{"id":3528,"date":"2007-01-11T08:55:08","date_gmt":"2007-01-11T08:55:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2007\/01\/down-under.html"},"modified":"2007-01-11T08:55:08","modified_gmt":"2007-01-11T08:55:08","slug":"down-under","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/01\/down-under.html","title":{"rendered":"Down Under"},"content":{"rendered":"

There has been quite a bit of activity and comment in Australia over the past few months on issues of bioethics and the Church.  A couple of recent notes:<\/p>\n

The Australian government has set up a pregnancy-counseling hotline and Catholic groups are involved – <\/a>raising the ire of abortion rights advocates and questions about Church groups giving information about, if not referring for, abortion. <\/p>\n

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Centacare has defended its role in the Government’s new pregnancy counselling service, saying the agency would be involved in developing a manual for counsellors and is "well suited" to the task.<\/p>\n

The Catholic Weekly<\/em> reports that Centacare Catholic Community Services, the official welfare arm of the Church in the Archdiocese of Sydney, was defending its role in a $15.5 million national telephone pregnancy counselling helpline after coming under attack by pro-choice organisations.<\/p>\n

The critics claimed that the Church’s staunch opposition to abortion cast doubt on its ability to give women unbiased advice on pregnancy.<\/p>\n

The chief executive officer of Centacare, Bernard Boerma, told the Weekly<\/em> that although the Church’s stance on abortion is known, the Church also recognises the "value of a decision-making counselling model which is non-directive and independent".<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

In addition, there are controversies relataed to the morning-after pill and IVF clinics:<\/a><\/p>\n

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Meanwhile, the Australian<\/em> reports that doctors and rape counsellors are concerned that Catholic-owned hospitals will not supply morning-after pills to women referred by rape crisis centres.<\/p>\n

The report in today’s Australian<\/em> cites the Code of Ethical Standards, compiled by Catholic Health Australia, which says direct referral of raped women to centres that offer the morning-after pill "should only occur if reasonable steps have been taken to exclude the likelihood of pregnancy".<\/p>\n

Catholic health ethics spokesman Bishop Anthony Fisher was quoted as saying the ban was a logical extension of the church’s position on use of the morning-after pill. <\/p>\n

But Karen Willis, of the NSW Rape Crisis Centre, told the paper that it was standard practice for a raped woman to be offered the morning-after pill, if there was a real risk of her becoming pregnant with her attacker’s child. <\/p>\n

"To not offer someone the morning-after pill would be negligence as far as we are concerned," she said.<\/p>\n

Following a recent report that the Canberra John James Hospital was withdrawing services to the Canberra Fertility Centre, which provides IVF services, the paper adds that the Queensland Fertility Group which also offers IVF has been told that it will need to find new premises following the takeover of the Townsville Wesley Hospital by the Catholic Mater Misericordiae Hospital.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There has been quite a bit of activity and comment in Australia over the past few months on issues of bioethics and the Church.  A couple of recent notes: The Australian government has set up a pregnancy-counseling hotline and Catholic groups are involved – raising the ire of abortion rights advocates and questions about Church…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3528","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nDown Under - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/01\/down-under.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Down Under - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"There has been quite a bit of activity and comment in Australia over the past few months on issues of bioethics and the Church.  A couple of recent notes: The Australian government has set up a pregnancy-counseling hotline and Catholic groups are involved – raising the ire of abortion rights advocates and questions about Church…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/01\/down-under.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2007-01-11T08:55:08+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"awelborn\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Down Under - Via Media","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/01\/down-under.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Down Under - Via Media","og_description":"There has been quite a bit of activity and comment in Australia over the past few months on issues of bioethics and the Church.  A couple of recent notes: The Australian government has set up a pregnancy-counseling hotline and Catholic groups are involved – raising the ire of abortion rights advocates and questions about Church…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/01\/down-under.html","og_site_name":"Via Media","article_published_time":"2007-01-11T08:55:08+00:00","author":"awelborn","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/01\/down-under.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/01\/down-under.html","name":"Down Under - Via Media","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website"},"datePublished":"2007-01-11T08:55:08+00:00","dateModified":"2007-01-11T08:55:08+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/01\/down-under.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/01\/down-under.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/01\/down-under.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Down Under"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/","name":"Via Media","description":"Amy Welborn","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a","name":"awelborn","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","caption":"awelborn"},"description":"Amy Welborn was born in 1960, the only child of a now-retired professor of political science, a teacher-librarian-artist mother,deceased since 2001, was a teacher, librarian and artist. The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3528","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3528"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3528\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3528"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3528"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3528"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}