The constitutional referendum on removing the time restriction on divorce from the Constitution has passed. It had 82.07 per cent support, one of the largest margins in a referendum since the vote on the Belfast Agreement in 1998.
There were 1,384,192 ballots cast in favour of the proposal, with 302,319 cast against. The total valid poll was 1,686,511, with 40,545 invalid ballots. Final turnout across the 31 constituencies was 50.89 per cent. The strongest No vote came in Monaghan, where just under one quarter of voters rejected the proposal. The referendum enjoyed strongest support in Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown, where 86.7 per cent of voters supported it.
The Government will now legislate to reduce the waiting time to file for a divorce from four years out of the last five, to two years out of the last three. A future Oireachtas will be free to further reduce the waiting time.
The Government’s radical abortion regime was slammed by prolife groups on the anniversary of the referendum that deleted the right to life of the unborn.
Spokesperson for the Pro Life Campaign Maeve O’Hanlon said the true nature of what the Government introduced has become starkly and unavoidably clear in the past 12 months.
“Instead of ‘Safe, Legal and Rare’ we now know that the estimated numbers of abortions will almost treble. What we have been hearing from people over the course of the last year is a deep sense of anger and regret. They feel that they have had their compassion used against them. It is time for the government to realise that the claims upon which they built their campaign for abortion have been exposed as the litany of deception that they were,” she said.
Far from being discouraged, she said the pro-life movement had witnessed an incredible resurgence among those who are committed to the advancement of genuine care for both mothers and babies.
“Today we have launched a nationwide billboard campaign to rally practical and meaningful support for mothers and babies and to encourage Government to provide positive alternatives to women in unplanned pregnancy and their families.”
She added: “We remain committed to providing a better alternative than abortion for Ireland’s women and unborn children”.
A Canadian Court has ruled that physicians can be forced by the State to facilitate procedures they find morally objectionable, including euthanasia and assisted suicide, by connecting patients with willing providers.
Three judges of the Ontario Court of Appeal unanimously upheld a lower court ruling in favour of a compulsory “effective referral” policy imposed by Ontario’s state medical regulator, the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario.
The Court decided the case solely on the basis of freedom of religion claims which it found “insufficient”. It did not consider an intervention of the Protection of Conscience Project about the nature of the procedures that were being objected to.
According to the Project Administrator, Sean Murphy, the judges uncritically adopted the view of the College that euthanasia and numerous other questionable procedures, such as assisted suicide, abortion, contraception, sterilization and sex change surgery, are acceptable forms of medical treatment or health care.
The appellants might yet appeal the case to the Supreme Court of Canada.
The second London council to institute a controversial Public Spaces Protection Order (PSPO) around an abortion facility has been taken to court. The censorship zone imposed by Richmond Council around an abortion clinic in Twickenham has banned prayer, offers of support and peaceful protest outside the facility.
Laurence Wilkinson, Legal Counsel for ADF International said the order criminalises free speech and peaceful protest. It also explicitly outlaws prayer – even silent prayer – concerning abortion. While PSPOs are intended to address anti-social behaviour, he said those in both Ealing and Richmond go far beyond that and could not be considered “reasonable or proportionate – banning even a simple offer of assistance”. He added: “Richmond has ignored the evidence that hundreds of women have been provided with practical help and support by pro-life volunteers outside abortion facilities. Local councils and the police have a broad range of existing powers to deal with any unlawful behavior. If we set a precedent that councils can start censoring speech with which they disagree, there is no logical stopping point.”
Richmond’s Public Space Protection Order came in the wake of the Home Secretary’s announcement that it would be disproportionate to introduce censorship zones on a national level last September.
A local election candidate has spoken about her experience acting as a surrogate mother for friends and her relief that she didn’t feel a bond with the child following his birth.
Westmeath-based Fine Gael candidate Becky Loftus Dore, who is a mother of four, gave birth late last month to a baby boy who was conceived through donor IVF. She says, during the pregnancy, she tried to distance herself emotionally from the child she was carrying.
“To be honest, I didn’t feel any connection or bond during the pregnancy. Right from the beginning, I knew I had a job to grow it. It has no biological connection to myself or my husband. It was something that I put into the deal: I wasn’t going to donate my egg or anything like that. It was a complete donor embryo.
“Even though my head had worked out what was going on, and my family had worked out what was going on, I was waiting to see the role my natural hormones would play when I saw the baby. Would there be a connection, would there be any kind of bond? But there wasn’t, which was fantastic”.
Babies are to be called foetuses up until the moment they are born. That’s according to the style guide of the publicly funded National Public Radio (NPR) a network of over 1,000 public radio stations in the United States whose programs are sometimes re-broadcast on Newstalk.
Standards & Practices Editor Mark Memmott published a blog last week on the correct language to use in describing abortion-related news. He wrote:
‘The term “unborn” implies that there is a baby inside a pregnant woman, not a fetus. Babies are not babies until they are born. They’re fetuses. Incorrectly calling a fetus a “baby” or “the unborn” is part of the strategy used by antiabortion groups to shift language/legality/public opinion. Use “unborn” only when referring to the title of the bill (and after President Bush signs it, the Unborn Victims of Violence Law). Or qualify the use of “unborn” by saying “what anti-abortion groups call the ‘unborn’ victims of violence.” The most neutral language to refer to the death of a fetus during a crime is “fetal homicide.”’
The proposed Constitutional change on divorce might have the effect of further weakening the social commitment to marriage. That’s according to Bishop Kevin Doran of the Diocese of Elphin who released a pastoral message yesterday asking the people of his diocese to consider whether the liberalising of divorce law could have that effect.
He also expressed doubts about the State’s current commitment to marriage: “The important parallel question that we need to ask is whether society is living up to its responsibility to prioritise the family and to provide the human supports that might help couples to resolve difficulties that arise in their relationship, before their differences become irreconcilable.”
Meanwhile Bishop of Limerick Brendan Leahy has said that it would be shame to just tick a box for the upcoming referendum on divorce law without first considering the social context and challenges that marriages face today.
In a statement ahead of this weekend’s referendum, Bishop Leahy asked for consideration to be given to establishing a State agency specifically dedicated to marriage, the promotion of healthy marriages and support to marriages in trouble.
A French court has ordered doctors to resume life support for a quadriplegic man whose case has sparked a major debate on euthanasia in France.
Doctors had begun switching off life support for Vincent Lambert, 42, on Monday, before the court order. Mr Lambert has been in a vegetative state since a 2008 motorcycle accident. His family are divided on his care with his wife calling for his feeding tubes to be withdrawn, while his parents insist he be kept alive.
An earlier judicial ruling had said Mr Lambert should be removed from life support and that process had begun with doctors halting the nutrition and hydration Lambert receives before Monday evening’s dramatic reversal by the Paris Court of Appeal.
The case has been the subject of judicial rulings, going as far as the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). Europe’s top court upheld the decision of a French court to allow Mr Lambert to be taken off life support. However, doctors then did not carry out the plan.
The UN’s Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities had called on France to intervene and delay the move to withdraw the life support while they investigated his case further. France’s ministry of health said it was not bound by the committee.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-48344426
Faith is a global force for good in producing positive outcomes for family life according to a new report released Monday by the Institute for Family Studies and the Wheatley Institution.
The 2019 World Family Map looked how religion is linked, on average, to four key family outcomes —relationship quality, fertility, domestic violence, and infidelity— in 11 countries across the globe: Argentina, Australia, Chile, Canada, Colombia, France, Ireland, Mexico, Peru, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Drawing on data from the World Values Survey (WVS) and the Global Family and Gender Survey (GFGS), the report found that faith is indeed a force for good in contemporary family life globally. Men and women who share an active religious life, for instance, enjoy higher levels of relationship quality and sexual satisfaction compared to their peers in secular or less/mixed religious relationships. They also have more children and are more likely to marry. At the same time, the researchers not find that faith protects women from domestic violence in married and cohabiting relationships. Overall, this report suggests the family-friendly norms and networks associated with religious communities reinforce the ties that bind. According to the authors of the report, the challenge facing those communities, however, is to build on these strengths to address families who are struggling—including the approximately one-in-five of their adherents who experience intimate partner violence.
The Democratic Governor of Louisiana, John Bel Edwards, has promised to sign legislation that would prohibit abortion after a fetal heartbeat is detected which occurs as early as six weeks into a pregnancy.
The bill is sponsored by Democratic state Sen. John Milkovich and has received little public opposition from lawmakers of any stripe as it steadily advances. The Louisiana bill includes an exception if the pregnant woman’s health is in “serious risk,” but not for pregnancies caused by rape or incest.
It is similar to laws passed in other states such as Kentucky, Mississippi, Georgia, Ohio and Alabama that have been the focus of public protests.
The Governor has always been a public advocate of pro-life policies with his position based in part on personal experience. When his wife was 20 weeks pregnant with their first child, a doctor discovered their daughter had spina bifida and encouraged an abortion. The Edwardses refused. Now, daughter Samantha is married and working as a school counselor, and Edwards finds himself an outlier in polarized abortion politics.
“My position hasn’t changed. In eight years in the Legislature, I was a pro-life legislator,” he said. When he ran for governor, his view was the same. “I’m as consistent as I can be on that point.”
