The authors are in favour of a radical change to what they describe as "the outdated structure of the gender division currently used in elite sport".

Associate Professor Anderson and Dr Taryn Knox from the Dunedin Bioethics Centre, together with Otago physiologist Professor Alison Heather, investigate the ethics and science to do with the International Olympic Committee's (IOC) decision in research published in the latest issue of the Journal of Medical Ethics.

The recent IOC guidelines allow trans-women to compete in the women's division if (amongst other things) their testosterone is held below 10nmol/L.

Heather says this is significantly higher than that of cis-women.

"Science demonstrates that high adult levels of testosterone, as well as permanent testosterone effects on male physiology during in utero and early development, provides a performance advantage in sport and that much of this male physiology is not mitigated by the transition to a transwoman," she says.

However, not all researchers have interpreted the existing studies in the same way, or agree that trans women have unfair advantages.

Human Rights researcher Jack Byrne said studies about testosterone were red herrings because the majority of trans women reduced their testosterone to very low levels.

The Otago team propose possible solutions. Some options value inclusion more than fairness and vice versa.

They include:

• Excluding trans-women from competing in the women's division
• Creating a third division for transwomen and intersex women
• Calculating a handicap for transwomen based on their testosterone levels - similar to that used in golf

Their preferred option is an extension of this with a proposed algorithm that could account for a range of parameters.

Source

• eurekalert.org
• rnz.co.nz
• Image: Mark Schiefelbein/AP

Using the freephone number the service has been set up by Wairarapa abortion doctor Simon Snook because of the delays, said to be potentially harmful, faced by many New Zealand women seeking to end a pregnancy.

The standard process for a woman seeking an abortion involves a GP or family planning doctor referring them to an abortion clinic.

The woman is then assessed by two consultants who have to agree to proceed with the abortion.

Snook says if the free phone is used the average delay is around just under 28 days.

He says the service was not bypassing the proper process and there was no intent to rush a person into having an abortion.

In January 2014 Pope Francis criticised abortion as evidence of a "throwaway culture" that wastes people as well as food.

In his speech on world crises, Francis cited abortion and said: "Unfortunately what is thrown away is not only food and dispensable objects but often human beings themselves, who are discarded as unnecessary."

Last November Pope Francis told told a group of Catholic doctors that "playing with life" in ways like abortion and euthanasia is sinful, and he stressed that each human life, no matter the condition, is sacred.

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

Pope Francis offered his words in an address given to members of the Italian Catholic Doctors Association in celebration of their 70th anniversary.

He 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.

After explaining to the inquirer that the Church is not against abortion because it is simply a religious or philosophical issue, he said it's also because abortion "is a scientific problem, because there is a human life and it's not lawful to take a human life to solve a problem."

Regardless of the many objections he has heard saying that modern thought has evolved on the issue, the Pope stressed that "in ancient thought and in modern thought, the word ‘kill' means the same!"

The belief that abortion is helpful for women, that euthanasia is "an act of dignity," or that it's "a scientific breakthrough to ‘produce' a child (who is) considered a right instead of accepted as a gift" are all part of conventional wisdom that offers a false sense of compassion, he said.

Source

• radionz.co.nz
• nzherald.co.nz
• catholicnewsagency.com
• Image: Screenshot globalnews.ca

Recalling that Thursday was the 45th anniversary of Pope Paul VI's encyclical Humanae Vitae makes me cringe. In fact, I am pained whenever the 1968 papal decree comes up for discussion. I feel like a person who has witnessed a tragic event and made an intense effort to turn over a key piece of evidence — the "smoking gun" — that would make the truth known only to see lawyers either misplace the evidence or fail to use it effectively. I contend the evidence I am talking about would have been climactic — making it virtually impossible for Pope Paul to ignore changing the church's current birth control policy, or conversely, if used today, make it relatively easy for Pope Francis to correct the church's second "Galileo affair."

For readers not around 45 years ago when Pope Paul promulgated the decree that renewed the Catholic church's ban on all artificial forms of birth control, it may be helpful to offer a brief review of that history. Pope Pius XI first imposed the ban in 1930, six months after the Anglican Lambeth Conference allowed its church's married couples to decide the issue by themselves. In October 1964, several Catholic bishops raised the issue of birth control during a discussion of marriage and the family at the Second Vatican Council. Cardinal Leon-Joseph Suenens of Malines-Brussels pleaded with his brother bishops to study the issue and "avoid another Galileo affair. One [failure of the church to keep abreast of scientific advances] is enough." Continue reading

Sources

• Frank Maurovich in National Catholic Reporter
• Image: Patheos

Frank Maurovich, founding editor of The Catholic Voice, left priestly ministry in 1977.

"Increasingly the institution of marriage is being replaced by simply living together, which has followed upon the sundering of the link between sex and fertility. This is not just a revolution in the area of moral norms; it reaches much deeper, into the very definition of man. If the drive which is innate in man as a physiological being conflicts with the optimum condition that we call a human way of life (sufficient food, good living conditions, women's rights), and therefore has to be cheated with the help of science, then the rest of our firmly held convictions about what is natural behaviour and what is unnatural fall by the wayside."

Milosz - who is buried in the basilica at Skalka in Krakow, traditionally held to be the site of the martyrdom of St. Stanislaus - had a complicated relationship with the Catholic Church. He was not a man who automatically accepted ecclesiastical dicta on the basis of religious authority. Thus his insight into the cultural consequences of cheap, effective and readily available contraception is all the more striking, in that it runs in close parallel to what Paul VI wrote in Humanae Vitae: an encyclical that was not so much rejected (pace the utterly predictable 45th-anniversary commentary) as it was unread, untaught, ill-considered - and thus unappreciated. Continue reading

Sources

• George Weigel in ABC Religion & Ethics
• Image: Letters to the Editor, etc

George Weigel is Distinguished Senior Fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, where he holds the William E. Simon Chair in Catholic Studies.

A release from the church said the Ministry of Health was partnering with them to combat the increasing numbers of teenage pregnancies and related issues.

The event is aimed at both Catholic and non-Catholic youth all over Fiji and the church will be sponsoring youth to attend the seminars.

As part of the seminars, two priests, Father Walter Schu and Father John Paul, will speak on themes aimed at different clusters such as legal and medical practitioners, clergy, parents, teachers and those in everyday life.

Source

• Fiji Times
• Columban Lay Missionaries