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The bill is also significant for Catholic hospitals that merge with secular hospitals. Abortion groups have pressured the staff of the new institution to provide abortions because they were formerlyavailable at the secular hospital.

Focus on the Family calls this a major victory at a crucial time for pro-life advocates. However, observers don't expect it to survive the Democrat-held Senate. The bill may not even reach the Senate floor this year.

Before the House vote this week, President Bush endorsed the bill: "This legislation makes clear that they may not be subjected to discrimination by the federal government, or by any state or local government … because they oppose or choose not to participate in abortions or abortion training."

Other stories on abortion include:

• The choice Nicole had to make | Nicole Appleton, former singer with all-girl group All Saints, has co-authored a book with her sister Natalie, in which she deals in some detail with the events surrounding her own abortion. (The Scotsman)
  
  
• Abortion pill slow to win users among women and their doctors | Two years after the abortion pill was introduced in the U.S., abortion providers say that only a small percentage of women seeking abortions are using it. (The New York Times)
  
  
• Also: Abortion pill sales rising, firm says | More than 100,000 abortions in last two years, company claims (The Washington Post)

Discussions on physical abuse and punishment
Three extreme cases of beating children have created new discussion of physically punishing youth. One case is a trial in Toronto against a nun who regularly beat children. While the cases of two mothers who recently beat their children in public are more about irrational temper than physical punishment, they have been the subject of interesting columns—especially the case of Madelyne Gorman Toogood. She beat her daughter in a department store parking lot (and was recorded by a security camera).

Columnists are discussing when a child should be pulled from a home, the tendency to rationalize sins, and when individuals should interfere in troublesome situations. In The Chicago Tribune, Focus on the Family's vice president of medical outreach gives a qualified endorsement of spanking.

Darby Christopher wrote this week for The Atlanta-Journal Constitution that cases like Toogood's have taken away the "gray areas" of parenting. "A parent either treats their offspring with the utmost patience and respect at all times," she writes. "Or abuses them, necessitating their removal from the home."

She argues that all parents lose their temper and the public needs to look at itself. Christopher writes:

As a culture, we are like the religious zealots who came to Jesus wanting to stone a woman caught in the act of adultery, only now we have a woman caught losing control and striking her child. To paraphrase Jesus' response, if there is a parent among us who without fear or hesitation would allow the world to view all of their parenting moments on videotape, may he or she cast the first stone.

Bioethics:

• Embryo cell research a step closer in Australia | National parliamentarians sided three to one in a rare conscience vote to support proposed laws to give the go-ahead (Reuters)
  
  
• South Korea bans all human cloning | Anyone convicted of cloning a human in South Korea would face 10 years in prison. (Newscientist.com)

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September (Web-only) 2002, Vol. 46