The HSE has admitted that women granted medical abortions after a phone consultation may be subject to coercion.

The Govt health agency was responding to a parliamentary question from Carol Nolan TD.

While claiming that remote consultation telemedicine abortion has been a success, the reply also concedes that “meeting the woman in person increases the likelihood of the provider identifying any coercion or domestic abuse”. And in another significant admission, the HSE states that “in-person consultations allow provision of personalised care and allow potential problems to be identified and mitigated.”

Earlier in the week, in a separate reply to Deputy Nolan, the Minister for Health himself completely dodged answering a question about the likelihood that government backed telemedicine ‘home abortions’ are putting women at greater risk of being coerced into having abortions.

A spokesperson for the Pro-Life Campaign called the HSE’s admission “an astonishing development” but one that tracks with what is generally known by both research and anecdotal evidence.

“Peer reviewed research has shown that up to a quarter of all abortions taking place likely involve some form of coercion from the woman’s partner or someone else close to her. Only last week, a man in Worcester, England was charged with a violent physical assault on his 27-year-old girlfriend after she refused to have an abortion”.

Meanwhile, Aontú leader Peadar Tóibín told the Dáil yesterday that the State Claims Agency has received 103 notifications of ‘adverse incidents’ arising from terminations carried out under the new abortion law. It remains to be seen what the precise nature and seriousness of these incidents amount to.

Legal euthanasia and assisted suicide have no impact on the reduction of violent suicides and might in fact increase their prevalence, a new study has shown.

The 35-page analysis in The Journal of Ethics in Mental Health debunks claims by “assisted dying” campaigners that prohibitions against assisting in suicides is driving people to take their lives by their own hands, often horribly.

The report, called “Euthanasia, Assisted Suicide and Suicide Rates in Europe”, found that the introduction of euthanasia and assisted suicide often “is followed by considerable increases in suicide (inclusive of assisted suicide) and in intentional self-initiated death”.

“There is no reduction in non-assisted suicide relative to the most similar non-EAS [euthanasia and assisted suicide] neighbour and, in some cases, there is a relative and/or an absolute increase in non-assisted suicide.”

The study says: “Furthermore, the data from Europe and from the U.S. indicate that it is women who have most been placed at risk of avoidable premature death.”

The peer-reviewed study was carried out by Prof David Jones, the director of the Oxford-based Anscombe Centre for Bioethics.

Professor Jones said that his study represented “further evidence that legalising assisted suicide or euthanasia will result in more people ending their lives prematurely”.

“It will not save lives. It will not help prevent suicide,” he said.

The Northern Ireland secretary, Brandon Lewis, said he wanted to see an acceleration in the number of schools opting for integrated status, believing it was an important part of the post-conflict journey of healing.

“This was one of the factors that people set out in the Belfast Good Friday agreement [BGFA] itself. We are 23 years on and still … such a small percentage of the population is able to be part of and benefit from integrated education. I think it’s just pretty poor progress,” said Lewis.

“We are in a situation where still, people in Northern Ireland first meet a Protestant or Catholic when they go to work or university. [Segregated education] just isn’t going to ever drive full reconciliation.”

Since its foundation in 1921, Northern Ireland’s education system has largely consisted of state-controlled schools, mainly attended by Protestant pupils, and Catholic maintained schools, almost exclusively attended by Catholics, says the Integrated Education Fund (IEF), a not-for-profit organisation supporting integrated education.

“I do believe in nudging and cajoling. Education is a devolved area, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t have an opinion and we don’t have a right as a co-guarantor and co-signatory of the BGFA to do all we can.”

The British Secretary for Education recently praised Catholic schools on the occasion of the 175th anniversary of the founding of the Catholic Education Service, a body of the English and Welsh bishops that supports Catholic schools.

Nadhim Zahawi, a Conservative MP, spoke at a meeting with Catholic educators at Parliament recently.

“175 years is a significant achievement, so I just want to thank everyone in the room, and of course colleagues here who are so supportive of this extraordinary human endeavour and recognise the incredible valuable work that you do and have done and continue to on behalf of so many young people and staff in school across our country,” Zahawi said.

“You deserve high praise, since many of your schools serve some of our most diverse and disadvantaged communities where the challenges include reaching out to those families where neither parent may be in work or those for whom English is a second language – as it was for this Secretary of State.”

Zahawi concluded by saying he is “proud to call [the Church] my partner”.

Most Catholic schools in England receive government funding, with the Church covering about 10% of costs and the state providing the rest. CES says this arrangement saves taxpayers “tens of millions of pounds a year.”

New proposals will treat some divorced and separated people, who no longer have a stake in the family home, as first-time buyers.

Housing Minister Darragh O’Brien said housing designed only for nuclear families does not meet “the reality of the world we live in” and the new measures are designed to recognise how “Ireland has changed”.

Mr O’Brien was speaking on the weekend marking 25 years since divorce was legalised, following a 1995 referendum to lift the constitutional ban on the dissolution of marriages.

Divorced and separated people, after they move out of the family home, can often struggle to raise the 20pc deposit required as second-time buyers while paying high rents.

People who end their marriages later in life can also struggle to be considered for a mortgage at all.

Under new plans, set to come into force from April, people who are divorced or separated will be eligible for the state-backed loan schemes.

It is believed this is the first time Irish government housing policy has specifically referenced divorced and separated people.

New research has underlined the view that family structure and stability matter for the welfare, happiness, and future outcomes of children.

According to a new report from the AEI-Brookings Working Group on Childhood in the United States, the evidence indicates that, on average, children who have (a) two parents who are committed to one another, (b) a stable home life, (c) more economic resources, and (d) the advantage of being intended or welcomed by their parents are more likely to flourish.

“In general, we believe that evidence suggests that marriage is the best path to the favorable outcomes highlighted above. Marriage is of course not the only path that allows children to succeed; many children raised by single parents and cohabiting parents thrive in life. Even so, in the United States marriage continues to be the institution most likely to combine the four benefits outlined above for the sake of children,” the report states.

The authors add: “Marriage matters to children. Having married parents typically means that children live in families with more resources, including more time with their parents, and with greater stability. While these factors in themselves point to a range of improved outcomes for children, the benefits of growing up in a family with married parents is more than a sum of these parts. Yet a long, steady decline in marriage rates over the past five decades means that more children are growing up in single-parent families. Today about one in four children ages 0–12 does not have married parents. While the decline in marriage has occurred across all demographics, more than one in three children whose mother has an education level of less than a college degree does not have married parents”.

Legislation to regulate Assisted Human Reproduction (AHR), including non-commercial surrogacy, has been approved by the Cabinet and published by the Government. Surrogacy in all forms is banned in some countries because it ‘splits’ motherhood into a birth mother and a genetic mother. Egg and sperm donation deliberate cut the tie between  child and one or both of its biological parents.

The Bill will regulate all forms of AHR, including commonly-used procedures such as in-vitro fertilisation (IVF) and donor-assisted human reproduction (DAHR), as well as newer technologies such as embryo screening and surrogacy.

Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly said the Cabinet had last week approved the publication of the Health (Assisted Human Reproduction) Bill 2022 and its presentation to the Dáil.

While the legislation published today will regulate fertility clinics and domestic, non-commercial surrogacy it does not include any provisions on international surrogacy and a Special Joint Oireachtas Committee is being set up to examine this with the aim of issuing recommendations within three months. Ukraine and Russia are the only countries in Europe that permit commercial surrogacy.

The proposed law regulates domestic non-commercial surrogacy. ‘Reasonable expenses’ can be compensated through an informal agreement.

Minister Donnelly said the Bill would pave the way for AHR methods to be provided via public funds.

The European Court of Human Rights ruled that the Polish government has the right to refuse to change and re-issue a long-form birth certificate to a transgender person.

The applicant (52), born a woman but identifying as a man, had asked the Polish government for an updated long-form birth certificate to reflect his preferred gender identity, Court House News Service reports. He had already obtained an updated short-form birth certificate via court order after sex ‘reassignment’ surgery, which involves removing healthy sex organs.

The short-form certificate is more common and can be used for identification and documentation. The long-form certificate serves mainly as a civil record.

The government acted in line with its policy of not reissuing long-form birth certificates for people who underwent surgery. Warsaw argued that a long-form birth certificate is a record of the actual birth, which cannot be changed. Most European countries also use this policy.

The European Court of Human Rights now ruled that the policy is not discriminatory. According to the judges, a country has the right to maintain accurate birth records. In addition, the court ruled that keeping the original birth certificate does not meaningfully impact the life of the transgender male.

The judges state that he did not “demonstrate that he had suffered any sufficiently serious negative consequences or difficulties resulting from the fact that the sex assigned at birth is still visible in the form of an annotation on his full birth certificate”.

https://cne.news/artikel/740-european-court-polish-birth-certificate-not-discriminatory-against-transgender

The British Government also announced the results of a consultation which showed that 70% of submissions supported ending the temporary policy immediately.

This decision comes after multiple calls were made by MPs and medical professionals, for the Government to end, what has been proven to be a dangerous provision.

In England, emergency ambulance responses to complications arising from abortion related complications was shown to be three times higher since telemedicine was introduced. And research released in November 2021 revealed that more than 10,000 women had to receive hospital treatment following the use of medical abortion pills in England between April 2020 and September 2021.

Meanwhile, in Ireland, the Pro-Life Campaign have said the move was “very welcome news”.

They called on the Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly to “immediately announce a similar cessation of the practice here, on health and safety grounds and, in keeping with the promise of his predecessor that telemedicine ‘home abortions’ would come to an end at the same time that other Covid restrictions were lifted”.