It is the one thing that unites every mother in its inescapable embrace: we have sex, we conceive, with little effort (for most) we grow within us a cluster of cells that morphs and roils and shapes itself into a human being; like some unstoppable experiment, this invisible life-force extrudes from our core and imprints upon our bones so that our skin itches with the stretch and our backs ache with the pressure and our pelvises are so bruised and heavy we can no longer bear it.

And then, just as we feel we might erupt, nature commands us to expel this animated being from our body. Whether this squashed little stranger we have incubated is born naturally or surgically, whether it emerges black, white, rich or poor, the singular experience of childbirth condenses the mother to her most primeval: we are animals who have grown within us new life and then released that new life into the great big world.

But this is where the similarities end. For Kate, the experience would have been riven with anxieties that no other mother has had to endure: the international press camped outside her labour suite; the comments on Twitter from millions of voyeurs demanding to know why her baby was 'late'; all her days of motherhood, from the very moment her pregnancy was prematurely revealed, lived under a penetrating, fault-finding microscope. Continue reading

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• Catherine Marshall in Eureka Street
• Image: Vanity Fair

Catherine Marshall is a journalist and travel writer.

The new legislation will also remove the centuries-old gender discrimination rule that favours first-born sons over older daughters in the order of succession to the throne.

On the day on which the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge announced they are expecting their first child, a government spokesman confirmed that while the new law has not yet been introduced in the British Parliament, it is already de facto law, and William and Kate's first child will be able to succeed to the throne whether it is a girl or a boy.

But the new law — approved by all 16 members of the Commonwealth, including New Zealand — will not allow a Catholic to succeed to the monarchy.

Only Protestant members of the Royal Family who are descendants of Princess Sophia (1630-1714), the Electress of Hanover, a granddaughter of James I, can be king or queen.

Because the monarch is also head of the Church of England, he or she is required to take an oath to defend that church and the (Presbyterian) Church of Scotland.

Archbishop Vincent Nichols of Westminster, president of the Catholic Bishops' Conference of England and Wales, praised the new legislation.

"This will eliminate a point of unjust discrimination against Catholics and will be welcomed not only by Catholics but far more widely," he said.

Meanwhile, Queen Elizabeth II has paid tribute to relations between the United Kingdom and the Holy See on the occasion of the 650th anniversary of the founding of the Venerable English College in Rome.

In a message on the December 1 Feast of the English Martyrs, she said the college — established in 1362 as a hospice for English pilgrims — is "held in high esteem . . . as a training ground for pastors, priests and future leaders of the Catholic Church of England and Wales".

Sources:

Independent Catholic News

CNN Belief

L'Osservatore Romano

Image: Mirror