Fianna Fáil leader, Michael Martin, has declined to say whether he would agree with abortion in the cases of rape and incest. Speaking on Kildare FM, he said: “It’s not a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’; that depends on a number of issues.” He added: “I know people today who are alive whose mothers, in one particular case, was raped. She was the outcome of that and she gets very angry when people suggest she should never have had a life.” Fianna Fáil will allow their members a vote of conscience on the outcome of the deliberations of an Oireachtas committee that will consider the recommendations of the Citizens Assembly. The make-up of that committee is yet to be finalised, though it is expected to include pro-life voices, Deputy Mattie McGrath, TD, and Senator Ronán Mullen.
A provision of an Adoption Bill that would impede adopted children from contacting their birth parents without their permission has come under sustained attack. The Adoption (Information and Tracing) Bill 2016 contains a provision that adopted children must sign an undertaking not to contact their birth parents if given their birth certificate except in certain circumstances. However, the provision has been fiercely criticised by adopted children. Noelle Brown, who was born in the Bessborough mother and baby home in 1965 and then adopted, said it amounted to a “barbaric piece of legislation”. She said adopted people were entitled to equality and therefore access to their full records. “I want to feel equal to every other citizen in Ireland, and not remain a reminder of our terrible past and one that needs to shut up and get over it,” she said. Adoption Rights Alliance director Susan Lohan said adopted people were entitled to “unconditional and unfettered access” to their documents. She said only adopted people understood the “shattered narrative” of adoption. “It is absolutely vital that this information be given to adopted people in a timely efficient and complete manner,” she told the conference which was organised by the Adoption Rights Alliance. She described the proposed undertaking as “absolutely odious”
The Minister for Education, Richard Bruton’s proposed changes to the admission policies of faith-based schools have come under attack from members of his own party. His proposal would make it impossible for faith-based schools to prioritise the admission of children of their own faith who live beyond the catchment area of the school. At a Fine Gael parliamentary party meeting, Deputy Colm Brophy and Senator Neale Richmond said the Bill could have unintended implications for minority religious groups, particularly Protestants. Minister Heather Humphreys urged her Cabinet colleague to engage directly with minority religious groupings and warned of unintended consequences for certain schools. Minister Charlie Flanagan told the meeting the proposed legislative changes could be viewed as a threat to the Protestant identity. He said such discussions could potentially have an impact on the political deadlock in Northern Ireland.
A Catholic religious order that cares for about 5,000 psychiatric patients in Belgium will allow euthanasia in its hospitals. The Brothers of Charity, who also operate in Ireland providing extensive services to people with intellectual disabilities, posted a statement on their website about how they “take seriously unbearable and hopeless suffering and patients’ request for euthanasia”, adding, “On the other hand, we do want to protect lives and ensure that euthanasia is performed only if there is no more possibility to provide a reasonable perspective to treat the patient”. By contrast, the worldwide head of the Brothers of Charity, Brother Rene Stockman, said he strongly opposes this and is appealing to the Vatican and Belgian Catholic bishops for help. Father Thomas Petri, a moral theologian at the Dominican House of Studies in Washington DC, told LifeSiteNews that the Brothers should pull out of their apostolate altogether. “It seems to me, given the legal situation in Belgium and the libertine view of euthanasia at work in that country, the Brothers of Charity need to reconsider this apostolate,” suggested Petri. “It would be far worse to remain complicit and cooperate in the culture of death now let loose in their institutions than to withdraw, pray for conversion, and to be prepared to help the victims of the fallout.”
Minister of State Marcella Corcoran-Kennedy told the Dáil that the Committee on Procedure had recommended amending the Standing Orders so that each day might begin with a prayer and a 30-second period of silent reflection. Fianna Fáil TD Mary Butler welcomed the proposal and said that retaining the prayer while adding the silent reflection, would encompass a modern Ireland, while still respecting the traditions of the past. Independent TD Mattie McGrath said the prayer was not unusual, adding a number of legislative bodies elsewhere had either a period of prayer or silent reflection before starting business. He said respect for cultural or religious views should not debar TDs from acknowledging the specific heritage of their own country and giving it an expression which the vast majority of people did not find offensive. Others were not as sanguine. People Before Profit TD Bríd Smith, referring to TDs being asked to stand during the prayer, said: “I’m not standing, no matter what I’m told to do, because my religion is my business and is not up for public scrutiny.”
She said the debate would be silly were it not for “the Tuam babies, the National Maternity Hospital and the Sisters of Charity, the Repeal the Eighth and the Citizens’ Assembly, the legacy of Magdalene and Christian Brothers and the people who were persecuted in this country”.
In a shocking case in Italy, a woman has been accused of faking a pregnancy in order to conceal an illegal surrogacy. Then, when the child turned out to be of mixed-race, she returned the baby to its biological parents. Surrogacy is illegal in Italy, and attracts prison time and heavy fines. The woman is alleged to have paid 20,000 euros for the child, and she wore a latex pregnancy bump which she bought online in order to fool family and friends into believing she was pregnant. Officials in the town of Latina outside Rome received an inquiry about registering a home-birth, but became suspicious when no mother subsequently showed up. Police investigated and uncovered the scheme. The baby has now been taken into foster care.
The Council of Europe has passed a resolution on the protection of the rights of parents and children belonging to religious minorities. The resolution urges States to “affirm” and “protect the right of all not to be compelled to perform actions that go against their deeply held moral or religious beliefs”. It also recalls the right of parents to provide their children with an education in conformity with their own religious and philosophical convictions. Meanwhile, The Director of the European Centre for Law and Justice, Dr Grégor Puppinck, spoke at a conference at the European Court of Human Rights on the rights of families as regards education and religion. In his speech, Dr Puppinck said the Universal Declaration of Human Rights expresses a subsidiary conception of society, which affirms the natural rights of parents to raise and educate their children and guarantees this right against the the State.
Scientists have been successful in creating an “artificial womb” that appears effective at enabling very premature fetuses to develop normally for about a month. So far the device has only been tested on fetal lambs, but Alan Flake, a fetal surgeon at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia who led the study published in the journal Nature Communications, says the group hopes to test the device on very premature human babies within three to five years. “If you can just use this device as a bridge for the fetus then you can have a dramatic impact on the outcomes of extremely premature infants,” Flake says. “This would be a huge deal.”
Some, however, find the advance unsettling and are already voicing concerns about the impact it would have on the political debate about abortion. Dena Davis, a bioethicist at Lehigh University, worries about whether this could blur the line between a fetus and a baby. “Up to now, we’ve been either born or not born. This would be halfway born, or something like that. Think about that in terms of our abortion politics,” she says.
In a searing response to the Democratic Party’s pledge to support only pro-abortion candidates, New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan branded the move as disturbing and called on the party to “recant this intolerant position”.
“The recent pledge by the Democratic National Committee chair to support only candidates who embrace the radical unrestricted abortion license is very disturbing. The Democratic Party platform already endorses abortion throughout the nine months of pregnancy, even forcing taxpayers to fund it; and now the DNC says that to be a Democrat—indeed to be an American—requires supporting that extreme agenda” he said in a statement.
Last week the head of the Democratic National Committee, Tom Perez, was slammed mercilessly by pro-abortion lobby groups for supporting a Democratic candidate in a Mayor’s race in a city in Nebraska who happened to be pro-life. Within days, he reversed himself, dropped that support and pledged instead that “Every Democrat, like every American, should support a woman’s right to make her own choices about her body and her health,” adding, “That is not negotiable.” Perez was praised by the Huffington Post for becoming “the first head of the party to demand ideological purity on abortion rights”.
But that demand for “ideological purity” has itself been forcefully condemned by Cardinal Dolan and he called on all members of the Democratic party to likewise reject it: “In the name of diversity and inclusion, pro-life and pro-‘choice’ Democrats, alike, should challenge their leadership to recant this intolerant position.”
