Catholic organizations in Northern Ireland are protesting against changes to regulations regarding sex education in secondary schools.
On November 7, the Catholic Schools Trustee Service (CSTS), the sector body representing Catholic schools in Northern Ireland, released a statement opposing the teaching of “abortion ideology” to children in secondary schools.
The announcement comes in response to radical changes to the Relationships and Sexuality Education (RSE) curriculum. On this basis, students in schools in Northern Ireland will receive information about abortion and access to abortion services.
Recall that the curriculum changes were approved by Northern Ireland Secretary Chris Heaton-Harris at Westminster on June 6 this year. The regulations will force schools to teach children aged 11 to 16 about killing the unborn and provide information about access to contraception.
Heaton-Harris said providing accurate information about contraception and abortion in schools was “fundamentally” important for the well-being of young people in Northern Ireland.
Northern Ireland currently has some of the most extreme abortion laws. Disabled children can be aborted until birth.
Against the promotion of abortion
CSTS believes the new changes “directly undermine the rights of parents” who wish to raise their children in accordance with their moral, ethical and religious belief systems, as guaranteed “in international human rights law.”
Members of the organization fear that the pro-abortion education legislation “imposes a specific ideological view on abortion and early pregnancy prevention that directly challenges the rights of Catholic schools to offer a faith-based worldview on such matters.”
Bishop Donal McKeown, president of the CSTS, said: “There is no ethically neutral or value-free approach to the question of when human life begins. The expectation that schools should adopt a so-called neutral curriculum that emphasizes access to abortion demonstrates a lack of understanding of the basic principles of Catholic education.”
The amendment to the sex education regulation, which was protested by Catholic groups, states that it aims to “achieve age-appropriate, comprehensive and scientifically accurate education in the field of sexual and reproductive health and rights, including the prevention of early pregnancies and access to abortion.”
Before the legislation was introduced, schools in Northern Ireland had the autonomy to decide what they wanted to teach students in terms of sex education, based on the ethos and beliefs of the school.
Source: Do Rzeczy
Roy Brown is a renowned economist and author at The Nation View. He has a deep understanding of the global economy and its intricacies. He writes about a wide range of economic topics, including monetary policy, fiscal policy, international trade, and labor markets.
