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‘Puberty is a gift from God’: Ireland’s new Catholic sex education is not good enough


Audio
by Lynn Enright
03rd May 2021

Read time: 7 mins

Getty

"The news about the Flourish programme highlights the fact that the provision of sex education in Irish schools is not yet good enough."

When it comes to sex education, children and teenagers don’t need prayers; they need to be able to talk about consent, gender identity, LGBTQ+ relationships and internet porn

To live in Ireland, with its contradictions and its paradoxes, is sometimes baffling. We are a young country and in young countries, inconsistencies are perhaps to be expected but still, they occasionally catch me off guard. In 2019, for example, the country voted overwhelmingly in support of free, safe, legal abortion – and yet still women are forced to travel to the UK to access abortion care if they are terminating pregnancies for medical reasons....

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