Baby born healthy after hospital advised abortion

17/02 ABC News | The ABC has learned that Canberra Hospital recommended a late-term abortion for a baby who was later born healthy.

The incident has come to light after nine obstetricians left the hospital during the past 13 months amid claims of bullying by senior staff and a hostile working environment. There are now fears that Canberra's biggest hospital will not be able to staff its new maternity unit because some experienced obstetricians are not prepared to work there.

Fiona Vanderhook came close to never knowing her 14-month-old son Diesel.

When she was five weeks pregnant, a trainee doctor told Ms Vanderhook she had lost the baby. The doctor recommended termination using the drug misoprostol, but the drug did not work and a follow-up scan showed the foetus was still alive.

The dead are not the only casualties of euthanasia

19/02 Andrew Bolt, Herald Sun Columnist | FOR 15 years, the growing pile of the dead at Dr Philip Nitschke's feet should have warned us of a great moral crime.

Yet Australia's leading euthanasia activist has been free to strike again.

The Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine this week found 51 Australians had died in the past decade from overdoses of Nembutal, promoted by Nitschke as the "peaceful pill".

Launch of the 'Pornography Harms' website

The 'Pornography Harms' website provides a wealth of information about the damage that pornography does - to men, women and children.

As pornography has spread, especially with the internet making it so accessible, many people have become immune to the damage that pornography causes to individuals and marriages.

Call to charge Nitschke for 'aiding' suicide

18/2 Julia Medew, The Age | EUTHANASIA advocate Philip Nitschke should be charged for assisting suicide over deaths caused by the drug he promotes as the ''peaceful pill'', a prominent ethicist says.

... recent revelations that 14 Australians aged in their 20s and 30s had died from an overdose of Nembutal was ''disturbing'' and should prompt legal action.

He said Dr Nitschke should be prosecuted for aiding or abetting suicides caused by the drug and that if police found the current laws unsuitable for such a charge, an offence of inciting suicide should be created to tackle the issue.

''I hope that sooner or later someone successfully prosecutes him because he is putting young peoples' lives at risk,'' Professor Tonti-Filippini said. ''In the past, he [Dr Nitschke] has expressed the view that adolescents should have the right to end their own lives. That is a huge concern.''

Do we really need R18+ computer games?

16/02 Barbra Biggins, Online Opinion | The Interactive Games and Entertainment Association has for some time been trumpeting the statistic that “91 per cent of adults think there should be an R18 + classification for games”. “So”, you might ask, “why haven’t we got one?”

There are good reasons why not, but these have had little exposure.

First, a little background. Sixteen years ago, the Federal, State and Territory Ministers responsible for classification matters, introduced a system of classification for computer games: that system classified games with content from G (general), up to and including MA15+ (strong impact and not legally available to those under 15 years).

At present, games with content more extreme than MA15+ level are “Refused Classification”. This cautious stance was adopted by ministers in 1994 as they believed that the interactive nature of games would have an impact on the player: that “doing” the violence and being rewarded for it would be more harmful than just “watching” it (as with films). This caution has been supported by a growing body of research evidence (more of this later).

However, gamers and the industry have over the past five years mounted a campaign to allow R18+ content. In response, the ministers responsible for classification have called for public comment by February 28, 2010.

Terrorists smile as they're jailed

16/02 The Australian | THEIR smiles said it all. Moments after judge Anthony Whealy ordered the five Sydney terrorists to serve jail sentences ranging from 23 to 28 years, the men looked calmly around the courtroom and smirked.

If nothing else, their reaction seemed to confirm the judge's assessment that not one of the five had any remorse for plotting violent jihad on Australian soil.

In fact, the judge said, the men seemed to "wear their imprisonment like some kind of badge of honour", seeing it as "a test of their faith and a burden willingly borne as a duty arising from their fundamentalist religious conviction".

Having presided over the 11-month trial -- one of the longest and most expensive in Australia's history -- Justice Whealy yesterday took four hours to deliver his sentencing remarks in the NSW Supreme Court in Sydney.

He said the group's actions "fell only marginally short" of the most serious case of criminality

Read Also: Terrorism threats still present: police - Nine News - "... Australia's greatest terrorism threat was along the east coast, Mr Dein said."We are working on a 24/7 basis for the purpose of investigating all of the information we receive in relation to the potential threat," he said.

Young People gain access to Euthenasia Drug

15/02 SMH.com.au | Australians in their 20s and 30s are killing themselves with the drug that euthanasia advocate, Dr Philip Nitschke, has promoted as the ''peaceful pill''.

The Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine has found that 51 people in Australia have died from an overdose of Nembutal in the past 10 years.

While the lethal barbiturate is only available for veterinarians to euthanise animals in Australia, Dr Nitschke has been helping people obtain it from Mexican vets and other overseas sources since the late 1990s.

The institute said in a report the figure did not represent all deaths caused by the drug, but rather those it could search for on its national database, which has limitations.

But the report provides the first insight into who is using the drug and where they got it from.

Sex, sleaze and a traumatised boy sacrificed for ratings

Elizabeth Lopez, The Age | At age 15, you can't vote, you can't die for your country, and you can't even take a legal drink. But it seems you're fair game if your parents lost their lives in the most pored over local sex scandal of the decade.

If you don't like it, well, turn off the telly.

Nine Network's telemovie about Maria Korp, the woman strangled by her husband's mistress and left for dead in the boot of the family car, raises questions about how a child caught up in his parents' complications can be offered up so easily at the altar of Nine's quest for ratings.

The 15-year-old — not named here, in line with the family's wishes — can take comfort from the fact that his tragedy will be — in the words of Nine's head of drama, Jo Horsburgh — the network's highlight of 2010.

In 2006, when this child's image was splashed all over the media, former Family Court chief justice Alastair Nicholson wrote: ''The privacy of the Korps' son was seriously abused by the media. In other situations, a child would be protected by the law.''

Had the Korp parents taken their marital problems to the Family Court, their son might have been spared a lot of this. Sadly, he faces another publicity onslaught. We have learnt nothing.

SOUTH AUSTRALIAN PARLIAMENT PASSES FAMILY-FRIENDLY CLASSIFICATION BILL

Australian Prayer Network | Family-friendly trips to the video store are now an imminent reality in South Australia, after both houses of parliament in that state recently passed a Family First classification bill. The Classification Amendment Bill 2009, which will take effect in coming months, will require video stores to keep R18+ videos in a separate section from other videos. The bill will also prohibit the showing of trailers or other promotional material with a rating of R18+ or greater within video stores. Proponents of the legislation say it is a simple way to protect children from harmful 'adult' content.

Suicide Costs Community $17.5 billion

Lifeline | A conservative estimate puts the economic cost of suicide at $17.5 billion a year. That equates to around $795 per person annually, yet current spending on the National Suicide Prevention Strategy is just 91c per head.

That's according to a collaboration of suicide prevention experts, who have prepared a joint submission into the Senate Inquiry into Suicide in Australia. This figure doesn't take into account the social, or human, cost of suicide, where grief and trauma can have long term and devastating affects on individuals and the communities touched by suicide.

The joint submission was prepared by ConNetica Consulting on behalf of Suicide Prevention Australia, the Inspire Foundation, the OZ Help Foundation, the Mental Health Council of Australia, Lifeline Australia, The Salvation Army and, the Brain and Mind Research Institute, and supported by 59 organisations and individuals.

The submission is calling on all levels of government and the community to undertake significant action to help prevent what is a leading, mostly preventable, cause of death with as many as seven Australians dying by suicide each day and almost 180 attempts daily.

Bad parents to lose kids for 18 years under new Government plan

Perth Now | BAD parents will have their children taken from them for up to 18 years under a controversial Barnett Government plan.

 Abusive, drug-addicted and dysfunctional parents will get two years to prove to authorities they have beaten their problems before children are handed to guardians.

Child Protection Minister Robyn McSweeney told The Sunday Times a detailed submission would go before Cabinet in the coming weeks, and, if adopted, legislation would be introduced into parliament this year.

Under the radical plan, which stems from an election commitment, courts will be given powers to issue special guardianship orders giving recipients the legal right to care for someone else's child until the child turns 18.

Unlike foster parents, who are under the control of the Department for Child Protection and are checked on every few months, guardians won't have the same constraints when bringing up children under their care.

The Canberra Times | More children are being reported abused or neglected and taken into care, a government report says.

The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare found more than 34,000 children were taken from their parents and placed in out-of-home care in 2008-09, an increase of 9 per cent on the year before.

A disproportionate number of the children were indigenous - an Aboriginal child is 7.5 times more likely to be abused and more than nine times more likely to be placed in care, the Child Protection Australia 2008-09 report said.

Its release comes a day after a coroner declared the death of a 12 year-old-girl under protection in the Northern Territory as ''appalling'' and ''needless''. The report's author, Kate Valentine, said there was no data to measure the impact of the Northern Territory intervention. Reports of suspected abuse have climbed each year since 2004-05, with some children alerted to child protection agencies more than once.

Top cop Simon Overland stars in gay day of pride

Herald Sun | POLICE Chief Commissioner Simon Overland received a rousing reception at yesterday's gay pride march.  Hundreds of supporters cheered and wolf whistled as Mr Overland, joined by members of Victoria Police, marched down Fitzroy St, St Kilda.

 "Never in my life have I experienced the sort of reception and the sort of welcome that we got walking down the street to Catani Gardens today, it was just unbelievable," Mr Overland said. "If I had any hair on the back of my head it would have been standing up."

Mr Overland follows his predecessor Christine Nixon who twice joined the annual march.

Training tomorrow's leaders

There is a great need in this nation to assist those students and recent graduates who demonstrate a high potential to become influential leaders for Christ across strategic areas of our nation including politics, law, media, science, education, arts and philosophy.
The Compass program, an eight-day course in Christian worldview, aims to address this need.

The inaugural program kicks off this Sunday with 40 students at the University of Queensland. For more information and to register interest for 2009, please go to www.compass.org.au .

Lyle Shelton
National Chief of Staff , Australian Christian Lobby