A Canadian non-profit has become a major player in the drive to help women “self-administer abortion at home” through the distribution of abortion pills by mail, all below the radar of Health Canada. 

With the framework of a national pharmacare program launched by the Liberal-NDP coalition, some are finding its initial focus on contraceptives a “deeply troubling” aspect of the deal.

SYDNEY – The widespread use of contraception has led to increased violence and aggression against women, the theologian of the papal household said during a mid-July visit to Sydney.

Next month will mark the 50th anniversary of Humanae Vitae, the 1968 encyclical of Blessed Paul VI which  reaffirmed the immorality of contraception at a time when many in the Church and the world expected a change.

OTTAWA – Humanae Vitae’s predictions of contraception’s effects proved far worse than Pope Paul VI’s prophetic vision, said speakers at an event marking the document’s 50th anniversary.

The Little Sisters of the Poor — nuns who have refused to comply with the Affordable Care Act contraception mandate — lost their latest court case July 14.

NEW ORLEANS - While the annual number of abortions in the U.S. has dropped from a high of 1.6 million in 1990 to about 1.06 million today, the number of chemical abortions through the use of RU-486 has increased and now represents about 25 per cent of all abortions.

BAYAMO, Cuba - In 2004, with the divorce rate looming around 70 percent in Cuba, the Catholic Church called for a "year of the family."

Already battle scarred in conflict with the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario over the college’s insistence that doctors must actively help patients access abortion, morning-after pills, chemical contraception, hysterectomies and vasectomies, Dr. Agnes Tanguay is not backing away from a fight for her right to practise medicine according to her conscience.

WASHINGTON - Catholic Relief Services, the U.S. bishops' overseas relief and development agency, called assertions that it had supplied birth control in Kenya "misleading, exaggerated and untrue."

The Birth of the Pill: How Four Crusaders Reinvented Sex and Launched a Revolution by Jonathan Eig (W. W. Norton & Company, 409 pages, $32.95 in print, $16.05 on Kindle).

OTTAWA - Canadian doctors who refuse to prescribe birth control pills have become the focus of a debate over physicians' rights to freedom of conscience and religion when practising medicine.