A US pro-life group has issued a white paper arguing that birth should be free to every mother in the USA.

Americans United for Life notes that mothers on private insurance may pay up to $5,000 for a healthy birth and up to $10,000 if there are medical complications. These expenses can provide the impetus to abort.

One answer to reducing abortions, the paper argues, is to ensure that every woman knows that she can give birth with no money out-of-pocket. The paper acknowledges that this would not be cheap, but it argues that doing this would, over time, reduce the total cost of births in the country.

The paper argues that free birth would go a long way toward promoting the general welfare.

The report has been issued by the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment (NCCA) following the public consultation. It noted that the draft refers to ‘values’ several times and that the subject is clearly values-based, but does not state explicitly the values which underpin the updated SPHE course.

Some parents expressed strong criticism, with some pointing out “that gender identity is a highly contested and sensitive topic” which may lead to confusion and even harm for some adolescents.

They also alleged that the NCCA is seeking to promote ‘gender ideology’ by refusing to acknowledge the binary nature of gender.

The report said these respondents “are strongly of the view that we are born as either male or female and that sex is binary and immutable”.

Some parents were also “concerned about the lack of reference to morality, moral teachings or family values and would like to see the specification reflect a school’s right to teach topics in a manner that aligns with the school’s ethos and values”. Others “questioned the legitimacy of schools providing SPHE/RSE as they saw this as usurping the role of parents as educators of their children.”

Tory MP and Leader of the Commons, Penny Mordaunt, has urged the Church of England to approve same sex relationships and gay marriage ahead of a potentially historic vote by bishops, marking the first intervention by a Cabinet minister on the issue.

Ms Mordaunt, who represents Portsmouth North, has written to the Bishop of Portsmouth, calling on him to “recognise the pain and trauma” that failure to recognise same-sex marriage causes to “many LGBT+ people who are left feeling that they are treated as second class citizens within our society”. Mordaunt ran in the recent Conservative Party leadership elections. According to current canon law, no Church of England minister can bless or marry gay couples.

Ms Mordaunt’s interjection is the first time a serving Cabinet minister has called for the issue to be reformed within the Church.

Next month, bishops will present their long-awaited findings to the General Synod on the status of gay relationships and the possibility of same-sex marriage.

Traditionalists hope bishops will veto any changes to the existing stance that marriage and church weddings are only for opposite-sex couples.

An attack on a church in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has left at least 17 people dead and injured many more.

The attack happened in Kasindi, in the Nord Kivu region near the Ugandan border, at 11am local time on Sunday as hundreds of Christians gathered for prayer and baptism.

The attackers, reportedly belonging to the Islamist Allied Democratic Forces terrorist group, set off a homemade IED in the attack.

The pastor of a nearby church told International Christian Concern (ICC) that he was midway through the Sunday service when he heard a loud blast.

“The area was chaotic since the believers were screaming, and smoke filled the whole place,” he said, adding that the attack was “gruesome”.

The law allowing medical practitioners to refuse to carry out abortions needs to be strengthened, a conference in Dublin heard on Saturday.

Doctors for Life chairman Dr Ronan Cleary told the meeting: “Recent reports have highlighted a focus of the Irish abortion review on the topic of freedom of conscience.

“It is important that we as doctors speak with one voice on the need to uphold and strengthen freedom of conscience, to ensure it applies across the board to all healthcare professionals and that nobody is compelled against their principles to perform an abortion.

“The vast majority of GPs in Ireland are not performing abortions. Even for those who do not describe themselves as pro-life, in their heart of hearts they know abortion is not healthcare.

“Any attempt to erode freedom of conscience and bludgeon doctors into violating their principles by providing abortions against their will would rightly prompt a massive reaction from doctors.”

Pope Francis has decried the fact that in many countries with a Christian majority the universal right to religious freedom is attacked.

“There can be no peace without religious freedom”, he said.

In his annual address to the diplomatic corps accredited to the Holy See, he remarked, “it is worrying that people are persecuted simply because they publicly profess their faith, and in many countries religious freedom is limited. About one-third of the world’s population lives in such conditions”.

This conclusion coincides with data from the latest report on “Religious Freedom in the World” published by Aid to the Church in Need (ACN), which found that 62 countries out of 196 have very serious violations of religious freedom.

The Holy Father stressed that Christians are particularly affected by religious persecution. “Alongside the lack of religious freedom, there is also persecution for religious reasons. I cannot fail to mention, as certain statistics show, that one in seven Christians suffers persecution.”

However, Francis continued, there are also problems in countries where Christians are in the majority and should therefore be safe from intolerance. “We must not overlook the fact that violence and acts of discrimination against Christians are also increasing in countries where the latter are not a minority.

China’s population has fallen for the first time in more than 60 years, with the national birth rate hitting a record low – 6.77 births per 1,000 people.

The population in 2022 – 1.4118 billion – fell by 850,000 from 2021.

China’s birth rate has been declining for years, prompting a slew of policies to try to slow the trend.

But seven years after scrapping the one-child policy, it has entered what one official described as an “era of negative population growth”. The whole of East Asia has below replacement level fertility rates.

The birth rate in 2022 was also down from 7.52 in 2021, according to China’s National Bureau of Statistics, which released the figures on Tuesday.

China’s population trends over the years have been largely shaped by the controversial one-child policy, which was introduced in 1979 to slow population growth. Families that violated the rules were fined or lost jobs, forced onto contraception or even made to have abortions.. In a culture that historically favours boys over girls, the policy had also led to forced abortions and a reportedly skewed gender ratio from the 1980s.

The population fell in 1961 because of the ‘Great Leap Forward’ policy which caused mass famine.

A Catholic priest burnt to death on Sunday after ‘bandits’ set fire to his parish rectory in predominantly Muslim northern Nigeria. There have been numerous attacks on Christians in the region.

The body of Father Isaac Achi was found among the charred parish building of Saints Peter and Paul Catholic Church yesterday, according to the Catholic Diocese of Minna, Nigeria.

He died after armed bandits attacked the priest’s residence in the village of Kafin Koro at 3 a.m. Another priest at the rectory, Father Collins Omeh, escaped the building, but sustained gunshot wounds and is being treated in a hospital.

Alhaji Sani Bello Abubakar, the governor of the Nigerian state of Niger where the attack took place, described the attack as “ungodly and inhumane” and directed the local security agencies to pursue the attackers, according to The Daily Post.

“This is a sad moment, for a priest to be killed in such a manner means that we are not all safe, these terrorists have lost it, and drastic action is needed to end this ongoing carnage,” Bello said.

A French court has been slammed by a town Mayor after it ordered the removal of a statue of the Virgin Mary.

The statue is located at a crossroads in La Flotte, a municipality of 2,800 inhabitants on the popular holiday island Ile-de-Re, off France’s Atlantic coast.

The statue was erected by a local family after World War II in gratitude for a father and son having returned from the conflict alive.

Its initial home was a private garden, but the family later donated it to the town which set it up at the crossroads in 1983.

In 2020, it was damaged by a passing car, and the local authorities decided to restore the statue and put it back in the same place, but this time on an elevated platform.

That move triggered a legal complaint by an association dedicated to secularity, on the basis that a French law dating back to 1905 forbids religious monuments in public spaces.

A court in Poitiers followed the argument as did, on appeal, the regional court in Bordeaux, ordering La Flotte to remove the statue, according to a statement.

Local mayor Jean-Paul Heraudeau called the discussion around the statue “ridiculous” because, he said, it was part of the town’s “historical heritage” and should be considered “more of a memorial than a religious statue”.

Studies showing the profoundly positive impact of religion on people’s lives may have underestimated its benefits by not distinguishing those who are more committed from those who are less so.

New research from the Institute of Family Studies shows the full benefits of religion are experienced by those who actively engage in home-centered religious practices, in addition to regularly attending religious services.

For example, individuals with a home prayer life in addition to church attendance are significantly more likely to report high levels of life meaning and happiness in their lives. Specifically, “Home Worshippers” are nearly twice as likely as their less-religious peers, and more than four times more likely than ‘Seculars’ to report a frequent sense of meaning and purpose in their lives.

The researchers also found an increase in reported life happiness with each dosage category of religious involvement. Home Worshipers are significantly more likely to report high levels of happiness than are Attenders, Nominals, or Seculars.

The study also found that women and men across the globe who live the Home Worshiper lifestyle are significantly more likely to report having a highly satisfying and stable marriage relationship than less religious or nonreligious individuals.