News Roundup

Pro-Life film exceeds box office expectation in US

A pro-life film has exceeded all expectations becoming the fifth most watched movie in cinemas in the US on its opening weekend.

Forbes reports that Unplanned, a $6 million-budgeted film, about a former Planned Parenthood clinic director turned pro-life activist, earned $2.72 million on Friday, setting the stage for a likely $7.25 million debut weekend.

The movie did unexpectedly well despite receiving an R rating and an almost complete lack of coverage from the media, as well as overcoming numerous obstacles to its platforms on social media.

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IFPA Director says women confused about timing of 12 week window on unrestricted abortion

Many women are unclear on when the 12 week window to have an abortion for any reason begins, leading to fraught situations to get appointments, according to the Medical Director of the Irish Family Planning Association (IFPA) Dr Caitriona Henchion.

“There has been a huge amount of confusion regarding what 12 weeks means, particularly because, for example, the pregnancy tests that a lot of women get in the pharmacy actually give them an estimate of date, but they are counting from conception… the legislation is based on counting from last period, which means you immediately have to add two weeks onto what you thought,” Dr Henchion told the Medical Independent.

She said that this can cause “a panic” to try and get an appointment on time.

“And some of the hospitals are really, really helpful, but at the same time they only have a certain number of appointments and it is only certain days of the week. They may be full and they may not be able to take any more and they may not have any theatre slots available and you get into this very, very fraught situation of trying to find someone a place to go,” she added.

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Half of teenagers will never marry, predicts think-tank

Research by the Marriage Foundation predicts that just 57 per cent of girls and 55 per cent of boys currently aged 13 to 18 will marry in their lifetimes.

The figures, obtained from Office of National Statistics data, represent a steep decline from previous generations where, among people now in their 60s, 91 per cent of women and 86 per cent of men have married.

The study also reveals that current marriage rates among under-25s have plunged virtually to zero, with just eight per cent of women and four per cent of men in that age group getting married. This is because of young people now waiting until they are in their 30s to marry, compared with only a few decades ago.

The former Bishop of Rochester, Michael Nazir-Ali, warned that the authorities must act. He said: ‘The Government should be putting more money into marriage education. Teaching young people about relationships should be more than just giving them facts about sex. We should also be recognising marriage in a more favourable tax structure.’

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Irish fertility clinics offering treatments of doubtful benefit

Numerous enhanced and often expensive fertility treatments are offered in Irish fertility clinics despite them being of doubtful effectiveness, according to The Sunday Times.

The treatments are offered as expensive “add-ons” to a normal course of IVF, with the promise of increasing the chances of a successful pregnancy. However, in the UK the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) has said of the very same add-ons that there is either no evidence that the treatments are safe and effective, or that there is a small or conflicting body of evidence, which means more research is required and the techniques should not be used routinely.

Nonetheless, clinics in Ireland offer these “extras” as their clients are “desperate” and willing to try anything that might help no matter how expensive.

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Irish family refused entry to NZ due to daughter with Downs

A family from Ireland have had to abandon a move to New Zealand as their youngest daughter was denied a visa because she had Down’s Syndrome.

Bumikka Suhinthan, 15, was told she couldn’t enter the country because her ‘health was not of an acceptable standard’ and would impose excessive costs. Her mother, Nilani Suhinthan, 52, was headhunted for a £74,000-a-year IT consultant job in Auckland, New Zealand. She, her husband Nagarajah, 54, and other daughters Tanya, 19, and Saumia, 14, all received visas but Bumikka’s rejection has put an end to the planned move.

Despite the family offering to pay for the extra support their daughter would need in school, Immigration New Zealand (INZ) ruled Bumikka would be too great a burden. The mother and her husband Nagarajah, an engineer, have spent three months appealing the rejection, but a hearing last week ruled the decision was final. Nilani, who lives in Dublin, said: “It’s complete discrimination. I’ve always told her she isn’t any different but this tears it up. She doesn’t completely understand why we’re not going to New Zealand.”

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Clash in Seanad over ‘conversion therapy’

Legislation on so-called “conversion therapy” that would outlaw some church ministries to people with same-sex attraction should proceed on an evidential basis.

Senator Ronan Mullen made the appeal in the Seanad on Thursday in response to a Private Members’ Bill by Sinn Fein Senator, Fintan Warfield.

Senator Mullen said “the highest value comes from what people want, provided it does not do harm”. He continued: “I do not know enough about it at this stage but if it can be demonstrated that this is harmful to people, there is a very good case to make it unlawful. If it cannot be shown to be harmful to people, we are back into the realm of individual choice.” He added that legislators “do not speak enough about the importance of an evidence base for proposals,” and recommended he and his colleagues should “look honestly at the current evidence”.

His remarks brought a critical response from an Assistant Professor in Gender Studies at UCD. Doctor Mary McAuliffe told breaking news.ie that the Senator’s remarks “implies that people who are LGBT have some sort of disorder that needs to be corrected rather than people who happen to be that way. I think that is a disturbing and dangerous route to go down.”

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FG candidate speaks about being a surrogate mother for friends

A Fine Gael local election candidate has spoken publicly of acting as a surrogate mother for two childless friends. Surrogacy of this kind is very rare compared with commercial surrogacy, or surrogacy where a couple pay a stranger ‘living expenses’ to have a child for them.

42-year-old Becky Loftus Dore, who is standing in the Kinnegad electoral area in the local elections on May 24th, is a mother of four children, and is currently 35 weeks pregnant with a baby boy intended for a couple she is friends with.

The child was conceived in vitro. This took place in Cyprus.

She warned others about the precarious nature of surrogacy in that the child will be born with no legal connection to either of the two people who intend to raise him. Moreover, even if the law changed, she cautioned: “You don’t know whether people are going to switch or change. A woman could form a bond and say ‘no, I want to keep it’.”

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CSO testing sexual-orientation question for 2026 census

The Central Statistics Office (CSO) might include a question on sexual orientation in the 2026 census.

A spokeswoman for the CSO said a question asking whether a person was heterosexual, lesbian, gay or bisexual was being tested for the first time as part of the quarterly national household survey.

“It has just been included in the household survey for quarter one 2019. It is a question that requires full testing to get it right. We’ll start to have the first results from that later in the year and they will feed into discussions about what questions will be included in the 2026 census. It wouldn’t be included until then.”

The CSO statement comes as an OECD report calls for the inclusion of questions on sexual orientation and gender identity in member states’ censuses to tackle discrimination.

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GP body refuses call for EGM on abortion

The professional body for GPs has refused a demand from hundreds of its members for a second extraordinary general meeting on the provision of abortion services.

In a letter sent to these members this week, the board of the Irish College of GPs (ICGP) said it had come to a “considered decision” after “careful deliberation, including taking legal advice about the correct interpretation of the rules of the organisation”.

The letter added: “We are very aware of the criticism and anger that exists among some members. However, the college has undertaken a very extensive consultative process with its members . . . [and] The fact that over 300 GPs are providing termination of pregnancy services at this time and that over 500 have completed training is an indication that the college’s decision to provide clinical guidelines was appropriate.” There are roughly 3,000 GPs in Ireland.

GPs who had collected the requisite number of signatures to mandate that an EGM be called under the rules of the Companies Act reacted with astonishment and fury. Dr Valerie Morris of the Medico-Legal Alliance said the ICGP had no valid reason to refuse the EGM and are acting in an undemocratic way to silence the voices of its own members.

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Natural family planning app found to be as effective other methods

A fertility app that tracks the times of month when a woman can and cannot become pregnant has been found to be as, or more effective than artificial methods of contraception for avoiding an unplanned pregnancy. The app was developed as a means of helping women in the developing world to manage their fertility without having to resort to long-acting hormonal contraception or abortion.

Researchers from the Institute for Reproductive Health (IRH) at Georgetown University Medical Center studied women’s use of the Dot app over 13 menstrual cycles, or about one year.

Their study, published in the European Journal of Contraception and Reproductive Healthcare, is the first to test a fertility app using best-practice guidelines for assessing effectiveness of family planning methods.

Using historical cycle data and a woman’s period start dates, Dot’s algorithm predicts pregnancy risk for each day of her menstrual cycle, flagging days of high and low fertility. As the app “learns” about her cycle over time, it personalizes a user’s fertile window – the days of her cycle when pregnancy is likely.

The researchers found that the app had a typical-use failure rate of 5 percent and a perfect-use failure rate of 1 percent, which makes Dot comparable to family planning methods such as the Pill.

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