Push on to make Ireland’s abortion law even more permissive

 

This week saw the third anniversary of the abortion referendum. A review of the abortion law at the three-year stage was promised by the Government and to mark the occasion, the National Women’s Council in Ireland (NWCI) has released a major report that seeks to make Ireland’s already very liberal abortion regime even more permissive. Among other things, they want to remove the three-day waiting period and totally decriminalise abortion.

At present, abortion can be obtained for any reason up to 12 weeks, which is when the vast majority of terminations take place. The NWCI want to extend this limit into the second trimester of pregnancy – up to 24 weeks – which means abortion-on-demand even when the baby could survive outside the womb.

As mentioned, they want the complete removal of the three-day waiting period. A cooling-off period between asking for, and receiving an abortion, is quite common in other countries. For instance, it is seven days in Italy, six days in Belgium, five days in the Netherlands, and it gives the mother some time to consider an irreversible choice.

The current legislation allows abortion up to birth if the foetus is expected to die within 28 day of birth due to a potentially fatal condition.

The NWCI want a complete removal of any time limit. It means that a baby which could live for months, or even years after birth, could be killed in the womb, or else delivered alive and left to die.

Moreover, they want the State to cover all the medical and travel costs for those who have abortion abroad. This would include “claim expenses around the repatriation of remains and funeral arrangement”. No such provision exists for similar abortions carried out in the country.

The NWCI want to ban prayers or protests outside abortion facilities. No other European country has similar bans and Garda Commissioner Drew Harris has said that exclusion zones outside abortion facilities are not needed.

The document also says: “Conscientious objection should not be permitted to obstruct access to abortion care”. It is not clear what this implies but the NWCI think that the State should be collecting data about conscientious objections. This could have a chilling effect on the right.

Currently, in nine of the 19 Irish maternity hospitals abortions are not offered because of conscientious objectors. The NWCI want abortions in every maternity hospital and are demanding fast-tracked medical appointments to fill the gaps. As a consequence, doctors would be recruited only if they are not conscientious objectors. What will happen to them if they change their mind? This would undermine the basic principle of freedom of conscience.

The NWCI document also requests maternity hospitals to offer priority ultrasound access to women seeking abortions, over any other expecting mother. They want all “abortion services” to be free for all, including illegal immigrants, and they are asking to remove the requirement for an Irish address.

In addition, they want the definition of ‘health’ broadened to the greatest possible extent so that, in practical terms, abortion is available on-demand at any point in the pregnancy.

As we can see, the abortion lobby in Ireland is not satisfied with the huge victory they achieved three years ago. They are now seeking to extinguish the right-to-life of the unborn even more. It is more urgent than ever that the pro-life movement keep the humanity of the unborn before the public and never let it be lost sight of.

Pain-relief must be compulsory for late-term abortions

A group of pro-life TDs has presented a Bill that would require doctors to give pain-relief medication to a foetus before it is aborted.

There is scientific evidence that babies in the womb can feel pain. In fact, it would be stunning if beyond a certain stage of development, a foetus, being a living human being, could not feel pain. Recent studies suggest that this can happen as early as 13 weeks.

Pain-relief medication is routinely administered as standard medical practice by foetal surgeons who operate on unborn babies but there is no such requirement for abortions.

The Bill, presented by the Life and Dignity Group and other pro-life TDs, requires the administration of anaesthetic or analgesic to a foetus that has reached or exceeds 20 weeks of pregnancy, or when it is likely that it will suffer pain.

This is similar to an amendment proposed when the current abortion legislation was debated in the Oireachtas in 2018. At the time, Minister for Health, Simon Harris rejected the proposal on the basis that such provisions should not be in primary legislation but rather in the medical guidelines.

Minister Harris said: “I cannot write the clinical guidelines, … our clinicians know how to carry out procedures and operate in an ethical manner in accordance with the Medical Council. I have absolutely no doubt about that. Our doctors go into hospitals every day to ease pain and I have no doubt that all these issues will be considered when the clinical guidelines are being drawn up. What we cannot do in this House is don the white coats and the stethoscopes and become obstetricians and gynaecologists. We are policymakers. Pain relief and care pathways come from doctors, not politicians.”

But Minister Harris is wrong for two reasons. Firstly, the onus on veterinary doctors to administer pain relief to animals when performing procedures is covered in primary legislation and so there is no reason why similar provisions cannot be put in place with regard to human pain. Animals are treated better than unborn children.

Moreover, three years after the abortion referendum, no guidelines appear to have been issued by any hospital or professional medical body in Ireland that prescribe foetal pain relief in case of abortions. This is why this Bill is necessary.

The guidelines issued in January 2020 by the Institute of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists in Ireland do not mention pain relief to the baby when presenting the various types of abortion procedures.

Things are different in other countries. The French College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, for instance, recommends that doctors administer pain relief to unborn babies before late-term abortions. And close to 20 states in the US also have laws ensuring that babies are given pain-relief before late-term abortion.

When presenting the Bill to the Dáil, Deputy Carol Nolan said: “The infliction of unnecessary or avoidable pain on human beings, especially those with no capacity to resist, is something that all compassionate societies should seek to avoid. Thankfully, in most areas of modern medicine, this principle is routinely adopted in practice. This is why medical ethics require that surgical procedures, both routine and major, are carried out with the use of anaesthetics and analgesics, except in extreme circumstances where this is not possible.”

After being introduced on the 12^th May, the Pain Relief Bill is now before Dáil Éireann and it will be debated after the Summer recess at the earliest. 

Why vaccine passports must not be compulsory

 

‘Vaccine passports’, if they are introduced, are documents which would certify that someone has been vaccinated against Covid-19. Without them, you might not be able to access certain places or services. There is even concern churches might insist on them for access to worship. But they are morally problematic for a number of reasons.

Of course, authorities have a right, and also a duty, to protect public health, but the necessary measures have to be proportionate and should not infringe basic rights.

Personally speaking, I believe I have a moral duty to be vaccinated. But I also believe that this must be voluntary, and the State (and private organisations as a general rule) have no right to impose a Covid-19 vaccine on citizens.

Every medical treatment should be based on consent. If excessive burdens are imposed on those who do not want, or cannot get vaccinated, this becomes de facto a form of coercion.

A refusal to be vaccinated should be respected. Some people might have moral or philosophical reasons to object to vaccines and, unless they become dangerous to others, it is their right to follow their conscience.

Requiring people to prove they have received the Covid vaccination to access certain places or services is equivalent to punishing those who have not received it. It creates two classes of citizens, and one has more rights than others.

An alternative to insisting that someone who boards a flight (say), has been vaccinated, is to ensure they test negatively for the virus before they embark.

Another negative effect of requiring vaccine passports is the possibility of diminishing public confidence in health authorities. Hesitant citizens will become even more suspicious if public health measures are enforced with a punitive attitude.

Vaccine passports are not per se immoral. Restrictions can be introduced when the circumstances require them, but only on a limited basis and they must be proportionate to the actual threat that unvaccinated people pose to the rest of society.

It is also important to distinguish common or essential activities from non-necessary ones. People should not be prevented accessing necessary services.

The use of vaccine passports instead would be more acceptable, for instance, to restrict those travelling from countries with a high level of infection, as they are more at risk, but it should not be the norm for the general population. Again, passengers could be tested for the virus before boarding.

Concerns similar to the ones outlined above have been expressed by a letter signed by more than 1,200 church leaders in the UK, warning that introducing vaccine passport would create a “medical apartheid”.

“This scheme has the potential to bring about the end of liberal democracy as we know it and to create a surveillance state in which the government uses technology to control certain aspects of citizens’ lives,” the letter said.

The Anscombe Bioethics Centre, a Catholic institute based in Oxford, has produced a detailed document in response to the UK government call for consultation on vaccine passports. They claim that “if applied widely, [vaccine passports] would undermine the voluntariness of vaccination and constitute unethical coercion. They would also very likely be socially divisive and raise questions in relation to equality law.”

 

Covid-19 caused a bigger decline in Catholic weddings than civil ones. Why?

 What effect did Covid-19 have on the number of weddings that took place in Ireland last year compared with 2019? As you can imagine, a very big effect. In fact, the figure halved, but the reduction in the amount of Catholic weddings was bigger than in the number of civil weddings. Why might that have been?

2020 has been an exceptional year because of the pandemic, and it would be pointless to compare the 2020 statistics with the previous year to infer some sort of trend, but it is interesting to analyse in details what has happened to avoid rush conclusions.

There were 9,209 opposite-sex marriages in Ireland in 2020, about half the number for 2019 (19,673) and 2018 (20,389), according to the recently released figures from the CSO 53pc less, to be more precise.

Same-sex marriages also halved from 640 in 2019 to 314 in 2020, which represents a 51pc decline.

The 2020 opposite-sex marriage rate for 1,000 population was a mere 1.9. This figure was 4.7 in 2015 and 4.0 in 2019, and it means that less people are getting married. The rate has been constantly declining since the 1980s, particularly so in recent years, and it has now reached approximately the same level as in the UK.

While a general drop in the number of weddings was easily predictable, the fact that the number of civil weddings surpassed Catholic weddings for the first time certainly stood out.

While religious marriages overall were still slightly more frequent (50.2pc) than non-religious ones (49.8pc), civil ceremonies (3,779) were more popular than Catholic weddings (3,295) in the year of the pandemic.

Atheist Ireland claimed that these figures show that Ireland is no longer a Catholic country, but I am afraid they may be disappointed to discover that most likely not the case.

The reason for this temporary decline seems quite simple: of all weddings, civil ones are the least likely to be postponed. A closer look at the statistics will prove my point.

When we compare the distribution of marriages through the year, we see a sharp decline in April, May and June 2020, and another decline in November. December, instead of the traditional August, was the month with most weddings in 2020.

Many marriages were postponed last year but, if we look at the statistics, it is clear that civil marriages were postponed less than other marriages. For instance, compared to the previous year, civil marriages saw a 43pc decline, while all marriages went down 53pc and Catholic marriages dropped 63pc. This is not because Ireland has suddenly become far less Catholic but because the couples who marry in a church are more likely to want a big day and so they are more likely to be postponed in a period of uncertainty, while civil ceremonies in a registry office are likely to be smaller affairs.

If we look, for instance, at same-sex marriages we discover that in 2020 civil ceremonies represented 72.6pc of the overall number, while they were 62.2pc the previous years. Humanist and Spiritualist ceremonies for same-sex marriages went from 29.7pc combined in 2019 to 20.7pc in 2020.

If we look at non-religious ceremonies, civil weddings went up from 31.6pc in 2019 to 42.1pc in 2020 while Humanist ceremonies went down from 9.4pc to 7.8 pc. The explanation is the same as above: civil marriages are the least likely to be postponed.

Spiritualist marriages also went down from 8pc of the total in 2019, to 6.7pc last year. These often take place in hotels and involve couples who don’t marry in a church but want a religious element to their wedding.

There is another important factor to consider.

First marriages went down 55.4pc in 2020, compared to the previous year. But marriages involving at least one divorced person went down by ‘only’ 41.8pc. This shows that those who are marrying for the first time were more likely to postpone their big day compared to those who were remarrying. And given that Catholic marriages generally do not involve someone who is divorced, this factor also contributed to the temporary decline of Catholic ceremonies in 2020.

In 2020 marriages were postponed for very practical reasons and, the more complex the ceremony, the more likely this happened.

This is not to say religious marriages are not declining in number anyway overall, but last year was unique for the reasons given above. 2021 is still an exceptional year but, as we will be back to normality, some anomalies that we saw in the 2020 figures will likely also disappear.