Children’s Minister Katherine Zappone has said she favours widening access to abortion beyond rape and fatal foetal abnormality as such provisions would “do nothing at all for most women in Ireland”. Arguing that she supports the repeal of the Constitutional protection for the unborn, Minister Zappone said women “do not want to be pregnant without their consent [and] I am committed to them having the option not to be”.

The new leader of Nigeria’s Islamist extremist group Boko Haram has instructed his followers to actively target Christians in the country. In a message announcing his leadership, Abu Musab al-Barnawi alleges that there is an active conspiracy in Nigeria to Christianise the region and says this will be resisted. He said members of Boko Haram will react by “booby-trapping and blowing up every church that we are able to reach, and killing all of those (Christians) who we find from the citizens of the cross”.

Germany’s Federal Court of Justice has rejected the creation of a third gender category to accommodate a person who identifies as neither male nor female. In a case taken by the unidentified German citizen, registered as female, it was argued that as she could produce a genetic analysis proving to be neither male nor female, she should be granted the right to identify as ‘intersex’. The court, however, disagreed and ruled that German law would not allow entry of a third option of “inter” or “diverse” in the birth registry, and saw no reason to refer the matter to the German constitutional court. The plaintiff has said she will challenge the ruling.

A High Court judge has ruled that the unborn child has rights beyond the right to life which “must be taken seriously” by the State. Ruling in the deportation case of a Nigerian man with an Irish wife and now infant child, Mr Justice Richard Humphreys said the word ‘unborn’ in the Constitution means an “unborn child” and therefore the unborn enjoy “significant” rights and legal position at common law, by statute, and under the Constitution. He said article 42a of the Constitution, inserted after the 2012 Children’s Referendum, means the State must protect “all” children. Justice Humphreys’ ruling was in response to legal arguments on behalf of the Minister for Justice that in considering the Nigerian citizen’s application to remain in Ireland, the only relevant right of his unborn child was a right to life.