| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
_WORLD WATCH______________________________
________________United
States_______________
In a crisis, free abortions
Planned Parenthood exploits an opening
In an opportunistic response
to the terrorist attack of September 11, Planned Parenthood of New York City (PPNYC)
put out a press release indicating that the group would offer free abortions,
for a limited time, for residents of the city.
Following the example set by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), which in recent years has used tragic events to target stricken communities with “reproductive health kits”—including abortifacient drugs and devices—PPNYC offered “complete reproductive health care from September 18-22 free of cost.” The press release by PPNYC listed among the “services” the agency would provide “birth control; emergency contraception; medical and surgical abortion.”
High Court to consider
vouchers
Church-state issue is central to case
The US Supreme Court has announced that it would hear arguments in three cases
to determine whether a Cleveland program of taxpayer-supported school vouchers
is constitutional. The court combined the three cases for argument in January,
with a decision expected by next June.
In 1995, the state of Ohio took over the Cleveland school district under orders from a federal judge overseeing a desegregation case. The state legislature then approved a pilot voucher project that gives private-school scholarships of up to $2,500 to children from kindergarten to 8th grade. For low-income families, the program provides 90 percent of the costs of going to a private school. If money is left over after low-income families apply, the program pays 75 percent of the costs for other families. For the 1999-2000 school year, 3,761 students enrolled in the program; 60 percent were from families at or below the poverty level.
Although families could choose to send their children to any private school, in practice 96 percent enrolled their children in religious schools. Eighty-two percent of the schools participating in the program in 1999-2000 were religious.
In one of the cases accepted by the Supreme Court, the parents of public-school children and a church pastor filed suit in July 1999 against the program, saying that it violated the principle of separation of church and state. A federal judge issued a preliminary injunction against the project. Last December, an appeals court panel ruled 2-1 that the program violates the Constitution because it “has the primary effect of advancing religion” and “constitutes an endorsement of religion and sectarian education.”
Jay Sekulow of the American Center for Law and Justice praised the Supreme Court decision to hear the appeals. “This is not about funding religion, but about providing parents with an opportunity to select the kind of education they prefer. Religious schools should not be singled out and targeted for exclusion in this arena,” he said.
Sex-selection approved
Ethicists stun their peers
The ethics committee of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine stunned
fertility specialists by issuing an opinion that it is acceptable for parents to
choose the sex of their children, by leaving embryonic children of an unwanted
gender to die of neglect.
The acting chairman of the ethics committee, John Robertson—an ethicist and lawyer at the University of Texas—said the group’s conclusion was a response to an inquiry from a Chicago fertility specialist. Robertson said it would be acceptable for parents who already had a child of one sex to select embryos of the opposite sex for implantation in their next fertility treatment, allowing other embryos to die.
Robertson said that the sex-selection option could legitimately be offered “when there is a good reason to think that the couple is fully informed of the risks of the procedure and are counseled about having unrealistic expectations about the behavior of children of the preferred gender.”
In the past, the ethics committee of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine had said the practice of sex-selection should be discouraged. “Sex selection is sex discrimination, and I don’t think that is ethical,” said Dr. James Grifo, the president-elect of the Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology, an affiliate of the reproductive medicine society. “It’s not ethical to take people off the street and help them have a boy or a girl.”
“What’s the next step?” asked Dr. William Schoolcraft, of the Colorado Center for Reproductive Medicine. “As we learn more about genetics, do we reject kids who do not have superior intelligence or who don’t have the right color hair or eyes?”
Abortion pill proves
unpopular
Few doctors writing prescriptions
A new survey shows that in the year since the Food and Drug Administration
approved the abortion pill RU-486 for use in the US, only 6 percent of
gynecologists report that they have prescribed the drug for abortion.
The Kaiser Family Foundation, a pro-abortion public policy group, released the survey which showed that, although many abortion clinics offer the abortifacient pill, most private doctors do not offer it as an option to surgical abortion. At its introduction, RU-486 was hailed as an alternative for mothers who did not want to go to clinics to abort their unborn children. However, only 27 percent of gynecologists who reported performing surgical abortions offered the abortion pill as an alternative.
Forty percent of the 595 gynecologists surveyed said they did not offer the abortion pill, because they personally oppose abortion as a matter of principle. Of those who do not offer RU-486 (or its chemical equivalent) for other reasons, 62 percent said that their patients simply had not asked for the abortion pill, and half also cited concerns about protests or violence that might be organized by opponents of abortion. The survey also found that women often confused RU-486 with so-called “morning-after” pills.
Back to Catholic World Report November 2001 Table of Contents