Scotland’s prosecution service has said it will take no further action against a 75-year-old woman who became the first person charged under the country’s new “buffer zone” law. A very similar law exists in Ireland.
Rose Docherty was arrested in February outside Glasgow’s Queen Elizabeth University Hospital while standing with a sign reading: “Coercion is a crime, here to talk, only if you want.” Though she was charged under Scotland’s Abortion Services (Safe Access Zones) (Scotland) Act, the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service (COPFS) confirmed it would not pursue the case.
Docherty called the decision “a victory for common sense”, reports BBC Scotland News. “I just did what I thought was right,” she said. “To be warned for having stood on the streets of Glasgow offering to have a conversation if anyone wants to come and speak to you – it just seems preposterous.”
The initial arrest of Ms Docherty caught the attention of the Trump administration and she was visited by White House officials a month after her arrest.
A spokesperson from the US state department applauded the decision, adding: “The United States stands with all those fighting for free speech and religious liberty.”
The United States has issued its strongest warning yet to the UK over exclusion zones which have been used to target silent prayer and peaceful expression outside abortion facilities.
Ireland passed legislation in 2024 enacting the very same prohibitions of free speech within 100m of clinics and hospitals that administer abortions.
In a comment to the Daily Telegraph, the US State Department accused the UK government of committing an “egregious violation of the fundamental right to free speech and religious liberty.”
“It is common sense that standing silently and offering consensual conversation does not constitute harm.”
The comment comes in response to cases in which individuals – some elderly – have been arrested, charged, or even criminally convicted for simply for praying silently or offering consensual conversations within large censored zones outside abortion facilities.
Under current legislation in England & Wales, “influencing” a person’s decision to access an abortion facility, within 150m of the facility, is a crime carrying a potentially unlimited fine.
In Scotland, similar legislation exists, censoring the area within 200m of all hospitals.
A Swiss clinic that offers assisted suicide claims it has changed its policies after an Irish woman killed herself with their help without any of her family knowing.
Maureen Slough, a 58-year-old mother and retired civil servant from Cavan who had a history of mental illness, ended her own life at the Pegasos clinic in Switzerland in July. Pegasos will enable people to end their lives even if they are not ill in any way.
Her partner Mick Lynch and daughter Megan only found out when a WhatsApp message arrived afterwards from Pegasos.
She was then cremated, and the urn containing her ashes was posted home like an Amazon package.
In response to queries from the Irish Independent, the clinic said it has now changed its procedures for unaccompanied applicants.
It says it will no longer accept unaccompanied applicants with living family members unless they provide copies of their next of kin’s passport and allow representatives of the clinic to meet them in a video call.
The Government is facing growing pressure to explain why it continues to demand €26.2 million from the Legion of Mary to contribute to the Mother and Baby Homes redress scheme. The Department of Children is sticking to its position despite key findings advising against the action.
Speaking to The Irish Catholic, former Ceann Comhairle Seán Ó Fearghaíl TD criticised the Government’s stance, saying: “I fail to see however why the department views the Legion of Mary/Regina Coeli as a relevant organisation when neither the Commission of Investigation nor the independent negotiator found against them or recommended that they should contribute to redress.”
The Regina Coeli Hostel in Dublin, run by the Legion of Mary from 1930 to 1998, was examined by the Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes, but found it unique among the 18 institutions examined. It operated not as a mother and baby home, but as a hostel offering shelter to homeless women, including unmarried mothers, women struggling with addiction, mental illness, or poverty.
Moreover, unlike most institutions of the time, mothers were allowed to stay with their children indefinitely and to keep them. Records show that between the 1930s and 1980s, the percentage of mothers who kept their babies rose from under 30pc to over 87pc, although much of this was due to changing attitudes and more financial support from the State.
The Taoiseach has paid tribute to Daniel O’Connell for achieving Catholic Emancipation at two separate events on Aug 6th marking the 250th anniversary of his birth.
At the unveiling of a commemorative plaque at his birthplace, Micheal Martin underlined how deeply the anti-Catholic Penal Laws affected the people, such that “open practice” was banned, Catholics were “excluded from education, politics and professions” and attempts were made “to try to force the conversion of Catholic landed interests, such as the O’Connell’s, to the established religion”.
Reversing this was “the great cause of Emancipation” which O’Connell took up and he extended the arguments to a universal freedom of religion.
At the State Commemoration at Derrynane, O’Connell’s “tireless advocacy for Catholic Emancipation” was recognised.
The Taoiseach noted his rootedness in faith which, he said, he became much more personally and deeply committed to as he grew older.
He said O’Connell took up “the cause of Catholic Emancipation with all of the fire and determination he brought to his legal work”, and its achievement in 1829 “resonated throughout the world”.
A booklet accompanying the event also underlined the specific religious core of his work, mentioning the word “Catholic” no fewer than 19 times.
The Bishop of Down and Connor has encouraged priests to continue being generous with their ministry despite a brutal attack on a priest in the sacristy of a church while he was dispensing a sacrament.
Bishop McGuckian told The Irish Catholic that it was “very poignant” that Canon John Murray of Downpatrick, Co Down, had agreed before mass to hear the confession of a man who then viciously assaulted him with a wine bottle. The man is believed to have committed a homicide the night before and was seeking absolution.
“Canon Murray made himself vulnerable and invited the person aside into privacy for the sacrament, for ministry. It was then that he was attacked and I understand that priests will feel, ‘My goodness, are we all vulnerable all of the time?’ But I know that priestly sense of being there, and wanting to be available and wanting to reach out will always trump that!
“And I say to my priests as I say to everyone else. Take courage and do not be afraid.”
Parents views must be “central” to the Government’s planned National Convention on Education, according to a leading figure in Catholic education.
Alan Hynes, CEO of the Catholic Education Partnership (CEP) spoke after the Minister for Education, Helen McEntee, announced a new national conversation on education. Both the Irish Constitution and the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights recognise the parents as the primary educators of their children.
He told The Irish Catholic that while the Government’s press release mentioned parents among other education stake-holders, “in the video the minister put on social media there was no mention of parents”.
“Parents ought to be central to this national conversation alongside the voices of young people,” he said, “I would take it that the Minister made a slip in not mentioning them in the video, but it is important that slip is not made again.”
“Parents are the only stakeholder specifically mentioned in the Constitution as having a priority regarding the education of their children. The Constitutional position of parents needs to be respected throughout this process,” Mr Hynes said.
Lone parent families are among those who face the highest risks of poverty and deprivation, according to the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI).
The new research examined persistent income poverty and material deprivation between 2015 and 2023.
The report says lone parent families, large families, and households with a working-age adult with a disability faced the highest risks of persistent annual at-risk-of-poverty [AROP] and deprivation.
It adds: “Children in lone parent families, in particular, are most at risk, with an average 33pc of them being persistently deprived, and 21pc being persistently AROP, between 2016 and 2023”.
Regarding policy implications, the report says the study highlights “the importance of understanding poverty as a dynamic and multifaceted issue, and the need for a multi-dimensional approach to poverty measurement and policy”.
Bertrand Maître, co-author of the report, said: “Research shows that the longer people stay in poverty, the harder it is for them to escape. This highlights the urgent need to tackle persistent poverty and to design policies that protect the most vulnerable groups from falling into long-term poverty.”
Men and women over the age of 80 in the UK are applying to become the legal parents of children they procured through surrogacy, according to official figures.
Data released by Cafcass, the government agency that represents children’s interests in the courts, revealed that between 2020 and 2025 several men over 80 applied for court orders to legally recognise them as the parents of surrogate babies.
The figures also show that in the same time frame there were applications from men aged 70-79 and women aged 60-69, 70-79 and over 80.
The new figures come after The Times revealed in May that a husband and wife, both aged 72, were granted a parental order to become the legal parents of a 14-month-old boy born via surrogacy.
The couple were granted the parental order for the baby, who was born six months earlier to a surrogate in California using the husband’s sperm and a donor egg, despite a judge’s concerns they could die before the boy reaches 18.
There is no legal age limit for intended parents in the UK, but anti-surrogacy campaign groups have condemned the rising trend of older people having babies through surrogates.
A national childcare subsidy for children under the age of three, has been announced by China.
It is the most significant central-level effort to reverse a deepening demographic crisis since allowing families to have three children in a country where the fertility rate has now dropped to half of what is needed to keep a population from declining.
The country will provide an annual subsidy of 3,600 yuan (€435) for every child born on or after January 1, 2025, until they turn three – regardless of whether they are the first, second or third child, according to a government announcement on Monday.
“The policy does mark a major milestone in terms of direct handouts to households and could lay the groundwork for more fiscal transfers in future,” said Huang Zichun, China economist at Capital Economics.
But he also pointed out that the sums involved were too small to have a near-term impact on the birth rate or household consumption.
The country is also among the world’s most expensive places to have children, in relative terms, according to a study by China-based YuWa Population Research Institute.
Moreover, decades of strict one-child policy enforcement not only curbed births but deeply affected social attitudes and the confidence to have children.
