The State should not take over the direct operation of health services currently run by voluntary hospitals and agencies, but there should be significant changes to existing funding arrangements, a new Government review is expected to recommend.
The review, commissioned last year by Minister for Health Simon Harris, was asked to examine the role played by voluntary organisations in health provision and personal social services in Ireland; to consider current and potential issues arising; and to make recommendations to the Minister for Health on the future relationship between the State and voluntary service providers. It was commissioned in response to the outcry over the National Maternity Hospital being moved to the voluntary Catholic Hospital, St Vincents, which was once run by the Sisters of Charity. Besides a distaste among some with public money going to a nominally religious body, there were also fears that abortion might be restricted in the new maternity hospital.
At least 42 people have died in an attack last week on the Cathedral of the Sacred Heart in Alindao, in the Central African Republic (CAR), according to local reports. At least one priest was among those killed in the attack. Some unofficial estimates have said the death toll could reach as high as 100. Many of the people killed were refugees sheltering at the Church. The CAR has suffered violence since December 2012, when several bands of mainly Muslim rebel groups formed an alliance, taking the name Seleka, and seized power while other groups, called Anti-Balaka, have formed to violently resist them.
According to reports from Aid to the Church in Need, ex-Seleka forces attacked the cathedral, reportedly in retaliation for a Muslim who was killed the day before by Anti-Balaka. The priest killed in the attack was vicar general of the diocese, Abbe Blaise Mada. Aid to the Church in Need added that some reports have said a second priest, Father Celestine Ngoumbango, was also killed, but this has not been confirmed. Houses in the neighborhood were also looted and burned.
Many Catholic churches in the country provide refuge to Muslims and Christians alike fleeing violence, including churches in the Diocese of Bangassou, some 140 miles to the east of Alindao, where several Catholic institutions have taken in displaced Muslims who face violence at the hand of anti-balaka.
New data shows a continued rise so far this year of people who have been diagnosed with HIV and other sexually transmitted infections.
According to provisional data from the Health Protection Surveillance Centre (HPSC), there were 454 new HIV diagnoses from January to November 2018. This is an increase of 66 cases compared to the same period last year. There has been a total of 11,078 STI diagnoses overall which represents a 6% increase when compared to figures from January to November 2017.
Niall Mulligan, Executive Director of HIV Ireland told TheJournal.ie that the provisional figures for the year so far are the worst he has seen. “I don’t think we’ve seen that kind of data but it’s disconcerting that we’re almost becoming accepting of this. These figures are provisional but they do give a good indication of how things are going to be at the end of the year. So, it’s inevitable that we’re going to see 500 plus new diagnoses again this year.”
The Master of the Rotunda predicts that the hospital will conduct up to 800 abortions a year once legislation making it widely available comes into practice. Dr Fergal Malone was speaking on RTE Radio 1’s Drivetime after the hospital announced a record 100% survival rate for premature babies born as early as 28 weeks gestation. The new research was published to coincide with World Prematurity Day and presenter Mary Wilson said it ‘shines a light on the life-saving impact of certain drugs and early diagnosis marking the highest survival rate on record.’
She went on to question Dr Malone about the hospital’s readiness to conduct abortions. He said they will ‘be on the frontline’ and they expect ‘about 15 cases a week at the Rotunda, so sixty a month, seven or eight hundred a year’. He said it would be a significant, increased burden on the hospital but they have plans which they have submitted to the HSE on how they would deal with it.
The United Nations Human Rights Committee wants to define abortion and assisted suicide as a human right. The Committee outlined the position in an advanced, unedited version of a ‘general comment’ on the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. A “General Comment” is a UN agency’s interpretation of the provisions of the treaties to which it is a party. Nothing in any UN document mentions either abortion or assisted suicide.
The comment says that States must guarantee “safe, legal and effective” access to abortion when the life of the pregnant woman is at risk, or when carrying the pregnancy to term could cause her pain or suffering, “most notably where the pregnancy is the result of rape or incest or is not viable.”
The document also argues that States “may not regulate pregnancy or abortion in all other cases in a manner that runs contrary to their duty to ensure that women and girls do not have to undertake unsafe abortions, and they should revise their abortion laws accordingly.”
It calls for the decriminalisation of abortion, both for women and doctors providing them and the elimination of ‘barriers’ to access, “including barriers caused as a result of the exercise of conscientious objection by individual medical providers.”
In addition, the draft comment Crux had access to also calls on States to allow medical professionals to provide treatment to “facilitate the termination of life of afflicted adults, such as those who are terminally ill, who experience severe physical or mental pain and suffering and who wish to die with dignity.”
Children whose parents remarry several times or have multiple partners are likely to have more relationships themselves when they’re adults, a new study has suggested.
An array of biological traits, as well as factors learned from parents in childhood, influence our relationship success, US researchers, lea by Dr Claire Kamp Dush, an associate professor of human sciences at Ohio State University, said. They add this has led to a “merry-go-round of partners” in some households which could be harming the wellbeing of children and their parents.
“Stable romantic unions, including marriage and cohabitation, are linked to better mental and physical health for both adults and children,” the authors wrote. The researchers said that signs of an increased break-up rate being passed down the generations could be down to a mix of heritable factors, such as personality traits or mental health conditions, and the relationship skills children see from their parents.
“What our results suggest is that mothers may pass on their marriageable characteristics and relationship skills to their children – for better or worse,” said Dr Dush. “It could be that mothers who have more partners don’t have great relationship skills, or don’t deal with conflict well, or have mental health problems, each of which can undermine relationships and lead to instability”.
A prominent moral theologian has urged doctors, nurses and other medical staff to engage in civil disobedience rather than accept being coerced into aiding and abetting abortions. Writing in the Irish Independent, Fr Vincent Twomey, said that the Government’s proposed abortion legislation includes a clause on “conscientious objection” according to which doctors whose conscience forbids them to kill a child in the womb at any stage of its development are obliged to refer the woman seeking abortion to another doctor, thereby co-operating in the abortion.
“This is repugnant to the meaning of conscience. It imposes a legal obligation that contradicts the moral obligation not to aid or abet evil. Apart from the doctor, other medical, pharmacy and ancillary hospital staff cannot be forced to co-operate in an abortion”, he wrote.
If the Government goes ahead with the proposed legislation, he said all medical and ancillary staff “must exercise civil disobedience”.
In conclusion, he quoted Seán MacBride, founding member of Amnesty International, who, upon receiving the Nobel Prize, affirmed that: “To the rights enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights one more might, with relevance, be added. It is ‘The Right to Refuse to Kill'” – and, Fr Twomey added, the right not to be forced to vote for, or otherwise co-operate in, such killing.
Meath TD Peadar Toibin has resigned from Sinn Féin after 21 years as a member, claiming he has been “censored” by party chiefs.
Mr Toibin was a prominent campaigner to save the Eighth Amendment and, most memorably, vigorously defended the rights of the unborn in all circumstances in the final Prime Time debate on RTE against Minister Simon Harris. He was subsequently suspended from party activity for six months after refusing to support the Government’s proposed abortion legislation. He had previously been suspended from the party for voting against the 2013 Abortion Act.
The deputy handed in a resignation letter today “with a heavy heart”. In the letter, Mr Toibin said he had secured a deal with the leadership in November 2012 which stated the party “would treat me equally and would not marginalise me due to my views on the right to life as long as I also gave the party view”.
“This deal worked well for four years at no cost to the party”. However, he said over the past 18 months the arrangement was “binned unilaterally by the party”.
“I have lost speaking rights, spokesperson’s positions, portfolios and have been significantly censored in my engagement with the media. These actions have prevented me from fully representing my constituents.”
“I have strived in every way I know how simply to make space within the party for people with a different on this one issue.
Finally he wrote to Ms McDonald and others in the party hierarchy two weeks ago, seeking to know if he had a future in the party. “This email was never replied to. That may be an answer in itself,” his resignation letter concludes.
The Irish Medical Organisation (IMO) has signed a contract to operate the Government’s proposed abortion regime.
As part of the deal agreed with the on Wednesday, doctors who accept the new contract will receive a total fee of €450 covering three visits – made up of a payment of €150 to cover the initial consultation with the patient and a further €300 for carrying out the termination procedure and the delivery of aftercare.
The HSE will write to GPs in the coming days seeking expressions of interest in taking up the new contract.
Minister for Health Simon Harris welcomed the agreement with the doctors’ organisation on the new contract for provision of abortions in community settings. “The agreement of this contract is a significant step in the detailed preparations for the introduction of termination of pregnancy services at the beginning of January,” Mr Harris said.
“It enables the HSE to offer the contract in sufficient time for doctors to consider its terms and, if they wish to take up the contract, to advise the HSE of this. I would like to acknowledge the constructive engagement by the IMO on this sensitive issue.”
Three hospitals around the country have refused to carry out abortions under the forthcoming new law, according to Peadar Tóibín, the former Sinn Fein TD.
Speaking during a Health Committee meeting last week he said doctors in Kilkenny, Letterkenny and Cavan had decided that they would not offer abortions. He said they told this to Peter Boylan, former head of the Institute of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, who has been been in discussions with maternity units on behalf of the Government. Dr Boylan declined to comment. Since then, when contacted by The Times, Ireland, the hospitals themselves have either made no comment or offered legal responses.
A spokesman for the Ireland East Hospitals Group, which includes Kilkenny, said that “all hospitals [in the group] will comply with the law of the land”. Queries to the hospitals in Letterkenny and Cavan were diverted to the HSE national press office, which said: “The HSE, in consultation with the Department of Health and other stakeholders, is working on developing an implementation plan for the delivery of the termination of pregnancy service by January 1, 2019.”
When asked again if doctors in Letterkenny and Cavan had said that they would not provide such services, the HSE did not comment.
Simon Harris, the Health Minister, appeared undeterred by the apparent refusals, commenting that there had been many claims that hospitals would refuse to offer abortion services when the government passed a law to allow abortions in cases of threatened suicide in 2013.
