A group of pro-life activists protested President Michael D Higgins in Dungannon, Co Tyrone for signing the State’s new abortion regime into law.
Rosemarie Shields, a former SDLP councillor who defected to Peadar Tóibín’s Aontu party, said they had gathered to show “that the North does not want to be next” in introducing an abortion regime. “We want to prove to every woman and every child that we can provide a society that protects them all,” she said.
The President was there to open a new Catholic school. Catherine Sewell, one of the protesters, said it was “not right” that Mr Higgins should have been invited to the school.
“The fact that a Catholic school invited him after he signed in the abortion law in the Free State, and countless babies have been murdered from January because of it, is not right, things like that can’t happen,” she said.
600+ GPs have submitted a petition to the Irish College of General Practitioners (ICGP) to trigger a new Extraordinary General Meeting (EGM) to discuss the issue of abortion.
The doctors have been thwarted twice in the past in their efforts to hold such a meeting. The first time signatures were ruled invalid for having been collected digitally. The second time a meeting was held but motions and votes were not allowed. This latest effort has well over the 350 physical signatures of full ICGP members required to automatically trigger an EGM under the rules of the Companies Act.
Dr Valerie Morris of the Medico Legal Alliance said clarity is best achieved by an EGM being convened to debate and vote on specific motions dealing with TOP (Termination of Pregnancy). She said: “We look forward to the upcoming EGM and would like to thank all those Irish GPs who took the time to sign the petition in the interest of democracy being upheld in our College, the ICGP.”
Four British doctors have filed a legal challenge against the Royal College of Physicians (RCP) accusing the College of using an illicit means to force the organisation to abandon its longstanding opposition to euthanasia.
The RCP announced that it would conduct a poll of its members on euthanasia in January. This attracted great controversy by requiring a 60% ‘super-majority’ in favour of any outcome or else the College would change its stance to ‘neutral’. The four doctors have said this move is unlawful on the basis that it is “unfair, irrational, and a breach of legitimate expectation.”
The RCP, which represents more than 35,000 doctors, has long been formally opposed to the legalisation of euthanasia. In 2014, 57.6% of its membership opposed a change in the law would legalise assisted suicide. However, its latest poll aims to remove the College’s formal opposition to such a legislative change.
The group of doctors have argued that use of a ‘super-majority’ vote on such issues is without precedent in professional organisations in the UK. They have said that it appears to be a tactical move to give a strong boost to the campaign to change the law on assisted suicide.
An emergency motion at the Dublin City Council calling for by-laws to impose ‘exclusion zones’ outside hospitals and GP clinics that conduct abortions was ruled ‘out of order’ by the Lord Mayor, Nial Ring.
Green party Councillors Patrick Costello, Ciarán Cuffe and Claire Byrne proposed the motion rather than wait for national legislation promised by the Minister for Health Simon Harris.
They acted after a similar motion was passed by Louth County Council last month. That motion was proposed by FF councillor Emma Coffey with the enthusiastic backing of some FG councillors. The Chief Executive Joan Martin however is seeking a legal opinion on the motion before proceeding any further with it, saying, ‘I don’t want to have useless by-laws that we can’t enforce.’
The Dublin City motion proposed using a bylaw to regulate the public roads and footpaths within 500 metres of hospitals or GP clinics. Anti-abortion activists would be banned from observing women or doctors, or “continuously observing” a healthcare facility itself. They would be prohibited from engaging in “threatening, harassing or intimidating behaviour” and from obstructing anyone from using services.
The bylaw would also ban protesters from leafleting people entering hospitals or GP clinics or putting up posters.
Mr Costello said that he believed the motion would be passed. “I don’t want to chill all debate on the subject. We’re not ending all protest, we’re simply preventing the intimidation and the prevention of women accessing services that are their choice to access.”
His party colleague, Ms Byrne, added: “In removing the Eighth Amendment this country said clearly we trust women. This cruel harassment and intimidation stands in contrast to that.”
The Lord Mayor ruled the motion ‘out of order’ at a meeting of the Council Tuesday night, but Councillor Costello has already vowed to reintroduce it at a later date.
Irish left-wing politicians who campaigned loudly for abortion have been criticised by their international colleagues for an excessive concentration on abortion to the detriment of other issues. The criticism echoes comments made by Nell McAfferty in the run up to last years referendum on repealing the Eighth amendment that the activists of today are all about “abortion, abortion, abortion” to the exclusion of a whole host of other issues such as housing, healthcare, childcare, and a proper work-life balance.
Members of Ireland’s socialist party, going by the name of the Anti-Austerity Alliance or Solidarity, and comprising TDs Paul Murphy, Ruth Coppinger and Mick Barry, were criticsed by the International Section (IS) of the Committee for a Workers International (CWI), the parent organisation of the Socialist Party.
In leaked documents reported on by the Irish Times, the IS said: “We think the comrades could be in danger of overstating the importance of the victory on abortion rights. In our view a tendency has also developed of some leading Irish comrades seeing all struggles through the prism of the women’s movement, rather than seeing how it interconnects with other struggles.”
A civil rights commission in Colorado that had taken a legal case against a Christian baker for refusing to make a cake celebrating a gender transition has dropped its legal challenge against him. The commission had previously sued the baker for refusing to make a cake celebrating a same-sex wedding. The baker appealed that case all the way to the Supreme Court and won on the basis that the Commission had shown an anti-religious bias. On the same day that case was decided, the Commission initiated this second case. Attorney’s for the baker charged the Commission with showing ‘ongoing hostility’ after comments were made at a 2018 public meeting in which two commissioners voiced their support for comments that a previous commissioner, Diann Rice, made in 2015, calling religious freedom “a despicable piece of rhetoric.”
“Today is a win for freedom. I’m very grateful and looking forward to serving my customers as I always have: with love and respect,” Phillips told Fox News, adding that he never imagined this chapter of his life — which has cost him over 40 percent of his business and six-and-a-half years tied up in legal proceedings.” — when he opened up his cake shop years ago.
A ban on the use of Irish government aid money to fund abortions in developing countries is likely to be lifted as a result of the Government’s embrace of a pro-abortion policy.
The ban was in place because of a rule that aid should not be used for purposes in conflict with domestic Irish policy.
The Department of Foreign Affairs says it will launch a new initiative on “sexual and reproductive health and rights” in the developing world as part of the work of Irish Aid, the development aid programme of the government. The new plan is likely to allow funding for abortion.
The Government is exploring options for providing free contraception as part of efforts to reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies. The cost of this could be up to €126 million according to a report in Times Ireland. No evidence has been provided by the Government yet that such a programme would reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies.
Increasing access to contraception was a key recommendation of the Oireachtas abortion committee that prepared for repeal of the Eighth amendment and the legislation that followed.
Health Minister Simon Harris has now set out the terms of reference for the Department of Health working group and will brief ministerial colleagues on the issue at a special Cabinet meeting on gender issues on Friday.
“This work will take a number of months to complete but it will deliver a clear pathway forward,” Mr Harris said.
“Cost should not be a barrier to accessing contraception and I am determined to address this. The benefits are clear. This will help to reduce the number of crisis pregnancies and promotes good sexual health. I look forward to receiving the outcome of this work later this year.”
Catholic Hospitals must provide abortion services according a Department of Health spokesperson quoted in The Times, Ireland Edition, despite a Government study recommending structural changes to healthcare budgeting that would allow them to opt out.
The recommendation came from a Study Group that Health Minister Simon Harris himself set up to look into the role of voluntary organisations in the healthcare service. Their report was published Thursday and, while the headline item was a suggestion that Catholic hospitals might remove religious symbols and iconography at the request of patients, the report also recommended that budgeting for healthcare might change so that grants could be offered for specific services that hospitals could decide for themselves whether to tender for or not. An onus would then fall on State-owned hospitals to provide abortions, if voluntary hospitals declined to do so.
A spokeswoman for Mr Harris told the Times, Ireland edition, however that he held the view that while individual doctors could opt out of providing abortion services, hospitals could not. “The minister has always been clear that there is an onus on everyone — the government, the HSE and especially service providers — to ensure that an effective exercise of religious freedom by health and social care professionals does not prevent or unduly restrict patients and service users from accessing services to which they are legally entitled,” she said.
Leo Varadkar has again waded in to the internal issues of Northern Ireland by calling for same-sex marriage and widespread abortion to be legalised.
Speaking to a gathering of the Alliance Party in Belfast, he spoke of how the Republic had legalised divorce, abortion and same-sex marriage and then voiced his “regret” that Northern Ireland, which for so long was more liberal than the South, had not “kept up” with the pace of change.
“I believe the right to marry the person you love, the right of a woman to make choices about her own body, and the right to have your native language respected should not be about orange and green,” he said.
These were “universal rights” and personal freedoms should “apply everywhere”, he added.
He added that Northern Ireland should embody the “best” of what is British and the “best” of what is Irish. “So any right or freedom that a British citizen has in Britain or an Irish citizen has in Ireland should be had here in Northern Ireland as well,” he said.
