Cardinal calls for Marian devotion to be protected from mafia exploitation

CNA Staff, Sep 25, 2020 / 03:01 pm (CNA).- Northern Ireland’s Department of Health told a Belfast daily on Friday that women who self-administer medical abortions at home are at risk.

Home administration of medical abortions is not permitted in Northern Ireland.

“Women are at risk if they access unregulated abortion services,” the health department told The News Letter Sept. 25.

“The Department’s view is that services should be properly delivered through direct medical supervision within the health and social care system.”

The News Letter’s Adam Kula had asked the Department of Health about a online course being held Sept. 26 by Alliance for Choice. The course is meant to teach “the process of self-managed abortion with pills, how to look after yourself or help someone else using the medication.”

Northern Ireland law allows elective abortions up to 12 weeks of pregnancy; abortions up to 24 weeks in cases of risk to the mother’s physical or mental health; and abortion without time limit in cases of severe fetal impairment or fetal fetal abnormality.

Abortions may be performed at General Practitioners premises, and Health and Social Care clinics and hospitals. Medical abortions are permitted up to 10 weeks, and the first medication, mifepristone, must be taken at a clinic.

The region’s Health Minister, Robin Swann, is able to approve further locations for medical abortions. The Press Association reported earlier this year that approval of at-home medical abortions “will require the agreement” of the Northern Ireland Executive.

Home administration of medical abortions has been permitted in Scotland and Wales for some time, and it was approved in England in March.

In April, shortly after the law permitting elective abortion in Northern Ireland came into force, Michelle O’Neill, deputy First Minister and vice president of Sinn Féin, urged that women there be allowed to perform medical abortions at home.

Sinn Féin is an Irish nationalist party that has historically enjoyed significant Catholic support. It supported the liberalization of abortion laws in Northern Ireland imposed by the British parliament, and its party members endorsed the repeal of the Republic of Ireland’s Eighth Amendment, which protected unborn children.

In contrast, First Minister Arlene Foster, who is also leader of the Democratic Unionist Party, stated that “The health minister will bring papers forward and we will have discussions, but I don’t think it’s any secret that I don’t believe abortion on demand should be available in Northern Ireland.”

“I think it’s a very retrograde step for our society here in Northern Ireland. Instead of supporting people who find themselves in crisis pregnancies, we’re not even having any discussion around that and how we can support people in those circumstances, how we can provide perinatal care,” Foster added.

At-home medical abortions were discussed by the power-sharing Northern Ireland executive April 6, and the BBC reported that “Stormont sources said it had led to a row between the parties.”

Before March 31, abortion was legally permitted in Northern Ireland only if the mother’s life was at risk or if there was risk of long term or permanent, serious damage to her mental or physical health.

In June the House of Lords backed the new abortion regulations for Northern Ireland by an overwhelming majority, and the British Minister of State for Northern Ireland said that while abortion regulation is a devolved issue, any local changes to Northern Ireland’s abortion law would have to comply with human rights conventions.

The Northern Ireland Assembly had shortly before passed a non-binding motion rejecting the imposition of the abortion regulations by the Westminster parliament.

Northern Irish women had been able to procure free National Health Service abortions in England, Scotland, and Wales since November 2017.

The new framework was adopted to implement Westminster’s Northern Ireland (Executive Formation etc) Act 2019, which was passed while the Northern Ireland Assembly was suspended.

Northern Ireland rejected the Abortion Act 1967, which legalized abortion in England, Wales, and Scotland; and bills to legalize abortion in cases of fatal fetal abnormality, rape, or incest failed in the Northern Ireland Assembly in 2016.

The amendment to the NI EF Act obliging the government to provide for legal abortion in Northern Ireland was introduced by Stella Creasy, a Labour MP who represents a London constituency.

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Rome, Italy, Jun 5, 2017 / 01:42 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Adorning the crypts hidden among Rome’s catacombs are frescoes which reveal 1,600 year-old history, as well as the life of early Christians, which are regaining vividness through new technolog… […]

Madrid, Spain, Feb 26, 2021 / 03:11 pm (CNA).- While maintaining restrictions on transit, gatherings, and worship services amid the coronavirus pandemic, Spanish authorities will allow marches for International Women’s Day next month.

Various feminist organizations are already calling for demonstrations in various parts of Spain March 8. In Madrid, marches of up to 500 persons have been authorized.

The Minister of Health, Carolina Darias, advises against the marches, saying, “there’s no place” for them because “the epidemiological situation would not allow nor make sense to hold these events.”

However, Fernando Simón, director of the Health Emergencies and Alerts Coordination Center of the Spanish government, has been in favor of the feminist events and said that they’re less risky than Holy Week processions.

Simón said,”it’s not the same to be under a litter carried by many people during Holy Week, than to be in a demonstration of 500 where distances can be maintained.”

The delegate of the Spanish government in Madrid, José Manuel Franco, told Onda Madrid public radio that the requests for a permit to hold marches they have received in the Spanish capital “have not been prohibited because they maintain the parameters required right now in this pandemic situation.”

In various autonomous regional governments in Spain, restrictions have already been announced for Holy Week celebrations and other celebrations associated with the Church, such as the “Sanfermines” in Navarre, which will not be held this year.

In a statement to ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish language news partner, Luis Losada, campaign director for CitizenGO in Latin America, said that “it’s outrageous that (while we have had to) give up the Fallas of Valencia and San Fermin festivals, as well as Holy Week, the feminists insist on their own celebration.”

Fr. Juan Manuel Góngora, a Spaniard, said, “these days we are watching with astonishment how in the middle of the pandemic, the Government Delegation in Madrid is going to authorize the 8M demonstrations with ridiculous measures.”

“Allowing these demonstrations is a farce for all of us citizens who are complying with the imposed measures and it constitutes a shameful double standard,” Góngora noted.
“At the same time we are already hearing 24/7 that this year we must act as if ‘Holy Week does not exist,'” he added.

The priest said that “if on Easter Sunday I go out through the door of the church that I administer holding the monstrance with the Blessed Sacrament while the parishioners accompany me duly separated, what authority does (the government) have to impose a fine on me?”

“We Catholics must stop being timid before sectarian rulers, we should act with courage and claim our right to express publicly our faith while respecting sanitary measures, those that truly respond to the requirements of healthcare but which others are using under that guise to restrict freedom,” Góngora said.

Fr. Francisco José Delgado, another Spaniard, charged that “all this time we have been enduring a real ‘demonization’ of Catholic worship, despite the fact that there is no known source of infection associated with worship activities in Spain.”

“At the same time, we see how the public events of the state religion, since the March 8 marches are nothing else, are shamelessly promoted by Podemos in the government,” he said.

Delgado said, that “the Ministry of Health advises against these marches, shows this is more about the political confrontation between the political parties in the government than from a real concern for the health of the people, which has been missing in the decisions that have been made since the pandemic started.”

“In our case, as a Church it is difficult to distinguish what part of our self-imposed restrictions belongs to prudence and what part corresponds to posturing before the world. We have to obey, and in most places we won’t have processions, obeying the bishops,” he said.

“But perhaps the task of spiritual reconstruction should be planned that must come after all this, because the world’s ideological agenda is not going to back off a millimeter, while we seem to be in retreat,” Delgado lamented.

Spain has had more than 3 million confirmed cases of Covid-19, and more than 68,000 deaths. Per 100,000 people, it has had 6,802 cases, and 147 deaths.

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