The French Supreme Court has overturned the assignment of a new “gender neutral” category which had been granted to one person by judicial fiat. The court determined that the distinction between male and female is “necessary to the social and legal organization, of which it is a cornerstone”, and that the recognition of a neutral gender would have “deep repercussions on French law” that would require legislative changes.
The Government here has said it supports a Sinn Fein proposal to introduce a third ‘gender’ class to Irish law called ‘gender non-binary’.
The case concerned a 65 year-old psychotherapist who lives in eastern France who said that he had been “given” a male first name. After years of cover-up, he got married at age 42 and then adopted a child with his wife. In August 2015, a judge from the family court in Tours, his birth city, accepted the mention of “neutral gender” in his documents. However, a Court of Appeals overturned the ruling, saying that it would require “recognizing, in the guise of a simple rectification of his personal records, the existence of another sexual category”.
According to the man’s lawyers, “the Supreme Court refuses to recognize the true identity of these people who are neither men nor women”. In a statement, the plaintiff’s lawyers said that “this decision constitutes violence and discrimination of the applicant and more widely intersex people”.
Lifelong republican Francie Brolly, who was Sinn Féin MLA for East Derry from 2003 to 2010, and father of former GAA All-Ireland winner and RTE commentator, Joe Brolly, has resigned from the party in protest at its complete embrace of abortion politics. “I can’t accept that my conscience can be subjected to public policy,” he said. “My conscience is mine. It’s basically the only important thing I own in the world, and I just can’t accept that Mary Lou McDonald can tell me ‘no, I’m very sorry, we have a policy on this and your conscience is irrelevant’.”
Sinn Féin changed its policy on abortion at its ardfheis in November 2017, voting to support abortion on almost unlimited ‘health’ grounds, and even denying its representatives a conscience vote. Mr Brolly is opposed to abortion under any circumstance.
He said Sinn Féin’s new position demonstrated a sharp disconnect between urban and rural voters. “We’re aware here in the North and all over Ireland that there are basically almost two states down there now, there’s Dublin and the rest, or possibly the cities and the rest. Certainly Dublin will decide which way the repeal vote goes, but I have no doubt in the more rural counties like Donegal that they would not vote for the Eighth Amendment to be repealed. I have absolutely no doubt, and plenty of proof that people are very uneasy.”
The legislature of the US state of Oregon has passed a bill that purports to update the law on advance directives but also paves the way for healthcare representatives to remove access to food and water for vulnerable people with dementia and Alzheimer’s.
“Oregonians should be able to trust their elected officials to act in their best interests,” said Lois Anderson, Oregon Right to Life’s executive director, in an email to LifeNews. “This bill is a betrayal of that trust. The brief hearings held in committee showed significant problems with the bill, especially the testimony from doctors who know well what Oregonian patients need.”
She added: “Supporters of this bill are touting it as a ‘fix,’ but the only fixing that is happening is fixing it so vulnerable Oregonians are left without protections and their right to basic care like food and water,”
The bill now goes to the governor, Kate Brown, to be signed into law.
Speaking at the launch yesterday in Buswells Hotel, Caren Ní hAllacháin, a nurse, said she believed the government had put together this abortion proposal without fully consulting with medical practitioners and without considering what legalising abortion can mean for medical staff, even for those who do not carry out abortions. She told the press conference that she had witnessed a baby who survived an abortion, but had been powerless to help the child because abortion was legal and she was not permitted to intervene.
“I was an agency nurse in Sydney Australia in the early ‘90s and I was on a ward one night when a woman had come in for an abortion. She was 22 weeks pregnant and had been told her baby had a chromosomal abnormality. I went into the sluice room and I saw the baby, a 22 week old baby boy, in a kidney dish at the sink where all the clinical waste was flushed. He was small but he was perfect. You could see his toes, his hands, he seemed like he had blond hair. He was the full size of the kidney dish and he was alive. I could see the rise and fall of his chest, he was breathing,” she said.
“I was a young nurse and I did not know what to do. Because this was an abortion I wasn’t allowed to intervene, I couldn’t get help for the baby, I couldn’t hold him or comfort him, or get oxygen for him or ask anyone to help him live. To see that baby trying to breathe, and nobody helping him, was so distressing and it will haunt me for the rest of my life,” said Ms Ní hAllacháin. “I fear for nurses like me if this abortion proposal is passed, and for the culture it will create in Irish hospitals. I fear that doctors will be expected to sit in judgment on the value of a baby’s life because of a suspected abnormality. There is a heart-breaking reality to repealing the 8th amendment and legalising abortion that is largely being ignored. I never want any nurse to see the heart-breaking reality that I saw.”
There is no prenatal right to life and therefore countries such as Malta must legalise abortion as a matter of “human rights” and “equality”, the Human Rights Commissioner of the Council of Europe, Mr Nils Muižnieks has claimed. Mr Muižnieks is formerly programme director of the pro-choice Soros Foundation/Latvia. Writing in the Times of Malta on Monday, Nils Muižnieks said “I am aware that some argue in favour of restrictions on access to abortion on the basis of a purported ‘prenatal right to life’”. However, he continued, “after a thorough analysis of how the right to life is interpreted within core treaties, it is clear to me that this right does not apply prior to birth and that international human rights law and mechanisms do not recognise a prenatal right to life.” Furthermore, he argued there is a duty to legislate for abortion.
The vast majority of pupils in the State still attend denominational schools, with Catholic schools accounting for more than 90 per cent of enrolments at primary level, new figures show. Preliminary data for the 2017/2018 academic year released by the Department of Education show total enrolments in mainstream primary schools stood at 555,241, up by just over 5,000, or 1 per cent, over the previous year.
Almost half of this increase at primary level, 2,448 pupils, was in enrolments to multi-denominational schools, which represented an increase of 9 percent on what remains a relatively small proportion of the overall total. On the other hand, denominational primary schools increased by 2,593 pupils, representing a 0.5 per cent rise.
At second level, total enrolments stood at 357,442, an increase of nearly 5,200 or 1.5 per cent, compared to the previous academic year. Similarly, almost half of the increase, 2,486 pupils, was in multi-denominational schools, whereas denominational secondary schools saw their numbers rise by 2,699, while secondary gaelscoileanna grew by 600 pupils.
When broken down by ethos, Catholic schools dominate at second level with 52 per cent . They are followed by interdenominational schools (40 per cent), which are defined by the Department as being under the patronage or trusteeship of more than one religious faith. The remainder of second-level pupils attended multi-denominational schools (4 per cent), which are defined by the department as those that do not provide faith formation, such as Educate Together, and Church of Ireland schools (3 per cent).
Rome’s ancient Colosseum was lit up in red on Saturday in solidarity with persecuted Christians worldwide. Hundreds gathered on a rainy night outside the Roman amphitheatre that is a symbol of the martyrdom of early Christians to hear the husband and daughter of Asia Bibi speak, a woman condemned to death under Pakistan’s blasphemy laws. The Catholic woman has been living on death row in Pakistan since 2010, when she was condemned for allegedly making derogatory remarks about Islam after neighbours objected to her drinking water from their glass because she was not Muslim.
European Parliament president Antonio Tajani, who has been tipped as a possible Italian prime minister after next week’s election, said that persecution of Christians was “a genocide”. “A message must be sent from this place. It is the duty of Europe to defend these values [of religious liberty] wherever on earth they are trampled on,” said Mr Tajani. Rebecca Bitrus, a Nigerian Christian woman who was held for two years after she was abducted by Boko Haram Islamist militants, told of how she was repeatedly beaten and raped. During the event, organised by Catholic group Aid to the Church in Need, there were live link-ups with Aleppo, Syria and Mosul, Iraq, both of whose minority Christian populations have been hit hard by wars.
A Northern Ireland-born Labour MP will introduce a private member’s Bill to the House of Commons at the end of March to redefine marriage in the North of Ireland. While such matters would usually be the prerogative of the Northern Ireland Assembly, with the collapse of talks to restore the Stormont devolved institutions, authority for deciding the matter returns to parliament in London. Northern Ireland Secretary Karen Bradley has previously said Conservative MPs would be given a free vote on the issue so there is no guarantee that the DUP could enjoin the Government to veto the measure.
South Armagh-born Labour MP Conor McGinn said: “My preference is for a fully functioning Executive and Assembly to deal with this issue, but LGBT couples in Northern Ireland should not be made to wait a moment longer for their basic rights. That is why I am introducing this Bill at the earliest available opportunity. It will test the mood of the House of Commons, and I am very confident that we will win any vote. It is then for the government to legislate. If my constituents in St Helens can marry the person they love, just like people in London, Edinburgh, Cardiff and Dublin, then I don’t see why couples in Belfast should not be able to do the same.”
All of the publicans in one rural town are going keep their doors shut and remain closed for business this coming Good Friday. Six pubs in Newmarket, County Cork, came together and decided they would not open their doors in spite of the State lifting the 91-year-old ban on serving alcohol on Good Friday.
John Scanlon of Scanlon’s bar, Church Street, who first proposed the move in an initial chat with a colleague, said: “We have only two days off each year, Christmas Day and Good Friday, and we want to hold on to that. It is a day publicans want to spend with their families.”
“It would be different for city publicans who would be giving up a lot of revenues by staying shut on a Friday night, but I don’t think there would be a lot around here on Good Friday,” he said.
Barrister Maurice Collins has said the ‘extreme’ nature of the State’s arguments in its Appeal against the recognition of unborn rights was ‘arresting’ and the refusal to recognise the “unborn” as an “unborn child” was ‘striking and startling’. He was addressing the Supreme Court in its second day of hearings of an appeal by the State to deny all Constitutional rights of the unborn child, apart from life, right up to the moment of birth. The Government want to remove the Constitutional right to life in the planned referendum.
Mr Colliins said the State was submitting that outside the right to life protected in the Eighth Amendment, the unborn child was a “constitutional nullity” and that if that amendment was repealed, the unborn had no rights at all. Mr Collins said the State was making this argument regardless of the stage of development, whether it was just after conception or just before delivery.
Mr Collins suggested the State’s “absolutist” position was not compatible with the Supreme Court’s previous decision in a case relating to frozen embryos which found that they were not entitled to the status “unborn” and hence, not due the protection of the Eighth Amendment, but they were nevertheless entitled to a measure of constitutional recognition and respect as a “form of human life”. Mr Collins said the State was suggesting that when the people voted for the Eighth Amendment they were unwittingly restricting the rights of the unborn, removing all but the right to life, and excluding them from the protection of any other constitutional provision.
The Supreme Court agreed to hear this appeal, under pressure from the Government, in the light of the planned referendum on repealing the Eighth Amendment.
In his submissions, Mr Collins said the right to life was already implicitly protected by the Constitution, as an unenumerated right, referred to in various statements of the Supreme Court, before the enactment of the Eighth Amendment. That meant, he said, the unborn had a “legal personality” capable of asserting constitutional rights, which could not have been taken away by the Eighth Amendment.
He said those who voted for the Eighth Amendment did not intend to prevent the unborn from claiming other constitutional rights that it was already entitled to. He said the principle right he was relying on was the right of the unborn child to the care and company of its father who, in this particular case, was facing deportation to Nigeria. On the other hand, he said the State was claiming that, minus the Eighth Amendment, the foetus was a constitutional “non-person” from conception all the way to birth.
Lawyers for the State were pressed by the court about whether or not there was a right to life for the unborn in the Constitution before the Eighth Amendment but counsel for the State refused to say. Justice Liam McKechnie said it seemed almost remarkable that the Minister for Justice steadfastly refused to give his position on this matter.
