The Pro Life Campaign have been refused leave to join the defense of unborn rights against an Appeal by the State to overturn all rights of the unborn, apart from the right to life explicitly recognised by the 8th amendment. The Appeal was made after it was ruled in the High Court that the rights of the unborn extend beyond the right to life.
On Monday, Benedict Ó Floinn BL, for the organisation, told Chief Justice Frank Clarke that the group, arising from “concerns over recent developments”, wished to be joined to the action as an amicus curiae – an assistant to the court on legal issues. Mr Justice Clarke granted counsel permission to serve short notice of its application and said he would consider it Tuesday during a case management hearing concerning the appeal. Lawyers for the State told the Chief Justice that they were opposed to the PLC’s application. The following day, counsel for the PLC told the Chief Justice his side were ready to address the matter and appreciated the appeal was for hearing on February 21st and, if it was joined, was not seeking to have that date changed. He said that the PLC could bring 25 years of experience and expertise, including that of constitutional law professor William Binchy, in protecting the rights of women and their unborn children to help the court to decide the legal issues before it. Counsel for the State argued, however, that as the case concerns constitutional law, the PLC could not bring any expertise the lawyers already involved do not have.
The position is significant as the Oireachtas Committee on the Eighth Amendment recommended that abortion should be available on mental health grounds after 12 weeks, but without specifying a legal time limit. Instead, the Committee’s report said that “provision for gestational limits for termination of pregnancy should be guided by the best available medical evidence,” which should then be provided for in legislation.
Dr O’Grady said best medical principles around timescale for abortion involved having the procedure “as early as possible and as late as necessary”, rather than getting bound up in “absolute decisions” about numbers of weeks, he said. This would potentially allow for abortion up to birth, if necessary.
Dr O’Grady, consultant child and adolescent psychiatrist, was addressing a campaign launch hosted by the Galway Coalition to Repeal the Eighth Amendment.
Pro-choice campaigners have been asked to condemn the “orgy of abuse” directed at a young American visitor curating the @Ireland twitter account this week. The call came from the SaveThe8th group who said that the Repeal Campaign “must change the tone” of the debate before someone gets physically hurt.
The @Ireland account is a twitter account that is curated each week by a different guest. Maria Oswalt, 23, has recently come to Ireland to visit her boyfriend, and has expressed pro-life views in the past but has tweeted nothing about the upcoming referendum.
Repeal campaigners trawled her social media accounts in an attempt to find out her views on abortion, and then subjected her to a sustained campaign of vicious bullying and abuse. She has been repeatedly told that she is “not welcome” in Ireland and that she should go home.
Commenting, Savethe8th spokeswoman Niamh Ui Bhriain said: “These vicious attacks on a young woman for holding a private opinion are an example of the very worst of what this campaign could become. Repeal supporters, who have no problem with Amnesty Ireland taking illegal donations from an American billionaire, spent most of yesterday abusing a 23 year old for holding private views, bizarrely finding and posting information about her family, and telling her to go home to her own country. This is not just creepy, it’s nasty and vicious”.
She added: “There is a lot of talk about a reasoned and respectful campaign, but one only needs to read the comments towards this girl to know that there is no reason or respect for those of us who have concerns about the introduction of abortion in Ireland. It is incumbent on the leaders of the repeal campaign to call off the dogs. And it is incumbent on the media to hold them to account if they do not”.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has formed a new Conscience and Religious Freedom Division within its Office for Civil Rights (OCR). The purpose of the new division is to restore federal enforcement of laws that protect the fundamental and inalienable rights of conscience and religious freedom for medical personnel. In a press release heralding the news, a spokesperson said the new division will provide the Health Department “with the focus it needs to more vigorously and effectively enforce existing laws protecting the rights of conscience and religious freedom, the first freedom protected in the Bill of Rights”.
OCR Director Roger Severino said, “Laws protecting religious freedom and conscience rights are just empty words on paper if they aren’t enforced. No one should be forced to choose between helping sick people and living by one’s deepest moral or religious convictions, and the new division will help guarantee that victims of unlawful discrimination find justice. For too long, governments big and small have treated conscience claims with hostility instead of protection, but change is coming and it begins here and now.”
The move was criticized by groups claiming, among other things, that freedom of conscience could harm ‘abortion rights’.
The National Association of GPs has strongly objected to the Government unilaterally co-opting them to provide unrestricted abortion services for the first 12 weeks of pregnancy. In a statement released yesterday, the association, which represents around 2,000 family doctors, said it strongly objects to the assumption that this will be a GP-led service and said that their members are outraged that there has been no consultation.
Dr Emmet Kerin, President of the NAGP remarked: “I was alarmed to hear the Minister’s comments and presumption that the State would direct GPs to lead an abortion service without any engagement with our members to discuss the implications of this notion. The growing disconnect of the Minister and his Department of Health from the frontline service of General Practice is of genuine concern to me.”
Dr Kerin further commented “General Practitioners are dedicated to the health of their patients but feel that their work supporting the increasingly chaotic healthcare system receives no acknowledgment. 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.”
A court in Ontario has ruled that doctors must refer patients for all procedures and drugs, including abortion and assisted suicide, even if they conscientiously object. The Court held that “equitable access” to health care services is of “sufficient importance to warrant overriding” the right of religious freedom.
The background of the case are policies of the body regulating the practice of medicine in Ontario which require that pro-life doctors who object to abortion and euthanasia must refer patients seeking those services to a “non-objecting, available, and accessible” physician, “in a timely manner” ensuring that the patient is “not exposed to adverse clinical outcomes” because of delay. This was appealed to the Supreme Court which found that the forced referrals are a violation of religious freedom, but also ruled that “equitable access” to such procedures was more important and thus justified the religious freedom violation. The Court drew a number of further conclusions including that doctors unwilling to provide “effective referrals” will have to change their area of practice; practicing medicine from a Christian ethical framework is characterised as one likely to shame patients; Professional disciplinary proceedings is a likely consequence for Christians who practice according to conscience and decline to refer; and, in the public square, in the event of a conflict between doctors’ rights and the patients’ interests, religious freedom loses.
A priest found hanging from a rope in his home, and the decision of authorities to rule the death a suicide, has prompted a fresh round of protests by Christians at what they feel is systematic persecution from Hindu extremists.
Congregants told local reporters that Pastor Gideon Periyaswamy had endured constant harassment by some local Hindus, who they said had made it a point to try to torment the cleric every Sunday for the last six months. Last year, a group of extremists beat the pastor, a congregant told the Morning Star News. The suspicious nature of the pastor’s death, and his struggles with his harassers, are refocusing attention on the growing persecution of Christians in the world’s largest democracy. India ranks 11th, just behind Iran and Yemen, this year on an annual list of the world’s 50 worst countries for persecution of Christians published by the Christian advocacy group Open Doors U.S.A. India had ranked 15 the previous year.
Government Ministers believe they must await a Supreme Court ruling on the rights of the unborn before finalising the wording of the proposed abortion referendum, according to a report in The Irish Times. This could delay the Government’s plans to hold the referendum in late May or early June, long before the visit of Pope Francis to Ireland in August.
“This is the first time in the history of the State that the Supreme Court will rule on the meaning of unborn,” a source familiar with the Government’s legal advice on the matter said. “The wording is known. But the worst thing we could do is publish it and then have to change it because of the judgment.”
The Supreme Court hearing is listed for February 22nd and is expected to take two days, legal sources say. A judgment is expected in the following weeks, but the Government have already said they hope to introduce the referendum bill to the Dáil on March 8th, International Women’s Day. Any delay could scupper plans to stage the referendum on the preferred dates of May 25th or June 8th. The Government are in a rush to hold the referendum before students start leaving the country for the summer. Leo Varadkar previously said the referendum could also be held in November, when all students would be back in the country, but many politicians want the referendum over and done with before Pope Francis visits the country in August.
