Drugs that induce abortions in the first ten weeks of pregnancy are due to be approved for use in Japan, but they would only be prescribed with the consent of the woman’s spouse.

The legislation is winding its way through Japan’s parliament after British pharmaceutical company Linepharma International applied last year to market a combination of two drugs for the purposes of abortion. A decision is expected before the end of the year.

Women’s rights groups have criticised the legislation as it requires the woman’s partner to agree to the abortion – under the same rules that apply to surgical abortion.

Questioned by a parliamentary committee earlier this month, a health ministry bureaucrat stated that the standards required for a surgical abortion under the 1948 Maternal Protection Law should also apply to chemical abortions.

“In principle, we believe that spousal consent is necessary, even if an abortion is induced by an oral medication,” said Yasuhiro Hashimoto, the head of the ministry’s child and family policy bureau.

Around 145,000 surgical abortions were carried out in Japan in 2020, which is one of only 11 nations that still require the consent of the woman’s husband for the procedure to go ahead.

A UK street preacher who was arrested on Easter Sunday 2020 for allegedly breaching Covid regulations has been exonerated by the courts after a two-year legal battle.

Andrew Sathiyavan was arrested on Sutton High Street, London, during lockdown after being told by officers that his preaching was “unacceptable”, “non-essential” and “causing anti-social behaviour”.

Mr Sathiyavan was detained in a police cell for four hours and issued with a Covid fine, which was subsequently upheld by a Deputy District judge.

However, Isleworth Crown Court has now overturned the arrest.

“We accepted that, on that particular day [the most important in the Christian calendar] the focus of Mr Sathiyavan’s ministry was the homeless, the poor and drug addicts, many of whom will not have ready access to Facebook, the internet or other forms of social media,” the judgment stated.

It found that his “motives were genuine” and that he was driven by Jesus’ command to “go and make disciples of all nations”.

“We accepted that, on that particular Easter Day, the fact that there were few people on the High Street in Sutton was immaterial to Mr Sathiyavan for, as he told the Court, if one person was ‘saved’ that was sufficient as he would have done as Christ did, namely, to go in search of the one lost sheep.”

A new peer-reviewed study by the US-based Charlotte Lozier Institute (CLI) has claimed there are dangers posed by mischaracterising abortion-related complications as resulting from miscarriage.

A previous CLI study had established that 60.9% of abortion-related emergency room visits following pill-induced terminations are miscoded as miscarriage-related. “[C]oncern that this misinformation … might result in sub-optimal care and, subsequently, an increased likelihood of hospital admission” provoked the most recently-published analysis.

The latest study, a 17-year longitudinal analysis of 423,000 confirmed abortions and 121,283 confirmed subsequent visits to an emergency room, found women whose abortions were miscoded as miscarriages in the ER were more likely to be hospitalised for any reason than women whose abortions were accurately reported. Women whose chemical abortions were miscoded further exhibited a pattern of multiple hospitalisations in the 30 days following their abortions – an average of 3.2 per patient compared to 1.8 for those not miscoded. In other words, the number of hospital admissions per patient was 78% higher in the miscoded group.

An independent, bipartisan advisory body has reiterated its call for the U.S. State Department to add Russia to its register of the world’s “worst violators” of religious freedom, a blacklist that already includes Iran, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and six other countries.

The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), created by Congress to make recommendations about global religious freedom, proposes in its latest annual report that Russia, India, Syria, and Vietnam be put on the “countries of particular concern” list, a category reserved for those that carry out “systematic, ongoing, and egregious” violations of religious freedoms.

The blacklisting paves the way for sanctions if the countries included do not improve their records.

The USCIRF report says that “religious freedom conditions in Russia deteriorated” last year, with the government targeting religious minorities deemed to be “nontraditional” with fines, detentions, and criminal charges.

For decades, the have been viewed with suspicion in Russia, where the dominant Orthodox Church is championed by President Vladimir Putin.

In 2017, Russia outlawed Jehovah’s Witnesses and labelled the group “extremist,” a designation the State Department has called “wrongful”.

Russia’s anti-extremism law was also used to “persecute religious minorities, particularly Muslims,” the report added.

A Fianna Fail junior Minister has announced that he now supports the country’s radical abortion regime despite having campaigned in 2018 to preserve the constitutional right to life of the unborn.

Speaking to the Irish Independent, Junior Minister for Sport and Government Chief Whip, Jack Chambers, said his position has “evolved” and he now supports abortions up to 12 weeks of pregnancy in all circumstances. Fianna Fail leader and Taoiseach, Micheal Martin, also announced before the referendum that his previous pro-life beliefs had ‘evolved’ which is why he supported repeal of the 8th amendment.

The interviewer said Chambers was reluctant to be specific about how he reached this position, other than to say he has met people and engaged and listened.

He adds: “He declines to be drawn on whether he regrets his previous involvement in campaigning for retention of the constitutional abortion ban. ‘You have a sincerely held view at a time but I am comfortable,’ he said, somewhat hesitantly. ‘I respect that everyone has different… it was the perspective I had at that time and that’s what it was. But I support the current position.’”

He also thinks maternity units in Ireland that are still not providing abortions should do so.

A report on expanding who is eligible for assisted suicide will be examined by a special joint parliamentary committee in Canada.

The panel of MPs and senators is considering whether so-called “medical assistance in dying” [MAiD] should be expanded to people solely suffering from mental illness and to ‘mature minors’.

It is also considering whether it should let people opt in to assisted suicide in advance before they lose the mental capacity to do so.

The committee was also tasked with studying a host of associated issues, such as the state of palliative care in Canada and the protection of Canadians with disabilities.

The government already agreed in Bill C-7 passed last March to lift the current ban on assisted dying for those suffering solely from mental illness in 2023.

It set up a separate panel of experts to advise on the rules that should apply in those cases and the panel made 19 recommendations in a report tabled earlier this month.

Two Catholic priests in northern Nigeria have been abducted after unidentified gunmen attacked their residence last week.

The kidnappers stormed St. Patrick Catholic Church in Katsina state in the early hours of 25 May, seizing Fr. Stephen Ojapa, Fr. Oliver Okpara, and two other people.

The director of social communications for the Sokoto diocese confirmed the incident in a statement and urged the faithful to pray for the safe return of the abductees.

The statement noted that there is no information as to the whereabouts of the four people seized during the raid.

This latest abduction is the latest in a series of kidnappings and attacks that target church institutions, priests and religious men and women.

Earlier this month, the Archdiocese of Kaduna announced the death of Fr. Joseph Aketeh Bako who died in captivity after being abducted in March by gunmen from his residence in St. John Catholic Church, Kudenda, where he had been serving as parish priest.

Nigeria, especially the northern region, has been facing security challenges in the past years, fueled by the activities of the Boko Haram Islamic extremist group, as well as clashes between nomadic herdsmen and the local indigenous farmers.

The Pro-Life Campaign has attacked the Government for allowing a campaigner against the 8th amendment to lead a key part of the review into the operation of Ireland’s abortion law even though the review is supposed to be even-handed.

Dr Deirdre Duffy, who is based in Manchester Metropolitan University, describes her work as drawing heavily on “abortion activisms, abortion trails, and reproductive justice.” When she appeared before the Citizens’ Assembly before the 2018 abortion referendum, she called for repeal of the pro-life 8th amendment.

The Pro Life Campaign described the move by Stephen Donnelly “as final proof that the Minister for Health has no intention of ensuring an objective and even-handed review of the abortion law.”

The Minister for Education, Norma Foley, was pressed at a recent meeting of the Education Committee on whether the State’s RSE programme would be imposed on all schools regardless of ethos and regardless of the wishes of parents.

Indicating she is supportive of mandatory Relationships and Sexuality Education, Fine Gael’s Jennifer Carroll MacNeil  put it to her: “Just to be clear, Minister, based on the answer you gave to Deputy [Brid] Smith, every child in Ireland will get the same technical sexual education as each other, with no opt-out for parents or schools?”

The RSE curriculum is currently being updated by the State’s advisory body on the curriculum, the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment.

Ms Foley said “what is laid down in the curriculum will be followed”.

When Ms Carroll MacNeill asked if this meant schools would still be able to opt-out of the new curriculum, Ms Foley responded: “You’ve asked the question, and I’m answering it now. What is laid down in the curriculum must be followed within our schools. And there is oversight of that by our inspectorate.”

Minister Simon Coveney’s response to the arrest of Cardinal Joseph Zen in Hong Kong is “tame” and displays a diplomacy that is “terrified by its own shadow”, said Independent TD Carol Nolan.

In a response to a parliamentary question from Ms Nolan, the Minister for Foreign Affairs did not specify if he will raise the Catholic prelate’s arrest directly with China.

Minister Coveney said he was “concerned” about Cardinal Zen’s arrest and added that it is “the latest in a series of actions under the National Security Law that impinge upon fundamental freedoms for Hong Kong”.

“Ireland will continue to raise concerns directly with China and to address these issues in the appropriate multilateral fora,” Mr Coveney continued in his response.

Commenting on Minister Coveney’s statement, Ms Nolan told The Irish Catholic that “Ireland’s response, and the PQ reply in particular, while welcome and better than nothing, is very much as tame and muted a response as we have to expect.

“We seem more concerned with not saying anything remotely offensive than forthrightly and forcefully condemning such actions,” she continued.