Concern over the curtailment of freedom of speech for people of faith has prompted a condemnation of the UK’s new Public Order Bill by the Lead Bishop for Life Issues for the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales,

The bill criminalises a range of activities within a 150m perimeter of an abortion facility, otherwise known as a ‘buffer zone’, including silent prayer.

In a statement “The Public Order Bill: A Step Too Far“, Bishop John Sherrington said that the proposed legislation, “constitutes discrimination and disproportionately affects people of faith.”

Commenting on what could be illegal within a ‘buffer zone’, he says: “These could very easily include many things that should never be criminalised such as prayer, thought, peaceful presence, consensual communication and practical support if they are deemed to influence or interfere with access to the clinic.

“Politicians went so far as to vote down an amendment which would have protected silent prayer and consensual communication in such spaces”, he added, “and that would have initiated a review into whether such legislation was needed.”

Participants at a picnic for women who have had children via sperm donation in Australia discovered that the same sperm donor was the biological father of many of their children. The women began to ask questions because many of the children looked alike.

It turned out that a man had donated formally to a fertility clinic and informally through Facebook groups like Sperm Donation Australia and Australian Backpackers Seeking Sperm Donation. At least 60 children had been conceived with his sperm. He donated under four different names. He has not been named.

Aimee Shackleton, of Donor Conceived Australia, lamented the fact that so little thought was given to the feelings of the child. He or she might want to know his origins when they get older.

‘People talk about meeting up in a car park or hotel and passing over a fresh sample for immediate use,” she told the media. “Our life ought to begin with dignity, and not as a process of some unregulated anonymous transaction.”

A massive pro-life rally in Belfast at the weekend heard a call for “peace in the womb” in order to “end the violence of abortion”.

Bernadette Smyth of Precious Life said the Rally shows “the plight of our unborn babies has not been forgotten.”

“On this 25th anniversary year of the Good Friday Peace Agreement, our politicians must be reminded there can never be true peace in Northern Ireland while unborn babies are being killed,” she said.

“We will join with thousands of others to recognise that everyone has a right to life, and a right to be protected from harm, and we cannot say that has been achieved in Northern Ireland when unborn babies are being killed under a law imposed by Westminster,” the pro-life leader said.

The Rally also heard strong opposition to new laws to come into effect in May which will criminalise peaceful pro-life efforts at abortion centres, with the laws described as being motivated by “malice and spite against peaceful efforts to offer women a better answer than abortion”, by Niamh Uí Bhriain of the Life Institute.

Conflicting approaches to transgender healthcare will be showcased in Killarney next month as the town hosts two separate international conferences featuring mutually exclusive ways of helping people suffering with gender dysphoria.

Genspect, an organisation that aims to highlight the potential dangers of medical transitioning, will be hosting a “counter-conference” to the European Professional Association of Transgender Health (Epath) conference booked into Killarney’s convention centre between April 26 and 28.

Founded by Irish psychotherapist Stella O’Malley, Genspect said its conference will “challenge the evidence base for gender medicine, and describe the widespread damage that gender identity ideology has wrought.”

Among Genspect’s speakers are people who have detransitioned — Ken Zucker, a Canadian-American sexologist, Helen Joyce, the author of the book Trans, and Maya Forstater, an English researcher who won an employment case over her gender-critical views.

A Catholic Church in central Chile was attacked and set alight by a group of eight masked and armed men.

According to the Chilean press, the attackers left pamphlets and a banner claiming the attack and warning about future violent actions. “Every bullet you fire will be returned. Temucuicui resists.” The message was signed by a militant group that claims to defend the rights of the indigenous Mapuche people and has been responsible for other attacks in the past.

The flames consumed the building in a matter of minutes, earller this month, leaving the community, which is mostly made up of Mapuche families, without a formal place of worship. The small chapel had been built in 1952 by local villagers.

Thousands turned out for the Yes to Life march in Madrid, Spain, on Sunday, where the sponsoring organisations expressed their opposition to “all laws and practices that threaten life and human nature at any moment of its existence, as well as the businesses and ideologies that sustain them.”

The event was held this year somewhat ahead of the usual date of March 25, the International Day for Life, and was supported by more than 500 organisations that are part of the Yes to Life platform.

Various participants carried banners with messages such as “You can’t be a Catholic and support abortion,” “All life is a blessing from God,” “Live out your pregnancy, give life,” “Human rights begin in the womb,” “No mother regrets being one,” and “Abortion leaves women without options.”

The Norwegian Healthcare Investigation Board (UKOM) has ruled that national guidelines on the use of puberty blockers and gender-reassignment surgeries need to be revised to reflect the lack of sufficient medical evidence supporting such procedures.

Under the new guidelines recommended by UKOM, hormone therapy and gender-reassignment surgery for minors would be restricted to research settings and not made otherwise available.

“The knowledge base, especially research-based knowledge for gender-affirming treatment (hormonal and surgical), is deficient and the long-term effects are little known,” the agency’s report argues. “This is particularly true for the teenage population where the stability of their gender incongruence is also not known.”

UKOM is an independent governmental agency charged with investigating the Norwegian health-care industry to identify “factors that could have led, or could potentially lead, to harm for patients.”

Pope Francis has said that gender ideology is “one of the most dangerous ideological colonisations” today.

In an interview with journalist Elisabetta Piqué for the Argentine daily newspaper La Nación, Pope Francis explained the reasoning behind his strong statement:

“Why is it dangerous? Because it blurs differences and the value of men and women”.

“All humanity is the tension of differences. It is to grow through the tension of differences. The question of gender is diluting the differences and making the world the same, all dull, all alike, and that is contrary to the human vocation.”

While he is not writing something on gender ideology, the pope said that he talks about the subject “because some people are a bit naive and believe that it is the way to progress.”

The pope noted that he always distinguishes “between what pastoral care is for people who have a different sexual orientation and what gender ideology is.”

“They are two different things,” he added.

President Emmanuel Macron has said that a bill would be prepared “in the coming months” to give ‘iron-clad’ protection to abortion ‘rights’. In France currently there are more than 200,000 abortions annually.

“This will enshrine the freedom of women to choose abortion, and be a solemn guarantee that nothing can ever limit or abolish this right because it will have become irreversible,” Mr Macron said.

“The rights of women are always a fragile conquest,” he added.

A national law made abortion legal in France in 1975, and no serious threat to its legality exists today, but the overturning of Roe v Wade in the USA last year has prompted this French effort.

“Courts in other countries in the world have returned to the question of women’s rights because reactionary ideologues are seeking their revenge on the lawyers and activists who once made them retreat,” Mr. Macron said.

Macron was speaking at a national tribute for Gisele Halimi, a deceased feminist activist and abortion pioneer.

However, her son Serge Halimi, a journalist, stayed away from the ceremony, saying it came “at a time when the country is rising up against an extremely unfair pensions reform”.

The militantly anti-clerical president of Nicaragua, Daniel Ortega, has ordered the closing of the Vatican embassy in Managua and the Nicaraguan embassy to the Holy See in Rome, according to Reuters.

The government of Nicaragua said that it had proposed “a suspension of relations” with the Holy See, the Associated Press reported. Nicaragua recently sentenced a Catholic bishop,  Rolando Álvarez, to 26 years in prison for ‘treasonous’ activities, something he has fiercely denied.

According to the AP, Vatican sources confirmed there had been a request from Nicaragua to shut down the two embassies.

The proposal to suspend relations between the Vatican and Nicaragua follows just days after Pope Francis likened Nicaragua’s Sandinista government to Nazi Germany in an interview. He also called Ortega “unstable.”