Harris: Religion will not determine health policy

Increasing access to and availability of contraception is and will remain public health policy, insisted Health Minister Simon Harris, responding to a bishop’s comments about birth control.

Bishop of Elphin, Kevin Doran, sparked outrage when he said the principles of Humanae Vitae, which banned artificial contraception, had been ignored for too long. “Please just make it stop,” the minister tweeted when he read the bishop’s comments, that were reported in the Irish Times over the weekend.

“Religion plays an important role for many on an individual basis, but it will not determine health and social policy in our country,” Mr Harris wrote.

Please just make it stop! Increasing access to & availability of contraception is and will remain public health policy. Religion plays an important role for many on an individual basis - but it will not determine health and social policy in our country any more. Please get that. https://t.co/BMwIL4fNEE

— Simon Harris TD (@SimonHarrisTD) August 5, 2018

“Amen to that, Simon,” added Fine Gael senator Catherine Noone, former chair of the Oireachtas committee on the Eighth Amendment.

In another tweet, Ms Noone wrote that keeping the Catholic Church out of sex education was long overdue.

“We are in the process of bringing sex education into [the] 21st century and will not be deterred,” she wrote.

Bishop Doran was speaking at an event in Dublin on Saturday marking the 50th anniversary of Humanae Vitae, an encyclical written by Pope Paul VI, about birth control.

About 150 people attended the conference organised by the Nazareth Family Institute, that promotes Catholic teaching on marriage, sexuality and family life.

The bishop said:

The principles of Humanae Vitae have been ignored for too long and need to be presented in a fresh way

“There is undoubtedly a place in schools for an appropriate presentation of the Church’s teachings on human sexuality.

“In a world which has embraced abortion and is flirting more and more with euthanasia, it may seem almost foolish to even suggest at this time that we should attempt to regain the ground that has been lost.”

Bishop Doran, who chairs the Episcopal Task Group on Bioethics and Life and is a member of the Council for Marriage and the Family, also said contraception impinged on the “dignity of women”.

The fact that women were less likely to become pregnant because of contraception also took away from them one of the principal motives or freedoms for saying no to unwanted sex.

He also believed that the “contraceptive mentality” in society was linked to the “surprisingly high number” of people in favour of same-sex marriage.

“If the act of love can be separated from its procreative purpose, then it’s also very difficult to explain why marriage needs to between a man and a woman,” he said.

Athiest Ireland’s human rights officer, Jane Donnelly, described the bishop’s speech as “hard and uncaring”.

Ms Donnelly said the Church had a lot of control over publicly-funded schools and continued to present its teaching on contraception.