Argentina’s senate has rejected a bill which would have legalised abortion without restriction in the first 14 weeks of pregnancy. After the vote, pro-choice campaigners protested in the streets, starting fires and lobbing missiles at police.
Currently abortion is allowed in Argentina in cases of rape, or if the ‘mother’s health’ is in danger. This bill which represented a further expansion of the abortion law was rejected by a vote of 38 to 31, with the chamber’s 30 female senators evenly split on the issue.
Anti-abortion activists responded with jubilation. “It’s a joy to see that our society can be based on such an important principle as the defence of the most defenceless, the child,” said one.
The Pro Life Campaign in Ireland has welcomed the vote. PLC spokesperson, Cora Sherlock said: “There’s one marked difference between the abortion debate in Argentina and the recent one in Ireland. Thankfully the lies that were repeatedly told by many abortion supporters during the referendum debate in Ireland didn’t pervade the debate in Argentina to the same extent. The evidence of the negative after-effects of abortion on women and the fact that abortion kills an innocent unborn baby clearly resonated during the public debate in Argentina in recent weeks. The scaremongering and deep seated bias from large sections of the media didn’t win out on this occasion. That’s a great result for mums and their unborn babies and the right to life which is being disregarded in so many places at present.”
Egg freezing brings no help to 90 per cent of women who opt for it, with the vast majority leaving it too late, research suggests.
Less than one in three of those opting for egg freezing do so before the age of 35, despite the fact a lower age is “the highest discriminating factor for success,” obstetricians said.
Separate research shows that a paltry nine per cent of women who underwent the process for “social reasons” – such as the lack of partner, or career pressures – ended up returning to use their eggs. The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists urged caution for women considering freezing their eggs for such reasons.
Abortion will be available to women from the North of Ireland once the Republic initiates its radical abortion regime, the Minister for Health, Simon Harris, has promised.
Speaking at an event in Belfast on Tuesday night, Mr Harris said that he thinks the law up there should be changed to allow for widespread abortion but, in the meantime, women will be welcome to travel across the border to abort their unborn children in clinics and GP surgeries in the South. “Whilst I respect the issue of abortion laws in Northern Ireland is a matter for public representatives in Northern Ireland, I really hope this is addressed in the near future,” he said.
“In the meantime, I intend to ensure women from Northern Ireland can access such services in the Republic, just like they can access other health services here,” he added.
Higher education institutions receiving public funding will have to provide sex education classes to tackle the issue of consent, sexual harassment and sexual assault on campuses, the Government has said. Minister of State for higher education Mary Mitchell O’Connor said she is considering making the classes compulsory in all Irish colleges.
She was speaking at the launch of research that showed that more than two-thirds of students do not think 28 standard drinks makes a person too drunk to give sexual consent. It also found high levels of sexual hostility or crude gender harassment. Ms Mitchell O’Connor said she was very surprised and troubled by the results and added “it is time” to examine how workshops on sexual consent could be made compulsory in Irish universities and Institutes of Technology.
“I believe it is timely and appropriate to formulate a standard of institutional responsibility, to address sexual harassment and assault,” she said.
Health Minister, Simon Harris launched an astonishing attack on a Catholic Bishop over the weekend for daring to defend Church teaching on love, marriage and contraception. The Bishop of Elphin, Kevin Doran, had spoken at a conference commemorating the anniversary of the 1968 papal encyclical Humanae Vitaewhen the Minister tweeted his 48,800 followers: “Please just make it stop!”
At the conference, Bishop Doran had said the principles of Humanae Vitae have been ignored for too long and need to be presented in a fresh way. He continued: “As a Church, we probably have not lived up to that demand. It needs to be presented in contemporary language in an appropriate context. There is undoubtedly a place in schools for an appropriate presentation of the Church’s teachings on human sexuality. I think we have, again, problems to address there. Not least, having a very good quality, Catholic inspired programme for relationship and sexuality.”
Bishop Doran also said it was “lopsided” to regard marriage as “simply a loving relationship” in which procreation was regarded as “an optional extra”.
Responding to the bishop’s speech in a tweet on Sunday, Minister for Health Simon Harris wrote: “Please just make it stop! Increasing access to & availability of contraception is and will remain public health policy. Religion plays an important role for many on an individual basis – but it will not determine health and social policy in our country any more. Please get that.”
Senator Rónán Mullen responded to the Minister, telling him, “you sound shrill and intolerant. Let Kevin Doran and others try to persuade people according to their values and you make your own arguments. You should be able to do your job without belittling folk”.
Boys close to their mothers are less likely to have mental health problems while daughters close to their fathers enjoy a similar lift in their self-esteem and confidence according to just published research.
The study by the Marriage Foundation concluded that boys and girls who are close to their parent of the opposite sex fare better at coping with teenage life.
Specifically, boys deemed ‘extremely close’ to their mothers at 14 are 41 per cent less likely to have mental health problems, the research found. Girls close to their fathers are 44 per cent less likely to suffer emotional problems or have trouble with their peers.
Moreover, the study reported that while boys are happier when their parents are married, girls are more reassured by their parents demonstrating a high-quality relationship.
The analysis, which uses Millennium Cohort Study data from 11,000 mothers, found that the biggest factor affecting teenage mental health was family breakdown.
Harry Benson, research director of Marriage Foundation, who co-authored the study with Professor Steve McKay from the University of Lincoln, said: ‘Our analysis shows once again that family breakdown remains the number one driver of teenage mental health problems.
The death penalty is now no longer admissible under any circumstances after a change to the Catechism of the Catholic Church was decided by Pope Francis.
“The death penalty is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person,” reads the Catechism of the Catholic Church now, with the addition that the Church “works with determination for its abolition worldwide.”
This is a departure from what the document, approved under Pope John Paul II in 1992, says on the matter: “Assuming that the guilty party’s identity and responsibility have been fully determined, the traditional teaching of the Church does not exclude recourse to the death penalty, if this is the only possible way of effectively defending human lives against the unjust aggressor.”
As it’s been re-written, the Catechism now says that “more effective systems of detention have been developed, which ensure the due protection of citizens but, at the same time, do not definitively deprive the guilty of the possibility of redemption.”
It’s for this reason, and “in light of the Gospel,” that the Church teaches, according to Pope Francis, that the practice is now inadmissible.
Hundreds of doctors have staged anti-abortion protests in Argentina as an abortion rights bill moves toward a vote in the Senate next week. Some have demonstrated while carrying models of unborn babies and waving signs saying: “I’m a doctor, not a murderer.” At one recent protest, they laid white medical coats on the ground outside the presidential palace.
While the Doctors for Life activist group claims about 1,000 members, its protests are feeding a debate in the profession as a whole about the move to legalize abortions for any reason in the first 14 weeks of pregnancy.
Leaders of the Argentina Medical Society have endorsed the bill, which has already passed the lower house of Parliament. But the Academy of Medicine vehemently rejects the legislation. The academy issued a statement that human life begins at conception and “to destroy a human embryo means impeding the birth of a human being.”
“Nothing good can come when society chooses death as a solution,” it said.
The measure only narrowly passed in the Chamber of Deputies on June 14 after a long campaign by hundreds of feminist and left-wing groups. Its advance appears to have galvanized opponents, religious and otherwise, to mobilize public protests ahead of a Senate vote tentatively set for Aug. 8. President Mauricio Macri has said he will sign the measure if it passes, despite opposing abortion.
Pope Francis this year denounced abortion as the “white glove” equivalent of the Nazi-era eugenics program and urged families “to accept the children that God gives them,” but he has not spoken publicly on the debate in Argentina.
Christians in India are treated as “terrorists” by the government, according to a group of Catholic bishops, who claim it uses its Anti-Terrorist Squad (ATS) to investigate Christian institutions, Catholic news agency UCAN reports.
Nine bishops from the north-eastern state of Jharkhand met with the state governor, Draupadi Murmu, in a bid to stop what they called “government harassment”.
“We are now treated as terrorists and officials of the ATS are after us as if we are involved in terrorist activities,” Auxiliary Bishop Telesphore Bilung of Ranchi, Jharkhand’s capital, told UCAN.
Over the past few months, several Christian organisations have been investigated and requested to produce their financial details within 24 hours, while “church people” have been arrested on “trumped-up charges”, the bishop said.
The bishops’ claims however were dismissed by state police spokesperson R.K. Mallick who dubbed them “absurd”.
A prominent pastor and academic has launched an appeal to Church leaders in Australia to prepare faithful Christians for a rising tide of hostility and persecution. Writing for The Gospel Coalition, Campbell Markham said that in Australia right now freedom of religion, conscience, and assembly are considered natural rights, but if the Government “grants” religious freedom, then “natural rights will be transmogrified into state rights.” He then predicted that such state-granted rights will be steadily restricted and repealed over time.
“I expect, within the remainder of my lifetime, that Christians will be legally restricted in their ability to speak out and live out their faith in the public sphere. Abortion centre “exclusion zones” and recent anti-discrimination actions are the thin end of the wedge here.
”I expect, within the remainder of my lifetime, that Christians will be forbidden to educate their children the way they want to. . . . I expect, within the remainder of my lifetime, that professing Christians will begin to be barred from such professions as law, education, healthcare, the academy, and the civil service.”
He then addressed a plea to directly to Church leaders, parents and anyone with influence over Christian young people: “Prepare them for hardship and persecution.”
https://au.thegospelcoalition.org/article/australian-church-leaders-prepare-people-persecution/
