Protection of Conscience Project News
Service, not Servitude
The Telegraph
It might look like a glowing egg from an alien world, but this red ovoid is actually human womb containing a baby, removed from its mother before birth, in a groundbreaking operation.
Doctors in the US have been pioneering an astonishing new treatment for spina bifida in which the baby is operated on before birth. . . [Full text]
Stat
It’s a telemedicine app that seems rather innocuous — enter your info, have it reviewed by a physician, and get a prescription. The California-based company behind it has raised millions to support its mission of expanding access to the pill, ring, or morning-after pill with minimal hurdles.
But that last option is now starting to attract pushback from anti-abortion activists, who consider the morning-after pill equivalent to abortion — and who say lax telemedicine laws are enabling access to this drug with insufficient oversight.
Nurx, an app that’s been called the “Uber for birth control,” lets patients obtain a variety of contraceptives from the touch of a smartphone; it also gives women access to Plan B and Ella, two forms of the morning-after pill, which is effective in preventing a pregnancy after sex. Women can order these drugs in a few easy steps: answer a series of health questions; provide basic demographic information; and choose a preferred drug. A doctor then reviews the patient’s information, writes a prescription, and the drug is delivered to either the patient’s home or her local pharmacy. . . [Full text]
Christian Today
Catholic heads in the UK are issuing a robust defence of the Church’s abortion teaching after criticism of bishops’ stance from within the Catholic hierarchy.
Describing having a termination as a ‘grave decision’ the two leaders of the Catholic Church in England, Wales and Scotland attack the ‘contradiction’ in abortion laws for disabled babies and praised politicians who try to change the law.
They also lambast an ‘erosion of respect’ for those who oppose abortion, saying doctors and nurses ‘face increasing difficulty in being able to combine their dedicated professional work with their personal conviction’.
Pointing to recent cases where doctors and pharmacists feel they cannot refuse to offer abortion services, the senior bishops write: ‘So much talent is being lost to important professional areas. Personal conscience is inviolable and no-one should be forced to act against their properly formed conscience in these matters. This is something which needs greater debate in our society.’ . . . [Full Text]
Irish Times
The Oireachtas Committee on the Eighth Amendment “would appear to have long since made up its mind” on repealing the constitutional ban on abortion, Bishop of Elphin Kevin Doran has said.
The chairman of the Catholic bishops’ consultative group on bioethics empathised with people who did not wish to co-operate with its proceedings. . .
Bishop Doran was speaking to The Irish Times at a conference, Abortion, Disability, and the Law, in Athlone on Friday. . .
Earlier Bishop Doran told the conference that the manner in which conscientious objection was being interpreted “in the so-called Protection of Life in Pregnancy Act gives rise to real concern”.
Doctors and nurses “are allowed under the Act to opt out of providing or participating in abortion, provided they refer the patient to someone else who will perform the procedure”, he said. “In other words, they are still required to participate in what they believe to be fundamentally immoral. Healthcare administrators have no recourse to conscientious objection.” [Full text]
The Catholic Register
For the first time in nearly 20 years of pro-life medical conferences, Canadian Physicians for Life will offer a pre-conference event for students thinking about applying to medical schools.
“There’s a growing number of pro-life undergrads who are communicating to us that they’re not considering medicine anymore,” said Physicians for Life executive director and general counsel Faye Sonier. “They don’t want to enter a field where they’re fearful that they will be discriminated against because of their pro-life views.” . . . [Full text]