David Quinn, Chief Executive of The Iona Institute, recently delivered the 4th Rosemary Sheehan Memorial Lecture. His theme was ‘In Defence of Catholic Healthcare’. In his talk, he reminded people of the immense contribution Catholics have made to healthcare in Ireland and worldwide both historically and down to the present day. He explained the origins...
Newly released figures from the Department of Health reveal that last year 8,156 abortions took place in Ireland, the highest number since the referendum of 2018. This is exactly in line with pro-life predictions. Pro-choice advocate, Dr Peter Boylan, said the opposite would happen. Numbers also continue to rise in England and Wales, and Scotland...
An Oireachtas Committee is currently meeting to consider whether Ireland should permit assisted suicide for the terminally ill. A key player in the debate, namely the Irish Association for Palliative Care (IAPC), is opposed. There voice is especially important as palliative care doctors deal with patients nearing the end stages of their lives every day....
An Oireachtas committee is holding its first public meeting today on assisted suicide (which the media euphemistically calls ‘assisted dying’). The line will be that any proposed law will only allow the terminally ill to avail of the procedure. But one of the main campaign organisations, Exit International, wants to go much further than that....
How many women change their minds about having an abortion during the waiting time between asking for an abortion and receiving one? This question is especially relevant following the publication recently of the Abortion Law Review. It recommends abolishing the mandatory three-day waiting period. Another question; are women less likely to change their mind depending...
The number of Catholics in Ireland has dropped, according to the results of Census 2022, but this change must be properly interpreted. While there has been a decline among the Catholic population, a lot of immigrants are religious, and the way the religion question was rephrased since the last census has almost certainly had an...
The new Social Personal and Health Education (SPHE) programme for Junior Cycle pupils (aged 12-15) has been approved by the Minister for Education. It incorporates Relationships and Sexuality Education, but incredibly, the new curriculum specification never mentions pregnancy or babies, and ‘men’ and ‘women’ are treated as almost alien terms. Instead, the curriculum heavily emphasises...
Assisted suicide should be made available to the poor, the homeless and the disabled, two ethicists from the University of Toronto have argued, and a large number of Canadians agree with them. Once again, we see how quickly assisted suicide and euthanasia can become normalised in a country and be seen as an acceptable way...
The number of marriages that took place in 2022 saw a significant increase on 2021, but this was mainly due to the postponement of weddings during the Covid pandemic. Overall, the marriage rate in Ireland remains low compared with a few decades ago. In all, 23,173 marriages were registered last year, according to the Central...
The official review of Ireland’s abortion law, published last week, was exactly as bad as pro-life campaigners feared it would be. Its only aim is to make it even easier to access abortion. It shows no visible concern for the unborn child and no visible wish that abortion should be rare, which is what the...
