LifeZine No. 776: 3rd May 10
Labour Targets Constitution in Move to Allow Abortions in Ireland
The Irish Labour Party will re-open the divisive abortion debate if it gets into power after the next election. The party’s leader, Eamon Gilmore, has promised to rewrite the Constitution if his party is in government. Besides the unborn babies, Mr Gilmore’s constitutional changes would also target the recognition of God, people’s property rights, the definition of the family, marriage and the EU. The voters would have to ratify any changes to the Constitution by a referendum. Following on from Fine Gael (main opposition party) leader Enda Kenny’s political reform proposals, including scrapping the Seanad (upper house of parliament), Mr Gilmore announced he also wanted to see constitutional changes. In his keynote address to his party conference, he announced his plan to “develop a new constitution”—eclipsing even former Fine Gael leader Garret Fitzgerald’s “constitutional crusade” of the early 1980s. “It is time, in my view, for a fundamental review of our Constitution”, he stated. “There is much about it that has served us well, but it is a document written in the 1930s for the 1930s. A time when one church was considered to have a special position and women were considered to be second-class citizens. And if we are to truly learn from the experience of the last 10 years, then we need to look again, in a considered way, at the fundamental rules that bind us together”. Labour has a long-standing policy on abortion, dating back to 2003, committed to bringing forward legislation to allow the killing of unborn babies in a number of circumstances. This policy follows a vote at the Labour conference in 2001 to support “a woman's right to choose on the issue”. Irish Independent. April 19.
Children’s Charities Force Penneys to Retreat on Early Sexualisation of Children
Penneys (Ireland) and sister company Primark (UK) were forced to reconsider selling children’s padded bikini tops in their shops following complaints that they sexualise young girls. The Irish Times reports that children’s charities in Ireland and the UK complained and the stores removed the products. Barnardos Ireland said people have expressed concern for some time about the early sexualisation of children, and how it could contribute to people viewing children inappropriately. Likewise, it might contribute to children’s worries about body image and lead to conditions such as anorexia. Parents, mostly, have been concerned about the sexualisation of pre-teen children, reports Focus on the Family, an Irish Christian group that helps parents with child-rearing and relationship issues. “Manufacturers and retailers need to show some responsibility here”, Mervyn Nutley told ciNews, explaining that there might be an attitude that as long as something sells there’s no need to consider the consequences. “Anecdotally”, he added, “we know that if teenagers are thinking about, being sexualised and introduced to sexual thinking, obviously it opens up the door for them to pursue that even more”. “Children are liable to become more sexually active at a younger age. Most people would say it is not a healthy thing to be pushing our children in that direction”. He remarked that parenting teenagers is challenging enough without also putting pressure on 7-to-10-year-olds. Ci News. April 20.
Cardinal O’Brien Says Labour Let Religious Voters Down; Tory Chief Appeals to Them
In the UK, Conservative Party leader David Cameron has pledged to give faith schools the freedom to teach sex education “in a way that's consistent with their beliefs”. In an interview with the Catholic Herald, he added that parents should be free to decide whether their children attended such classes. Responding to a question about Labour’s Children, Schools and Families Bill, Mr Cameron said his party backed an amendment “to allow faith schools the freedom to teach these issues in line with their own values”. He added, “I think parents who have chosen a faith-based education for their children should have that decision respected. I’m a big supporter of faith schools and I think it’s really important that their rights are protected in this way”. He also said he favoured a reduction of the time limit for abortions and opposed weakening people’s current protections from euthanasia. “My own view”, he explained, “is that we do need to review the abortion limit. I think that the way medical science and technology have developed in the past few decades does mean that an upper limit of 20 or 22 weeks would be sensible. I’ll continue to support a modest reduction in the abortion limit.” The party leader also reiterated his opposition to assisted suicide: “My personal view is that if assisted dying is legalised, there is a danger that terminally ill people may feel pressurised into ending their lives if they feel they’ve become a burden on loved ones. I don’t believe anyone should be put in this position. So no, I don’t support any change in the law.” His outreach to religious and other traditional-minded voters is part of an overall message that stresses the importance of cultural factors and personal responsibility as a response to what the Conservatives have dubbed “Broken Britain”. As part of this strategy, the Tory leader has repeatedly emphasised the importance of marriage, pledging to reduce taxes on married couples. His comments come as the bid for religious voters intensifies. Earlier this year, a prominent Scottish minister suggested religious believers should vote for Labour. Scottish Secretary Jim Murphy argued that Labour was the natural party for them to support. In response, the leader of the Catholic Church in Scotland, Cardinal Keith O’Brien, said Labour had let religious voters down with its legislation on embryo-killing experiments, abortion, homosexual “civil partnerships” and religious freedom. Mr Cameron’s remarks will be seen as an attempt to reach out to religious voters. In an election expected to be extremely close, such voters, though small in number, could decide the final outcome. Ci News. April 14.
Social Workers in UK “Behaving like Tyrants”, Judges Complain
Two of Britain’s most senior judges have accused social workers trying to take children from their mothers of acting as if they were in “Stalin’s Russia or Mao’s China”. Lord Justice Wall, the new President of the Family Division, said a mother fighting for custody of her two children had been “quite improperly rebuffed” by social services. In a similar case, Lord Justice Aikens drew the parallel with totalitarian states, noting that the social workers had “absolutely no evidence” the mother had mistreated her child. They said social workers were being seen more and more as the “arrogant and enthusiastic removers of children”. The Court of Appeal has now given both mothers more time to prove they can care for their children properly. The first case in the Court involved Greenwich social services in London, where Miss EH was fighting to keep her five-year-old son R and two-year-old daughter RA. At the Court, Lord Justice Wall alleged that the Greenwich social workers’ conduct was “hard to credit.” He said that though he was aware that social workers were “damned if they do and damned if they do not”, this case had proved “quite shocking. Here was a mother who needed, and was asking for, help to break free from an abusive relationship”. “She both needed and sought help, and was quite improperly rebuffed by a local authority which had plainly prejudged the issue”. “[Social workers] are perceived by many”, he commented, “as the arrogant and enthusiastic removers of children from their parents into an unsatisfactory care system, and as trampling on the rights of parents and children in the process. This case will do little to dispel that perception”. In the second case, Miss S, a teenager from Devon, is fighting attempts to force her to give up her son, Baby H, for adoption. Again, at the Court of Appeal, Lord Justice Aikens observed that there was no evidence the mother had maltreated her baby, or that a previously violent partner would have anything to do with H. He said the “outside perception” might be of social workers who were effectively saying to the mother, “‘Whatever you may do doesn’t make any difference—we are going to take your child away’. That is more like Stalin’s Russia or Mao’s China than the west of England—that is the impression you give”. In their ruling, the judges made it clear they weren’t saying Miss S could keep her child, but that she was entitled to a chance to prove she was a good mother. CiNews. April 15.
Pope Speaks About 'Indivisible Link' Between Respect for Life and the Environment
In the five years since he became Pope, Benedict XVI has repeatedly spoken out on ecological issues. As a result, some have taken to calling him the “Green Pope”, but such a label doesn’t do justice to his statements. We have a legitimate stewardship over nature, he’s affirmed, which involves a duty to hand over to future generations an earth that’s in good condition. This isn’t just a matter for science or economics, he added, but must be integrated into a human ecology that includes all that shapes our existence. “The book of nature is one and indivisible: it takes in not only the environment but also life, sexuality, marriage, the family, social relations: in a word, integral human development”, the Pontiff pointed out. There’s a fundamental contradiction in our mentality, he’s insisted, if, on the one hand, we insist on respect for the natural environment while, on the other hand, not respecting the right to life and to a natural death. This linkage between respect for the environment and respect for life has been a recurring theme in the Holy Father’s statements on the ecology. “The great and vital moral themes of peace, non-violence, justice, and respect for creation do not in themselves confer dignity on man”, he told Noel Fahey, Ireland’s ambassador to the Holy See in 2007. Human life has an innate dignity, he explained. “How disturbing it is”, the Pope lamented, “that not infrequently the very social and political groups that, admirably, are most attuned to the awe of God’s creation pay scant attention to the marvel of life in the womb”. Zenit. April 18.
Chinese Use Mass Hostage-Taking to Enforce One-Child Law
Population-control officials have held hundreds of senior citizens captive in Chinese government offices as part of a campaign to force their children to submit to sterilisation. The elderly people are parents of young adults suspected of flouting strict population-control rules in the southern city of Puning. The Nanfang Rural News reports that the local government has drawn up a list of nearly 10,000 people whom it suspects of planning to have a second or third child. Around half the people in that group have agreed to undergo sterilisation. The 1,377 captive people include some of those who’ve so far refused, but mostly consist of their parents. Witnesses said officials were holding them in cramped, damp conditions, including one group of 200 who’d been herded into a hundred-square-metre room. “The room was too small for all the people to lie down and sleep”, the Nanfang Rural News reported. “The young ones had to stand or squat”. The detainees are being lectured on the Communist regime’s population-control rules. Huang Rufeng, a father of three, said he and his wife had refused to be sterilised. “Several days ago, a village official called me and asked me or my wife to return for the surgery”, he told the newspaper. “Otherwise they would take away my father”. The 20-day campaign in Puning was triggered by criticism over poor population control. The government will take further “extraordinary measures” against families with more than one child—or two if the first is a girl—including expelling subsequent children from school and health insurance. The Independent. April 17.