Life Links 12/22/10

Bishop Olmstead has declared St. Joseph's Hospital in Phoenix to be no longer Catholic. Here's Bishop Olmstead's statement in which he notes that the hospital had been failing to follow Catholic teaching for some time. The web site of the Arizona Catholic also has a variety of information on this situation.


On December 28, MTV will air a special program on abortion which will follow one of the moms from "16 and Pregnant" who will decide if she wants to abort her second pregnancy.


A Maryland man has been sentenced to life in prison for attempting to kill his pregnant girlfriend after she wouldn't get an abortion.

"I got my early Christmas present," Jodi Torok said after seeing her former boyfriend, Charles Brandon Martin, sentenced to life in prison by an Anne Arundel County judge.

"I believe you were willing to snuff both of them out because they were an inconvenience to you," Judge Pamela L. North told Martin, in a reference to Torok and her unborn child, before sentencing him.

A health worker in England could be fired after she gave a pamphlet on abortion's physical and psychological effects to co-workers.

Margaret Forester passed the booklet to family planning staff at the health centre where she works because she felt that the NHS was not offering patients enough information about the risks associated with terminating a pregnancy.

But Ms Forester, 39, said she was suspended from her job as a psychological wellbeing practitioner based in Westminster because managers at Central North West London Mental Health Trust disagreed with her personal beliefs.

She will appear in front of an internal disciplinary committee on Wednesday, charged with “distributing materials some people may find offensive”. Her supporters fear that she could lose her job.