Catholic churches around the country are promoting their pro-life stance today with masses to celebrate the "Day for Life" campaign.

ONLY one in three women with a crisis pregnancy have attended counselling services, it emerged yesterday.

CURA, the Catholic Church's crisis pregnancy counselling service, is holding its 30th annual conference this weekend.

The Catholic Church's crisis pregnancy counselling service is reportedly set to lose €600,000 in annual funding due to its refusal to distribute a leaflet containing information on abortion.

AROUND 100,000 women concerned about a crisis pregnancy in the past three years have used a State-funded mobile phone text service to get help, it was revealed yesterday.

A LEADING psychiatrist has questioned whether the Crisis Pregnancy Agency will meet its goal of reducing abortion figures unless it places greater emphasis on making parenting positive.

BISHOPS should have no involvement in crisis pregnancy counselling services, an Oireachtas committee heard yesterday.

AS a former Cura counsellor, I welcome the decision by the Irish bishops to call for an end to the distribution of the ‘positive options’ leaflet by Cura.

THE Crisis Pregnancy Agency (CPA) is meeting Cura management next week to ask how they intend fulfilling their contract with the State body after Catholic bishops told the service to stop issuing abortion clinic contacts.

The Catholic pregnancy advice service day accepted orders from the Church to stop distributing leaflets which contain information on abortion.

Catholic bishops have ordered the pregnancy counselling service, CURA, to stop offering women a leaflet which names other Irish agencies prepared to give information on foreign abortions.

WHEN you’re in a hole, the old saying goes, you should stop digging. Michael McDowell cited it recently, as he elegantly side-stepped public odium by allowing Nigerian student Kunle Elukanlo back into the country.

CARDINAL INNITZER of Vienna thought he could do a deal with Hitler. He supported the Anschluss, the 1938 unification of Austria and Germany. He even offered a ‘Heil Hitler’ when the Nazis marched into Vienna.

AN ARRANGEMENT between the State and the Catholic Church’s pregnancy advice service on issuing abortion clinic contacts must end, a moral theologian insisted yesterday.

The Archbishop of Dublin has expressed concerns about the running of the Catholic Church's pregnancy advice service Cura.

A POST MORTEM was due to be held today after a newborn baby was discovered in a shallow grave in Co Mayo.

A CRISIS pregnancy group, which has already received almost 200,000 calls for help on its mobile phone text service, is starting a campaign to reach out to women in their late 30s and early 40s.

A STAGGERING 10,000 mobile text messages were made to a crisis pregnancy information service in one week last month after a TV campaign was launched to promote it.

AT least 1,000 young women face the dilemma of an unplanned pregnancy every year in Ireland, according to the Union of Students in Ireland (USI).

MORE than 11,000 women sought help from the country’s leading pregnancy support agency last year.

CRISIS pregnancy support group CURA yesterday urged the public not to prejudge the person who dumped a newborn child in Co Dublin.