Following recent controversy, Cyberdoc reviews websites on abortion and asks: is there a difference between being anti-abortion and being pro-life?

We cannot mention the internet and abortion with out discussing 'The Nuremberg files'.This web site published 'hit lists' of the names of doctors performing abortions. The story of the offending website can be explored online on a page on a 'crime' site and in CNN's archives. After a court judgement the site was disconected by its service provider although it resurfaced briefly courtesy of a dutch free speech advocate. The site is no longer accessible and several other sites discussed here make the point that we are not so much anti-abortion as pro-life. It would seem sensible to make this distinction in the light of the murders of some of the doctors who appeared on those lists.

Prolife.com and prolife.org should not be confused. The former lives up to its 'com' status (short for commercial to internet users) with quotes from celebrity interviews on abortion, and a strident promotion of the 'save sex' campaign. They also strongly link abortion with the Pill arguing strongly for the great unspoken likelihood that contraceptive pills may produce pre-implantation abortions. I would have liked to see more references to medical literature on this page to make their arguemnt more compelling.

The other site with its 'org' status (loosely indicating charity on the web) mainly lists on-line web pregnancy crisis services. The prolife alliance web site is informative, and up to date with latest news. If you would like to see the pictures of an abortion censored from their party political broadcast during the british general election they can be downloaded from the site. The Care for Life site was unfortunately brief with no way of tracking down any of their crisis centres. Life does have a list of their centres on-line although you could easily miss it and it is not very well designed.

In the light of a medical establishment in favour of abortion, perhaps it is necessary for there to be outlets for some form of research on abortion on the internet. One of these is called 'after-abortion.org'. Here there is an online survey of post-abortion complications and a review of some of the litereature on this subject.

I am pleased to report that if you want clear writing from a biblical perspective the CMF's collection of articles on abortion are by far the best starting point. These articles are simply brilliant, and provide a great source of biblical information together with UK facts and statistics. The important issue of conscientious objection being over-ridden is also well handled. Some of the other pages seemed a little short on fact and high on hype in my opinion.