A British government plan to allow single people to raise surrogate children has been criticised as an attack on family values. The government move to amend the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 2008 comes on foot of a ruling by a High Court judge in 2016 that confining the rearing of surrogate children to couples breached the human rights of single people. Reacting to the announcement, Ciarán Kelly of The Christian Institute said it was yet another attack on family values. “All the evidence shows that children do better when raised by their mother and father – and best of all when those parents are married. It is beneficial to the children. It is beneficial to society. Why does the Government want to undermine this?” Meanwhile, Robert Flello MP, vice-chairman of the All Parliamentary Pro-Life Group, stressed that the focus overall should be on the child. “The right for the child to have two parents is deliberately overlooked,” he said. “A child has the right to be brought up in a loving family by its mother and father and that should be the starting point for government and society.”
The number of abortions taking place in the United States is at its lowest level in 40 years, according to latest figures. Compiled by the Guttmacher Institute, a pro-choice organisation, the new report revealed a figure of 926,200 abortions for the year 2014, the lowest figure since 1974, the first full year after the Supreme Court’s Roe v Wade decision broadened access to abortion across America. The 2014 figure represents a continued decrease in terminations over recent years, down by 32,500 on 2013. In percentage terms, the reports also reveals a 12.5% decrease in 2014 over 2011, when abortions stood well over the million mark, at 1.06 million terminations that year. “The number of abortions and the abortion rate declined steadily between 2011 and 2014, by 3–6% per year,” the report finds.
Independent TD Mattie McGrath has described the Minister for Education’s stated commitment to tackle the so-called ‘baptism barrier’ as a “transparent diversionary tactic”. In a statement following Minister Richard Bruton’s announcement of a consultation process on four options which will undermine the ability of faith schools to prioritise children of their respective faiths for admission, Deputy McGrath said, “What Minister Bruton is attempting to do is to divert attention away from the complete failure of his Government and his Department with respect to addressing the issue of over-subscribed schools.” He continued: “It is far easier to characterise the rights of denominational schools as obstructive rather than face the real issue of funding for the construction of so called ‘stand-alone’ state schools, funding which we all support and see as increasingly necessary.” He added that the options proposed by Minister Bruton “continue the assault on denominational schools that has already seen everything from their rights regarding employment policy, curriculum content and protection of ethos being severely undermined.”
The representative body for over 2,900 Catholic primary schools has reiterated the fact that oversubscription of school places only occurs in a minority of locations in Ireland. The comment came in the wake of an announcement from Minister for Education Richard Bruton of a consultation process on four options to tackle the prioritising of children of faith backgrounds in denominational schools. In a statement, The Catholic Primary Schools Management Association (CPSMA) pointed out, “The vast majority of Catholic schools are not oversubscribed and enrol all applicants. The issue mainly arises in areas of Dublin and in small pockets of the commuter belt surrounding the capital.” Despite this reality, there has been a major drive in some quarters for the so-called ‘baptism barrier’ to be dealt with once and for all, leading to Minister Bruton proposing his four options towards reducing the ability of faith schools to prioritise pupils from their respective faith communities during the admissions process. The CPSMA has called the term ‘baptism barrier’ “misleading and warned that “reforms to admissions policies will do nothing to alleviate the shortage of school places: only extra school places can achieve that.”
A Bill aimed at banning abortions once a foetal heartbeat is detected has been placed before the US Congress. Introduced by Republican Representative Steve King, the Heartbeat Protection Act of 2017 requires that doctors check for a foetal heartbeat before any move to provide a termination and refuse to proceed should a heartbeat be detected. The only exemption permissible under the act would be where a mother’s life is in danger. Medics breaching the law would face a fine and/up to five years in prison. “America was founded on the concept that our rights come from God,” said King. “All human persons have a right to life. How then could we confer that those rights allow the killing of a baby? I believe our most important responsibility that God has bestowed upon us is to protect innocent human life, and I will continue to dedicate my life to that responsibility.”
Women in Europe are having fewer children, with the trend particularly notable in the southern part of the continent, a new study has shown. Conducted by France’s National Institute of Demographic Studies, the research found that more than a fifth of women born in southern Europe in the 1970s may remain childless, compared to an average of 15% in northern Europe and 18% in western Europe. The report tracks a combination of factors to explain a trend not seen since the early years of the 20th Century, when World War I and the Great Depression had devastating impacts on demographics. “Most of the economic and cultural trends of the last half-century appear to have steered women and men away from having children,” the report states, adding that very few women plan never to have children, rather most end up “perpetually postponing parenthood” until it is too late. Reliable contraception, delayed union formation and childbearing, greater family fragility, demanding careers and job instability, as well as general economic uncertainty, are likely to foster childlessness,” the report concludes.
Britain’s civil servant tasked with integration issues has likened Catholic teaching on traditional marriage to Islamic extremism that has been exposed in schools in Birmingham. During a sitting of the Communities and Local Government Committee, at which Dame Louise Casey answered questions on her report into the so-called ‘Trojan Horse’ schools affair, she said the issues uncovered about extremism were “not okay, in the same way that it is not okay for Catholic schools to be homophobic and anti-gay marriage. That is not okay either — it is not how we bring children up in this country”. Dame Louise went on to allege that opponents of same-sex marriage using religion to cover their anti-equality views. “It is often veiled as religious conservatism, and I have a problem with the expression ‘religious conservatism’, because often it can be anti-equalities,” she said.
The academic advantages of faith schools may be exaggerated, a new study in Britain has claimed. Undertaken by the Education Policy Institute, the study examined the characteristics of pupils attending faith schools, how socially selective faith schools may be, and pupil attainment. It found that disadvantaged pupils are under-represented at faith schools, while those with high prior attainment are over-represented. The researchers were thus prompted to seek a control group in non-faith schools with similar characteristics to those in faith schools, finding that the difference in attainment is largely eliminated once pupil characteristics are accounted for in this way. The study comes at a time when the British government is proposing to increase good school places which includes a proposal to remove the 50% cap on faith-based admissions for oversubscribed faith free schools.
The US state of Kentucky has signed into law two pro-life bills which had been fast-tracked by the state Senate to Governor Matt Bevin for signing. The laws – the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act and the Ultrasound Informed Consent Act – ban abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy and require that women receive an ultrasound and the opportunity to see it before the final decision to have an abortion. “It is an honour for me to sign into law these historic pieces of legislation that protect our most vulnerable,” Governor Bevin said. The new laws come after years of legislators attempting and failing to get such protections past a Democrat-dominated House of Representatives in Kentucky. The year 2017 is the first time Republicans have controlled the House since 1921. With the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, Kentucky becomes the 16th state to enact such a control on abortion.
Christian pharmacists in Britain could be forced to provide services which are against their conscience, under newly proposed guidelines. The General Pharmaceutical Council (GPhC) is currently engaged in a consultation process on revising its own guidance to pharmacists which, if approved, would insist that staff “take responsibility for ensuring that person-centred care is not compromised because of personal values and beliefs”, while weakening the right of referral to another pharmacist. It adds that in some cases, a pharmacist’s beliefs could render them “unable to take up certain working roles”. This could see Christian pharmacists being forced to provide access to abortifacient drugs, such as the morning after pill. Similar guidelines already exist in Ireland.
