UK groups push for ’emergency contraception’ expansion amid coronavirus outbreak

March 25, 2020 CNA Daily News News Briefs 2 Print

CNA Staff, Mar 25, 2020 / 06:19 pm (CNA).- While the U.K. government has quickly backed away from rules allowing women to complete a medical abortion at home during the coronavirus pandemic, some groups are lobbying to expand legal access to emergency contraception, which can have abortion-causing effects.

The Faculty of Sexual and Reproductive Healthcare of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists has said consultations for emergency contraception should take place by telephone or video. The drugs are sometimes informally known as the “morning after pill.”

They advise the same consultation practices for contraception prescriptions and for counseling for intrauterine contraceptives and contraceptive implants, the Scottish newspaper The National reports. The faculty, which sets standards in family planning, has also advocated that online contraceptive services be expanded around the U.K.

Catholic ethics reject the use of the “morning after pill” to avoid conception following consensual sexual relations, and strongly reject the use of drugs that can kill any newly conceived embryo.

Dr. Anne Lashford, vice president of the Faculty of Sexual and Reproductive Healthcare, said doctors, nurses, and other clinicians in her specialty are being redeployed to help respond to the coronavirus outbreak. She said sexual and reproductive healthcare services were “already operating beyond capacity.”

“It is crucial that we ensure women of all ages can continue to access effective contraception during the crisis, avoiding unplanned pregnancies which will likely lead to added strain on both maternity and abortion services,” Lashford said.

Pro-abortion rights advocates have argued for looser abortion restrictions during the pandemic. Otherwise women “may resort to illegal methods or be compelled to carry unwanted pregnancies to term,” a spokeswoman for the British Pregnancy Advisory Service said.

The U.K.’s Department for Health initially made changes to England’s abortion laws that would have allowed women to complete a chemical abortion at home, without going to a hospital or clinic first. The changes were retracted March 24 just hours after they were published.

British Members of Parliament questioned Health Secretary Matt Hancock in the House of Commons March 25 about the changes.

Hancock reiterated that the government has no plans to change abortion regulations during the COVID-19 pandemic. Prime Minister Boris Johnson has issued lock down orders for the U.K. with strict social distancing measures enforced.

A medical abortion, sometimes called a chemical abortion, is a two-step process that involves the ingestion of two drugs: mifepristone and misoprostol. The first drug, mifepristone, effectively starves the unborn baby by blocking the effects of the progesterone hormone, inducing a miscarriage. The second drug, misoprostol, is taken up to two days later and induces labor.

Women in the U.K. are already allowed to take the second drug at home, after taking the first at a medical clinic and after obtaining the approval of two doctors, as required by law.

The retracted changes would have allowed women to take both pills at home after consulting with a doctor via video link or by phone.

John Smeaton, Chief Executive of the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children UK, said the proposed policy was “radical and most disturbing” and would have “placed more women at risk.”

“The removal of any direct medical supervision overseeing the use of both abortion pills could have seen a rise of physical and physiological complications experienced by women.”

The Society for the Protection of Unborn Children UK, a pro-life group, has launched a national and international campaign calling for abortions to be halted during the COVID-19 pandemic.

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Spain to permit feminist marches, while restricting worship services

February 26, 2021 CNA Daily News 1

Madrid, Spain, Feb 26, 2021 / 03:11 pm (CNA).- While maintaining restrictions on transit, gatherings, and worship services amid the coronavirus pandemic, Spanish authorities will allow marches for International Women’s Day next month.

Various feminist organizations are already calling for demonstrations in various parts of Spain March 8. In Madrid, marches of up to 500 persons have been authorized.

The Minister of Health, Carolina Darias, advises against the marches, saying, “there’s no place” for them because “the epidemiological situation would not allow nor make sense to hold these events.”

However, Fernando Simón, director of the Health Emergencies and Alerts Coordination Center of the Spanish government, has been in favor of the feminist events and said that they’re less risky than Holy Week processions.

Simón said,”it’s not the same to be under a litter carried by many people during Holy Week, than to be in a demonstration of 500 where distances can be maintained.”

The delegate of the Spanish government in Madrid, José Manuel Franco, told Onda Madrid public radio that the requests for a permit to hold marches they have received in the Spanish capital “have not been prohibited because they maintain the parameters required right now in this pandemic situation.”

In various autonomous regional governments in Spain, restrictions have already been announced for Holy Week celebrations and other celebrations associated with the Church, such as the “Sanfermines” in Navarre, which will not be held this year.

In a statement to ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish language news partner, Luis Losada, campaign director for CitizenGO in Latin America, said that “it’s outrageous that (while we have had to) give up the Fallas of Valencia and San Fermin festivals, as well as Holy Week, the feminists insist on their own celebration.”

Fr. Juan Manuel Góngora, a Spaniard, said, “these days we are watching with astonishment how in the middle of the pandemic, the Government Delegation in Madrid is going to authorize the 8M demonstrations with ridiculous measures.”

“Allowing these demonstrations is a farce for all of us citizens who are complying with the imposed measures and it constitutes a shameful double standard,” Góngora noted.
“At the same time we are already hearing 24/7 that this year we must act as if ‘Holy Week does not exist,'” he added.

The priest said that “if on Easter Sunday I go out through the door of the church that I administer holding the monstrance with the Blessed Sacrament while the parishioners accompany me duly separated, what authority does (the government) have to impose a fine on me?”

“We Catholics must stop being timid before sectarian rulers, we should act with courage and claim our right to express publicly our faith while respecting sanitary measures, those that truly respond to the requirements of healthcare but which others are using under that guise to restrict freedom,” Góngora said.

Fr. Francisco José Delgado, another Spaniard, charged that “all this time we have been enduring a real ‘demonization’ of Catholic worship, despite the fact that there is no known source of infection associated with worship activities in Spain.”

“At the same time, we see how the public events of the state religion, since the March 8 marches are nothing else, are shamelessly promoted by Podemos in the government,” he said.

Delgado said, that “the Ministry of Health advises against these marches, shows this is more about the political confrontation between the political parties in the government than from a real concern for the health of the people, which has been missing in the decisions that have been made since the pandemic started.”

“In our case, as a Church it is difficult to distinguish what part of our self-imposed restrictions belongs to prudence and what part corresponds to posturing before the world. We have to obey, and in most places we won’t have processions, obeying the bishops,” he said.

“But perhaps the task of spiritual reconstruction should be planned that must come after all this, because the world’s ideological agenda is not going to back off a millimeter, while we seem to be in retreat,” Delgado lamented.

Spain has had more than 3 million confirmed cases of Covid-19, and more than 68,000 deaths. Per 100,000 people, it has had 6,802 cases, and 147 deaths.


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