News Roundup

Ireland had Europe’s highest reported rate of gonorrhoea infection in 2022

Ireland has the highest reported rate of gonorrhoea infection of 30 European countries, according to a new report.

The European Centre for Disease Control (ECDC) said there has been a “troubling” rise in the most common sexually transmitted diseases across the continent.

Across the 30 countries in 2022, gonorrhoea cases rose by 48 per cent year on year, with syphilis cases up 34 per cent and chlamydia cases rising 16 per cent. Reported cases of other sexually transmitted diseases, including congenital syphilis, also increased substantially.

A record 3,812 cases of gonorrhoea were reported in Ireland in 2022, an increase of almost 60 per cent since 2018.

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‘Up to 2,000’ children born through surrogacy in ‘legal limbo’

Up to 2,000 Irish children born through surrogacy do not have a formal recognition of the adults who commissioned them and wish to be recognised as their parents, an Oireachtas committee has heard. Almost no country in Europe recognises commercial surrogacy because critics says it commodifies children and exploits low-income women. Some countries also ban non-commercial surrogacy. Ireland is planning one of the most permissive surrogacy laws in Europe.

Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly said the retrospective recognition of parentage is the most “significant and eagerly awaited component of the whole legislation” for many parents across the country.

He was speaking at a committee meeting on the Assisted Human Reproduction (AHR) Bill whose purpose is to provide a legal framework for domestic and international surrogacy.

Mr Donnelly said the real number of children awaiting recognition of their parentage is unclear as there is no register, adding that estimates range from 300 to 500 before saying there may be 2,000 children.

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Row as Law Society calls for Yes votes without consultation

A controversy has erupted over the decision of the council of the Law Society, the solicitors’ representative body, to publicly support a Yes vote in Friday’s referendums.

One solicitor, Gareth Noble, a leading family and child law solicitor, has withdrawn from the society’s committee on family and child law because of the position taken by the council.

Another solicitor, Jennifer O’Riada told The Irish Times newspaper that the council’s stance was outside its remit and power.

Some other lawyers took to social media to complain the society’s 11,500 members were not consulted before the 39-member council issuing its statement.

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Magdalenes group call for ‘No’ vote in care referendum

A campaign group for former residents of Magdalene laundries has called for a ‘No’ vote in the upcoming referendum to replace the ‘mothers in the home’ clause with a statement on care within the family.

Writing in the Examiner newspaper, Professor Katherine O’Donnell, Dr Maeve O’Rourke, and Dr Claire McGettrick, of the Justice for Magdalenes Research group, noted the “growing numbers of Irish feminists who are publicly admitting that they will vote no” on the care amendment.

They say the proposed article “betrays the committed work of many years by groups who campaigned together to achieve important recommendations from the Citizens’ Assembly and an all-party Oireachtas Committee, only for the Government to propose an entirely opposed understanding of what best constitutes ‘Care.’”

They add: “The Government wants to insist that it is families, first, foremost and solely who must provide care while the State will “strive” to support them. The Government’s proposed clause makes a distance between citizens, presumed clustered in family groupings, and a transcendent State, removed from obligations to care, committed to (at best) offering forms of support for all of the caring work that must be done.”

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‘Ambiguity’ and ‘lack of clarity’ in referendum proposals, says Presbyterian church

The Presbyterian Church in Ireland (PCI) has called the forthcoming family and care referendums a “missed opportunity” that would likely not be of any real benefit.

In a letter to its members, they say the “ambiguity and lack of clarity contained within some of the amendments will mean that it is unlikely to introduce meaningful change, which could have been of benefit to society as a whole”.

Specifically regarding the family referendum, they say, “we are disappointed that the proposed amendment seeks to remove the link between marriage and family”.

They add that they are “not alone in foreseeing major problems that will arise from the lack of clarity surrounding this new definition and interpretation of ‘durable relationships’ in the proposed new text”.

 On the “mothers in the home” or “care” amendment they express concern that the deletion of this article may unintentionally devalue the “pivotal role that mothers have in nurturing and bringing up children”, and lead to a failure to recognise “the huge economic, as well as the social value of parents (mothers and fathers), who have the ability to stay at home with their children during their formative years”.

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Gender ideology is ‘ugliest danger’ today, says Pope Francis

Pope Francis has said contemporary cultural challenges including gender ideology are putting at risk a culture that protects human and Christians vocations.

Gender ideology believes that gender is divorced from one’s biological sex and can be changed at will.

“It is very important that there is this meeting, this meeting between men and women, because today the ugliest danger is gender ideology, which cancels out differences,” the Pope said during an audience with members of the French-based academic organisation Research and Anthropology of Vocations Institute (CRAV).

Gender ideology, which seeks to blur differences between men and women through movements such as transgenderism, “makes everything the same,” Francis said.

“Erasing differences is erasing humanity. Man and woman, however, are in a fruitful ‘tension,’” Francis told the assembly, which gathered in Rome for a two-day international conference titled “Man, Woman, Image of God: For an Anthropology of Vocations.”

https://www.ncregister.com/cna/pope-francis-today-the-ugliest-danger-is-gender-ideology

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France makes abortion a constitutional right

France has become the first country in the world to explicitly include the right to abortion in its constitution.

Parliamentarians voted 780-72 to revise the country’s 1958 constitution to enshrine women’s “guaranteed freedom” to abort. Abortion has been available on wide grounds in France for almost 50 years. About 200,000 terminations take place in the country each year versus about 680,000 births.

President Emmanuel Macron described the move as “French pride” that had sent a “universal message”.

However pro-life groups have strongly criticised the change.

Polls show around 85% of the public supported amending the constitution to protect the right to abort.

And while several other countries include reproductive rights in their constitutions – France is the first to explicitly state that an abortion will be guaranteed.

It becomes the 25th amendment to modern France’s founding document, and the first since 2008.

Following the vote, the Eiffel Tower was lit up with the message: “My Body My Choice”.

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Independent Ireland TDs call for NO/NO vote 

The new political party of TDs Michael Collins, Michael Fitzmaurice and Richard O’Donoghue is advocating a No/No vote in the March 8 referendums on “family” and “care”.

Party Leader, Michael Collins, said that it’s “incredible to think that two days before Mother’s Day, the Irish government wants to remove the word woman from the constitution.”

“Here we have not one but two referendums that have been poorly worded, poorly communicated and rushed through without proper scrutiny and mixed messages on our current constitution from government ministers means I do not have the confidence to advocate for any change to our current constitution”.

“At a time when so many people are struggling to make ends meet, it is this sort of symbolic but ultimately insubstantial political point-scoring that grinds the gears of so many people. While the government spend millions of taxpayer’s monies on two referendums, the struggle in the cost of living, housing, healthcare and any number of other issues continue for ordinary men and women across the country”.

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Pro-life student group needs police protection from mob at Manchester

A student pro-life group required police to protect them from a hostile crowd of up to 250 people that surrounded a building where they were due to meet.

The University of Manchester’s Pro-Life Society, met for a talk on the evening of 1 March. As students tried to access the building, eggs were thrown at windows, while attendees were subject to “a torrent of verbal abuse and threats”.

As students left the event, they had to proceed through a tunnel of protesters held back by police as the air reverberated with chanting: “Shame on you! Shame on you! Shame on you!”

The pro-life students were spat at and threatened with physical abuse, including one female first-year student being told to “get raped”. Some members of the crowd then pursued the students while shouting and swearing at them.

A heavily pregnant 22-year-old woman had to be escorted home in a police van due to concerns for her safety.

“I really thought our lives were in danger,” says Maisie, the expectant mother and an alumna of the university.

A petition has been signed by 15,000 students looking for the pro-life organisation to be shut down completely.

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Trinity Students Union calls for ‘No’ vote in carers’ referendum

Trinity College Dublin Students’ Union (TCDSU) has advised its members to vote no in the upcoming referendum on care to “not sideline the needs and voices of individuals with disabilities”.

The group called for a yes vote in the family referendum to recognise “durable relationships”.

In a letter, the union said the referendum to replace Article 41.2 does not “foster a truly inclusive and equitable society”.

The letter said the wording “takes a narrow view of carers, pertaining solely to family, and completely disregards the needs of people with disabilities”.

“This is a massive oversight on part of the government, and in light of further recent developments, such as the flawed Green Paper on Disability Reform, is no surprise.”

The letter also said the new article would allow the state to “shirk any legal responsibility” to provide resources and support services for people with disabilities.

“We need to vote no on the care referendum to ensure stronger rights from the government – ones based on enforceable, rights-based wording, not vague promises.”

TCDSU is the only student union in Ireland so far to take a stance on the March 8 referendums.

TCDSU endorse #YesNo vote in upcoming family and care referendums

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