The Government has approved a legislative proposal to recognise and facilitate what amounts to commercial surrogacy abroad, a practice banned almost everywhere in Europe because it commodifies babies and exploits low-income women. The Government denies it will recognise overseas commercial surrogacy, but this simply isn’t true. Once drafted, the new provisions will be part of...
Canada only introduced assisted suicide in 2016, but already we see that the grounds to avail of it are widening and the country now has one of the most permissive euthanasia and assisted suicide laws in the world. Increasingly, assisted suicide is being seen an alternative to a lack of proper health care or welfare...
The Master of the Rotunda, Professor Fergal Malone, has revealed that up to 95pc of parents who are informed by the hospital that their unborn babies have Down Syndrome (DS) opt for abortion. This is a horrifying figure that appears to have soared since the abortion referendum even though the terminations in these instances are...
The US midterm elections took place on Tuesday. What has attracted little attention on this side of the Atlantic is the fact that voters in three US states backed extreme, pro-choice amendments to their constitutions. Pro-life proposals went before two other states, and they were rejected. Perhaps part of the reason is that the Democrats...
International development NGOs generally originated from the middle of the last century, but public support for faith-based and missionary organisations dates back centuries and they often laid the foundations for the work of secular agencies, something that is often forgotten. The Catholic Church was a pioneer in development infrastructure with 1822 being a significant year....
The well-being of young adults aged 18-25 in America has significantly declined, compared to older age groups, according to new research from the Human Flourishing Programme at Harvard University. This is due to the lockdowns but also to a decline in religious practice. The same phenomenon has occurred in Ireland. The study used data from...
In another sign of the very aggressive posture of the Irish State towards the pro-life movement, the HSE has backed calls for exclusion zones outside health centres in its submission on the matter to the Oireachtas Health Committee. Last August, the Government published a General Scheme of a Bill that would ban pro-life activities, including...
You probably didn’t notice at the time, but a judge in New York opened the door a few weeks ago to legal recognition of so-called ‘polyamorous relationships’, which involve three or more people who are romantically involved with one another. Ruling on a case, Judge Karen May Bacdayan, opined that perhaps the “time had arrived”...
Conservative women are generally happier than their liberal counterparts, according to a new survey, and marriage and family life are strongly linked to the greater life satisfaction of conservatives. The American Family Survey, an annual nationwide study of 3,000 Americans, found that only 15pc of liberal women of the 18-55 age group are “completely satisfied”...
The European Court of Human Rights has ruled that Belgium has violated the right to life, as guaranteed by the European Convention on Human Rights, in a controversial euthanasia case, although the ruling was more about procedure than the substance of the country ‘right to die’. The ruling refers to Godelieva de Troyer, a woman...
