The Scottish Government has announced plans that would likely vastly increase the number of places offering late-term abortions.

Following the release of statistics showing the second highest abortion numbers ever in Scotland, the SNP-led Scottish Government has released its “Women’s Health Plan” for 2021-2024.

The plan outlines proposals to prioritise increasing “access to abortion services” throughout Scotland, which would involve increasing the number of abortion clinics and hospitals that provide later-term abortions. This is described in the report as providing “mid-trimester abortion care locally or regionally for all indications” which would involve abortions taking place between 13 and 28 weeks.

The change in policy would mean that Scotland would go from having almost no locations providing abortion beyond 18-20 weeks gestation, to a situation where abortion is available at later gestations “locally or regionally for all indications”.

A new study says it has found a correspondence between a country’s abortion rate and its suicide rate.

Published in the Asian Journal of Psychiatry, a pre-proof details the research that was carried out on 62 different countries.

Despite its significance for public health, the paper says the relationship between suicide and abortion has been rarely studied.

Yet, they say investigating it can help to examine abortion in terms of views on life.

“Although a society with a high suicide rate can not necessarily be considered to be a society with less respect for human life, it is certain that a society with a higher suicide rate is more likely to be in a state where the value of life is in jeopardy. Given this, the relationship between suicide and abortion would provide insight into assessing the abortion arguments in terms of the value of life”.

Moreover, “whereas suicide among those who experienced abortion is a much-studied issue, the relationship between suicide and abortion has hardly been studied at the general population level”

The researchers found that, “the suicide and abortion rates have a significant positive association. When the relevant variables such as homicide rate, fertility rate, alcohol consumption per capita, and income level were taken into account, the suicide rate was the only significant predictor of the abortion rate.”

The data is contained in the CSO’s Population and Migration Estimates report for the year April 2020 to April 2021 which was published on Tuesday.

There were 55,500 births and 32,700 deaths in the year to April, giving a natural increase in the population of 22,800. But it’s the lowest level of natural increase recorded since the 2000 population estimates.

Nonetheless, a combination of positive net migration and natural increase gave population growth of 34,000 in the year to April 2021 to push the population to an estimated 5.01m, the first time it has risen over five million since 1851.

A “massive housing crisis” that is forcing so many to live in “unsuitable temporary accommodation” is contributing to family breakdown, the Archbishop of Dublin has warned.

Archbishop Dermot Farrell challenged the State to do more to provide affordable homes and said rules brought in following the banking crisis had backfired in terms of providing affordable homes.

“People are living in hubs waiting for homes. Some of the temporary accommodation is completely unsuitable for families. It is very difficult to sustain family life in those sorts of settings. It can contribute to family breakdown,” he said.

Dr Farrell said the State had an obligation to “provide homes for people that are affordable”.

“Family life is stressful at the best of times, but if everybody is confined to one room, where you live, sleep and cook, that creates a lot of extra stresses and strains,” he said.

“These are things that impact on family life and lead to family breakdown. It is a major crisis in this country which has to be addressed.”

America’s prestigious Harvard University, founded by Puritan settlers almost 400 years ago, has a new chief chaplain and he doesn’t believe in God.

Greg Epstein, 44, took up the role this week, becoming the first atheist elected president of Harvard’s organization of chaplains.

He has been the university’s humanist, or atheist, chaplain since 2005 and will lead a group of more than 40 chaplains who represent some twenty different religions and beliefs including Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism and Buddhism.

In response, Princeton professor, Robert George, said he was not surprised that Harvard would have an atheist chaplain as it long ago seems to have shed any Christian, biblical, or theistic commitments. “The same is true for most of its peer institutions. I suppose that these days it is officially non-sectarian, but surely its policies, practices, and guiding understandings, principles, and norms reflect secular progressive ideas broadly speaking, and Woke ideology more specifically. An earlier generation of secular progressives would have denied that their ideology was a religion and, indeed, would have insisted—implausibly—that they had left religion behind. . . . Perhaps Harvard is now being clear-headed and honest in recognizing that secular progressive/Woke ideology is indeed a religion—for all intents and purposes the established religion of the University”.

The Government is expected to approve a plan to remove the vast majority of remaining Covid-19 restrictions over the autumn months, including restrictions on special sacramental occasions. In some parishes, they have already been taking place.

First Holy communion and Confirmation ceremonies can resume from 6 September under the plan being drawn up.

Religious ceremonies can proceed at 50 per cent venue capacity, regardless of immunity status of attendees.

All remaining restrictions on religious ceremonies are due to end on October 22nd, such as requirements for physical distancing; private indoor mask wearing; and limits on numbers attending indoor and outdoor events.

The measures being announced today will mark the most significant change to how the pandemic is managed since March of last year, shifting responsibility to people to use their own judgment and personal responsibility rather than the Government exhaustively regulating social interactions.

A Catholic priest, five Religious sisters from the Missionaries of Charity, the order founded by Mother Theresa, and 14 disabled children from an orphanage were safely evacuated from Kabul last week.

Father Giovanni Scalese had spent eight years in Kabul, offering daily Mass for foreign residents in the city at the only Catholic church in Afghanistan, located inside the Italian embassy.

“I would never have returned to Italy without these children,” Father Scalese told the Italian newspaper La Repubblica.

The children were residents of an orphanage founded in 2006 by the Missionaries of Charity, which has now been forced to close due to the Taliban’s takeover.

Sister Bhatti Shahnaz, another Catholic religious sister who arrived in Rome on the evacuation flight, also worked with disabled children in Afghanistan with her community, the Sisters of Charity of St. Jeanne Antide.

“The 50 intellectually disabled children we looked after are still there,” she said with tears in her eyes.

Italy has welcomed 2,659 evacuated Afghans, about a third of them children, according to the Italian Defense Minister Lorenzo Guerini.

Father Matteo Sanavio, the president of the NGO For the Children of Kabul, said: “We really must thank the Italian forces for their work and dedication, for everything … They managed to bring the nuns to safety, these little seeds of Christian charity present in Afghanistan, and above all, we must thank them for having brought our children, those of the Missionaries of Charity, who have severe disabilities.”

The long-time partner of a woman who died is suing the Minister for Social Protection to grant him the Widower’s Pension despite him not having been married.

The action has been taken by John O’Meara, whose partner of over twenty years Ms Michelle Batey died on January 31 last as a result of contacting Covid-19.

He claims that sections of the 2005 Social Welfare Consolidation Act which excludes him from receiving the pension, because he was not married to nor had entered into a formal civil partnership with his late partner, despite their long relationship together amounts to a discrimination.

The couple, who never married, have three children together, all of whom are minors. The court heard that Mr O’Meara had planned to marry Ms Batey but they couple were unable to go through with their plans.

The Italian State rescued a Christian Afghan family from Kabul last week.

They were brought out on an airlift organised by the Italian government to rescue Italian nationals and Afghans at risk.

A Catholic charity, the Fondazione Meet Human, accepted responsibility for the group of people once in Italy, which includes eight minors.

The Italian military helped solve the problem of getting them to the Kabul airport, an operation that was successful on Thursday of last week.

“We are grateful to Italian civilian and military authorities for this complicated and demanding rescue operation, not to mention the many people who worked for its success. It might be a drop in the ocean, but the ocean is made up of drops,” President of the charity, Daniele Nembrini, told AsiaNews.

A large and varied group of human rights experts and advocates for religious freedom have urged U.S. Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, to re-designate Nigeria as a Country of Particular Concern. The State Department is currently preparing a list of Countries of Particular Concern (CPC) for nations who have “engaged in or tolerated particularly severe violations of religious freedom”. The list will be released in December.

“Now is not the time for the United States to pull back its pressure on a regime whose ham-fisted overreach is exacerbating its country’s human rights problems. The pressure must remain, not only because of religious freedom concerns, but because of all the human rights concerns facing Nigeria. Any let up by the U.S. and the international community will signal to the people of Nigeria that they have been abandoned. We cannot stand by while the Nigerian government allows terrorists and criminals to attack faith communities and commit gross human rights violations with impunity. Nigeria must remain a Country of Particular Concern,” said Kelsey Zorzi, Director of Global Religious Freedom for ADF International.