The Iona Blog

Why Roe vs Wade was overturned

By Dr Angelo Bottone

The Supreme Court of the United States has overturned Roe vs Wade, the 1973 ruling that a woman has an untrammelled right to abortion up to viability. Why did it do so? The simple answer is that the 1973 ruling had no real constitutional basis. The new ruling does not ban abortion. It simply gives...

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Number of abortions in England hits new record of 214,869

By Dr Angelo Bottone

Last year, 214,869 abortions took place in England and Wales, according to newly released statistics from the Department for Health show. It is the fifth consecutive year that the number has risen and it is both the highest number and the highest abortion rate since data have been collected. The number of terminations is the...

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Government should help all childcare choices

David Quinn was on Newstalk Breakfast discussing whether the Government’s should make daycare free. “There seems to be an assumption in this debate that every parent wants to put their young child in daycare. If this is not true, the Government cannot put all the money into daycare sector at the expenses of the other...

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Against the critics of Catholic healthcare

Catholic healthcare has been roundly attacked in the context of the row over the relocation of the National Maternity Hospital. Are the attacks deserved? The short answer is, no. In fact, secular healthcare with its abandonment of the most basic objective of medicine, ‘first, do no harm’, is what should be under the spotlight. In our new video,...

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Conscientious objection to abortion remains strong in Irish hospitals

By Dr Angelo Bottone

Conscientious objection to abortion is widespread among health care professionals working in Irish hospitals. This reality is highlighted in a recent paper by a group of pro-choice doctors. It admits that pro-life conscientious objectors were initially a challenge to establishing “abortion services” and still are a persistent barrier to expanding them. The paper is based...

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Forcing religious-run health centres to allow assisted suicide

By Dr Angelo Bottone

All hospitals and hospices will be forced to allow euthanasia to take place on site, with no exception, according to a law recently passed in the Australian state of New South Wales. Pro-life health care facilities will be obliged to allow external doctors to access patients who have requested assisted suicide. The Australian state of...

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The poor state of marriage across the EU

By Dr Angelo Bottone

Ireland had one of the lowest marriage rates in Europe in 2020, according to new data from Eurostat. This was the year Covid emerged, so marriage rates dropped everywhere, but Ireland was particularly bad, and the rate was already low. Figures from Eurostat show that Ireland had a marriage rate of 1.9 per 1,000 people...

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Catholic healthcare better than the secular alternative

By Dr Angelo Bottone

In the debate about the National Maternity Hospital, Catholic health care, and the role of the nuns in particular, are being constantly demonised. We are led to believe that secular healthcare is far better, something that does not hold up to scrutiny. Among those attacking Catholic healthcare and the religious sisters has been Sinn Fein...

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Marriage in Ireland continues its decline

By Dr Angelo Bottone

New figures from the CSO throw light on the changing nature of marriage in Ireland. To cut a long story short, the institution is in continuing decline. In all, there were 16,717 opposite-sex marriages last year; 15 percent less than in 2019. There were 500 same-sex marriages. The marriage rate per 1,000 population was just...

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A win for religious freedom at the US Supreme Court

By Matt Moran

Obviously, the possibility that Roe v Wade could soon be overturned is currently getting all the attention, but there was a nice win for religious freedom at the court yesterday that should not be overlooked. For 12 years the city of Boston has rotated flags on an 83-foot pole outside City Hall for every group...

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