Irish Examiner survey on attitudes to abortion.

A survey of attitudes on abortion, carried out in the farming community in conjunction with one of Ireland’s farming organisations, the ICMSA, was published in the Irish Examiner on Sept 22nd. According to the survey, 64% of farmers favour amendment of Article 40.3.3, to allow for abortion on wider grounds. 34% of respondents said they were opposed to any changes to the Amendment and 2% of respondents chose the ‘don’t know’ option. The question was framed as follows: “The 8th Amendment to the Constitution granted equal rights to the mother and her unborn child. Do you think it should be amended to allow for abortion in certain circumstances or not?”

This survey was carried out following blatant media reporting bias on the issue during recent weeks which appears to be aimed at persuading political parties to include removal of the pro-life amendment from the constitution in their political manifestos in the run up to the upcoming general election.

Relentless pressure from pro abortion forces to remove Ireland’s remaining protection for unborn babies

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There have been a number of attempts since the passing of the current government’s pro-abortion legislation, The Protection of Life in Pregnancy Act, to increase access to abortion in Ireland.  Socialist TD’s (members of parliament) Clare Daly and Ruth Coppinger have made several attempts to introduce private members bills, either to remove the pro life amendment to the Constitution, or to widen the scope of the government legislation, in order to to kill unborn babies with fetal abnormalities and/or those conceived in rape.

In the wake of the disasterous result in the same sex marriage referendum, pro-abortion forces, buoyed up by that result, have continued to pressure Ireland’s coalition government to remove the pro-life amendment, Article 40.3.3.

The Irish Government, whilst indicating it was not against the idea of a referendum on the issue, has refused to do so this year as all political parties are now gearing up for a general election which must be held by the middle of next year.  Health  Minister Leo Varadkar made this clear recently when he told the Dail that a referendum to remove the 1983 pro-life amendment from the Constitution would be a matter for the next Dáil.

Apart from political pressure from within the country pressure is also being placed on the Government by UN Committees despite the fact that there is no such human right as a right to abortion, and the that International UN treaties protect the lives of all human beings including the unborn.

The most recent attempt to pressurise Ireland came from the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR).

The CESCR in it concluding observations, on the third periodic report of Ireland to the Committee, E/C.12/IRL/CO/3, said that the Committee is concerned at what they termed to be ‘Ireland’s highly restrictive legislation on abortion and strict interpretation thereof’.

The Committee recommended that Ireland,

“take all necessary steps, including a referendum on abortion, to revise its legislation on abortion, including the Constitution and the Protection of Life During Pregnancy Act 2013, in line with international human rights standards; adopt guidelines to clarify what constitutes a real substantive risk to the life of a pregnant woman; publicize information on crisis pregnancy options through effective channels of communication; and ensure the accessibility and availability of information on sexual and reproductive health.”

This Committee has a tendency to treat national laws with contempt as they issue instructions to countries under review to change their laws and policies on abortion, regardless of the fact the the Convention on Economic Social and Cultural Rights never mentions abortion. 

Treaty body mandates create a narrow role for treaty bodies such as the CESCR and those bodies cannot exceed the scope of the authority set forth in the treaty itself.  Specifically, committee recommendations, such as this, issued by treaty bodies are not binding on States Parties because such recommendations and comments are not part of the actual negotiated language of the treaty.

Moreover, treaty bodies do not have the authority to interpret or reinterpret treaties.  Authoritative interpretations of treaties are reserved to States Parties collectively.  Many diplomats have privately expressed concern that these treaty bodies have grossly exceeded their authority in recent years.

The Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties (VCLT) sets out interpretive norms for all treaties. The VCLT in Article 31 says:  "A treaty shall be interpreted in good faith in accordance with the ordinary meaning (emphasis added) to be given to the terms of the treaty in their context and in light of its object and purpose."   In other words, attention must be paid to the actual text of the treaty and, as an aid to interpretation, to its surrounding context. 

26 babies aborted under Ireland's abortion law

Ireland’s Minister for Health Leo Varadkar confirmed today that 26 babies were aborted under the Protection of Life During Pregnancy Act. Under the new law Minister Varadkar is obliged to issue an annual report  detailing the number of abortions carried out in Irish hospitals. See Department of Health news release and reports by the IrishTimes and Journal.ie

The information detailing the number of abortions during the first year of operation of the legislation which emanated from the Health Service Executive (HSE) confirms that three abortions were carried out when the mother’s life was deemed at risk due to suicidal ideation. The figures also show that 14 terminations were carried out due to the risk from physical illness, with nine based on an emergency from physical illness.

It is not clear whether thes figures include the case of the baby born to Miss Y who was delivered live at 24 wweks by caesarean section after she was deemed suicidal under Section 9 of the Act.

The Protection of Life during Pregnancy Act (2013) marked a radical change in Ireland's abortion law. It repealed the comprehensive protection of unborn children under the Offences Against the Person Act (1861) and in addition stripped the right to life from children before, and even during, birth in a broad range of circumstances. The numerous inconsistencies and ill-defined terms (eg "good faith", "reasonable opinion" and "due regard")  create limitations to the  protection unborn babies under the Act.

Referendum on so called same sex marriage in Ireland.

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The Irish Government has been campaigning strongly for a ‘Yes’ vote in the upcoming referendum on marriage which has been given the misleading title of ‘Marriage Equality ‘. The referendum however is not about equality and the government focus on equality distorts the reality. This is about the creation of new rights and if it is passed will have very grave consequences for our nation.

Many people are confused about marriage and think it is merely for the public recognition of committed relationships for the benefit of adults.

That is not what marriage is, but what it will actually become under the law if it is redefined.

Marriage in reality is much more than a committed relationship. Marriage not only unites a man and a woman with each other, but with any children born from their union. That expresses the fullness of what marriage is. It is a community of life and love.  This is a fact that can only be recognized and never changed. It already presumes procreation, complementarity, motherhood and fatherhood.

The three requirements for marriage are that it is unitive, procreative and indissoluble. This factual description expresses irreplaceability, and permanence, Not every married man and woman has children, but every child has a mother and father. With insertion of the word “any” even the possibility of the heartbreak of infertility is accounted for. It is the only true definition of marriage

Justice and Equality Minister Frances Fitzgerald in her statement announcing the referendum said: “People will be asked to decide whether the following new wording should be added to the Constitution: ‘Marriage may be contracted in accordance with law by two persons without distinction as to their sex'.”

Irish Foreign Affairs Minister Charles Flanagan told the Human Rights Council in Geneva in March that ‘it is one of the greatest shames of the modern world that States continue to deny individuals their human rights because of who they are or whom they love.’

Minister Flanagan the shame is on you and your colleagues for your blatant rejection of the truth and beauty of human sexuality expressed through the committed love of  men and women for one another.  Your actions will undermine the family, attack the rights of parents in the moral education of their children, and attack freedom of religion, as has happenned in other countries where same sex marriage has been introduced. Take for example the Court ruling in Lexington Massachusetts, which ruled that schools are permitted teach about homosexuality without parents consent or even a right to remove their children from the class. In the lead up to the case one parent was arrested because he objected to the indoctrination of his son.

The major push is to indoctrinate the next generation and the way it will be done is through so-called comprehensive sexuality education.

Our children are precious and we need to protect them from early sexualisation.

  

We as Christians are all called to love one another but that does not mean that we uncritically accept the actions of others without comment. Real love resides in expressing the truth in all situations because it is the truth that sets us free. In truth marriage is between one man and one woman and cannot be extended to others, anything else is a sham.

Marriage is the foundation stone of the family and is recognised in the Irish Constitution in Article 41 which declares that: the State recognises the family as the natural, primary and fundamental unit group of society and as and as a moral institution possessing inalienable and imprescriptible rights, antecedent and superior to all positive law. It also says that: The State, therefore, guarantees to protect the Family in its constitution and authority, as the necessary basis of social order and as indispensable to the welfare of the Nation and the State. 

The Universal Declaration on Human Rights is also very explicit and article 16 tells us: Men and women of full age, without any limitation due to race, nationality or religion, have the right to marry and to found a family.

Article 16 also tells us that: ‘The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State.’

The Irish Constitution was enacted, ‘In the Name of the Most Holy Trinity, from Whom is all authority and to Whom, as our final end, all actions both of men and States must be referred.’ Has it not occurred to our political leaders, Taoiseach Enda Kenny together with Ministers Flanagan, Fitzgerald and Labour leader Joan Burton that what is proposed is directly flouting God’s law and it is adding insult to injury by proposing the inclusion of such an abomination in the text of our Constitution dedicated to the Most Holy Trinity.  

Taoiseach, when future generations evaluate your words and actions the lasting shame will be on you and your colleagues for your blatant rejection of God’s Commandments and for kow-towing to so called political correctness at the expense of genuine marriage and the family.

It is to be hoped that the Irish electorate will have more sense than you do and will not approve this outrage.

UN pro-abortion and sexual rights agenda defeated at major conference

The 48th UN Commission on Population and Development (CPD) ended on Friday April 18th with a firm rejection of the anti life and family policies the UN is attempting to impose globally. 

The 48th session of the Commission, was themed, ‘Integrating population issues into sustainable development, including in the post-2015 development agenda’. This was the last Commission before the upcoming negotiations on a new 15 year programme to be known as the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG’s) and was regarded by UNFPA the UN population fund and their anti life allies, such as International Planned Parenthood (IPPF), as their best opportunity to influence the outcome of the SDG’s by forcing the acceptance of controversial language on sexual and reproductive rights and comprehensive sexuality education.

In recent years the negotiating strategy adopted by Western governments has been to insert controversial issues into documents during the negotiating period and rely on the chair to issue a compromise text which inevitably retains some of those issues.

In this case negotiations on the outcome document over a period of 10 days were similarly loaded up with controversial language and by Thursday evening (April 16th) had become completely unacceptable. Negotiations continued on Friday when a so called compromise text was produced by the chair Ms. Bénédicte Frankinet from Belgium.  The Chair had removed a reference ‘sexual rights’ from the text but it still contained a number of unacceptable references.

Ms. Frankinet made it clear that her so called compromise text was final and demanded that the text be accepted without alteration as a consensus document. The Nigerian Ambassador Usman Sarki speaking on behalf of the African Group informed the meeting that the text needed further work and that in his opinion agreement could be reached in 10-15 minutes given the political will to do so. The chair was  unwilling to accommodate the concerns of the African countries regarding terminology such as ‘comprehensive sexuality education’ (CSE) and reproductive rights. Rather than qualify or delete the controversial terms the Chair withdrew the document.

The decision by the chair to withdraw the document was greeted with a shocked silence by the anti-life and family brigade, when the realisation sunk in that there would not now be any outcome document and that there was no agreement on how to integrate population policies in the post-2015 development agenda, the actual purpose of this year’s commission.

Ambassador Sarki, who had diplomatically tried to persuade the Chair to be more accommodating when he sought time to discuss proposed changes spoke very forcibly following the withdrawal of the document. “We came to the meeting with an open mind,” he said, adding that from the outset they had to deal with drafts “replete with controversial issues that have in the past not only proved difficult to deal with but are also extremely divisive in nature.” He put down a marker for future negotiations saying that member state delegations and UN officials “should refrain from putting language in drafts on which there is no consensus”.  He also said that lack of an outcome document should not be seen as a failure. “Member states”, he said, “have resisted the imposition of unhelpful ideas and concepts on all the membership.”

Mr.Babatunde Osotimehin, head of the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) told the meeting, in an obviously crestfallen manner, that he “regretted” that an agreement could not be reached and then went on to criticise countries for not being “tolerant,” because of their resistance to the UNFPA agenda.

The delegate from Nauru, Rennier Gadabe, complained about UNFPA harrassment of his Government during the negotiations “Does UNFPA he said, think they can do this because Nauru is the smallest member state?” UNFPA had pressured the Nauru Government to change its position on reproductive rights and CSE and was critical of the position taken by the Nauru UN delegation. The delegate angrily told the meeting that such tactics were “unacceptable.”

UNFPA has over the last few years spent hundreds of thousands of dollars arranging conferences throughout the world, in places like, Accra, Kuala Lumpur, Ocho Rios, Montevideo and other venues, with the sole purpose of firstly influencing the outcome of this session of the Commission and ultimately the Sustainable Development Goals.