A lowering of support for marriage is likely to lead to a further lowering of the birthrate, according to a leading economist.

David Higgins was speaking as the Government announced it will plough ahead with referendums on family, gender and the protection of mothers in the home. This would involve removing the special standing of marriage in the Constitution.

Mr Higgins said, “if our society is now ambivalent towards marriage, it surely follows that we will have less of it. We are already seeing this in falling marriage rates. It must also surely follow that the birth rate will continue to notch lower”.

He noted that CSO Census data for 2022 show that 29pc of married households have three or more children, as opposed to 19pc of cohabiting households and 15% of single parents.

The result for society, he says, will be a stark choice: “The generation that follows ours will either face much higher taxes (a heavier burden on fewer working people), or the services provided to our (now older) generation will shrink.

“A referendum which weakens the standing of marriage in the constitution may be a symbolic marker of this coming economic challenge”.

Both the First Minister and Health secretary of Scotland have expressed their opposition to the legalisation of assisted suicide in Scotland.

Earlier this week, the First Minister, Humza Yousaf, said he was increasingly against the idea saying: “I feel even less persuaded after a recent discussion with the Glasgow Disability Alliance.

“They were incredibly strong in their opposition to assisted dying, given that they felt that they would be the ones, as they described it, that would be the thin end of the wedge when it came to assisted dying.”

Asked on Wednesday whether he supported the ‘assisted dying’ legislation, Health Secretary, Michael Matheson said: “No, I don’t. I’ve opposed it previously.

“It’s an issue which I’ve raised as a matter of personal conscience and it’s something which I continue to oppose.

“Because I don’t believe it’s society’s responsibility to make those decisions.”

He said such a law might put pressure on sick and disabled people to opt for ‘assisted dying’.

Two referendums will be held on ‘gender equality’, marriage, and the work of mothers in the home and they are still theoretically set for November, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has confirmed. It remains to be seen how ‘gender’ will be defined.

However, the wording for the amendments has yet to be agreed and the date of a vote might be pushed into the new year.

The Government intends deleting the protection that mothers should not be forced to work outside the home–a constitutional provision that was never given legislative force–and replace it with new definitions of family, home and equality.

Mr Varadkar said: “The intention of the referendum is to delete the very sexist language that exists in our Constitution talking about the role of women in the home and their duties in the home. We will replace that with wording that values care, and the value of family care in particular, and then also wording that recognises that there are many different types of families in Ireland now.”

The Taoiseach added that the Government’s intention remained to hold the referendum at the end of November but he had to be cognisant of the newly formed Electoral Commission, which has said it needs three or four months to prepare properly for a referendum.

Moral and cultural factors are keeping birthrates in South Korea the lowest anywhere in the world as economic incentives have failed to boost births, according to a leading Korean demographer.

The Asian nation has spent more than $210 billion in the past decade to boost fertility, but birthrates have dropped to shocking new lows, well below one baby per woman.

Hungary likewise has gone all out to boost having children, although its fertility rate for gone from 1.2 in 2010, to 1.6 last year, indicating some progress is being made.

China also has tried going pro-natal recently, but it hasn’t worked so far, and it’s population is now shrinking.

In Korea, cash incentives are ineffective because larger societal issues such as intense competition for getting the best possible education and jobs haven’t been resolved.

Demographer Lee Sang-lim says the “younger generation fears perpetuating competition, and not having a child essentially lowers the risk of passing down unhappiness.”

“In East Asia, Civilizational Sadness is tied up with overwork, and it leads to suicide. Civilizational Sadness in Europe and the U.S. has a different flavor, inflected with climate fear. The result is that falling birthrates are self-reinforcing. Fewer babies makes us sadder, and being sad makes us not want to reproduce”.

The Mexican supreme court has struck down laws protecting unborn human life in every state of the federal republic.

The court said that laws penalising abortion “violate the human rights of women and people with the ability to gestate”. It decriminalised the procedure.

The decision will require the federal public health service and all federal health institutions to offer abortion to anyone who requests it with no gestational limit.

It comes after years of incremental legal moves by the court, which had decriminalised abortion on a state-by-state basis. Eleven of the country’s states, as well as the capital, Mexico City, already permit the procedure in certain circumstances.

Courts in the 20 states which still criminalise abortion will now have to abide by the supreme court’s decision, although campaigners say there will still fight to get the law changed in every state.

Christians in Israel need better protection from unjust attacks and systemic discrimination according to the country’s leading newspaper.

An editorial of the Jerusalem Post noted that a 3,000 strong pilgrim group were turned away by police from visiting the Church of the Transfiguration on August 18th.

Meanwhile, the Interior Ministry has ceased to grant work or clergy visas to Christian groups.

And this comes as attacks against Jerusalem’s Christian community, sometimes by extremist Jewish groups, have picked up, to the extent that the Israeli Tourism Ministry deemed it necessary to convene a forum on the topic.

The attacks range from verbal abuse to stone-throwing and vandalism, with one incident resulting in damage to 30 graves at a Protestant cemetery on Mount Zion.

The Post says both the attacks and the systemic approach to clamping down on the freedoms of Christians appear to stem from a fear of missionary activity.

They conclude that authorities “must find a way to clamp down on illegal missionary activity without discriminating against the wider Christian population, while simultaneously apprehending Jewish extremists who find it permissible to take matters into their own hands and ensuring that Christians and members of all faiths feel safe and protected in the Jewish state”.

A man shot and wounded a Christian pastor in eastern Pakistan, according to a police complaint released on Monday, just weeks after vigilante mobs in the area attacked churches and burnt down homes, displacing hundreds in the small religious minority community.

After conducting a church service this weekend in the eastern town of Jaranwala, Elizar Sandhu, a local priest, was stopped by a man who told him to recite a Muslim religious text, according to the information report filed to police. The man then shot the priest in the arm when the religious leader recited a Christian prayer in response. The priest is being treated in a nearby hospital.

A large contingent of armed paramilitary troopers has fanned out to restore calm in Jaranwala after violence roiled the area last month, but tensions have remained high and Christians displaced from their homes have said they are scared of more violence.

More than 120 people were arrested over the hours-long rampage by a mob that residents said consisted of people carrying iron rods, knives and sticks, and which set fire to churches and scores of homes.

The criminal trial of a Finnish politician for tweeting a bible verse indicates what could occur in Scotland and Ireland when proposed new Hate Speech laws come into force, according to prominent human rights lawyer.

Paul Coleman, Executive Director of ADF International, British solicitor and author of “CENSORED: How European Hate Speech Laws are Threatening Freedom of Speech”, reflected on the parallels between the Finnish legislation and that which is pending in Scotland and Ireland:

“Few would have expected that in a Western democracy, in 2023, a public figure would be dragged before the courts simply for expressing her belief in the Bible.

The treatment of Päivi Räsänen because of her expression of faith “is a canary in the coalmine for what happens when we roll out laws which ban the vague and nebulous concept of ‘hate speech’, which can be interpreted as a right to censor any thought or opinion which lies outside of state approval”.

A lack of support, poor coordination of care and insufficient resources are among the reasons why many people are unable to die at home, a new report has found.

The ‘Dying Well at Home’ report, published by the Irish Hospice Foundation, also revealed that an unsuitable standard of care for individuals or communities and a lack of other social supports are stopping many dying people from being cared for at home before their deaths.

The report compiles qualitative research from focus groups with care providers and was conducted between November 2021 and 2022. It details the enablers and barriers faced by people in Ireland which impacts whether they have a good death – one which is comfortable, gives dignity to the dying person, and empowers carers while receiving support from medical professionals when required.

A priest and a seminarian who had been kidnapped in the Diocese of Minna, in Nigeria, were released last week, after three weeks in captivity.

According to a statement released by the Missionaries of Africa, “they are both fine, alive and healthy, despite the traumatizing experience they went through in the hands of their abductors”.

Fr Paul Sanogo, and Brother Melchior Mahinini, originally from Mali and from Tanzania, respectively, were kidnapped on 2 August in the state of Niger, in Nigeria.

Kidnapping by bandits is widespread in Nigeria. Although priests and members of the clergy are far from being the only victims of this type of crime, 13 have been kidnapped in 2023 alone, although were later released. Besides these incidents, two Nigerian priests were also killed in 2023, and three priests who were kidnapped in previous years are still missing.