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Will there be a bill in Indiana to protect pharmacists’ freedom of conscience?
In the US state of Indiana, a law could allow pharmacists to refuse to give women abortion pills on ethical or religious grounds. The proposal was approved by a state Senate Committee and could extend the current law prohibiting doctors and hospital employees...
Abortion in the Netherlands: on the increase and for older women
The report on abortion in the Netherlands in 2017 by the Dutch Health and Youth Care Inspectorate (Inspectie Gezondheidszorg en Jeugd, IGJ) has just been published. Significant developments include: An increase in the number of abortions in 2017 to reach...
In utero surgery enables a baby to be born healthy
A foetus with a severe immune deficiency has benefited from in utero hematopoietic stem-cell transplantation. The operation took place in July 2015, following a risk of mother-to-child transmission of toxoplasmosis. This parasite-transmitted disease "can have major...
Treating genetic pathologies in utero?
Researchers have developed a new form of gene therapy in mice using the CRISPR technique. This would make it possible to cure genetic disorders by repairing mutations in the foetal brain in utero. The mice in the experiment had Angelman syndrome, caused by a...
Irish hospital posts not open to doctors who are conscientious objectors
The National Maternity Hospital (NMH) on Holles Street, Dublin, has just launched the recruitment of two doctors, an anaesthetist and an obstetrician-gynaecologist. The hospital announced that these positions would only be given to doctors willing to perform...
“Universal” iPS cells to bypass graft rejection
Researchers at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) used CRISPR-Cas9 to create induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC) which are “invisible” to the immune system, thus preventing the potential for transplant rejection. These "universal" stem cells could be...
“I had no right to say I wasn’t doing well”: A bereaved father recalls his partner’s two miscarriages
“I want to share the loss of two babies in utero at six-and-a-half months and eight months of pregnancy”. More than ten years after the events, a family man shares his experience and the emotion is still very much alive. At the time, his partner, who was...
Switzerland: a petition for information on “emotional distress” after an abortion
In Switzerland, a petition launched yesterday for information on all aspects of abortion collected 25,000 signatures. “The public, and in particular young adults, should be better informed about the negative consequences of abortions”, insists the Swiss...
The genetic modification of Chinese twins may have affected their brains
The brains of twins whose genes were modified by CRISPR-Cas9 before birth, a change they will pass on to future generations, may have been impacted by the procedure. New research shows that alterations in the CCR5 gene introduced into the babies’ DNA, which...
Fertility fraud: are incriminated doctors protected by the law on sperm donor anonymity?
John Coates, a fertility doctor in Vermont, in the United States, is accused of using his own sperm to fertilise one of his patients' eggs in the 1970s. Following a genetic test conducted on Ancestry.com, which revealed the identity of her biological father, the...
Utah: bill to ban abortion if Down syndrome is the reason
On 6 February, in the US state of Utah, a Senate committee approved a bill banning abortions following positive diagnosis of Down syndrome. This legislation had already been discussed in 2018(Utah: a law under consideration to prohibit abortions based on the diagnosis...
Canadian women abandon the pill
Her excruciating migraines disappeared overnight when she stopped taking the pill. Yet Kelsie Bryson took eight years to make the connection between the pill and her symptoms. "I would experience numbness in the right side of my body — including in my mouth, which...