The Government has approved plans for the building of 12 new primary schools around the country under the patronage of either non-denominational or multi-denominational bodies. The schools are to be located in the cities and commuter belts of Dublin and Cork.
For years pressure in those places has hit Catholic schools hard and they had to adopt a system of deciding who would be accepted into oversubscribed schools. Their method of granting priority to children of Catholic families has been unfairly dubbed a ‘baptism barrier’. Spokespersons for Catholic schools, however, claimed there was instead a ‘buildings barrier’ that needed to be overcome in the areas where population growth exceeded school places.
This latest announcement by the Department of Education should ease the acuteness of the problem, but it remains to be seen whether politicians will drop plans to curb the capacity of Catholic schools to give any priority to children of their own faith community.
A pro-choice GP has said he is “incredibly proud” to participate in the provision of abortion under the new Irish law, adding, “It is a privilege (and challenge) being a GP, but I have never been as professionally rewarded, as in the past seven weeks.”
Writing in The Irish Times, he dismissed the criticism of other pro-choice advocates who say the roll-out of the new regime is too slow. He said instead that the country had “set a world record for the implementation of a comprehensive abortion service”, and even claimed that “we are the envy of many healthcare systems.”
Nonetheless, despite having achieved the goal of so-called ‘free, safe, and legal’ abortion in community settings around the country, he signaled a need to expand the regime even further. This included the expansion of the number of GPs providing abortions; exclusion zones outside hospitals and GP clinics; eliminating the three day waiting period; the universal, free provision of contraception; free abortions for women from the North; and the expansion of abortion law itself to cater for women who have been “left behind, including those who are pregnant beyond 12 weeks.”
Two donor-conceived children are waiting for a court to decide who exactly are their legal parents and whether they can be taken across an international border in a relocation from Australia to New Zealand. The case has major implications for international custody disputes of donor-conceived children all over the world because, under the Hague Convention, a child cannot be taken by a parent from a member country to another member country to live without the permission of the other parent.
The children were born to a lesbian woman in Australia. A gay man is the sperm-donating father to one of the children, and is claiming parentage of both children due to his role as a co-parent. He has petitioned the courts in Australia to prevent the children being relocated to New Zealand.
The woman’s same-sex partner asked the courts to declare her the legal parent of both children, which would have involved her name replacing that of the gay man on the birth cert of the older child, his genetic daughter. Irish law will soon permit the names of two women to appear on a birth certificate.
A lower court decided that the lesbian partner was the parent of one child–the younger child conceived through an American sperm donor–but not of the older child, conceived using the sperm of the gay man. The Court’s reasoning was that the partner’s relationship with the mother was not ‘de facto’, or reasonably established, at the time of the conception of that child. The judge ruled the relationship, at that stage, was still only developing, albeit rapidly, and so the man was allowed to remain as a legal parent and was granted the injunction to prevent the children being removed from the country.
The women have appealed that decision and the case is to be heard later this year in Australia.
Abortion for reasons of non-life-threatening disability should be explicitly legalised, according to Ruth Coppinger of the far-left Solidarity party. The current abortion regime already allows abortion for any reason for the first three months of pregnancy; for health reasons for the first six months of pregnancy; and for all nine months of pregnancy where a child is so disabled it is expected to die before or soon after birth. Speaking in the Dail yesterday, Coppinger cited the case of a woman pregnant with a child suffering a serious disability who was refused an abortion. Ms Coppinger alleged that “conservative Catholic control of hospitals and a very narrow law with criminalisation are having a chilling effect and forcing such women to travel abroad”. She asked the Taoiseach why in Ireland is a “distinction made between fatal and severe abnormalities that is not made in other countries”. She also asked who decided what got onto a list of “fatal foetal abnormalities” and why it varied from hospital to hospital.
The Taoiseach said the Oireachtas decided to limit the law at aborting the disabled who were unlikely to live long after birth and the legislation would be reviewed after three years.
Ms Coppinger also called for a fully secular hospital system where there “isn’t a culture that sends people on their way” and one where, she said, the Catholic Church would not influence medical matters.
Countries such as Germany do not permit abortion on disability grounds, but they happen on a widespread basis anyway because the mother can claim a threat to her mental health.
French schools are set to replace the titles ‘mother’ and ‘father’ with ‘parent 1’ and ‘parent 2’ to avoid ‘discrimination’ against same sex parents. The bill was passed through the French parliament last week to recognise parents with the same gender. The bill was tabled by MP Valerie Petit with the aim of ‘anchoring the diversity of families with children in the law’.
The amendment says: ‘To prevent discrimination, school enrolment, class registers, parental authorisation and all other forms involving children must mention only Parent 1 and Parent 2.’
However, even some of the supporters of the idea have questioned whether the law would create more problems regarding who is designated as parent number one, and who is number two.
Other MPs are staunchly opposed to the move. Fabien Di Filippo, deputy general secretary for The Republican party, described the amendment as a “frightening ideology,” which “in the name of limitless egalitarianism promotes removing points of reference, including those regarding the family”.
A willingness to conduct abortions is one of the requirements for an open consultant position in Obstetrics and Gynaecology, and another for Anaesthesia, at the National Maternity Hospital. That’s according to an advertisement for the positions which appeared in national newspapers last week. This effectively bars pro-life doctors with an ethical objection to the procedure from applying for the post.
The advertisement states that candidates for the positions will provide patient care and other duties “which as of 2019 includes elective terminations of pregnancy services and the post-holders will be expected to contribute to this new service as part of their practice plan”.
A statement from the NMH said the posts were being funded specifically from a financial allocation to the hospital from the Health Service Executive for the “provision of termination-of-pregnancy services, and are for individuals willing to contribute to the provision of these services”. A hospital source said the posts could not therefore be open to doctors who are unwilling to carry out abortions.
He added that the doctors involved would be expected to carry out only a small number of surgical abortions and that their duties would be mostly the ones normally expected in a maternity hospital of an anaesthetist or an obstetrician.
Health Minister Simon Harris has been accused of “colossal double standards” for condemning a plan by a pro-life group to offer sidewalk counselling to women contemplating abortion while staying silent on a pro-choice group’s counselling that provoked an investigation by the DPP.
Minister Harris was reacting yesterday to a report of an American group allegedly planning to offer “sidewalk counselling” to Irish women entering GP clinics and hospitals to have abortions. He described the practices of the group as chilling, manipulative and disrespectful of the democratic process. Yet, he was assailed by the Pro-Life Campaign for equally failing to condemn the manipulative practices of the Irish pro-abortion group that Irish Family Planning Assoociation (IFPA).
PLC spokesperson Maeve O’Hanlon said: “Simon Harris has no credibility talking about standards in pregnancy counselling while refusing to publicly condemn the State funded pro-abortion IFPA [which was] caught on tape coaching women during counselling to illegally import abortion pills to self-administer without medical supervision.
“Given that Simon Harris singled out the IFPA for praise in the Dáil as recently as December 5th, he has a duty to address the issue of IFPA counselling practices that led to a DPP investigation some years ago.
“Everyone should wish for nothing but the highest standards in pregnancy counselling but it is deeply disturbing when the Minister for Health politicises the issue and displays no willingness to stay impartial or fair-minded. It remains a scandal that Minister Harris will not condemn the IFPA for their outrageous counselling practices.”
The vague plans of an obscure US pro-life organisation to engage in abortion outreach outside Irish GP clinics and hospitals was the subject of a raft of articles that appeared in the Times, Ireland Edition, on Monday.
According to the newspaper a US organisation, Sidewalk Advocates for Life (SAFL), is training campaigners to wait in hospital car parks to target couples who have received a diagnosis of a fatal foetal abnormality to talk them out of having an abortion.
The article adds that the group advises as an “effective” tactic telling rape victims that having an abortion will not “unrape” them and that a termination can be “rape like”.
Bethany Mistretta, a programme manager for SAFL, is reported as saying that they want to “have every abortion facility or every doctor’s office that provides abortions, have every one of those locations covered with peaceful sidewalk advocates. Any hour of business that they’re open.”
In a later statement to RTÉ News, the group said its materials “were taken out of context” by the newspaper. It added: “We advise every location to act within the confines of their legal rights to offer help through local, reputable pregnancy centres or other medical facilities to fill their healthcare needs. “We have no grand plan to put Sidewalk Advocates in front of every abortion facility in Ireland.”
Numerous stories detailing alleged gaps in knowledge of sexual issues by children and young people appeared in Irish media over the weekend as the NCCA’s online consultation on a new RSE course for schools came to an end. The Times, Ireland edition, led the way on Saturday with no fewer than three stories detailing the situations children are finding themselves in due to their lack of awareness of online dangers.
“Teenagers’ sex videos shared by paedophiles”, read one story, while another was headlined, “Sex predators targeting children in explicit group chats on Twitter”. A third story explicitly brought up RSE with the headline, “Alert children aged 2 to online risks, charity urges.”
On the Late Late Show Friday night, a man told his story of being in shock when he was diagnosed in 2012, at the age of 21, with HIV. Robbie Lawlor told Ryan Tubridy, he “didn’t know HIV existed in Ireland” and he didn’t understand how he was getting this diagnosis. He had just finished a four year degree in UCD in zoology and was hoping to travel to Australia, but the diagnosis scuppered those plans. He added that education of young people on the matter today is “non-existent”. He is now an activist for HIV/Aids awareness and had a piece in the journal.ie on Friday on that very subject.
The Cabinet has approved a bill to enable same-sex female couples to register as parents of a baby conceived with the help of a sperm donor. In addition, any couple will also be allowed to replace the word ‘mother’ and father’ on birth certs with ‘parent’.
A memo explaining the new legislation says: “Section 10 provides for the inclusion of details of ‘Parent’ in the required particulars to register a birth or stillbirth. This will facilitate both partners in a same-sex female relationship to have their particulars registered in the register of births. Registration of particulars of “Mother” and “Father” will continue to be available. However, any parent may choose to register a birth as ‘Parent’, if they so wish.”
Under current laws, birth certs only allow for the birth mother to be recorded, but under the changes both women in a same-sex relationship will be able to be recorded as parents. The Bill will also work retroactively to allow people re-register past births.
This change in the law was meant to be effected by the Children and Family Relationships Act of 2015, but a drafting error in one section prevented that part of the legislation from becoming law.
This bill will not extend the same rights to men in same-sex relationships who have children as that crosses over with separate surrogacy laws, the Assisted Human Reproduction Bill 2017, being prepared by the Department of Health.
According to a press release from the Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection, currently, “particulars of only one parent, the mother, can be included on the birth certificate. Under these new provisions both parents can be recorded as ‘parent’ on the birth certificate.”
It adds that this “will equally apply to non-same sex parents should they so choose.”
The Bill also includes a provision to enable a mother to more easily rebut presumption of paternity of her estranged husband in registering a birth.
