Australia’s Labour Party has voted to remove any conscience clause for members on the issue of same-sex marriage by 2019. A substantial number of Labour party parliamentarians, especially from New South Wales, are opposed to same-sex marriage. Amid the ongoing debate on redefining the country’s marriage laws, representatives of the party, currently in opposition, met...
A law banning commercial surrogacy in Thailand has come into effect. In the wake of two controversial cases involving Thai surrogate mothers in 2014, the government acted in February to introduce new measures to curb the trade in ‘renting’ the wombs of surrogate mothers. According to The Bangkok Post, the new controls on clinics bar...
A drift towards a more liberal abortion regime in Ireland has reversed, a new study has revealed. According to a Behaviour & Attitudes (B&A) poll for The Sunday Times newspaper, figures supporting a more liberal abortion regime in this country have slipped since the same research was conducted in 2013. Where the B&A found, in...
The number of under-age girls in Britain receiving contraceptive implants and injections has nearly tripled over the last 10 years. According to the latest figures from the country’s National Health Service (NHS), 8,400 girls aged 15 years and younger received such contraceptive treatments, a leap from 3,100 for the year 2004-2005. For the decade as...
A man suffering locked-in syndrome in Britain has failed in a legal bid to have medical guidelines changed to allow him to avail of assisted suicide. The patient, identified only as Martin, had brought a case before the High Court in an attempt to force a change to current General Medical Council (GMC) guidelines on...
Italy has been criticised by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) for its ‘failure’ to recognise in law the status of same-sex couples. In a ruling arising from a case taken by three same-sex couples who argued that Italy was engaging in discrimination against them for its stance, a seven-judge panel of the ECHR...
The Irish Government is to allow adopted people to access their birth certificates for the first time under legislation currently being drafted. According to a report in The Irish Times, the passage of the proposed Adoption (Information and Tracing) Bill could affect as many as 50,000 people who have till now been denied access to the documentation...
Freedom of religion is “the key human right”, Britain’s House of Lords has heard. During a debate on the question of Britain affording extra emphasis to the issue of religious freedom, peers heard of numerous violations of religious freedom internationally, contravening Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which bestows the right to...
The number of marriages in Ireland rose last year, with traditional church ceremonies still the most popular choice for intending couples. According to the Annual Report of the Registrar General for 2014, some 22,033 marriages were recorded for the year, a 6.6% increase over the figure of 20,670 in 2013. However, the latest figures were...
The Pro-Life Campaign (PLC) has accused the Government of neglecting patient safety over a rush to introduce abortion legislation. Reacting to media reports of an alleged war of words between the Minister for Health Leo Varadkar and the Health Service Executive (HSE) over failure to implement patient safety recommendations handed down in the wake of...
