Law and religion round-up – 27th May

The week in which the GDPR became operative and our inboxes were inundated with e-mails from people we’d never heard of, begging to keep in touch…

The GDPR and the blog

On 25 May we scrapped our existing subscriber list and started afresh. Also on 25 May, we had an all-time record number of page-views and already a significant number of readers has resubscribed.

We fully realise how irritating all this has been for our subscribers (it’s also been a total pain for us) and we must express our grateful thanks for everyone’s forbearance. If nothing else, however, the advent of the GDPR has made us realise that we ought to have a formal Privacy Statement: you can read it here. Those wishing to resubscribe or subscribe for the first time should visit our Home Page, scroll down, enter their e-mail address and hit the ‘Subscribe’ button on the right-hand sidebar.

Ireland and the Eighth Amendment

In the referendum on Friday, Ireland voted by two to one to repeal the bar on abortion in the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution. The wording of the referendum question envisaged allowing abortions without any restriction up to the end of the twelfth week of pregnancy. Given that repeal had the support of both the Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, and the Tánaiste, Simon Coveney, their intention is presumably to introduce the necessary legislation to amend the Constitution asap. 

The UK Government and blasphemy laws Continue reading