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A single woman who was granted IVF funding on the NHS has finally had a baby after suffering three miscarriages.
Claire Dodd, 41, from Manchester, was left infertile aged 21 after having her fallopian tubes and ovaries removed due to cysts.
But after her relationship broke down when she was 30, she began to look into adoption, but was unsuccessful, as she felt time was running out to have a baby.
A major overview of the scientific data on sexuality and gender identity has found ‘a great chasm’ between what is commonly believed and what the evidence actually demonstrates. The 144-page study, published in a special edition of The New Atlantis journal, challenges the key orthodoxies that lie at the heart of the LGBT movement.
Co-authored by two of the world’s most respected scholars, Dr Lawrence Mayer and Dr Paul McHugh, the study carefully summarises and explains many of the most rigorous findings from the biological, psychological and social sciences regarding sexual orientation and gender identity and finds common assumptions wanting.
The House of Lords has unanimously passed a motion to reduce its own size.
There is no consensus on how numbers should be cut but the move was heralded as "unique" by the Lord Speaker after the debate on Monday night.
"This is a significant step forward and represents a substantial consensus. It shows that Members of the Lords want reform and see the present size of over 800 as an obstacle in the way of the effective running of the House," said Lord Fowler.
The defining feature is the belief that humanity is confronted by powerful destructive forces that threaten our everyday existence.1
‘Terror is the order of the day’—so decided the Convention in 1793 during the French Revolution, meaning that opponents of the Revolution would face terror. Looking out over western Europe you wonder whether fear has not become the order of the day. Secular and Christian writers alike have been commenting for over 20 years that western culture has an ambience of fear, as well as an air of brash self-confidence. It predates the attacks on the Twin Towers, although those terrorist crimes undoubtedly accelerated and inflamed it, and it has been only too evident in the cultural west over the last year. My own country, the UK, has opted to leave the European Union, but the manner of its doing so has been striking. Whether you were Exit or Remain, both sides in the referendum campaign invoked our fears. The issue could have presented as: ‘Which fear do you prefer?
Dame Louise Casey’s review into integration is not about integrating Indian Hindus or Punjabi Sikhs or Polish Catholics or Sri Lankan Buddhists or Chinese Taoists or Afro-Caribbean Anglicans or Jewish Haredi into British society. It has to include these nationalities and religions for the sake of political convenience. But once you see through the window dressing and strip down the padding, The Casey Review: A review into Opportunity and Integration, published yesterday is really about the failure to integrate Muslims from Pakistan and Bangladesh.
Scottish Catholic schools’ legal right to vet teaching staff for religious suitability should be reviewed, the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) has told the Scottish government.
The EHRC wants the law on “Catholic approval”, that any teacher appointed to a Catholic school must be approved in terms of “religious belief and character” under the Education (Scotland) Act 1980, re-examined.
Catholic teachers must obtain references from their parish priest but under the European Union’s equality directive such a requirement must be proportional.
Theresa May is an Anglican, and her faith appears to be sound and secure (ie, it doesn’t fade in and out like Magic FM in the Chilterns). A few articles have pondered the precise cut of her Christian jib: Giles Fraser was first off the mark, with a tender dissection of her High Church upbringing, with its “unflashy service, community, warts and all, and personal sacrifice”. For him, she is the real thing: “her faith feels entirely convincing to me,” he observes. More discursively, not to say vaguely, James Macintyre talks of her being “a quiet Christian from the heart of middle England”. That tells you a lot.
There used to be just truth and lies, but it’s got more complex of late. Some people are talking about our being in an age of post-truth – which I suppose means we all make up a version of that suits us. But there’s also anti-truth – which is not so much a lie, as an attempt to hide the truth.
And it may have been anti-truth that lay behind the Home Office deciding to refuse visas to three Middle Eastern bishops this last week; two of them were Syrian and one Iraqi.
They were invited to England to help celebrate a new Syriac Orthodox Cathedral being opened in London; a great multicultural event. Prince Charles, who has been a defender of the persecuted and ravaged Christians in the Middle East, was going to be there. It might even have been his suggestion to invite them.
The Catholic church has denied any link to a New South Wales pregnancy centre accused of deceptively pushing an anti-abortion agenda to women, despite records showing the local diocese set up its website.
The Women's Life Centre has operated for several years in Albury, NSW, marketing itself as a service that helps "any woman facing an unplanned pregnancy or worried that they may be pregnant".
The centre is currently crowdfunding to buy an ultrasound device and says it offers pregnancy testing, counselling, resources on pregnancy and abortion, future planning and abortion grief counselling.
A key part of the government's counter-terrorism strategy, Prevent, is to face a legal challenge in the High Court on Tuesday.
Salman Butt, a British Muslim activist, has launched legal action, saying he was named as a "non-violent extremist" by the government.
He says aspects of Prevent breach free speech rights.
The Home Office has accused Dr Butt of expressing views that violate British values, something Mr Butt denies.