Doctors in Spain who oppose the practice of abortion suffer “brutal discrimination”, according to the general coordinator of the National Association for the Defense of the Right to Conscientious Objection.

Attorney, José Antonio Díez, made the statement following a ruling by the Constitutional Court (TC) of Spain declaring that the “right to abortion” is violated when a hospital administration refers a woman who wants to have an abortion to a private establishment if the doctors at the public health facility did not object to performing abortions in writing and in advance.

The case dates back to 2014, when the Health Service of the autonomous community of Murcia referred a 35-year-old pregnant woman to a private abortion center in Madrid, alleging that there were no doctors willing to provide an abortion in the region’s public health system.

However, according to the TC, the abortion “has to be carried out in the centers of the public health network of the autonomous community itself, except in supposedly exceptional cases in which the public health service cannot facilitate it due to widespread conscientious objection.”

The Constitutional Court ruled that “in the prosecuted case it was not proven” that the doctors had exercised that right individually, in advance and in writing.

Nicaraguan Bishop Rolando José Álvarez Lagos was sent back to prison last week after he refused to comply with the Ortega regime’s demand that he go into exile.

After speaking out against Ortega’s ever-escalating persecution of the Catholic Church, Álvarez, 56, was arrested in 2022 and subsequently sentenced on 10 February after refusing to board a plane carrying 222 political dissidents, including four priests, who were flown to the US in an agreement with the State Department.

Álvarez was sentenced to 26 years and 4 months in prison on treason charges and had his Nicaraguan citizenship revoked.

Under the dictatorship of Ortega and his wife and vice-president Rosario Murillo, hundreds of Nicaraguans, including priests and religious, have been arbitrarily arrested and deported, Church assets and property have been seized, and religious freedom has been greatly restricted.

In March, after Pope Francis strongly criticised the Ortega regime, likening it to Nazi Germany, the dictatorship closed the Holy See’s embassy to Nicaragua, officially cutting off all diplomatic ties with the Vatican.

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.