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Ohio: the Senate bans abortion as soon as a heartbeat is detectable
The Ohio Senate voted 18 votes in favour and 13 votes against the bill that would ban abortion as soon as a heartbeat is detected. The bill was passed by the House of Representatives last month (see Ohio: draft bill to ban abortion of foetuses with detectable...
Irish Parliament decriminalizes abortion
Seven months after the referendum that began the procedure for decriminalizing abortion in Ireland, Parliament passed the bill on Thursday (see In Ireland, marketing authorisation for the abortion pill and Irish Referendum: abortion decriminalised). The bill...
In Belgium, children stillborn at 4.5 months can be registered in the civil registry office
In Belgium, the House of Representatives passed a bill on Thursday 13 December that will allow a foetus to be registered starting at140 days after conception, or 4.5 months. Women who wish to do so in order to facilitate the grieving process and preserve a trace of...
GMO babies: WHO sets up a working group, Harvard team launches similar research
Following the revelation of the birth of two genetically modified babies in China last week, WHO announced the establishment of a “panel to study gene editing”. WHO “brings together experts and we work with Member States (…) to discuss criteria and guidelines that can...
In Indiana, towards a crime of “fertility fraud”?
In the United States, in the state of Indiana, a proposed bill aims to make it a criminal offence for a doctor, in the context of infertility treatment, to use either his own sperm without the consent of his patient or to use the sperm of a donor without his consent....
In Iran, no more children are born with Down Syndrome
In Iran, the birth of babies diagnosed with Down’s syndrome has almost stopped. According to Mahmoud Tavallaei, director of the Iranian Genetics Society of Iran, “Over the past few years, only one baby has been born with Down syndrome in 700 to 1,000 births in Iran”....
Abortion in Ireland: limited conscientious objection
Irish general practitioners will have the right not to perform abortions if they do not wish to, but they will be required to provide all the information patients need to access abortion elsewhere, said Harris Simon, Irish Minister of Health. “No doctor, no nurse, no...
Uterine transplant from a deceased donor: first baby born in Brazil
Following the transplantation of a deceased donor's uterus, a first baby was born in Brazil last year. The study was published today in the journal The Lancet. The University Hospital of Sao Paulo, where the transplant took place, reports that the little girl and her...
Marie Stopes: Illegal abortions in Kenya funded by British taxpayers?
British citizens have called on the UK government to investigate illegal abortions carried out in Kenya by the UK-funded NGO Marie Stopes. Last week, the Kenyan government shut down the abortion clinics run by Marie Stopes (see Kenya: the Ministry of Health...
Cambodia: 32 surrogate mothers released on bail
Thirty-two surrogate mothers arrested in Phnom Penh last June were released after pledging to keep their babies rather than giving them up to the Chinese sponsors (see Cambodia - police raid child surrogacy ring involving 33 surrogate mothers). “In exchange for our...
Xenotransplantation: Baboons survive more than six months with a pig’s heart
Researchers at the University of Munich transplanted pig hearts to baboons that survived for more than six months. The study published in Nature on December 6 reports that one of the baboons survived up to 195 days, “a record that suggests that human clinical trials...
In Ireland, marketing authorisation for the abortion pill
In Ireland, the Regulation of Termination of Pregnancy Bill was passed by the Dàil, the Assembly of Ireland, last night with 90 votes in favour, 15 against and 12 abstentions, after a lengthy debate. Abortion is authorised up to 12 weeks. Beyond this term, a pregnancy...