A delegation from the Irish State’s foreign aid organisation, Irish Aid, is currently in Vietnam promoting gay rights. Interestingly, Irish Aid seems to have nothing to say about the suppression of religious freedom in the Communist dictatorship, never mind other crucial freedoms. Why? The Socialist Republic of Vietnam controls all aspects of the lives of...
In a speech she delivered recently in Wexford, Children’s Minister Katherine Zappone highlighted what she termed ‘reproductive justice’. In her hands, ‘reproductive justice’ renders the rights of the unborn child completely null and void. Interestingly, however, other advocates of ‘reproductive justice’ while they are certainly pro-choice, nonetheless have misgivings about aspects of abortion that Minister...
Recently both the Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, and the Minister for Children, Katherine Zappone, said an unborn child should not be considered equal to its mother. The Taoiseach affirmed that the unborn child did, nonetheless, enjoy some rights, whereas Ms Zappone said that unless women have unrestricted access to abortion, meaning no rights for the unborn...
I was on Prime Time on Thursday night discussing 25 years of social change in Ireland. Prime Time has been in existence now since 1992. The video before the panel discussion took us from that year to the present and basically invited us to consider how much progress Ireland has made in that time. But...
Dr Rhona Mahony, Master of the National Maternity Hospital gave a speech to the Labour Party ‘Think-In’ a few days ago. In it, she said that while law deals with “right”, medicine deals with “risk”. She seemed to imply she does not believe that medicine also deals with “right”, a terrifying prospect. Can she really...
If, in matters of pregnancy, ‘choice’ is supreme, are there any grounds for criticising a woman who aborts one of her twins because she wants just one baby, not two? The euphemism for this is ‘foetal reduction’ and ‘foetal reduction’ often occurs when IVF results in a woman becoming pregnant with two or more babies....
Jacky Jones continues her war on domesticity in her health column in The Irish Times. Having previously wondered whether housewives are scared of ‘real work’ and accusing them of ‘completely wasting their talents’, she now laments that Irish women are more likely than men to like cooking, and also seem to like cooking more than...
Following a meeting between Catholic bishops and Government representatives last week, Children’s Minister Katherine Zappone, who was not present, told the Catholic Church that it has no right to determine our laws, and that its own teachings ought to recognise a right to abortion. That is quite a double whammy. According to The Times Ireland...
There has been much debate in the last few weeks about the ‘compulsory’ nature of the Government’s Public Services Card. Many of those concerns revolve around increased levels of State intrusion and the threat to personal privacy. This is a threat also posed to an increasing extent in the medical world as knowledge of genetics...
There is an intense debate raging within Neonatal medicine in the United States and elsewhere about whether or not very premature babies (22-26 weeks gestation) are full members of the human family. The claim that they are not, clears the path to allowing these babies to die rather than save them. This is the extension...
