Liberal abortion and LGBT agenda on course for NI classrooms

Compulsory Relationships and Sexuality Education (RSE) classes are to be introduced across Northern Ireland, the Westminster Government has announced.

Northern Ireland Secretary Chris Heaton-Harris MP said he had a statutory duty to implement RSE recommendations contained in a report by the UN’s Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW).

Currently, all grant-aided schools are required to develop their own policy on RSE, but they can provide content in keeping with their own ethos and permit the right of withdrawal on an individual basis.

UN

The Northern Ireland Office said the Regulations “will result in educating adolescents on issues such as how to prevent a pregnancy, the legal right to an abortion in Northern Ireland, and how relevant services may be accessed”.

Citing the CEDAW report, Mr Heaton-Harris said that post-primary school children must “have access to age-appropriate, comprehensive and scientifically accurate education on sexual and reproductive health and rights”.

In 2018 the UN committee claimed that RSE provision in Northern Ireland was “under developed or non-existent” as a consequence of a “school’s discretion to implement the contents of its curriculum according to its values”.

The report’s recommendations were not binding until they were given legal force by Section 9 of the Northern Ireland (Executive Formation etc) Act 2019, drafted by abortion activist Stella Creasy MP and passed under Theresa May’s government.

‘Hijacked’

The Christian Institute’s Northern Ireland Officer, Callum Webster, said: “This is shocking. The Secretary of State is enshrining the demands of UN committee activists and overriding the wishes of parents in Northern Ireland, who are rightly concerned about what their children will now be taught.

“The classroom ought not to be hijacked as a place to undermine the values and religious ethos of parents. Abortion is not some value-free or morally neutral act – it is damaging to women and their unborn children.”

Dr John Kirkpatrick, moderator of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland, criticised Mr Heaton-Harris for failing “to consult or engage in a meaningful way with any of the key stakeholders within education”.

And Rev Gordon Dane, speaking on behalf of the Free Presbyterian Church, accused the Government of imposing CEDAW’s “liberal and immoral” agenda on the Province.

‘Gender identity’

In May, Northern Ireland’s Education and Training Inspectorate called for schools to deliver more sex education lessons on abortion and ‘gender and sexual identity’.

The Inspectorate particularly complained that too many schools were ‘completely avoiding’ teaching on “gender and sexual identity; LGBTQ+”.

It claimed that the flexibility given to schools to teach in accordance with their ethos created “a risk, that some pupils in NI could leave school without a clear, unbiased knowledge and understanding of important concepts” such as ‘gender identity’.