The draft heads of the Bill to provide for a referendum on abortion is to be considered by the Cabinet today. The Bill will ask voters if they wish to repeal the Eight Amendment and replace it with a text that affirms the authority of the Oireachtas to legislate for abortion. While the first draft of the Bill will undergo the scrutiny of the Cabinet today, a final draft is not due to be agreed until March 6th. The Government plan on publishing the Bill on March 8th to coincide with International Women’s Day, although that plan will be scuppered if a Supreme Court case on the rights of the unborn is not decided before then, or if the Court renders an unfavourable judgement.
In addition to the referendum Bill, a policy paper outlining the abortion legislation that would follow passage of the referendum is also due before the Cabinet on March 6th. It is anticipated that the bill will follow closely upon the recommendations of the Oireachtas abortion committee which allowed abortion unrestricted up to 12 weeks, and after that on UK-style ground, namely for reasons impacting the ‘mental and physical health’ of the mother potentially up to birth.
The consideration of the draft heads of the referendum Bill will mark the beginning of the legislative process ahead of a referendum, which the Government is intent on holding by the end of May or the beginning of June.
In a sharp rebuttal of remarks by Senator Catherine Noone, the Chair of the Oireachtas abortion committee, the Savethe8th committee ridiculed a claim that no doctor would appear before the committee to defend the Eighth amendment. According to the Irish Times, Senator Noone “revealed the committee could not find a single medical expert in Ireland to argue the case for the status quo”. She was quoted as saying “The committee secretariat were in touch with many people, to my knowledge both suggested by the committee and otherwise,” she said. “Nobody was willing to come forward, none who were experts in this country. There was no single GP who offered, or any way indicated, that they wanted the status quo to remain.”
A spokesperson for Savethe8th, called the claim “utterly bizarre” and pointed to the group Doctors for Life who defended the Eighth Amendment and the status quo in both a submission and an oral presentation to the Citizens Assembly. He also questioned how media in Ireland could report the claim unchallenged, without subjecting it to even the most rudimentary fact-checking. He continued: “Senator Noone’s claim raises serious questions about her command of the facts in this debate, and the coverage of Senator Noone’s claim raises serious questions about internet connectivity across the newsrooms of Dublin”.
The Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection, Regina Doherty, believes the Government’s proposals to repeal the Eighth Amendment and legislate for an extreme abortion regime could fail, unless a lot more work is done to convince the people to pass it. She spoke after a duo of polls showed support for repeal dropping, and the public evenly divided on legislation for unrestricted abortion up to 12 weeks.
Speaking to RTÉ News, Ms Doherty said “Standing right now, if nobody does anything, I don’t think this referendum will pass”. She added: “We need to sell, as advocates of people who want to see the Constitution changed and the 12-weeks imposed, that needs to be sold to people and the reasons why that 12-weeks figure was come at. That needs to be explained clearly to people with reasons and evidence, so there is a job of work to be done”.
The polls published today in the Sunday Independent and Sunday Times both show a drop in support for the Government’s proposal to introduce abortion on wide-ranging grounds. 48% of respondents to the Sunday Independent poll support allowing unrestricted abortion up to 12 weeks, 33% says it goes too far and a further 19% are undecided. The Sunday Times poll shows a broadly similar result. 43% of respondents support the Government’s proposal with 35% opposed to abortion up to three months and a further 22% undecided.
Commenting on the two polls, Pro Life Campaign spokesperson, Dr Ruth Cullen said: “Obviously I welcome the shift in support in a pro-life direction indicated in the two latest polls. As more and more people come to realise what repeal of the Eighth Amendment would lead to in practice, I’m confident the polls will continue to move in the same direction.
“No matter how it’s packaged or presented, repeal of the Eighth Amendment would strip unborn babies of all meaningful protections and lead to abortion on demand similar to countries like England where 1 in 5 pregnancies now end in abortion.
“The point we have been making that there’s no such thing as limited abortion is starting to resonate with voters. This is not surprising as the evidence from other countries on this point is so strong.
“It makes no sense talking about doing away with all constitutional protections for unborn babies through repeal and in the same breath arguing that meaningful protections for the right to life could somehow be provided for in legislation. The vote on repeal is about whether we introduce abortion on demand or not. It is about nothing else.”
Children and teenagers under 18 perpetrated an eye-popping 45 per cent of all sexual crimes recorded by the Gardaí in 2016, a report has found.
The figures in the Garda Juvenile Diversion Programme (GJDP) report show that 334 sexual offences involving juvenile offenders were reported in 2016. That figure represented a massive increase of 39 per cent on previous year’s figures and included 114 cases of rape and 21 cases involving child abuse images.
Clíona Saidléar, executive director of Rape Crisis Network Ireland, said she was appalled but not surprised by the figures. “They are a wake-up call to the fact that sexual offences are being committed by children. We can no longer turn a blind eye to the problem,” she said. The network has called for more research into the factors behind the increase as well as to examine how girls were viewed by boys.
Ms Saidléar said that the growing sexualisation of culture and the normalisation of pornography was a concern. “There must be a realisation that children can also be perpetrators as well as victims when it comes to sexual offences. What might have been classified as sexual experimentation in the past can constitute sexual abuse,” she said.
Tenders are being sought from firms to provide 500,000 HSE branded condoms and 250,000 branded lubrication packets as part of ongoing efforts by the executive to prevent unplanned pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases. It is planned that the condoms and lubricants will be given out free across the country to at-risk population groups as part of the HSE’s National Sexual Health Strategy 2015 -2020.
HSE records show that sexually transmitted disease notifications increased by 279 per cent from 3,361 in 1995 to 12,753 in 2013 while HIV cases increased to over 500 in 2016. The 2016 total for new HIV cases was the highest number since records began. Last year saw an 11 per cent increase in cases of sexually transmitted infections in the 15 to 24 year old age bracket, increasing from 4,677 to 5,200 with chlamydia making up 50 per cent of cases.
The move was welcomed by Savethe8th, a group campaigning for a NO vote in the forthcoming referendum. Their spokeswoman Niamh UiBhriain said: “The decision from the ICGP not to endorse a YES vote in the referendum on repeal is significant and welcome. In recent days and weeks we have seen increasing concern from doctors, both those who oppose this proposal on principle, and the significant number who see it as simply unworkable”.
She added: “For months now, supporters of Repeal have tried to present medical opinions on the referendum as uniform. They are not. In the coming months, we are glad that those many doctors with serious concerns about the Governments proposal will have the support of the ICGP if they wish to make their views known. This is a good day for those of us who want a fair and open debate”.
Three years after ISIS militants issued an ultimatum to Christians to “Convert, leave or die”, throngs of families have returned to their ancestral lands in the Nineveh plains as houses are rebuilt and communities reconstituted. In Qaraqosh, Iraq’s largest Christian city, shops and restaurants are open, children go to school, busloads full of students head to Mosul daily for their studies at Mosul University, and increasing numbers of Christians are returning to the Assyrian city more commonly known as Baghdeda. In partnership with the charity, Open Doors, locals have repaired and rebuilt hundreds of homes. “The people are happy,” says local pastor Fr George. “…They prefer to be here, to be back home.” And the people come not only from elsewhere in Iraq: “We also saw refugees returning from France, Jordan, Lebanon and even Australia. I will personally work to convince more of those who left the country to come back.” So far, renovations have concentrated on the more easily repairable houses near the centre of the city. It will take a lot more time and money to rebuild the homes that were completely burned down or destroyed, and to continue the works to the outer edges of the city. But, a start has been made and life is returning and hope has once more sprung like a phoenix rising from the ashes.
While the bill is generally built around removing barriers to schools admission, the spokesman said the Minister for Education Richard Bruton had been reflecting on how best to allow children from an Irish-speaking background gain access to Irish-medium schools in a fair, inclusive and transparent manner. Cearta Oideachais, which represents Irish-speaking families, argues Gaelscoileanna should be able to continue to give priority to Irish-speaking pupils in order to protect the educational rights of this small minority of children. “Unlike members of the Church of Ireland or the Catholic Church seeking to establish their right to priority enrolment in a faith based school, children raised through Irish do not have the equivalent of a baptism certificate to prove that they are native speakers,” it stated in a submission on the bill.
“Our primary concern is the right of our children – members of Ireland’s indigenous linguistic minority and native speakers of the first national language – to receive an education in their first language, and to achieve full working literacy and competency in that language.” Using an argument that is rarely heard in relation to faith-based prioritising of schools admissions, the group said children who have Irish as a first language “scaffold” other children’s language learning in the classroom.
“In Irish-medium schools, they are therefore an important resource for peers for whom Irish is not the language of the home,” it stated.
A leading GP has echoed the reservations of the Irish College of General Practitioners to Government plans for a GP-led abortion regime, calling the plans ‘unworkable’ for both doctors and patients. “The fact is that, whatever the view of an individual GP on the abortion issue, we simply are not currently equipped as a profession to cope with what is being proposed by Simon Harris. We lack the facilities, the training, the time, and yes, the resources,” wrote General Practitioner, Dr Máire Neasta Nic Gearailt, in an op-ed in the Irish Examiner this week. Describing how the proposal is meant to work in practice, Dr Nic Gearailt said that a doctor must first satisfy himself that a woman has the right under the new law to have an abortion. Then, the doctor must administer two miscarriage-inducing pills over several days. “The woman will experience cramping and heavy bleeding before the baby is expelled. How are GPs, operating in busy and crowded practises with common waiting rooms, expected to medically supervise this procedure? Neither are most GP surgeries the ideal place to deal with any emergencies that might arise from any adverse sequelae from taking these tablets,” she wrote.
Last week, Dr Emmet Kerin, President of the National Association of General Practitioners, which represents some 2,000 GPs said: “for the Minister to suggest that our profession should lead out an abortion service without consultation with our member GPs is an affront to our profession and could pose yet another strain on the provision of general practice healthcare services”.
Dr Nic Gearailt echoed this objection saying GPs have not been asked their view on this law, in either an opinion poll or by the Government, and called it “an extraordinary oversight that should alarm the public”.
“The Government says it is committed to the welfare of women, but it has proposed a law that is simply unworkable for doctor and patient alike”.
Quite apart from the myriad problems with attempting to administer the Government’s plans, she said a great number of GPs would simply refuse to commit abortions anyway. “Then there is the fact that a great many of us, myself included, simply could not in good conscience administer a drug to a healthy young woman with a healthy pregnancy that would cause her to lose her child. I did not study medicine so that I could end life, and I know that I am not alone in this.” She added: “Amongst colleagues, the assumption has been that this Government is simply so eager to get the pro-choice lobby off it’s back that it has given them everything they wanted without considering the consequences. It is hard to look at what has been proposed and come to any other conclusion.”
Dr Spelman concluded that “it would have been more prudent of Simon Harris if he had engaged with the various GP bodies before he raised expectations that MTOP would be a GP-led service in Ireland”.
