The UK’s Catholic bishops expressed dismay after the British parliament gave preliminary approval of a Bill to legalise assisted suicide, while those opposing the measure promised to redouble their efforts to stop it from becoming law.

On Friday, Labour MP Kim Leadbeater’s Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill was approved by Parliament by a vote of 330 in favour to 275 against at the second stage of the Bill with members of all the major parties split on the issue.

Bishop Patrick McKinney of Nottingham said it would be a “devastating law” and added: “This marks a very bleak day in our country’s history”.

Meanwhile, Spokesperson for Right To Life UK, Catherine Robinson, said “This is just the first stage of a long journey through the Commons and then the Lords for this dangerous assisted suicide Bill. We are now going to redouble our efforts to ensure we fight this Bill at every stage and ensure that it is defeated to protect the most vulnerable”.

The number of teenage girls having babies has dropped sharply from 3,135 in 1999 to 705 last year, but the complex social issues they face have increased, it has emerged.

National manager of the Teen Parents Support Programme (TPSP), Samantha Dunne said more young parents today have a social care background, increased mental health issues, exposure to domestic abuses, high incidences of homelessness and substance misuse problems.

“So although births to young parents have decreased, challenges, adversity and many other systemic issues can impact young parents significantly,” she said. “This has led to the need to expand the age-range criteria, and support parents for a longer period of time,” she said.

Data published on Tuesday by the UK’s fertility regulator revealed that the number of single women undergoing IVF or artificial insemination has tripled over the past decade, from 1,400 in 2012 to 4,800 in 2022.

Experts said this reflected improved NHS access to fertility treatment for single women, as well as changing social norms, and difficulties finding a partner during the Covid pandemic.

The report by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) found that 6 per cent of all IVF cycles are now in women without a partner, who use a sperm donor instead.

On average, single women are 36 when undergoing IVF, which is slightly older than the average age of 35 for couples undergoing fertility treatment. However, the HFEA said single women were increasingly opting to have treatment at a younger age, down from an average of 38 in 2008, which reflects “a reduction in social stigma” around having babies alone.

The inventor of the ‘Sarco’ gas-chamber, assisted-suicide pod, Dr Philip Nitschke has announced he will make the pods available for use in the UK if an ‘assisted dying’ Bill becomes law.

With Kim Leadbeater’s Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill being voted on on Friday, The Telegraph reports that Nitschke is “absolutely” keen on bringing his machine to the UK.

Professor of law and constitutional government at St John’s College, Oxford, Richard Ekins KC said, “If Kim Leadbeater’s Bill passes, and if the Secretary of State approves liquid nitrogen as an approved substance, then the Sarco death pod would be a lawful means to assist suicide in Britain”.

A person ends their own life inside the 3D-printed Sarco pod by pushing a button which injects nitrogen gas into the sealed gas chamber. The nitrogen causes them to suffocate to death.

The UK Supreme Court has been told it would be capitulating to an “insidious and omnipresent” patriarchy if it allows gender recognition certificates to trump biological sex.

The long-running case about how “men” and “women” are defined in discrimination law is likely to have wide-ranging implications for single-sex spaces, including women’s refuges, prisons, changing rooms and hospitals.

For Women Scotland (FWS), argues that sex is a “biological fact”, which should trump recognition certificates that allow trans people to change their gender, as otherwise “nonsensical outcomes” arise.

Aidan O’Neill KC, representing FWS, urged the judges to “save the day for biological reality” rather than succumbing to “fantasies of legal fiction” that tilt rights against women and express a kind of patriarchy.

Referring to ‘menstruators’ instead of women, ‘birthing people’ instead of pregnant women and ‘bodyfeeding’ instead of breastfeeding were examples of that patriarchy, he said.

“Yet [trans woman] cannot menstruate, cannot get pregnant, cannot give birth, cannot breastfeed.”

People with a disability are facing euthanasia by stealth should the practice be legalised in Ireland, according to a leading campaigner.

Dr Margaret Kennedy who is a wheelchair user said services are so dire, people with disabilities might give up and accede to assisted suicide rather than chose to fight for a better life.

In a scathing op-ed in the Irish Independent she said: “We are to be ‘culled’ by the back door, ‘encouraged’ to shift off this planet as life becomes unbearable. It is euthanasia by stealth”.

She said that many TDs do not appear to understand ‘assisted dying’ legislation has the potential to erode services, reduce palliative care investment and create a major damaging, psychological impact on vulnerable groups.

She notes that many doctors, and groups representing disabled people and older people, oppose such legislation because of what happened in Belgium, the Netherlands and Canada.

When it’s increasingly hard to lead an active, meaningful life, she said, many who are “not able to hang on will make a choice to die rather than fight”.

Gordon Brown said he opposes ‘assisted dying’ because the loss of his baby daughter convinced him of the value of improving end-of-life care.

It comes ahead of a landmark vote on proposals to change the law next week, which have split MPs across the political spectrum.

The former prime minister, who lost his newborn, Jennifer, at just 11 days old in 2002, said Britain should “do better at assisted living”.

Reflecting on the final days of her life in an article for The Guardian, Mr Brown expressed sympathy for those who were terminally ill and feared the suffering that lay ahead.

But he said that, in his view, assisted suicide was “not the only option available, nor even a good option when set against the palliative support that could be available in ensuring a good death”.

The Labour Party’s proposal to move religious instruction outside of denominational schools’ daily teaching hours has prompted a senior figure in Catholic education to question what they would introduce in its place.

CEO of the Catholic Education Partnership (CEP), Alan Hynes, said “It’s likely that they will go with something like an ethics course of some form or another because when last in government and holding the education portfolio they pushed a separate ethics course that they wished all schools to teach. The thing is, every ethics course comes from a particular world view, so what world view do Labour wish to impart?”

“Labour are now purporting that the pupils attending Catholics schools will, in fact, receive another world view. So there’s kind of a slight-of-hand for parents – you might send your child to a Catholic school but we’re going to teach them something else … Something else that Labour has not defined. So what ethical view do they hold that the public holds in so little regard?”, he said.

A French media company was fined and forced to apologise on air after a journalist referred to abortion as the world’s leading cause of death.

Presenter Aymeric Pourbaix of CNEWS made the statement during a Catholic program called “En quête d’esprit” [“In Search of the Spirit”].

The program showed a graph of causes of death that put abortion on top, with 73 million deaths each year worldwide. That constitutes 52% of annual deaths, far ahead of cancer (10 million) and smoking (6.2 million).

The French media regulatory authority Arcom imposed a fine of 100,000 euros and compelled CNEWS to apologise on the air. Arcom found that the network had failed its “obligation of honesty and rigor in the presentation and processing of information.” It declared that “Abortion cannot be presented as a cause of death.”

A lack of care and support might leave some vulnerable people feeling they have no choice but to accept euthanasia, according to a recent survey in Canada.

The same survey reveals that health care access can be especially difficult for Canadians with disabilities. Fully 57pc of respondents with severe disabilities say they’ve faced discrimination in healthcare because of their impairments or limitations. Almost half of those with moderate disabilities say the same. These experiences include worse access and quality of care, as well as difficulty finding a primary care doctor, inaccessible treatment or testing locations.

Those living with severe disabilities also report the strongest concerns with those who might opt for medical assistance in dying, or MAiD [Medical Assistance in Dying], due to issues with care, compared to those without disabilities.