Dawn McAvoy
Dawn keeps the office and team in order. She also heads up Both Lives Matter, of which the Evangelical Alliance Northern Ireland is a founding partner. Dawn lives and worships on the Ards peninsula, with her husband Peter and their three daughters.
Time to leave the culture wars behind
1 July 2022Context Fifty years ago, the US Supreme Court in Roe v Wade interpreted the constitution so as to introduce a right to abortion by extending the right to privacy. Last week, a majority opinion in a case called Dobbs v Jackson led to Roe being overturned. The result means that responsibility for abortion law has been returned to each state legislature rather than being determined by federal government. With abortion consistently being one of the most contested issues in America, around half of…
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Neither apocalypse nor silver bullet
5 May 2022Context and culture war Fifty years ago, the US supreme court in Roe v Wade interpreted the constitution so as to introduce a right to abortion. Yesterday, a political site published a leaked early draft of a supreme court ruling expected this summer. The leak was unprecedented and is being investigated. But what it revealed – that a majority opinion in the Dobbs v Jackson case may overturn Roe v Wade, returning responsibility for abortion laws to each state legislature rather than set by the…
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Protecting mother and child in Northern Ireland
19 June 2019As a devolved issue, the law on abortion in Northern Ireland is very different to the rest of the UK. in Northern Ireland abortion is permitted but in much more limited situations which relate back to the health and life of the mother rather than the wanted-ness or disability of the baby than is the law across the rest of the UK. Abortions have been carried out in Northern Ireland in situations of rape and sexual crime (as per the Bourne case), and where the baby has a ‘fatal fetal abnormality’…
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