Seanad debates

Monday, 30 March 2015

Children and Family Relationships Bill 2015: Report and Final Stages

 

2:30 pm

Photo of Jim WalshJim Walsh (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I support this amendment on the basis that it reflects, as I am sure it did, what was intended in amendment No. 4, that the two parents shall be a father and a mother. That conforms well with all of the amendments which I put down and pressed at Committee Stage, and, consequently, could not re-enter here.

The Minister stated, in an earlier contribution in response to Senator Power, that parentage will be assigned. In other words, the State will decide. Nature and biology is being consigned to the dustbin and that creates serious difficulties, both for society and for children, as we move forward. The Bill decouples parentage from biology and assigns parentage to what it calls the "intending parents". The donor is reduced to a mere supplier of biological material. The concept of natural parents is relegated in order to promote a new concept of "intending parents", favouring a right of adults to have a child over that of children to have ties to their natural mother and father.

Many interest groups and lobby groups talk about the right of adults to have children using donors. Although I understand the human desire to procreate, I believe we must also think about the rights of other affected parties, including donor-conceived children and donors, in particular, the women in developing countries who have their ovaries hyper-stimulated using hormones, often without regard to their future physical or mental health, to harvest eggs used in commercial assisted-reproduction clinics in western Europe. I am concerned about the exploitation of women and in the main, these are from poorer countries and poorer families on which the globalised commercialised IVF sector relies. Our laws should not encourage commodification of the human person or the human body.

This Bill does not provide the comprehensive legal architecture required to deal with all of the complex family and children's rights issues that come about as a result of assisted human reproduction. Rather than introduce an inadequate Bill that radically re-imagines parentage, relatives, kinship and identity, Ireland should have the chance for a proper social conversation about all of these matters, such as whether children have a right to their natural identity and parentage and whether they have a right to a parent-child relationship with their genetic parents. In this conversation about such matters as ethics, globalised commercialised donor-assisted human reproduction and genetic relatedness, the right to know is not taking place because the Government has sought to rush this legislation through for its own political purposes in redefining marriage.

There are a number of persons who share that view. Since we embarked on this Bill over the past week, I have been surprised at the amount of contact I have had from persons, who are seriously concerned about what the Minister is doing and who forwarded other pieces of relevant information to me to highlight and substantiate their concerns. Recently, there was an article in the Irish Independentfrom somebody who would be disposed to Fine Gael but whom I cannot name because we are locked down and our constitutional right to expression is being infringed. It states:

"The State ... does little or nothing to face a situation in which one-third of children are born outside marriage.

Yet all of us, apart from a few eccentrics, rightly believe that our system of monogamous marriage is good for society. Perhaps our politicians would do better to find means of strengthening it than engaging in an exercise aimed at solving a problem which does not exist. ...

Essentially this project is a sop to Labour from Fine Gael.
That is from somebody who would be disposed to the Minister's party, and has been in the past.

There was a thought-provoking article in yesterday's Sunday Independentand, presumably, it is one the Minister read. It refers to:

the persistent insinuation that biology is an arbitrary or inconsequential aspect of parenthood. Politicians, commentators and "experts" tell us that what matters in child-rearing is solely the quality of the "love" on offer and it is time for us to overcome our "obsession" with biological parenthood.
The Minister made this point here. Where does that leave her when polyandrist, polygamous, trouples and other group time-limited marriage relationships come about, many of which may be loving, caring relationships? On the basis of the Minister's criteria, she will have no defence when they come knocking on her door to extend marriage to them.

The article in question further states:

[I]n many other jurisdictions legal parenthood arises automatically from biology, Irish jurisprudence identifies rights between parents and children as deriving from legal ties defined under the constitutional provisions governing the married family. ... but [here we acquire] such protections only if his or her parents are married to one another. ... Under our Constitution, a married family enjoys a high degree of autonomy, having rights that are inalienable and imprescriptible. In recent times, there has been growing dissatisfaction and protest concerning this constitutional way of seeing things, in part because it excludes from full constitutional protection unmarried families, now accounting for a third of all Irish families with children.
Here the Minister is looking after approximately 230 - she stated the figures - whereas the hundreds of thousands who do not live within married couples will have no constitutional underpinning. It goes back to a point that I made on Committee Stage, when I put a question to Senator Zappone. There are other ways in which what the Minister is trying to achieve could be tackled but what she is doing, in the manner in which she is approaching this, will have detrimental effects for both children and society as a whole in the future.

I note another article from a recent Sunday newspaper from a gay man, whom I cannot name, who is on the record in other areas.He objects to same-sex marriage for two core principles. I will only go into the first one because his second one deals with the civil partnership issue which is not part of this debate. His first core principle is that the State, its agencies and others, charged with the welfare of children, should be able to favour a family unit that provides a mother and a father, and then he moves on to the civil partnership issue, which I will not go into. He said the result of allowing same-sex couples to marry is that agencies that are entrusted with finding parents to adopt and foster children cannot legally favour families that can provide a mother and a father, which all evidence suggests is the best environment children. Despite what the Minister says, that is in fact the case.

There was a recent article by a lady in the United States, whom I cannot name but who is on the record, and some Members may have read the article. She was brought up by a lesbian couple and has spoken out against gay marriage. She is a mother of four from South Carolina. She previously supported same-sex marriage and even took part in gay rights marches. She announced her change of heart in a article for TheFederalist,an American web magazine. She said, "I don't support gay marriage ... [because] it might not be for the reasons that you think". She added, " It's because of the nature of the same-sex relationship itself". The mother said that growing up she had supported and advocated for gay marriage but now that she can reflect on her childhood, she realises the long-term consequences that same-sex parenting had. She continued,: "[I]t's only now, as I watch my children loving and being loved by their father each day, that I can see the beauty and wisdom in traditional marriage and parenting".She argued that, "Same-sex marriage and parenting withholds either a mother or a father from a child while telling him or her that it doesn't matter.". She said, and she echoed my own sentiments which I included in my Second Stage contribution,"My father's absence created a huge hole in me, and I ached every day for a dad". The mother said, "[B]y and large, the best and most successful family structure is one in which kids are being raised by both their mother and father". According to her, "Gay marriage does not just redefine marriage, but also parenting". The Minister has clearly illustrated that in the Bill she has put before us. It promotes and normalises a family structure that necessarily denies us something precious and foundational. She concluded by saying that this is a hard conversation for gay people to have but stressed that it needs to be talked about. Reference was made in this House by a number of us, including myself, to the Dolce and Gabbana statement a few weeks ago and, in particular, the response from Elton John. I should not have named him.

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