NZ Family Planning Association donations raise some serious questions
By Brendan Malone You may have heard that Right to Life is encouraging people to boycott Telecom after they discovered that Telecom has been sponsoring the NZ Family Planning Association (NZ FPA). This is actually something Telecom have been doing for several years now, and Ken Orr tells me that Telecom are committed to funding the FPA until 2010. But I think there are some other important issues about the funding of the NZ FPA that raise some even bigger questions. Firstly, according to

Eluana Englaro’s Father Now Making Waves as a Euthanasia Activist
The father of Eluana Englaro (known in the press as “Italy’s Terri Shiavo”), Beppino Englaro, is making a name for himself as a euthanasia activist, and is continuing to claim justification for his successful decade-long court battle to have his daughter’s food and hydration removed last year. Continue reading this story…

Dr. Singer’s Immodest Proposal
In an October 26, 2009 op-ed in the New York Daily News, Princeton University professor of bioethics, Peter Singer, applauded New York’s nanny-state measures (i.e., abolition of trans fats in restaurants, high cigarette taxes, and similar fashionable causes) but complained that government policy makers were ignoring what he referred to as “the cow in the room.” To stop people who are meat eaters from killing fellow animals, the planet, and themselves, Singer calls on state and local governments to impose a “50 percent tax on the retail value of all meat.” Such action, he believes, will not only diminish meat consumption, improve the lives of cows, p

Catholic and Protestant leaders release pro-life, pro-marriage, pro-conscience “Manhattan Declarat
From the Manhattan Declaration website… Christians, when they have lived up to the highest ideals of their faith, have defended the weak and vulnerable and worked tirelessly to protect and strengthen vital institutions of civil society, beginning with the family. We are Orthodox, Catholic, and evangelical Christians who have united at this hour to reaffirm fundamental truths about justice and the common good, and to call upon our fellow citizens, believers and non-believers alike, to join us in defending them. These truths are: 1. the sanctity of human life 2. the dignity of marriag

Catholic bioethicist weighs in on paralyzed man thought to be unconscious for 23 years
A paralyzed man who was misdiagnosed as comatose for 23 years is again communicating with the world after new brain scans showed he was in fact conscious. A Catholic bioethics expert suggests the case shows the wisdom of Catholic teaching on the duty to provide sustenance for those believed to be comatose. Catholic News Agency spoke about the case in a Monday phone interview with John Haas, President of the Philadelphia-based National Catholic Bioethics Center. Houben’s mistaken diagnosis was a “perfect example” of why artificial nutrition and hydration should be continued, Haas said. He reported that the U.S. Catholic bishops last week p