Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights, Nils Muižnieks, said in a report this week that we should introduce a British-style abortion law here. No, we shouldn’t and we don’t have to. The opinion has about as much legal weight as a feather. Muižnieks, a former director of the Soros Foundation (George Soros being well...
On Saturday the Iona Institute Northern Ireland was launched with an inaugural conference based on the theme, ‘Faith in the Public Square’. In the keynote address, the Archbishop of Armagh, Eamon Martin, urged Christians to not be afraid of speaking out in the public square, and appealed to all others to not be afraid of...
Banning the wearing of religious symbols and garb in a place of work, like a cross or a headscarf, is not discrimination the EU’s highest court, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) has found in a ruling issued last week. This is a bad decision, but fortunately it does not directly affect national law. If...
Iona Institute Director, David Quinn, appeared on RTE’s Claire Byrne Live on Monday night. In this short clip, he points out that public funding of Church schools exists in countries where Church and State are firmly separated and should continue in Ireland also. He instances the examples of Australia and the Netherlands. The item can...
Freedoms of religion, conscience and speech were discussed at an important conferences held in London recently. ‘Enemies of the State: Religious Freedom and the New Repression’, was held at Conway Hall, home to an important archive on humanism. It was co-hosted by Spiked and by ADF International. Spiked is a Marxist leaning online journal. Its editor,...
Good afternoon Ladies and gentlemen, I want to talk to you about two things this afternoon. First, I want to address the question that is often posed in relation to this Assembly. Why shouldn’t we simply have a vote on this issue? Why shouldn’t we leave it to the majority to decide? I want to...
‘Fact Check’ at TheJournal.ie has ‘fact checked’ something Maria Steen of The Iona Institute said on Claire Byrne Live a fortnight ago about diversity in multi-denominational schools and found it to be ‘mostly false’. It is this statement that is actually false. Maria was very specific in what she said and everything she said stands...
The pro-choice Guttmacher Institute was invited last month to address the Citizens’ Assembly and give delegates some facts and figures about abortion. In my previous blog post, I have showed how it very mistakenly told delegates that married women are more likely to have abortions. In this post I will look at the claim that...
Two very questionable claims were made by one of the experts invited to address the Citizens’ Assembly last month. One is that married women have an abortion rate higher than unmarried women, and the second is that countries with highly restrictive abortion laws tend to have higher abortion rates than countries with more permissive laws....
Maria Steen of The Iona Institute appeared on TV3’s Tonight with Pat Kenny last night. The subject was the pro-life amendment to the Irish Constitution. Should we retain it or repeal it? Maria argued in favour of retention and said that if we repeal it, it will be the first time ever we have voted to...
