A leading Catholic bioethics agency has called for changes in the law and for a government review after the trauma experienced by the parents of 12 year old Archie Battersbee, who passed away last week following the switching off of his ventilator and other forms of life support against the wishes of the parents.

“The court battle over Archie Battersbee’s care is the latest example of the dying of children becoming complicated by unresolved conflict between parents and hospital authorities. It seems clear that there are serious problems with the current clinical, interpersonal, ethical, and legal approach to these situations.”

The Third Annual Report on Medical Assistance in Dying in Canada (2021) indicated that the number of reported assisted deaths increased by 32.4% and represented 3.3% of all Canadian deaths.

In one State, that of Ontario, the Office of the Chief Coroner released the June 2022 MAiD data which indicates that there were 1822 reported assisted deaths in the first six months of 2022 and 11,620 reported assisted deaths since euthanasia was legalized. The Ontario data is important because it is regularly released and Ontario represents 39% of Canada’s population.

The June 2022 Ontario monthly data also showed a significant increase with 334 reported assisted deaths as compared to 281 in June 2021.

Under the planned “self-determination law,” adults would be able to change their first name and legal gender at registry offices without further formalities. A similar law has existed in Ireland since 2015 which was passed without debate. England recently rejected a gender self-identification proposal. Women’s rights group applauded the decision of the English Government on the grounds that allowing anyone to self-identify as a woman is eroding women’s rights.

The existing “transsexual law, in Germany” which took effect in 1981, currently requires individuals to obtain assessments from two experts whose training and experience makes them “sufficiently familiar with the particular problems of transsexualism” and then a court decision to change the gender on official documents.

Over the years, Germany’s top court has struck down other provisions that required transgender people to get divorced and undergo gender-transition surgery.

The decision follows moves by German lawmakers at the end of June who voted to end the country’s ban on advertising abortions. Previous German governments were concerned that advertising abortion would increase demand for it.

Government parties and the Left party voted to lift the restriction, while the center-right Christian Democrats and the far-right Alternative for Germany voted against.

There were ten times less abortions in Poland in 2021 than in previous years, according to data from the Ministry of Health, Polish newspaper Rzeczpospolita reported.

After the coming into force of the ruling of the Constitutional Court at the end of January 2021, which banned abortion in almost all cases, only 107 legal abortions were performed in the country last year.

Of those 107 abortions, 75 were due to a high probability of severe and irreversible impairment of the fetus or an incurable disease threatening its life.

That reason was eliminated in the Constitutional Court ruling, so that those abortions were performed because the sentence was not valid for a small part of the year.

The remaining 32 abortions during the year took place because of a risk to the woman’s life or health. If a pregnancy was the result of a criminal act such as incest or rape, the law allows the termination, but data say that there were no such cases in 2021. Pro-choice campaigners said many Polish women are now forced into other countries for abortion.

Violent attacks on Christians in Nigeria is overwhelmingly due to militant Islamic ideology, rather than factors such as climate change, according to a leading human rights activist.

Dr David Landrum, Open Doors UK & Ireland, says a recent report from the Observatory of Religious Freedom in Africa (ORFA) reveals the number of Christians killed was almost ten times higher than the number of Muslims killed in jihadism-related violence per capita between Oct 2019 and Sept 2020.

The report also confirms that violence against moderate Muslims is overwhelmingly from jihadist groups. The findings fit with the 2020 report by the All-Party Parliamentary Group for International Freedom of Religion or Belief: ‘Nigeria – Unfolding Genocide?’ – which as the title suggests identifies the murders, rapes and abductions as systematic, deliberate, and at source – jihadist.

Despite this, he says, the UK government “continues to prefer to attribute it to a complex range of issues – which then justifies inaction. These issues include politics, criminality, banditry, farming disputes, poverty or even climate change”.

A new bill was introduced in the Australian Parliament on Monday seeking to lift a 25-year ban on doctor-assisted suicide in two territories, the last remaining areas of the country protecting vulnerable adults from the lethal practice.

One of those, the sparsely populated Northern Territory, in 1995 became the first place in the world to legalize voluntary euthanasia. But the landmark law was overturned by the Australian Parliament two years later. It is now one of last parts of Australia where doctor-assisted suicide remains banned.

“For too long Australians living in the territories have been treated as second-class citizens,” government lawmaker Luke Gosling, who represents a Northern Territory electorate, told Parliament.

He and fellow legislator Alicia Payne introduced a bill that would allow the legislatures of the Northern Territory and Australian Capital Territory to legalize assisted dying.

The two territories do not have the same legal rights as the six states, that have each legislated euthanasia laws in recent years.

The parents of a 12-year-old boy who is in a coma have lost an attempt at the UK Supreme Court to block the withdrawal of his life-sustaining support.

Three judges on the Court of Appeal dismissed arguments from the family of Archie Battersbee that doctors at Barts Health Trust should be blocked from a breathing machine and other forms of life-support until a UN committee on disability rights had a chance to assess the case. The family may yet appeal to the European Court of Human Rights.

Archie’s mother, Hollie Dance, said: “We are having to battle over every decision with the hospital. There is nothing dignified in how we are being treated as a family in this situation. We do not understand what the rush is and why all of our wishes are being denied.”

Archie, from Southend, Essex, was found unconscious at his home with a ligature next to his head on April 7 after taking part in what his parents suspected was an online challenge. He suffered brain damage and has never regained consciousness. A mechanical ventilator is helping to keep him alive.

In a blow to pro-life hopes, the voters of Kansas have rejected a constitutional amendment that would have given authority to the state legislature to make abortion law without being constrained by a radically pro-abortion ruling adopted by a state court in 2019.

That decision by the Kansas State Supreme Court had found that a section of the Kansas Constitution Bill of Rights, dating from 1859, referring to “equal and inalienable natural rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” included a right to abortion. The Court further ruled that any restriction on abortion, to be constitutional, would have to be subject to an even higher standard than that demanded by the radical Roe v Wade abortion regime.

That resulted in even modest restrictions to abortion in Kansas being struck down.

Monday’s vote would have given authority to the State Legislature to overrule the State Court’s ‘strict scrutiny’ standard for abortion and make laws in the area as it saw fit.

While no legislative bill was waiting to be enacted, pro-choice activists claimed the State Government might ban abortion entirely, rather than merely restrict the existing permissive regime.

With 95% of ballots counted, the amendment was being rejected by a 58.8 to 41.2pc margin.

Appeasing a group of radical pro-abortion campaigners, rather than following Garda advice, drove last week’s proposal for exclusion zones, according to the Pro-Life Campaign.

Health Minister Stephen Donnelly presented the so-called ‘Safe Access Zones’ legislative proposal to Cabinet last Tuesday to ban peaceful pro-life protests close to abortion facilities.

The Pro-Life Campaign said the move was a wholly disproportionate response to the risk that a tiny number of people may at some point in the future engage in harassing behaviour near a facility where abortions are performed.

They added: “Were such incidents to occur, the authorities already have wide-ranging powers to deal with the situation under existing public order laws. Senior members of An Garda Síochána have repeatedly made this point clear to the Minister for Health, yet he and his government colleagues persist in pressing ahead with their regressive and draconian proposal, for no other reason than to appease a group of radical pro-abortion campaigners who have lobbied non-stop for such a law”.

“Minister Donnelly acknowledged in the Seanad as recently as 10th February that introducing such a law ‘pushes up against civil liberties’. He also openly admitted that he was ignoring the advice of An Garda Síochána and instead taking guidance on the matter from radical pro-abortion groups like Together for Safety”.

Among other things, their COVID Tracking Survey measures current life satisfaction across different demographic brackets, namely those who are married or unmarried crossed with those with or without children.

In a post by the Institute of Family Studies, Professor Christos A. Makridis, says the data shows those who are not married and have no children have the least level of current life satisfaction, and, notably, their life satisfaction never recovers even two years into COVID-19 by the end of 2021.

Moreover, the proportion of people who are thriving at a given point in time shows those who are married with children have higher rates of flourishing.

Regarding rates of loneliness. The unmarried are substantially more likely to feel lonely, ranging between 30-40 percent. In contrast, married Americans have much lower rates of loneliness, around 20 percent.