The board of the National Maternity Hospital have rejected calls for its vice-Chairman to resign over a continuing row about the Governance and ethos at its proposed new location.
Former Master of the hospital, Dr Peter Boylan, alleges Mr Nicky Kearns has “seriously mishandled the project to date, in particular by your failure to advocate successfully for the hospital’s independence”.
“In my view you have failed to deal adequately with the issue, specifically the concerns in relation to the potential for Catholic ethos to adversely impact on the care of women in the new NMH as a consequence of it being owned by the Sisters of Charity on land also owned by them.”
The NMH board responded on Friday and accused Dr Boylan of attempting to “obstruct or derail this vital project for women and their babies”, calling it “exceptionally disappointing”.
“Your personal attack on the deputy chair is totally unwarranted . . . and unworthy of a governor.”
Dr Boylan reacted by seeking to have his objection to the relocation plan put on the agenda of the AGM in June.
An Irishman who contracted a woman in Russia to gestate and bear a child for him via surrogacy is now stranded and running out of money while awaiting legal documents to allow him fly the child home. Officially, Irish law does not allow commercial surrogacy, but in practice it is permitted. Commercial surrogacy is banned in most European countries.
“I was advised this can normally take six to eight weeks to get sorted. However, I fear that my six to eight weeks have not been started yet as no one from the Department of Foreign Affairs or embassy has seen my paperwork.”
He said he had been attempting to contact the relevant people “but it seems my emails and pleading for help have all but been ignored”.
He said his child’s Russian birth certificate shows her as “having only one parent which is me. I have been her main caregiver since birth and [the birth cert] does not entitle her to any rights or protection as a Russian citizen. The only way she can be given a nationality is via myself.”
With money running out, he said he is getting desperate and fears both he and baby may end up homeless in Russia.
Promoting a family-friendly culture is the best way to fight elder abuse, according to the Federation of Catholic Family Associations in Europe (FAFCE).
Speaking on the UN’s World Elder Abuse Awareness Day, FAFCE President Vincenzo Bassi said elderly persons should be helped to stay with their family, but added, “it is crucial to remove all obstacles families face when taking care of their most vulnerable members.”
He said that family associations can play a key-role by creating new structures of solidarity in our communities.
The Covid-19 pandemic has seen the increased vulnerability of the elderly often forgotten about in the management of the crisis. “Many elderly persons have been left alone in care homes, where they were unable to have access to the same medical care and life-saving therapies as any other patient. We recall today the necessity to protect their dignity and their life, even and especially in the post-pandemic times: we should seize this historical moment as an opportunity to reshape the way we take care of the elderly and the way we recognise their precious role in our communities. The work of all the families who take care of elderly persons also has an economic value, even without monetary consideration. Therefore, it should be fairly awarded and encouraged through appropriate policies.”.
Boris Johnson’s team has ditched plans developed under Theresa May to allow transgender people change their birth certificates without a medical diagnosis, which is the law in Ireland since 2015.
Liz Truss, the Equalities Minister, will publish the details in an official response to a public consultation on the Gender Recognition Act.
Under the leaked plans, proposals for people to self-identify their gender will be abandoned and those wanting to change their birth certificate will still need medical approval. Under current rules applicants have to produce two medical reports that they have suffered from gender dysphoria — usually from their GP and one other registered medical practitioner or psychologist. They are also required to show that they have lived in their chosen gender identity for two years and intend to do so for the rest of their lives.
Under the plans there will also be a crackdown on “quack” doctors to ensure that only reputable medics can give approvals.
Additionally, safeguards will be put in place to protect “safe spaces” for women, reaffirming provisions in the Equalities Act. New national guidelines on lavatory provision are likely to be introduced, replacing the “free-for-all” in which councils set their own rules, which has seen a rise in gender-neutral bathrooms.
More than 100,000 responses were received to the consultation, and 70% of those purportedly backed the idea that anyone should be able to declare that they are a woman or a man. However, officials dismissed the consultation as they believe the results were skewed by an avalanche of responses generated by trans rights groups.
The state of religious freedom in China has further deteriorated over the past year, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Wednesday, as his department unveiled a blistering assessment of the country’s treatment of religious groups.
China’s “state-sponsored repression against all religions continues to intensify”, Pompeo told reporters at the release of the “2019 International Religious Freedom Report”.
“The mass detentions of Uygurs in [the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region] continues, so does the repression of Tibetan Buddhists and Falun Gong and Christians,” said Pompeo, accusing the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) of seeking to “infuse communist dogma” into faith groups’ teachings.
Last year began with China’s formal adoption of a five-year plan to “Sinicise” Islam, a strategy to bring the religion and its practitioners in line with Party doctrine.
In 2019 the Chinese government had “tortured, physically abused, arrested, detained, sentenced to prison, subjected to forced indoctrination in CCP ideology, or harassed adherents of both registered and unregistered religious groups for activities related to their religious beliefs and practices,” said the report, which devoted some 45,000 words to the situation in China.
Specifically in the province of Xinjiang, the US government believes that “more than one million” Uygurs and other ethnic minority groups have been detained in mass internment camps for the purpose of forced indoctrination since April 2017, said the report, echoing similar estimates made by the United Nations.
An academic at Fudan University in Shanghai has suggested that the Chinese government allow women to marry two or three husbands.
In a June 2 column, Professor Yew-Kwang Ng asked, “Is polyandry really a ridiculous idea?”
“I wouldn’t suggest polyandry if the gender ratio was not so severely imbalanced …” he wrote. “I’m not advocating for polyandry, I’m just suggesting that we should consider the option in the face of an imbalanced gender ratio … If two men are willing to marry the same wife and the woman is willing, too, what reason does society have to stop them sharing a wife?”
The professor said there are advantages to monogamy; it is good for children’s well-being.
“But given China’s skewed sex ratio, it’s necessary to consider allowing polyandry legally,” he continued.
Sex-selection abortions accompanied by the country’s oppressive one child policy have led to at least 71 million women being missing from society. Many men cannot find girlfriends and wives because they were aborted as babies; and the country’s population is aging rapidly because children are not being born.
The number of abortions that took place in England and Wales last year was the highest ever.
That’s according to official statistics published today.
209,519 abortions took place in the two countries in 2019.
The abortion rate at 18.0 per 1,000 women means that 1 out 4 viable pregnancies ended in abortion.
The Report also shows that 375 Irish residents had an abortion in England and Wales in 2019, down from 2,879 in 2018.
Nonetheless, the number of Irish babies with Down Syndrome aborted in England increased dramatically from 17 in 2018 to 27 in 2019.
Commenting on the figures, a spokesperson for the Pro-Life Campaign, Maeve O’Hanlon said it was inevitable that the number of Irish abortions occurring in England would drop considerably but, “the heart-breaking reality is, regardless of where it happens, with every abortion a new and unique human being has his or her life ended”.
They also criticised the Government for concentrating on rolling out abortion facilities all over the country, rather than promoting positive alternatives to it.
Religious freedom advocates have warmly welcomed the Executive Order Advancing International Religious Freedom signed by President Trump on June 2nd.
According to Daniel Philpott, a professor of political science at the University of Notre Dame, the second sentence of the order contains words that these advocates have been waiting for years to hear a president utter: “Religious freedom for all people worldwide is a foreign policy priority of the United States, and the United States will respect and vigorously promote this freedom.”
He says the words are important because they follow the affirmation that: “Religious freedom, America’s first freedom, is a moral and national security imperative.”
Philpott freely admits President Trump is an unlikely promoter of human rights. Still, he says, “if the message is crippled by the messenger, the message still merits support when it is the right one”.
“The Trump administration, whose staff includes sincere and dedicated experts on the issue, has promoted global religious freedom through: an annual ministerial conference that has brought together hundreds of foreign policy officials, religious leaders and civil society leaders from around the world; the appointment of Sam Brownback as a committed and effective ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom; and, now, last week’s executive order”.
The Irish Catholic bishops’ have published guidelines to enable the safe reopening of churches for the public celebration of mass on June 29th.
The new Framework Document recommends that pews be cordoned off with one person allowed sit “at the end of each free row while permitting those from the same household to sit together”.
The obligation to attend Sunday Mass and holy days remains dispensed with while Communion should be received in the hand while priests and ministers of the Eucharist wearing a face covering.
Priests and such ministers should “visibly” sanitise their hands before and after distribution of Communion while the procession for Communion may require the assistance of stewards.
Altar servers should help only when all physical distancing requirements are met while the sign of peace “can be omitted” or is offered without physical contact.
In a statement, the Bishops said in all circumstances the safety and health of people, ministers, and priests must be paramount. They added: “No church should be opened for public prayer or worship until satisfactory arrangements, as indicated in this Framework, have been put in place.”
The Supreme Court has granted the State’s bid to overturn a previous High Court finding that the word “child” in the International Protection Act could extend beyond biological and adopted children for family reunification purposes.
The definition of “child”, as used in the relevant provision of the 2015 Act (section 56.9.d) “can only be a reference to a biological/adoptive child of the sponsor”, the court ruled on Tuesday.
That is “the literal and ordinary meaning of the word”, Ms Justice Elizabeth Dunne said, when giving the five-judge court’s judgment.
This was reinforced by the legislative history of the 2015 Act which, unlike earlier legislation, excluded grandparents, wards or guardians, from the definition of “member of the family”, she said.
It is not clear what implications there may be for the definition of parenthood in cases of donor IVF and surrogacy where the concept of intention, rather than nature or adoption, establishes parenthood.
