Quartz: The German parliament is split over a Nazi-era abortion law that punishes doctors

In a country as progressive as Germany, it may surprise some people to know that under section 219a of the criminal code, a medical professional is forbidden to publicly “offer, announce, or advertise” abortion services. Breaking the law is punishable with a fine or up to two years in prison. [...]

Then, on Tuesday (Mar. 13), the Social Democrats—partners in the new coalition—suddenly did an about-face, announcing they didn’t want to put their proposal to strike the law to a vote, as they’d originally promised, but would seek a common solution with their conservative partners. They were slammed for giving in to the CDU before the new government even got off the ground. [...]

Abortion is still a crime in Germany and an “offence against life” under section 218 of the criminal code. However, a woman won’t be prosecuted if she has the abortion in the first 12 weeks of her pregnancy, but she’s legally obliged to have a counseling session with a doctor and then have three days “thinking time” before she goes ahead with the procedure. She still has to pay for the abortion herself though, as medical insurance will normally only cover her if the pregnancy is deemed risky.

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BBC4 Analysis: What Are Universities For?

Almost half of the UK's school leavers are now going to university. But the university sector is under more scrutiny than ever before. Sonia Sodha argues that it's time to take a profound look at what universities are really for.

Should we be spending vast amounts of public money educating young people at this level if the main purpose is to get ahead of the next person? Are vast numbers of students being failed by a one-size-fits-all system that prizes academic achievement above all else? Why has Apple - and several other companies in Silicon Valley - decided that training young people's imagination and sense of civic culture is of paramount importance? What are the long-term risks to society if universities increasingly become little more than training grounds for the workplace?  

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The Atlantic: How Trump Is Remaking Evangelicalism

But evangelicals are also defined by how the world sees them, and this has become particularly complicated in the wake of the 2016 election. The statistic that 81 percent of the white evangelicals who voted chose Trump has been cited constantly over the last year and a half. All jokes about conservative Christians supporting a thrice-married, foul-mouthed casino owner have become canned. Non-Christians weren’t the only people who were shocked. “Most evangelical Christians like me exclaimed, ‘Who are these people?’” wrote Mark Galli, the editor in chief of Christianity Today, in his essay. “‘I know hardly anyone, let alone any evangelical Christian[s], who voted for Trump.’” [...]

This, above all, may be the fracture line within the church that Trump has most exacerbated: race. The authors of Still Evangelical? clearly see a non-white-majority future for the church—not just in America, but worldwide. In the U.S., Hispanics grew as a share of Catholics, mainline Protestants, and evangelical Christians between 2007 and 2014, according to Pew, and whites are more likely than either blacks or Hispanics to say they’re not religiously affiliated. A century ago, North America, Europe, and Australia dominated global Christianity; today, the faith is growing most quickly in regions like sub-Saharan Africa. While many predominantly white churches in the U.S. are aging and fading, multi-ethnic and immigrant-driven churches are increasing in size and vibrancy. [...]

Evangelicalism is not going to be remade into a progressive movement in the wake of Trump. In 2015, Pew found that 56 percent of evangelical Protestants identify as Republican or Republican-leaning, higher than any other religious group other than Mormons. While a small but vocal minority of leaders have pushed to create an evangelical left, that movement is still narrow. Even among the generally anti-Trump elites who wrote essays for this book, not all would want that future for their faith.

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America Magazine: Five Years of Francis: The Keys to His Papacy

The sheer surprise of Francis’ election was also a factor. John Paul II had been pope for 26 years at the time of his death, and his doctrinal wingman, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, was elected to succeed him in 2005 as Benedict XVI. The combined pontificates represented 35 years of a traditional reorientation in the church, and those two popes had named all of the 113 cardinals who went into the 2013 conclave. [...]

But the hallmark of Francis’ papacy, and the source of the gravitational draw of his personality, is not about some tectonic shift in the church. Rather, it is a commitment to reforming the church first in order to serve the flock truly and bear genuine and convincing witness to Christ’s teachings. [...]

Benedict XVI was wiser about the need for the church to renew itself. But he insisted that all the tools and traditions were already at hand. He had neither the energy nor the administrative skill to open the church to reform and instead sought to highlight tradition and beauty and liturgy as the irresistible draw that would outshine the church’s obvious flaws. Both John Paul and Benedict, in other words, saw themselves as pastors who went out in order to bring others back to their fold, through their own gate. [...]

Prosaic as it sounds, part of the answer lies in the numbers. By the end of 2017, Francis had named just under half of the 120 cardinals who could cast a ballot in the next papal election. A two-thirds supermajority is needed to elect a pope, so it is not as though he has “packed” the College of Cardinals. To be sure, many of the cardinals appointed by Benedict and John Paul are happy about the direction in which Francis is taking the church. But others are dismayed, to say the least, and still others are perhaps unnerved by the tumult that has been stirred by Francis’ critics and may want a compromise candidate as his successor, someone less prone to stirring the pot. On the other hand, a principal dynamic at work in the 2013 conclave—an effort by a large majority of the cardinals, whatever their orientation, to rebalance the power equation between the Vatican and local dioceses—endures and could play a central role again.

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Financial Times: Three reasons Theresa May didn't retaliate more on Russia

The FT's chief foreign affairs commentator Gideon Rachman says the expulsion of diplomats was the 'minimum expected' but Britain's prime minister will have other measures up her sleeve.