The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that the First Amendment’s free speech clause protects a Colorado web designer who feared she would be prosecuted under state anti-discrimination law for her faith-based objections to designing websites that promote same-sex weddings.

Colorado’s Anti-Discrimination Act includes sexual orientation and gender identity as protected classes. The question before the court was whether compelling an artist to speak or stay silent violates the First Amendment’s free speech clause. It did not take up the question of whether it is a religious freedom violation.

“In this case, Colorado seeks to force an individual to speak in ways that align with its views but defy her conscience about a matter of major significance,” Justice Neil Gorsuch said in the 6-3 decision. “But, as this court has long held, the opportunity to think for ourselves and to express those thoughts freely is among our most cherished liberties and part of what keeps our republic strong”.

Welcoming the decision, General Counsel Kristen Waggoner of the Alliance Defending Freedom said, “The U.S. Supreme Court rightly reaffirmed that the government can’t force Americans to say things they don’t believe. The court reiterated that it’s unconstitutional for the state to eliminate from the public square ideas it dislikes, including the belief that marriage is the union of husband and wife”.

Thousands are expected to gather at the annual Rally for Life on Saturday, where speakers will urge the government to take action to tackle “surging abortion numbers”.

Commenting on the 22% rise in abortion numbers last year,” Rally for Life spokeswoman Megan Ní Scealláin asked: “Are women being led to believe that abortion is the only option?”.

She said that the government needed to take urgent action to tackle the spiralling abortion rate – and that it was “almost beyond belief that a strategy that would increase the abortion rate further was instead being considered”.

“One of the messages coming from the Rally is that TDs are being reminded that they promised voters in 2018 that the 3-day wait would be a ‘safeguard’ – and that the pro-life movement is reminding voters that scrapping that provision would be a breach of promise to voters,” she said.

Men and women are less satisfied with their lives under the female-breadwinner arrangement versus the dual-earner and male-breadwinner alternatives, according to new research.

Writing in the European Sociological Review, Helen Kowalewska and Agnese Vitali say this female-breadwinner ‘penalty’ is marginal when the male partner is part-time employed but sizeable when he is jobless.

The researchers also found gender differences: whereas women appear roughly equally adversely affected by a male partner’s unemployment as by their own, men report substantially higher well-being when she is unemployed instead of him.

Country comparisons indicate that while this female-breadwinner penalty is largest in more conservative contexts, especially Germany, it is fairly universal across Europe. So, even in more liberal countries, unemployed men with breadwinner wives are not immune from the social stigma and psychological difficulties associated with their gender non-conformity.

Malta’s government has backed down on a bill which would have legalised abortion in the strongly pro-life country, instead opting for an amendment to clarify that interventions can take place when a mother’s life is in danger.

Pro-life organisations celebrated the news, with local campaigners telling Gript it was a “win for Life, for mothers and babies”.

The government revised a proposed amendment which originally sought to legalise abortion on health grounds which pro-lifers said could be interpreted too widely.

Local media had reported that the country’s president, George Vella, had told the government he would resign rather than sign the bill as originally drafted.

The reports were never denied and Vella had made his disquiet publicly known, repeatedly appealing for a revision of the text.

Health Minister Chris Fearne said on Friday that the bill would be amended so that termination could only take place where a mother’s life was in danger and all other treatments had been exhausted.

A pro-life advocacy group is calling on MPs to reject regulations brought forward by the UK Government that would force schools in Northern Ireland to teach students aged 11 to 16 years old about abortion and how to access it.

The regulations are due to be voted on in the House of Commons in the coming days.

The lack of a public consultation has been heavily criticised by a House of Lords Committee.

They also criticised the lack of procedures allowing parents to withdraw their children from such instruction.

“The Committee believes that this will be of considerable concern to parents in Northern Ireland”.

A number of submissions to the Lords’ Committee also raised concerns that teachers who are morally opposed to abortion would not have the option of opting out of teaching such material to students.

Right To Life UK is encouraging members of the public to contact their MP and ask them to vote against the regulations.

U.S. church attendance stands at 31%, a full three percentage points down from pre-pandemic levels.

In the four years before the pandemic, 2016 through 2019, an average of 34% of U.S. adults said they had attended church, synagogue, mosque or temple in the past seven days.

From 2020 to the present, the average has been 30%, which includes attending remotely via TV or the internet.

Those attendance levels are about 10 percentage points lower than what Gallup measured in 2012 and most prior years.

Church attendance is down four points among Protestants (from 44% to 40%) and seven points among Catholics (from 37% to 30%), the two largest faith groups in the U.S.

A state visit to Washington D.C. last week prompted an outcry against India’s human rights record by International religious freedom advocates on behalf of persecuted religious minorities.

Violence against Christians and other religious minorities in India has escalated over recent years, with dramatic upticks in 2022 and 2023, most recently in the northeast state of Manipur. Laws and policies at the national and state level severely hinder and restrict the liberties of minority religious groups in India, allowing for the harassment and targeted discrimination of minority religious groups by radical mobs throughout the country.

“What we are seeing in India is a religious freedom crisis,” said Sean Nelson, legal counsel for Global Religious Freedom for ADF International as Indian PM Narendra Modi visited the White House and the US Congress.

“Christians and other religious minorities are systemically targeted in India by radical Hindu nationalist mobs, who carry out widespread violence and harassment with impunity. No person should be persecuted, harassed, or killed for simply living out their faith. The government of India should work to put an end to the violence and reform any laws that restrict freedom of religion and implicitly encourage such violence. President Biden and other world leaders should speak clearly about the deteriorating religious freedom conditions in India and encourage the Indian government to work to reverse this trend”.

Medics who provide abortions in Ireland have described moments of personal doubt about their work, according to new research.

The study by a trio of UCD academics was based on interviews with 13 abortion providers, including GPs, midwives, obstetricians and nurses.

One of those interviewed said the hardest thing morally and ethically “is seeing the little fetus”.

“[A]t the end of it all … they are formed so well, like even little fingernails … it’s just unbelievable really the formation even just … coming up to that twelve-week mark”.

“[E]ven the position. A lot of the time, they just have their little hands underneath their chin, or their hands could be across their chest … On a personal level, you just have to try and forget about it as quick as you can, but there’s certain cases that you don’t forget about … as much as others and especially the babies that are, you know, all older babies and babies that are … practically formed in every way … so that can be very, very difficult.”

Another said “In theatre during a termination … you kind of have to take yourself out of the room a little bit in your head cause I think if I thought about it too much, I would have gotten uncomfortable or I would have gotten upset, just the physical thought of what’s actually happening.”

Another interviewee said it’s “not a pleasant procedure”, adding: “you can have a moment every now and again like ‘Oh my god, [this is] not quite what I’m usually used to’ but that has diminished a lot.”

Americans tend to give higher marks to worshipping together in person rather than online, according to a new Pew Research Center survey of more than 11,000 adults.

Broadly speaking, while majorities express satisfaction with virtual services, even bigger shares of physical attenders say they feel extremely or very satisfied with the sermons (74%) and music (69%) at the services they attend in person, according to the research.

In addition, virtual viewers are much less likely to report feeling connected to other worshippers, whereas roughly two-thirds (65%) of regular in-person attenders say they feel “a great deal” or “quite a bit” of connection with their fellow attenders.

A 19-year-old found guilty of murdering her baby son hours after giving birth has been jailed for at least 12 years.

A trial heard Paris Mayo, then 15, suffocated the boy, Stanley, by stuffing cotton wool into his throat.

Mayo delivered him alone at her family home in Ross-on-Wye, in March 2019, while her parents were upstairs. She had hidden the pregnancy from her parents.

“Killing your baby son was a truly dreadful thing to do,” said the judge, Mr Justice Garnham, passing the sentence.

The trial heard she had assaulted Stanley, leaving him with injuries comparable to those seen in a car crash.

“How you did this is not clear, but I suspect you crushed his head, probably beneath your foot,” the judge told Mayo.

Her initial assault caused him “serious damage”, but did not kill him, the judge added.

“He remained alive and continued to breathe for at least an hour. You decided you had to finish Stanley off by stuffing cotton wool balls into his throat.”