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Third webinar on euthanasia

Third webinar on euthanasia

Family Solidarity will host a third ZOOM webinar on Tuesday 1st December at 7.30 pm (Irish time) Léopold Vanbellingen of the European Institute of Bioethics (IEB) in Brussels will give a talk on Euthanasia in Belgium and Netherlands: How the slippery slope is turning...

A new campaign to expand the grounds for abortion in Ireland

A new campaign to expand the grounds for abortion in Ireland

The Irish abortion law is to be reviewed next year and the campaign to expand its grounds has already started. A recent newspaper article presented the tragic story of an unborn baby who had received a diagnosis of a chromosome abnormality. As this diagnosis fell...

Gene Editing and Planned Personhood

Gene Editing and Planned Personhood

The specter of “planned personhood” crops up again and again throughout science fiction, from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein to Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World and Star Trek’s “Eugenics Wars.” Genetic engineers in such stories are morally compromised at best, depraved at...

Family is the heart of the post-pandemic recovery

Family is the heart of the post-pandemic recovery

FAFCE held today its bi-annual Board Meeting, gathering representatives of Members Associations from all over Europe. Sharing the same concerns for the future of Europe after the pandemic, FAFCE Members adopted a Resolution on “Family is the heart of the post-pandemic...

How ‘science’ was used to victimise unmarried mothers

How ‘science’ was used to victimise unmarried mothers

In Ireland in the past, unmarried mothers and their children were harshly treated as a result of a potent brew of Victorian values and a strict application of Catholic morality. But as we will see, in other countries such as Britain and Sweden, the ‘science’ of...

Euthanasia’s Slippery Slope in Netherlands Set to Snare Children

Euthanasia’s Slippery Slope in Netherlands Set to Snare Children

The Euthanasia Act of the Netherlands provides that a doctor who performs euthanasia, or assists in suicide, cannot be prosecuted and punished if he meets a number of due care requirements. He must verify that the request is voluntary and durable. Furthermore, the...

Webinar: ASSISTED SUICIDE, EUTHANASIA AND DYING WITH DIGNITY

Webinar: ASSISTED SUICIDE, EUTHANASIA AND DYING WITH DIGNITY

Family Solidarity hosted an on line ZOOM webinar on ASSISTED SUICIDE, EUTHANASIA AND DYING WITH DIGNITY On Thursday 15th October at 19.30 (Irish time)  Dr Noreen O’Carroll presented a paper on the above topic and it was followed by a discussion with a panel which...

Once euthanasia is introduced, the grounds always expand

Once euthanasia is introduced, the grounds always expand

Last night the Dáil voted in favour of moving Gino Kenny’s assisted suicide bill past the second stage of the legislation process, and to committee stage. Several senior Government figures voted in favour of it including Leo Varadkar, Helen McEntee, Stephen Donnelly...

Dail rushes to embrace assisted suicide

Dail rushes to embrace assisted suicide

On the 2nd October the Dail debated Gino Kenny’s assisted suicide bill. But it wasn’t a debate because only one TD opposed to the bill was allowed to speak, namely Peter Fitzpatrick, and he was given only four minutes. In other words, 71 out of the 75 minutes allotted...

Why leading doctors oppose assisted suicide

Why leading doctors oppose assisted suicide

A Private Members’ Bill seeking to permit assisted suicide will be debated in the Dáil next week. It is proposed by Solidarity-People Before Profit TD Gino Kenny. The last time when this issue was discussed in Leinster House, three years ago, some of the strongest...

Assisted Suicide Bill introduced in the Dail is fatally flawed

Assisted Suicide Bill introduced in the Dail is fatally flawed

A Private Members’ Bill permitting Assisted Suicide has been introduced to the Dail today by Gino Kenny TD. Some media reports say the Bill has strong safeguards and is limited in scope. This is totally false. Its definition of ‘terminal illness’ is incredibly broad,...

Assisted suicide is incompatible with human dignity

Assisted suicide is incompatible with human dignity

The debate about assisted suicide is heating up in Ireland again with a Private Member’s Bill due to come before the Dail that seeks to permit the procedure under certain circumstances. At the core of this debate is the very dangerous assumption that death by a form...

The Pope’s Prayer intention for July 2020

The Pope’s Prayer intention for July 2020

The family ought to be protected. It faces many dangers: the fast pace of life, stress… Sometimes, parents forget to play with their children. The Church needs to encourage families and stay at their side, helping them to discover ways that allow them to overcome all...

6666 abortions performed in Ireland last year

6666 abortions performed in Ireland last year

By Dr Angelo Bottone We now know how many women had an abortion in Ireland last year; 6666. If you add in the 375 women who went to England for an abortion in 2019, despite our new law, it adds up to 7,041, a horrible figure. The official figures were published today....

Marriage in Ireland continues its decline

Marriage in Ireland continues its decline

Marriage continues to change and decline in Ireland as the latest figures from the Central Statistics Office show. Fewer marriages are taking place, fewer are taking place in churches, more are taking place between people who were married before and are now divorced,...

Programme for Government will ban pro-life vigils outside hospitals

Programme for Government will ban pro-life vigils outside hospitals

The newly agreed Programme for Government includes a commitment to impose ‘exclusion zones’ which would stop even silent pro-life vigils outside hospitals and GP surgeries where abortions take place or are facilitated. This is an extreme measure and, as a national...

Getting the facts right about reversing effects of abortion pills

Getting the facts right about reversing effects of abortion pills

This week an article attacked Irish doctors who offer medical assistance to women who have taken abortion pills and then changed their minds before the effects were final. The article contains a number of claims that need to be challenged. A chemical abortion consists...

Global Day of Parents: Honouring Motherhood and Fatherhood

Global Day of Parents: Honouring Motherhood and Fatherhood

Brussels, 1st June 2020 On the Global Day of Parents, FAFCE recalls the importance of motherhood and fatherhood and asks to recognise their fundamental roles during the current pandemic. “The parents – FAFCE’s President, Vincenzo Bassi, said – are those who take the...

Ukraine human rights boss criticises country’s surrogacy industry

Ukraine human rights boss criticises country’s surrogacy industry

The practice of foreigners using the Ukraine as an international surrogacy destination as come under fire as 51 babies born to surrogate mothers lay uncollected due to coronavirus lockdown restrictions. Clients from all over the world including the United States,...

FAFCE welcomes the EESC Opinion on Demographic challenges

FAFCE welcomes the EESC Opinion on Demographic challenges

Brussels, 12 May 2020 FAFCE welcomes the Exploratory opinion on "Demographic challenges in the EU in light of economic inequalities and development disparities" adopted by the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC). This Opinion follows a request of the...

New law takes an axe to the natural ties

New law takes an axe to the natural ties

This week, the final parts of the Children and Relationship Act 2015 have come into operation. This legislation has changed profoundly the legal arrangement of family relationships but in a way that downgrades the importance of the natural ties. Part 2 and 3, which...

Is the Nuclear Family a Mistake?

Is the Nuclear Family a Mistake?

  In a recent article for The Atlantic, David Brooks claims “The Nuclear Family Was a Mistake” (https://bit.ly/2Y9tste). He contends that the model of a married couple with 2.5 kids was an anomaly in the 1950s and 1960s, and that this nuclear family model is no...

Marriages in UK fall to a record low

Marriages in UK fall to a record low

The number of men and women marrying each other has fallen to its lowest level on record, official statistics show. A total of 235,910 such marriages were registered in England and Wales in 2017- a decrease of 2.8% compared with 2016. The number has fallen by 45%...

UK to ban irreversible gender surgery on under 18s

UK to ban irreversible gender surgery on under 18s

Doctors may no longer conduct surgery to alter the biological sex of children, the equalities minister in the UK has announced. Liz Truss will set out details of the plans later this summer that would ban under-18s with gender dysphoria from genital reconstructive...

Hidden Facts: Domestic Abuse is at its Worst During the Pandemic

Hidden Facts: Domestic Abuse is at its Worst During the Pandemic

Most in the U.S. are on week 3 or more of “social distancing,” or perhaps even a mandated “shelter-in,” and the New York Times is now reporting on an unanticipated and tragic result of the pandemic-protection guidelines: a rise in domestic violence and child abuse....

Covid-19 and the culture of death in the US and Europe

Covid-19 and the culture of death in the US and Europe

By Paolo Gulisano (translation by Angelo Bottone) The current Covid-19 pandemic has become an extraordinary opportunity for the dissemination of the culture of death. This is happening on a world-wide scale. In the United States, which were incomprehensibly caught “by...

Growing Old, With Family and Friends

Growing Old, With Family and Friends

Given the past century’s dramatic increases in life expectancy, at least for those living in developed nations, much research is now centering on how to increase the quality of those additional years of life. Adding to this research is a new paper assessing how...

Fertility rates are dropping dangerously worldwide

Fertility rates are dropping dangerously worldwide

In 1996, five years before he received the Nobel Prize in economics, George Akerlof in “An Analysis of Out-of-Wedlock Childbearing in the United States” labeled contraception the “technology shock” that gave us the death of the ‘shot-gun marriage’ and the rise of...

The nuclear family a ‘catastrophe’? No, but it needs help

The nuclear family a ‘catastrophe’? No, but it needs help

Was the nuclear family more trouble than it was worth? The headline on a piece in the prestigious American monthly, The Atlantic, would give the impression that it was. More surprising is that the headline is over an article written by New York Times columnist, David...

FAFCE activities

FAFCE activities

Meetings with Church officials Brussels (21 January) – Our President, Vincenzo Bassi, met the Apostolic Nuncio to the European Union, H. E. Mgr. Lebeaupin. They spoke about the current activities of FAFCE and the Nuncio encouraged very much to go forward in the...

How can the pro-life movement make a difference

How can the pro-life movement make a difference

We have just three weeks to make a difference! General Election 2020 to take place on 8th February. We must do our best to increase the number of pro-life TDs in the Dáil. #ge2020 –––– Dear Friend, As you know, Leo Varadkar yesterday confirmed that the General...

A Father Who Honors His Son

A Father Who Honors His Son

By Patrick Fagan Just as Spartan mothers told their sons to “Return with your shield or on it!,” so, too, great parents tutor their children in greatness, each child in his own way. Public honors were the motivator for the great men of Greece, and to this day, we are...

The growing shortage of marriageable men

The growing shortage of marriageable men

As women’s economic prospects have risen in recent decades, and that of many men, especially many working class men have declined, so have the odds of some people ever getting married. To put it bluntly; a man with good earning prospects has a better chance of getting...

Minister Harris attacks a Catholic parish for being Catholic

Minister Harris attacks a Catholic parish for being Catholic

Minister for Health Simon Harris has attacked a parish in Tullamore for a stating that IVF is incompatible with the Catholic faith. In doing so, he has stepped far outside his role as a Government Minister. He needs to mind his own business, which is precisely what...

Teaching children that porn can be ethical and positive

Teaching children that porn can be ethical and positive

By Dr Angelo Bottone Is ‘porn literacy’ something we should be teaching in schools? If so, at what age? What is ‘porn literacy’? Is there such a thing as ‘ethical porn’? To what extent will these things be part of the planned new Relationships and Sexuality Education...

Ireland reaches the next taboo: adult incest

Ireland reaches the next taboo: adult incest

The central driving force of the sex revolution, namely the belief that anything goes between consenting adults, continues to work its remorseless logic, toppling taboo after taboo. It has now reached the next one, according to a report in the Irish Times; adult...

An important voice in favour of fathers speaks out

An important voice in favour of fathers speaks out

The French parliament is debating a new law which will extend assisted reproduction to single women and lesbian couples as well. What is interesting is the fact that no less a body than the National Academy of Medicine has objected to the proposed reform on the ground...

The Latest Family Solidarity Newsletter is now available

The Latest Family Solidarity Newsletter is now available

Family Solidarity’s Annual General Meeting Saturday 9th November.11.30 am (Mass)  till approx 4 pm in ELY House, Finger food lunch at 1 o’clock, follow by short addresses from  Petra Conroy (about the Faith on Fire project) and Niamh Uí Bhriain and others...

How Happy Couples Argue

How Happy Couples Argue

In marriage, conflict is inevitable. Even the happiest couples argue. And research shows they tend to argue about the same topics as unhappy couples: children, money, in-laws, intimacy. So, what distinguishes happy couples? According to “What are the Marital Problems...

Top Human Rights Court: Norway violated parental rights

Top Human Rights Court: Norway violated parental rights

Today (10 September 2019), the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights found that Norway violated the fundamental right to family life through the actions of its child welfare services. Strand Lobben v. Norway was one of several cases appealed to the...

New world disorder, old world disorder

New world disorder, old world disorder

I’m here in California, in San Francisco, deep in the heart of liberal progressivist America. I arrived from Ireland over a week ago and as I did so I wondered would I be experiencing something of a culture shock, would I be falling out of the Irish frying pan of PC...

The grim reality of surrogacy in Ukraine

The grim reality of surrogacy in Ukraine

Irish media often present surrogacy as an uncontroversial option for couples who struggle with infertility but we rarely hear reports about children who have been abandoned by commissioning adults, or about the poor women who have acted as surrogates and regret it....

Minister for Children usurping parental rights

Minister for Children usurping parental rights

By Margaret Hickey New mother Ruth Davidson cited personal reasons as the primary reason for resigning as leader of the Scottish Conservative party. The care of a small baby and fulfilling a demanding public role didn’t combine well for her. But then every young...

Love In An Age Of Information Overload

Love In An Age Of Information Overload

When it comes to information, humanity has been playing a vast game of Tetris for thousands of years. New blocks of information are constantly being formed as we acquire new knowledge. As we encounter them, our objective is to rotate and place these informational...

Death of Dutch teenager was euthanasia by another name

Death of Dutch teenager was euthanasia by another name

When 17 year old Noa Pothoven died recently in the Netherlands following a long period of mental illness, it was initially and erroneously reported that she died by lethal injection under her country’s euthanasia law. In fact, she was allowed to refuse food and...

UN report warns against all forms of surrogacy

UN report warns against all forms of surrogacy

Both commercial and so-called ‘altruistic’ surrogacy could amount to the sale of children, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the sale and sexual exploitation of children has warned. Our Government normally likes to listen to the UN. Will it do so on this...

The risk factors leading to marital breakdown

The risk factors leading to marital breakdown

Do marriages that end in separation or divorce share certain traits, risk factors that allow us to predict which couples will stay together and which ones will not? The answer is, yes.In my previous blog I referred to the studies of Paul Amato, a sociologist of...

Children suffer when parents in low-conflict marriages divorce

Children suffer when parents in low-conflict marriages divorce

We are in the middle of a referendum right now on whether the waiting time required before a couple can divorce should be removed from the Constitution. It therefore seems a good time to look at the general issue of divorce, and in particular on what makes a person...

In England the abortion situation becomes worse

In England the abortion situation becomes worse

The UK Office for Nationals Statistics has released the 2017 data on pregnancies in England and Wales. When compared with the statistics about abortion, those data give us a frightening account of the situation: pregnancies and births are decreasing while abortions...

Time for a bigger spotlight on rogue fertility clinics

Time for a bigger spotlight on rogue fertility clinics

We hear a lot in the papers about ‘rogue’ pro-life counselling agencies. But what of rogue fertility clinics? The fertility business is huge and anxious couples pay a very great deal of money in their efforts to become pregnant, efforts that often result in failure....

Ireland must have a debate about gene-editing

Ireland must have a debate about gene-editing

Ireland needs to have a debate about the use of ‘CRISPR’ technology, a gene-editing technique that can affect the DNA of future generations of human beings. A number of eminent scientists and bioethicists have recently called for a moratorium on techniques to make...

Our politicians’ blind spot about the natural ties and children

Our politicians’ blind spot about the natural ties and children

The Oireachtas Health Committee met recently for the last pre-legislative scrutiny of the Bill that will regulate Assisted Human Reproduction (AHR). The hearings have confirmed that the Committee suffers from huge blind spots about some of pitfalls of AHR and the...

Little evidence that sex education programmes actually work

Little evidence that sex education programmes actually work

A big review of the way Relationships and Sexuality Education is underway, led by the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment. Yet, an absolutely crucial question that needs to be considered in all this is whether RSE-type programmes even work. What outcomes...

New report on RSE only pretends to be ‘objective’

New report on RSE only pretends to be ‘objective’

Earlier this week the Joint Committee on Education presented a report on Relationships and Sexuality Education (RSE). This report has two main flaws: it undermines the role of the school ethos in RSE and it fails to address the question of what the purpose of RSE...

Laws banning protests outside abortion facilities are extremely rare

Laws banning protests outside abortion facilities are extremely rare

Minister Simon Harris has promised to introduce “exclusion zones” to prevent protests outside hospitals, clinics and GP surgeries where abortions take place or abortion pills are prescribed.  This would make us the only country in Europe to have such a law, as Lawyers...

Why the State should tax married couples less

Why the State should tax married couples less

Should single people pay less tax and married people pay more than under the present Irish system? That seems to be the gist of an article in the Irish Times this week. In tones of regret, it said that “while society has moved forward in so many ways over recent...

Save the date for the Rally For Life!

Save the date for the Rally For Life!

This year's Rally for Life, organised by the Life Institute, takes place on 6th July in Dublin City Centre.It sounds like a cliché to say that it’s more important than ever that pro-life advocates gather and stand up for life, but it really is vital in these deeply...

New post in Garvan Hill

New post in Garvan Hill

There is careless and sloppy journalism and there is cold calculated malicious journalism. Sadly both fit into the spectrum to which Janet Malcolm notoriously drew attention in a New Yorker essay thirty years ago when she wrote:”Every journalist who is not too stupid...