The US State of Vermont is considering a bill to expand assisted suicide by allowing it occur by ‘telemedicine’, which permits a doctor to prescribe lethal drugs without ever meeting the person.

It is another example of the assisted suicide lobby’s focus on expanding access to the process in states where it is already legal.

Alex Schadenberg, Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition, says that for several years, the assisted suicide lobby has promoted the use of telemedicine for approving and prescribing lethal assisted suicide drugs.

He warns that the process eliminates the chance to discover that the person asking for it was misdiagnosed as, “If the doctor does not examine the person who requests assisted suicide then they are basing their assisted suicide approval solely on the person’s medical record”.

He adds: “Permitting assisted suicide by telemedicine in states where assisted suicide is legal may enable doctors to approve and prescribe out-of-state assisted suicides. Telemedicine approvals enables the assisted suicide lobby to set-up a national assisted suicide approval and prescribing center to permit assisted suicide nationally”.

Italy’s highest court has blocked a referendum on the issue of assisted suicide.

The constitutional court said it “deemed the referendum question inadmissible,” because if the referendum were to repeal the existing criminal law on assisted suicide, “the constitutionally necessary minimum protection of human life, in general, and with particular reference to weak and vulnerable persons, would not be preserved.”

Welcoming the ruling, the country’s Catholic bishops said it was “a very specific invitation to never marginalise the commitment of society, as a whole, to offer the support necessary to overcome or alleviate the situation of suffering or distress.”

The court said the proposed referendum did not give adequate protection to the weak and vulnerable.

Catholic schools in the US are seeing their biggest enrolment figures in decades which is being partly attributed to them staying open for almost all of the Covid-19 pandemic while public schools remained shut.

A report in the Wall Street Journal says that enrolment in U.S. Catholic schools increased by 62,000 students—3.8%—from autumn 2020 to autumn 2021. That’s the highest one-year increase recorded in two decades.

Catholic schools across all 50 states opened again in the academic year starting in autumn 2020 and have remained open since.

There are almost 1.7 million pupils in nearly 6,000 Catholic schools in the US.

A major law firm in Britain has appointed a ‘fertility officer’ in response to the concern some women have that becoming a mother can be ‘career-suicide’.

The Times says Burgess Mess has appointed legal expert, Natalie Sutherland, to the part-time post.

She told the newspaper: “The impression that me and my peers were given early in our careers was, ‘If you want to do well, you shouldn’t be having babies until you are established’. But that compounds the problem because usually you only become established when you are well into your thirties when your fertility is starting to decline.”

The move comes against a background of plunging birth rates and couples delaying becoming parents for the first time until they are well into their 30s.

The secret to a long marriage could be starting life together with a big but cheap wedding.

Couples who spend tens of thousands of pounds on their big day or invite just a handful of friends and family are more likely to end up divorcing, a study has found.

Researchers discovered that ten per cent of marriages that started with a wedding costing more than £20,000 broke down within three years – twice the overall divorce rate of five per cent in that time.

They also found that 34 per cent of couples who had ten or fewer guests at their wedding ended up divorcing within a decade – again almost double the sample’s total rate.

The findings emerged in a survey commissioned by pro-marriage think-tank the Marriage Foundation.

Its research director, Harry Benson, said: ‘The data echoes previous research from the US suggesting expensive weddings can be bad for marriages because of the risk of debt.

Revisions to the law are aimed at promoting Thailand as a ‘medical hub’, gaining more income for the country. T

Under the present rules and conditions, surrogacy in Thailand is allowed only for Thai couples or foreigners who have a Thai partner. Those in Thailand also cannot send their frozen eggs or sperm overseas. Thailand is losing opportunities over these two restrictions, according to the Director-General of the Department of Health Service Support, Thares Krassanai-Rawiwong.

There have also been a number of cases in Thailand related to illegal surrogacy. Back in May 2020, a Thai doctor faced charges for human trafficking and involvement in an illegal ring using Thai women to carry babies for people in China.

According to local sources, the leaders of the VHP and Bajrangdal organized a re-conversion (Ghar Wapsi) ceremony at a temple in the village, where 40 Christians, including Anandi Ben and her family, were forced to do the rituals of breaking the coconut and eating food (Prasad) offered to gods. Anandi Ben and her family have been following the Christian faith for more than four years. The Christians in the village were threatened to boycott them from the village if they refused to take part in the re-conversion program.

Irish couples are waiting for14 babies due to be born to surrogate mothers in war-threatened Ukraine. They may face an €88-a-day fee for ‘nanny’ care in the under-threat country.

Ukraine is one of the only countries in the world to allow commercial surrogacy which critics say exploits women and commodifies children.

If the Irish couples cannot travel to collect the infants, one Fine Gael Senator has asked for the Government to subsidise the extra cost.

A small number of parents are understood to be in Ukraine, although most are still in Ireland.

Fine Gael Senator Mary Seery Kearney said the commercial surrogacy companies “are proposing a nanny arrangement but it’s coming at a considerable cost that wasn’t anticipated.”.

The number of abortions performed in Texas plummeted in the first month since a new law — which prohibits the procedure after a fetal heartbeat is detected at around six weeks — went into effect.

In September 2021, just 2,197 abortions were performed in Texas, a drop of more than 60 percent from 5,400 statewide abortions in August, and a 51 percent reduction from September 2020 figures, according to new figures released by the Texas Health and Human Services Commission.

Meanwhile, a survey taken by Heartbeat International in September 2021 indicates that 41 percent of pregnancy centers in Texas and surrounding states have seen an increase in clients. Michael New, a research associate at the Busch School of Business at The Catholic University of America and is an associate scholar at the Charlotte Lozier Institute, says that while some Texas women are circumventing the Heartbeat Act by obtaining abortions in other states, “clearly more Texas women are seeking assistance in carrying pregnancies to term”.

He said there is no hard data about the number of Texas women who obtained abortions in other states and he lamented that “none of the media coverage included comments from Texas pregnancy help centers, nor did it note that the Texas state legislature appropriated $100 million for the state’s ‘Alternatives to Abortion’ program last year”.