Atheist Ireland have sent a number of questions to the Standards in Public Office Commission (SIPOC) to ascertain whether the Catholic Bishops are breaching laws on political donations by its funding of the Choose Life 2018 initiative. In a letter to SIPOC, Atheist Ireland say: “In 2018 the Bishops initiative includes a website and a weekly printed newsletter sent to all Dioceses around the country where its stated purpose is to encourage discussion in families on the value of every human life.” However, the letter alleges, the initiative “also overtly campaign[s] for a particular outcome in the coming referendum on the eighth amendment to the Constitution”. The group then asks SIPOC a series of questions that encourage an investigation of the the funding of the bishops’ initiative and to decide whether they should register as a political lobbyist.
Former Taoiseach John Bruton has spoken strongly against repeal of the Eighth Amendment and said that Ireland should be “proud” of having protection of the unborn child enshrined in its constitution. Mr Bruton said on Sunday, “To arbitrarily say that, after whatever number of weeks, it’s okay to suppress that life is just not in accordance with the values of charity towards the weak in our communities that have exemplified the Irish over the last many centuries.
“It’s true that we are probably one of the few countries in the world that has, in our constitution, an express recognition of the right to life of the unborn child, but that’s something we should be proud of,” he said.
Reiterating those comments on Newstalk Breakfast, today, he added: “We’re one of the few countries in the world that actually has in its Constitution a protection for the right to life – not just of a person after they’re born, but before they’re born as well.”
While many women already travel to the UK for abortions, Mr Bruton argued there will be “substantially more” abortions taking place among Irish people if the Eighth is repealed.
Minister for Children Katherine Zappone has accused the Catholic Church of a misogynistic tradition, and vowed to raise the matter with officials of the Holy See when she visits the Vatican and the Irish College in Rome on a diplomatic visit this week to mark St Patrick’s feast day.
Echoing former president Mary McAleese’s remarks from last week, Ms Zappone said: “I definitely concur with Mary McAleese’s thoughts. I would have been of that view for many, many years. I think it is really important to continue the dialogue and I will be both visiting the Holy See in the context of the ambassador’s residence and also having lunch in the Irish College in Rome”.
She said she will be there “as a senior minister from Ireland and bring a respect for different aspects of the tradition but certainly not the misogyny of the tradition of the Roman Catholic Church”.
Another group of publicans, this time in the town of Drumconrath in Meath, will resist pressure to treat Good Friday as a purely commercial trading day of no special significance by announcing that they will not be opening their pubs that day.
Dermot Muldoon, owner of Muldoon’s Bar, says Good Friday is a ‘very special day’ in Drumconrath. He told Pat Kenny: “The change didn’t suit us at all – we weren’t really for it at all.” Dermot said the idea to close the pubs arose during a conversation with the local parish priest, and the three publicans then came to the decision to stay closed as usual.
He explained: “When the pub’s closed… you’d head off for the day with your family, when they were kids of course. [You’d] have a day out, maybe go to some of the sights around Dublin… you can earmark things for that day, basically, because you are closed… And we get cleaners in on that day too, to clean the place top-to-bottom.”
He observed: “It was always a special day. At 3 o’clock we have the prayers at the stations of the cross. There’s a certain air around the village – a nice peaceful air. It’s very special, basically. [When the pubs close] that’s it – the whole place is shut down.”
On the subject of the pubs closing, Dermot’s mother Kaye added: “It’s a tradition here we always look forward to. There’s two days we get off – one is Christmas Day, and the other is Good Friday. It has been like that since I came here 55 years ago, and probably long before it.”
Standing at the door of her villa-style residence in Sandymount, one women in her late 30s, a young child by her side, said she would “probably be voting ‘No’ to repeal”.
“I totally agree supports for women with a crisis pregnancy in this country are totally inadequate, . . . But what I am hearing about the legislation [that would follow repeal of the Eighth Amendment] does not address my concerns. It would open up a whole new, unregulated industry of abortion. It would not be monitored. This is a country that is just not good at healthcare or regulation.”
A few doors down, a man in his 60s answered the door and looked at a leaflet offered to him, titled “Eight reasons to repeal the Eighth”. He asked what it’s about and when told raised his voice and said, “Get off this land and close the gate behind you.”
An older man who was on his way to the Aviva Stadium for the Ireland Scotland rugby match, said “People should be taking precautions. And there’s no way I’m leaving it to TDs”.
Pro-life feminists protested outside Leinster House yesterday as Minister for Health Simon Harris unveiled the Government’s plan to repeal the Eighth amendment and introduce an abortion regime even more liberal than that in the UK where 1 in 5 pregnancies, or 200,000 unborn children are aborted every year. Ninety-seven percent are done on’ mental health’ grounds. The Irish law will allow abortion for any and no reason up to 12 weeks, and on ‘health’ grounds after that.
In a statement ahead of the event, the group said Mr Harris had to realise that “abortion is anti-woman and anti-child, and that he is not helping women by pushing abortion, but is instead failing to assure women that his government will provide the compassion, help and support women need to raise their children”.
“We are tired of being told that we can’t be feminists and be pro-life, when the fact is, according to the polls, women are actually just as likely or more likely to oppose abortion,” the statement said.
“Pro-life feminists are sick of being lectured to by abortion campaigners who like to tell women what they can and can’t say – but Irish women are independent-minded enough to stand up to the bullying of the abortion industry.”
The President of the Circuit Court, Mr Justice Raymond Groarke, ruled yesterday that Good Friday must be treated exactly like any other day for alcoholic licensing so that late-bar licences must be granted as readily as any other day of the year.
A judge in the Dublin District court had refused to grant a Good Friday late bar extension to the Red Cow Inn on the Naas Road, Dublin, which meant a huge back-up in similar applications pending an appeal to the Circuit Court.
The appeal allowed on Friday by Judge Groarke frees publicans to obtain bar extensions in cases where there is no objection by the State authorities, including the Garda, and where all necessary legal proofs are in order.
The Board of Management of a Catholic school can proceed with its High Court challenge against the School’s patron over the sale of the school’s playing fields. Last year the school board was told by Edmund Rice Schools Trust (ERST), the patron body, that it faced being scrapped over its support for a legal challenge to the sale of pitches at the Deansgrange schoool. However, the approval of Minister for Education Richard Bruton is required to dissolve the board, and the request was being examined by the Attorney General. Minister Mary Mitchell O’Connor said on Wednesday that the Attorney General had “given his assurance that there will be no dissolution of the board before the High Court case”. If the board had been dissolved, the High Court challenge would have collapsed. Now instead, the patron faces the prospect of losing control of governance of the school.
A massive majority of GPs say they will not provide abortion pills to women in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy even if it becomes law, according to a survey of family doctors. Nearly seven in 10 of the 497 GPs who voted in a closed doctors’ forum said they would not be involved in medical abortions. A mere 15.7pc of respondents said they would provide the service while 16.1pc were “unsure”. The doctors responding to the survey are among 3,700 GPs who are registered with GPBuddy.ie, the online medical directory designed by GPs for Irish healthcare professionals.
In response, Independent TD Mattie McGrath has called on the Minister for Health, Simon Harris, to postpone the scheduled debate on the repeal of the Eighth Amendment referendum bill and was scathing in his criticism of the Government’s proposal for a GP-led abortion service.
“By any fair standard this is a devastating and potentially fatal blow to a central feature of the government’s and the Joint Committee’s plan on how it wanted to roll out unrestricted abortion access up to 12 weeks.
“It also demonstrates the absurdity of the claims that were made by the Chairperson of the Joint Committee on the Eighth Amendment that they could not find a single GP opposed to the repeal of article 40.3.3.
“If the Minister does indeed decide to proceed with the plan to introduce legislation, it will be a case of him doing so while knowing with clear certainty that it will be practically impossible to implement given the scale of opposition to it by GP’s.
“This is crippling political embarrassment for Minister Harris and all those whose only intent is to foist an unrestricted abortion regime upon the people.
“Serious consideration must now be given to scrapping the proposed debate in light of the inherent unworkability of the proposals that have now been clearly exposed.
“The only other option is for the likes of private, profit driven UK abortion providers with appalling health records to set up shop here. If that is what the Minister wants then he should have the guts to say so,” concluded Deputy McGrath.
Pro-life groups have condemned yesterday’s decision of the Supreme Court that unborn children have no inherent, constitutional rights beyond the right to life explicitly written into the Constitution by the Eighth amendment. Niamh Uí Bhriain, of Save the 8th, said the judgment exposes the frightening reality of the Government’s proposals on abortion, that if the 8th is abolished, then the last remaining constitutional protections enjoyed by unborn children would be abolished along with it. “This is an extreme outcome which the Taoiseach himself rejected as recently as last September, and shows that the proposals go far beyond the so-called ‘middle ground’,” she said. “It exposes the true agenda of the Government proposals: to remove all constitutional protections for unborn children, while masking it as a proposal to protect the rights of women. Such an outcome would give carte blanche to future governments to extend abortion on demand later in pregnancy without any approval from the public”. She concluded that voters “will be repulsed by this stark choice.”
The Pro Life Campaign said the Supreme Court ruling shows the importance of keeping the Eighth Amendment in the Constitution. Pro Life Campaign legal adviser, Professor William Binchy said: “The Supreme Court’s judgment makes it all the more necessary to oppose the Government’s proposal to introduce abortion on demand. The Court has made it clear that unborn babies, up to birth, would have no constitutional protection against the legislation that the Government intends to introduce.”
The Iona institute released a statement saying that the fate of unborn children now lies entirely in the hands of the people of Ireland. Iona spokeswoman, Maria Steen, said: “The Irish people have now become, in effect, the last line of defence in Ireland for the unborn child. It is now exclusively in our hands to decide whether to protect the fundamental right to life of the child in the womb, or to take it away.”
She said it was “extremely sad” that the Government sought to overturn the High Court ruling that the child before birth enjoys more rights than simply the right to life, and, she said, It shows “the overt hostility of the Government towards the unborn child”.
