The Presbyterian Church in Ireland has loosened ties with the Church of Scotland, its mother Church, over the latter’s moves towards recognising same-sex marriage. The Church of Scotland recently instructed officials to consider changes to its laws to allow its ministers preside at same-sex-marriage ceremonies.
At the Presbyterian General Assembly in Belfast this week, delegates voted to no longer accept invitations to attend the General Assemblies of the Church of Scotland and the United Reformed Church and to no longer issue invitations to those two denominations to attend the Irish Presbyterian Church’s own General Assembly.
The vote “demonstrated that a majority of assembly members felt that both denominations have drifted far from biblical truth in relation to marriage, and were in fact ignoring the authority of scripture,” said assembly clerk Rev Trevor Gribben.
“Both are now moving towards a position where so-called same-sex marriage can be performed in the context of their worship services. Our church is very clear that marriage, as defined in God’s Word, is between one man and one woman and significantly it is God’s Word that is authoritative,” he said.
Any restrictions on divorce could be placed in legislation, rather than the constitution, according to the Minister tasked with liberalising the country’s laws on dissolving marriages. Minister for Culture, Heritage and Gaeltacht Josepha Madigan is shepherding legislation through the Oireachtas on holding a referendum to reduce the period a couple must be ‘living apart’ before one of them may apply for a divorce. Currently, the Constitution requires a couple to be separated for four of the previous five years, and it has been proposed to amend this to two of the previous three years. In a speech to newly enrolled solicitors to the Law Society yesterday, however, and following upon passage of the abortion referendum, she suggested removing the conditions for divorce entirely from the Constitution and dealing with the matter exclusively with legislation. This would allow future Government’s free rein to craft and change divorce law without requiring a referendum of the people.
The Supreme Court has upheld for now the restrictive anti-abortion laws of Northern Ireland by dismissing a challenge to those laws on a technicality. The Court ruled today that the Northern Irish Human Rights Commission lacked standing to bring a case on abstract grounds. However, they said that a case could be brought by a woman who showed she had suffered harm due to the law. The Court then said that, in the event of such a case, they would in all likelihood rule against the anti-abortion law and declare its prohibition on abortion in the cases of rape, incest and so-called “fatal foetal abnormality” incompatible with European Human Rights law. At the same time, the Court issued a challenge to politicians that, while the ruling is not binding, they should take note of its content.
The judgement was welcomed by pro-life campaigners with Dawn McAvoy, co-founder of Both Lives Matter commenting: “It is not a moment to celebrate, but rather to pause and be thankful for the lives this judgment will save. The Supreme Court has dismissed the case brought by the Human Rights Commission. In doing so, it has made clear that there is no human right to abortion.”
She continued: “In simple terms, the Commission have lost. However, the court have indicated how they would have decided the case if the Commission had standing. There were split decisions in relation to the issues of fatal foetal abnormality and rape and incest cases. While we note the views of the court on these matters and are concerned by them, it is important to state that they are non-binding.”
The UK’s most senior family judge was under fire from politicians, colleagues and family rights campaigners yesterday after saying that the collapse of the traditional family was to be welcomed.
In a speech Sir James Munby, president of the Family Division of the High Court, celebrated the “infinite variety” of contemporary forms of family life, including single parents, temporary cohabitation, same sex and polyamorous arrangements, and children born of artificial donor insemination and surrogacy arrangements. “The fact is that many adults and children, whether through choice or circumstance, live in families more or less removed from what, until comparatively recently, would have been recognised as the typical nuclear family. This, I stress, is not merely the reality; it is, I believe, a reality which we should welcome and applaud.”
The Marriage Foundation, founded by Sir Paul Coleridge, the former High Court family judge and colleague of Sir James, was fiercely critical of the Judge’s remarks. Its research chief, Harry Benson, said: ‘Sir James has stepped well outside the court in saying “we should welcome and applaud the end of the nuclear family”.
‘At a time when we have the highest rates of family instability in the entire developed world precisely because of the trend away from relatively stable marriage, this is like saying that we should welcome and applaud the existence of ill health or broken legs. Yes, we must care for, support, treat and prevent brokenness. But to welcome and applaud it is a rare lapse of judgment.’
Sir James’s remarks were also criticised by Iain Duncan Smith, the former Tory leader and work and pensions secretary, who has long argued for greater state support for married couples. ‘The UK faces a complete collapse of family commitment through marriage, particularly among people who are on low incomes.’ Mr Duncan Smith said that the cost of family break-up to the state is estimated to run to £50 billion a year. ‘If that was caused by something economic the Government would move heaven and earth to stop it,’ he said. ‘But because we are afraid of offending people we have failed to do anything. We should be moving to stop family break-up.’
Doctors working on behalf of the Institute of Obstreticians and Gynaecologists have asked that foeticide might be made legal for unborn children with so-called “fatal foetal abnormalities”. Foeticide means the killing of a foetus and is effected by a lethal injection to the heart of the child while in utero.
The doctors fear that the Government’s published legislative schema would require babies beyond the point of viability to be delivered early and be given all necessary care. However, the legislation in question has a ground for the abortion of babies with a high likelihood of dying shortly before or after birth and there are no gestational limits attached to this ground. Nonetheless, the doctors say that in other countries, doctors have faced ‘wrongful birth’ lawsuits when babies were born alive after abortions. Dr Keelin O’Donoghue told the Sunday business Post, “I worry that we will be very exposed on this issue as the [published heads of the bill] does not allow for foeticide”, she said. If babies live longer than originally anticipated, it would “create a lot of challenges for parents and clinicians,” she added.
Dr Noirin Russell said other countries allowed doctors to give medication “to stop the baby’s heart [in utero] and ensure it is born sleeping.” She said this was part of a “compassionate delivery of care” and in England, when offered the choice of early delivery followed by comfort care or foeticide and induction, most parents make the choice for foeticide.
She added that doctors are seriously concerned about additional litigation. “We are already spending more on obstetrics litigation than we are on obstetric care. All of this needs to be very carefully planned,” she said.
A spokesperson for Doctors For Life took Dr Russell to task for the use of the euphemism “born sleeping”. In a statement on twitter, he said “Dr Russell is allegedly quoted as saying to give medication ‘to stop the babies heart (in utero) & ensure it is born sleeping.’ Sorry doctor, but stopping a heart means you are ensuring ‘it is born dead.’ If you were ‘asleep’ & your heart stopped – you’d be ‘dead’ not ‘sleeping.’”
The leading Irish doctor helping people change their sex has said that Ireland has a high rate of adults who regret their treatment and has called for greater support and resources to prevent post-operative remorse. Prof Donal O’Shea of St Vincent’s and St Colmcille’s hospitals in Dublin is currently treating three patients for post-op regret, and he is leading two of those three through painful reverse surgery. “The worst outcomes I have seen are those who have transitioned and have said ‘Oh dear, what have I done?’ or in some cases ‘Why did you let me do that?’ Transitioning needs to happen at a pace that is appropriate for the individual and that the diagnosis is absolutely correct.”
He also said that three transgender people have died by suicide in the past five years, two of whom had had surgery and the third was on hormone therapy.
He said the death of patients by suicide has a profound impact on him and staff at the centre. “It is very difficult. When you see someone who is doing very well and then hear that they are dead, it’s halting, it knocks you in your tracks, and affects everyone,” he said.
Prof O Shea said there is a rise in “gender confused” teenagers, rather than those who have true “gender dysphoria” and attributed this in part to “Kardashian culture” and the greater visibility and acceptability of trans-identity. He also said the portrayal of transgender people in cartoons and anime is also having an impact, with patients frequently reporting seeing “a character who believes that all their problems are rooted in gender and everything is great when they transition”. Prof O’Shea believes there needs to be greater support and resources including a dedicated clinic based in Ireland, to deal with the issues properly.
Meanwhile, forty Five Irish teenagers questioning their gender identity are currently availing of services in Britain. This represents a five-fold increase in the space of four years according to figures published by the Irish Mail on Sunday. Of the 45 children, 18 so far have moved on to receiving puberty blockers to suppress their normal sexual development and other hormone therapies to prepare them for a full sex change operation after they turn 18. In addition, 60 adults have travelled abroad for sex change operations since 2012. The HSE is funding these therapies and operations under the Travel Abroad Scheme as sex change operations are not currently available in Ireland. Patients are referred to the Tavistock and Portman clinic in London for initial evaluation and treatment and then attend monthly clinics in Crumlin Hospital that are run by doctors from Tavistock. Referrals to UK surgeries are often made through a consultant at St Colmcille’s Hospital in Loughlinstown.
Donor conceived children are suffering a loss of identity and a falsification of birth records in much the same way as adopted children suffered in the past, according to a psychologist, Emma O’Friel. She told Mary Wilson on RTE Radio 1’s Drivetime last Friday, that the fertility industry is, like the Church of old, powerful, wealthy and doing some good, but it is also inflicting on donor-conceived children today the same kind of harm that was inflicted on adopted children of the past.
“Adoption occurs in Ireland and all around the world, particularly after the Hague Convention, as a last resort, so it is to protect children. But in donor-conception and with illegal adoption you have children who are really removed unnecessarily from their genetic family, and irrevocably, with no access and no rights to access their parentage, and to know who they are and to know who their parents were. And again you have donor-conceived children being born today with falsified birth certificates, so it is really identical.”
She described the pain and anguish suffered by people in both situations as being similar as they feel the loss of something ‘intrinsic’ to who they are: “people describe it as a hunger and donor-conceived children and perhaps adoptees get quite cross when people say its more a curiosity. Its not, its like having a loved one behind a door and you can never get behind that door, you can never access them. And the fact that its systematic, that its set up that you will never be allowed this.”
She also said that in 2008, a full thirty years after the first use of anonymous sperm and eggs in Ireland, it was estimated that 95% of donor-conceived children in the country had no idea they were donor-conceived. Even now, years after a greater awareness of the importance of such matters has arisen, she said the majority of people in Ireland born through donor conception still do not know that they are donor-conceived.
In a highly significant ruling, the US Supreme Court has ruled by a 7-2 majority that a baker had his right to religious freedom unjustly infringed when a State Human Rights Commission sanctioned him for refusing to make a cake for a same-sex wedding. The baker said that it would have violated his religious beliefs to support the wedding, though he would have gladly served the customers in any other way.
The Supreme Court ruled that the State Commission showed an illegitimate animus against religion in its original ruling. One commissioner had claimed that “freedom of religion” has been used to “justify all kinds of discrimination throughout history,” including slavery and the Holocaust. The commissioner called the baker’s religious-freedom claim “one of the most despicable pieces of rhetoric that people can use.”
In response, US Supreme Court Judge, Anthony Kennedy, who himself authored the decision to make same-sex marriage legal in all fifty States in the US, said the description of the man’s faith disparaged his religion in at least two distinct ways: by describing it as despicable, and also by characterizing it as merely rhetorical — something insubstantial and even insincere. “This sentiment is inappropriate for a Commission charged with the solemn responsibility of fair and neutral enforcement of Colorado’s anti-discrimination law — a law that protects discrimination on the basis of religion as well as sexual orientation.”
Furthermore, the Court found an inconsistency in applying the law to protect some free speech, but not other speech, an inconsistency that again revealed an anti-religious animus. On at least three occasions the Commission protected bakers who had refused to make cakes with a text disapproving of same-sex marriage. The Court decided that the Government must be a neutral arbiter in free speech cases and not be the judge of what should be deemed offensive, and not protected, and not offensive.
While the Court ruled on the question of religious freedom, it did not address the question of whether free speech could be compelled and, for instance, force a baker to express a pro same-sex marriage message apart from religious freedom concerns.
The Government will not accept amendments to the forthcoming abortion legislation which seek to stipulate that disability is prohibited as a ground for abortion. The amendments are being proposed by some Fianna Fail and Independent TDs so as to protect disabled children who might be aborted under the 12 weeks on request ground, or the risk of serious harm to health ground that allows abortion up to 24 weeks. Some in Government appear to think that the draft legislation already includes a clause that specifically excludes abortion on the grounds of disability, and this point was made by Minister Finian McGrath on RTE Radio 1’s News at One on Monday. However, the published heads of the bill make no mention of any such exclusion, thereby allowing the possibility of disabled babies being aborted under one of the stated grounds.
Nonetheless, Government sources have told the Irish Times that they will oppose any amendments that would narrow the scope of abortion in the published Heads of the Bill. However, an unnamed spokesperson did say that “the Government has always said that disability of the foetus will not be accepted as a threat to the mother’s health. It is intended to set this out in clinical guidelines, rather than in primary legislation.”
The Minister for Health Simon Harris is assessing if services provided under the Maternity and Infant Care Scheme can be expanded to pay for expectant mothers who want an abortion. Pro-life leaders have said providing abortion under this scheme would make a mockery of it.
Currently, the Maternity and Infant Care Scheme allows for maternity services free of charge when provided by a family doctor (GP) and a hospital obstetrician. Government sources told various media the assessment was at the preliminary stage but it was keen there would be “no barrier to accessing services on the basis of affordability”, which means pro-life tax-payers would be forced to pay for abortions.
“Our priority is that no woman is treated differently because of her economic circumstances – part of the reason we legalised abortion is to ensure women no longer turned to the web for abortion pills,” a source told the Irish Independent.
