Women aged 27-30 are now included in a ‘free’ contraception scheme fully paid by the State that was introduced last year for 17 to 26 year olds.

This comes despite a 2019 Working Group on Access to Contraception, under the then Health Minister, Simon Harris, say the proposal would probably be a waste of public funds.

It is open to women, girls, and “people who identify as transgender or non-binary, in cases where a prescription or procedure is deemed suitable by doctors”.

It covers the costs of GP consultations, family planning, student health and primary care centres along with prescriptions for a variety of contraception options.

Those options include long-acting reversible contraception (LARCS), which include injections, implants (the bar), and hormonal and copper intra-uterine devices (the coil).

LARCS fittings, removals, and checks are included in the scheme.

Emergency contraception – which can act as an abortifacient – is also included in it as well as the oral contraceptive pill.

An estimated 7,000 pro-life campaigners of all ages filled Parliament Square in London on Saturday to participate in the ‘March for Life’.

The annual public witness, now in its ninth year, processed through Westminster before stopping to hear a series of speakers.

Lois McClatchie-Miller from ADF (Alliance Defending Freedom) told the crowd ‘The apparently ’empowering’ mantra of ‘my body, my choice’ has led to a deficit of male responsibility, allowing men to shrug and say ‘your body, your choice, your problem’.

Scott Klusendorf, president of The Life Training Institute urged attendees to enter into conversations with those around them on abortion but reminded them ‘We need to have the confidence to make our case persuasively’.

Co-director of the event, Isabel Vaughan-Spruce shared her experience of being arrested for praying silently near an abortion centre

A California mother who said her daughter was ‘socially transitioned’ into a trans boy by her school has won a landmark legal victory against the district – who settled the suit for $100,000.

Jessica Konen’s daughter Alicia, 11, was allegedly told by Buena Vista Middle School that she was upset because she didn’t know who she ‘truly was inside.’

The school allowed the child to use the boys’ bathroom and male pronouns in class without her mother’s consent.

Single mom Konen accused teachers of encouraging her daughter to think she was a trans boy when she was at the school in 2019 – only for the child to return to her female persona while learning remotely during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Despite not admitting fault, the school district’s settlement marks an important moment in how parental rights fit in with children’s decisions in school settings.

The Pro-Life Campaign is treating the new constituencies and extra Dáil seats as an opportunity to be engaged with.

The recommendations of the Electoral Commission included raising the number of TDs from 160 to 174 and redrawing many constituencies.

“More seats give more opportunities for candidates from all parties and none to be elected. Pro-lifers should look at the recommended increase in seats as an opportunity. It should encourage greater engagement with politics, and hopefully prompt people to stand forward for election,” said a spokesperson.

The splitting of five seat constituencies in Tipperary and Laois/Offaly into a number of smaller three seat constituencies should suit sitting pro-life TDs.

‘For Carol Nolan, since her voting base is strongly based in Offaly, the creation of a new Offaly constituency will hopefully solidify her vote and help her prospect of re-election at the next general election’, the PLC said.

Mattie McGrath’s vote is concentrated mostly in the south of county Tipperary. Therefore, the division of the county in two will likely be of net benefit to him as a candidate in Tipperary South’, they added.

Finnish politician Päivi Räsänen is on trial this week for “hate speech” and “ethnic agitation” after publicly sharing in 2019 her traditional views on sex and marriage.

In a 2019 tweet that brought about Räsänen’s current legal troubles, she criticised her Lutheran Church for embracing LGBTQ+ ideology, asking how these views could be reconciled with Scripture. In the tweet, she referenced Romans 1:24-27, which states that sexual activity with a member of the same sex is against God’s will.

Along with Räsänen, a Finnish Lutheran bishop named Juhana Pohjola is also being tried for hate speech for publishing a pamphlet written by Räsänen that advocated for the biblical understanding of sexuality and marriage.

Though they were unanimously acquitted by a Finnish District Court in 2022, prosecutors appealed their acquittal to the Helsinki Court of Appeal.

Considerable savings could be made if assisted suicide were to be introduced on the island of Guernsey, according to a local politician

Lester Queripel told the local parliament’s Health & Social Care Committee that the Island’s financial problems provide an ideal opportunity to revisit the controversial issue.

The Deputy said that ‘no stone should be left unturned’ as committees battle to save millions of pounds a year in spending. And he urged HSC to accept that significant savings could be realised through the use of assisted suicide.

In written questions to HSC, Deputy Queripel asked how many people had been kept alive, against their wishes, in the past five years, how much their medication and treatment had cost taxpayers, and how many staff hours had been taken up keeping them alive.

HSC president Al Brouard said such figures were unavailable and rebuked Deputy Queripel for his choice of language.

Britain can no longer be described as a Christian country, three quarters of Church of England clergy believe, according to a landmark survey conducted by The Times of London.

The wide-ranging poll of frontline Anglican clergy also found a strong desire among rank-and-file priests for significant changes in Church doctrine on issues such as sex, sexuality, marriage and the role of women to bring it into greater line with public opinion.

The survey analysed responses from 1,200 serving priests and ministers.

Asked whether they think “Britain can or cannot be described as a Christian country”, only a quarter (24.2 per cent) answered: “Yes, Britain can be described as a Christian country today”. Almost two thirds (64.2 per cent) said Britain can be called Christian “but only historically, not currently” while 9.2 per cent answered “no”.

Figures from the 2021 census showed that the proportion of people who identified as Christian in England and Wales had fallen below half for the first time — to 46.2 per cent — with the strongest growth among those who say they have “no religion”. The figure has trebled since 2001 to 37.5 per cent.

The survey also uncovered high levels of stress among clerics, many of whom feel over-stretched. They fear that the Church’s efforts to arrest the decline in attendance will fail and this may ultimately lead to its “extinction”.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/church-of-england-christianity-survey-gay-marriage-sex-female-archbishop-70ck07sj6

Priests in Berlin may confer a blessing on same-sex couples in a ruling of the local Catholic Archbishop.

This comes despite a 2021 Vatican declaration, approved by Pope Francis, that “the Church does not have, and cannot have, the power to bless unions of persons of the same sex.”

In a recent letter, Archbishop Heiner Koch assures the Berlin archdiocese’s priests, deacons, and lay pastoral workers that he will not take disciplinary action against them if they bless couples “who cannot or do not want to marry sacramentally.”

Citing Pope Francis’ 2016 post-synodal apostolic exhortation, ‘Amoris Laetitia’, he notes that it says that same-sex unions “may not simply be equated with marriage,” and he suggests that Amoris also gives local churches “a great deal of latitude in dealing with people in so-called ‘irregular’ situations.”

Koch argues that Francis’ oft-cited statement about the Eucharist in his 2013 apostolic exhortation ‘Evangelii gaudium’ — that it is “not a prize for the perfect but a powerful medicine and nourishment for the weak” — also applies to other sacraments, including marriage, “and yet even more so to a sacramental such as blessing.”

“Every blessing promises God’s grace and help to us people who are and remain weak. Blessing therefore does not have the meaning of ‘legitimizing, endorsing, approving,’” he writes.

The father of a man with Down Syndrome has said society needs to decide whether it wants to have children with Down Syndrome in it.

Michael O’Dowd was speaking after it was revealed that 95% of parents diagnosed with a Down Syndrome baby at Dublin’s Rotunda Hospital choose an abortion. He was reacting to a column by David Quinn in The Sunday Independent.

Mr O’Dowd, a former Mayor of Drogheda and Aontú representative, told The Hard Shoulder people need to have a balanced and rounded view.

“As a society we need to decide whether we want to have children with Down Syndrome, and the richness and the beauty that they bring to all our lives, or whether we want to have a society without them,” he said.

“The question is there, the gene that causes the chromosome disorder will continue to happen, so this is a discussion that will continue to happen.

“There will never be a situation where we have no Down Syndrome people in the world, but certainly in some societies they’re moving that way unfortunately.”