News Roundup

Marches for life attract hundreds across Ireland

Marches to raise awareness about “Ireland’s spiraling abortion rate” took place across the country, May 20-22.

The Marches for Life, organised by the Pro-Life Campaign, attracted hundreds of pro-lifers in Galway, Cork and Donegal.

Speakers at the events warned that pressures are being placed on doctors and nurses to assist in abortions, forcing them to act against their conscience and opposition to abortion.

They called on the Government to introduce proper resources to support and inform women about positive alternatives to abortion.

The speakers included TDs Michael Collins and Seán Canney, along with local Councillors, doctors and activists.

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TD’s ‘misleading claim’ about pro-life vigil outside clinic

A claim by a Fine Gael TD that a pro-life protest outside a GP’s practice subjected patients to “obstruction and intimidation” appears to be without foundation as the gathering in question occurred on the day the practice was closed, according to Gript Media.

Speaking in the Dail, Neale Richmond said that “patients of the GP practice in my village of Stepaside became the latest to be subjected to an act of sheer obstruction and intimidation by so-called protesters, simply because that medical practice offers full maternal and reproductive care, as per the laws of this land.”

He claimed that the protest was held on Monday. However, Gript have confirmed that the protest he was referring to was actually held on Saturday, the 28th of May. Stepaside Medical does not open on weekends and there were, therefore, no patients attending the practice during the protest.

Richmond did not respond to questions asking if he, having been informed by Gript of his error, still stood over his description of the protest, and, if so, who exactly he believes the protesters had obstructed or intimidated.

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Almost 42pc of births outside of marriage

A very high 41.5pc of births in the fourth quarter of 2021 were outside marriage, according the latest release from the CSO.

This figure is roughly the same as in the US and UK and marks a further decline in tandem with marriage and fertility rates.

The figures did show there were 16,250 births in quarter 4 2021, which was 2,666 births or 19.6% more than the same period in 2020 when Covid-19 arrived in Ireland.

Of those, 9,512 (58.5%) births registered as within marriage/civil partnership.

There were 6,738 births registered as outside marriage/civil partnership, accounting for 41.5% of all births in quarter 4 2021.

The average age of first time mothers was 31.8, up 0.4 years from that recorded for the same period in the previous year. The average age of all mothers at maternity for births registered in quarter 4 2021 was 33.4 years, which is up 0.1 years from that recorded in quarter 4 2020. The average age of first time mothers outside marriage/civil partnership was 30.2, while the average age of all mothers outside marriage/civil partnership was 31.3 years. In the same quarter in 2020, the average age of mothers having their first baby outside marriage/civil partnership was 29.4 years while it was 30.9 years for all mothers for births registered outside of marriage/civil partnership.

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Feminist groups opposing international surrogacy write to Oireachtas committee

An international coalition of feminist groups opposed to surrogacy have written to the Oireachtas to lodge their objections to legally recognising the practice.

In a letter to the Joint Committee on International Surrogacy, the group noted the near unanimous views of the committee members in favour of surrogacy and that the one dissenting voice, Senator Sharon Keogan, was “silenced”.

The International Coalition for the Abolition of Surrogate Motherhood said most European countries ban surrogacy for reasons of human dignity.

They add that, whether for commercial or so called “altruistic” motives, donor conceived and surrogate pregnancies are higher risk and much more dangerous than naturally conceived pregnancies and should be listed among acts of violence against women.

“Surrogacy causes violence in at least four thematic fields: medical, psychological, legal, economic, in which personal, situational and socio-cultural aspects are intertwined”.

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Abortion drug to be made available to Japanese women with spouse’s consent

Drugs that induce abortions in the first ten weeks of pregnancy are due to be approved for use in Japan, but they would only be prescribed with the consent of the woman’s spouse.

The legislation is winding its way through Japan’s parliament after British pharmaceutical company Linepharma International applied last year to market a combination of two drugs for the purposes of abortion. A decision is expected before the end of the year.

Women’s rights groups have criticised the legislation as it requires the woman’s partner to agree to the abortion – under the same rules that apply to surgical abortion.

Questioned by a parliamentary committee earlier this month, a health ministry bureaucrat stated that the standards required for a surgical abortion under the 1948 Maternal Protection Law should also apply to chemical abortions.

“In principle, we believe that spousal consent is necessary, even if an abortion is induced by an oral medication,” said Yasuhiro Hashimoto, the head of the ministry’s child and family policy bureau.

Around 145,000 surgical abortions were carried out in Japan in 2020, which is one of only 11 nations that still require the consent of the woman’s husband for the procedure to go ahead.

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Preacher wins challenge against Covid arrest at Easter

A UK street preacher who was arrested on Easter Sunday 2020 for allegedly breaching Covid regulations has been exonerated by the courts after a two-year legal battle.

Andrew Sathiyavan was arrested on Sutton High Street, London, during lockdown after being told by officers that his preaching was “unacceptable”, “non-essential” and “causing anti-social behaviour”.

Mr Sathiyavan was detained in a police cell for four hours and issued with a Covid fine, which was subsequently upheld by a Deputy District judge.

However, Isleworth Crown Court has now overturned the arrest.

“We accepted that, on that particular day [the most important in the Christian calendar] the focus of Mr Sathiyavan’s ministry was the homeless, the poor and drug addicts, many of whom will not have ready access to Facebook, the internet or other forms of social media,” the judgment stated.

It found that his “motives were genuine” and that he was driven by Jesus’ command to “go and make disciples of all nations”.

“We accepted that, on that particular Easter Day, the fact that there were few people on the High Street in Sutton was immaterial to Mr Sathiyavan for, as he told the Court, if one person was ‘saved’ that was sufficient as he would have done as Christ did, namely, to go in search of the one lost sheep.”

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Study shows risks associated with identifying abortion pill complications as miscarriage-related

A new peer-reviewed study by the US-based Charlotte Lozier Institute (CLI) has claimed there are dangers posed by mischaracterising abortion-related complications as resulting from miscarriage.

A previous CLI study had established that 60.9% of abortion-related emergency room visits following pill-induced terminations are miscoded as miscarriage-related. “[C]oncern that this misinformation … might result in sub-optimal care and, subsequently, an increased likelihood of hospital admission” provoked the most recently-published analysis.

The latest study, a 17-year longitudinal analysis of 423,000 confirmed abortions and 121,283 confirmed subsequent visits to an emergency room, found women whose abortions were miscoded as miscarriages in the ER were more likely to be hospitalised for any reason than women whose abortions were accurately reported. Women whose chemical abortions were miscoded further exhibited a pattern of multiple hospitalisations in the 30 days following their abortions – an average of 3.2 per patient compared to 1.8 for those not miscoded. In other words, the number of hospital admissions per patient was 78% higher in the miscoded group.

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Report says Russia among ‘worst violators’ of religious freedom

An independent, bipartisan advisory body has reiterated its call for the U.S. State Department to add Russia to its register of the world’s “worst violators” of religious freedom, a blacklist that already includes Iran, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and six other countries.

The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), created by Congress to make recommendations about global religious freedom, proposes in its latest annual report that Russia, India, Syria, and Vietnam be put on the “countries of particular concern” list, a category reserved for those that carry out “systematic, ongoing, and egregious” violations of religious freedoms.

The blacklisting paves the way for sanctions if the countries included do not improve their records.

The USCIRF report says that “religious freedom conditions in Russia deteriorated” last year, with the government targeting religious minorities deemed to be “nontraditional” with fines, detentions, and criminal charges.

For decades, the have been viewed with suspicion in Russia, where the dominant Orthodox Church is championed by President Vladimir Putin.

In 2017, Russia outlawed Jehovah’s Witnesses and labelled the group “extremist,” a designation the State Department has called “wrongful”.

Russia’s anti-extremism law was also used to “persecute religious minorities, particularly Muslims,” the report added.

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FF Minister ‘evolves’ from pro-life to pro-choice

A Fianna Fail junior Minister has announced that he now supports the country’s radical abortion regime despite having campaigned in 2018 to preserve the constitutional right to life of the unborn.

Speaking to the Irish Independent, Junior Minister for Sport and Government Chief Whip, Jack Chambers, said his position has “evolved” and he now supports abortions up to 12 weeks of pregnancy in all circumstances. Fianna Fail leader and Taoiseach, Micheal Martin, also announced before the referendum that his previous pro-life beliefs had ‘evolved’ which is why he supported repeal of the 8th amendment.

The interviewer said Chambers was reluctant to be specific about how he reached this position, other than to say he has met people and engaged and listened.

He adds: “He declines to be drawn on whether he regrets his previous involvement in campaigning for retention of the constitutional abortion ban. ‘You have a sincerely held view at a time but I am comfortable,’ he said, somewhat hesitantly. ‘I respect that everyone has different… it was the perspective I had at that time and that’s what it was. But I support the current position.’”

He also thinks maternity units in Ireland that are still not providing abortions should do so.

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Canadian parliament considers expanding eligibility for assisted suicide

A report on expanding who is eligible for assisted suicide will be examined by a special joint parliamentary committee in Canada.

The panel of MPs and senators is considering whether so-called “medical assistance in dying” [MAiD] should be expanded to people solely suffering from mental illness and to ‘mature minors’.

It is also considering whether it should let people opt in to assisted suicide in advance before they lose the mental capacity to do so.

The committee was also tasked with studying a host of associated issues, such as the state of palliative care in Canada and the protection of Canadians with disabilities.

The government already agreed in Bill C-7 passed last March to lift the current ban on assisted dying for those suffering solely from mental illness in 2023.

It set up a separate panel of experts to advise on the rules that should apply in those cases and the panel made 19 recommendations in a report tabled earlier this month.

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