The few remaining restrictions on abortion, including conscience protections for staff at Ireland’s hospitals, have been called into question by pro-choice campaigners.

Niall Behan, chief executive of the Irish Family Planning Association (IFPA), called for a full decriminalisation of abortion.

Of the 19 maternity hospitals across Ireland, only ten provide full abortion ‘services’. Behan described this as “absolutely outrageous”.

Regarding the law in operation, he said there are a number of areas that need to be changed. “The most urgent and the most important for us right at the moment is the 12-week limit, which is excluding women from abortion care.”

Parliamentarians in the UK have compiled a dossier on the assisted suicide legislation that includes horror stories of how such laws have gone wrong in other jurisdictions.

The All-Party Parliamentary Group for Dying Well, chaired by Danny Kruger MP, highlighted among others the case of Kurt Huschle in Colorado.

Diagnosed with incurable bile-duct cancer at 58, he was eligible for assisted suicide as he was thought to have less than six months left to live. Subsequently, he was prescribed a cocktail of lethal drugs and found a pharmacy that was able to supply it in liquid form. He and his wife were told that the process from ingestion to death would take two to four hours.

However, contrary to expectations, he did not pass away peacefully.

“With every sip he’s choking and coughing, choking and coughing”, his wife Susan said.

After 20 minutes, he began to gasp unevenly. It seemed that he had lost consciousness but more than four hours after taking the drug, he was still alive. Frightened, Susan realised that her husband might still be partially conscious and able to hear her. She then called a doctor asking for help.

That evening, more than 8 hours after ingesting the lethal drug, Kurt sat in bed, retched and stopped breathing. Susan said she had not been able to say a peaceful farewell, nor had it been the goodbye they wanted.

Israel announced on Tuesday that the country will begin allowing same-sex couples, single fathers and transgender individuals to pursue parental surrogacy.

The news was delivered by Israeli health minister Nitzan Horowitz, who said the rules will take effect on Jan. 11.

The health ministry said the new rules will allow ‘equal access’ to surrogacy across Israel.

Parenting children through surrogacy had previously been banned for same-sex couples, single men and transgender people in Israel.

Israel’s highest court ruled last February that the ban was unconstitutional and current laws stipulate that surrogacy for parenthood is open only to heterosexual married couples or single women who have a genetic connection to the baby.

“The sweeping exclusion of homosexual men from the use of surrogacy is viewed as ‘suspicious’ discrimination, suggesting that this part of the population is inferior,” Supreme Court President Esther Hayut and Justices Hanan Melcer and Neal Hendel wrote at the time.

Sinn Fein’s leader has called for legislators to make a decision on euthanasia, saying the political system has “dragged its heels” on the issue.

Mary Lou McDonald said that campaigners such as Vicky Phelan had made “a really compelling case”. The Irish College of Psychiatrists issued a major policy document just before Christmas opposing assisted suicide.

Ms McDonald added that although the issue was “fraught and sensitive”, that did not absolve legislators from taking action and that the debate must not drag on “endlessly for another decade”.

McDonald added: “I think we are now at a point where we need to have the conversation. We need to listen to the evidence, we need to listen to all of the perspectives and then we need to take a decision.”

McDonald said that while she had yet to take a firm position on the issue, a decision was needed sooner rather than later. “I have an open mind on it,” she said. “I don’t have a fixed or a firm view, except that the political system has dragged its heels.”

Parliament approved the new law in December, following a constitutional court ruling on the issue.

The new rules explicitly exclude minors or those with mental health conditions.

An absolute ban on assisted suicide was lifted by a federal court last year, which ruled that it “violated the right of self-determination”.

But the legal punishment up to that point, up to five years in prison, will remain in place for those who kill another person at their “serious and emphatic request”.

The Indian government has blocked Mother Teresa’s charity from receiving funds from abroad in a decision made on Christmas Day.

The rejection of the application comes less than two weeks after Hindu hardliners accused the charity of carrying out forced conversions of Hindus to Christianity in a home for girls it runs in Vadodara in the state of Gujarat.

The accusations, which the charity fiercely denies, were that the charity was “luring” poor young Hindu women into becoming Christian by forcing them to read Christian texts and take part in Christian prayer.

A spokesperson for the Missionaries of Charity rejected all the allegations as unfounded. “We have not converted anyone or forced anyone to marry into Christian faith,” he said.

The accusation come amid a wave of anti-Christian intolerance and violence that has been spreading across India. Christian pastors have been attacked and church services violently disrupted in recent months as anti-Christian hysteria has grown, and over Christmas there was an unprecedented spate of attacks against the Christian community.

The refusal by the government, which is ruled by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata party (BJP), to grant a new licence to Mother Teresa’s charity has been seen by many as indicative of a growing hostility towards Christian organisations operating in India.

In a statement on Monday, the Missionaries of Charity confirmed that its renewal application had been denied, and that it would not operate any foreign funding accounts “until the matter is resolved”.

Businessman Declan Ganley’s High Court challenge to the legality of the ban on attending public religious worship which operated at stages during the Covid-19 emergency has been dismissed.

Mr Justice Charles Meenan ruled the challenge was now moot, or pointless.

Mr Ganley had argued that although the disputed regulations have lapsed, the case raised important legal issues about the balance between the right to public worship and public health and the issues could arise again in the future. To not litigate them in court would mean there was no “right to an effective remedy”, as provided by Article 13 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

However, the judge said the constitutional rights to the free practice of religion are not absolute and restrictions must be “proportionate” to the circumstances of a given time and place which depend on the extent and effects of the particular disease.

Finding that the now rescinded restrictions were disproportionate would be of little value in considering the legality of similar restrictions that could be introduced in the future to deal with a different threat, he said.

He was satisfied Mr Ganley’s application was moot and should be dismissed.

New legislation to give adopted people the right to access their birth information will be published next month, the Cabinet has been told.

This contrasts with a High Court ruling last week that dismissed concerns raised by the Adoption Authority of Ireland about whether an international adoption after a commercial surrogacy arrangement could be registered without reference to a child’s birth and genetic mothers.

Minister for Children Roderic O’Gorman received Cabinet approval on Tuesday to progress the Birth Information and Tracing Bill.

The tracing legislation was promised by Mr O’Gorman following the report by the Mother and Baby Homes Commission of Investigation earlier this year.

It will, for the first time, give adopted people the right to their birth certificates with the name of their birth mother, as well as documentation from their early lives.

The proposed legislation will allow adopted people to access records related to their own identity. The information covered includes birth certificates, birth, early life, care and medical information and other items.

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/social-affairs/proposed-law-to-enable-adopted-people-to-access-birth-data-1.4761491

The High Court has ordered the Minister for Foreign Affairs to make a decision on an application for an Irish passport for a child who was born in the UK via a surrogacy arrangement as the Judge came down on the side of the applicant.

The boy’s parents are a married same-sex couple residing in Britain. One of his fathers is a dual citizen of Ireland and the UK, but he is not a biological parent.

The court heard that the boy’s UK birth certificate initially recorded the name of his birth mother and his biological father. However, the England Family Court later issued a parental order which reassigned parentage from the birth mother to the boy’s non-biological father.

It follows, Mr Justice Max Barrett ruled, that this parental status is also recognised under Irish law, contrary to the Department’s claim that a parent was “understood to mean either the mother or father of the child or a male adopter”.

The judge directed that a decision on the passport application be made but said it did not seem necessary for the court to direct that the minister issue the boy a passport. That is because if the minister does not appeal the decision, a passport will be issued and if an appeal is lodged, then a stay on the court’s decision would need to be granted.

The Northern Assembly’s rejection of a bill to outlaw most abortions on the grounds of disability has been described as a “profound and fundamental failure”, by the North’s Catholic Bishops.

In a statement today, the prelates said it is a matter of grave concern for all those who uphold the preciousness and dignity of every human life that the current legal framework in Northern Ireland permits abortion, to the point of birth, where an unborn child is found to be suffering from a serious but non-life-threatening disability.

“The nature of such a disability is not defined in our legislation but will include conditions such as Down’s Syndrome. The effect of similar legislation in other parts of the world, especially in Scandinavia, has been to screen out of existence an entire sector of humanity,” they wrote.

“The Severe Fetal Impairment Abortion (Amendment) Bill, recently voted on in our Assembly, was a measured and reasonable attempt to address this injustice and remove from the current abortion regulations discrimination against unborn children with non-fatal disabilities.  Its defeat in the Northern Ireland Assembly represents a profound and fundamental failure to respect the equality of all persons, born and unborn, in our society”.