Children who grow up in households without two biological married parents experience more behavioural issues, attain less education, and have lower incomes in adulthood, but the reason why this occurs is not fully known, according to Kay Hymowitz of the Manhattan Institute.

Commenting on an article by Melanie Wasserman, “The Disparate Effects of Family Structure,” published in the spring 2020 issue of The Future of Children, Hymowitz says that, while the reasons for such outcomes remains out of reach, the most confident of Wasserman’s conclusions is that ”the absence of a biological father in the home yields especially negative consequences for boys.”

Wasserman’s study focuses on differences according to race and gender, but the evidence is inconclusive as to why boys should suffer more in some areas, like education, than girls.

Hymowitz does say these are questions that have become so politicized as to scare off a lot of potential researchers in other fields, such as, “Are there innate emotional, developmental, and/or neurological differences between the sexes that can explain why boys are more easily affected by family structure and the neighbourhoods where they live?”

The international human rights project has neglected freedom of religion, according to a leading religious freedom advocate.

Elyssa Koren, Director of UN Advocacy for ADF International, said that nobody should be persecuted because of their faith.

“Freedom of religion or belief, as recognised in the Report of the Commission on Unalienable rights, is indispensable for the integral development of the human person and the flourishing of society as a whole”.

She added: “We welcome the approach to revitalise the international human rights project that the Commission has set out in its recent report – guided by consensus but respecting national sovereignty. While we must prevent political or ideological preferences from dominating the discourse on human rights it is vital that international engagement and discussion on this topic remains”.

Mexico’s Supreme Court ruled against a proposal that could have paved the way for the decriminalisation of abortion across the country.

In a 4-1 decision handed down last week, the court’s first bench voted down a proposal to uphold a lower court decision from the state of Veracruz. The Veracruz decision ordered the state legislature to reform its criminal code and remove any penalties for abortion during the first 12 weeks of pregnancy.

Justice Norma Pina, who voted with the majority against the proposal, voiced concerns that the court could not order another branch of government – the Veracruz legislature – to take certain actions or act as lawmakers.

“The court cannot replace the legislature to order specific legislative content, because there is no constitutional mandate to legislate,” Pina said, according to the newspaper Reforma.

“The court would fall into judicial activism,” Pina added, “which would surpass its constitutional powers.”

The Mexican bishops’ conference welcomed the decision, tweeting immediately afterward: “Today in #Mexico, a culture of life triumphs, thanks to everyone and each of you who joined together to pray and raise their voices. May life live!”

Huma Younas was just 14 when she was taken from her home in Karachi in October last year. She was transported 600km to the Punjab region, where she was forcibly converted to Islam and married off to her captor.

A court in Karachi refused to intervene as it accepted the claims of her legal husband, Abdul Jabbar, that she is 18 and willingly consented to marriage.

Since then, a new hearing has been set to consider the official record of her birth.

John Newton of Aid to the Church in Need says this news is hopeful, but the courts might find other reasons to delay.

The girl is now pregnant.

Her Lawyer, Tabassum Yousaf, said her only hope might rest with an appeal to the Supreme Court of Pakistan.

Uigher women who fled Beijing’s brutal crackdown on the Muslim minority in its northwest Xinjiang province have detailed the atrocities they suffered and witnessed including women who were forcibly sterilised, ordered to have abortions and their husbands taken away to concentration camps.

Zumret Abdullah is one witness to how the communist State “turns hospitals into terrifying places of murder”. She spent four years training as a nurse at Urumqi Medical University, then three years working in its hospital maternity ward.

She estimated she saw about 90 forced abortions in those three years. Expectant mothers were made to swallow pills to abort foetuses or, if more than five months pregnant, had to have fatal injections into the heads of their unborn child. ‘I witnessed a lot of tragedies there,’ said Zumret, 30.

‘The husbands were not allowed inside. They take in the women, who are always crying. Afterwards, they just threw the foetus in a plastic bag like it was trash. One mother begged to die after her seven-month-old baby was killed. It took three more days to give birth. It was a proper baby. She asked if they could bury it but the doctors would not give it to the family.

‘These women suffered so much. Doctors would claim the women wanted abortions but then you would hear them chatting in the office and learn the truth.’

Zumret quit her job, unable to bear the trauma. ‘I was having mental problems, seeing babies in my dreams. I still have nightmares,’ she added.

She said all the victims were Uighur, despite many Han Chinese moving to Urumqi, the regional capital. ‘It never happened to a Chinese person once. This was just to control the Uighur population.’

A new global survey has found significant variations on whether people think belief in God is needed to underpin good moral values.

The Pew Research Center surveyed 38,426 people in 34 countries in 2019 asking them: “What is the connection between belief in God and morality? And how important are God and prayer in people’s lives?”

People in the emerging economies included in this survey tended to be more religious and more likely to consider religion to be important in their lives, and they were also more likely than people in this survey who live in advanced economies to say that belief in God is necessary to be moral.

Within countries, people who are relatively nonreligious are more inclined than highly religious people to say it is not necessary to believe in God to be a moral person.

Despite variances in religious observance, a median of 62% across the countries surveyed say that religion plays an important role in their lives, while 61% agree that God plays an important role in their lives and 53% say the same about prayer. Since 1991, the share of people who say God is important to them has increased in Russia and Ukraine, while the opposite has occurred over the same time span in Western Europe.

In the eight Western European publics surveyed, a median of just 22% say belief in God is necessary to be moral, while in the six Eastern European nations studied, a median of 33% share the same view. Prior research establishes the European continent as increasingly secular on the whole, though among Europeans, there are notable differences between Eastern and Western countries in attitudes toward religion and religious minorities.

The letter was organised by the leader of Aontu, Peadar Toibin.

The letter asks the Taoiseach, Tánaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs that Ireland would “immediately condemn the barbaric measures being used by the Chinese Government to slash the Uighur Muslim population in China”.

“The campaign has been labelled a ‘demographic genocide’ by international experts. We are deeply concerned about the ‘detention camps’ to which women are being sent if they have more than the ‘permitted’ number of children.”

It adds that news outlets are now reporting that China has subjected “hundreds of thousands of women” to forced pregnancy tests, forced birth control, sterilisation and forced abortions.

“We are deeply concerned at drone footage that shows hundreds of men and women being led blindfolded onto trains. We are very concerned at reports of men and women being detained without charge or conviction for indefinite lengths of time in ‘thought transformation camps’”.

It concludes with a direct appeal to “urgently intervene and make Ireland’s opposition to this torture known”.

The parents of a child aborted at the National Maternity Hospital after a wrongful diagnosis are threatening a court injunction to stop what they fear will be a biased inquiry.

An investigative review to be carried out by a team of experts was due to begin last year, but a dispute over membership and alleged conflicts of interest repeatedly delayed it.

The hospital now says it intends to go ahead with the review anyway, despite the ongoing objections.

In a series of strongly worded letters on behalf of the couple, the hospital has been accused of acting without transparency and accountability, and adopting a bullish approach to the matter.

The couple’s solicitor Caoimhe Haughey has written to the Taoiseach pleading with him to intervene: “I believe you will agree it is really beyond extraordinary that a hospital which is funded and indemnified by the Irish State believes it can act with such impunity and sees itself answerable to no one.”

The couple, who say they have been left mentally and physically broken, have asked to meet him personally to highlight the extent of their distress at the failure to resolve their concerns over the make-up of the inquiry.

A spokeswoman for the Taoiseach said yesterday he had requested that Health Minister Stephen Donnelly meet the couple and their solicitor to listen to their concerns and attempt to break the deadlock.

The UN’s agency for population control has hit out against sex-selective abortions in a new report. Nonetheless, it quotes the UN’s Human Rights Committee comment that “bans on sex selection are often ineffective and also infringe reproductive rights”.

In its State of World Population 2020 report, the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) writes that “From a human rights perspective, gender-biased sex selection is a harmful practice because it translates a preference for boys over girls into a deliberate prevention of female births. Unambiguously linked to discriminatory norms and behaviours, it is a malignant outcome of gender inequality.”

The 2020 report says that “[m]ore than 140 million females are considered missing today as a consequence not only of gender-biased sex selection but also of postnatal sex selection” (i.e. infanticide).

It adds that “between 2013 and 2017, about 460,000 girls in India were ‘missing’ at birth each year. According to one analysis, gender-biased sex selection accounts for about two thirds of the total missing girls”.

The report says that the UN’s Human Rights Committee, “has reminded States Parties that gender-biased sex selection is a reflection of the subordination of women and that they therefore have an obligation to address the root causes”.