Trovo letteralmente sconvolgente e profondamente ingiusto oltre che scorretto il fatto che in un matrimonio tra un cattolico ed un protestante i figli debbano per forza essere allevati nella fede cattolica. Questo significa che una chiesa tende ad aumentare i propri membri a discapito dell'altra.

La scelta dell'educazione religiosa, o dell'assenza di educazione religiosa dovrebbe essere lasciata ai genitori e non imposta dall'alto dei cieli. La coraggiosa Sheila ha lottato proprio per la libertà di scelta in tal senso.

A member of the Church of Ireland, her decision 52 years ago to flee her Catholic husband and the State rather than allow her children to be educated at the local Catholic national school led to a boycott of Protestant businesses in the south Co Wexford village.

Although Ms Cloney herself shunned publicity, two years before his death, Mr Cloney spoke about the events of 1957 to The Irish Times. He recalled that his wife had resented being pressurised by the Catholic priest who had told her: “Eileen’s going to the local Catholic school and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

He said: “Sheila didn’t fancy being ordered. She developed the frame of mind, ‘we’ll see what could be done about it’.” He explained the couple’s eventual resolution of the controversy: “Whether they went to a Protestant or a Catholic school would be seen as a victory for one side or the other and we could not sanction that. So they never went to school and we educated them ourselves.”

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2009/0630/1224249782433.html

THE GOVERNMENT is to launch a robust defence of the State’s ban on abortion before the European Court of Human Rights in the face of a legal challenge by three women who claim the restrictions violate their human rights.

The Strasbourg-based court is considering the admissibility of a legal challenge by the women, who claim their rights were denied by being forced to terminate their pregnancies outside the State.

The women say the restrictive nature of Irish law on abortion jeopardised their health and wellbeing.

The identities of the three – known as A, B and C – will remain confidential as the case proceeds through the court.

The women’s complaints centre on four alleged violations of articles in the European Convention on Human Rights, including protection from “inhuman or degrading treatment” and freedom from discrimination.

The women at the centre of the case – who are represented by the Irish Family Planning Association – say the lack of any effective remedy at home means they have satisfied the requirement to exhaust domestic legal remedies.

In addition, they say that taking a case would have been costly, futile and could have forced them to relinquish their anonymity.

 http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/frontpage/2009/0421/1224245071362.html

The women claim the restrictive nature of Irish law on abortion jeopardized their health and wellbeing. Travelling abroad placed "enormous physical, emotional and financial burdens" upon them. The law created delays and hardships for each woman, resulting in each of them having a later abortion, creating greater risk to their health.

Abortion restrictions interfered with the most intimate aspects of their private and family lives without adequate justification, they say. This, they submit, is in violation of the European Convention on Human Rights, which provides a right to respect for one's "private and family life." In addition, they also claim the abortion laws impeded the ability of some of them to obtain necessary follow-up medical care upon their return to Ireland.

The women, who are represented by the Irish Family Planning Association, say there is a lack of any effective remedy at home and Irish law is in inadequate.

The impossibility for these women to have an abortion in Ireland made the procedure unnecessarily expensive, traumatic and complicated.

The decision of the European Court of Human Rights on the case is expected shortly. It shall be binding on Ireland and must be complied with by the Irish authorities.

The Bishop of Cork, Cloyne and Ross, Bishop Paul Colton, has announced the appointment of a new Canon in the Diocese. She is the Reverend Eithne Lynch who is also Rector of Kilmoe Union (Schull, Altar and Crookhaven) in West Cork. Canon Lynch will be Prebendary (Canon) of Desertmore and Killanully in Saint Fin Barre's Cathedral, Cork and Prebendary of Timoleague in Saint Fachtna's Cathedral, Ross.

Canon Lynch said: "I am greatly honoured to have been appointed Canon."

http://www.ireland.anglican.org/index.php?do=news&newsid=2718

Davvero sconvolgente! Mamma mia! Ma come? I gay non erano tutti debolucci ed incapaci di svolgere la benchè minima attività fisica che richieda sforzo e grinta? Gasp! Sembra che la realtà contraddica lo stereotipo.

All-Ireland hurling star Donal Og Cusack has revealed in an explosive autobiography that he has slept with both men and women before realising he is gay.

The player has lifted the lid off his bisexual past in a candid story of his life that makes him the first ever senior GAA star to publicly declare his homosexuality.

But when a country fails to address issues that undermine the health and wellbeing of its own citizens, it needs to hear the voices of those beyond its boundaries.

The organisation that I work for, the British Pregnancy Advisory Service, hears the voices of Irish women all the time.

We see hundreds of women every year who have travelled over to end crisis pregnancies.

Nothing obvious marks them from out from our English clients, except sometimes their accents.

But, whether they acknowledge it or not (some do, some don't) they carry an additional burden of knowing that, in their own homeland, abortion is illegal.

The illegality of abortion at home has consequences even for those women wealthy enough, organised enough and informed enough to travel.

The truth needs to be heard. Legal abortion is safe and benefits society. And Ireland can only exist as a modern society because of abortion clinics in England.

We are the safe, civilised alternative to clandestine, illegal abortion treatments, to abandoned infants and the burdens of forced motherhood.

Women in Ireland have abortions but they have them here, while politicians turn away.

Abortion is a fact of life for women in Ireland. And the Irish Government needs to face that fact.

http://www.herald.ie/national-news/abortion-battle-the-pain-of-travelling-1970010.html

Three women living in Ireland challenged Ireland’s ban on abortion on the grounds that the law jeopardised their health and their wellbeing in violation of their rights under the European Convention on Human Rights.

The Irish Family Planning Association (IFPA) which is providing support to the three applicants, welcomes the decision by the European Court of Human Rights to hear their case in the its most important forum, the Grand Chamber.

The IFPA wishes to commend the bravery of three applicants in taking a case to the European Court of Human Rights, particularly given the unhelpful nature of abortion discourse in Ireland.

 http://www.ifpa.ie/eng/Media-Info-Centre/News-Events/2009-News-Events/Ireland%27s-restrictive-abortion-laws-put-under-the-spotlight-at-human-rights-court

"Women in need of abortion services should, as a matter of international law and - frankly -human decency, be able to count on support from their government as they face a difficult situation," said Marianne Mollmann, women's rights advocacy director at Human Rights Watch. "But in Ireland they are actively stonewalled, stigmatized, and written out." In Ireland, abortion is legally restricted in almost all circumstances, with potential penalties of penal servitude for life for both patients and service providers, except where the pregnant woman's life is in danger, but there is little legal and policy guidance on when, specifically, an abortion might be legally performed within Ireland.

"Women should not have to make decisions about their health and lives based on lies," Mollmann said.  "Yet the law leaves ‘rogue' agencies unregulated and threatens honest service providers with fines or worse if they help a distressed woman make a phone call to a clinic abroad."

http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2010/01/28/ireland-abortion-limits-violate-human-rights

http://www.hrw.org/en/reports/2010/01/28/state-isolation-0

A NEW fund dedicated solely to women’s causes was launched yesterday in Dublin by President Mary McAleese.

The Women’s Fund for Ireland aims to address problems facing women and girls in Ireland including poverty, violence and improving access to healthcare and education. It will also support grassroots projects in areas such as the arts, literacy and support for carers.

The fund launch took place at a symposium on Women in Philanthropy, Realising the power and potential of women in philanthropy, which was hosted by Philanthropy Ireland and the Community Foundation for Ireland (CFI).

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2010/0415/1224268372322.html

The Fund will tackle the problems facing women and girls in Ireland today by raising funds, promoting women’s organisations and raising awareness of the challenges facing women. The fund will be dedicated to supporting a number of varying women’s issues by giving small grants to enable positive change at the grassroots and strategic level and tackle women’s inequality at its source.

http://www.irishpressreleases.ie/2010/04/15/the-womens-fund-for-ireland/

Questi cosidetti "crisis pregnancy centers" esistono già negli Stati Uniti. Evidentemente li stanno esportando.

Several women who approached these agencies for advice on their options reported feeling distressed by the counselling techniques used. State-funded pregnancy counselling services are concerned about the issue, and have called on the Government to step in and regulate their activities.

Pregnancy counselling services in Ireland generally state their ethos to help women select an appropriate service. One of the criticisms levelled against unreliable agencies by the Irish Family Planning Association (IFPA) among others, is that their advertising is misleading, implying that they will provide information about abortion services abroad when this is not the case.

An IFPA report claims that so-called “rogue” agencies use pro-choice language and advertise in a manner designed to attract women who may be considering abortion, when in reality they have an anti-abortion ethos.

The counselling methods used by these agencies have also come in for strong criticism. The Well Woman Clinic regularly encounters women who have visited them and found the experience upsetting.

“From what we hear, women are subjected to the most extraordinary tactics,” says Alison Begas, chief executive of the Well Woman Centre.

“We have heard stories of counselling sessions lasting three to four hours, the use of lurid US-produced videos and disturbing images.

“None of these tactics has any place in responsible pregnancy counselling. The problem is that most women don’t know where to go for advice until they actually need it.”

She adds that silence surrounding the issue of abortion leaves women vulnerable to “spurious” medical information, and women who have a bad experience with a rogue agency are less likely to seek the good quality service they need to make an informed decision.

Sarah (not her real name) became pregnant at 19 and made an appointment with a pregnancy counselling agency in Dublin with a view to discussing a termination.

“Our contraception failed. Myself and my boyfriend were both in college and it was fairly obvious to us that we didn’t want a child. We went to the Golden Pages , looked at family planning. We made a phone call to this place saying we wanted to talk about having an abortion, going to England.

“I think the ad made some reference to English clinics, it definitely gave the impression they gave out abortion information . . . I don’t think I would have had the guts to say it if the ad wasn’t like that.

“They said, ‘Yes, come in, that is what we do and we will give you all the information you need’. There was no hint of religion or anything. We went in together with our minds made up, and the place was horrible, really grotty.

“They separated us pretty much immediately after the test. What I remember is coming out after two or three hours in there and us both looking at each other and saying, ‘Okay, we can’t do that now, it’s not an option anymore’.

“They talked about how an abortion would ruin our relationship, that we would break up, and that really got to us.

“They said I would not be able to have children again; my family would think I was awful; that I’d never want to have sex again; they actually managed to change our mind about this huge thing.

“They said my risk of breast cancer would go up two or three times, and called several times afterwards to ask what decision I made. I think they cause a lot of confusion and pain in the long run. They have to be closed down. I mean, it is such a huge thing to have to go through.”

A Bill which will give people in long-term relationships many of the statutory rights of married couples has been published.

The legislation will allow same-sex couples to register their civil partnership for the first time and will also recognise a number of other rights and obligations previously denied to them. Unmarried opposite-sex couples will be allowed to register, as will those in non-sexual relations such as cohabiting companions.

Under the Bill, once a civil partnership is registered, the couple will be dealt with in the same way as a married couple by the Revenue Commissioners.

"The Bill has been carefully framed to balance any potential conflict between these two constitutionally guaranteed rights. This balance is achieved by maintaining material distinctions between civil partnership and marriage, in particular between the rights attaching to both, while at the same time reflecting the equality rights protected by the Constitution,” Minister for Justice Dermot Ahern this afternoon.

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2009/0626/breaking34.html

THE SIGNING into law yesterday of the Civil Partnership Bill was welcomed across the political spectrum and also by groups that have campaigned for legal recognition for same-sex couples in Ireland.

The Bill was signed into law by President Mary McAleese at Áras an Uachtaráin yesterday morning.

Minister for Justice Dermot Ahern said it was “one of the most important pieces of civil rights legislation to be enacted since independence”.

The Green Party’s justice spokesman Trevor Sargent also warmly welcomed the development, describing it as a significant step forward and a stepping stone towards greater equality in society.

Gay and lesbian couples will benefit from the same rights as married couples in the areas of property, social welfare, succession, maintenance, pensions and tax.

The Civil Partnership and Certain Rights and Obligations of Cohabitants Act 2010 is expected to be commenced when those changes take effect, allowing the first registrations in January 2011.

Kieran Rose of the Gay and Lesbian Network said that it was a great day for Ireland.

“Lesbian and gay people, their parents, families, friends neighbours, colleagues can now look forward to celebrating their civil partnerships in the near future,” he said.

The Reverend Aisling Shine will be installed as a Canon of Christ Church Cathedral next month.

Aisling is currently working in Drumcondra North Strand and was previously based in Clondalkin and Rathcoole parish. She was deaconed in 2003 and ordained to the priesthood in 2004.

Regarding her new appointent, Aisling stated that she was "looking forward to meeting the people who work and worship in Christ Church and being part of that work and worship myself." 

http://www.ireland.anglican.org/index.php?do=news&newsid=3140