A group of family doctors has demanded that Minister for Health Simon Harris consults with GPs before legislation providing for a GP-led abortion regime is passed by the Oireachtas. The group of doctors assembled a petition that has been signed by 640 of their colleagues and which expresses concerns with the Government’s plans to have abortions readily available in Irish GP clinics and hospitals by January.

Dr Aisling Bastable accused Mr Harris of ignoring the voice of “mainstream general practice”, and called on Taoiseach Leo Varadkar and the Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin to intervene.

Dr Andrew O’Regan said: “Many GPs on the ground do not believe that general practice is the appropriate setting in which to deliver abortion because of the lack of capacity in an already overstretched environment, lack of training and availability of ultrasound and delivering on genuine freedom of conscience,” they said.

The State of Alabama passed an amendment to its constitution Tuesday that recognises the right to life of the unborn and clarifies that there is no right to abortion implicit in the document, nor any right to public funding for abortion. He amendment was passed by a majority vote of 60%.

Specifically, the text declares that “it is the public policy of this state to recognize and support the sanctity of unborn life and the rights of unborn children, most importantly the right to life in all manners and measures appropriate and lawful; and to provide that the constitution of this state does not protect the right to abortion or require the funding of abortion”.

While the result changes state-law, it does not affect the operation of abortion as that is controlled by federal law. However, if the Supreme Court case upon which that law is based, Roe v Wade, were overturned, then Alabama would be able to effect a prohibition on abortion.

In the state of West Virginia there was a similar ballot initiative passed that likewise prohibits public money being spent to fund abortions.

An Australian man has been sentenced to 10 years in jail for encouraging his wife’s suicide.

Graham Morant, 68, was convicted of counselling and aiding his wife, Jennifer Morant, to take her own life in 2014. He had been motivated by a desire to access Mrs Morant’s life insurance benefits, a judge ruled. As sole beneficiary of the policy, Morant had stood to receive A$1.4m (£770,000; $1m). Mrs Morant had suffered from chronic pain, depression and anxiety, but was not terminally ill.

Morant had pleaded not guilty to the charges, but a jury found that Mrs Morant would not have ended her life without his counselling.

The 56-year-old woman was found dead alongside a petrol generator in her car on 30 November 2014. Nearby, a note read: “Please don’t resuscitate me.”Her husband had previously driven her to a hardware store to buy the generator, the jury was told.

“You took advantage of her vulnerability as a sick and depressed woman,” he said. Morant received a maximum 10-year sentence for the charge of counselling suicide, and a six-year sentence for the charge of aiding suicide. The sentences will be served concurrently.

Two priests of the underground Catholic Church in China have been detained by authorities in Hebei Province.

One priest was reportedly taken away by personnel of the United Front Work Department on Oct. 24. A source said that the priest had been placed in detention and forced to study newly revised regulations on religious practice and to recognize the state-controlled Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association (CCPA).

The government officials were said to have warned that the Catholic Church in China was required to be autonomous from the Vatican, withstanding a provisional Vatican-Beijing agreement signed two months ago.

Another priest, on Oct. 13, was placed under home arrest so he could be indoctrinated on government policies.

Meanwhile a source said that in a village of Xuanhua Diocese, families were told that they would be fined and detained for five days if they received priests in their homes.

In addition, the Jingkai District Bureau of Ethnic and Religious Affairs Sept. 25 issued a notice banning what it described as illegal religious activities. It was reported that more than a dozen religious venues of the underground church in the province had been recently seized.

A church member lamented that restrictions on Catholics had intensified since the China-Vatican agreement was signed contrary to its avowedly “friendly spirit.”

A Hebei underground Catholic named Paul told ucanews.com that most underground church members would not accept the government’s patriotic association, the CCPA.

GPs who organised a petition calling on the Irish College of General Practitioners to hold an Extraordinary General Meeting on the provision of a GP-led abortion regime in Ireland, have described the decision to hold it in four weeks time as “wholly unacceptable”. The legislation in question has already cleared one vote in the Dail and amendments to the bill are due to be considered in the committee stage this coming week.

The 2 December EGM was announced in a statement by the ICGP board Friday evening, after it received a petition from over 600 GPs, who are concerned about multiple aspects of the proposed legislation, including the wholly inadequate provision of conscience protections.

The GPs who organised the petition have said they approached the ICGP board on multiple occasions to ask for an EGM in order to clarify the attitude of the ICGP membership about the abortion provisions, but all those requests were refused. The petition triggered an automatic EGM, but the timing of it now appears to make its purpose moot because the meeting has been deferred “until after amendment stage in the Dáil”. Because of this, the GPs have accused the ICGP of ensuring that the voice of mainstream General Practice would not be heard by legislators.

The statement says those who signed the petition represent a variety of views on the proposed legislation, but they share a concern regarding the “total lack of consultation” with GPs from the Minister for Health and the ICGP Board.

It describes “the level of disregard” by the Board to GPs on the ground as “appalling”.

Officials in Pakistan have ordered that a Christian woman, acquitted of charges of blasphemy last week after spending eight years on death row, must not leave Pakistan in order to end violent protests over the ruling. Campaigners blasted the deal as akin to signing her “death warrant”.

Asia Bibi, a wife and mother of five, was convicted in 2010 of insulting the Prophet Muhammad during a row with neighbours.

Her lawyer, Saif Mulook, told the BBC earlier this week she would need to move to a Western country for her own safety. A number of attempts have previously been made on her life and several countries have offered her asylum. Now Mr Mulook has had to leave the country so he could continue to represent her safely. Mr Mulook said: “I need to stay alive as I still have to fight the legal battle for Asia Bibi.”

Pakistani Information Minister Fawad Chaudhry defended the government against allegations that a deal reached with an Islamist party was capitulating to extremists. Mr Mulook, however, called the agreement “painful”.

“They cannot even implement an order of the country’s highest court,” he told AFP before he boarded the plane to Europe.

Islamic gunmen killed at least seven Christians who were returning from baptising a child at a Coptic monastery in Egypt on Friday, officials said – the most serious attack on the minority in more than a year. Six of the dead were from the same family, and another 18 people, including children, were wounded, the Coptic Church’s spokesman said in a statement. Islamic State claimed responsibility for the ambush in Minya province in central Egypt, the militant group’s Amaq news agency said.

The attackers opened fire mid-afternoon on two buses near the Monastery of St Samuel the Confessor in Minya, 260 km (160 miles) up the River Nile from Cairo, the church spokesman said. Footage posted on social media showed bodies inside a bus with gunshot wounds.

Islamic State and affiliated groups have claimed responsibility for a series of attacks on Christians, including one that killed 28 people in almost the same spot in May 2017.

Although Egypt’s army and police launched a crackdown on the militant groups in February, some of the Christian mourners said security should be tighter. On Saturday at the funeral of some of the victims, mourners spilled out of the pews screaming, sobbing and praying over six white coffins, while rejecting the condolences of members of the security services.

Minister for Children Katherine Zappone lobbied Tánaiste Simon Coveney that no State funding would be used to finance the World Meeting of Families (WMoF) in Dublin attended by Pope Francis in August due to her disgust at the removal of references to lesbian, gay and transgender Catholics from some publicity materials for the event.
“Very serious concerns have been brought to my attention by former president Mary McAleese and others regarding the forthcoming World Meeting of Families and the potential use of State funding. As a Government Minister I share these concerns and believe they must be urgently addressed,” she wrote.

“These actions have raised the prospect that the meeting will include statements on homosexuality, gay marriage and gay adoption which will cause great hurt and offence, not just in our communities but to people worldwide,” Ms Zappone said in her letter, which she copied to Taoiseach Leo Varadkar.

She wrote to Mr Coveney, whose Department of Foreign Affairs managed the Pope’s visit, seeking assurances that State funding “will not be used to support views and events which do not represent Government policy.”

“Our Government through the Department of Foreign Affairs has been to the forefront in promoting equality and human rights offering hope to those facing inequality, discrimination and abuse,” she wrote.

“Financial support for an event which encourages discrimination and inequality undermines and comprises this work, which has the support of the Irish people.”

An investigation is under way after more than 100 panes of glass were broken at a COI church in Tullamore, Co Offaly. It has been estimated that repairing the windows and installing security measures could cost up to €70,000.

Reverend Isaac Delamere from St Catherine’s Church says he felt “incredibly sad and numb” after the discovery of the broken windows.

Rev Delamere said he believes it was probably young people “messing or having a laugh”, but the scale of the damage and the number of stones that were flung into the church show that it took a long time to do the damage.

He said that there was no question that it was a sectarian attack and the entire community was shocked and saddened by it.

Alan Wallace, a parishioner, said the church had been there for 203 years without such an incident happening. “What does that say about society and where society is going?” he asked.

Mr Wallace said he knew Minister for Justice Charlie Flanagan well but felt much safer decades ago when Oliver Flanagan, his father, was minister for defence. He said that back then he “slept easier in my bed than I am sleeping at the moment and that is mirrored across the country, but most people are afraid to talk about it”.

“I suppose parents not teaching children discipline, not to damage things, to respect older people. The old values seem to be forgotten a lot,” he said.