Pope to Church: Risky Seminarians Must Go

Australian Cloning Ban

CYBERCAST NEWS SERVICE, Aug. 30 — Australia's parliament has voted unanimously to ban all human cloning. The vote followed an agreement by lawmakers to split the cloning ban component from broader legislation they are considering, which would legalize controversial research on human embryos.

The ban covers cloning of a human embryo for whatever purpose, including so-called “therapeutic cloning” that would allow cloning of an embryo solely to provide stem cells.

With the cloning matter out of the way, lawmakers have more time to debate the more contentious embryonic stem-cell research provision, which if passed will allow scientists to harvest stem cells from “spare” embryos created during in-vitro fertilization treatment.

Pravda Criticizes U.S. Press

RFMNEWS.COM, Aug. 26 — The former Soviet state-controlled newspaper Pravda has called the American mainstream media establishment “liberal” and asserted that “dozens of studies” associating abortion with breast cancer are not being discussed in the American public forum.

According to Pravda, this occurs because the women's health issue is a “taboo subject” as a result of “intense pressure from the billion-dollar abortion industry.”

Pravda reported on a controversy which has erupted between U.S. Rep. John Hostettler (RInd.) and a handful of women associated with the National Breast Cancer Coalition (NBCC). The congressman was publicly chastised and called an “embarrassment.”

Hostettler raised the subject of the abortion-breast cancer link in a meeting with the activists who are breast cancer survivors and the women felt he had implied they once had abortions.

Iran Keeps Abortion Illegal

SOCIETY FOR THE PROTECTION OF THE UNBORN CHILD, Aug. 29 — A group of legislators in Iran have tabled a bill which would legalize abortion in cases of fetal handicap.

The legislation would permit so-called preventative abortions in the first four months of pregnancy if three doctors certified that an unborn child was “malformed.”

Abortion is currently illegal in Iran except to save the mother's life.

Abortion/Breast Cancer Link

REPUBLICAN NATIONAL COALITION FOR LIFE, Aug. 30 — Participants in the Avon Breast Cancer Walk and the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure in Colorado will see a mobile billboard which reads, “Breast Cancer's Most Avoidable Risk: Abortion.”

Last year, Colorado Right to Life joined forces with Survivors, a group of American-teens who carry the message that one third of their generation has been destroyed by “choice,” to launch the mobile billboard campaign.

The billboard was driven past hundreds of women in the Komen Foundation race.