A majority of women regret their abortions and suffer feelings of sadness and guilt afterwards, according to a study published in the journal Cureus.

“Sixty percent reported they would have preferred to give birth if they had received more support from others or had more financial security,” researchers found.

Of the 226 women surveyed who had had abortions, 33% identified the abortion as wanted, 43% as accepted but inconsistent with their values and preferences, and 24% considered the abortion unwanted or coerced.

Only women who had considered the abortion wanted and consistent with their values associated positive emotions and gains in mental health after their decision to abort.

“All other groups attributed more negative emotions and mental health outcomes to their abortions,” researchers found.

The study undercut the results of a 2015 paper by the pro-abortion group Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health that claimed that 99% of women have no regrets about abortion.

Japan experienced the largest drop in the number of citizens last year, with all 47 prefectures seeing declines for the first time.

New data from the internal affairs ministry revealed that the population of Japanese nationals stood at around 122.42 million as of Jan. 1, a decrease of over 800,000 compared to a year prior and the 14th straight year-on-year drop.

According to the data, the number of births among Japanese nationals last year was 771,801, the lowest since the start of the survey in 1979. Social and economic reasons have been largely blamed for the country’s low birthrate.

The administration of Prime Minister Fumio Kishida is planning to roll out an “unprecedented” policy package to support families to encourage more people to have children.

“Balancing work and child care is difficult in Japan,” said Yoshinori Hiroi, a professor at Kyoto University’s Kokoro Research Center, citing the realities of generally long working hours and poor support for women entering the workforce as some of the main culprits.

“The employment and living conditions of the younger generation are unstable, making it difficult for them to envision getting married and raising children.”

Fathers cannot withdraw consent for in vitro fertilisation treatment and thereby stop a woman from implanting a resultant embryo, Italy’s highest court has ruled.

The case involved a woman who had decided, with her husband, to undertake IVF six years ago, but decided to have her embryos frozen while she dealt with a personal health problem.

Shortly afterwards, the couple’s marriage broke down and her ex-husband tried to prevent her from proceeding with the pregnancy. Ruling in the Italian woman’s favour, the constitutional court said that a 2004 law that made male consent for IVF irrevocable was not at odds with the Italian constitution.

Judge Luca Antonini said there was a “turning point” when “one or more” embryos were formed, and that the interests of the woman and the embryo had to take precedence over those of the reluctant father. She will now be able to proceed with implantation of the fertilised egg.

Italy’s Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni, announced that her country is ready to participate in the reconstruction of the Orthodox Transfiguration Cathedral in Ukraine, which suffered damage in a night-time rocket strike by Russian occupying forces.

“The attacks in Odesa, the loss of innocent lives, and the destruction of the Spaso-Preobrazhensky Cathedral deeply sadden us,” stated Italy’s Prime Minister.

“A free nation will not be intimidated, and barbarism will not prevail. Italy, with its unique world-renowned experience in restoration, is ready to join the reconstruction of the cathedral and other cultural treasures of Ukraine,” highlighted Giorgia Meloni.

On the night of July 23rd, Russia carried out another massive rocket attack on Odesa, a coastal city in Ukraine whose historic center is listed as a UNESCO World Heritage site.

Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly has announced full public funding for a cycle of IVF (in vitro fertilisation) for eligible couples from September. The average success rate for people using IVF is only 25pc per cycle and it is strongly age dependent. The cost per cycle in Ireland is around €5,000.

IVF creates spare embryos which are often destroyed or indefinitely frozen if not used.

Asked why the funding is limited to one cycle, the Minister said “this is a first step”.

€10m was allocated in the Budget for IVF funding.

An age limit will be in place for a woman up to 41 years of age and men up to 60, Minister Donnelly said.

To be eligible individuals must be ordinarily resident in the State and referred through their GP to a regional fertility hub.

A couple or individual will not be eligible for publicly funded AHR treatment if either has had voluntary sterilisation.

To ensure the welfare of any children resulting from AHR treatment, an assessment will be carried out, based primarily upon a self-declaration form.

There shall not be more than two intending parents of a child born as a result of AHR treatment and, they shall be in a relationship for at least one year.

The second ever case of assisted suicide in Italy was carried out on Sunday.

The procedure followed upon the Constitutional Court’s 2019 ‘Cappato ruling’ making assisted suicide permissible in certain circumstances. It has however never been legislated for.

The 78-year-old woman of the Veneto region had terminal cancer.

While she was the second such case in Italy, she was the first to have had the drugs and equipment delivered to her directly by the local health authority.

The practice became possible after Veneto’s regional health authority and ethics committee in June approved her request for assisted suicide under the terms of the 2019 ruling.

Previously, three other Italian regions, Marche, Umbria and Friuli Venezia Giulia, turned down similar requests by terminally ill patients wishing to end their lives.

Unmarried couples in the UK are almost three times more likely to have split by the time their child turns 14 than those who married before the birth, a new study has found.

Sixty per cent of couples who cohabit but never marry had separated by the time their first child turned 14, compared with 21 per cent of those who had married before the birth, according to the Marriage Foundation report. The proportion rose to 32 per cent of couples who married after the birth.

The researchers found that 46 per cent of 14-year-olds in the study were not living with both natural parents. A similar figure was found in a review for the Children’s Commissioner last year.

The Marriage Foundation report tracked 4,476 mothers with children born between 2000 and 2002, from the Millennium Cohort Study.

Researchers found that by the age of three, 26 per cent of children were not living with both natural parents, rising to 46 per cent at the age of 14. Among the 54 per cent of children still living with both natural parents, 84 per cent lived with parents who were married.

A resolution on the need for laws that hold individuals accountable for blasphemy, especially for desecrating the Qur’an, has been adopted by the UN Human Rights Council.

The move has been described as a blow to international free speech norms by a leading religious freedom and human rights law firm.

The resolution, titled “Countering religious hatred constituting incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence”, indicates that penalties would be “consistent with obligations of States arising from international human rights law.”

The move comes following the public burning of a Qur’an as a protest in Sweden. Swedish police had granted a permit for the protest, in accordance with its free-speech laws.

ADF International’s Director of UN Advocacy Giorgio Mazzoli commented that the deliberate burning of sacred books, whether it involves the Qur’an, the Bible, or the Torah, is an act of provocation, which can stir emotions and cause serious offense to many. However, he added, “in a democratic society, the cost of safeguarding our fundamental right to speak freely sometimes lies in the discomfort of being offended by the actions of others with which we disagree”.

A Russian missile strike on a historic Ukrainian cathedral has shocked local clergy.

Priests at the scene of the Transfiguration Cathedral, which was consecrated by the Russian Orthodox patriarch Kirill of Moscow in 2010 after an extensive rebuild, were scathing in their assessment.

“This is barbarism, it’s terrorism. The people who did this are not people at all,” said Myroslav Vdodovych, the cathedral’s chief priest, as he walked through the ruins, taking calls on his mobile phone and directing emergency workers to spots where there was rubble to clear.

“I was one of the first people here, because I got notified when the alarm signals went off. It was a direct hit, right in the altar area,” he said.

Odessa’s main Orthodox cathedral was established in 1794. It was destroyed by Stalin in 1936, but rebuilt under an independent Ukraine between 1999 and 2006. It was one of several historical parts of central Odessa, a UNESCO world heritage site, hit by Russian missiles strikes over the past week.

According to the Guardian, there is a sense of amazement that Moscow could launch such ruthless attacks against a storied city that plays such a large role in Russian cultural and historical narratives.

New regulations which would force Northern Ireland’s schools to teach a permissive view of abortion have been described as a “very serious restriction” on religious liberty.

Liam Gibson of the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC) told The Irish Catholic they have asked people to oppose the move which was introduced from Westminster in the absence of a functioning Stormont.

Mr Gibson said the regulations “mandate abortion is taught as a ‘right’, and that there is information provided on how to get an abortion for children in schools”.

“It’s forbidden to promote any view other than that, it’s a very serious restriction on the ability for Catholic schools to teach children what the Catholic Church says about abortion, that it is morally wrong, that it is the taking of an innocent human life. That is illegal,” he insisted.

“We’re asking this is withdrawn and to allow schools to teach according to the basic principal that parents have a right to have their children educated according to their own religious convictions and that’s recognised in international law, both in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the European Convention on Human Rights.”