An influential group of NHS experts is urging the Scottish Government to allow the morning-after pill to be handed out in schools. The morning-after pill can act as an abortifacient. However, the demand has faced criticism for being irresponsible and for pouring “more fuel on the flames”. In a written submission to a Holyrood committee,...
A Fine Gael county councillor has criticised the HSE for its payments to hospital chaplains. Kieran Dennison, who represents the Mulhuddart Ward of Dublin West, questioned whether the State should be paying chaplains ahead of nursing staff, The Irish Times reports. Mr Dennison, a member of the HSE Dublin North East Regional Health Forum, said...
A ‘conspiracy of silence’ surrounded the issue of marriage because political leaders were afraid to say married families were better for children than cohabiting families or single parent families, a leading family lawyer has said. Baroness Ruth Deech (pictured) also said marriage is as important to the future of the nation as climate change and...
The Swedish government is to amend a law to replace the term ‘pregnant woman’ with ‘pregnant person’ as a concession to transsexuals. It will mean a pregnant person will no longer be automatically considered to be a woman. The proposal means laws requiring those undergoing sex change operations to be sterilised will be scrapped. A...
An Austrian law which forbids same-sex couple from adopting children in certain circumstances has been found to be in breach of the European Convention of Human Rights The Austrian law allows a man to adopt his own child when he is in an unmarried partnership with the child’s biological mother, but it does not allow...
Delegates at the Constitutional Convention have voted overwhelmingly to amend rather than delete Article 41.2 of the Constitution which deals with women in the home. This was in line with the recommendations of submissions from the Iona Institute and Curam, which advocates for carers in the home, both of whom argued for the amendment...
Middle-income families are set to bear the brunt of the Government’s proposed changes to Child Benefit, according to an expert report. ‘Squeezed’ middle-income families, not high earners, will suffer “the most significant losses” in relative terms under the proposed changes, the report says, according to The Irish Independent. The report says Child Benefit should remain...
France’s medical ethics council has edged the country closer to legalising euthanasia by ruling that assisted suicide should be allowed in certain cases In a statement issued on Thursday, they said that patients who make “persistent and lucid requests” to have their lives ended should be permitted to have access to assisted suicide. The body...
President Obama has pledged that his administration will work to remove financial barriers to marriage for low income couples. In his State of the Union address he said that strong families have always been “the source of our progress at home” and “the foundation of our power and influence throughout the world”. He said that...
Legislation along the lines of the X case which allows abortion in the case of suicide would not vindicate the equal right to life of the unborn child and would be unconstitutional, former Taoiseach John Bruton has said. In an article in today’s Irish Times, Mr Bruton says that article 40.3.3 “acknowledges an equal right...
