Tuesday, September 30, 2014

Updated commentary on the Revised General Scheme of the Children and Family Relationships Bill 2014

The Alliance for the Defence of the Family and Marriage [ADFAM] has issued a new commentary on the revised general scheme for the Family and Relationships bill as set out below.

Update on ‘the Shatter Bill’
[i.e. the Revised General Scheme of the Children and Family Relationships Bill 2014]
–– it will serve neither children nor mothers
·       The definition of ‘parent’ in this revised General Scheme ignores the fact that the Family according to Article 41.1.1° of the Constitution of Ireland has ‘inalienable and imprescriptible rights, antecedent and superior to all positive law’; and ignores the definition of ‘family’ given by Mrs Justice Susan Denham in McD. –v- L & anor (2009), point 62, where she says ‘Therefore arising from the Terms of the Constitution, “family” means a family based on marriage of a man and a woman.’ The revised General Scheme implies that biological parents can transfer such rights to commissioning couples, for example, in cases of surrogacy. It also directs that in the case of Assisted Human Reproduction ‘conception’ is to be read as ‘implantation’. That ignores the legal reality that the State already accepts the validity of the DNA test, a test based on the scientific fact that the individual human being begins life at fertilization [see the Criminal Justice (Forensic Evidence and DNA Database System) Act 2014]. If the validity of the DNA test is to be undermined in that way, it will have serious knock-on effects in regard to forensic evidence in cases of criminal law to do with murder, rape, robbery, and sundry other crimes.
 [Part 1, Head 2: Interpretation (1), (2)]
·       The revised General Scheme would discriminate between the biological father and the biological mother by persisting in the contested principle that the woman who gives birth is the legal mother. [Part 3: Head 10, (3), (4)]
·       The revised General Scheme pre-empts the judgement of the Supreme Court on the appeal by the Government against the Abbott judgement [The High Court, March 5, 2013]. The Abbott judgement acknowledges the right of the genetic mother to be recognized as the legal mother. [Part 2, Parentage and Presumption of Paternity, Head 5: Parentage (2)]
·       The revised General Scheme, by allowing adoption and custody of children by non-marital couples, cohabiting couples, not excluding same-sex couples, disregards its own stated principle of ‘Best interests of the child’ by ignoring the evidence that children living in the care of such couples, are 8 times more likely to be harmed than children living with married biological parents [Abuse, Neglect, Adoption and Foster Care Research, National Incidence Study of Child Abuse and Neglect (NIS-4), 2004-2009, March 2010, (Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation)]; and are 50 times more likely to die of injuries, than children residing with two biological parents [P. G. Schnitzer, ‘Child death resulting from inflicted injuries: household risk factors and perpetrator chararcteristics’, Pediatrics 116 (2005) 687-93.] [Part 3, Head 10: Parentage in cases of assisted reproduction using eggs, sperm or in vitro embryos provided by donors; Part 7, Head 37 Best interests of the child]
·       The revised General Scheme is an attempt to legislate, by the back door, for Assisted Human Reproduction including In Vitro Fertilization [IVF]. IVF, as ordinarily practised, relies on the foreseen wastage of 96% of human embryos conceived in vitro [i.e. ‘on glass’]. When more than 1 embryo is  implanted in  a woman, and when that woman is somewhat older, she is advised to have at least one of the extra embryos aborted, as it is claimed that the procedure poses a risk to her health and her life. A recent Chinese study has confirmed the strong link between abortion and breast cancer [‘A meta-analysis of the association between induced abortion and breast cancer risk among Chinese females’, Cancer Causes Control, November 24, 2013]. [Part 4 Safeguards to Preserve the Child’s Identity in Cases of Assisted Reproduction Using Donor Gametes, Head 12, (2), (3)]
Issued by the Alliance for the Defence of the Family and Marriage [ADFAM]
www.adfam.ie

Monday, September 29, 2014

Mothers and Fathers Matter

New organisation demands major reform of Children and Family Relationships Bill

A NEW organisation called Mothers and Fathers Matter has been launched today to draw attention to the anti-child nature of the Children and Family Relationships Bill in its present form.

The message of Mothers and Fathers Matter is exactly that, mothers and fathers matter. The latest version of the General Scheme of the Children and Family Relationships Bill, published last week, denies this outright.

In its present form the proposed legislation:

- Commodifies children

- Undermines the right of a child to a mother and father whenever possible

- Deliberately disrupts the natural ties between parents and children

- Undermines the special status of marriage in the Constitution

Minister Fitzgerald gives the impression that the law simply regulates existing family relationships by giving them necessary legal supports. In fact the law creates an almost absolute right to produce a child via artificial means and an extremely wide right for adults to adopt children regardless of marital status or whether the child’s right to a mother and father will be respected.

The law thus promotes families where children are deliberately denied either a mother or a father. This element of what the law does is based on adults’ wishes and not on the best interests of the child.

The proposed legislation authorises adults to deliberately deprive a child of a connection to either his/her natural mother or natural father where those adults use donor sperm or a donor egg to have a child. Using donor gametes to have a child commodifies children by allowing adults in effect to ‘order them’, even to particular specifications. (This is why eggs from university undergraduates are often sought by fertility clinics).

While the Bill will not provide a statutory basis for surrogacy, as was originally intended, neither will it prohibit the practice. It remains open to adults to use surrogate mothers to have babies, that is, to contract women to have babies for them.

The new scheme of the Bill aims to prohibit anonymous egg and sperm donation. This gives a child the right to know their natural parents when they reach age 18. But it means they have no right to a relationship with their missing natural parent as they grow up and even when they reach 18, their natural parent may refuse them such a relationship.

Mothers and Fathers Matter therefore asks Minister Fitzgerald to amend the Bill to take proper account of the natural ties and to protect children’s right to a relationship with their natural parents which, in every case, will be their mother and their father.

Mothers and Fathers Matter Chairman, Professor Ray Kinsella said: “We believe this legislation seriously undermines the rights of children. It amazes us that a Government, which professes to be pro-child, would wish to pass a piece of legislation that treats the natural tie, and by extension motherhood and fatherhood, in such a dismissive fashion”.

He continued: “We should have learnt the lessons of the past by now. We know the pain it can cause to children when they do not know their natural parents. The Government should do what it can to spare children this pain rather than inflicting it on them. Prohibiting anonymous egg and sperm donation does not properly protect the rights of children. Egg and sperm donation themselves need to be prohibited.

“Adoption law should also seek to place children with a married mother and father whenever possible. Only in exceptional circumstances should this preference be set aside. The proposed Bill does not uphold this preference at all. It allows cohabiting couples as well as same-sex couples in Civil Partnerships to adopt. This further highlights the fact that the Government does not attach any special importance either to marriage or to motherhood and fatherhood.”

He concluded: “Common sense as well as our Constitution acknowledge the place of mothers and fathers in conceiving, nurturing and raising children. We should not be legislating to subvert the most basic entitlement of a child.”

ENDS

Further information about Mothers and Fathers Matter can be found on our website: www.mothersandfathersmatter.ie

Contact details:

Professor Ray Kinsella: 087 123 8884

Friday, September 26, 2014

Voice of the Family: New and important Initiative.

Voice of the Family is an initiative of Catholic laity from major pro-life/pro-family organisations. It has been formed to offer expertise and resources before, during and after the Synod. The group is offering assistance to Synod Fathers, such as research, expert briefings, speech-drafting, and professional support and contacts.

Voice of the Family argues that the following themes must be central to the Synod’s conclusions:

• Sacramental marriage, binding parents together in an indissoluble union, is the greatest protector of children both born and unborn.
• the inseparability of the unitive and procreative dimensions of the sexual act is an essential defence against the culture of death.
• parents are the primary educators of their children.

By making a particular stand in defence of parents as primary educators, the Synod Fathers would be embracing marriage, the sanctity of human life, and the truth about human sexuality. The potency of this issue at grassroots level cannot be overestimated

The initiative is supported by:
Campaign Life Catholics
Campaign Life Coalition Canada
Catholic Voice
Culture of Life Africa
European Life Network
Human Life International (HLI)
LifeSiteNews.com
National Association of Catholic Families (NACF)
Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC)


The Voice of the Family website has already posted a number of important articles and will be updated regularly throughout the synod.

Links to the following articles










Thursday, September 18, 2014

UN side event on reducing under 5-child mortality ignores the elephant in the room


A side event organized jointly by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and the Permanent Mission of Ireland launched a new technical guidance document on ‘the application of a human rights based approach to reduce and eliminate preventable mortality and morbidity of children under 5’. The technical guidance is very timely in respect of babies between birth and age 5 however it ignores the elephant in the room, the approximately 45 million unborn babies aborted before birth every year.
Millennium Development Goal (MDG) 4 called for the reduction of child mortality by 2/3 from the 1990 level. Figures presented at the side event say that the rate has halved from 90 deaths per 1000 live births to 46 in 2013, most of which (95%) occurs in Africa and Asia. The global rate of decrease is accelerating it was 1.2% in 1994-5 and has now reached 4%. Clearly there is still much to do.
The question that must be asked is why is the largest and most vulnerable group of children the approximately 45 million unborn babies who are slaughtered every year, ignored when preventable child mortality is under discussion?  Surely this is contrary to the provisions of the CRC and in point of fact represents a double standard. The unborn clearly come into the category of being under 5 and the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) in its preamble says:
“The child by reason of his physical and mental immaturity, needs special safeguards and care, including appropriate legal protection, before as well as after birth”.

The real issues are usually avoided and the standard UN argument in support of ignoring the child before birth is that the CRC only applies from birth. This argument however does not stand up when the travaux preparatoire (the history of the negotiations) is considered. Poland being a communist country at the time of the negotiations proposed that the Convention would apply only from birth. This was rejected and the ensuing document is not limited to born children only.
It should also be noted that the personhood of the child before birth is implied in the CRC by referring to 'the child' before as well as after birth.

This resolution is an update of last years one on the same issue, which called for the preparation of technical guidance which was announced today.

The report tells us that most child mortality is due to a small number of diseases and conditions 43% occur among newborn babies from birth to 28 days and are mainly due to pre-term birth complications, birth asphyxia and trauma, and sepsis. After the first 28 days, until age of 5 years, the majority of deaths are attributable to infectious diseases such as pneumonia (22%), diarrhoeal diseases (15%), malaria (12%) and HIV/AIDS (3%).  The vast majority of conditions and diseases that lead to death among children under 5 years of age are preventable and treatable through cost-effective interventions.

Friday, September 5, 2014

Commentary on the Children and Family Relationships Bill 2014


Pursuant to the publication of the General Scheme of a Children and Family Relationships Bill on the 30th January 2014, it is important to point out some of the unseen consequences which will arise should the bill be enacted in its present form We understand that the aim of the Bill 2014 is to ‘put in place a legal architecture to underpin diverse parenting situations and to provide legal clarity on parental rights and responsibilities in such situations’.

The Bill known as ‘Shatter’s Bill’will serve neither children nor mothers, according to a press release by the Association for the Defense of the Family and Marriage ADFAM 
[Heads of the Children and Family Relationships Bill 2014]
·       The definition of ‘embryo’ indicates a profound lack of respect, and that of ‘parent’ ignores the fact that the Family according to Article 41.1.1° of the Constitution of Ireland has ‘inalienable and imprescriptible rights, antecedent and superior to all positive law’; and ignores the definition of ‘family’ given by Mrs Justice Susan Denham in McD. –v- L & anor (2009), point 62, where she says ‘Therefore arising from the Terms of the Constitution, “family” means a family based on marriage of a man and a woman.’ The Bill implies that biological parents can transfer such rights to commissioning parents in cases of surrogacy. [Part 1, Head 2: Interpretation (1)]
·       This Bill would discriminate between the biological father and the biological mother by persisting in the contested principle that the woman who gives birth is the legal mother. The birth mother in a surrogacy case would be the legal mother, and then the commissioning couples would become the legal parents. [Part 3: Head (10)]
·       This pre-empts the judgement of the Supreme Court on the appeal by the Government against the Abbott judgement [The High Court, March 5, 2013]. The Abbott judgement acknowledges the right of the genetic mother to be recognized as the legal mother. [Part 2, Parentage and Presumption of Paternity, Head 5: Parentage (2)]
·       The Bill ignores the evidence that children living in the care of non-marital couples, including same-sex couples, are 8 times more likely to be harmed than children living with married biological parents [Abuse, Neglect, Adoption and Foster Care Research, National Incidence Study of Child Abuse and Neglect (NIS-4), 2004-2009, March 2010, (Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation)]; and are 50 times more likely to die of injuries, than children residing with two biological parents [P. G. Schnitzer, ‘Child death resulting from inflicted injuries: household risk factors and perpetrator chararcteristics’, Pediatrics 116 (2005) 687-93.] [Part 3, Head 10: Parentage in cases of assisted reproduction other than surrogacy]
·       This Bill, in effect, would make a reproductive slave of the surrogate mother, and would embed the practice of IVF which, as ordinarily practised, relies on the foreseen wastage of 96% of human embryos conceived in vitro [i.e. ‘on glass’]. Surrogacy, as practised, frequently involves the deliberate abortion of one of the embryos conceived and implanted. A recent Chinese study has confirmed the strong link between abortion and breast cancer [‘A meta-analysis of the associaton between induced abortion and breast cancer risk among Chinese females’, Cancer Causes Control, November 24, 2013]. [Part 5, Surrogacy Arrangements: Heads 17 to 23]
Issued by the Alliance for the Defence of the Family and Marriage [ADFAM]