Sheridan was referring to a speech by Joe de Bruyn, who used three examples to reflect on how to live a Catholic life. Joe de Bruyn is a retired trade unionist, Labour figure and Campion College board member.

Sheridan says that "at the first mention of the word 'abortion' a walkout began, which included a majority of graduands and a majority of university staff present".

"A serious vice-chancellor would have attended the speech himself" wrote Sheridan.

He is calling on the vice-chancellor to apologise to de Bruyn for the rudeness shown him and reiterate ACU's commitment as a Catholic institution to Catholic teaching.

University offers counselling

However, the university later offered counselling to those affected by the speech.

It said it was "deeply disappointed the speech was not more befitting of a graduation ceremony" and that it would refund ticket fees for graduates.

de Bruyn was being presented with an honorary degree by the Australian Catholic University.

In the speech, de Bruyn claimed abortion was the "single biggest killer of human beings in the world" and referred to is as a "tragedy that must be ended".

Living a Catholic faith in the public square

However Monica Doumit, writing in the Catholic Weekly, says that media reports were wrong to characterise de Bruyn's address as an inappropriate, self-indulgent rant about issues of life and human sexuality that had little relevance to a graduation ceremony.

Contrary to how it was portrayed, Doumit says de Bruyn's speech was not just a rehashing of the Catholic position on contentious issues, but a reflection on how to live one's Catholic faith in the public sphere.

De Bruyn told the graduands that for more than 40 years he had worked in a union that covered warehousing, retail and fast-food companies, fighting for the rights and wages of some of the lowest-paid workers in the country.

He explained that bringing these aspects of his Catholic faith to his work and advocacy was not controversial, but that bringing other aspects of his Catholic faith was contentious.

To illustrate his point, de Bruyn offered three examples: abortion, IVF and marriage. His point was summed up in his concluding remarks:

"As happened to me, you will be faced with issues in your professional and personal lives where the general opinion of the majority of the population is at odds with the teaching of the Church.

"My experience is that many Catholics cave in to peer pressure. They think their professional lives will be harmed if they promote the teaching of the Church. My experience is that this is not so.

"Despite my view on some issues being at odds with the views of my contemporaries over the past 50 years, it never affected my career at all."

Listening Church

Australia's new cardinal-designate, Mykola Bychok, has backed de Bruyn's anti-abortion speech.

"Freedom of speech is an important pillar of our society, so is freedom of religion'' he said.

"We must be free to say that which we believe to be the truth as passed to us by Our Lord. Jesus says to us ‘Be not afraid'.

"I grew up at a time when my church was banned and persecuted in Ukraine. A church of martyrs and confessors.

"We survived this persecution because people loved God and their church. They were courageous and passed on the faith to their children and grandchildren.''

Cardinal-designate Bychok said he did not believe there was any division within the Church on the sanctity of life.

While Pope Francis told the Church to be a "listening Church'', that did not mean others did not have to listen to Christ.

Sources

• The Australian
• ABC
• The Catholic Weekly
• The Australian

They were opposing a bill allowing single women and lesbian couples under the age of 43 access to in vitro fertilisation (IVF) treatment.

In France, IVF is currently restricted to heterosexual couples who are married or have cohabited at least two years.

Besides broadening the rights of single and lesbian women, the bill also addresses the rights of children conceived by IVF.

If passed into law, children conceived with donated sperm will have the right to find out their donor father's identity when they reach the age of 18. This is not currently allowed.

Although the church hierarchy did not officially call on Catholics to march, it posted comments from 56 bishops on the bishops conference website.

All the bishops criticised the bill and urged opposition to it, often including public protests such as the march.

One prelate, Archbishop Michel Aupetit of Paris, said the bill "touches on the most essential foundations on which our human societies are built".

He described these as "filiation, the non-commercialisation of the human body, respect of all life from its conception until its natural death, the best interest of the child, a philanthropic and non-commercial medicine, a human ecology where the body is not an instrument but the place of the edification of the personality."

A speaker at the protest, former legislator Marion Maréchal, said the French government is seeking "to voluntarily deprive a child of a father or to transform him and the mother who carries him into a consumer product."

Others said the law would lead to a further reform legalising surrogate motherhood.

Organisers said the proposed law would weaken the family and therefore, thus society.

It is unjust "to authorise the manufacture of children voluntarily deprived of a father," they said.

Many participants fear assisted procreation will inevitably lead to allowing surrogate motherhood, a reform opposed by an even larger percentage of French.

The government has denied it would do this.

Several of France's neighbours, including Britain, Spain and the Netherlands, already allow IVF for single women and lesbian couples.

Polls suggest about two-thirds of the public support the bill, which has been passed by the lower house of parliament.

It will go before the Senate later this month.

Source

• Radio New Zealand
• The Tablet UK
• Catholic News Agency
• Image: The Times

The Conscientious Objection (Medical Activities) Act 2017 would defend healthcare workers in England and Wales from partaking in the withdrawal of life-sustaining treatment, IVF or similar fertility treatments, or abortion if they have a conscientious objection to doing so. Read more

Although the difference between the health outcomes from IVF babies and others is small, research shows genes behave differently in IVF babies.

IVF - or in vitro fertilisation - is forbidden by the Catholic Church.

Dr Carmen Sapienza of Temple University Medical School in Philadelphia says dozens of genes involved in growth, metabolism and obesity behave differently in IVF babies.

IVF pioneer Dr Andre van Steirteghem says there are genetic causes of infertility that you can pass on.

"It means that the next generation may be infertile as well and this is something all clinics should mention to the patients."

Van Steirteghem says parents need to be told if there is a genetic origin of infertility that this may be transmitted to the next generation.

Nearer to home in New Zealand, John Aitken, who is a Newcastle University laureate professor, says IVF is resulting in a new new generation of infertile Australian children.

He says they will require expensive medical treatment to produce their own offspring.

One in every 25 Australian children are conceived via IVF.

Aitken also says the male offspring of aging fathers contributing sperm to IVF procedures may be more prone to cancer.

The growing number of children born as a result of IVF treatment has been paired with a growing fertility industry.

This was reported at £500M per year in the UK in a Manchester Fertility clinic blog in 2013.

The blog also reported that one in six couples struggle to reproduce naturally.

Source

• Stuff
• Daily Mail
• Manchester Fertility
• Image: SlideShare

The Latin American pontiff said it was a "false sense of compassion" to consider euthanasia as an act of dignity.

He classified as equally false the belief that abortion helps women.

Rather, the image of true compassion is in the figure of the Good Samaritan, who sees a man suffering, has mercy on him, goes close and offers concrete help.

Pope Francis also condemned in vitro fertilisation, describing it as "the scientific production of a child".

He added that embryonic stem cell research can be seen as "using human beings as laboratory experiments to presumably save others".

His remarks were made to the 4000 Catholic doctors on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the Association of Italian Catholic Doctors.

Pope Francis said "playing with life" in ways like abortion and euthanasia is sinful.

"Be careful, because this is a sin against the Creator: against God the Creator."

He stressed that each human life, no matter what the condition, is sacred.

The Pope did not specifically mention the case of terminally ill young American Brittany Maynard, who died recently by assisted suicide.

Francis recalled that many times in his years as a priest he heard people object to the Church's position on life issues, specifically asking why the Church is against abortion.

He would explain that the Church is not against abortion because it is simply a religious or philosophical issue.

It is because "there is a human life and it's not lawful to take a human life to solve a problem".

Addressing the advances in modern medicine, the Pope said the possibility of physical healing has drastically increased.

However, the ability to truly care for the person has almost gone in the opposite direction, he said.

Some aspects of medical science "seem to diminish the ability to ‘take care' of the person, especially when they are suffering, fragile and defenceless", he said.

The Pope said advancements in science and medicine can only enhance human life if they maintain their ethical roots.

Sources

• The Telegraph
• Catholic News Agency
• Image: BebaOlivia

In 2004, the Human Assisted Reproductive Technology Act was passed governing the practice of fertility treatment.

In 2010 the legislation was amended allowing the retrospective 10-year storage period for eggs, sperm and embryos.

Families can apply to have the time lengthened.

One fertility clinic, Fertility Associates, says it has not been able to contact everyone who has frozen samples.

Fertility Associates has spent the past year trying to track down 1700 people with samples 10 years or older that are frozen in liquid nitrogen banks.

"This is urgent, this is within the week they need to make the decision," says Richard Fisher, the co-founder of Fertility Associates.

Around 300 people cannot be reached and another 650 have not replied to letters.

There are fears that the unclaimed samples may be the only chance some have at raising children.

"What we don't want to do is for someone turn up on our doorstep in a year's time and say: 'I've come to collect my sperm' or 'I've come to collect my embryos' and we'll have to say: 'Sorry, they've been disposed of'," Mr Fisher says.

At least two other clinics, Fertility Plus at Auckland's Greenlane Hospital and Otago Fertility Services in Dunedin, also hold embryos which may be affected by the deadline.

Sex could become purely recreational by 2050 with large numbers of babies in the Western world born through IVF, the professor who invented the contraceptive pill says.

Professor Carl Djerassi, an Austrian-American chemist and author, said the pill would become obsolete because men and women would choose to freeze their eggs and sperm when young before being sterilised.

He also claims it would end abortions, as no pregnancies would be unplanned.

Djerassi said advances in fertility treatment made it much safer for prospective parents who do not have fertility problems to consider IVF.

Djerassi, 91, is an emeritus professor of chemistry at Stanford University.

Watch Video clip TVNZ news item

Source

• TVNZ News
• Herald on Sunday
• New Zealand Herald
• Image: tupbebek-genetik.com

Stuart says the way the news was delivered added to the blow. His doctor walked into the room and bluntly declared: "You've got big troubles. You basically have one good sperm." Stuart says this "made me feel about an inch tall".

Like most illnesses, infertility does not discriminate. But somehow it makes people feel they are part of a brutal natural selection process that prevents the weakest from reproducing their inferior genes. It also has a cruel way of making well-matched couples feel they may not be truly compatible. Says Rachel, "I often think, in a way, that, as hard as it has been, I'm glad it was both of us that had problems because if it was just me, I would have felt as though Stu should go and find someone else."

The Maloneys borrowed most of the $30,000 they have spent on IVF to become pregnant with Nate. While they don't regret a cent of it and believe they have received good care, they still wonder why the often repetitive procedures cost so much. "The thing that always pulls me up is the embryo transfer," Rachel says. "It costs about $3000 and it's a bit like a pap smear. They basically pop a speculum in and use a catheter to squirt the embryo in with some sterile water. It takes about 15 minutes. The doctor is there, so we're obviously paying for his time, but the embryo has already been created and we pay storage fees of about $160 every six months to keep them frozen. A scientist obviously has to prepare the embryos, but $3000 for a 15-minute procedure? That really gets me." Continue reading

Sources

• The Sydney Morning Herald
• Image: The Guardian

The government said it would draft regulations to allow human embryos to be created in this way to avoid mitochondrial diseases.

But the director of Human Genetics Alert, called the method "unnecessary and unsafe" and said it would lead to "a eugenic designer baby market".

Continue reading

The committee is the first of a two stage approach to talking with stakeholders about the issues. In this first stage they have presented arguments about six key issues where there is potential for a significant clash between New Zealand requirements and those elsewhere:

• altruistic donation v. commercial supply
• right to access identifying information about donors v. no right to access identifying information about donors
• family size requirements
• use of sex selection
• scope of informed consent
• use of gametes and embryos overseas in procedures or research prohibited or precluded in New Zealand.

Among the submissions are the minutes of a meeting held between Dr John Angus, the Chair of Acart, and John Kleinsman, the director of the Nathaniel Centre, the New Zealand Catholic Bioethics Centre.

ACART has been established under the Human Assisted Reproductive Technology (HART) Act 2004. As an independent advisory committee, ACART sits between the government and the people of New Zealand and formulates advice and guidelines for the regulation of assisted human reproduction. ACART is required to undertake extensive public consultation before issuing advice or finalising guidelines.

Source

• Acart
• Image: Blog.babycentre.com

The study showed that babies which grow from thawed embryos are less likely to be born preterm or underweight and have a lower risk of dying in the days after their birth.

Thawed embryos also reduced the risk of bleeding for the mother during pregnancy.

Existing research has also shown there is no difference in pregnancy rate whether fresh or frozen embryos are used, but experts from Aberdeen University reviewed 11 previous studies which followed more than 37,000 pregnancies from implantation of either fresh or thawed embryos to birth, and have concluded differently.

The Aberdeen University experts showed that when frozen embryos were used, there was a

• 30 per cent lower risk of bleeding during pregnancy,
• 30 to 40 per cent less chance of the baby being born underweight,
• 20 per smaller risk of it being born preterm and
• 20 per cent less likelihood of it dying shortly after birth.

Researchers put the increased reliability of frozen embryos down to the delay between removing the eggs from the mother and implanting it back in the mother after fertilisation.

The fact that only the healthiest embryos survive the freezing and thawing process could also increase the likelihood of the pregnancy going according to plan, it was claimed.

The study by Dr Abha Maheshwari of Aberdeen University was published in the Fertility Sterility journal and was presented at the British Science Festival in Aberdeen on Wednesday.

Source

• The Telegraph
• Cambridge News
• Image: The Health Age

The letter says parents shirk their responsibility if they agree to the freezing of their children, and the future of embryos in the frozen orphanages is "very bleak".

The freezing or disposal of surplus embryos shows that IVF methods, "which at first glance seem to be at the service of life, are in fact actually a threat to human life", the bishops say.

Continue reading

As the initial controversy over man's scientific manipulation of nature has faded, about 350,000 babies conceived in petri dishes are now born every year, said the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology (ESHRE).

That represents about 0.3 percent of the 130-million-odd babies added to the world population annually.

Continue reading

The teacher, Emily Herx, filed the suit because she was discriminated against after the school's priest found out she had begun the IVF treatements.

IVF treatments are against Catholic Church teaching.

According to CNN, the school's priest called Herx a "grave, immoral sinner". He told her she should have kept quiet about such things because "some things are better left between the individual and God," she said.

"I don't think I was doing anything wrong."

"I have never had any complaints about me as a teacher," Herx said.

Responding, the diocese said it "views the core issue raised in this lawsuit as a challenge to the diocese's right, as a religious employer, to make religious based decisions consistent with its religious standards on an impartial basis."

In its statement, Fort Wayne-South Bend Indiana diocesan officials said that "the church promotes treatment of infertility through means that respect the right to life, the unity of marriage, and procreation brought about as the fruit of the conjugal act. There are other infertility treatments, such as in vitro fertilization, which are not morally licit according to Catholic teaching."

The statement adds that teachers working in the diocese are required to "have a knowledge and respect for the Catholic faith, and abide by the tenets of the Catholic Church."

Herx said she underwent her first in vitro fertilization treatment in March 2010, and immediately told her supervisor, the school's principal.

"The first time she was made aware that my husband and I had to go through fertility treatments, she said, 'You are in my prayers,' " Herx said.

"To me, that was support."

Source

• CNN
• Image: CNN

Sensational news reports surrounding the $180,000 price tag for Ukrainian black-market babies shocked the determinedly secular segments of society, and few remain unmoved by the story of the FBI's round-up of "baby-brokers." Beyond the initial horror of children clinically conceived and sold as a commodity, investigators discovered that these babies have dozens of full and half siblings that were sold elsewhere. This opens the possibility that, in 25 years, a young man might unknowingly marry his sister.

Added to the fate of the children is the dismal lot of the destitute women (often living in third-world countries) who offer their bodies as surrogate wombs. In India, 500 clinics service the nation's "fertility tourism," estimated to be a $450-million-per-year industry — and growing. Ads for medical tourism in Thailand boast, "We've got the affordable IVF procedures you heard about, great IVF vacations, and low-cost IVF gender selection."

As fertility technologies increase, so do the ethical quandaries. Scanning the comments on these news articles, one is immediately struck by the revulsion many people have to these accounts of black-market infants. On the other hand, the dozens of websites soliciting surrogate mothers indicate that surrogacy is — for many of these same people — just another legitimate business arrangement.

The subject is complicated, even polarizing, because many couples (including Catholics) conceived their own children via IVF. For these parents, IVF is applauded as a means of family-building, not abuse of babies. The temptation of couples who have difficulty conceiving deserves our compassion and prayers. The echo of Hannah is heard down the centuries: "And she was in bitterness of soul, and prayed to the Lord and wept in anguish" (1 Sam 1:10-11).

Yet the lurid news accounts of black-market babies provide an opening to share the wisdom of the Church's prohibition against IVF and teaching on the inviolate sacredness of human life. The challenge for Catholics is to effectively engage the secular argument, which is best achieved from the perspective of the common good for all of society without recourse to religious references. Wisdom need not be presented as religious or scriptural teaching, but rather as the practical consequence that proceeds from violating a basic ethic: Humans cannot be owned.

Read More: Crisis Magazine

Image: Crisis Magazine

New Zealand-born Shamus Husheer, founder of the company Cambridge Temperature Concepts, told the Wall Street Journal that six months' use of his DuoFertility monitor has the same success rate as a round of IVF, according to a peer-reviewed study his company has published.

"From a woman's perspective, IVF is pretty awful. With us, all they have to do is wear a patch," Husheer said.

The monitor system uses a small temperature sensor which a woman tapes under her arm and wears all night and preferably during the day.

The monitor is synchronized with a base station connected to a PC to record a woman's body basal temperature, which is lower before ovulation than after.

A small increase in temperature of about 0.78 degrees Fahrenheit takes place within 48 hours of ovulation and will remain elevated until a woman's next period.

Recording the body basal temperature has historically been difficult and depends on taking temperature with regularity upon waking each morning.

The monitor uses the data to identify the day of a woman's ovulation and to suggest the ideal three-day window to try to conceive. A woman can also use the base station to report other events such as the beginning of her menstrual cycle, interrupted sleep, or illness.

The DuoFertility website characterizes the product as a "personal fertility coach" and as an alternative to lengthy waits to see fertility experts.

The device has been licensed by the British National Health Service and is undergoing approval by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The NHS is considering using the system for its patients with unexplained fertility, who number 4,000 per year.

In the U.K. an IVF cycle costs $7,200, while the DuoFertility system costs about $800.

IVF has also faced ethical objections. The procedure often creates "leftover" human embryos whose lives are at risk. Catholic ethicists also object to IVF's separation of procreation from marital sex.

Sources

• EWTN
• Duo Fertility