Catholic hospital bars contraception advice

Cancer doctors are on a collision course with a Catholic health organisation over new religion-based rules which prohibit them recommending contraception to patients taking a drug derived from thalidomide, which can cause severe birth defects.

Under a clampdown at Newcastle’s Calvary Mater Hospital, doctors recruiting patients into clinical trials may no longer distribute information about contraception. Instead they are allowed to offer a statement of reproductive risks, which advises participants to avoid pregnancy but gives no information on how to achieve this — via redwolf.newsvine.com