Our image of public figures is formed mainly by what we read about them in the media. In the case of Pope Francis and Pope Benedict, anything that made the later seem more hardline than he really was received plenty of publicity. In the case of Pope Francis the reverse holds true. Hence, his frequent...
There are indications that Covid-19 will increase rates of divorce and separation because of so many couples being forced to live at close quarters for weeks or even months at a time, without the safety valve of being able to leave the house to go out socialising. But a study based on the UK Household...
A number of vaccines are being rolled-out to fight Covid-19. In some cases, the vaccine companies have used cells ultimately derived from aborted foetuses. For example, the one announced by Pfizer and BioNtech has used a cell line called HEK293, which uses a kidney cell extracted from an aborted foetus in the Netherlands back in...
Almost everyone believes in free will. We take its existence for granted. We think we can choose one action over another, love this person rather than that person. It is the basis for our belief in moral accountability. After all, if we don’t really choose our actions, how can we be held responsible for them?...
The members of the National Public Health Emergency Team (NPHET) might take some time out of their day to read a ruling by the US Supreme Court that declared new restrictions imposed on public worship because of the pandemic are disproportionate and violate the constitutional right to religious freedom. In fact, a French court, the...
Marie Stopes International, a chain of abortion and family planning clinics, has announced that it will change its name and remove any reference to Marie Stopes, due to her controversial past. Stopes was a member of the Eugenic Society, which promoted the selective breeding of human beings. A supporter of Nazism, she advocated for the...
The Irish Family Planning Association has just published its annual report, covering the first full year of the operation of Ireland still new abortion law. The organisation, which is the biggest private provider of abortions in the country, surveyed 177 of its clients to try and find out more detail on who is having abortions....
A new study based on interviews with 10 doctors who perform abortions in Irish hospitals reveals that our law is exactly as terrible and brutal as predicted by pro-life campaigners. The three researchers behind the study focused on cases involving so-called ‘fatal foetal abnormalities’ and asked the doctors who carry such out abortions about their...
The Irish abortion law is to be reviewed next year and the campaign to expand its grounds has already started. Two papers, written by three medical researchers based in Cork, want it made easier for doctors to say an unborn baby has a fatal abnormality and therefore perform an abortion. In fact, their more recent...
There is “little relationship between receiving Relationships and Sexuality Education (RSE) or not and young people’s sexual behaviour and competence”. This is the huge finding of a new report from the Economic and Social Research Institute, not that the finding would jump out at you when reading it. You have to go looking (it’s on...
