is patently a farce."
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PBS: Abortion Providers Under Siege, Is This The New Face of Domestic Terrorism?
Warning: Pro-Abort influence ahead...
The murder of Dr. George Tiller has reignited the abortion debate, and raised the question: should violence against medical doctors who perform abortions be viewed and prosecuted as domestic terrorism? This week NOW Senior Correspondent Maria Hinojosa sits down with two of the remaining handful of doctors who publicly acknowledge performing late abortions, including Leroy Carhart, a fellow doctor in Tiller's Wichita, Kansas clinic.
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Death Is Upon Us. `Us' Being Doctors
Mortality indeed stalks us all. But I'm talking about the death culture—abortion, infanticide, and euthanasia. The death peddlers here and abroad seek to remove legal protection from pro-life doctors who refuse to perform abortion, refer for abortion, or participate in euthanasia. Euphemisms like "reproductive freedom," the "right to choose," and "death with dignity" justify the assault on our patient's lives and our rights of conscience. But in the midst of this inversion of right and wrong, pro-life doctor groups worldwide are banding together to form a Hippocratic Registry of Physicians.
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NYT/CBS News Poll Examines Public Opinion On Sotomayor, Shows Support For Abortion Rights
Three weeks after President Obama named Judge Sonia Sotomayor as his nominee to the Supreme Court, 53% of U.S. adults say they do not know enough about her to determine whether they would support her confirmation, according to a New York Times/CBS News poll released Wednesday, the New York Times reports. The question was one of many in the national telephone poll of 895 adults, which explored a broad range of issues related to Obama's first five months as president. According to the poll, 48% of participants said that Sotomayor's opinions on issues like abortion and affirmative action are important information that should be known ahead of her confirmation hearing, which is scheduled to begin July 13. The poll found that 74% of participants believe it is very or somewhat important for the Supreme Court to reflect the nation's diversity.
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