The story about 13 year old girls being given contraceptive implants without their parents’ knowledge drew the usual justifications from the usual suspects. Natika Halil of the Family Planning Association said the provision of contraception to young people was “a vital part of the Government’s strategy to reduce teenage pregnancy rates in the UK which...
For the last few weeks we have been following the developing row between the Obama Administration and Catholic bishops there over Administration proposals to force Catholic and other religious organisations to extend their insurance cover to contraception, the Morning-After-Pill (an abortifacient) and sterilisation. This is a very big religious freedom issue and even liberal Catholics...
A case has come to light in Britain that is eerily reminiscent of an Irish case a few years back called McD v L in which a sperm donor father took a legal case against the two women raising his child for more access rights. As with the Irish case, the British case involves a...
Last month, there was a welter of media coverage of a study purporting to show that the health and welfare benefits of marriage had been oversold by a range of earlier studies. However, Dr. Scott Yenor, a political science professor a Boise State University, says there are serious flaws in the study. Yenor, author of...
Last month saw a potentially very significant ruling by the Supreme Court on adoption, Nottinghamshire County Council v B, but in the course of the ruling Justice Donal O’Donnell gave a justification for the Constitutional position on marriage which is well worth noting. Most importantly, his justification puts children at the centre of marriage, not...
So, it seems that the French are going to make a stab at reducing their very high divorce rate. The French Government has announced plans to introduce marriage preparation kits and longer civil ceremonies which currently can be as short as five minutes. But François de Singly, a sociology professor at Paris Descartes University, has...
A new study out this week has been well covered in many media outlets because it purports to overturn the findings of many other studies which show that marriage confers various health and welfare benefits on married people compared with cohabitees or single people. The study is published in the current issue of the prestigious...
The Civil Partnership Act is now in existence for over a year. In his column in last Friday’s Irish Times John Waters drew attention to an aspect of this law that was little noticed at the time, namely the provisions that force many of the legal responsibilities of marriage on cohabiting couples unless they opt...
On Wednesday the US Supreme Court issued its most important religious freedom ruling in years. Religious freedom is under increasing pressure in the US, Ireland and elsewhere, and the question was whether the court in this particular case would rule in favour of religious freedom or against it. It ruled in favour. Under consideration was...
A few months back British Prime Minister David Cameron declared himself in favour of same-sex marriage because encouraging commitment is a conservative thing to do in his view. Around the time he said that, Douglas Murray writing in The Spectator agreed. But his article was most noteworthy for what it left out. The article has...
