Northern Ireland’s Secretary, Chris Heaton-Harris, recently set regulations in Parliament that will require all post-primary schools to teach about abortion access and prevention of early pregnancy. These Relationship and Sex Education (RSE) regulations will mirror the approach taken in England and will come into effect on July 1, 2023.
Until now, Northern Ireland schools have been required to develop their own sex education policies and curriculums. An advisory panel on a gender equality strategy appointed by Stormont’s Department for Communities previously said RSE curriculums in Northern Ireland are “inconsistent and insufficient.”
In a written statement on Tuesday, Heaton-Harris said he had a legal duty to act on recommendations made in a United Nations (UN) report. He explained that the implementation was based on “A CEDAW (Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women) recommendation to ‘make age-appropriate, comprehensive and scientifically accurate education on sexual and reproductive health and rights, a compulsory component of curriculum for adolescents, covering prevention of early pregnancy and access to abortion in Northern Ireland, and monitor its implementation.'”
The CEDAW report he referred to states that young people are “denied the education necessary to enjoy their sexual and reproductive health and rights.”
Bishop of Derry Donal McKeown agreed that schools need to help students develop “lifelong skills for healthy relationships,” but added, “I am really concerned this seems to be a decision by the secretary of state that will impose a particular way of approaching the issue on all schools. [That will] perhaps end up having schools penalized and criminalized for not obeying the legislation.”
He continued, “I don’t think you need to impose a duty on schools, that come from a range of different backgrounds, an obligation to provide information as if abortion and that whole area is somehow or other a value-free thing.”
Bishiop McKeown believes schools should be providing an education, not information about abortion. “If anyone wants to find out about abortion you get something called Google and you type in abortion,” he said. The Bishop spoke on BBC Radio Foyle’s The North West Today program, saying that Mr. Heaton-Harris should have engaged “with all parties in Northern Ireland, not just with CEDAW coming from New York.”
He said the changes to the curriculum developed from an “ideology that says: ‘This is about my rights’, and there is no question of morality involved. This is a new ideology that says: ‘This is the right way to do it, that we must worship on the altar of human rights and everything else must be sacrificed in the service of that.'”
Dr. John Kirkpatrick, moderator of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland, also challenged the changes to the curriculum, saying Mr. Heaton-Harris was trying to “impose a particular worldview on the education of children in Northern Ireland.”
