New study questions institutional conscientious objection to assisted dying in Victoria
Winning the battle for the legalisation of euthanasia is just a first step. To achieve open, equal and universal access to assisted dying, campaigners are...
Intended parents should get legal status from birth, says British surrogacy review
In a joint report, the Law Commission of England and Wales and the Scottish Law Commission have rejected commercial surrogacy but backed legal parenthood from...
Decriminalise all forms of sexual activity, says UN report
A United Nations report has recommended the decriminalisation of drug use and sexual activity. The “March 8 Principles”, released on International Women’s Day, are supposed...
Portuguese Parliament passes its third euthanasia bill – but will the President sign it?
Portugal’s parliament approved a new version of a euthanasia bill approved, this Friday. The third version now goes to the President, Marcelo Rebello de Sousa....
Nigerian power couple convicted in London over organ trafficking plot
In May last year, a young Nigerian man stumbled into a police station into the English town of Staines, in Surrey, and appealed for help....
Cease and desist: Dutch sperm donor who has fathered 550 children is being sued
A Dutch woman and a foundation for children of sperm donors are suing a Dutch man for fathering too many children. Forty-one-year-old Jonathan Jacob Meijer,...
Should intractable mental illness make you eligible for euthanasia?
Canada is in the middle of a vigorous debate about whether incurable mental illness is grounds for Medical Assistance in Dying. This has been approved...
Belgium to permit multiple gender ID changes
Belgium will permit people to change their gender identity as often as they want. The Minister of Justice, Vincent Van Quickenborne, says that the principle...
Nature’s foray into politics may have backfired
In the 2020 election, a swag of high-profile science journals, including Nature, Science, The Lancet, and the New England Journal of Medicine, endorsed Joe Biden...
Mortality rates for American kids are rising for the first time in 50 years
US President Joe Biden is so concerned about the future of American children that he inserted a mandate for affordable child care into a major...
Will Pope Francis be composted?
Will Pope Francis be composted instead of buried in St Peter’s Basilica in Rome with his predecessors? It’s unlikely. But a former editor of the...
The virtues and the vices of the outrageous
A Norwegian bioethicist, Anna Smajdor, recently set out a case for “Whole Body Gestational Donation” – using the wombs of brain-dead women as surrogate mothers...