Caring For Creation

By Daniel Koh Kah Soon

(This article originally published in Wesley Methodist Church quarterly magazine Tidings, issue 2008 the third quarter.)

An Inconvenient Truth?

The world is facing an environmental crisis. Unless we are completely out of touch with what is happening around the world, we cannot read newspapers, surf the net and watch television and not be aware of it. It is true that some people may dispute the cause and the gravity of the crisis. For example, there are those who have scorned at Al Gore’s controversial An Inconvenient Truth and some of them have seen it as alarmist. Yet in spite of that and the refusal of the United States to endorse the Kyoto Protocol which seeks to manage our vulnerable environment, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, an independent scientific body set up by the World Meteorological Organization and by the United Nations Environment Programme in its Fourth Assessment Report (2007) has sounded the latest wake-up call for the leaders of the world to address the growing environmental crisis or face the consequences which such a crisis may have on the well-being of our common home, the planet earth which we inhabit.

Organ Trading: A Christian Perspective

By Roland Chia

(This article is originally a talk given at the Graduates' Christian Fellowship’s forum on Human Organ Trading held on 12 November 2008 at the GCF-FES Centre, reprinted in Graduates' Christian Fellowship Bulletins, issue December 2008, and reproduced at Graduates' Christian Fellowship website.)

The recent case of two Indonesian men, who were prosecuted for selling their kidneys, has sparked a robust debate on the question of whether Singapore should legalise the sale of human organs. In an article in The Straits Times (21 July 2008), Health Minister Khaw Boon Wan was quoted as saying: "Let’s push within the current regime … but at the same time, let’s not write off an idea just because it sounds radical or controversial … We may be able to find a compromise which is workable and yet does not offend people’s sensibilities."

Time for Singapore to relook abortion law

By Tan Seow Hon

(This article is originally published in the Strait Times, 24 July 2008, and reproduced at Asiaone News website.)


It has recently been argued that if Singapore wants more babies, one approach that deserves more attention is to render access to abortion harder. This would necessitate that the law, which allows abortion up to 24 weeks of pregnancy without restriction as to reason, be amended.

The current law, the Termination of Pregnancy Act, is a consolidation of abortion laws that have remained substantially the same since 1974. The 1974 Abortion Act had liberalised the 1969 Abortion Act, which was passed contentiously with 32 ayes, 10 nays and one abstention.