Milan is in the grip of an epidemic. Towns have been quarantined. Public gatherings have been cancelled. The streets are empty. Public officials try to dampen mounting hysteria. Dark rumours are circulating. Hospital wards are overflowing. The coronavirus? No, the Great Plague of 1630 in which perhaps a million (1,000,000) people died. Seventeen (17) have died so […]
The Citizens’ Assembly on gender equality met just over a week ago. Regrettably, the session on “The family in the constitution and law”, was a prolonged attack on marriage and its special status in the Constitution. Prof. Siobhan Mullaly from NUI Galway, who spoke as an expert, should have explained why marriage deserves constitutional protection. […]
I had a quick look through Hansard and discovered that I first started speaking on this subject 20 years ago in a debate on the persecution of Christians in Egypt. Frankly, there was little interest from the Government then, but we see much more attention now, which I welcome. There is a special envoy for […]
In September, in a case known as Truchon v Canada, Quebec Superior Court Justice Christine Baudouin declared parts of both the federal and provincial laws on Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) unconstitutional. Her judgement struck down the requirement in Canada’s euthanasia laws that death be reasonably foreseeable before euthanasia could take place. On Monday, the Canadian […]
The number of teenagers born as girls who have been diagnosed with gender dysphoria has increased by almost 1,500 percent in ten years in Sweden, according to a report from the Board of Health and Welfare (Socialstyrelsen). The report examines mental health and the rise of gender between 2008 and 2018. In that time the number […]
After its parliament approved five bills this week, Portugal will probably become the next country to legalise euthanasia and assisted suicide. The next step is for a committee to consolidate the five proposals into one bill. However, right to die is not yet done and dusted. President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, a conservative, could veto […]
The world’s major economies are being hit hard by demographic change. From China to Europe, they may well grow old before they grow any richer. Over the next three decades, the global number of older persons is projected to more than double, reaching over 1.5 billion persons in 2050. Currently, Eastern and South-Eastern Asia are home to the […]
In 2010, President Barack Obama made January National Slavery and Human Trafficking Awareness Month. It’s incredible that anyone needs to be aware of slavery 157 years after the Emancipation Proclamation. But it still exists. “Human trafficking erodes personal dignity and destroys the moral fabric of society,” said President Trump when he launched this year’s commemoration. “It […]
Following on from our post on Friday night which discussed the vicious Shankill butchers (a loyalist gang connected with the UVF); a Catholic civilian Francis Rice, (24), was abducted, beaten, tortured and had his throat cut almost through to the spine. His torture and death was described as grotesque and obscene. His body was found […]
Once again, the Belgian parliament is debating abortion – not whether to decriminalise it, for that happened in 1990, but whether to criminalise protests against it. A new bill would relax existing restrictions by allowing abortions up to 18 weeks (from 12 weeks), removing all penalties for women who do not comply with the law, […]
It is incredible how rare babies are becoming in the Republic of Korea. In 2018, the country’s total fertility rate (the number of babies a woman will have on average in her lifetime) crashed down to 0.98. That’s far below the rate of 2.1 considered necessary for a stable population and is about the lowest […]
Even in the current culture, most young people still dream of being happily married someday—of finding someone they’d like to share their life with.