A seriously debilitated woman has been shocked by twice being offered assisted suicide in the course of her medical treatment.

Tracy Polewczuk has spina bifida and has been receiving special treatment for the last two years after she suffered a leg break that never properly healed.

On two separate occasions and without prompting, she says she was informed that she would be eligible for medical assistance in dying (MAID), once by a nurse at the rehabilitation centre at Ste-Anne’s Hospital and another time by a social worker at the Verdun Hospital.

“It feels like we are being pushed towards the MAID program instead of being given the help to live,” Polewczuk said.

Doctor Paul Saba, a family physician, says that it’s seen as a recommendation whenever a doctor makes a suggestion or a health care worker.

In 2022, more than 4,800 Quebecers opted for medical assistance in dying, more than any other province in Canada. Those figures raise serious questions for this patient’s rights advocate.

“My theory is that a lot of those people who have asked and gotten medical help to die, that they might have been in circumstances where they had no other choice.”

A futuristic suicide pod for ‘assisted dying’ may be used for the first time as early as this month, Swiss media reports.

Developed by Philip Nitschke, one of the founders of Exit International, whose Irish branch is led by Tom Curran, the partner of the late ‘right-to-die’ campaigner Marie Fleming, the ‘Sarco’ (short for sarcophagus), is a coffin-shaped machine that releases deadly nitrogen once activated from inside.

Its creator claims a rapid decrease in oxygen level while maintaining a low CO2 level could allow users to die, “a peaceful, even euphoric death”.

Yet, the press section of the company’s website links to a New York Times story that the US state of Alabama used nitrogen gas to execute a man on death row.

Moreover, while State lawyers had previously claimed in court filings that an execution by nitrogen would ensure “unconsciousness in seconds”, the condemned prisoner, Kenneth Smith, 58, “shook and writhed” for at least two minutes before slipping into slower, heavier breathing and eventually dying.

Swiss news outlet NZZ reports that on June 10, Nitschke wrote in an online forum that Sarco’s deployment in Switzerland was expected ‘in the next few weeks.’

Cases of syphilis have increased by almost a third in the first six months of this year when compared to the same period last year, new figures show.

STI cases are rising globally, with Ireland seeing a “significant increase” in the past year when compared with pre-pandemic levels.

According to the most recent figures from the Health Protection Surveillance Centre (HPSC), up to June 29th, incidence of syphilis is up 31 per cent, from 413 cases in the first six months of 2023, to 544 during the same period this year.

The number of cases of HIV has also increased by 27 per cent, with 548 diagnosed this year so far — an increase on the 431 during that time last year.

Derek Freedman, a consultant in STIs and HIV, said there are a “variety of reasons” why STIs are increasing, including a post-Covid increase in sexual activity, travel, migration, dating apps and the availability of anti-HIV medication called pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP).

“People on PrEP know they are protected from HIV but they forget about the other possible infections,” he added.

Four Israeli municipalities have sought to levy municipal taxes on church properties in violation of “centuries” of historical agreements in a move denounced by local Church leaders as a “coordinated attack” against Christians in the Holy Land.

Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, Latin Catholic patriarch of Jerusalem and Franciscan Fr Francesco Patton, custos of the Holy Land, in a letter to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, stated: “At this time when the entire world, and in particular the Christian world, is constantly following the events in Israel, we find ourselves once again faced with an attempt by the authorities to expel the Christian presence from the Holy Land”.

They added: “It is an outrage that, specifically during such sensitive and complicated times when patience, compassion, unity in prayer and hope should prevail, municipalities are opening cases against churches in courts and making threats. This constitutes contempt of our customs and that which is dear to us, while trampling the mutual respect that existed between us until this time”.

A Belgian civil court has fined two Catholic bishops in a direct attack on religious freedom after they denied a woman entry into a diaconate formation program.

The woman, Veer Dusauchoit, asked the Archdiocese of Mechelen-Brussels to register for training as a deacon in June 2023 and again in October 2023.

Ms Dusauchoit made her first request to Cardinal Jozef De Kesel and her second to Archbishop Luc Terlinden after De Kesel’s 2023 resignation at age 76. Both times, her request to join the four-year diaconal training program was denied. The two prelates will have to pay  €1,500 euro each, the court ordered.

The Catholic Church teaches that holy orders –  diaconate, priesthood, and episcopate – is reserved to baptised men.

Pope Francis has reiterated numerous times that holy orders are “reserved to men”, though he has also called for “study” into whether women could become deacons.

In a mixed judgement, a German Court has acquitted a pharmacist of breach of professional duty for refusing to stock and sell abortifacient drugs.

However, the judge warned him that if he can’t dispense certain drugs for reasons of conscience, he would have to give up the profession.

Andreas Kersten was charged in 2018 when he exercised his freedom of conscience to refrain from selling a potentially abortifacient drug, the “morning-after pill,” in his pharmacy. The Court held that Kersten was relying on a letter from the federal Ministry for Health, which stated that pharmacists may exercise their conscience in such situations.

However, the presiding judge explained that the duty to provide drugs (including the morning-after-pill) overrides the freedom of conscience – a stance at odds with international human rights law protecting conscience. He noted that a pharmacist who could not reconcile the dispensing of certain drugs with his conscience would have to give up his profession.

Dr Felix Böllmann of ADF International, which has supported Kersten’s case for six years welcomed his client’s exoneration but called the reasoning behind the judgment “egregious” as it is “in direct contradiction to international law”.

The controversial hate crime Bill is now not expected to return to the Oireachtas before the summer recess, casting doubt on whether it will be enacted at all, reports the Irish Times.

Citing unnamed sources, the report says the incomplete Bill will not be taken up again until the autumn at the earliest, which leaves little time for it to be passed before the legislative session breaks for the general election.

The Bill passed in the Dáil but stalled a year ago in the Seanad after Senators raised several significant questions about it, not least its failure to define hatred. Mr McDowell also asked the Department of Justice to explain “what is intended by the term ‘transgender’ and the phrase ‘a gender other than those of male and female’” in the definitions of the Bill. He did not receive an explanation.

The Department of Justice has previously declined to give examples of speech which is legal but will be criminalised by the Bill if it is passed

A retired married couple died side by side in what is the latest case of double euthanasia in the Netherlands.

In the moments before their deaths, the pair were surrounded by friends and family, including their son, who had found his parents’ decision to end their lives hard to take.

Jan, who worked as a cargo boat operator, had been suffering from severe back pain for over 20 years, while his wife was diagnosed with dementia in 2022 and it was getting progressively worse.

‘I’ve lived my life, I don’t want pain anymore,’ Jan told the BBC. ‘The life we’ve lived, we’re getting old [for it]. We think it has to be stopped.’

In 2023, 9,068 people died by euthanasia in the Netherlands – up 348 on 2022.

29 couples died that way in 2022, up from 16 couples in 2021. In 2018, there were nine.

Japan’s top court has ruled that a defunct eugenics law, under which thousands of people were forcibly sterilised between 1948 and 1996, is unconstitutional.

Eugenics was practiced in the US and Sweden, from the early part of the 20th century, and inspired similar programs in Nazi-Germany from the mid-1930s.

Japan’s government acknowledges that around 16,500 people were forcibly sterilised under the law that aimed to “prevent the generation of poor quality descendants”.

An additional 8,500 people were sterilised with their consent, although lawyers say even those cases were likely “de facto forced” because of the pressure individuals faced.

The Supreme Court also declared that a 20-year statute of limitations could not be applied, paving the way for compensation claims from victims after years of legal battles.