Jason Walsh

CS Monitor, May 1, 2013

The Protection of Life in Pregnancy Bill spells out the terms where women could obtain abortions, which are currently illegal. Ireland’s prime minister vows it will be law by summer.

By Jason Walsh, Correspondent

DUBLIN, IRELAND—It came half a day late, but late last night the Irish government finally published the “heads of bill” outlining its proposed abortion legislation – though it did little to stem arguments about the legality and morality of abortion in Ireland, where the practice has been outlawed.

CS Monitor, April 29, 2013

Ireland is introducing an abortion bill that would include mental health among factors that could put a woman’s life at risk. Opponents say it would open the door to greater liberalization.

By Jason Walsh, Correspondent

DUBLIN, IRELAND—When Ireland’s Supreme Court ordered the government to pass a law allowing abortion when a pregnant woman’s life was at risk, none of the five judges could likely have imagined that its ruling would still be pending more than 20 years later.

Spiked, April 24, 2013
Following the Savita tragedy, Irish pro-choice activists should be engaging with the public, not cosying up to judges.

By Jason Walsh

CS Monitor, April 18, 2013

The thieves are expected to try to sell the horns in Asia. Europol claimed in 2011 that most of Europe’s illegal rhino trade was committed by a single ‘ethnically-Irish organized criminal group.’

By Jason Walsh, Correspondent

DUBLIN, IRELAND—Four rhino heads have been stolen from a museum in Ireland, presumed to be headed to the Far East where they could fetch over half a million dollars as raw material for Asian folk medicine.

CS Monitor, April 16, 2013

Ireland’s Constitutional Convention voted Sunday, with 79 percent in favor of extending marriage rights to same-sex couples. Next up will likely be a referendum.

By Jason Walsh, Correspondent

DUBLIN, IRELAND—Ireland, a famously conservative country with a government dominated by the center-right, has taken a step toward legalizing same-sex marriage, following several other Catholic nations into what some say is belated equality – and others claim is murky legal and moral territory.

CS Monitor, April 13

Thatcher opponents have driven the song ‘Ding Dong, the Witch is Dead’ to the top of Britain’s pop charts. Was the ‘retaliatory’ promotion of a 1979 punk song fanned by fans – or a good capitalist moment?

CS Monitor, April 12, 2013

The Central Bank of Ireland will not withdraw a 10 euro coin that it minted to commemorate Irish novelist James Joyce, even though the coin misquotes a line from his masterpiece ‘Ulysses.’

CS Monitor, April 11, 2013

Though held up today by British Euroskeptics as an icon, the late prime minister left a legacy in Europe that is not as one-sided as it might at first appear.

NSFW Corp, April 9, 2013

Margaret Thatcher supported Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, yes. What she did not do was use his tactics. Throughout Thatcher’s reign Britain remained a democracy. Labor party leaders Michael Foot and Neil Kinnock were not dropped from helicopters into the Atlantic ocean. Guardian journalists were not rounded-up and shot. In fact, at least one of them, Polly Toynbee, left the Labor party to join the collaborationist Social Democratic Party, significantly damaging Labor’s chances of unseating Thatcher in the 1983 election.

CS Monitor, April 8, 2013

The late British prime minister’s blunt style and politics were not well received in either the Republic or Northern Ireland, which she once famously declared ‘as British as Finchley.’

By Jason Walsh, Correspondent