UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown is facing an unprecedented challenge to his authority over plans for embryo research.

As many as 12 ministers could quit if ordered to back a Bill allowing the creation of part-human, part-animal embryos for medical research.

The Prime Minister is determined to pass the legislation - which will also abolish the need for IVF clinics to consider a child's need for a father and allow the creation of "saviour siblings" to cure sick brothers and sisters.

The Royal College of Psychiatrists says that women who have an abortion put themselves at risk of having a mental breakdown. The College believes that women should not be referred for a termination until they are counselled on the risks to their mental health.

UK psychiatrists are concerned by a number of recent studies that suggest that the potential mental health problems associated with having an abortion could be larger than those related to having an unwanted baby.

Mr Barack Obama, a potential Democrat candidate for the US presidency, said in a debate yesterday that he regretted voting for a law which attempted to save the life of the patient in a controversial euthanasia case.

Mr Silvio Berlusconi, a former Italian prime minister now running for re-election, has said he would approve of a ‘moratorium’ on abortion. “I think that recognising the right to life from conception to natural death is a principle that the UN could make its own, just as it did with the moratorium on the death penalty,” he said in an interview.

Mr Giuliano Ferrara, who first raised the issue following the UN’s adoption of a resolution against the death penalty in December, has recently announced his own candidacy for the Italian parliament. In 2004, 136,715 women had abortions, compared with 234,801 in 1982. Italy has about 58 million people.

In January 2007, NSW Right to Life successfully challenged before the Classification Review Board a how-to-do-it book for would-be suicides.

Euthanasia campaigners, Dr Philip Nitschke and Dr Fiona Stewart, published "The Peaceful Pill Handbook" in the United States. The Handbook provides detailed information as to how to commit suicide.

One of the most riveting and energetic speakers at the March for Life Tuesday was Rabbi Yehuda Levin. No stranger to pro-life Americans, Rabbi Levin has represented more than 1000 Rabbis calling for moral laws. At the march, he made an unusual appeal - asking Pope Benedict XVI to lead religious leaders on the streets of New York in a declaration forbidding faithful to vote for politicians who support abortion.

The state of South Australia could become the first jurisdiction in the world to deal with the new alternative to therapeutic cloning.

Although most Australian states quickly passed legislation copying a 2007 Federal law which authorised the creation of cloned embryos, South Australia lagged behind. In the interval came the stunning news that Shinya Yamanaka, of Kyoto University, had created pluripotent cells from ordinary skin cells.

Now legislators will have to decide whether they will decline to legalise a superseded and ethically contentious technology or press ahead to keep scientists' options open.