People who do not have a religion, or who no longer practise, have been urged to mark ‘no religion’ on the upcoming census form.

Atheist group, the Humanist Association of Ireland (HAI) said this is the only way to ensure a fairer representation and a greater voice for the non-religious when key policy decisions such as the allocation of resources and funding are being made.

However, research shows that those who do not regularly practice a religion, often still believe in God, pray, have their children baptised etc.

HAI chief executive Jillian Brennan said she believed the 468,421 ‘no religion’ number in 2016 would have been higher if not for what she described as “the biased nature of the census form question that assumed a religious affiliation by asking ‘what is your religion’?”

This “leading religion question” had, in the past, “encouraged many people with no religious beliefs to tick a religious box purely out of cultural affiliation,” she said.

In response to lobbying from the HAI and other groups, the Census Advisory Group agreed to change the wording from “What is your religion, if any?” to the tick box “No Religion”, which is now also the first option on the religion question checklist. This will make comparisons with past years extremely difficult.

Dozens of doctors urged the Government on Wednesday to quickly settle terms for the new National Maternity Hospital (NMH), saying “misinformation” over the site’s ownership is “derailing” the project. This was followed on Thursday by a letter from Dublin City councillors repeating the same allegations the doctors vehemently denied.

The hospital will be built on the same site as St Vincent’s hospital, which already performs abortions. St Vincent’s private and public hospitals were founded by the Religious Sisters of Charity. They expressed a willingness to perform abortions even when still nominally under a Catholic ethos.

Senior medical figures including NMH master Prof Shane Higgins and three of his predecessors have said the deal now on the table includes “unbreakable legal stipulations” to guarantee that all procedures allowed under Irish law will be provided “including abortion, tubal ligation, gender affirming surgery and assisted reproduction”.

They went on to say that concerns raised about the new hospital on the St Vincent’s campus at Elm Park being “curtailed by any religious ethos are misleading and ill-informed” and it was “manifestly false” to suggest that only full State ownership of the site can assure “the avoidance of religious influence”.

Despite the Doctors’ claims, more than half of Dublin city’s councillors signed a letter on Thursday calling on the Minister for Health to reconsider plans to build the new hospital on private land at St Vincent’s Hospital.

In their letter the councillors express “grave concern” over the mooted plan as it would “result in a privately owned, religiously influenced hospital” where maternity and obstetric services such as abortions, IVF and gender reassignment surgery among others would not go ahead if the hospital was located on land owned by the Catholic Church.

The US Senate took the first steps toward a vote on a radically pro-abortion bill that aims to invalidate nearly every pro-life, state law in the country and ensure a legislative right to abortion up to birth in the event of the Supreme Court striking down the current abortion regime which is based solely on past judicial decisions.

The Democratic Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer moved the vote on the Women’s Health Protection Act last week.

The WHPA, backed by the Biden administration, effectively codifies abortion on demand throughout pregnancy, going so far as to nullify state pro-life laws, including those that protect unborn children after they’re able to survive outside the womb. The bill would forbid states from enacting even the most modest of abortion regulations such as informed-consent laws, waiting periods, ultrasound requirements, and bans on abortions chosen for discriminatory reasons (such as the unborn child’s sex or diagnosis with a disability).

The same measure has already passed the House on a nearly party-line vote, with only one Democrat, Henry Cueller of Texas, voting against it.

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.