According to new research reported on in Science Daily, some of the negative consequences on the wellbeing of a child born to a single mother can be reduced if their biological father joins and stays with the family. Conversely, however, if the biological father leaves, or is replaced by a step-father, the children, on average, do no better cognitively, socially or emotionally than children whose mothers remain alone. The research was conducted by experts at the prestigious London School of Economics (LSE) by analysing data from the Millennium Cohort Study, a UK longitudinal study of around 19,000 children who were born in the UK between September 2000 and January 2002. Their final report was published in full in the peer-reviewed European Journal of Population.
The Taoiseach has confirmed that the heads of a bill to legislate for surrogacy and related matters of assisted human reproduction (AHR) is being worked upon and is due to be presented to the cabinet by June of this year. He was responding to a question in the Dáil by Fine Gael TD for Dublin Rathdown, Josepha Madigan, who said the legislation was supposed to cover “the areas of surrogacy, embryo donation, gamete donation, stem cell research and also the screening of embryos for genetic serious diseases”. The legislation was originally part of a bill drafted by the then Minister for Justice Alan Shatter in 2014 dealing with all aspects of surrogacy and donor-assisted human reproduction, but was shelved shortly after he resigned his position.
In a shocking case in the USA, a woman was trafficked from Mexico in order to act as a surrogate, but was kept in virtual slavery even to the point of being forced to have sex with strangers and be inseminated with their sperm. The orchestrator of the scheme, Esthela Clarke, 47, has been arrested by police and is facing up to 20 years in prison. Ms Clarke had met the victim in Guadalajara, Mexico and promised her $3,000 – $4,000 to act as a surrogate. The victim had to be smuggled from Mexico into the USA and then underwent repeated attempts at a crude homemade insemination using the sperm of Ms Clarke’s boyfriend. During this time the victim slept on a floor and was forced to work while handing over her earnings to Ms Clarke. The abuse continued for up to three years until a member of a local church rescued the woman and mad a complaint to the police.
In a brazen act of child trafficking, an American couple put a five-month old baby up for sale on the internet marketplace, Craigslist, reports the Irish Independent. The ad was spotted by police and an undercover detective responded to it. The detective subsequently met with the couple, handed over the asking price of $3,000 (€2,761) and received the baby in return. The couple were arrested on the spot. John David Cain (26) and Deanna Lynn Greer (37) are charged with aggravated child abuse and aggravated child neglect or endangerment, according to local TV station WSPA News. The baby is currently in the custody of the Tennessee State Department of Children’s Services.
The amount of time spent teaching religion may be left up to the discretion of individual primary schools under a proposal being considered by the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment.
The body is holding a consultative conference in Dublin Castle to explore how time should be allocated to various subjects throughout the school week. This is in response to complaints from teachers that the school syllabus is increasingly over-loaded with time-intensive obligations.
Schools are required to teach 30 minutes of the religion of the school’s patron. For the vast majority of schools, where the patron is the Catholic Church, that means catechetical instruction in the Catholic faith.
The proposal under consideration though would leave it up to the discretion of each school to decide for themselves how they should organise up to 40% of school time, including time spent on religious education. This would allow schools to drastically reduce the amount of time they currently spend teaching religion.
A 17-year-old girl with Down’s syndrome issued a pointed challenge to policymakers over the use of tests to screen out people with the condition. Speaking at a conference event at the United Nations in Geneva ahead of World Down’s Syndrome Day last Tuesday, Kathleen made clear the immeasurable value of her life and the disturbing nature of screening for Down’s. “I love to sing, I love to dance, and I started playing tennis. I hope everybody loves me. I have Down syndrome. Yes. Is that so wrong? So, why all this testing? Why?” She added: “My name is Kathleen Humberstone and I love my life!”
Her mother Denise said that the testing regime was seriously misguided. “I dare anyone currently promoting this screening to meet with adults with Down Syndrome like my daughter Kathleen. I dare them to look her in the eye and tell her straight to her face that her life is less valuable than their own”.
A candidate for the leadership of one of Canada’s largest political parties has pledged a set of policies that would make Canada the most pro-adoption country in the world. Conservative leadership candidate Brad Trost says he’ll double the federal tax credit for adoptive parents to “at least $30,000”. This is a tax credit that parents can claim for expenses incurred during the course of an adoption. Currently, the credit can be claimed for expenses only up to a limit of $15,000. Trost says this reform would be part of a wider commitment to uphold the sanctity of life and promote pro-life policies.
An MP since 2004 and the father of a two-year-old daughter, Trost acknowledged that “we would like legislation” to protect the child in the womb, “but we also understand in Canada that may take awhile to get to that goal.” But he can advance policies supporting adoption, Trost pointed out in a campaign video. “We need to review our laws, federally and provincially, to see what we can do to make our laws more friendly for quicker, easier adoption, both domestic and internationally,” he added.
A proposal to oblige religious schools to prioritise locally-based children has emerged as a front-runner in plans to reform the admissions policies of faith based schools reports the Irish Times. At present, publicly funded schools which are oversubscribed may prioritise children of their own faith-community ahead of other children who live closer to the school. A consultation process to consider reforms of this policy was launched by Minister for Education Richard Bruton last January. The options that were examined included allowing schools to favour children of their own religion only when those children live within the school’s catchment area, or when that school is their nearest one; a quota-based system; and an outright ban on using religion as a factor in admissions. The Catholic Primary School Management Association, which represents the boards of management of the more than 2,900 Catholic primary schools, said the catchment-area proposal was the “least problematic” of the options. However, it says reforms to admissions policies will do nothing to alleviate the shortage of school places and only extra school places will remedy this.
Women should be able to have abortions simply because their unborn child is the ‘wrong’ sex, a leading ethics expert at the British Medical Association has said. In an interview with The Mail on Sunday, Professor Wendy Savage called for the law banning such terminations to be scrapped. Her comments will cause shockwaves as she is an influential member of the BMA’s 18-strong medical ethics committee. They also come amid concerns that British parents are seeking abortions based on the gender of babies – which has led to some NHS hospitals refusing to tell parents-to-be that information. Fears that British women are undergoing abortions based on the gender of their babies have grown since a 2014 study found that Britain had up to 4,700 fewer girls than would be statistically expected. And undercover journalists have secretly filmed doctors appearing to agree to carry out abortions for reasons of gender alone. This led the Department of Health to issue new guidance clarifying the law, which stated: ‘Abortion on the grounds of gender alone is illegal.’ Pro-life campaigners reacted with dismay and described her demands as ‘utterly abhorrent’. Conservative MP Mark Field said: ‘Suggesting that women should be able to abort babies solely because they happen to be either male or, much more usually, female, is utterly abhorrent. ‘To have someone like Wendy Savage with her extreme views at the heart of the BMA is a very worrying sign. The majority of people in this country, even those who support abortion, think sex-selective abortion is a step too far.’
