FOR LOVE OF LIFE

Anti-abortionists are giving sleepless nights to the French judiciary. While a Paris court recently allowed a group of save foetus" activists - who had barged into a hospital and started praying outside the operation theatre where abortions were being performed - go scot free, in Bourg-en-Bresse, central France, 12 activists had suspended prison sentences and fines slapped on them for staging a protest at the city's hospital. The judiciary went easy on the I st group because it felt that a foetus is "a future human being, already alive"; the activists were, therefore, covered by a law authorising action to safeguard life in the face of danger.