Men play a critical role in determining whether a woman chooses to have an abortion, according to a survey released last week.

“You can’t be serious about ending abortion unless you are serious about engaging men on the issue,” said Roland Warren, president and CEO of Care Net, a US network of Christian crisis-pregnancy centres.

Care Net released the finding of a Feb. 25-March 26, 2021, survey of 1,000 American men whose spouse or partner had had an abortion. Findings show that roughly 3 out of every 4 men, or 74%, said their partner talked with them about getting the abortion before going through with it.

Forty-two percent of the men surveyed said they either “strongly urged” or “suggested” their partner have an abortion when they learned the woman was pregnant. An additional 31% say they did not give their partner any advice one way or the other.

Among the men surveyed who remained silent about the abortion decision, 63% said they thought it was “her choice” to make, and 61% said they were “ready to support her either way.” Nearly 20 out of every 100 men said they “didn’t feel they could say anything.”

The study found that 38% of men whose partner had an abortion think they were the “most influential on her decision.”

The data also reveals that “men play a key role in breaking the cycle of abortion and building strong families,” Warren said.

Less than one in nine GPs are administering medical abortions, while just over half of the country’s maternity units carry out surgical terminations, over three years after they became legal here.

Since January 2019, abortions have been allowed for any reason during the first 12 weeks of pregnancy, which is when the vast majority of terminations took place.

For the first nine weeks, they are allowed in GP surgeries.

According to Freedom of Information (FOI) figures released to Newstalk, only 405 GPs provide them.

There are about 3,500 GPs across the country – meaning over 88% do not.

Peigin Doyle from Sligo Action for ‘Reproductive Rights Access’ admits no Sligo GP has signed up for the HSE MyOptions website to provide medical abortions in that county.

An amendment that would have introduced assisted suicide into the text of a healthcare bill was withdrawn in the House of Lords yesterday.

Several peers from across the political spectrum opposed the amendment, which would have forced the government to submit an “assisted suicide” bill to Parliament within a year of the passage of the Health and Care Bill.

Lord Daniel Michael Gerald Moylan challenged the motion stating, “[…] the idea that we can impose on the government something it doesn’t want to do, for which it has no electoral mandate and which is not on its policy platform, seems like an abuse.”

Other peers noted the relationship between assisted suicide and palliative care is always inversely proportional.

Lord Robert Thomas William McCrea, of the Democratic Unionist Party, added during the debate in the Upper House that “[…] an assisted suicide bill, however well intended, would alter society’s attitude toward the elderly, the seriously ill, and the disabled, sending the message that assisted suicide is an option they should consider.”

Children born to surrogates suffer from a “legislative vacuum” in Ireland, the government’s special rapporteur on child protection has told politicians today.

New rules proposed by the Department of Health will provide stronger regulation but only for domestic, non-commercial surrogacy. Most European countries ban commercial surrogacy outright on the basis that it commodifies children and exploits low-income women.

Conor O’Mahony, the government’s special rapporteur on child protection and a law professor at University College Cork, told the joint committee on children and youth that there is a legal limbo for children born through commercial surrogacy abroad.

“Even if domestic surrogacy is regulated, there will always be families who will opt for international arrangements, whether due to the availability of surrogates or other issues. It is unsustainable to allow these families to remain in the legal twilight zone they currently inhabit,” he is expected to say today.

Drafted by Labour education spokesman Aodhán Ó Ríordáin, the proposed Bill would amend legislation introduced in 2018 that limited to 25 per cent of the first-year intake the number of such places.

Mr Ó Ríordáin said the Bill, which has not been opposed by the Government to date, would remove what he calls an “elitist” piece of legislation included, he argued, solely at the behest of certain influential fee-paying schools.

“This is a deliberate attempt to keep the royal bloodlines of succession through particular elite second-level schools, and it was done at the behest of those elitist second-level schools,” he said on Monday.

The JMB counters: “Schools, like families, are not solely operational entities; they thrive on relationships, values, continuity, local community cohesion and loyalties built up over time and, indeed, over generations,” it says.

The submissions suggest that the numbers of schools which operate the parent and grandparent rule is a small minority, and the criterion is usually below that of catchment area, feeder schools and the sibling rule.

Most women in England and Wales no longer have a child before they are 30, official figures show for the first time.

An Office for National Statistics (ONS) report found 50.1 per cent of women born in 1990 were childless by their 30th birthday.

It is the first time there has been more childless women than mothers below the age of 30 since records dating back to 1920 began.

A third of women born in that decade had not mothered a child by the age of 30, for comparison.

Women born in the 1940s were the most likely to have had at least one child by that milestone (82 per cent).

But there has been a long-term trend of people opting to have children later in life and reduce family size ever since, the ONS said.

The most common age to have a child is now 31, the ONS estimates based on latest data, compared to 22 among baby boomers born in the late 1940s.

A Catholic priest was killed in a knife attack in Vietnam on Saturday.

Father Giuse (Joseph) Trần Ngọc Thanh, O.P, was attacked Jan. 29 at a mission of Dak Mot, about 40 miles northwest of Kon Tum. He was hearing confessions before the last Mass of the evening, according to his religious order, the Dominicans.

The Diocese of Kon Tum said he was murdered in his house, and that a suspect has been arrested.

Fr. Trần was born in 1981 in Ho Chi Minh City, and took his religious vows in 2010. He was ordained a priest in 2018.

A funerary ceremony was held Jan. 30 at the Dominican monastery in Kon Tum.

His interment will be held Jan. 31 at St. Martin Chapel in Biên Hòa.

“Please unite to pray so that Father Guise’s soul may soon enjoy the glory of God,” the Diocese of Kon Tum said Jan. 30.

Five US Senators have raised the “alarming” prosecution of a Christian politician in Finland on grounds she is guilty of ‘hate speech’.

Päivi Räsänen, a former interior minister, had attacked the Lutheran Church in Finland in 2019 for associating with a Gay Pride parade. In a tweet she quoted a Biblical passage condemning homosexual acts. The case has sparked a debate about ‘hate speech’ laws versus free speech. She potentially faces time in prison.

The Senators said in a letter to the US Ambassador-At-Large for International Religious Freedom: “We are greatly concerned that the use of Finnish hate speech law is tantamount to a secular blasphemy law. It could open the door for prosecution of other devout Christians, Muslims, Jews and adherents of other faiths for publicly stating their religious beliefs that may conflict with secular trends. We believe that, regardless of whether Finnish prosecutors agree with the religious beliefs that MP Räsänen and Bishop Pohjola have expressed, all people have a fundamental right to the freedoms of religion and speech, which should be upheld without fear of government interference,”

Räsänen, who is also a doctor, was brought before court last week. Finland’s Prosecutor General brought three criminal charges against Räsänen over the contents of a pamphlet Räsänen wrote on these topics in 2004, for engaging in a debate on a 2019 radio show and for a tweet containing a picture of Bible verses Räsänen directed at her church leadership. Bishop Juhana Pohjola also faced trial alongside her for publishing a pamphlet for his congregation that Räsänen wrote on the topic over 17 years ago.

He made his remarks in the Seanad on Thursday.

The appointment was already under attack over the manner in which it happened.

Health Minister, Stephen Donnelly had given a public guarantee that a transparent tendering process would take place to ensure the appointment of an ‘independent’ chairperson. Last week, however, the Minister was forced to concede in replies to parliamentary questions from TDs Peader Tóibín and Michael Collins that a “small number of candidates, identified as having suitable experience for the position, were contacted and invited to apply for the role of independent Chair.”

Potential tenderers for research positions with the Review were told that the Department “has a very limited budget available for this project” and would be looking for value for money.

Furthermore, a spokesperson for the Pro-Life Campaign noted the “embarrassing speed” with which The National Women’s Council welcomed the appointment of barrister Marie O’Shea as chairperson, and the way they paid tribute to the Minister’s decision to abandon the tendering process “has all the signs of a coordinated effort to move things in a particular direction, with the Minister caving to the demands of strident pro-abortion campaigners”.

Recognising international commercial surrogacy arrangements, where women in foreign countries are paid to have babies for Irish parents, could be “difficult to justify”, according to an options paper drawn up by officials for a special Oireachtas committee. Some European countries ban all forms of surrogacy.

It says: “Commercial surrogacy raises complex ethical issues and concerns about commodification of children and exploitation of surrogate mothers. These issues are heightened in international surrogacy, especially where intending parents from a wealthy country such as Ireland undertake a commercial arrangement with a surrogate mother in a poorer country, or one where the rights of women are less protected.”

The options paper drawn up by officials to guide TDs and Senators on the committee contains a numbers of warnings about international surrogacy. It also appears to reject recommendations by the Government’s special rapporteur on children’s rights relating to the recognition of international surrogacy arrangements.

It says legislation enabling commercial surrogacy arrangements outside the State, while prohibiting such arrangements in the State, “would create a double standard”. It adds that any route to attempt legal recognition should not have negative consequences for the identity rights of those children and the rights of the surrogate mother and genetic parents who provide the gametes.

Noting widely condemned adoption practices of the past, it says: “From the perspective of the child, informed by historic adoption practices, it can be hugely distressing for an individual to learn of possible exploitation of a birth mother.