What the parties say about abortion, euthanasia,
faith schools and gender 
 

IN THIS e-letter we examine the pledges the various parties have made in the areas of abortion, euthanasia, denominational schools and religion.

We see that Labour, the Social Democrats and People Before Profit all want to further liberalise our abortion law and the same three parties also want to allow euthanasia.

Labour appears to want an entirely State-run education system. Both Labour and the Social Democrats want to remove religious instruction from the school day.

These parties also want to further extend trans rights.

Fine Gael, Fianna Fail and Sinn Féin are mostly silent on the above issues. Aontú maintain a pro-life position, want to repeal the Gender Recognition Act and ensure that sex education in schools follows the wishes of parents and is age-appropriate.

Further details follow.

 
Abortion

Labour, Social Democrats and People Before Profit want to decriminalise abortion, remove the three-day waiting period and also extend the 12-week limit for abortion-on-demand.

People Before Profit want to allow abortion on demand with no time limit at all.
 
Aontú want to protect the three-day wait period. They want to offer the Children's Allowance for mothers from the fourth month of pregnancy. The party supports full freedom of conscience for health workers. Other pro-life commitments can be found in their manifesto.


Euthanasia

Labour, the Social Democrats and the Green Party want to introduce euthanasia and assisted suicide, based on the recommendations of the Oireachtas Committee on Assisted Dying.
  

Denominational schools

Labour and Social Democrats want to remove religious instruction from the school day.

Labour say their objective is to “secure a State run school system with religious instruction removed from the school day”. This would appear to mean that over time there should be no publicly-funded denominational education.

At the same time, they say they want to increase “parental choice”. It is hard to know how to reconcile these two statements,

Aontú want sex education and associated materials to adhere to the ethos of the parents and the schools their children are being taught in. They want to ensure that students are taught about the growing dangers of pornography and ensure that all teaching is based on fact and science and is age-appropriate.


Religion

The Labour party promises to establish a Joint Committee on Constitutional Change to consider proposed wording for amendments on the place of faith in the Constitution including the Preamble and religious oaths for office holders.

 
Gender ideology

The Green Party commits to implement a “model of trans healthcare” guided by the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH). WPATH recommend the use of puberty blockers in certain cases. The WPATH approach has been criticised by the Cass review in the UK.

The Labour party wants to reform the legal gender recognition system and allow children of any age to legally ‘change’ their gender. Labour believe in the recommendations of the ‘Review of the Gender Recognition Act 2015’ from 2018, which include making puberty blockers available to children despite criticism of this from expert quarters.

Labour and Social Democrats also want to provide legal gender recognition for "non-binary people".

Sinn Féin are committed to "Implementing a new and holistic model of care for gender identity services". It is not clear what this means.

Aontú believe that women and girls have the right to female-only (that is, biological female) safe spaces, and that women should be allowed to participate in women-only sports. They seek to repeal the Gender Recognition Act to end the practice of male-born sex offenders being placed in women’s prisons.

Note: Aontú have now published their manifesto and among their promises is a commitment to giving stay-at-home parents a payment of €3,000 per annum for each children aged 3 or under.

FROM The Iona Institute

Think - Tank