Tag Archives: Country: Ireland

Irish Times: Abortion legislation is incompatible with the core values of human rights, Prof William Binchy, legal adviser to the anti-abortion campaign, has told the Oireachtas committee. He said those values respected and protected the equal dignity and worth of every human being.

Christian Institute: Christian printer Nick Williamson explains why he is standing up to the bullies who are trying to force him to print a gay magazine.

Charles C. Camosy at Washington Post: The church, in part because Catholic institutions would be compelled to do these abortions, has reacted strongly against the measure. The Irish Bishops, for instance, point out that abortion, “is never a remedy for suicidal ideation and therefore should never be cited as a justification for the direct killing of an innocent human being.” There is even talk of excommunication of Irish lawmakers depending on how this all plays out.

BBC: Cardinal Sean Brady has urged 5,500 people at an anti-abortion prayer vigil in the Irish Republic to lobby their politicians over a draft abortion bill.

Christian Concern: The Irish Cabinet has reached an agreement on the terms of a controversial bill that would permit abortions on the grounds of mental health.

AP: Ireland unveiled a long-awaited bill Wednesday that lays down new rules governing when life-saving abortions can be performed, a point of potentially lethal confusion for women in a country that outlaws terminations.

BBC: The Irish cabinet has reached agreement on a controversial bill on abortion that will include the credible threat of suicide as grounds for a termination.

AP: A paralyzed Irish woman who wants to die cannot legally commit suicide with her partner’s help, Ireland’s Supreme Court ruled Monday in a case that moved some in the courtroom to tears.

BBC: A Sinn Fein motion calling on the Northern Ireland Executive to legislate to allow for same sex marriage has been defeated in the assembly by 53 votes to 42.

Christian Institute: The Presbyterian Church in Ireland is calling on MLAs to vote against a motion supporting same-sex marriage in Northern Ireland on Monday.

Irish Times: Proposed new abortion laws will go before the Cabinet next week. Minister forf Health James Reilly reported to his ministerial colleagues on the progress of the legislation which is due to be enacted by July. It had been expected Dr Reilly would bring the proposed legislation to Cabinet today.

Christian Institute: A motion supporting same-sex marriage will be debated in the Northern Ireland Assembly later this month – despite MLAs rejecting a similar move in October last year.

Irish Times: A new forum for communication between the judiciary and the Government has been formed, the Chief Justice has announced.

Turtle Bay and Beyond: The constitutional convention backs the extension of marriage rights to same-sex couples, the Irish Times reports. With this decision, Ireland seems set to join the fold of countries that want to destroy the institution of marriage by re-defining it beyond recognisability. But it could still be prevented, as a popular referendum will be needed.

Christian Institute: The Christian owner of a printing firm in Northern Ireland faces being hauled to court over his refusal to print a gay magazine. Nick Williamson, who is being advised by The Christian Institute, says printing the material would go against his religious beliefs.

Christian Institute: Legal action could be used to force same-sex marriage on Northern Ireland, according to two groups that back gay marriage.

Gatestone Institute: City planners in the Irish capital, Dublin, have given the go-ahead for the construction of a sprawling mega-mosque complex that will cater to Ireland’s burgeoning Muslim population.
The massive €40 million ($50 million) “Islamic Cultural Center” will be built on a six-acre site in Clongriffin, a new and as yet unfinished suburb at the northern edge of Dublin.

Washington Post: Ruth Bowie was in the throes of grief when she found out she would never know her unborn child. At the 12-week mark, a pregnancy scan showed the baby had anencephaly, a fatal condition in which a portion of the brain and skull never form.

Chileb.cl: Interestingly, both countries have the least permissive abortion laws in the world, while still displaying negligible abortion-related mortality. This challenges the myth according to which the restriction of abortion leads to hundreds -even thousands- deaths due to abortion: that’s untrue.

Christian Institute: An attempt to stop private clinics carrying out abortions in Northern Ireland was blocked on Tuesday – even though it won majority support. It was vetoed at the Northern Ireland Assembly by the Sinn Fein Party and two MLAs from the Alliance Party and the Green Party.

Christian Concern: An amendment that would have made it illegal for abortions to take place outside the NHS in Northern Ireland has been blocked by Sinn Fein, despite being strongly supported by the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP).

Independent.ie: GAY or lesbian teachers in fear of losing their job because of their sexuality are to be protected, under proposed new legislation.

BBC: Campaigners and politicians from NI and the Irish Republic have gathered at Stormont to oppose any change to abortion laws on the island of Ireland.

Guardian: SDLP’s Alban Maginness and DUP’s Paul Girvan to push for law that would make abortions available only via NHS in province

Independent.ie: “A transgender dentist is to launch a fresh legal challenge for a new birth certificate recognising her female gender.”

Belfast Telegraph: A legal victory for a lesbian couple who want to jointly raise one partner’s child could lead to same sex couples in Northern Ireland being allowed to adopt, a gay rights activist has said.

Catholic Herald: Soon, an abortion Bill will travel through the Oireachtas, the two houses that together make up Ireland’s government. Our prime minister, Enda Kenny, wants legal grounds for an abortion if the baby’s mother is suicidal. He’s arguing that this will not, in everyday clinical practice, become “abortion on demand”. For most people, pro-life or pro-abortion, Kenny lacks credibility.

Christian News: The Republic of Ireland, which has long been held up as one of the most traditional Roman Catholic Church nations, has ranked religion dead last out of 119 options in a new poll seeking to determine what people consider important in their lives.

BosNewsLife: A Christian Europarliamentarian has urged Ireland to use its European Union presidency to tackle the world’s “growing persecution of Christians.”

LifeSiteNews: The UK’s busiest abortion organization is offering training sessions for Irish medical students who want to “observe the procedure.” Students can attend one-week externships to “witness how abortion procedures are carried out.”

LifeSiteNews: Tens of thousands thronged the streets of Dublin outside the country’s parliament on Friday night to demand that the Fine Gael/Labour coalition government keep a campaign promise to keep Ireland abortion-free. Demonstrators came from around the country for the vigil and rally, the highlight of which was a phone call to the Prime Minister’s office in which 30,000 people chorused, “Enda, Keep Your Promise.”

Catholic Culture: A Catholic church in Belfast was badly damaged by homemade bombs on Monday night, as renewed tensions in Northern Ireland prompted clashes between Catholics and Protestants.

Irish Times: Master of the National Maternity Hospital Dr Rhona Mahony said legislation should be broad enough “to allow regulation to provide the detail and flexibility necessary to deal with current and future circumstance”.

Irish Independent (includes video): NEW laws to reform the limited ban on abortion will only allow a pregnancy to be terminated if there is a real and substantial risk to a woman’s life – including the threat of suicide, it has been confirmed. The Government will introduce a combination of legislation and regulation in the new year to legalise the procedure as a last resort to save a pregnant woman’s life.

First Things: Ireland’s cabinet offered a proposal today that would legalize abortion in cases where the mother’s life is at risk, including from suicide. Irish Prime Minister Edna Kenny says they system will not lead to “abortion on demand” . . .

LifeNews: In Europe, Ireland is a symbol of resistance against abortion. Nevertheless, Ireland is on the point of giving in to the concerted pressure of the Council of Europe and the pro-abortion lobbies.

NC Register: The Irish bishops’ conference is insisting that almost all the options recommended by a recent report for changing the country’s abortion laws are unacceptable, since allowing abortion cannot be morally justified.

The HIll: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is being pressured to address the thorny topic of Irish abortion law when she visits Dublin Thursday on one of her last official foreign trips.

LifeSiteNews: “International experience” has shown that attempts to legalize abortion in Ireland in “limited” cases, including where women threaten suicide, would quickly “open the floodgates” for abortion on demand, the Catholic bishops of Ireland have said in a new statement.

LifeSiteNews: Over 10,000 gathered outside Ireland’s parliament this week to demand that Prime Minister Enda Kenny keep his campaign promise of 2011 not to bring legalized abortion into the Republic. The crowd included five Catholic bishops, and was organized by a united effort of all of Ireland’s pro-life organizations.

Fox News (AP): A Protestant mob has stormed into the grounds of Belfast City Hall and clashed with police after the council’s Catholic majority voted to remove the British flag from the building for most of the year. More information …

LifeSiteNews: Kitty Holland, the Irish Times reporter who broke the story about the death of Savita Halappanavar that launched a global crusade against Ireland’s pro-life laws, has admitted that the story of Mrs. Halappanavar asking for an abortion may have been a little bit “muddled” in the retelling.

Katherine Connell at National Review: Julie F. Kay’s piece in Slate, “What the Irish Abortion Tragedy Means for the United States,” is the latest attempt to cast the death of a pregnant woman, Savita Halappanavar, in a Galway hospital as a cautionary tale for America. This is what would happen, the story goes, if Republicans succeeded in making abortion illegal except in cases where the mother’s life is threatened, as is the case in Ireland.

Irish Times: The husband of the late Savita Halappanavar has decided to proceed with an application to the European Court of Human Rights.

LifeSiteNews: Ireland’s prime minister is reportedly facing a backlash from his own party over rumored plans to legalize abortion in the Republic . . . Taoiseach Enda Kenny is caught between strong public disapproval of abortion and opposition from his own backbench MPs and ministers on the one hand and pressure from Labour coalition partners who have legalisation as part of their party agenda.

Chicago Tribune: When I argued a case challenging Ireland’s ban on abortion before the European Court of Human Rights in 2009, I told the story of my client, “Ms. C,” who had been battling cancer when she became pregnant. Ms. C’s doctors in Ireland, where abortion is illegal and lifesaving abortion is largely unavailable, refused to provide her with even basic information about the risk that continuation of pregnancy posed to her life, and so she had no option but to travel to England to obtain an abortion.

Jill Stanke at LifeSiteNews: Twelve mothers that we know of died from “safe and legal” abortions in the U.S. in 2008. And as Americans United for Life’s Charmaine Yoest noted to LifeNews.com, “That number is double the deaths reported the previous year and it’s the highest since 1994.”

LifeSiteNews: The media-generated uproar over the death of Savita Halappanavar in a hospital in Galway has emboldened Labour Party coalition members to push for legalization of abortion on what they believe to be a wave of public support. The government will act “speedily” to “implement a new legal framework” allowing “limited abortion,” said Brendan Howlin, the Labour Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform.

First Things: Indeed, international statistics confirm that Ireland, without abortion, remains one of the safest countries in the world in which to be pregnant and to give birth. This is a position that should continue to be cherished and strengthened in the interests of mothers and unborn children in Ireland.

BBC: Three Galway-based consultants will now not be part of the inquiry into the death of Savita Halappanavar.

Paul Coleman at Townhall: In late October, a 31-year old female dentist named Savita Halappanavar died in Ireland after being refused an abortion. And although there was no causal link between the refused abortion and her death at the time, and there remains none now, pro-abortion proponents are seizing on her death as sufficient reason to legalize abortions in Ireland.

Boston Globe (AP): About 10,000 people marched through Dublin and observed a minute’s silence Saturday in memory of the Indian dentist who died of blood poisoning in an Irish hospital after being denied an abortion.

Hilary White at LifeSiteNews: But I dive in because it seems as if the whole world has suddenly fallen into a frenzy to murder Irish children. I’ll say it again, just so we’re clear: the calls for legalisation of abortion in Ireland, always carefully framed in the media and parliaments as a matter of “women’s rights,” is a call for the unrestricted slaughter of innocent children.

LifeSiteNews: The death of a young woman in Galway, reportedly from complications of a miscarriage, has abortion-promoters demonstrating in the streets of Dublin, demanding legislation to legalise abortion. Pro-life leaders in Ireland and abroad, however, have slammed the media and abortion campaigners for using the young woman’s tragic death despite the dearth of details about what actually happened. They have also pointed to clear evidence that pro-abortion groups knew about Savita’s case days before it hit the media, and that they were already planning on using the case to further their cause.

LifeNews: We cannot know the all the details about her condition, treatment, and untimely death until the investigations are completed and the results made available to the public. What we do know is that the standard medical practice, in conformity with Irish law and medical ethics, requires that pregnant women receive all essential medical treatment during pregnancy – even if it won’t be possible for the baby to survive that treatment.

Independent.ie: The question that needs to be asked is: was Ms Halappanavar treated in line with existing obstetrical practice in Ireland? In this kind of situation the baby can be induced early (though is very unlikely to survive). The decision to induce labour early would be fully in compliance with the law and the current guidelines set out for doctors by the Irish Medical Council

AP: Pressure is mounting in Ireland for the government to draft a law spelling out when life-saving abortions can be performed following the death in the hospital of a pregnant woman who was denied an abortion.

LifeSiteNews: The passage of the Children’s Rights Referendum in Ireland this weekend – 57.4 per cent to 42.6 per cent – is a blow to families, NO campaigners have said.

Washington Post (AP): The debate over legalizing abortion in Ireland flared Wednesday after the government confirmed that a miscarrying woman suffering from blood poisoning was refused a quick termination of her pregnancy and died in an Irish hospital.

One News Now: Government officials in Ireland say a constitutional amendment which would give greater state control over children is set to be approved with an approximately 60 percent “yes” votes.

Jurist: Voters in Ireland on Saturday approved a constitutional amendment [text] on children’s rights that changes existing wording in the constitution to make certain rights more explicit.

Pro Life Blogs: Irish voters will take up a referendum this Saturday to decide whether or not to surrender their parental rights to the government. The referendum would insert a “child rights” amendment into the Irish constitution and open families up to forced adoptions and the use of the “best interests of the child” standard in “all proceedings.”

LifeSiteNews: The Irish Council of Civil Liberties has launched a complaint to the Council of Europe, saying that Ireland’s refusal to legalise abortion is an obstruction to obtaining full “equality” for women. The ICCL is a project of Chuck Feeney, a US-based billionaire and philanthropist and one of the major forces for leftward “progressivist” change in Ireland.

C-FAM: Pro-life groups in Ireland fear that recommendations from a panel of experts appointed by Irish Health Minister James Reilly would be the first steps to introduce legal abortion in Ireland. The minister is expected to issue new regulations following the recommendations of an expert panel set up in January as a response to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruling in the case of A, B & C v. Ireland, from 2010.

USA Today: The first abortion clinic on the island of Ireland opened Thursday in Belfast, sparking protests by conservatives from both the Catholic and Protestant sides of Northern Ireland.

NPR (AP): Unmarried and same-sex couples in Northern Ireland should be allowed to adopt children, a Belfast judge ruled Thursday, overturning a 1987 adoption law that discriminated against both groups . . . Belfast High Court Justice Seamus Treacy ruled that the law clearly violated European human rights laws on privacy and discrimination. | The Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission’s Application [2012] NIQB 77

LifeSiteNews: Irish pro-life and family observers are warning that an upcoming referendum to amend the constitution regarding the “rights of the child” is in reality a “power grab of monstrous proportions” by government aimed at erasing the natural rights of parents and of children.

The video posted on YouTube here.

Herald.ie: The law is no “paper tiger” and will closely monitor Northern Ireland’s first private abortion clinic, Health Minister Edwin Poots has warned

BBC: Northern Ireland is not covered by the 1967 Abortion Act and, unlike the rest of the UK, abortions can be carried out only to preserve the life of the mother or if continuing the pregnancy would have other serious, permanent physical or mental health effects.

AP: The Marie Stopes clinic due to open next week in Belfast, capital of the British territory of Northern Ireland, plans to offer non-surgical abortions to women whose pregnancies are less than nine weeks in gestation.

Reuters: Patricia Casey’s views on abortion were formed at the age of 12 when she came across an image of what looked to her like a torn-apart baby – an aborted foetus.

Christian Institute: A motion to support redefining marriage has today been defeated in the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Belfast Telegraph: A sexual health charity has challenged the Health Minister to issue guidance on abortion in Northern Ireland to health professionals immediately after the latest round in a legal battle. The Family Planning Association has won High Court permission to challenge the failure to issue new Government guidelines on abortion here.

BBC: A sexual health charity has been granted High Court permission to challenge the government’s alleged failure to issue new guidelines on abortion in Northern Ireland.