A drug trial in Mayo may fall apart as the man charged with the crime is legally recognised by the State as a woman.
The defendant who was born a man was named as ‘Patrick’ on the arrest warrant, even though the person had at the time obtained a gender recognition certificate that legally changed his gender to ‘female’ and his name to ‘Fiona’. The State returned to Castlebar District Court on Wednesday to change the name on the summons.
Nicola Daly, solicitor for the defendant, objected to the application made by the state, contending the person named on the summons no longer existed. The defendant had legally changed her name by deed poll and obtained a gender recognition certificate in June 2016, well before the arrest and subsequent charge for a drugs offence. Daly said that any attempt to amend the summons would compromise the defendant’s constitutional and human rights under the Gender Recognition Act.
Joe McKenna, a superintendent at Castlebar Garda station, said the state would continue to argue that the defendant was the same person and should be tried as such, regardless of the incorrect name filed on the summons.
The judge adjourned the matter to a November 21 sitting of Castlebar District Court, where evidence will be heard from Gardai of what details were provided by the transgender person at the time of the arrest.
The addition of Brett Kavanaugh to the US Supreme Court may result in the very permissive abortion regime that was introduced by the Roe V Wade ruling in 1973 being curbed by the Court, according to an article in the New York Times.
The piece listed three ways the court could intervene to change the law and restrict abortion. The most likely and least far-reaching would be to allow Roe v Wade to stand but also allow individual states to provide some protections to the unborn child. The next possibility would be to overturn Roe v Wade and thereby revert back to the situation prior to 1973, when each state had its own unique law (unless that state law has been updated since). A third possibility, the least likely and what would be the most disruptive would be for the Court to declare unborn human life to have rights that thereby restrict or would outright prohibit abortion.
Pro-life groups have vehemently protested the abortion legislation introduced to the Oireachtas yesterday.
Commenting outside the Dáil, Eilís Mulroy of the Pro Life Campaign said: “The Government has painted a very benign and sanitised picture of what’s contained in its abortion bill. The reality however is chillingly different. The bill being introduced to the Oireachtas today is by far and away the most unjust and inhumane bill ever to come before the Dáil.
“Regardless of how many times Minister Harris suggests otherwise, his bill has nothing whatsoever to do with genuine healthcare. The bill defines abortion as a ‘medical procedure intended to end the life of a foetus.’ The intent here could not be clearer.”
Ms Mulroy continued: “The public voted to repeal the Eighth Amendment, they did not vote in favour of the extreme and inhumane proposal that the Government is now putting forward – legislation that doesn’t even provide pain relief for unborn babies during late term abortions and that compels doctors to abandon their medical training to protect life and instead facilitate abortions or run the risk of being struck of the medical register.
“Minister Harris will be showered with praise in the coming days from the usual quarters about how ‘compassionate’ and ‘liberating’ his abortion bill is. But away from all the applause and acclaim the truth will emerge about the truly barbaric nature of the new law. Granted it will take time, but the truth will come out. As a movement, I can assure the minister we will not rest until it does.”
Parents will have to opt their children into religious instruction in State secondary schools under new directions to be issued shortly. As schools will be required to ensure students who do not take religious instruction are provided with another subject on the timetable, this means in effect that students who choose religious instruction must opt-out of regular, timetabled classes.
The Irish Times has learned that a new Department of Education circular will clarify requirements aimed at giving greater rights to non-religious and minority faith students in about half of secondary schools. Under the new rule, there will be an automatic assumption that children are not taking religious instruction, unless parents have requested admission to the class. The changes will affect about 160,000 secondary school students, or almost half the entire secondary school population.
The provision against blasphemy in the Irish Constitution is “largely obsolete”, the Irish Catholic Bishops’ Conference has said after its Autumn meeting.
The Bishops said the reference to blasphemy in the Constitution may give rise to concern “because of the way such measures have been used to justify violence and oppression against minorities in other parts of the world”.
The Conference, however, underlined that the promotion of religious freedom and freedom of conscience “greatly increases the social fabric of a country.” They added that the right of religious communities to contribute to public debate without been attacked or ridiculed “needs to be acknowledged and respected”.
“Bishops stressed that it is vital to ensure that the rights of individuals and communities to practice and live out their faith openly are protected by our law,” a statement from the Conference read.
“In this context bishops, once again, expressed their solidarity with Christians and all those throughout the world who are currently experiencing persecution, and human rights abuses, because of their faith or beliefs.”
Dr Peter Boylan has been appointed by the HSE to help prepare for the introduction of abortion in Ireland.
Dr Boylan, a former master of the National Maternity Hospital, will consult with other medical experts about bringing abortion in, and will help with the drafting of clinical guidelines.
The former Chair of the Institute of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists was a vocal supporter and campaigner for a Yes vote in the abortion referendum earlier this year.
Welcoming the appointment, Health Minister Simon Harris said: “Peter Boylan has a wealth of experience in caring for women. Over the course of his work, he has proven himself to be a strong patient advocate and a compassionate campaigner for women’s rights.
“I am grateful to him for taking on this position and I look forward to him working with the HSE to ensure safe, woman-centred services are operational in January.”
Theresa May has pledged to introduce civil partnerships for heterosexual couples in the UK. The Prime Minister said the move was for people who wanted to “formalise their relationship but don’t necessarily want to get married”. However, pro-marriage organisations say heterosexual civil partnerships would weaken marriage by creating a ‘marriage-lite’ alternative.
Speaking to the Evening Standard, Mrs May said she was “proud to sponsor the legislation that created equal marriage” and the latest proposal would give all couples “the same choices in life”.
Coalition for Marriage has previously warned: “The gold standard of commitment is marriage; with the declarations made in the presence of witnesses and the expectation of lifelong faithfulness”.
Heterosexual civil partnerships would only “weaken marriage by creating a two-tier system, offering a sort of marriage-lite option”.
Ciarán Kelly, a Deputy Director at The Christian Institute, has said civil partnerships give couples all the benefits of marriage without the responsibilities.
In Ireland, once marriage was redefined to excise sexual-complementarity from its essence, the Government stopped same-sex couples from engaging in new civil partnerships.
Minister for Education Richard Bruton is set to commence key provisions of the School Admissions Act on Wednesday which will prevent Catholic schools from giving enrolment priority to baptised children for the 2019/2020 school year.
Minority faiths, such as the Church of Ireland, jewish and muslim schools, will be allowed to prioritise members of their religion in order to protect their ethos in cases where they are over-subscribed.
Mr Bruton said that exclusion had been introduced to help ensure children of minority faiths could still access a school of their own religion.
However, some schools who are mid-way through processing their admissions for the coming year say the short notice of the change is set to cause “chaos”.
Ultan Mac Mathúna, principal of Holy Cross primary school in Dundrum, Dublin, said: “We’ve been left in the dark as to the application of this rule. It will cause chaos. We can’t give parents a straight answer. Changes to admissions require a decision by the board, and need to be approved by the patron and published.”
An ideology of total control over pregnancy and unborn children has been proposed by the state-funded National Women’s Council as a jurisprudential philosophy to undergird further liberalisation of Simon Harris’ extreme abortion legislation.
In a submission released yesterday, the NWCI said they believe the effect of our abortion laws should be two-fold: “(1) to ensure safe, equitable, accessible and legal abortion for women, and (2) to institutionalise women’s autonomy over reproductive decision-making.”
Toward that end, the group called for changes to the bill including a preamble to indoctrinate future generations into a politics that paints the crusade for abortion as part “of the long fought for changes to protect women’s health.” This preamble would “serve to reflect Ireland’s past restrictive abortion laws and the legacy of how women have been treated in Ireland.” There is no mention of how unborn children unwanted by their parents are treated, nor how abortion abortion ends the lives of such children in a cruel and callous manner.
The submission also calls for a wider range of healthcare workers to be involved in abortion, that the law be so clear that doctors would never be ‘needlessly cautious’ in applying the criteria for abortion, and that conscience rights of medical personnel which they refer to as “so-called ‘conscientious objection’” would be carefully circumscribed so that no woman would ever be denied an abortion.
Louth TD Peter Fitzpatrick is resigning the Fine Gael whip over the party’s unstinting support for abortion and he will stand at the next election as an Independent candidate.
Speaking on Tuesday about the reasons for his departure, Mr Fitzpatrick said for the “last 15 months no one was listening to me, I felt isolated, like I was just there to push a button.”
When asked on RTÉ’s Sean O’Rourke programme whether the 8th Amendment had influenced his decision, he replied: “that’s only one thing. I do have a problem with abortion. There’s no way Peter Fitzpatrick is going to vote in favour of 12 weeks.”
Taoiseach Leo Varadkar said he was sorry Mr Fitzpatrick had made this decision. “I know that he has been unhappy for some time and was a strong opponent of holding a referendum on the Eighth Amendment,” Mr Varadkar said.
