David Quinn of The Iona Institute discusses how egg and sperm donation and surrogacy undermine the right of a child to their identity and compares them with the illegal adoption practices of the past, which we are rightly outraged by. He appeared on the ‘Hard Shoulder’ on Newstalk. You can listen to the item here.
This week, the final parts of the Children and Relationship Act 2015 have come into operation. This legislation has changed profoundly the legal arrangement of family relationships but in a way that downgrades the importance of the natural ties. Part 2 and 3, which were delayed because of technical mistakes in the original Act, contain...
A new scientific paper says that so-called ‘designer babies’ could be only two years away. David Quinn discussed the ethics of this on Newstalk Breakfast. You can listen to the item here.
David Quinn was on Spirit Radio to ask some hard questions about a new law governing Assisted Human Reproduction and surrogacy.
Health Minister Simon Harris has announced that he is ‘commencing’ sections of the Children and Family Relationships Act for the first time. This law, passed in 2015, governs, among other things, the legal relationships between children conceived via egg and sperm donation, and the ‘intended parents’. Harris is almost guaranteed soft questions from journalists on...
Irish media often present surrogacy as an uncontroversial option for couples who struggle with infertility but we rarely hear reports about children who have been abandoned by commissioning adults, or about the poor women who have acted as surrogates and regret it. A new documentary by the Australian ABC TV covers the story of baby...
The attack on the natural ties is getting closer to its logical endpoint now. The Children and Family Relationships Act, buttressed by the upcoming legislation on Assisted Human Reproduction already tremendously downgrade natural family ties, but influential voices want Irish law to go even further in this direction. For example, they want surrogate mothers to...
Breda O’Brien appeared on Spirit Radio’s Morning Show to discuss a new report from the Oireachtas Health Committee on the fertility industry. In particular she attacked a proposal that would allow surrogate mothers to become pregnant with their own babies and and then hand them over to a commissioning couple or individual, possibly in return...
The Oireachtas Joint Health Committee has just issued a report on Assisted Human Reproduction (AHR). The report is extremely inadequate in its treatment of the ethically questionable aspects of AHR but for the sake of simplicity, let’s examine what seems to be the least problematic forms of AHR: so-called altruistic egg and sperm donation and...
Press Release from The Iona Institute Sleepwalking to disaster if recommendations on fertility industry are followed July 22, 2019 – A new report from the Joint Oireachtas Health Committee on the Assisted Human Reproduction (AHR) industry would further advance the commodification of eggs, sperm, wombs, embryos and even children after they are born if its...
