Vulnerable patients are being “coached” on how to pass a psychological evaluation so as to gain access to gender reassignment hormone therapy and surgery, it has been claimed.
Ireland’s leading endocrinologist, Professor Donal O’Shea, has warned that he believes some advocacy groups are prepping patients to fast-track their way to gender transition – without undergoing an appropriate mental health assessment.
“I have had a number of patients who have told me that they have been coached in the answers to give so that they give the ‘right’ answers to psychologists and psychiatrists who will be asking them questions before receiving hormone treatment and gaining access to surgery,” Prof O’Shea said.
“And I have been told by patients who have had hormone treatment, who have had surgery, who are now unhappy with their decision, that they have been instructed by patient advocates not to report this because it would be bad for the wider community.”
A spokesperson for the activist group, BeLonGTo, denied they coach children and young people to pass such psychological tests. TENI, an activist organisation for people who identify as trans, said no one was available for comment.
A Catholic bishop has accused local councillors in Scotland of orchestrating a “hostile” attempt to diminish the church’s influence over education.
William Nolan, the Bishop of Galloway, linked the movement to remove the voting rights of religious representatives on council education boards to renewed calls for Catholic schools to be abolished in response to sectarian violence in Glasgow.
Bishop Nolan, who has urged parishioners to become more engaged in politics, said that the debates had created a “hostile environment” for Catholics.
Nearly a third of councils are considering stripping church leaders of their right to vote.
Scottish law states that there must be three church representatives on committees. However, councillors in Perth and Kinross found that while the law states that religious representation is mandatory it does not say whether they have a right to vote on policy.
The council removed voting rights from religious representatives in May after a decision to close a non-denominational school was swung by the votes of two members of the Church of Scotland.
Parents should be able to choose the ethos behind their child’s RSE class, according to Aontu TD Peadar Tóibín who was speaking in a Dail debate on the review of RSE in Ireland.
The Meath West TD said it would be a “massive mistake to go down the route of uniformity with regard to ethos in sex education.”
“Parents should be able to raise their children within their own values and ethos. Forcing one value system on all parents, a mandatory ethos against the wishes of parents and children, would simply seek to replace the stifling uniformity of the past with the reverse now.”
He specifically criticised comments by TD Ruth Coppinger saying that while the Catholic Church “should not determine the ethos of the sex education of all the children in Irish society, neither should Deputy Coppinger”.
She had earlier claimed that “some right-wing and religious fundamentalist groups are now targeting the area of sex education, and oppose any change or progress in it”.
She further claimed they “tend to focus on sex and gender. However, RSE is about healthy relationships, interacting with others, dealing with difficult situations and much more.”
Chair of the Oireachtas committee Fiona O’Loughlin of Fianna Fáil disagreed with Deputy Toibin’s stance. She said parents should have the right to bring up their children in the ethos and the faith in which they choose to do so. “However, this is not about ethos; it is about health, health education and equipping young people with the skills and confidence they need to navigate this world.”
The reaction of prominent abortion-supporting TDs to the Garda Commissioner’s letter describing the pursuit of so-called ‘Safe Access Zone’ legislation as ‘redundant’ has been described as alarming and irresponsible by the Pro-Life Campaign.
Sinn Féin TD, Louise O’Reilly described the Commissioner’s letter as a ‘distraction’ while Bríd Smith TD described the latest developments as ‘shameful’. Meanwhile Health Minister Simon Harris says he intends pressing ahead with his legislation despite the concerns raised by the Commissioner.
Commenting on these latest developments, Pro-Life Campaign spokesperson Eilís Mulroy said:
“What these reactions clearly establish is that the proposed introduction of ‘Safe Access Zone’ legislation was less about protecting women and more about strong arming the law into silencing pro-life voices.
“Now that this tactic has encountered a sudden and dramatic challenge, efforts are being made to effectively diminish the authority of the Garda Commissioner’s office and to rubbish his objective expert assessment by characterising it as a mere ‘distraction.’
“We are now calling on all political parties, including Fianna Fáil, to make clear whether or not they will support legislation that is in direct contradiction to the Garda Commissioner’s advice. People need to know if the law on this issue is going be evidence based or ideologically based.”
The advice of the Garda commissioner was welcomed by Senator Ronan Mullen who said that calls for exclusion zones had nothing to do with concern for the welfare of women and was in fact, “about crushing any public dissent”.
Italy’s constitutional court has ruled it is not always a crime to help someone in “intolerable suffering” kill themselves, opening the way for a change of law .
Parliament is now expected to debate the matter, which was highlighted by the Milan trial of an activist who helped a tetraplegic man avail of assisted suicide in Switzerland.
Anyone who “facilitates the suicidal intention … of a patient kept alive by life-support treatments and suffering from an irreversible pathology” should not be punished under certain conditions, the top court ruled.
The court was asked to rule on the case of Fabiano Antoniani, known as DJ Fabo, a music producer, traveller and motocross driver left tetraplegic and blind by a 2014 traffic accident.
Marco Cappato, a member of Italy’s Radical party, drove Antoniani to Switzerland in February 2017, where he was given a lethal injection, aged 40.
Helping or instigating someone’s suicide is currently punishable by between five and 12 years in prison in Italy.
Garda Commissioner Drew Harris has said a proposed new law imposing exclusion zones outside abortion facilities is not needed. In response, the Pro-Life Campaign has said Health Minister Simon Harris withdraw the proposal.
Commissioner Harris made his views known in a letter to the Health Minister that was shared at a special Oireachtas briefing yesterday (Thursday).
The Commissioner said that protests to date have not contravened the law and are peaceful, and he expressed his satisfaction with existing public order legislation.
Commenting on today’s development, Eilís Mulroy of the Pro Life Campaign said it is time now for the Government to give up on the proposed legislation: “Minister Harris should immediately scrap his undemocratic plan to introduce exclusion zone legislation. This proposed law was never about ensuring the safety of women but is about trying to suppress freedom of speech and peaceful assembly.
“People must have the right in a democracy to peacefully assemble without running the risk of being arrested or possibly even receiving a custodial sentence for simply supporting women and their unborn babies.
“The developments at this morning’s Oireachtas briefing amount to a good day for democracy, freedom of speech and common sense”, she concluded.
The United Nations has been accused of trying to assert an international right to abortion.
The charge was made in New York this week as delegates from 172 countries including Ireland gathered for a major UN General Assembly.
While most media attention focussed on climate change, there was a parallel meeting aimed at ensuring ‘universal health coverage’ for all.
And while delegates agreed upon the basic goal, some, such as Ireland’s Minister for Health, Simon Harris wanted to include sexual and reproductive rights. This has often been interpreted to include abortion.
Minster Harris said: “Ireland believes that if universal health coverage is to be genuinely universal it should and indeed it must embrace all health services including those related to sexual and reproductive health as set out in the sustainable development goals.”
He continued: “We have taken vital steps in Ireland to ensure that such services are available, are of good quality, are accessible to all women & girls throughout their lives, free of stigma, discrimination, coercion and violence. Reproductive healthcare is a basic human right and should not ever be seen as a matter of political discretion. The Irish Government’s new international development policy, A Better World, prioritises gender and equality and provides for a number of new initiatives in this area.”
On the other hand, speaking on behalf of 18 countries, including Poland, Hungary and Nigeria, Alex Azar, Health and Human Services Secretary of the United States, advised dropping that same language because it may refer to intrusive sex education and abortion, and be used to assert a universal right to abortion.
In a plea reflecting the mind of Pope Francis, the Vatican’s Secretary of State, Cardinal Pietro Parolin also rejected the same language.
A transgender person who gave birth with the help of fertility treatment cannot be registered as the child’s ‘father’, the most senior family judge in England and Wales has ruled. The individual is biologically female but legally male.
In the first legal definition of a mother in English common law, Sir Andrew McFarlane, the president of the high court’s family division, ruled on Wednesday that motherhood was about being pregnant and giving birth regardless of whether the person who does so was considered a man or a woman in law.
Freddy McConnell, 32, went to court after a registrar insisted he be recorded as the baby’s mother on the birth certificate.
Plans by President Emmanuel Macron to permit single women and lesbian couples to use donor sperm have been attacked by the National Academy of Medicine in France because it will lead to the deliberate creation of children who will be raised without fathers.
In a report at the weekend, the Academy said the deliberate conception of a child deprived of a father constitutes a major anthropological break, which risks the psychological development of the child.
“The father figure,” it said, “remains a founding stone of the child’s personality”.
Proponents of the bill say it is unfair that some women must, at great cost, travel to Belgium or Spain to access such fertility treatment. However, Valérie Boyer, an MP for the Republican Party, said that depriving children of fathers creates inequalities. She added that the proposed new law does not take the interests of children into account.
“Until now France considered IVF not as a right but as a medical procedure to treat infertility,” Daniel Borrillo, a law professor at Paris Nanterre University, told the Financial Times on Monday. “In this new law, what counts is no longer the pathology but the desire to become a parent, be it as a heterosexual or a homosexual couple, or a single woman.”
Some of the most controversial elements have already been removed from the bill, including preimplantation diagnosis which screens embryos for serious genetic abnormalities.
Health Minister Agnes Buzyn, who supports the bill, has previously said she is opposed to widening access to preimplantation diagnosis because it marks a “clear eugenic drift” that would lead to “a society that will sort embryos”.
A pregnant woman lost her unborn child when a doctor mistakenly performed an abortion on her after medical staff mixed up her medical chart with that of another patient.
Seoul Gangseo Police Station on Monday said they arrested a gynecologist and a nurse for wrongly conducting an abortion on a six-week pregnant woman by failing to check the patient’s information before the operation.
According to investigators, the alleged victim — a Vietnamese national — who was six weeks into her pregnancy was prescribed nutritional supplements last month. When she entered the delivery room — where the hospital apparently also gave injections and conducted surgeries — neither the nurse nor the doctor checked the patient’s identity. Confusing her for the patient on the charts they were looking at, the nurse injected the patient with anesthesia after which the doctor performed the abortion.
The woman returned to the hospital the next day after experiencing bloody discharge and was told that the fetus had been aborted.
