New US Census figures show that over a quarter of unmarried women who gave birth in the year ended June 30, 2008 were living with a partner. It is the first time that the Census Bureau has measured the percentage of unmarried mothers who were not living alone. In Ireland in the first quarter of...
A leading fertility expert has called for the taxpayer to subsidise IVF treatment for couples who experience difficulty having children. Dr Mary Wingfield, director of the Merrion Fertility Clinic in Dublin, that such couples are being forced to borrow money to avail of In Vitro Fertilisation (IVF) treatment due to the lack of financial support...
The role of religion in the public square is the key challenge facing the world, according to former British prime minister Tony Blair. Writing in UK Catholic magazine, The Tablet, he asked: “Is it a force for good or a force for ill? A force for healing or for conflict? A force of reaction or...
Pope Benedict XVI has convened a meeting later this month of the world’s Cardinals which will discuss religious freedom around the world among other topics. The morning session will begin with discussion of the situation of religious freedom in the world and the new challenges being faced, with an introductory talk by Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone,...
Children who attend preschool are less likely to lie, cheat or steal as adults, a conference was told yesterday. The annual conference of ‘youngballymun’, an early intervention programme, heard that findings from the US HighScope Perry Preschool Study, a longitudinal study into a preschool programme in the 1960s showed that children who participated tended to...
A homosexual sperm donor who fathered two babies with a lesbian after placing an advert in a magazine is now engaged in a legal dispute over access to the children. The woman in her 40s, and her civil partner, took the case to the Court of Appeal to try to overturn an earlier ruling that...
Men and women who get married and start a family should “receive decisive support from the State”, the Pope said on his visit to Spain at the weekend. He also warned of the dangers of “aggressive secularism” which he said is now the strongest it has been in Spain since the 1930s. Speaking in Barcelona...
A ruling by the European Court of Human Rights that access to Assisted Human Reproduction like IVF is a ‘human right’ is being appealed to the Grand Chamber of the Court. The ruling last April found that an Austrian law banning sperm and ova donation for In Vitro Fertilisation was “unjustified” and constituted a violation...
Fewer children in the UK are being adopted than at any time since 1998 according to new figures, and Christian campaigners say that equality legislation giving adoption rights to same-sex couples is partly to blame. Last year, some 4,655 children were adopted in England and Wales, 15 per cent fewer than the peak of 5,477...
Divorce and the decline in marriage is costing the UK up to a staggering £100 billion a year, a leading Government minister has said. Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith said that children raised in single parent households were nine times more likely to begin a life of crime than those who were raised...
