Category: News

Swedish midwife to take abortion beliefs fight to higher European Court

Fox News

Perry Chiaramonte

The Swedish midwife who lost her legal battle to be exempt from assisting in abortions—an act she has said violates her religious freedom—has decided to push her case to the European Court of Human Rights even though she likely will not return to Sweden.

“In the beginning, I was hoping to stay in Sweden,” Grimmark said in a phone interview with Fox News from her new home in Norway, where she moved two and a half years ago after she was let go from three different hospitals in Sweden. “But we have now made Norway home. I have a job here where they are not concerned with my beliefs.” . . . [Full text]

 

New threat to nurses and midwives over abortions, warns Christian nurse

Christian Today

Ruth Gledhill

A leading Christian nurse is warning that nurses and midwives could find themselves under new pressures to be involved with abortions and other procedures that go against their conscience.

Steve Fouch, head of nursing with the the Christian Medical Fellowship Head of Nursing, warns in a blog of a  challenge to the rules that allow doctors to opt out of abortions.

He is writing after a new study, headlined ‘Vacuum aspiration for induced abortion could be safely and legally performed by nurses and midwives’,  questions the need for abortions to be carried out by doctors in the first place. . . [Full text]

New study threatens midwives’ freedom of conscience on abortion

CMF Blogs

Steve Fouch

In the latest bid to circumvent the increasing number of younger doctors being unwilling to perform abortions, a new report has challenged the need for some surgical abortions to be undertaken by doctors at all.

Sally Sheldon, a Law Professor at the University of Kent, has published a study into the 1967 Abortion Act and subsequent legal opinions to argue that in the case of vacuum aspiration (VAs), midwives or nurses should be able to carry out the procedure.

This, she argues is congruent with ‘recognition of nurse competences, follows government policy that patients should receive the right care, in the right place at the right time by appropriately trained staff, fits with guidance offered by relevant professional bodies, and offers the potential for developing more streamlined, cost-effective abortion services.’ . . . [Full text]

 

Will removing a ‘conscience clause’ force Christian pharmacists to dispense morning-after pills?

Christian Today

Harry Farley

Pharmacy regulators have removed a ‘conscience clause’ from their standards code meaning Christians and other religious people could be forced to ensure that contraceptives and other medicines are handed out against their beliefs.

The General Pharmaceutical Council (GphC) said allowing personal religious beliefs and values to dictate dispensing practice was ‘not compatible’ with a ‘person-centred care’ they wanted to offer.

The regulatory body that sets standards across British pharmacists said they wanted to ensure patient care is ‘not compromised by religious belief’. . . [Full text]

 

Fewer than half of assisted-death requests in Nova Scotia have been granted

Provincial stats on medical assistance in dying include applications filed between June 2016 and March 2017

CBC News

Frances Willick

Sixty-seven Nova Scotians have requested medical assistance to die since Canada’s assisted dying legislation was passed last June.

But of those 67 applicants, only 31 actually received medical help to die.

The Nova Scotia Health Authority, which oversees assisted dying in the province, said there are several reasons why the remaining applicants may have not received the help they requested. . . .[Full text]