Spanish Planned Parenthood subsidiary stripped of government benefits

London, England, Sep 18, 2018 / 02:30 pm (CNA).- British politicians have called for a review of the availability of early sex detection tests for pregnant women. The proposal was made by Labour Members of Parliament and prompted by concerns that the tests are leading to sex-selective abortions.

The MP’s expressed particular concern that women, especially those in the UK’s Asian communities, are being pressured or coerced into having an abortion if they are pregnant with a girl.

Labour MP Naz Shah said it was “morally wrong” that women are using the Non-Invasive Prenatal Test (NIPT) to determine whether or not they are pregnant with a girl, and then scheduling an abortion based on the result. Shah, the Shadow Secretary of State for Women and Equalities, called for a government investigation into the practice.

The call for government intervention against the practice comes almost 18 months after the Nuffield Council on Bioethics, a government-funded think tank, found that NIPT promoted sex-selective abortions.

The NIPT consists of a blood test given to the mother at the ninth week of pregnancy, at which time the baby’s DNA is detectable in their mother’s bloodstream.

The test is currently administered by the UK’s National Health Service to screen for genetic conditions, such as Down syndrome. Pro-life advocates have already warned that the test is used to “screen out” children with Down’s syndrome and other conditions. Currently in the UK, 90% of children with a prenatal diagnosis of Down’s syndrome are aborted.

While the gender can be detected by the NIPT, the NHS does not share this information with parents unless there is a specific need to do so. While the test is not made available by the NHS expressly for gender screening, it is privately available to parents and can be purchased at a clinic for about £150-£200.

In the London suburb of Slough, which has a substantial South Asian population, the tests are roadside advertisements explicitly market the test as being able to determine the sex of the child. This, said Shah, is where the government should consider stepping in.

“NIPT screenings should be used for their intended purpose, to screen for serious conditions and Down’s syndrome,” said Shah.

“The government needs to look into this exploitative practice and enforce appropriate restrictions.”

Slough’s Labour MP Tan Dhesi agreed with Shah, and pointed out that some Asian countries have “made huge strides in tackling this social evil,” particularly when the government has banned prenatal gender tests.
“In the UK I think we need to be doing likewise, with regards to the private sector as well,” said Dhesi.

Prenatal sex detection has been illegal in India since 1994.

The calls follow a BBC has report on online forums where women have discussed how NIPT results will directly inform their decision to continue with their pregnancy or to have an abortion.

“I need a son to heal me…,” wrote one woman. “My only bet is NIPT followed by continuation, only if it’s a boy.”

Clare McCarthy, spokesperson for Right To Life UK, told CNA that she agrees with the need for government action to address the problem of sex-selective abortion.

“This BBC investigation adds to a growing body of evidence that we have a sex-selective abortion problem here in the UK,” said McCarthy.

“It’s time for the Government to stop denying there is a problem here and take urgent action to put in place a ban on sex-selective abortion.”

McCarthy, however, said it was “seriously concerning” that the same Labour MPs who are opposed to sex-selective abortion also are in favor of removing all legal restrictions on abortion, “under the guise of ‘decriminalisation.’”

If this were happen, McCarthy told CNA that “the evidence from overseas shows that this could make our sex-selective abortion problem even worse.”

While sex-selection abortion is technically illegal in the United Kingdom, women may give other reasons as for why they want to have an abortion.

In England, Scotland, and Wales, abortion must be signed off by two doctors and cannot be performed later than 24 weeks gestation. After 24 weeks of pregnancy the grounds upon which an abortion can be sought narrow significantly.

In Northern Ireland, abortion is illegal, but it is legal for a Northern Irish woman to travel to England, Scotland, or Wales for an abortion.

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Sligo, Ireland, May 29, 2018 / 03:15 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- As the Republic of Ireland moved to legalize abortion over the weekend, one bishop has said that practicing Catholics who voted to repeal the Eighth Amendment should consider going to confession… […]

Dublin, Ireland, Jun 25, 2018 / 04:00 pm (CNA).- Former Irish President Mary McAleese has said that the baptism of infants is a form of coercion, calling on the Catholic Church to change its practice.

“You can’t impose, really, obligations on people who are only two weeks old and you can’t say to them at seven or eight or 14 or 19 ‘here is what you contracted, here is what you signed up to’ because the truth is they didn’t,” she said in a June 23 interview with The Irish Times.

Baptizing babies, she said, makes “infant conscripts who are held to lifelong obligations of obedience.”

McAleese, Ireland’s president from 1997-2011, is a student at Rome’s Gregorian University, pursuing a doctorate in canon law. Her doctoral dissertation criticizes Catholic practices regarding infant baptism, The Irish Times reported.

“If your parents are Catholic and you are baptised in a Catholic Church, that baby becomes a member for life – according to the teaching of the church – of the church and it has rights and obligations,” she said.

McAleese said that in previous centuries, Catholics “didn’t understand that they had the right to say no, the right to walk away.”
 
“But you and I know, we live now in times where we have the right to freedom of conscience, freedom of belief, freedom of opinion, freedom of religion and freedom to change religion. The Catholic Church yet has to fully embrace that thinking,”
 
“What the church has failed to do is to recognise that there has to be a point at which our young people, as adults who have been baptised into the church and raised in the faith, have the chance to say ‘I validate this’ or ‘I repudiate this,’” she added.
In the same interview, she said that the Church must respect the right of Catholics to dissent from Church teaching.

“Let’s be frank about it, very little of the magisterium – there are elements of it that are obviously infallible, things like the teaching on Christ and his divinity – but there are other things that over many, many centuries were taught with great passion that quietly now have been abandoned by the very magisterium that taught them.”

McAleese, who has previously advocated publicly for ending abortion restrictions in Ireland, same-sex marriage, and women’s ordination to the priesthood, drew headlines earlier this year when she spoke March 8 at a women’s conference in Rome held outside the Vatican.

The annual conference, “Voices of Faith,” had previously been held in the Vatican City State. In 2018, Cardinal Kevin Farrell, prefect of the Vatican dicastery for Laity, Family and Life, objected to some speakers, including McAleese, and would not approve use of the Vatican’s space for the conference. Organizers moved the event to the headquarters of the Society of Jesus.

“We are here to shout, to bring down our Church’s walls of misogyny,” McAleese said at that conference.

Referring to the Church hierarchy, she added that “I hope that all the hearing aids are turned up today!”  

The Catechism of the Catholic Church calls on parents to baptize their children as soon as is possible after they are born.

“Born with a fallen human nature and tainted by original sin, children also have need of the new birth in Baptism to be freed from the power of darkness and brought into the realm of the freedom of the children of God, to which all men are called,” the Catechism says.

“The sheer gratuitousness of the grace of salvation is particularly manifest in infant Baptism.”  

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