News

The Harry Potter controversy https://www.lifesitenews.com/features/harrypotter/index.html   Embryonic Stem Cell research was approved in Germany, Australia, India and Belgium.  The International Criminal Court went into effect as of July 1, 2002.  The Irish referendum on abortion which would have defined human life as beginning after implantation rather than at fertilization was defeated.  U.S. stats showed that some 170,000 embryos are killed every year in fertility treatments.  Assisted Reproductive societies announced the birth of the one millionth child through in vitro fertilization.  Belgium legalized euthanasia.  The sex scandal concerning Catholic priests has caused the Vatican to emphasize its rules against the ordination of homosexuals to the priesthood and to approve the U.S. bishops revised sex abuse policy.  Nepal and Switzerland legalized abortion after pressure from the United Nations.  Reports of cloned human beings about to be born were prominent.  Meanwhile countries debated stem cell legislation, which would not ban human cloning but allow it and yet not allow the child created through the cloning process to be born alive.  The U.S. Supreme Court heard the case which charged pro-lifers under racketeering laws, but no decision was rendered.  James Charles Kopp shocked the pro-life movement by admitting to the shooting of abortionist Barnett Slepian.  Even after his arrest while on the run in France, many pro-lifers assumed he was innocent.  The Anglican Church got close to splitting over the issue of blessing of homosexual unions with a renegade Canadian Bishop Michael Ingham leading the pack and actually performing the blessings.  Canada avoided caving in to an Ontario court ruling allowing homosexual “marriage” with the provincial justice minister filing an appeal on the last day allowable.  The government is currently surveying Canadian opinion on the matter.  More attention has been given to the fact that certain vaccines are made with the use of aborted baby tissue.  This year the state of California went crazy with pro-abortion legislation, the most outrageous being a law to forbid any future law in the state to curb abortion.  Canada ratified the Optional Protocol on the U.N. Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women, thus women can complain to the U.N. when their ‘rights’ under the convention are contravened.  According to the U.N. committee those rights include abortion.  Canadian Catholic education was challenged by Marc Hall, a homosexual student who won a court injunction forcing the school to allow him to bring his homosexual ‘boyfriend’ to the prom as his date.  The court case in the matter is still to be heard.  A second study which involved implanting tissue from aborted babies into Parkinson’s patients’ brains has found that it can cause irreversible damage to over 10% of recipients causing incontrollable jerking movements.