201 Irish women went to the UK for an abortion in 2022, according to the UK Office for Health Improvement and Disparities.

On Thursday, it published statistics on abortion in England and Wales.

Of the 201 Irish women who travelled there for the procedure, 126 did so under what is called “ground C”, which allows for abortions due to physical or mental health concerns up to 24 weeks. In Ireland, abortion is permitted for any reason, but up to 12 weeks.

According to the Department, almost all of the abortions carried out under ground C were reported as being performed because of a ‘risk’ to the woman’s mental health.

In addition, 75 women had abortions performed under ground E – defined as “a substantial risk that, if the child were born, it would suffer from such physical or mental abnormalities as to be seriously handicapped”.

This included 37 cases where the unborn child had Down’s syndrome.

Women are waiting longer to have their first child, according to new figures from the Central Statistics Office (CSO).

The average age of first-time mothers was 31.6 years in 2023. This is an increase of 3.4 years when compared with 2003, when the average age was 28.2 years old.

According to the CSO, there has been a decrease in the number of registered births, from 68,930 in 2013 to 54,678 in 2023. This represents an annual birth rate of 10.4 per 1,000 of population.

The fertility rate was also found to have declined from 2.0 in 2013 to 1.5 in 2023. A value of 2.1 is usually considered to be the level that the population would replace itself in the long run, ignoring migration.

The CSO figures also included marriages in 2023, of which there were 21,159, a decrease compared with the 23,173 registered in 2022.

Some left-wing deputies joined conservative voices in opposing euthanasia as France’s parliament started debating a deeply controversial right-to-die bill backed by President Emmanuel Macron.

The bill is facing stiff opposition from religious leaders as well as many health workers. While most left-leaning deputies and Macron allies back the legislation, some of them said they would be voting against. Communist MP Andre Chassaigne whose brother, suffering from pancreatic cancer, killed himself, has said he could not back a law that allowed “killing.”

All parties’ parliamentary leaders have said that they will not pressure their MPs to follow the party line.

Macron has insisted that any authorization to choose death should be limited to people with incurable illnesses and intense pain. Only people over 18 and able to clearly express their wishes and suffer from a condition that limits their life expectancy to the short or medium term. Psychiatric illnesses are specifically ruled out from the bill, as are neurodegenerative conditions such as Alzheimer’s.

One key question is whether patients who are no longer able to trigger the protocol to end their life by themselves can be euthanised by qualified personnel.

A father has recounted his experience of the family law system as “deeply unfair and deeply biased”. Fathers’ right campaigners have consistently highlighted what they say is the unfairness of family law.

Writing in the Sunday Independent, the man, who did not given his name for the sake of privacy, said his experience is that a mother can decide a marriage is over and “the husband is expected to move out and pay up”.

Then, “if he doesn’t leave his children, a playbook of tactics and allegations is employed to ramp up the pressure”.

He said he lost count at 50 court dates and the countless number of times he walked out of courtrooms feeling the system was determined to “force” him out of his child’s life, “despite all the evidence that exists as to the powerful affirmative role fathers have”.

In particular he questioned the use of Section 47 child welfare reports which can be ordered by a judge hearing a family law case.

The unnamed father said he experienced malpractice with multiple Section 47 practitioners: “incompetence, gender-bias, basic sloppy mistakes, money-grabbing, a lack of compassion and basic bad manners”.

“It is an unregulated, unprofessional Wild West — an abomination which needs to be exposed and replaced. There is no transparency, no accountability and no oversight. All is shrouded in secrecy behind the ‘in-camera’ rule”, he said.

A Christian family in Pakistan suffered a violent attack at the hands of an angry mob of Muslim fanatics on Saturday, following a false accusation of blasphemy.

According to information gathered by the international charity Aid to the Church in Need (ACN), the false accusation led to a new wave of terror against Christians.

Mr Nazir Gill Masih, who owns a shoe factory in Gillwala Mujahid colony in Sargodha, Punjab, was beaten after a false accusation of having burnt pages of the Quran. Between 7-8am a mob attacked the family, ransacking and burning their factory and home. Although ten members of the family were able to escape, Mr Nazir Gill Masih was badly beaten and critically injured before police arrived and managed to remove him from the mob. He was taken to the hospital for urgent medical care.

A Tory Member of the Scottish Parliament (MSP) is facing strident opposition for wanting to exempt “silent prayer” from proposed exclusion zones from which all pro-life activism would be banned.

A bill by Green MSP Gillian Mackay would block every kind of pro-life presence within 200m of clinics and hospitals that offer abortion.

Holyrood’s health committee backed the bill, but noted there are different views among MSPs on silent prayer.

Under the Tory MSP’s amendments, a person would not be criminalised if they engaged in silent prayer or if they were not part of a group or organised event.

Mackay rejects this saying: “I will always consider constructive suggestions, but I will not support wrecking amendments or anything that could undermine or weaken protections for service users and staff”.

The Humanist Society Scotland have also said exempting silent prayer would create a loophole for anti-abortion activists.

A British woman with terminal breast cancer has been euthanised on a beach in New Zealand.

Tracy Hickman, 57, was first diagnosed with breast cancer in March 2019 after a routine mammogram.

The cancer returned in 2023 and in March this year doctors advised she probably only had three months to live.

In New Zealand, laws brought in under the End of Life Choice Act in 2019 enable competent adults to choose an ‘assisted death’ – if they have a terminal illness, are aged 18 or over, and have no more than six months to live.

Following her diagnosis, Tracy applied for an assisted suicide in New Zealand’s through a process that includes an assessment from two doctors.

A medical team administered the fatal drugs to her on a beach, surrounded by family.

Euthanasia and assisted suicide are currently illegal in the UK and any medic or person who performs one can face prosecution for manslaughter or murder.

There has been a call to investigate “blatant misleading of the people” by Government Ministers in the run up to March’s failed referendums.

Addressing the Taoiseach in the Dáil yesterday, the Aontú Leader, and Meath West TD, Peadar Tóibín called on the government to launch such an investigation.

He said Aontú had highlighted the tax changes, the confusion in the phrase ‘durable relationships’ and how the courts would interpret it, and the impact on immigration law.

However, he added: “The government rubbished our concerns at the time and said that there would be no impacts. Ministers refused to published the advice that they had received and stated that they had received no advice contrary to their statements”.

“We now know that this was all untrue”.

“Its not that the government just hid this pivotal advice from the people. They went further than that. Ministers outright lied as to the advice that they were receiving. Its important that the government take responsibility for this, that they investigate as to why Ministers were misleading the people and that they come clean and apologise to the people of Ireland”.

A quarter of a million abortions took place in England and Wales in 2022, the highest number ever recorded. It means there was one abortion for every 2.6 births.

The 252,122 total represented an increase of 37,253 (17.34%) from the previous year’s figures according to a release from the Department of Health and Social Care.

Commenting on the figures, Spokesperson for Right To Life UK, Catherine Robinson, said it is a “national tragedy” that so many lives were lost to abortion.

“Every one of these abortions represents a failure of our society to protect the lives of babies in the womb and a failure to offer full support to women with unplanned pregnancies”.

“Ahead of the General Election, we are calling on the next Government to urgently bring forward new protections for unborn children and increased support for women with unplanned pregnancies. Polling shows these changes are backed by the public and this would ensure we are working together as a society to reduce the tragic number of lives that are lost to abortion each year”.

A Catholic diocese will appeal after New York’s highest court ruled the Empire State can continue to require employers with health insurance plans to cover what it called ‘medically necessary’ abortions.

The Diocese of Albany, and other faith-based groups, challenged the regulation, arguing its exemption for religious employers was too narrow and could force some employers and church-run organisations such as hospitals and food-banks to violate their religious beliefs.

At stake, they argued, “is regulatory action by a state to require religious organizations to provide and pay for coverage of abortion in their employee health plans.”

“We believe this is unconstitutional since it involves government entanglement in the fundamental rights of free exercise of faith and conscience,” the statement said. “The final decision on constitutionality will be by the United States Supreme Court.”

The challengers argued that the original regulation was intended to exempt employers with religious objections, but that it was later narrowed to cover religious groups that primarily teach religion and mostly serve and hire only those who share their faith. In effect, groups such as Catholic Charities, which seek to serve those in need regardless of their faith, wouldn’t qualify.