A billboard ad claiming that 100,000 lives have been saved because of Northern Ireland’s restrictive abortion regime was run in January. Complaints about its accuracy were made to the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA). The good news is that the complaints have been rejected because the ASA believes the claim is reasonable and defensible. As you...
Paul Cullen recently wrote a long article for the Irish Times about the rights of children conceived artificially through the use of sperm or eggs from anonymous donors. This controversial method, called heterologous fertilisation, raises many moral and legal issues. To what extent does this practice infringe the identity rights of these ‘donor-children’? The Assisted...
New Census data shows that the married family continues its decline in Irish life. While it is still by the easily the predominant type of family overall, its dominance has declined with the rise of cohabiting couples, divorce and separation, and single-parent households. Yesterday, the CSO released the Households and Family data from Census 2016....
‘Momentous review to end church’s health role’, said the headline in Saturday’s issue of The Times Ireland Edition. ‘For the first time since its foundation, Ireland is formally emancipating itself from the church’, said the editorial, without a hint of hyperbole. The headline made it look like the Church is being singled out. Not so....
At the end of June, Ms Justice Laffoy presented her report on the Citizens’ Assembly meetings dedicated to the discussion of the 8th amendment. In spite of calls for the provision and regulation of conscientious objection to abortion, the report has made no recommendation about it. The Citizens’ Assembly members voted for Article 40.3.3 to...
What is the point of soliciting submissions from the public when the agenda of the Citizens’ Assembly is already set? The Citizens’ Assembly devoted its last two sessions to the discussion of “how we best respond to the challenges and opportunities of an aging population”. For the occasion, the general public was invited to submit...
Critics are outbidding each other to see who can lavish most praise on the series one Irish Times writer calls a “dystopian masterpiece” about a “religious fundamentalist government who deal with the decreasing birth rates by forcing lower-class women into sexual slavery as reproductive servants for the infertile elite.” The series is The Handmaid’s Tale...
A new CSO module on childcare reveals a huge preference among parents for minding their pre-school and primary school children at home. The module reveals that only a small minority of parents wish to place their children into a creche, Montessori, or some similar arrangement despite the growing Government preference for this kind of childcare....
The recent ruling by the Supreme Court on a polygamous marriage means that exclusivity is no longer considered an essential element in marriage. So, marriage does not have to be exclusive under the new legal dispensation, it does not have to be the conjugal union of a man and a woman, it cannot be legally...
Iona Institute NI spokespeople Mary Lewis and Tracy Harkin appeared on the BBC today (Friday). Mary appeared on The Nolan Show to discuss the decision to allow the NHS to fund Northern Ireland women who travel to England for abortions. Mary’s contribution can be heard here (21 minutes and 53 seconds in). Tracy appeared on...
