The headline to the story in The Irish Times yesterday read, ‘Only 49pc teach religion willingly in schools’. What did this headline invite us to believe? It invited us to believe that the rest do so unwillingly. Nothing could be further from the truth. The INTO survey on which the report is based in fact...
Reports that the Government could back a Bill which would deny religious institutions the right not to hire people who could damage their ethos and to take “reasonable” action against those who do is very worrying for those of us who value religious freedom. The legislation, which is being proposed by a group of Labour...
Maria Steen of the Iona Institute discussed the issue of surrogacy on RTE’s Prime Time with David Walsh of the Sims Fertility Clinic on Tuesday in the wake of the High Court’s decision to recognise the biological parents of twins born to a surrogate mother as the legal parents. You can watch the discussion here....
Yesterday’s High Court ruling in favour of a biological mother whose child was born to a surrogate mother and who wanted to be acknowledged as the legal mother was a legal milestone. The case presented surrogacy in a positive light. In fact, surrogacy is an ethical minefield throwing into sharp relief such questions as who...
This year is the 50th anniversary of The Feminine Mystique, by Betty Friedan, one of the most influential books of the late 20th century and possibly the key text in modern feminism. In the latest edition of the Family in America journal, author Charmaine Crouse Yoest argues that the book launched modern feminism’s war on...
The Supreme Court is in the midst of considering the issue of assisted suicide, after last month’s High Court ruling upholding Ireland’s ban on the practice was appealed. Yesterday, the court heard from the lawyer from the Irish Human Rights Commission (IHRC), Frank Callanan SC, who argued that the appellant, Marie Fleming, should have the...
Last week I was asked by a school to address its transition year and sixth year girls on the topic of abortion. Talking about abortion to a group of 120 17 and 18 year olds struck me as risky business. Would they react against what I had to say, or would they ‘merely’ be bored...
No fewer than seven judges of the European Court of Human Rights issued a partial dissent from the court’s ruling on Tuesday in favour of a lesbian couple where one partner wished to adopt the biological child of the other. The case is called ‘X and others v Austria’ and as was argued in our...
The European Court of Human Rights seems to have difficulty treating different situations differently. That much is clear from its ruling in the case of X and Others v. Austria. Instead the court wants to pretend that different situations are the same. Under Austrian law, an unmarried man can seek to adopt his own biological...
Victoria White (pictured) has an excellent piece in today’s Irish Examiner arguing forcefully for the retention of Article 41.2, which deals with women in the home. White makes the excellent-and all too frequently forgotten-point that the article was not designed to keep women in the home, but to protect their rights: “Article 41.2 recognises the...
