The National Academy of Medicine in Argentina has warned that the abortion law passed with the support of President Alberto Fernández’ administration violates the fundamental principles of medical ethics and the defense of life.

Argentina’s law legalizing elective abortion up to 14 weeks of pregnancy was passed by the country’s legislature Dec. 30, 2020 and was published in the government’s Official Bulletin Jan. 15, 2021. The decree that regulates the law was published in the Official Bulletin August 15.

In response, the National Academy of Medicine said that it has an obligation “to alert society, institutions and professionals about resolutions that are against the fundamental principles of medical practice, ethics and the defense of life.”

The academy reiterated “its respect for life from the moment of fertilization,” and criticized the euphemistic definition of abortion as “as access to the voluntary interruption of pregnancy.”

Calling abortion “the most pressing human-rights challenge of our time,” Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone on Sunday invoked the excommunication of prominent Catholic segregationists in the early 1960s as an example of a legitimate response to pro-abortion Catholics politicians who support “a great moral evil.”

In an op-ed published in The Washington Post, the leader of the Archdiocese of San Francisco pushed back against recent statements by Catholic politicians who have denounced a new state law in Texas that prohibits abortions after six weeks of pregnancy.

The op-ed doesn’t mention any politicians by name, and it stops short of advocating that any specific pro-abortion politicians be excommunicated. President Joseph Biden and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, both professed Catholics, have been among those who have come out strongly against the Texas law.

The Taliban takeover of Afghanistan has raised concerns about radical Islamism across the region, particularly amongst Christians.

In neighbouring Pakistan, Church leaders are concerned about the threat of terrorist attacks on churches. At a meeting between senior Catholic and Protestant leaders in Pakistan it was agreed that security at churches on Sundays would be increased. It is feared that the Taliban-affiliated Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and other militant groups will be emboldened by the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan and launch attacks on churches.

Meanwhile the situation for Christians in Afghanistan itself is worrying. Many Christians were unable to be evacuated on the US-led airlift. The former US religious freedom ambassador, Sam Brown, warned about a genocide being carried out against Christians and other religious minorities in Afghanistan:

“It’s a deadly and catastrophic situation and could easily lead to genocide.”

There have been reports of members of the Taliban going door-to-door in Afghanistan looking for religious minorities, including Christians.

It has also been alleged that the Taliban have been checking people’s phones for digital copies of the Bible and have threatened to kill those who they do find with Bibles on their phones.

The communist President of China has argued that “human rights,” “freedom,” and “democracy” are bourgeois, Western values that the Marxist country will never accept.

On September 2, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)’s daily newspaper People’s Daily offered Xi Jinping’s answer to the question “Why should we take a clear stand against the so-called ‘universal values’ of the West?”

The “universal values” Xi Jinping is talking about are “the values ​​of ‘freedom,’ ‘democracy,’ and ‘human rights’ advocated by the modern western bourgeoisie.”

It is a “clever” strategy of the international bourgeoisie, led by “the United States and other Western countries,” continues Xi Jinping, to “package these values as ‘universal values’ and promote them globally, which confuses many people.” The truth for the Chinese president is that, if one adheres as he does to Marxist dialectical materialism, there are no “universal values” valid for all stages of history. Democracy, freedom, and human rights were useful, valid tools used by the bourgeoisie to defeat the “feudal autocracy.” In the next stage of history, they are reactionary weapons to “maintain the rule of the capital” over the proletarians, and should be liquidated by socialism .

Promoting freedom, democracy, and human rights as “universal values” creates an “ideological fog” whose “essence and harm” should be exposed.

A bishop in the UK is warning an attempt to legalize assisted dying working its way through the House of Lords sends the message “that some lives are no longer worth fighting for.”

Baroness Molly Meacher’s private member’s Assisted Dying Bill is set to get its second reading – where it will be debated in the House of Lords – in the autumn.

The proposed legislation would allow terminally ill patients in their last six months of life to commit medically assisted suicide with the permission of two doctors and a judge.

Bishop Patrick McKinney of Nottingham said it is “one of the most pressing moral issues of our time.”

“What this means in practice is that seriously ill people, across England and Wales, can be supplied with lethal drugs by NHS healthcare professionals, with the deliberate intention of helping the patient to end their life. Enthusiasts for a change in the law like to euphemistically label this controversial proposal as ‘assisted dying’, when in fact what they are demanding is assisted suicide for seriously unwell, vulnerable people,” the bishop said in a video statement.

Scotland’s decision to ignore public opposition and push forward with a home abortion regime is “deeply concerning,” according to a Catholic Church spokesperson.

Anthony Horan, the head of the Catholic Parliamentary Office of the Scottish bishops’ conference, said the government’s decision “rides roughshod over democratic convention” by deliberately setting out “to diminish the views of thousands of individuals who responded to a consultation on home abortions.”

“The Scottish Government shockingly sought to downplay those individuals who raised concerns, labelling a significant number of the responses as ‘organized by pro-life or faith groups’ as if to downgrade their importance. The same treatment was not given to pro-abortion groups,” he said in a Sept. 1 statement.

“Not only is the Scottish Government risking the health and wellbeing of vulnerable women and their unborn children, for whom abortion is always fatal, it also rides roughshod over democratic convention. It is dangerous for women, and it is dangerous for democracy,” he said.

Pope Francis has denounced the modern “throwaway culture” that discards unwanted human beings through abortion and euthanasia.

In a wide-ranging interview with Spain’s COPE radio station, the pope once again compared the practice of abortion to hiring a hit man to assassinate somebody who stands in your way.

Regarding Europe’s demographic winter, the pope pointed to abortion as a root cause.

“This throwaway culture has marked us. And it marks the young and the old,” he said. “It has a strong influence on one of the dramas of today’s European culture.”

“In Italy, the average age is 47 years old. In Spain, I think it is older,” he continued. “That is to say, the pyramid has been inverted. It is the demographic winter of births, in which there are more cases of abortion.”

He also defended the Vatican deal with China’s communist government on the appointment of Catholic bishops, saying an uneasy dialogue is better than no dialogue at all.

He compared it to the Vatican’s dialogue with East European countries during the Cold War which, he said, eventually resulted in many freedoms for the Church there.

People in Scotland will be able to self-identify their sex in next year’s census, official guidance has said.

This means Scots will not be required to give the same sex as that recorded on their birth certificate and a voluntary question on trans status will follow allowing people to identify as non-binary.

National Records of Scotland, who are responsible for the census, said people do not need a gender recognition certificate to identify as a different sex from the one registered at birth.

The census was delayed a year in Scotland due to the pandemic, while England, Wales and Northern Ireland held their counts earlier this year.

In this year’s census in England and Wales, people were asked the voluntary question of: “Is the gender you identify with the same as your sex registered at birth?”

The Office of National Statistics said: “Your answer helps your local community by allowing charities, public bodies, and local and central government to understand what services people might need.

“This information helps monitor equality between groups of people of different gender identities.

“Your answer will help public bodies to identify discrimination or social exclusion based on gender identity and work to stop it from happening.”

https://www.independent.ie/news/participants-able-to-self-identify-their-sex-in-scottish-census-40807422.html

There has been a call on Western governments to include Christians in their intake of Afghan refugees.

A charity that supports persecuted Christians helped 400 escape Afghanistan, with a further 400 supported by them still in the country and another 1200 that the charity is currently helping to escape.

The figures come from an article by Barnabas Fund Patron, Lord Carey, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, in the London Daily Telegraph.

Before the evacuation, the Christian population of Afghanistan was estimated as including several hundred families in hiding by the charity. Carey estimates the total number as between 5,000 to 8,000. Barnabas fund is

Lord Carey said he was “dispirited that Christians have seemingly been overlooked by the Government even though they face the most extreme dangers under Taliban rule”.

He added “the small community of Christians are converts from Islam liable for punishment for apostasy under the Taliban. The Hanafi school of sharia which predominates in Afghanistan specifies death for male apostates and imprisonment for female apostates. The Taliban have a record of ultra-strict interpretation of sharia”.

A university in England has refused to officially recognise a Catholic priest as a chaplain over comments that he posted on social media about assisted suicide.

The University of Nottingham, in central England, confirmed that it had declined to give official recognition to Fr. David Palmer, a priest of the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham.

“They referenced a tweet where I had referred to the proposed ‘assisted dying’ bill [introduced in Britain’s Parliament in May] as a bill to allow the NHS ‘to kill the vulnerable,’” Palmer told CNA.

“I was told it was fine for me to have this opinion, but they were concerned with how I expressed it. When I asked how they would suggest I express it, quite remarkably, they suggested I should call it ‘end of life care,’ which is a completely unacceptable policing of religious belief.”