Atheists and theists typically debate the existence of God, but it is almost as relevant and pertinent to debate the nature of morality and that is what Atheist Ireland’s Michael Nugent and I have been doing lately in a number of blog posts. Michael began by writing a piece about the gender ideology debate. I...
The Irish Medical Council has produced an updated version of the Guide to Professional Conduct and Ethics for Registered Medical Practitioners. The most relevant changes follow the Ireland’s new abortion law. Let’s consider them in detail. Section 48 of the Guide was titled “Abortion” in the previous editions while now the euphemism “termination of pregnancy”...
In a recent blog, the head of Atheist Ireland, Michael Nugent writes: “I believe we should treat every individual person with the same respect and dignity and love.” Well, yes, and an atheist is perfectly entitled to believe this if they want, just as I am perfectly entitled to believe in God, but both beliefs...
In the Netherlands, a doctor has appeared in court after having performed euthanasia on a woman suffering from dementia. She had made a living will in the past and, according to her daughter, she wanted to die. Nonetheless, the 74-year woman had no recollection of it and during the procedure she struggled trying to prevent...
Maria Steen had a column in The Irish Times on Saturday which caused a big online response. The topic of her article is crucial; are liberals as liberal and tolerant as they purport to be? Increasingly, many liberals seek to shut down debate on substantive issues. Instead debates (such as they are) are intra-liberal ones,...
Irish media often present surrogacy as an uncontroversial option for couples who struggle with infertility but we rarely hear reports about children who have been abandoned by commissioning adults, or about the poor women who have acted as surrogates and regret it. A new documentary by the Australian ABC TV covers the story of baby...
The recent outcry about the poor treatment of children at a number of creches focused public attention once again on the issue of daycare. But the debate centred almost entirely on the need to better resource the sector and to regulate it more. But as Maria Steen argued in The Irish Times on Saturday, the...
By David Mullins If proposals contained in a submission to the Department of Health by the Irish Pharmacy Union are accepted; then access to an abortion will soon become more readily available than access to contraception. As things currently stand, any person aged 16 or over may access an abortion without parental consent. Those below...
In a recent decision on the abortion law of two US states, Supreme Court Justice, Clarence Thomas, wrote an opinion of his own that drew attention to the embrace of eugenics by some of the founders of the modern ‘reproductive health’ movement. As he says: “From the beginning, birth control and abortion were promoted as means...
The attack on the natural ties is getting closer to its logical endpoint now. The Children and Family Relationships Act, buttressed by the upcoming legislation on Assisted Human Reproduction already tremendously downgrade natural family ties, but influential voices want Irish law to go even further in this direction. For example, they want surrogate mothers to...
