A council in England has made making the sign of the cross and prayer illegal in public areas around an abortion provider.

The Council of Bournemouth, Christchurch, and Poole in southern England has drawn red lines around an abortion provider and designated the area a “safe zone.” Anyone caught crossing themselves, reciting Scripture, or sprinkling holy water behind these red lines can be fined £100 or risk a court conviction.

The prominent Catholic convert Gavin Ashenden wrote on Twitter: “Bournemouth 2022. It is now illegal to cross yourself. Stop for a moment and think about the implications….”

In a press release, the council said the decision to enforce a Public Spaces Protection Order (PSPO) was made following a public consultation. A PSPO is intended to stop anti-social behavior.

The British House of Commons has voted in favour of placing exclusion zones around abortion facilities in the UK, a move condemned by Right to Life UK. A similar law is being proposed by the Irish Government.

MPs voted by 297 to 110 in support of an amendment to the Public Order Bill to introduce the ‘buffer zones’. The Conservative party allowed a free vote.

Carla Lockhart MP, who voted against the move, noted: “We already have laws on the statute book to prevent harassment and maintain public order, including laws in place to ensure women are not harassed or intimidated outside abortion clinics”.

In a press release, Right to Life UK, said: “Hundreds of women have been helped outside abortion clinics by pro-life volunteers who have provided them with practical support, which made it clear to them that they had another option other than going through with the abortion”.

“This passing of this amendment means that the vital practical support provided by volunteers outside abortion clinics will be removed for women and many more lives will likely be lost to abortion”.

Lawyers for the State have told the High Court that any decision concerning the rights of a genetic mother and a child born through commercial surrogacy abroad would have significant and possibly unintended consequences for all areas of assisted human reproduction. Almost all countries in Europe either ban or don’t recognise commercial surrogacy because they believe it exploits low income women and commodifies children.

The court was told its decision could send “ripples” and “reverberations” through the system and affect legislation in many areas.

Senior Counsel Mary O’Toole was making submissions on behalf of the State in the case of a genetic mother of a boy born through international surrogacy who cannot be recorded as his legal mother.

Ms O’Toole said the court was being presented with “a deceptively simple situation and to make what seems like a deceptively simple answer to what is an enormously complex situation.”

She said if there was a finding of a right to recognition of genetic motherhood, then every piece of legislation would now have to be interpreted in the light of that finding and may be undermined by it.

A bill establishing an exclusion zone of 100 metres in radius around “all healthcare premises” in the country, including outside all GP surgeries, will likely not pass constitutional muster.

That’s according to the Pro Life Campaign (PLC) who made a submission to the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health in relation to the Bill.

The submission describes the proposed new law as “a deliberate attempt to criminalise the peaceful conduct of citizens who hold views which oppose abortion”. They also described the bill as “wildly disproportionate”.

The bill proposes prison sentences and/or fines of up to €25,000 for anyone in breach of the proposed new law.

The PLC submission says that due to the bill’s broad scope and the extent to which it infringes on freedom of expression and freedom of assembly, it will “most likely not withstand a challenge before the Irish courts or before the European Court of Human Rights” in the event that it becomes law.

A top human rights court has ruled in favour of the “Femen” activist who simulated the abortion of Christ by the Blessed Virgin, on the altar of the Madelaine church in Paris in 2013.

The judgement was handed down by the European Court of Human Rights Thursday.

The case concerned the criminal conviction of the applicant, a feminist activist who at the time was a member of Femen, for acts of “sexual exposure” committed in a church during a “performance” by way of protest against the Catholic Church’s position on abortion. She had received a suspended prison sentence.

The Court found that the criminal sanction imposed on her had not sought to punish an attack on freedom of religion but rather the fact that she had bared her breasts in a public place, and that the interference with the applicant’s freedom of expression, in the form of a suspended prison sentence, had not been “necessary in a democratic society”.

Grégor Puppinck of the European Centre for Law and Justice said the court had once again sided with anti-Christian blasphemers.

“The Court speciously ruled that the protection of ‘freedom of conscience and religion’ could not justify the conviction, and furthermore feigned to reproach the French courts for not having ‘examined whether the [Femen]’s action was “gratuitously offensive” to religious beliefs, whether it was insulting or whether it incited disrespect or hatred towards the Catholic Church’”.

The Taoiseach has said he would like to see a referendum next year on the constitutional clause that mothers should not be obliged by economic necessity to work outside the home.

However, Micheál Martin said the “devil is in the detail” when it came to how to word the proposal and that sufficient time would have to be given to a referendum commission to do its work before the issue is put to a vote.

Appearing before the Oireachtas gender committee on gender equality on Wednesday, Mr Martin warned that referendums had been lost through “bad preparation” and when people feel uninformed or that “the wool was being pulled over their eyes”.

The Fianna Fáil leader said the “most dangerous referendums” were those when all parties were in favour of an issue.

He said that if the committee could bring a “definitive conclusion and certainty” on how the issue should be approached, he would “like to see a referendum in 2023.”

A Catholic church in Brazil has been desecrated with all 28 statues of saints destroyed, causing pain and outrage of the faithful.

The attack took place around noon on Monday in São Mateus church in the town of São Mateus do Sul located in Paraná state in southern Brazil.

“Our statues were broken, but our faith is firm,” said the pastor of the parish, Father José Carlos Emanoel dos Santos, at a press conference.

The priest stressed that “evangelical brothers” also sent notes repudiating the vandalism, “something that we also appreciate.”

Father Diego Ronaldo Nakalski, parochial vicar, said that whoever destroyed the images “closed the doors to commit this atrocity and left only one side door open through which he probably left.”

“It seemed that we were at war to see everything destroyed. The images refer us to something greater, to something of heaven. When the people saw them broken, the feeling was of very great pain, horrific,” lamented the priest.

In the US, a Colorado baker is currently fighting a ruling that he violated the state’s anti-discrimination law for refusing to bake a cake to celebrate a gender transition.

Jack Phillips previously refused to make a same-sex wedding cake on religious grounds and was penalised by the state’s Civil Rights Commission. However, that decision was overturned by the US Supreme Court in a 7-2 decision in 2018 on the grounds that the Commission exhibited an anti-religious bias. Court liberals Anthony Kennedy, Stephen Breyer and Elena Kagan joined the majority opinion wrote by chief Justice John Roberts.

In the present case, in arguments before Colorado’s appeals court, Phillips’ attorneys from Alliance Defending Freedom urged the court to overturn a ruling issued last year against their client on procedural grounds and said the court should uphold Phillips’ First Amendment rights.

Phillips was sued by Autumn Scardina, a biological male who identifies as a woman and who ordered a pink cake with blue frosting from Phillips’ shop, Masterpiece Cakeshop in 2017.

During the 2021 trial, according to The Associated Press, Phillips said he believes someone cannot change genders and he did not celebrate “somebody who thinks that they can.”

A couple whose genetic son was born to a surrogate mother allege the State has breached their constitutional rights by not allowing the woman to be legally recognised as the child’s mother. Irish law currently gives automatic legal recognition only to the birth mother. Surrogacy separates the role of mother into at least two women, namely the woman who gives birth and the woman who provides the egg. In some cases, a separate woman raises the child. It is why some countries ban surrogacy completely.

Kathy and Brian Egan, of Castlecomer Road, Kilkenny, are claiming the State’s failure to provide retrospective recognition of parentage is an “invidious discrimination” against their family.

A Ukrainian woman carried and gave birth to their genetic son in 2019 via a surrogacy arrangement. Ukraine is one of only three European countries to allow commercial surrogacy. The other two are Russia and Belarus.

Mr Egan is the child’s genetic and legal father while Ms Egan is his genetic mother and legal guardian, a relationship that will cease when he turns 18. She is not legally recognised as his mother.

The family seeks various declarations, but Counsel said there is no request for an order that would specify in detail the manner in which the Oireachtas should regulate international surrogacy.

The Quebec College of Physicians in Canada has started to lobby for euthanasia for new-borns.

In a press release last December the College argued that MAiD should be available for children aged 0-1 and 14-17. “Suffering does not take age into account and for minors it can be as intolerable as for adults,” it said. With respect to euthanasia for newborns, the College offered as a model the Groningen Protocol which Dutch doctors use to decide whether to euthanise infants.

Alex Schadenberg, of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition, suggested that the recommendations of the College make no sense. “Why would you then have to give the child a lethal dose? If the child is not going to survive, the child can be kept comfortable and die naturally. There’s no reason for us to kill the child. There’s no reason for us to do this at all,” he told the National Post.