Pro-life groups praying on church grounds but within reach of an abortion clinic, would be criminalised in a new bill, according to Health Minister Stephen Donnelly.

Presenting the Health (Termination of Pregnancy Services) (Safe Access Zones) Bill 2023 in the Dáil on Wednesday, Mr Donnelly said the bill will create a 100m radius zone from the entrance or exit to a premises where obstetricians, gynaecologists and GPs provide or administer abortions.

Where a church falls within that 100m zone, he said the bill “ensures that conduct which would otherwise be lawful, which occurs within a public place, meaning a building of worship, is not prohibited. This is to protect, for example, sermons that may be given during church services”.

However, he added, “It should be noted that this exception would not apply to, for example, grounds outside of a church within a safe access zone to avoid a situation where protestors use the grounds of a church or other similar location to circumvent the prohibited activities”.

“The aim of this overarching approach is to ensure the effect of the proposed legislation on the rights of those affected is proportional to the objective sought to be achieved”.

Germany’s Bundestag on Thursday voted down two proposals that would have enable a regime of assisted suicide.

The first would have made assisted suicide legal for stated circumstances, but otherwise prohibited. 304 lawmakers voted in favor, with 363 against.

The other proposal sought to enshrine a right to self-determined death in law.

Two groups of parliamentarians put forward the proposals which were subject to a free vote.

For one group, Katrin Helling-Plahr of the business-focused Free Democratic Party (FDP) said there were many people who wanted to decide to die when the right time for them had come, and that they should be able to do so without fear of legal repercussions.

Center-left Social Democrat (SPD) politician Lars Castellucci, speaking for the other group, said it was important to make assisted suicide possible without encouraging it.

He said anyone providing organized possibilities for suicide without adhering to a fixed concept of protecting the vulnerable should be liable for penalties.

Both proposals shared the aim of creating a legal framework for giving those wanting to commit suicide access to the lethal drugs they need.

All maternity hospitals in the State are expected to be able to provide abortion by early next year, Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly has said.

The minister was speaking in the Dáil on Wednesday, as the Health (Termination of Pregnancy Services) (Safe Access Zones) Bill 2023 was being debated at second stage.

The proposed legislation would prohibit pro-life gatherings within 100 metres of any facility that could provide abortions. Very few countries have such a law on the grounds that it violates freedom of speech and assembly.

“The latest update I have from the Department is that we are on track for 17 of the 19 [maternity hospitals] to provide those services [abortion] by the end of this year, and for the remaining two next year,” he said.

“These are legally provided and lawful services. While we must and do respect people’s views, and while conscientious objection is rightly embedded in the legislation and any healthcare worker is obviously free to exercise that right, we must ensure these services are provided around the country.”

An increase in overall suicides has been recorded in Victoria, Australia, despite a promise that legalised physician-assisted death would prevent fifty suicides a year, said Hon. Damien Tudehope in a speech before the Victorian parliament.

“[T]here were 62 more suicides in Victoria in 2022 than in 2017, when this claim was made,” said Tudehope. “The suicide rate among those aged over 65 years increased in Victoria between 2019 and 2022 by 42 percent — five times the increase in New South Wales.”

Data collected from Victoria reveals that there were 756 suicides in the state in 2022, an increase of nine percent from 2021. It is the highest number of suicides in Victoria since the coroner’s court began collecting suicide data in 2000. There was a 21% increase in suicide among people aged 45 to 54, an eight percent (8%) increase for males, and a 12% increase for females.

The Victorian state coroner, John Cain, said it was “troubling to see an increase in suicides emerge in the last few months of 2022.”

The European Court of Human Rights is proceeding with a challenge to the ban on same-sex marriage in the British territory of Bermuda. It has always held that there is no right to marriage for same-sex couples that would oblige States to legislate for it.

Marriage had been redefined in Bermuda to accommodate same-sex couples but a change of government in July 2017 resulted in legislation that confined marriage to that between a man and woman. In the Bermudian courts, the legislation was found to be contrary to Bermuda’s constitution. However, the UK’s judicial committee of the privy council (JCPC) – the ultimate court of appeal for Bermuda and dozens of other British overseas territories – overturned the decision.

A number of applicants have now sought remedy in the European Court of Human Rights. Among other things, they argue that the revocation of same-sex marriage distinguishes the case from past case law in which it has been held (in 2010 and 2016) that there is no right to the introduction of same-sex marriage.

The justifying of abortion leads to the denial of fundamental truths, according to Bishop Kevin Doran.

Speaking in advance of the Rally for Life last weekend, Bishop Doran said when an unborn child is experienced as “inconvenient”, we either adapt in order to welcome it, or we make arrangements to dispose of it.

“This is where we come face to face with the truth.  A society that seeks to justify abortion inevitably finds itself in conflict with the truth”.

Turning to the recent review of the abortion law, he said in order to justify the use of public health resources, the “Review” consistently refers to abortion as “women’s healthcare”.  In reality, however, there is “no evidence whatsoever that those abortions have anything to do with healthcare”.

Likewise, regarding the three-day waiting period, while its purpose is to provide a window of opportunity for a woman to reconsider her decision, the Review downplayed its effectiveness by publishing different, lower, figures, from a pro-abortion source, as to its success.

He adds that while the language of concern for women and for women’s health is repeated in the Review, there is nothing in the legislation “that is designed to find out why thirty thousand women sought abortion over the past four years, what were their circumstances physically, economically or emotionally, what other options they might have been given, or what has happened to them since”.

There has been a 65pc increase in the number of ‘gender recognition certificates’ issued last year compared to 2021.

The certificate means the person has changed their sex in the eyes of the law and is entitled to a new passport, drivers licence, and other documents reflecting their changed status.

A person need only sign a form to effect the change.

Unlike the UK’s Gender Recognition Act 2004, there is no requirement under the Irish legislation for a medical diagnosis of gender dysphoria or evidence that applicants have been living in their acquired gender.

A total of 321 certs were issued by the Government in 2022, latest figures brought to Cabinet Tuesday show.

This is an increase of 65pc from 2021, when 194 certs were issued and 2020, when 107 were issued.

People have been able to self-identify their gender since the Gender Recognition Act was passed almost without debate in 2015.

Thousands of people took part in last Saturday’s Rally for Life which sought to hold the government to account for the spiralling abortion rate.

The event took off from Parnell Square at 1.30 pm as the diverse crowd chanted ‘pro-life’, and waved posters and flags saying ‘Life Will Win’ and ‘Stop Aborting Our Future’.

Scrapping the 3-day wait would be seen as a reneging on promises to voters in the 2018 referendum, and a summer campaign to remind voters of that promise would be ramped up, attendees at the Rally were told.

Earlier, the Life Institute said that the pro-life gathering took place in the context of what was described as a “steep and disturbing” rise in the number of abortions taking place in Ireland, and just weeks after a bill seeking to legalise abortion on request to 6 months of pregnancy unexpectedly passed second stage in the Dáil.

Assisted suicide would be ‘inappropriate and dangerous’, according to a committee of the French Senate.

On Wednesday, the Committee of Social Affairs adopted a report on the end of life that breaks down point by point the arguments for euthanasia and assisted suicide.

According to the new report, active assistance in dying is “an inappropriate and dangerous response to a diffuse and equivocal request.” It asserts that the “collateral damage” that would come with legalising self-determined death would be greater than its benefits. The report also presents a wealth of data, scientific studies and the opinions of experts who were consulted in about 30 interviews.

Furthermore, the report criticises the transitory nature of the polls, which allegedly showed great support for a new end-of-life law. In addition, it emphasised the risks of “pressure from the most vulnerable” and the “threat of a commodification o chosen death.”

Therefore, the Committee decisively warned against the end-of-life bill which Minister Agnès Firmin Le Bodo must present before the end of summer.

The ongoing killings of Christians in Nigeria is “religiously motivated” and “almost entirely fuelled by Islamist extremism” according to a new study from a British parliamentary group.

In the report, ‘Nigeria: Unfolding Genocide? Three Years On’, by the All-Party Parliamentary Group for International Freedom of Religion or Belief, religious extremism is cited by over half of respondents as the biggest driver of violence that has claimed tens of thousands of lives and displaced more than two million people.

“For years now, academics, politicians and major western NGOs in the west have downplayed the role of Islamist extremism in this slaughter,” said Henrietta Blyth of Open Doors UK and Ireland, one of the groups that contributed to the report.

“Instead, they have focused on ethnicity or climate change, both factors. But when I speak to women or men whose families have been butchered or villages burned down, they are clear. They know who is persecuting them and why. Why are we erasing their voices?”

She added, “This is a perilous situation, not just for Christians, but for the whole nation. This is, to quote the report, ‘a land grab facilitated by ethnic cleansing’, and it’s religiously motivated.”