A 17-year-old girl who felt she could no longer go on living has been allowed to die at home with the help of an ‘end-of-life clinic’. She had been a victim of rape as a young girl.
Noa Pothoven died in a hospital bed in her living room after doctors allowed her to starve and dehydrate to death.
In Holland, children as young as 12 can be granted euthanasia if they desire, but only after a doctor concludes that the patient’s suffering is unbearable with no clear end in sight.
In a social media post one day before her death last Sunday, Noa made her decision public: ‘I will get straight to the point: within a maximum of 10 days I will die. After years of battling and fighting, I am drained. I have quit eating and drinking for a while now, and after many discussions and evaluations, it was decided to let me go because my suffering is unbearable.’
According to the Dutch newspaper De Gelderlander, Noa’s parents had no idea she was unwell until her mother discovered a plastic envelope in her room filled with farewell letters to her parents, friends and acquaintances.
‘I was in shock,’ Lisette told De Gelderlander. ‘We didn’t get it. Noa is sweet, beautiful, smart, social and always cheerful. How is it possible that she wants to die? We have never received a real answer. We just heard that her life was no longer meaningful.’
Lisette told De Gelderlander last year that Noa and was ‘at odds’ with her parents. ‘We, her parents, want her to choose the path of life. Noa really doesn’t want to die at all. She only longs for peace,’ Lisette said. But when she turned 17, Noa no longer needed her parents consent in order to apply for euthanasia.
Almost four in ten births (37.8 per cent) in 2018 were registered as outside of marriage, according to the latest official figures.
A yearly summary of births and deaths published by the Central Statistics Office (CSO) shows the rate is at its highest ever.
The figures also showed a significant ‘marriage gap’ depending on what part of the country a baby was born. Well over half (54.5 per cent) of all births in Limerick were to unmarried mothers, compared to less than a quarter (23.8 per cent) in the Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown area of south Dublin.
Overall, there was a declining birth rate. There were 61,016 births registered in 2018, a decrease of 1,037 on 2017. The 2018 total is 19.4% lower than in 2008 when 75,724 births were registered.
The total period fertility rate in 2018 was 1.8 which is below replacement level of 2.1.
The London-based Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG) has refused to conduct an inquiry into the case of a child aborted at the National Maternity Hospital (NMH) at Holles Street after a wrongful diagnosis of a serious foetal abnormality.
The Hospital had asked the Royal College to review the case, but in declining the invitation, it said it did not have the expertise needed. It also expressed doubt that it could complete the work as quickly as was required. It has suggested individual clinicians would be in a position to carry out a review more swiftly, and has offered to put the hospital in contact with them.
Caoimhe Haughey, the solicitor for the couple in the case, said RCOG’s decision meant promises of an independent review were now “in limbo” and it was unclear what would happen.
She has has written to Health Minister Simon Harris and Chief Medical Officer Dr Tony Holohan calling for a full statutory inquiry. In the letter, she indicates a proposed external review might not go far enough and the parents of the child believe a sworn Section 9 inquiry may be warranted “to eliminate risk”.
An American bishop has been attacked by three Irish Government ministers for tweeting that Catholics should not participate in gay pride celebrations.
Bishop Thomas Tobin of the diocese of Providence, Rhode Island, posted on Saturday: ‘A reminder that Catholics should not support or attend LGBTQ “Pride Month” events held in June. They promote a culture and encourage activities that are contrary to Catholic faith and morals. They are especially harmful for children.”
In response, Culture Minister Josepha Madigan tweeted: “Not the God I know. Disgraceful. !?”.
Social Protection Minister Regina Doherty called the Bishop’s comments ‘unchristian’, writing: “I think this is so so sad and probably THE most unchristian thing to do – to isolate and discriminate. NOT ON,” followed by an angry emoji.
Justice Minister Charlie Flanagan added his own condenations, writing: “So dispiriting but alas not surprising. Complete absence of tolerance, understanding & compassion. So sad & disappointing”.
Bishop Tobin followed up his earlier tweet with a statement expressing ‘regret’ that his comments turned out to be so ‘controversial’ in our community, and ‘offensive to some’. He added that, as a Catholic Bishop, however, his obligation before God is ‘to lead the faithful entrusted to my care and to teach the faith, clearly and compassionately, even on very difficult and sensitive issues’.
One candidate in the local elections made history this week by becoming Ireland’s first black female county councillor.
Nigerian-born, evangelical Christian, Yemi Adegua was elected to represent the Navan area of Meath county council.
Her success ruffled the feathers of some people though, not because of her ethnicity, but because she gave glory to God in a joyful social media post that garnered over 3600 ‘likes’.
One respondent offered his congratulations to her but added a plea ‘on behalf of the new Ireland’, that she ‘leave the religion out of it’. Another wrote, ‘Congrats but please leave the god stuff back in Nigeria’, and another: ‘First black person. Great stuff. The God stuff. Less great depending on how it affects your policies.’
A further tweet said ‘Congratulations. Really pleased to see the beginnings of diversity in our councils. But please: lay off the religious stuff we live in a republic and trying hard to separate church and state.’
And another said: ‘Extraordinary to see religion attempt to insinuate itself again into Irish politics. We spent long enough getting it out’
The French Senate passed a bill on Monday that Paris’s Notre Dame Cathedral must be rebuilt to its “last known visual state.”
This is in opposition to French president Emmanuel Macron’s call for “an inventive reconstruction” of the roof and spire which were destroyed in the fire that engulfed the building in April. It also goes counter to an international competition proposed by the French Government for a new design that would rebuild the spire ‘adapted to techniques and challenges of our times’.
The Cathedral is the property of the French state ever since it was seized in 1789 during the French Revolution, and although the Catholic Church now has exclusive use of the building, the Government is responsible for building maintenance and repairs.
According a poll conducted by YouGov from Le HuffPost and CNews, 54 percent of French adults want to restore the cathedral to its original form, with another 25 percent seeking a modern addition. 21 percent of respondents did not have an opinion on the matter.
The Archbishop of Irbil in Iraqi Kurdistan, has accused Britain’s leaders of failing to do enough in defence of the vanishing Christian community in Iraq. This is despite Britain recently issued a report on the persecution of Christians. The Irish Government never highlights the issue preferring to refer to persecution of religion generally.
In an address in London, the Rt Rev Bashar Warda said Iraq’s Christians now faced extinction after 1,400 years of persecution.
Since the US-led invasion toppled the regime of Saddam Hussein in 2003, he said, the Christian community had dwindled by 83%, from around 1.5 million to just 250,000.
He referred to the current, pressing threat from Islamic State (IS) jihadists as a “final, existential struggle”, following the group’s initial assault in 2014 that displaced more than 125,000 Christians from their historic homelands.
The archbishop went on to accuse Britain’s Christian leaders of “political correctness” over the issue. He called the failure to condemn extremism “a cancer”, saying they were not speaking out loudly enough for fear of being accused of Islamophobia.
“Will you continue to condone this never-ending, organised persecution against us?” he said. “When the next wave of violence begins to hit us, will anyone on your campuses hold demonstrations and carry signs that say ‘We are all Christians’?”
More older women are having abortions in Scotland, with the overall number rising to a ten-year high. Figures show 13,286 women aged 15 to 44 had abortions last year – a rate of 12.9 per 1,000 – up from a figure of 12,212 in 2017. This compares with Ireland’s rate of 4.9 per 1000 prior to the repeal of the Eighth amendment. This counts women who travelled to England for abortions.
The Scottish figures also showed rates for women in the most deprived areas remain about twice as high as those from the least deprived areas at 17.8 per 1,000 women aged 15-44 compared to 8.9.
For the first time the figures include the number of women taking a drug to induce the second part of a two-stage medical abortion process at home, rather than in a medical clinic. Almost a third (30 per cent) of abortions were performed in this manner.
Michael Robinson, from the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children Scotland said the statistics were “deeply alarming”.
“Not only are we seeing a ten-year high, 13,286 abortions annually or the equivalent of 255 a week, we are once again seeing some of the most vulnerable women in society forced by circumstance to end the life of their unborn child,” he said. “Women deserve better than abortion and the right to life must be defended for every person.”
The solicitor for the couple who had their baby aborted at the National Maternity Hospital at Holles Street after a wrongful diagnosis has expressed frustration at the lack of progress in setting up an investigation.
Experts from the Royal College of Obstetricians are supposed to be appointed to examine the circumstances of the case.
However, solicitor for the couple, Caoimhe Haughey, said Tuesday that “at this stage we still do not know if the Royal College will do so”.
She added: “It is not clear if they are in a position to undertake an investigation and secondly if they are willing to do so.”
Parents have staged a protest outside an Educate Together school in Dublin calling for the board of management to resign over a row about Relationships and Sexuality Education being taught by Catholic organisation, Accord.
Accord is a marriage counselling organisation attached to the Bishops’ Conference. It teaches about contraception in a morally-neutral way and it counsels couples in same-sex marriages. It receives State funding.
The parents are from Castleknock Educate Together National School (CETNS). The protest was organised to coincide with an Accord information event for parents, which was cancelled yesterday, but the protest went ahead anyway. Educate Together schools are non-demoninational.
The organisation issued a statement saying “it is not appropriate for a religious-run organisation to deliver RSE in the context of an equality-based Educate Together school”. It added: “To this end, Educate Together will be writing to all schools under its patronage to ask them to ensure that relationships and sexuality education is delivered in a way that is consistent with its ethos and free from religious bias”.
Earlier this year, the CETNS parent teacher association said it could not see how an organisation “funded by the Catholic Church and with a clear religious ethos could ever have been deemed ‘fit for purpose’ to deliver the RSE programme in an Educate Together school”.
An email seeking support for the protest said: “This is about the parents of children making their voices heard within the school, and letting both the board and Educate Together know that secular instruction, in line with their stated ethos, is what we want for our children.”
