Sunday, April 28, 2013

Mad Abortion Laws Just Plain Wrong

Melbourne doctor's abortion stance may be punished

by:Peter Rolfe
From:Herald Sun
April 28, 20139:00PM

Dr Mark Hobart fears he may face tough sanctions after reporting an abortion specialist for providing an abortion to a couple who wanted a boy instead of a girl. Picture: Jon Hargest Source: Herald Sun

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A MELBOURNE doctor who refused to refer a couple for an abortion because they wanted only a boy has admitted he could face tough sanctions.

Dr Mark Hobart fears he could be punished for refusing to give the Melbourne couple a referral after discovering they were seeking an abortion because they didn't want to have a girl.
Obstetricians have proposed parents be banned from knowing the sex of unborn babies until it is too late to terminate, to prevent gender-based abortions.
By refusing to provide a referral for a patient on moral grounds or refer the matter to another doctor, Dr Hobart admits he has broken the law and could face suspension, conditions on his ability to practice or even be deregistered.
But he was willing to risk punishment in pursuit of principles. He said he did not believe any doctor in Victoria would have helped a couple have an abortion just because they wanted a boy.
"I've got a conscientious objection to abortion, I've refused to refer in this case a woman for abortion and it appears that I have broken the rules," he said.
"But just because it's the law doesn't mean it's right."
The Sunday Herald Sun yesterday revealed the couple had asked Dr Hobart to refer them to an abortion clinic after discovering at 19 weeks they were having a girl when they wanted a boy.
Victoria's Abortion Law Reform Act 2008 specifies the obligations of registered health practitioners who have a "conscientious objection" to abortion.
Under the Act, if a woman requests a doctor to advise on a proposed abortion and the practitioner has a conscientious objection, he or she must refer the woman to a practitioner who does not conscientiously object.
"That is the letter of the law," he said. "It leaves me in limbo.
"It's never been tested ... it is a very complicated area."
Medical Practitioners Board spokeswoman Nicole Newton said doctors were bound by the law and a professional code of conduct.
"The board expects practitioners to practise lawfully and to provide safe care and to meet the standards set out in the board's code of conduct," she said.
Another doctor who was brought before the Medical Board in January for airing his views against abortion was cautioned and warned he could be deregistered if it happened again.
peter.rolfe@news.com.au

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Taken from: http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/lifestyle/melbourne-doctors-abortion-stance-may-be-punished/story-e6frf00i-1226631128438

Thursday, April 4, 2013

Pope Francis and the Turin Shroud

Making sense of a mystery

ON THE eve of his first Easter Sunday celebration as bishop of Rome, Pope Francis sprang another of his teasing little surprises. As the Shroud of Turin, which is probably the Christian world's most hotly contested holy relic, was given a rare showing on television, he issued a statement that urged people, in rather passionate terms, to contemplate the object with awe; but he also stopped firmly short of asserting its authenticity.
In a carefully worded message, he asked and answered a rhetorical question: "How is it that the faithful, like you, pause before this icon of a man scourged and crucified? It is because the Man of the Shroud invites us to contemplate Jesus of Nazareth." An icon, in Christian terminology, is very different from an idol. In theology as in computer-speak, an icon is a sort of window that can lead the user into a different reality. But people can miss the point of an icon, so the theory goes, if they focus too much on the object itself (its age, its construction, its history) and forget to gaze beyond it.
The pope was signalling his refusal to enter a debate that may revive soon about the provenance of the Shroud, a four-metre long piece of linen which bears the imprint of a slim bearded man who has been scourged and tortured, with blood flowing from his head. For most of the past five centuries it has been kept in Turin and reverenced as the burial cloth which enveloped the body of Jesus before his resurrection. But for many people, the history of the Shroud appeared to be settled in 1988 when laboratories in Zurich, Oxford and Tucson, Arizona did a simultaneous carbon-dating test on a strip of the linen which had been cut into three. All agreed that it was no older than the mid-13th century. In other words, it was a medieval fake.
But there have always been those who on one ground or other reject that finding. Giulio Fanti, a professor of mechanical and thermal measurement at the University of Padua, has said he will soon publish research based on infra-red light and spectroscopy, showing that the cloth could have been made in the era of Jesus, give or take a few centuries. Rodney Hoare, a physicist who chaired the British Society for the Turin Shroud, thought the 1988 experiment was flawed in several ways: more than one part of the Shroud should have been analysed, observers should have been present throughout the sample-taking and a broader range of dating methods used. (Full disclosure: I was once taught physics by Rodney Hoare and he thought my experiments were pretty bad too.)
Inevitably, all investigators of the mysterious cloth, even if they are well-qualified scientists, bring personal sensibilities to bear. After years of studying the Shroud, Hoare, who was a liberal Anglican, concluded that the man wrapped in it could not have died; within a short time of death, the liquids oozing from the traumatised body would have obscured the markings that are now visible. This thought prompted him to posit a revised version of the Resurrection story. Gleb Kaleda, a Soviet scientist who was also a secret Orthodox priest, argued that only one thing could have skewed the carbon-dating readings completely: a matter-changing flash comparable to a thermonuclear explosion. But there is of course no peer-reviewed literature on the thermonuclear implications of a miraculous resurrection.
Hence, perhaps, the cautious but far from anodyne words of the new pontiff, who draws some unexpected conclusions from the Shroud, almost implying that it does not make any difference whose visage appears on the cloth. "This disfigured face resembles all those faces of men and women marred by a life which does not respect their dignity, by war and violence which afflict the weakest… And yet, at the same time, the face in the Shroud conveys a great peace; this tortured body expresses a sovereign majesty."

(Photo credit: Wikimedia commons)

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Taken from: http://www.economist.com/blogs/erasmus/2013/03/pope-francis-and-turin-shroud

"God's plan inscribed in nature"

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(Vatican Radio) Since the beginning of his Pontificate, Pope Francis has spoken of the importance of protecting creation. At his Installation Mass on Tuesday the Holy Father said, "let us be “protectors” of creation, protectors of God’s plan inscribed in nature, protectors of one another and of the environment."
Speaking about Pope Francis’ message, FAO Assistant Director-General of Forests, Eduardo Rojas-Briales says, “His predecessor Benedict XVI had already started a very important environmental discourse.”
Pope Francis, he continued, has “strengthened this linkage between the religious message as well as the need to keep creation and to keep nature in a good state.”

Listen to Lydia O’Kane’s interview with Eduardo Rojas-Briales

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