The Iona Blog

6666 abortions performed in Ireland last year

We now know how many women had an abortion in Ireland last year; 6666. If you add in the 375 women who went to England for an abortion in 2019, despite our new law, it adds up to 7,041, a horrible figure. The official figures were published today. If we allow for (a high estimate) that...

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Marriage in Ireland continues its decline

By Dr Angelo Bottone

Marriage continues to change and decline in Ireland as the latest figures from the Central Statistics Office show. Fewer marriages are taking place, fewer are taking place in churches, more are taking place between people who were married before and are now divorced, and couples are older when they marry. Same-sex marriage is now permitted....

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China, morality, atheism and happiness

By David Quinn   Lately I’ve been reading a book called ‘Science and the Good’ which is about the failure to discover a scientific basis for morality. To cut a long story short, dispense with religion and the idea of God, then it is very hard, if not impossible, to declare that anything at all...

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Programme for Government will ban pro-life vigils outside hospitals

By Dr Angelo Bottone

The newly agreed Programme for Government includes a commitment to impose ‘exclusion zones’ which would stop even silent pro-life vigils outside hospitals and GP surgeries where abortions take place or are facilitated. This is an extreme measure and, as a national law, would be unique in Europe.The Programme includes other measures of concern (see below). For example, it promises yet another...

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Number of babies with Down Syndrome being aborted goes up

By Dr Angelo Bottone

Abortion has been legal in Ireland since January of last year so we would expect a dramatic decline in the number of women travelling from here to Britain in order to obtain an abortion. This has indeed happened. Official figures, just released, show that 375 Irish residents had an abortion in England and Wales in...

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More light thrown on religious practice in a lockdown

By Dr Angelo Bottone

Prayer and online religious practice have increased in the island of Ireland during the Covid-19 pandemic, according to a new report. “Many faith leaders described an increase in religious practice, linked to moving online. They observed surprising numbers of people tuning in for worship services and other events, noting that people who would not have...

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Safety above all things is not a Christian virtue

By Dr Angelo Bottone

Too much or too little are two ways of doing something wrong. A well-meant action can go bad because of an excess of it or a lack of it. Courageous gestures, for instance, lie between excessive fear and recklessness. If we consider risk, which is a common and inevitable element of life, what is too...

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How non-belief is factor in Irish voting behaviour

By Jim Stack MSc PhD Two years after the abortion referendum, I found myself thinking quite a lot about how that referendum result came to be. A big part of the explanation was, of course, the relentless pro-abortion bias in media coverage of the issue, stretching over most of the thirty-five years of the Eighth...

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Getting the facts right about reversing effects of abortion pills

By Dr Angelo Bottone

This week an article attacked Irish doctors who offer medical assistance to women who have taken abortion pills and then changed their minds before the effects were final. The article contains a number of claims that need to be challenged. A chemical abortion consists of two separate pills: the first, called mifepristone, blocks the effects...

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Should those in charge get priority treatment in a pandemic?

By Dr Angelo Bottone

In a previous blog I discussed an article published in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) that debates certain principles for allocating scarce medical resources during a pandemic. The authors propose four main values that can be useful when there is a shortage of resources. They are: 1. Maximize the benefits; 2. Treat people equally; 3....

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