A UK judge has criticised couples for making informal surrogacy arrangements and warned he would refuse to grant parental recognition if sufficient due diligence was not taken. Almost all European countries ban commercial surrogacy, and several also ban so-called ‘altruistic’ surrogacy.
Two individuals, D and C, sought a parental order for a child, G, who was conceived and born in China via surrogacy. Surrogacy is illegal in China and surrogacy arrangements are generally held to be invalid by Chinese courts.
The contracting couple, the judgment noted, “were entirely unaware that commercial surrogacy was illegal”.
The judge found it was appropriate to make a parental order in this case, as it was in the child’s ‘best interests’, but described the couple’s choice as “unwise”.
The judge added a warning for all others that his decision was “not a licence to engage in unlawful commercial surrogacy arrangements abroad”.
“Would-be parents who are contemplating entering into a commercial foreign surrogacy arrangement should be in no doubt that court will not make a parental order simply because the court is presented with an apparent fait accompli based on the fact that the subject child is already in the care of the intended parent.”
Undercover researchers filmed at this year’s Future Fertility Show in Dublin encountered the widespread promotion of several add-ons that have been rated red by the UK regulator.
This means that they have both potential safety concerns and also may reduce the effectiveness of IVF treatment.
However, unlike in the UK, while doctors here are regulated by the Medical Council, there is no independent statutory regulator overseeing fertility treatment.
Caitríona Fitzpatrick of NISIG, Ireland’s national infertility charity, said the fertility sector needs more policing as people struggling to have a baby are often desperate for a solution.
“Fertility is one of the hardest areas for people to spot misinformation on because the people looking at it are under such stress and they’re such a vulnerable group. But it has one of the highest levels of misinformation,” Ms Fitzpatrick said.
Budget 2027 has not given any increase to Child Benefit, marking the 11th straight year the payment has remained stagnant.
The monthly payment remains at €140 per child aged 18 and under, the same as it has been since the last rise in 2016, despite years of heavy, compounding inflation since then.
If it was inflation adjusted it would be over €180 per month now.
On the other hand, the Government announced another increase to the subsidy for daycare.
This nudges parents in the direction of using institutional childcare, whether they want it or not, whereas Child Benefit gives them full discretion over how to spend the economic assistance for raising their children.
The policy preference for institutional daycare over letting parents decide for themselves comes despite the electorate’s massive rejection of the Mother in the Home referendum in 2024.
It also comes despite polls consistently showing that parents would prefer to look after their children at home.
Around €2 billion per annum is spent on Child Benefit currently and about €1.5 billion is spent on daycare with this figure due to increase further next year.
A UN official has warned France about punishing women for stating safety concerns about men in women’s spaces.
The moves comes after a Paris court fined a female French journalist for criticising the placement of biologically male, transgender inmates in female prisons.
Reem Alsalem, the UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls, said on October 2 that she was seriously concerned by the conviction and by other proceedings linked to the journalist’s statements on sex and gender.
“As women, saying that we need to exercise caution around men, particularly where there are reasons to fear for our safety, does not in itself constitute hate speech,” Alsalem said.
Women “should not be sanctioned for expressing concerns about their own safety or that of other women and girls”.
The French Government has not yet replied in public.
An elite university at the heart of Silicon Valley has seen a threefold increase in conversions to the Catholic Church this past year.
The Catholic chaplaincy to the university is run by Dominican fathers.
Father Bart Hutcherson OP, says the students are drawn to the beauty of traditional forms of worship — age-old hymns played on a pipe organ, Latin prayers and the ornate Byzantine details at Stanford Memorial Church.
He added that the high-achieving students are often first attracted to Catholicism on an intellectual basis, educating themselves on church’s history and centuries-old philosophical traditions before taking the plunge.
Six hundred Stanford students packed into a recent Saturday afternoon Mass of the Holy Spirit — hundreds more than Hutcherson would have expected just a couple of years ago.
The Christian presence in the Holy Land is under threat, according to Father Bernard Poggi, rector of a Catholic seminary near Bethlehem.
Fr. Poggi made his remarks during a Day of Prayer for Christians in the Middle East, organised by Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) Germany.
“Nobody has to explicitly order Christians to leave the country,” Fr Poggi said. Rather, it is the cumulative effect of many different pressures that makes staying increasingly difficult: roadblocks, inaccessible farmland, a lack of work permits, intimidation, and a lack of prospects for the future.
Poggi expressed particular concern about the increase in violence by Jewish settlers. Among other examples, he referred to Taybeh, the last entirely Christian village in the West Bank. “When fields, vehicles, homes, or churches are attacked, the consequence is always the same: it becomes more difficult for Christians to remain in their homeland, and the space in which they can live becomes increasingly restricted.”
Christians also face hostility in Jerusalem. Poggi described a recent visit with young seminarians where children approached them and spat at them because of the crosses they were visibly wearing.
In 2022, an estimated 123,802 people aged 50 and over received family care. This number is projected to increase by 49 to 58 per cent by 2040.
If people not currently in receipt of care but experiencing difficulties with basic personal care or carrying out tasks needed for independent living are included, then the projected number of people requiring care would more than double.
Population ageing is the main driver of the projected increases in care need, followed by population growth. Assumptions about healthy ageing could offset some of the projected increase but not remove the underlying pressure from population ageing.
A split is emerging among GPs over a legislative bill that would remove the 3-day wait before having an abortion.
Over 100 doctors so far have signed a petition addressed to the Oireachtas urging them to retain the waiting period and opposes the stance taken by the Irish College of General Practitioners (ICGPs).
The petition says there is “no clinical basis” for the proposed removal of the three-day wait.
The wording seems a direct response to a HSE representative telling an Oireachtas committee that there was “no clinical reason” to retain the waiting period.
“Not all women who attend a GP for a first consultation on abortion are certain about their decision. A substantial minority of women change their mind in the ensuing days”, it reads.
“The Medical Council’s Guide to Professional Conduct and Ethics (section 15) states that informed consent should provide time for patients to consider the information before making a decision, and that the process should factor in the nature and complexity of the procedure.
“Given the irreversible nature of an abortion, it is our belief that the current reflection period offers a reasonable and appropriate safeguard for women”.
The Convention was established last year by the then Minister for Education, Helen McEntee. It is described as a once in a generation opportunity to “shape Ireland’s education system for decades to come”.
It has been taking place across four weekends in March, May, September, and November.
Last Sunday featured a panel discussion on School Values and Culture. The panellists were Kieran Golden, Former Principal of Mayfield Community School; Andrea Burke-Khan, Principal of Griffeen Valley Educate Together National School; Ebun Josef, Ireland’s Special Rapporteur on Racial Equality and Racism; and, David Joyce, Coordinator for Further and Higher Education at Pavee Point- Traveller and Roma Centre.
The session begun with videos from BelongTo, an LGBTQ+ youth organisation, and from the Traveller Community
Nienke Neeven, an advisor to the Dutch Minister of Education, spoke at a later session titled “An international perspective” with her views on “the curriculum of the future”.
Pope Leo XIV on Sunday attacked the legalisation of euthanasia and assisted suicide as immoral “false compassion”. France recently passed a law permitting both.
Leo’s visit to the once staunchly Catholic and officially secular France has been marked by huge crowds — 800,000 at Leo’s Mass on Paris’s iconic Place de la Concorde — and his messaging against both abortion and assisted suicide.
On Sunday, the American pope celebrated Mass before some 150,000 people — many in wheelchairs — on a field next to Lourdes’ main basilica. He then visited a care center for sick people on the sanctuary’s grounds. He sought to encourage especially those who live in “terrible pain” that they have inherent dignity that no law or algorithm can “eliminate.”
“On the contrary, it is precisely in the name of this inalienable dignity of the human person that we must reject the temptation to cause death under the guise of false compassion,” he said. “What is legal is not necessarily moral,” Leo said to applause from the crowd.
In Lourdes, where the church has recognised 72 “miraculous” cures as authentic, the question of respecting even the most frail, sick and vulnerable is particularly acute.
