One of the leading lights of the pro-life movement in the United States has gone out. Nellie Gray, the charismatic octogenarian founder of the annual March for Life in Washington, D.C., the largest annual pro-life event in the country, passed away over the weekend, and was discovered in her apartment earlier today.

Gray, who was once described by Cardinal Sean O’Malley as the “Joan of Arc” of the pro-life movement, was an ubiquitous figure at the pro-life march every year, her slight frame standing at the podium at stage centre, introducing the many luminaries who addressed the crowd of several hundred thousand during the rally before the march.

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An official in the Indian Catholic Church has endorsed the idea that participants in sex-selective abortions should be charged with murder.

The backing by Holy Spirit Missionary Sister Helen Saldanha, secretary of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India Office for Women, comes as momentum builds to end female feticide, a practice that finds families terminating a pregnancy because the child they are expecting is a girl.

Filing criminal charges for killing a child in the womb because of its sex would “change the killer attitude” toward girls in Indian society, Sister Helen told Catholic News Service.

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Growing numbers of women in desperate financial straits cannot afford abortions, say women’s health advocates who are running out of funds to help them. They say women on Centrelink benefits cannot afford fees at private abortion clinics, and public hospitals must play a bigger role in providing a free service.

”Women who are really poor are finding it hard to get bulk-billed abortion services,” said Denele Crozier, the executive officer of Women’s Health NSW, the peak body for women’s community health centres. ”Either public hospitals must provide an abortion service or governments must further subsidise poor women to use the free-standing clinics.”

Women receive a Medicare rebate for terminations but out-of-pocket costs are high for many.

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The dream is simple: To have a baby.

In generations past, couples faced with infertility had two choices: adopt a child or accept life without one.

Advances in medicine and science have provided more options: Fertility drugs. Artificial insemination. In vitro fertilization. Sperm donors. Egg donors. Surrogate mothers.

Approximately 2.7 million American couples put their faith in one or more of these options every year.

Still, not everyone who begins the quest ends with a baby. Only about 65% of women who seek fertility treatment ultimately give birth.

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Motherlessness and commodification of human life and the womb are concerning. According to the 2010 My Daddy’s Name Is Donor report (released by Blankenhorn’s colleagues at the Institute for American Values), the first large comparative study of young adults conceived via commercial conception, “Donor offspring are significantly more likely than those raised by their biological parents to struggle with serious, negative outcomes such as delinquency, substance abuse, and depression, even when controlling for socio-economic and other factors.”

Being raised by one’s biological parents is not only ideal according to social science research, but according to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, it is a human right. My biggest fear is that the redefinition of marriage to include same-sex couples will strip children of the right to be raised by their natural parents, because law and culture will demand that we celebrate all the means by which same-sex couples become parents.

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Compared to Hispanic Americans, black Americans are far more likely to believe abortion should be legal in most circumstances, even when they personally reject the procedure as immoral.

That’s one of the findings of a poll released Thursday (July 26) by the Public Religion Research Institute, which also explored these groups’ attitudes toward birth control and the extent to which their churches influence their opinions.

“Generally these social issues will not play a major role when these Americans vote in November’s elections,” said Daniel Cox, PRRI’s research director. “Obama has a significant advantage over Romney among both African-Americans and Hispanics, and neither candidate’s views on these questions will likely have much effect on their support.”

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Maternal blood tests that look at the alphafetoprotein levels can suggest the presence of neural tube defects like spina bifida, a deformity of the spinal column, and anencephaly, an absence of all or part of the brain and skull. This test can also be a marker for Down syndrome. More invasive tests include amniocentesis and chorionic villi sampling. These allow the direct examination of fetal chromosomes in order to detect genetic abnormalities. These tests are more accurate, but they also carry more risk for the unborn child. The decision to undertake any form of prenatal testing must weigh the risks against the potential therapeutic benefits derived from the information provided by such procedures.

While prenatal testing offers the opportunity to correct some abnormalities or to prepare to adjust to others, it is unfortunately often utilized to screen for diseases and abort unborn children who are deemed defective. In 2007, the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology (ACOG) changed their recommendations for prenatal screening from offering tests to pregnant women over age 35 to offering them to all pregnant women. Their rationale was that while women over age 35 had the greatest risk for conceiving a child with Down syndrome, most children with Down syndrome were born to women under the age of 35. The expanded screening would allow for these cases to be detected prenatally.

Currently, 92% of all children with Down syndrome in the United States are aborted…

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Recent reports of women being coerced into late-term abortions by local officials have thrust China’s population control policy into the spotlight and ignited an outcry among policy advisers and scholars who are seeking to push central officials to fundamentally change or repeal a law that penalizes families for having more than one child. Pressure to alter the policy is building on other fronts as well, as economists say that China’s aging population and dwindling pool of young, cheap labor will be a significant factor in slowing the nation’s economic growth rate.

“An aging working population is resulting in a labor shortage, a less innovative and less energetic economy, and a more difficult path to industrial upgrading,” said He Yafu, a demographics analyst. China’s population of 1.3 billion is the world’s largest, and the central government still seems focused on limiting that number through the one-child policy, Mr. He said. Abolishing the one-child policy, though, might not be enough to bring the birthrate up to a “healthy” level because of other factors, he said.

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We should be clear, as writers like Paul Rahe have pointed out, that this subjection of Catholicism to the control of the state is being carried out by officials that many of them voted for in great numbers and with enthusiasm. We have not been able to imagine that the Catholic Church in its essential moral teaching would come to be seen as an enemy of democracy and human “rights.” Yet, these new versions of democracy and human “rights” embody positions that diametrically oppose human life, marriage, basic morality, and the nature of transcendence. No one who cannot accept this new version of “rights” will be a member of the new state that has come to exist before our very eyes. The “inversion” of morals is almost complete. It is “sinister.”

As George Rutler remarks, St. Paul would not have been much surprised at this turn of events. There is a “logic” already in place that, if allowed to go further by the continuation of the present regime, will reduce the Catholic presence to a mere shell, perhaps a “remnant,” to recall an Old Testament term. True, there will still be institutions that call themselves “Catholic.” Willingly, they will accept the funds of the state on its own terms. We may even anticipate a situation in which we see two churches calling themselves “catholic,” one accepting government funds and terms, the other, much reduced, not accepting them.

Rutler’s term, “post-comfortable Catholicism” is both a witty and an accurate description of where we are. If this is indeed our “last free election,” we will not be overly surprised if most of us accept it, well, comfortably.

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The Rev. Kevin Flynn, an Anglican priest and director of the Anglican studies program at Saint Paul University:…

Requests for doctor-assisted suicide appear to be signs of the failure of human community. It is difficult, if not impossible, to regard life as sacred if we have no assurance that we will be supported in all circumstances. We need to be certain that we will not be forced to endure dehumanizing medical procedures. We need confidence that we will not be abandoned in our suffering. With all the financial strains that our health-care system is facing, terminally ill people need to know that assisted suicide is not being promoted because it is actually cheaper than good palliative care.

Anglicans have been consistent in resisting doctor-assisted suicide for many reasons. At root, that opposition comes from the belief that there is no stage of life, no aspect of experience, which is intrinsically incapable of being lived through with some kind of trust and hope in God.

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The debate over the federal contraceptive mandate and the fight for religious freedom is not about “a particular policy choice” but is “a debate over the role of religion in American society and the freedom and integrity of the Catholic Church’s mission,” the head of the Knights of Columbus said June 22.

“It’s not an ordinary national debate. There’s a great deal at stake here,” Supreme Knight Carl Anderson told Catholic News Service in an interview in Indianapolis. It is an attempt “to redefine the role of religion in America,” he added.

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NHS doctors are prematurely ending the lives of thousands of elderly hospital patients because they are difficult to manage or to free up beds, a senior consultant claimed yesterday.

Professor Patrick Pullicino said doctors had turned the use of a controversial ”˜death pathway’ into the equivalent of euthanasia of the elderly.

He claimed there was often a lack of clear evidence for initiating the Liverpool Care Pathway, a method of looking after terminally ill patients that is used in hospitals across the country.

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In an unexpected blow to the Obama administration and a major boon for America’s Catholic bishops, the influential Catholic Health Association on Friday (June 15) rejected White House proposals aimed at easing faith-based objections to the contraception mandate.

“The more we learn, the more it appears that the ”¦ approaches for both insured and self-insured plans would be unduly cumbersome and would be unlikely to adequately meet the religious liberty concerns of all of our members and other Church ministries,” Sister Carol Keehan and leaders of the CHA said in a five-page response to the Department of Health and Human Services.

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The British Medical Journal this week contains three articles aimed at neutralising medical opposition to euthanasia.

The BMJ, which remains editorially independent from the British Medical Association, but is sent to all members, has a long track record of backing liberal causes, amongst them the legalisation of assisted suicide and euthanasia….

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A sharp increase in the number of women having abortions in their early thirties is partly being driven by the financial crisis of recent years, experts say.

The figure for women between the ages of 30 and 34 rose by 10% between 2009 and 2011, according to figures from the Department of Health. By contrast, the number of girls under 18 who had terminations over the same period dropped by more than 18%.

Over the past decade, the abortion rate for women aged 30 to 34 has increased faster than for any other age bracket ”” from 14.2 women per thousand in 2001 to 17.2 in 2011.

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The debate about the latest advance will reopen many debates that are familiar in reproductive science. When can abortion be justified? What do we mean by “normal”, and how far from genetic norms ”“ whatever they are – does the DNA of an unborn child have to stray before a pregnancy can be terminated?

Can it be right to abort a foetus at risk of a disease that will only strike in middle age or old age? One of the pioneers of the field, Dr Dennis Lo, has said it would not be ethical to screen for like Alzheimer’s or cardiovascular illnesses. But once the technical issues have been ironed out in the next few years, that could become routine.

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For the first time, researchers have determined virtually the entire genome of a fetus using only a blood sample from the pregnant woman and a saliva specimen from the father.

The accomplishment heralds an era in which parents might find it easier to know the complete DNA blueprint of a child months before it is born….

“It’s an extraordinary piece of technology, really quite remarkable,” said Peter Benn, professor of genetics and developmental biology at the University of Connecticut, who was not involved in the work. “What I see in this paper is a glance into the future.”

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Last September, the U.S. bishops struggled to raise awareness about an “interim final rule” for co-pay-free contraception, approved by the Obama administration in August 2011.

Now, in the wake of 43 Catholic groups filing 12 lawsuits across the nation on May 21, recent polling confirms that the controversial federal rule, approved Jan. 20, has emerged as an election issue. Public opposition has mounted against the controversial rule, while partisan forces and their media allies argue that Catholic leaders are “carrying water” for the GOP.

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The battle between the Obama administration and some prominent Catholic institutions intensified Monday when 43 Catholic groups, including the archdioceses of Washington, D.C., and New York, and Notre Dame and Catholic universities, filed suit across the country challenging a federal mandate requiring them to provide contraception to their employees.

The organizations say the administration’s contraceptive requirement would compel them to violate church teaching. Some employers are exempt from the federal mandate ”“ but many are not, including schools, hospitals and charities that offer their services widely.

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When Saraswati Devi awoke from the anesthesia, her clothes were soaked in blood. She was lying on a grass mat on the floor in excruciating pain, and there were no medical staff to answer her cries. She was one of 53 women who underwent surgeries at a “sterilization camp” sponsored by the government of India in its national campaign to drastically cut population growth.

The campaign is underwritten by tens of millions of dollars in American and British foreign-aid funds.

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We will all die, and how we respond to illness and suffering says much about who we are, reflects Nicholas Tonti-Filippini in his recent book, “Caring for People Who are Sick or Dying,” (Connor Court Publishing).

Tonti-Filippini is the Associate Dean and Head of Bioethics at the John Paul II Institute for Marriage and Family, in Melbourne, Australia. He was Australia’s first hospital ethicist, 28 years ago, at St. Vincent’s Hospital, Melbourne.

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From time eternal, men and women have been making babies, usually by choice, and usually in the old-fashioned way. But in recent years, making babies has become fraught with promises and possibilities never before imagined, whether the opportunity to conceive children later in life, identify genetic abnormalities in embryos, or hire surrogate mothers from halfway around the globe to carry an embryo to term. Ethical questions often get shoved to the side in the face of both rapid technological advancement and the emotions involved. Who wants to raise concerns about the production of millions of babies who bring great joy to millions of parents?

Thankfully, Ellen Painter Dollar has waded into the murky waters of reproductive technology in her new book No Easy Choice: A Story of Disability, Parenthood, and Faith in an Age of Advanced Reproduction (Westminster John Knox). Ellen begins with her own story as a woman with OI, osteogenesis imperfecta. She passed OI, a genetic disorder that causes frequent broken bones throughout childhood, to her first child, Leah, and wondered whether it was right for her to conceive other children who might inherit the same condition.

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The BBC is to make broadcasting history by producing a two-hour show live from an abortion clinic in which it hopes to air the views of patients and staff working in a sector that has been surrounded in renewed controversy.

The BBC Radio 5 Live presenter Victoria Derbyshire will host an edition of her show from an as yet unnamed clinic next month and carry out interviews with women who are undergoing pregnancy terminations, as well as doctors, counsellors and junior members of the clinic’s staff. After a period of negotiation the clinic has consented to the programme and is likely to be identified.

The show is likely to attract controversy…

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I will admit that the HHS contraception rule does ask these Catholic clerics to sacrifice something. But what is this sacrifice? Simply to allow the women who work for their organizations to be offered contraceptive coverage by their insurers. To refuse this sacrifice is not to uphold civil society. It is to refuse to participate in it.

Toward the end of their statement, the 15 bishops who signed this statement called on every U.S. Catholic to join in a “great national campaign” on behalf of religious liberty. More specifically, they called for a “Fortnight for Freedom” concluding with the Fourth of July when U.S. dioceses can celebrate both religious liberty and martyrs who have died for the Catholic cause.

As Independence Day approaches, I have a prediction. I predict that rank-and-file American Catholics will ignore this call.

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Despite differences over contraception, evangelical leaders have fallen in step with Catholic bishops over what they see as federal compulsion to provide services against their conscience.

In 2011, the Obama administration ruled that religious institutions would be required to provide employees with free contraceptive coverage. President Obama said in February that insurers would be responsible for paying for the contraception, but those who opposed the new rule suggested insurers could simply raise premiums to cover the cost.

Searching for strategies, some evangelicals filed lawsuits. Others followed Catholic bishops’ lead, releasing letters to be read in churches.

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Pastors and members of several Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod congregations will gather Tuesday to show support for the Catholic Church’s opposition to federal Health and Human Services department rules requiring many religious institutions to provide employees with health insurance that includes contraception, sterilization and abortion-inducing drugs.

“We see this HHS contraceptive mandate as an attack on freedom of religion,” said Christopher Barnekov, a member of St. Paul Lutheran Church on Barr Street who is helping to organize the event.

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Fundamentally, they noted, the HHS contraceptive mandate “still forces us to act against our conscience and teaching,” particularly because the new proposal does not modify the inclusion of sterilization and contraceptives, including some abortifacients, in the “preventive services” mandate.

“Those falling outside the government definition of ‘religious employer’ will be forced by the government to violate their own teachings within their very own institutions,” the bishops said. “Whatever funding and administrative mechanisms are ultimately chosen, it remains that many deeply religious institutions and individuals will be forbidden to provide even their own employees — or, in the case of educational institutions, their own students — with health coverage consistent with their values.”

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The blessing was prepared to support parents awaiting the birth of a child, to encourage parish prayers for and recognition of the precious gift of the child in the womb, and to foster respect for human life within society. It can be offered within the context of the Mass as well as outside of Mass.

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