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The morning-after pill will be made available over-the-counter and will not require a doctor's prescription, Medicines Authority chief Anthony Serracino Inglott told Times of Malta today.
“We looked at all the recommendations made by the parliamentary committee but have decided that to ensure that there is efficacy, the contraceptive will be made available over-the-counter,” Prof. Serracino Inglott said this morning.
As we start another week … how about some good news as a welcome break from the headlines?
Since 40 Days for Life started on September 28, we now have reports of 264 babies whose moms chose life at the last minute – that we know of! People are praying – and bringing a public witness of Christ’s mercy – to 367 locations in 23 countries.
In his article, “Is ‘Mindfulness’ Christian?,” (in Book Reviews, Life & Ministry 16 October 7, 2016), Ian Paul, an Anglican minister, enthusiastically reviews the booklet written by fellow Anglican cleric, Tim Stead, Mindfulness and Prayer, in the grove spirituality series. Stead devotes his booklet and much of his ministry to normalizing for Christians the Buddhist technique of spirituality, namely Mindfulness. To his own question about the Christian nature of Mindfulness, Ian Paul enthusiastically answers, “yes.”
This weekend Planned Parenthood turned 100. As several politicians and pro-choice supporters publicly celebrated the milestone, many Christians and others committed to defending life and human dignity mourned.
While supporters see a century of Planned Parenthood as an era of choice and physical autonomy, many of us see it as an era of death, both of unborn humans and of the consciences of millions of women and men. Many Americans cannot hear the words “Planned Parenthood” without remembering a series of videos that revealed leaders of the organization having cavalier lunch conversations about the best prices for infant body parts. And we also remember the explicit social Darwinism of Planned Parenthood’s founder Margaret Sanger, and her vision to create a society with fewer “undesirables”—including minorities and the disabled.
The BBC has warned production companies it won’t commission shows unless they employ a representative amount of ethnic minorities, the disabled and LGBT people.
The Chinese government is calling on people to report their neighbours, friends and relatives for “luring minors into religious activities” in a province home to the country’s largest Muslim population.
New education rules coming into force in Xinjiang on 1 November threaten to remove children from their parents’ care and send them to “receive rectification” at specialist schools.
When Amina Aliyeva, a mother of two girls, found out she was expecting another girl, she was told by her family to get rid of it.
"We went to learn the baby's sex together with my mother-in-law and my husband. When the doctor told us it was a girl, they felt like it was the end of the world," she says. "They told me I must have an abortion."
Aliyeva, 30, says her gynecologist also sided with her mother-in-law and her husband, trying to convince her to have an abortion.
Cleo Pablo and her wife Tara Roy-Pablo were married under Arizona law in 2015. But Pablo’s tribe, the Ak-Chin Indian Community, refused to recognize their union.
Cleo Pablo felt obligated to leave. “I want equal opportunity,” she said, “I want what every married couple has.” Pablo also filed a lawsuit against the Ak-Chin Indian Community, though it is still pending.
‘Parents bring up children, not governments’. The 2007 national Children's Plan made that clear. Parents are their children’s prime educators, with parental attitude, support and expectation proving to be key factors in a child’s success. How and where each child is educated is a matter of parental choice.
There is a history of nonconformist Christian education dating back to the 1662 Act of Uniformity – that is a parental right which has continued undisturbed for centuries, and one which is still clearly enshrined in Article 2, Protocol 1 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). It says that ‘the State shall respect the right of parents to ensure such education and teaching is in conformity with their own religious and philosophical convictions’.
The nation of Hungary recently did something that is as unprecedented as it is commonsensical and humanitarian: it “has become the first government to open an office specifically to address the persecution of Christians in the Middle East and Europe.”
Zoltan Balog, Hungary’s Minister for Human Resources, explained:
"Today, Christianity has become the most persecuted religion, where out of five people killed [for] religious reasons, four of them are Christians. In 81 countries around the world, Christians are persecuted, and 200 million Christians live in areas where they are discriminated against. Millions of Christian lives are threatened by followers of radical religious ideologies."