Fourteen states and several pro-life groups in the US have joined a lawsuit urging the nation’s Supreme Court to overrule laws restricting free speech near abortion clinics.

According to the states’ brief, the laws have “dire consequences” by allowing the government to “cut off speech on a hotly contested moral and political issue” outside an abortion clinic “where a pregnant woman makes a life-altering decision for both herself and her child.”

The case revolves around Debra Vitagliano, a Catholic mother of three who is suing a New York county for barring pro-lifers from counselling women and offering them alternatives to abortion within 100 feet of a clinic, including footpaths.

“I want to offer abortion-vulnerable women a message of hope and compassion, letting them know that they are loved and can keep their babies,” Vitagliano said in an Aug. 25 press release.

The Westchester County law, called a “bubble” or “buffer” zone law, imposes misdemeanour penalties of up to $5,000 and a year in jail for pro-lifers attempting to counsel women outside abortion clinics.

The number of registered births decreased by almost 14 per cent in the first quarter of this year when compared to the same period in 2022, according to new figures from the Central Statistics Office (CSO). This is well below replacement level. Meanwhile, the number of registered deaths rose by 7pc.

The CSO’s latest vital statistics for the first three months of 2023 recorded 13,968 births, down from the 16,131 births in the same period the previous year, a decrease of 13.4 per cent. There were 10,025 deaths, an increase of 7pc, meaning the natural amount of population increase in the quarter was less than 4,000.

In the first quarter of 2013, there were 17,563 births and 8,347 deaths.

The report also shows that 42.6pc of births were outside marriage in the period.

Sadness, fear and defiance animated a crowd of 700 who attended mass outside their burnt-out church in Pakistan last Sunday following one of the country’s worst outbreaks of persecution in a generation.

Amid tight security, Bishop Indrias Rehmat of Faisalabad presided at the Mass held in the streets of Jaranwala where the previous Wednesday a multitude of people narrowly fled a mob of thousands who went on the rampage.

Up to 24 churches, hundreds of Christian homes and a Christian cemetery were targeted in the attack which was sparked by reports of a blasphemy allegation against two Christians accused of desecrating the Qur’an.

After the service outside St. Paul’s Catholic Church, a Christian community leader, who is not being named for security reasons, told ACN: “Most of the people were crying in the Mass. It was a very painful time but a chance to share with one another their sense of loss and sadness.

The Government is unlikely to press ahead with three referendums in November as Ministers are not prepared to answer fundamental questions about what is a family and what is a woman.

Difficulties in agreeing a wording to replace the protection for mothers working in the home and fears a campaign could lead to divisive debates about the definition of family and related gender issues have led to a growing expectation the vote will be postponed.

“We will have to be able to answer the question ‘What is a family?’” one politician said. It was not yet clear, he added, that the Government had an answer.

Senior sources, however, are wary that the referendum campaign could become a debate about gender, prompting questions about transgender issues that have proved highly contentious elsewhere.

“This is one of those things that you wade into at your peril,” one minister said.

An alleged “industrial” level of fraud, human trafficking and sham embryo transfers in a surrogacy clinic in Greece may result in Irish clients being shut out of surrogacy arrangements there and in neighbouring North Cyprus.

The Greek authorities are investigating 400 cases of alleged wrongdoing and they have placed a number of newborns into a protected area of a hospital in Crete while DNA checks are carried out.

The Mediterranean Fertility Institute (MFI) clinic is accused of trafficking vulnerable women from countries such as Georgia and Albania to become surrogates for foreign couples and pocketing half the money that was supposed to be paid to them. Greek police allege that the women had their eggs harvested before becoming surrogates.

MFI is alleged to have falsified birth records and medical documents, prepared fictitious leases and cohabitation agreements and carried out fake embryo transfers. There are also allegations that the clinic arranged sham marriages for gay men to facilitate surrogacies because Greece does not allow surrogacy for homosexual couples.

The Sunday Independent spoke to one couple based in Northern Ireland that was using MFI who said they were very distressed by the revelations.

“We have paid for IVF and IVF with donor eggs there with no success,” said the Belfast-based women. “We have embryos frozen there too. But we have no facts to present as yet.”

Sam Everingham, global director of surrogacy liaison firm Growing Families, said the MFI scandal is likely to lead to a crackdown on unregulated surrogacy in other jurisdictions that Irish couples regularly use, such as North Cyprus.

French authorities are to ban the wearing in school of abaya dresses, which are long and loose-fitting and worn by some Muslim women, the education minister has said, arguing the garment violated France’s strict secular laws in education.

A law of March 2004 banned “the wearing of signs or outfits by which students ostensibly show a religious affiliation” in schools.

This includes large crosses, Jewish kippas and Islamic headscarves.

Unlike headscarves, abayas occupied a grey area and had faced no outright ban until now.

“It will no longer be possible to wear an abaya at school,” education minister Gabriel Attal told TF1 television, saying he would give “clear rules at the national level” to school heads ahead of the return to classes nationwide from September 4.

“Secularism means the freedom to emancipate oneself through school,” Mr Attal said, describing the abaya as “a religious gesture, aimed at testing the resistance of the republic toward the secular sanctuary that school must constitute.

“You enter a classroom, you must not be able to identify the religion of the students by looking at them,” he said.

Thousands of Muslims in a city in Pakistan have set fire to at least four churches and vandalised the homes of multiple Christians over claims that two men desecrated the Quran, police say.

Residents said up to a dozen buildings connected to churches in Jaranwala, in eastern Punjab, were also damaged.

Police have detained more than 100 protestors and launched an investigation into the violence.

Authorities say the situation remains tense, but say no deaths were reported.

Police have also filed a case against two local Christian residents for violation of the blasphemy law, which carries the death sentence.

Even though Pakistan has yet to sentence anyone to death for blasphemy, a mere accusation can result in widespread riots, causing lynchings and killings.

The US Food and Drug Administration must restore critical safeguards for chemical abortion drugs and disallow their shipment by post, according to a US Court of Appeals, a practice that also takes place in Ireland.

Four medical associations and four doctors experienced in caring for pregnant and post-abortive women had taken up the case.

“The 5th Circuit rightly required the FDA to do its job and restore crucial safeguards for women and girls, including ending illegal mail-order abortions,” said ADF Senior Counsel Erin Hawley, who argued the case before the court.

“The FDA will finally be made to account for the damage it has caused to the health of countless women and girls and the rule of law by unlawfully removing every meaningful safeguard from the chemical abortion drug regimen. The FDA’s unprecedented and unlawful actions did not reflect scientific judgment but rather revealed politically driven decisions to push a dangerous drug regimen without regard to women’s health or the rule of law. This is a significant victory for the doctors and medical associations we represent and, more importantly, the health and safety of women,” she said.

For years the communist nation had a controversial “one-child” policy that involved forced abortions and sterilisations. Once authorities realised that the rate of population growth was falling precipitously, they reversed the policy, but the momentum against child-bearing appears irreversible.

The latest fertility rate figure, which indicates the number of births per woman, is likely to rattle authorities.

The state-backed Daily said that the figure from the Population and Development Research Centre means that China now has the lowest fertility level among nations with a population of more than 100m.

It already ranks as one of the world’s least fertile countries alongside South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore.

This year, China’s population shrank for the first time since 1961, when there was a widespread famine caused by ‘the Great Leap Forward’.

The falling fertility rate and aging population have prompted the authorities to implement an array of measures aimed at lifting the birth rate, including financial incentives and improved childcare facilities.

https://www.rte.ie/news/2023/0816/1400079-china-fertility-falling/

Irish families continue to fly to war-torn Ukraine to avail of commercial surrogacy despite repeated pleas from the Government not to do so. Ukraine is one of the only countries in Europe that allows commercial surrogacy, but even they are considering legislation to outlaw international visitors from using it.

It is understood a small number of families — about 20 — are engaged in the process, with some having embryos stored in the war-torn country and at least one couple being in Ukraine.

A spokesperson for the Department of Foreign Affairs said any travel to Ukraine was advised against due to the ongoing war with Russia. The department said part of the reason people were asked not to travel is due to limits on the ability of the Irish State to provide consular assistance to those in Ukraine.

Fine Gael senator Mary Seery Kearney who is promoting legislation to legalise surrogacy in Ireland said her first advice was not to travel to the country. She added there are “other countries which do international surrogacy and the embryos can be shipped there”.

Ukraine has signalled it may end the practice of foreign surrogacy. President Voldomyr Zelenskyy’s government has drafted a piece of legislation that would outlaw the use of international surrogacy through Ukraine.

That move was followed by Georgia, which in June moved to do the same.