One of Nigeria’s most powerful prelates has blasted the new US President’s move to recommence funding international abortions.

In an interview with Crux, Archbishop Ignatius Kaigama of Abuja said, “It is intriguing that one of Biden’s first official acts is to promote the destruction of human lives domestically and in developing nations.”

“This order does not stand to reason; it violates human dignity,” Kaigama said, adding, “The President should use his office to prioritize the most vulnerable, including unborn children.”

Noting that every pope since the Second Vatican Council down to Pope Francis have described the deliberate killing of a child before or after birth “as a most grievous violation of God’s commandments,” Kaigama insisted that life “must be protected with the utmost care from the moment of conception.”

Legislating for assisted suicide would undermine the absolute respect for life across society, according to the Evangelical Alliance of Ireland.

In a submission to the Oireachtas Committee on Justice, they say Gino Kenny’s Bill, by accepting the premise that some people are better off dead than alive, “fatally undermines the respect for human life that underpins a compassionate and caring society”.

“If passed into law, it will undercut the efforts of those who are trying to combat the epidemic of suicide among young people in Ireland. If we as a nation determine that killing yourself is an appropriate way to respond to suffering, then we should not be surprised if suicide increases in other contexts and among all age groups (as has happened in the Netherlands)”.

They add that respect for the value of every human life, regardless of physical or mental limitation or projected longevity, is at the core of our attitudes to many issues, including how we view capital punishment, care for the elderly, care for the disabled, palliative care, suicide prevention, homelessness, poverty, the treatment of migrants and refugees, and even military action.

“It would be extreme folly to imagine that we can unravel the value of a human life at one point in our society without undermining it at other points”.

Several former detainees from inside Uighur internment camps in China, and a guard, have told the BBC they experienced or saw evidence of an organised system of mass rape, sexual abuse and torture.

Tursunay Ziawudun, who fled Xinjiang after her release and is now in the US, said women were removed from the cells “every night” and raped by one or more masked Chinese men. She said she was tortured and later gang-raped on three occasions, each time by two or three men.

Another woman described being electrocuted as part of sexual torture: “The woman took me to the room next to where the other girl had been taken in. They had an electric stick, I didn’t know what it was, and it was pushed inside my genital tract, torturing me with an electric shock.”

A leading expert on China’s policies in Xinjiang, Adrian Zenz, told the BBC that the testimony gathered for their story was “some of the most horrendous evidence I have seen since the atrocity began”.

“This confirms the very worst of what we have heard before,” he said. “It provides authoritative and detailed evidence of sexual abuse and torture at a level clearly greater than what we had assumed.”

The Co Galway based Chairman & CEO of Rivada Networks says restrictions on public worship are in breach of the State’s guarantee of the free practice of religion in Article 44 of the Constitution.

Last November, he sought leave to bring judicial review proceedings against the Minister for Health, with Ireland and the Attorney General as notice parties.

When the matter was mentioned before Mr Justice Charles Meenan on Friday, Darren Lehane SC, for Mr Ganley, said his side were awaiting opposition parties from the respondents.

Catherine Donnelly SC, for the respondents, said those papers would be filed later that day.

The judge listed the case for further mention on February 9, when it is expected a hearing date will be sought.

The proposed Dying with Dignity Bill needs “significant changes” and does not ensure “adequate safeguards” to protect a person’s right to life, the State-funded Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission (IHREC) has warned. It did not call for the bill to be scrapped altogether.

In its submission to the Oireachtas Committee on Justice which is considering the legislation, the IHREC says that any law that would empower doctors to end the lives of patients should be guided by “the human rights model of disability” and “extensive discussions” with groups representing certain at-risk people.

In its submission, the commission underlines that “robust and adequate safeguards are vital” and that before any legislation is passed, a framework must be in place to protect a person’s right to life, right to health and palliative care and right to participate in decision-making.

An “independent oversight mechanism” responsible for reviewing and affirming a person’s declaration that they want to end their life should also be introduced.

The Catholic Archbishop of Dublin has warned that the current push to legalise euthanasia sends a message that some lives are less valuable than others.

Archbishop Dermot Farrell also said that what he described as a “vulnerable class” of people are going to suffer if the bill were to come into law.

Speaking to The Irish Catholic, Dr Farrell was emphatic about the teaching of the Church, saying, “It has to be stated very bluntly, that if it [euthanasia] comes into law at some stage, it’s not only going to encourage the acceptance of assisted suicide, but it’s also going to weaken the protection against what you might call ‘non-consensual killing’ of your vulnerable class of people.”

Meanwhile, in its response to Oireachtas Committee on Justice’s consultation on the Dying with Dignity Bill 2020, the Presbyterian Church in Ireland (PCI) has said that it would “leave vulnerable members of our society open to abuse, duress or the weight of a perceived expectation that they will relieve others of the burden of caring for them…”

TDs were also warned that it was “poorly drafted” and contained “no robust or sufficient safeguards.” In short, PCI’s submission stated that the Bill should not proceed.

The Supreme Court of Ireland ruled Friday that a hospital may withhold medical treatment contrary to the wishes of the parents of a child with severe injuries.

“The withholding of treatment to a child does not necessarily require parental consent to be lawful if it based on a properly made decision as to the best medical interests of the child and it would be contrary to medical ethics to provide the treatment,” the court wrote in its Jan. 22 decision “In the matter of JJ”.

The boy, John, had an accident in June 2020, and has since been in hospital. He has significant physical injuries, many of which he is not expected to recover from, as well as brain injuries believed to be irreversible.

The Court said the case raised “difficult, troubling and complex” issues about when the State may intervene to permit medical decisions to be taken about children contrary to their parents wishes. However, it stressed the case did not involve any move to accelerate death or raise issues about euthanasia.

The leaders of a number of small independent churches in Scotland have started legal proceedings against the Scottish Government over the closure of churches as part of covid19 restrictions.

Some representatives from the Church of Scotland, the Free Church of Scotland, the Free Church of Scotland (Continuing) and a number of other churches launched a claim for judicial review.

Rev William Philip, leader of the Tron church in Glasgow city centre, said: “We are able to do some things remotely via broadcasting but many – especially the poorest, the oldest and those most vulnerable – have no access to this.

“They are excluded completely from the possibility of Christian worship and the comfort and encouragement in life and death only this can give.

As part of the latest lockdown rules, places of worship are only permitted to conduct weddings or funerals – with the number of attendees strictly limited – and to broadcast services online.

Communal worship can continue south of the border subject to restrictions on attendance.

Poland’s constitutional court has published the rationale for its declaration that abortion for fetal abnormalities – a form of eugenics –  is unconstitutional. This gives effect to a judgement it made three months ago which caused large pro-abortion protests in the country, including the invasion of churches.

The 154-page ruling said: “In the opinion of the Tribunal, an unborn child is, as a human being — a person who enjoys innate and inalienable dignity, a subject who has the right to life; and the legal system must, according to Article 38 of the Constitution, must guarantee due protection for this central good, without which this subjectivity would be deleted.”

The ruling, which cannot be appealed, could lead to a significant reduction in the number of abortions in the country.

Until now, Polish law permitted abortion only in cases of rape or incest, a risk to the mother’s life, or fetal abnormality.

A woman discovered by chance that she was conceived using a donated egg and has written to a national newspaper seeking advice.

The college-age woman wrote to the Irish Times to say she was doing some administrative work for her mother who is sick with cancer when she came across papers from a fertility clinic detailing an assisted conception using a donor egg from twenty years ago.

Realising she is the child of this donor-IVF, but was never told by her parents, she said she is now “very angry”.

“Of course, I am glad that they had me, but they should have told me that I had a different genetic mother,” she wrote.

She shares the same physical appearance as her mother, but she found out that too was intentional: “I have the same skin tone and eye colour as my mum, but once I completed the translation of the form from the fertility clinic, I found that these were also the characteristics of the egg donor”.

She added: “While I would be curious to meet the woman who donated the egg, I would be really keen to find out if she has any of her own children. I have no siblings, so would be eager to have the opportunity to find out if I had any brothers or sisters”.