A Government plan to increase the number of maternity hospitals providing abortion has once again been delayed as medics conscientiously object and alternative recruitment is proving difficult.
Earlier this year, the Department of Health said that 14 maternity hospitals would be doing abortions by the end of this year. However, at the moment, only 11 of the country’s 19 maternity units are doing so.
According to the HSE, five of the hospitals will not be providing abortions until next year at the earliest, while another two maternity hospitals are still in talks with the HSE to try to roll out the procedure next year.
The HSE said that “conscientious objection, recruitment, and infrastructure” was to blame for the slow roll-out.
The French Government is proceeding with a citizens’ convention on whether to legalise euthanasia and assisted suicide, despite objections near and far.
The issue is contentious, and Pope Francis himself denounced Emmanuel Macron’s initiative last week before holding private talks with the president in Rome on Sunday.
Macron wants reform of French law, which allows doctors to give terminally ill patients enough sedatives to lose consciousness, but not to prescribe or administer lethal drugs.
Although opinion polls show that about 90 per cent of French people are in favour of authorising assisted suicide for terminally ill people, Macron is wary. He has said he does not believe the polls, and is reported to be concerned about the potential to upset Catholic groups vehemently opposed to the idea. The Pope told a delegation of French politicians last week: “You can’t ask carers to kill their patients.”
Macron said he had spoken to the Pope about the issue when visiting Rome on Sunday, “telling him that I don’t like the word euthanasia”.
The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom is “tremendously disappointed” with the Vatican’s decision to renew its deal with China, and it has expressed as much to the upper echelons of the U.S. government, according to one of the commissioners.
“I certainly understand as a Catholic that the Vatican is playing the long game here and not thinking about the immediate circumstances, but I think that these agreements have not produced any improvement in religious freedom for Catholics in China, and I think that the Holy See should really rethink its decision to dance with Xi on this whole business,” said USCIRF Commissioner Stephen Schneck.
In its 2022 report, USCIRF stated that “despite the Vatican-China agreement on bishops appointments, authorities continue to harass and detain underground Catholic priests who refuse to join the state-controlled Catholic association, such as Bishop Joseph Zhang Weizhu of Xixiang, Hebei Province.”
The Holy See announced on Oct. 22 that its deal with China regarding the appointment of bishops was renewed for another two years. The deal was signed in September 2018, and extended in October 2020. The exact terms of the agreement have never been made public.
A new report in the United Kingdom is recommending legislation that will mandate the reporting of child abuse, and specifically says no exemptions should be given for sacramental confession, which could lead to a clash with a central tenet of Catholic teaching.
The Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) in England and Wales was announced by the British government in 2014 to examine how the country’s institutions handled their duty of care to protect children from sexual abuse.
The final report of the inquiry recommended that people be required to go to the authorities “when they either receive a disclosure of child sexual abuse from a child or perpetrator, or witness a child being sexually abused,” adding that a “failure to report in those circumstances should be a criminal offence.”
Furthermore, it said mandatory reporting “should be an absolute obligation; it should not be subject to exceptions based on relationships of confidentiality, religious or otherwise.”
A 54-year-old Canadian man has applied for euthanasia because he fears becoming homeless.
Amir Farsoud, who lives in St Catharines, near Niagara Falls, is in constant pain from a back injury and says that his quality of life is ‘non-existent’. However, he says it would be bearable if he didn’t have to cope with the fear of homelessness.
Mr Farsoud lives in a shared rooming house but its owner has placed it on the market. He depends on social assistance and says he can’t find affordable accommodation.
“I don’t want to die but I don’t want to be homeless more than I don’t want to die,” he told CityNews.
“I know, in my present health condition, I wouldn’t survive it anyway. It wouldn’t be at all dignified waiting, so if that becomes my two options, it’s pretty much a no-brainer,” said Farsoud.
One doctor has already signed off on his application for MAiD; one more is required.
Asked if he would consider euthanasia if he had stable housing, Farsoud said it would still be “on his radar” but “years down the road”.
A council in England has made making the sign of the cross and prayer illegal in public areas around an abortion provider.
The Council of Bournemouth, Christchurch, and Poole in southern England has drawn red lines around an abortion provider and designated the area a “safe zone.” Anyone caught crossing themselves, reciting Scripture, or sprinkling holy water behind these red lines can be fined £100 or risk a court conviction.
The prominent Catholic convert Gavin Ashenden wrote on Twitter: “Bournemouth 2022. It is now illegal to cross yourself. Stop for a moment and think about the implications….”
In a press release, the council said the decision to enforce a Public Spaces Protection Order (PSPO) was made following a public consultation. A PSPO is intended to stop anti-social behavior.
The British House of Commons has voted in favour of placing exclusion zones around abortion facilities in the UK, a move condemned by Right to Life UK. A similar law is being proposed by the Irish Government.
MPs voted by 297 to 110 in support of an amendment to the Public Order Bill to introduce the ‘buffer zones’. The Conservative party allowed a free vote.
Carla Lockhart MP, who voted against the move, noted: “We already have laws on the statute book to prevent harassment and maintain public order, including laws in place to ensure women are not harassed or intimidated outside abortion clinics”.
In a press release, Right to Life UK, said: “Hundreds of women have been helped outside abortion clinics by pro-life volunteers who have provided them with practical support, which made it clear to them that they had another option other than going through with the abortion”.
“This passing of this amendment means that the vital practical support provided by volunteers outside abortion clinics will be removed for women and many more lives will likely be lost to abortion”.
Lawyers for the State have told the High Court that any decision concerning the rights of a genetic mother and a child born through commercial surrogacy abroad would have significant and possibly unintended consequences for all areas of assisted human reproduction. Almost all countries in Europe either ban or don’t recognise commercial surrogacy because they believe it exploits low income women and commodifies children.
The court was told its decision could send “ripples” and “reverberations” through the system and affect legislation in many areas.
Senior Counsel Mary O’Toole was making submissions on behalf of the State in the case of a genetic mother of a boy born through international surrogacy who cannot be recorded as his legal mother.
Ms O’Toole said the court was being presented with “a deceptively simple situation and to make what seems like a deceptively simple answer to what is an enormously complex situation.”
She said if there was a finding of a right to recognition of genetic motherhood, then every piece of legislation would now have to be interpreted in the light of that finding and may be undermined by it.
A bill establishing an exclusion zone of 100 metres in radius around “all healthcare premises” in the country, including outside all GP surgeries, will likely not pass constitutional muster.
That’s according to the Pro Life Campaign (PLC) who made a submission to the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health in relation to the Bill.
The submission describes the proposed new law as “a deliberate attempt to criminalise the peaceful conduct of citizens who hold views which oppose abortion”. They also described the bill as “wildly disproportionate”.
The bill proposes prison sentences and/or fines of up to €25,000 for anyone in breach of the proposed new law.
The PLC submission says that due to the bill’s broad scope and the extent to which it infringes on freedom of expression and freedom of assembly, it will “most likely not withstand a challenge before the Irish courts or before the European Court of Human Rights” in the event that it becomes law.
A top human rights court has ruled in favour of the “Femen” activist who simulated the abortion of Christ by the Blessed Virgin, on the altar of the Madelaine church in Paris in 2013.
The judgement was handed down by the European Court of Human Rights Thursday.
The case concerned the criminal conviction of the applicant, a feminist activist who at the time was a member of Femen, for acts of “sexual exposure” committed in a church during a “performance” by way of protest against the Catholic Church’s position on abortion. She had received a suspended prison sentence.
The Court found that the criminal sanction imposed on her had not sought to punish an attack on freedom of religion but rather the fact that she had bared her breasts in a public place, and that the interference with the applicant’s freedom of expression, in the form of a suspended prison sentence, had not been “necessary in a democratic society”.
Grégor Puppinck of the European Centre for Law and Justice said the court had once again sided with anti-Christian blasphemers.
“The Court speciously ruled that the protection of ‘freedom of conscience and religion’ could not justify the conviction, and furthermore feigned to reproach the French courts for not having ‘examined whether the [Femen]’s action was “gratuitously offensive” to religious beliefs, whether it was insulting or whether it incited disrespect or hatred towards the Catholic Church’”.
