Iona Institute director, David Quinn, appeared on RTE’s The Spirit Level on Sunday to debate the ethics of surrogate motherhood and Assisted Human Reproduction more generally. The debate takes place near the beginning of the show and lasts about 15 minutes. Click here to download it.
What does a mother tell her child when she has conceived that child via donor sperm, that is, when she has deliberately decided to raise her child alone and without a father? Here is what one mother told Red (a women’s magazine), she would say: “I want my son to know he doesn’t have a...
Last March The Iona Institute hosted a talk by Dr Eric Kaufmann entitled “Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth?” Based on his book of the same name, Dr Kaufmann’s thesis was that, as religious believers tend to have more children, the future of Europe, and the West generally, was likely to be more religious, not...
Taoiseach Brian Cowen made some warm remarks about the Pope’s message for World Day of Peace last week, echoing his call for the protection of religious freedom. Mr Cowen said that he welcomed “the focus of His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI on the question of freedom of religion in his message for World Peace Day”....
In recent weeks the issue of the age of consent for sexual activity has twice come up in different guises. First it was the Irish Times lending its weight to proposals by the Law Reform Commission to reduce the age at which minors can access the Pill without parental knowledge or consent to 14. Now...
Among the other proposals found in the new document of the Law Reform Commission called ‘Report on Legal Aspects of Family Relationships’, is one that would pave the way for the one child having three or more legal parents. In addition, several other adults could have access rights to that same child. As mentioned in...
The Law Reform Commission issued a new paper on family law yesterday and needless to say it would propel us in a still more liberal direction that could only further undermine the social institution proven to be of most benefit to children, namely marriage. The LRC – in reality one more left-wing quango – either...
The European Commission has issued a Green paper that aims to make it easier for EU citizens to have their legal status in one country fully recognised in another. For most of us, a major legal status is our marital status, which the EU calls our ‘civil status’ in order to take into account same-sex...
In sociology there is something called the ‘selection effect’. For example, sociologists wonder whether religious people are less likely to divorce because they are religious or is it because the sort of people who are religious are less likely to divorce anyway? The same question applies to marriage. Are married men less likely to abuse...
The Irish Times today editorialises in favour of minors being given the Pill without the consent of their parents. It believes the Government should adopt the recommendation of the Law Reform Commission in this regard and copy the example of the UK. The editorial notes that conflicts can arise between doctors, their ‘patients’ and parents...
