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.
‘Do Not Resuscitate’ requests will get a stronger legal basis when a new law comes into force.
People who declare they do not want CPR, or further medical procedures as they near the end of their lives, will have firmer legal backing for their wishes when the Assisted Decision Making (Capacity) Act 2015 finally commences.
The new law, signed by President Higgins almost four years ago, continues to undergo legislative work. It was reported in the Sunday Independent that it is hoped it will be ready to commence near the end of next year.
People already have the right to make an Advance Healthcare Directive (AHD) indicating what medical treatment they do not want, in the event of them losing their capacity to make such decisions later in their lives. AHDs will be simpler to operate under the new law.
Switzerland’s highest court has ruled that parents do not have a constitutional right to provide school-aged children with private lessons at home. The verdict came after a mother in canton Basel City appealed the Federal Court, after her application to provide homeschooling for her son was rejected by the local school and cantonal justice authorities.
The court also ruled that the cantons – who are in charge of educational matters in Switzerland – could decide whether, and to what extent, homeschooling should be authorised, restricted or banned.
Figures vary but according to a recent Tages-Anzeiger newspaper reportexternal link, there are over 2,000 homeschooled children in Switzerland. And the trend is rising, experts say.
Willi Villiger, president of the Homeschool Association of Switzerland, said he was disappointed by the ruling, He had hoped that attitudes were slowly changing in Switzerland.
Villiger, himself a teacher, taught all his ten children at home with his wife. “Homeschooling allows a family to become a team, to be out and about with the children and learn, and to get on in life together,” he told SRF.
Minister Simon Harris’ rebranding of abortion exclusion zones as ‘safety access zones’ has been dismissed as ‘rhetorical game playing’ that is divisive and unhelpful.
The comments were made by the Pro-life campaign after the Minister announced a progress briefing on his plans to introduce legislation banning peaceful pro-life vigils outside centres that perform of faciliate abortions.
The briefing indicates a continued determination from the Minister to pursue his proposals despite an acknowledgement by An Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, in April that the proposed new law was running into difficulties regarding ‘free speech’ and the right to ‘peacefully protest.’
Pro Life Campaign spokesperson, Maeve O’Hanlon said they entirely reject the premise that an unwillingness to support the Minister’s plans to introduce ‘Safe Access Zones’ implies an indirect support for anything resembling ‘unsafe’ access.
“The fact that the Minister’s preferred description has moved from ‘Exclusion Zones’ to ‘Safe Access Zones’ also serves to highlight the fact that an attempt is being made to present the proposed legislation in more palatable language while the substance remains essentially the same.”
