A national parents’ advocacy group has condemned the Welsh Government’s decision to make Relationships and Sexuality Education (RSE) a compulsory school subject in all schools in Wales.
From 2021, parents in Wales will no longer be able to withdraw their children from lessons on relationships and sexuality.
The Welsh Government began a project in October collecting feedback on changing the curriculum to remove the option for parents to stop children studying Religious Education (RE) and RSE, Education Minister Kirsty Williams said in a statement.
“After careful consideration of the responses, I can confirm that there will not be a right to withdraw from RE and RSE as part of the new curriculum. This change will require careful and sensitive implementation,” she said.
Vulnerable people on the Isle of Man will continue to be protected after politicians rejected efforts to weaken the laws against assisted suicide.
Ahead of the vote, Manx medics expressed overwhelming opposition. The Isle of Man Medical Society said it had found 85 per cent of working doctors would not support assisted suicide.
Society President Dr Jonathan Wilmot and executive committee chairman Dr May Shiu Chan said doctors feared that vulnerable people would be put under pressure to die.
“They were concerned that it would not in reality be a voluntary or free choice” the group said, adding, “vulnerable people would feel an obligation to opt for it to decrease the burden on relatives or that others may believe it was best for them and seek to influence their choice”.
In the debate, which followed one on suicide prevention, the Manx Parliament considered whether to push ahead with changing the law.
David Ashford proposed an amendment to say that the Parliament “notes the debate” and the “individual views” but removed the reference to preparing legislation.
Manx politicians unanimously backed his amendment.
Number 10 Downing Street needs a Family Policy Unit intent on figuring out whether and how government policy can limit or reduce the scale of family breakdown.
That’s according to Harry Benson of the marriage Foundation. Writing at conservativehome.com, he said it is a massive social justice issue simply because of the consequences for children.
“When the majority of break-ups occur ‘out of the blue’, with no obvious evidence of serious conflict or unhappiness, it makes sense to ask why we do so badly and how policy could reduce its prevalence.”
He gave three suggestions to guide the establishment of such a Unit.
First, he said a genuine family policy needs to be rooted in robust evidence.
“A Number 10 Family Policy Unit should encourage the development of UK research into mainstream family stability, instability, and its consequences.”
Second, he noted that government policy itself can and does influence the decisions couples make so a Family Policy Unit should look at how the Government encourages or discourages couples to make clear decisions about their future and to formalise those decisions.
Third, he said policymakers need the confidence to base their public policy on the same principles most of them apply in private.
He concluded by saying a, “Number 10 Family Policy Unit should have the key role of giving senior ministers the confidence to promote clarity of commitment – and therefore marriage and civil partnerships – as the centrepiece of a bold new family policy that boosts the odds of stability.”
It has been revealed that monies ring-fenced for the Government’s maternal safety strategy, including fighting sepsis, have been diverted to pay for abortion.
The National Maternity Plan was developed in response to official recommendations following the death of Savita Halappanavar from sepsis in 2012.
The Irish Times has reported, however, that the plan has received only a fraction of the funds set aside for it after the Minister for Health, Simon Harris, used it to pay for the State’s new abortion regime.
The move prompted one of only two patient advocates to resign from the board of the HSE.
Mark Malloy has been campaigning for greater accountability in the health service ever since his own child was one of a number of babies who died unnecessarily at Portlaoise hospital.
He told the Irish Times he resigned because the latest HSE service plan could only fund a fraction – 12 per cent – of the €8 million a year that was promised for the National Maternity Strategy as the rest of the funds were used to pay for Minister Harris’ abortion regime.
Three different evangelical representative bodies in Spain have reacted to the central Government’s pledge to deny parents any right to opt their children out of classes and activities, including radical sex education, which might conflict with their moral and ethical values.
Education Minister Isabel Celáa had said in a press conference that “no one should commit the mistake of thinking that children belong to their parents”.
The new Equality Minister Irene Montero, of far-left party, Podemos, added that: “The children of homophobic parents have the same right as all other children to be educated in the fact that they can love whoever they want to, and to be educated in freedom, feminism and equality”.
In response, the Spanish Evangelical Alliance (AEE) denounced that “a code of values charged with ideology is being imposed on our children, which presents ideological dogmas as if they were absolute truths, creating a kind of ‘lay religion’”.
The Evangelical Council of the Region of Murcia, also expressed its “deep concern and disagreement” with Celáa’s words. The evangelical body in that region underlined that “parents have the right to educate children according to their ethical and moral convictions, this being a Constitutional right, which cannot be subject to changing policies or ideological proposals”.
Finally, the Federation of Evangelical Religious Entities of Spain (FEREDE), called to end what they believe to be “a false debate” because “it hurts us all, especially the children”. “Both Parents and the State should recognise each other as needed partners and collaborators for the satisfaction of the fundamental rights of children (…) Government and opposition should be careful not to sow mistrust between the schools and parents”.
The Gospel-based, values-centred approach of faith-based schools in the US has helped many people out of poverty and set them on a path to longterm success. That’s according to advocates of Catholic schools in New York who spoke after the US Supreme Court heard arguments about whether US States can prohibit public revenue from going to faith-based schools.
Kathleen Porter-Magee is the superintendent of Partnership Schools Partnership Schools NYC, a network of Catholic schools in disadvantaged parts of New York like Harlem and the South Bronx. Writing in the New York Post, she says Catholic schools seek to form students with the habits of virtue that help them choose to do good. The results then speak for themselves: “Research has shown that students who attend religious schools are less likely to participate in risky criminal and sexual activity. One study found that girls who went to Catholic school were more likely to avoid early pregnancy, and boys who went to Catholic school were less likely to be incarcerated.”
She says that academically, students in her schools routinely surpass state, city and charter test-score averages, serving as a reminder of why many poor families have historically sent their children to Catholic schools.
Still, she adds that, while student achievement is important, it isn’t sufficient to bring about transformative change for our children. That’s why the case before the Supreme Court regarding some States who prohibit funding of faith-based schools is so important: “By ruling the right way, the Supremes can clear away the barriers that disadvantage religious schools and help ensure that all families, regardless of their income, have the right to choose the values in which they want their children educated.”
The new Citizens’ Assembly on Gender Equality met for the first time in Dublin Castle last Saturday afternoon.
A report on gender equality worldwide from the World Economic Forum shows we are already the seventh most gender equal country globally, ahead of countries like Denmark, France, the UK and Germany.
The head of the Assembly, Dr Catherine Day told delegates that the Oireachtas had asked that the Assembly “advance gender equality by making proposals on a range of issues and to prioritise those issues which may include policy, legislative or constitutional change”.
She said the Assembly is tasked with doing this “while having regard to the legal requirements and the costs versus the potential impact of these proposals”.
Issues for consideration, as set out by the TDs and Senators, ranged from “challenging the barriers and social ways of behaving that facilitate gender discrimination, to reassessing the economic value placed on work traditionally done by women”.
They included “looking at where the responsibility for care lies, especially within the family, assessing early years parental care and facilitating greater work/life balance, and scrutinising the structural pay inequalities that result in women being disproportionately represented in low pay sectors.
She said the Assembly will not be about only women’s issues but will also involve men and the LGBT+ community.
She added that other genders will be included in the discussions. “This [Oireachtas resolution] only talks about boys and girls and women and men, but we will certainly interpret gender equality as applying to however people define or identify themselves.”
Substantial pro-family policies in Hungary are bearing real fruit, according to Katalin Novak, Hungary’s Minister of State for Family and Youth Affairs.
She spoke at two events in Dublin last week and described the positive demographic changes that has occurred in Hungary in the past decade after a radical change in Government policies.
The country’s population had been in decline since 1981, with the fertility rate plunging to a mere 1.23 in 2011. This was accompanied by declining rates of marriage and huge numbers of abortions.
Since then, successive conservative Governments have implemented a raft of initiatives to help young couples have as many children as they would like, and when they would like to have them. The fertility rate is currently 1.5, still far below the replacement rate of 2.1. It still remains to be seen what effect Hungarian policies will have over the medium to long-term.
Minister Novak said that in Hungary now there is national agreement that supporting families and money spent on the birth of new children is the best investment. She also told those present that there has been a twenty percent increase in the desire to have children, the number of marriages is at a forty-year high, and both abortions and divorces have dropped.
A ruling in Germany upholding the right of pharmacists to conscientiously object to selling the ‘morning after pill’, which can act as an abortifacient, is being appealed by the professional body for pharmacists.
The case concerns German pharmacist, Andreas Kersten, who before his retirement, owned and operated a pharmacy in Berlin. In accordance with his conscience and his deeply held beliefs, he neither stocked nor sold the ‘morning after pill’. This drug can prevent the implantation of an embryo in the uterus and cause the death of an unborn child. After refusing to sell the product in his pharmacy, he was reported to the Berlin Pharmacists’ Chamber which took the matter to the Professional Court at the Administrative Court of Berlin.
The court ruled in his favour, but the Pharmacists’ Chamber has now appealed against the decision.
A man who paid a woman to have an abortion, but who later changed her mind, is now denying paternity of the child in a bid to avoid paying maintenance.
The unusual case was brought before Judge Patrick Durcan in Ennis district Court last Thursday.
The woman is alleging the man is the father of the child, but he denies this and is also refusing to pay for a paternity test.
He said he gave the woman €500 to abort the child, and he told Judge Durcan the woman can pay for the DNA test herself out of those funds.
