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BBC HomepageSkip to contentAccessibility HelpYour accountLiveNotificationsHomeNewsSportWeatheriPlayerSoundsBitesizeMore menuMore menuSearch BBCHomeNewsSportWeatheriPlayerSoundsBitesizeCBBCCBeebiesFoodClose menuBBC NewsMenuHomeIsrael-Gaza warCost of LivingWar in UkraineClimateUKWorldBusinessPoliticsCultureMoreTechScienceHealthFamily & EducationIn PicturesNewsbeatBBC VerifyDisabilityWorldAfricaAsiaAustraliaEuropeLatin AmericaMiddle EastUS & CanadaSimon Harris: Profile of a man in a hurry to the topPublished28 minutes agoShareclose panelShare pageCopy linkAbout sharingImage source, Getty Images/NurPhotoImage caption, Simon Harris, now 37, organised his first political meeting when he was a 16-year-old schoolboyBy Eimear FlanaganBBC News NISimon Harris is set to replace Leo Varadkar, not only as taoiseach but also as the youngest person ever to lead the Republic of Ireland.At 37, he is a year younger than Mr Varadkar was when he took the same job in 2017.For Simon Harris, it has been a rapid rise to the top of Irish politics, but then he did start out very early.The County Wicklow native organised his first political meeting at just 16 years of age.He was also in such a hurry to start his career in politics that he dropped out of college without finishing his degree.”I know, in many ways, my career has been a bit odd,” Mr Harris told Hot Press magazine in 2022. “I was a county councillor at 22. I was a TD (member of the Irish Parliament) at 24. “I was a junior minister at 27. I was the health minister at 29. “Life came at me a lot faster than I expected it to.”Mr Harris was confirmed as Fine Gael leader after he was the only candidate to seek the role – now he is on course to become taoiseach following Mr Varadkar’s shock resignation announcement on Wednesday.Who is Simon Harris?Image source, Getty Images/NurPhotoImage caption, Simon Harris has served as a minister in the Irish cabinet for the past eight yearsMr Harris was born in 1986 and grew up in the coastal town of Greystones, County Wicklow.The eldest of three children, he is the son of a taxi driver and a special needs assistant.His younger brother Adam is autistic – a fact which Mr Harris said kickstarted his own involvement in politics when he was 16.”I was really frustrated – as that moody, opinionated teenager – with the lack of information around autism,” he told Hotpress.”I saw the stress and strain my parents went through, and called a public meeting in my hometown.”The teenager invited autistic people and their families to a gathering in his local parish hall.About 60 people attended the event, which resulted in the establishment of a new autism support and lobby group. This Twitter post cannot be displayed in your browser. Please enable Javascript or try a different browser.View original content on TwitterThe BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites.Skip twitter post by Simon Harris TDAllow Twitter content?This article contains content provided by Twitter. We ask for your permission before anything is loaded, as they may be using cookies and other technologies. You may want to read Twitter’s cookie policy, external and privacy policy, external before accepting. To view this content choose ‘accept and continue’.Accept and continueThe BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites.End of twitter post by Simon Harris TDAs a schoolboy, Mr Harris attended St David’s Holy Faith Secondary School in Greystones before beginning a degree in journalism and French at Dublin Institute of Technology (DIT).However, the future minister for further and higher education dropped out of college during the penultimate year of his four-year degree course.He deferred his studies to work as a parliamentary assistant to Fine Gael Senator Frances Fitzgerald, but very soon he entered elected politics himself.In 2009 he became a councillor in Wicklow, attracting the highest individual vote of any candidate in the county.When Fine Gael swept to power in 2011 to lead a new coalition government, Mr Harris won a seat for the party in Wicklow. Aged 24, he was “the baby of the House” as the youngest member of the 31st Dáil (Irish parliament).Image source, Getty ImagesImage caption, As the youngest member of the Irish Parliament, Simon Harris met the late Queen Elizabeth in Dublin in 2011His got his first cabinet role in 2016, taking on the prestigious but difficult role of health minister.The following summer he married his long-term girlfriend, children’s cardiac nurse Caoimhe Wade.His brother Adam was best man at the ceremony.Mr Harris is now father to two children.Image source, RTEImage caption, Mr Harris married aged 30 and has since had two childrenIn 2018, he intervened in the case of a nine-year-old schoolboy who was born in Dublin but was facing deportation to China.Eric Zhi Ying Xue had never been outside Ireland, but was not entitled to Irish citizenship due to a 2004 law change.”Quite frankly, Eric is Irish,” Mr Harris told BBC News NI at the time.”This is his home. This is his country. I really hope common sense can prevail.”He appealed to the Department of Justice and, after a wider campaign led by the boy’s school, Eric was granted leave to stay. Covid-19 gaffeMr Harris had served as health minister for more than three and a half years when he faced his biggest challenge – the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic.Image source, Getty Images/NurPhotoImage caption, As health minister, Simon Harris led Ireland’s initial response to the coronovirus emergencyThe Republic of Ireland took early precautions, closing all schools and colleges almost a fortnight before the UK enforced its lockdown.But six weeks into the national emergency, Mr Harris made a surprising gaffe regarding the name of the disease.Speaking about the prospect of a future vaccine, he said: “Remember this is coronavirus Covid-19, that means there have been 18 other coronaviruses and I don’t think they have successfully found a vaccine for any.”But Covid-19 was named by the World Health Organization to reflect the year the disease was discovered, having been first identified in China in late 2019. Widely ridiculed on social media for his lack of knowledge, Mr Harris apologised for what he described as an “awful boo-boo”. Two months later he was replaced as health minister when a new coalition government was formed.Mr Harris was moved to a newly-created department, becoming minister for further and higher education, research, innovation and science.’My most important job’He still holds that job and still lives in Wicklow with his young family. In an opinion piece to mark Father’s Day in 2022 he said parenthood was “the most important job I have, and ever will have”.”For me, fatherhood changed my whole life. The hours I was happy to spend at my desk can sometimes be spent worrying about missed moments and milestones with the children,” he wrote.However, commentators have noted Mr Harris has made no secret of his political ambitions.His name began to circulate as a frontrunner as soon as it was clear the job of taoiseach was up for grabs. 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[ad_1] The favourite to replace Leo Varadkar as taoiseach organised his first political meeting aged 16.
![BBC HomepageSkip to contentAccessibility HelpYour accountLiveNotificationsHomeNewsSportWeatheriPlayerSoundsBitesizeMore menuMore menuSearch BBCHomeNewsSportWeatheriPlayerSoundsBitesizeCBBCCBeebiesFoodClose menuBBC NewsMenuHomeIsrael-Gaza warCost of LivingWar in UkraineClimateUKWorldBusinessPoliticsCultureMoreTechScienceHealthFamily & EducationIn PicturesNewsbeatBBC VerifyDisabilityWorldAfricaAsiaAustraliaEuropeLatin AmericaMiddle EastUS & CanadaAlabama IVF ruling divides devout Christians: ‘Fewer children will be born’Published3 hours agoShareclose panelShare pageCopy linkAbout sharingImage source, Ian DruceImage caption, Margaret Boyce was days away from her first appointment for IVF when Alabama made its rulingBy Nomia IqbalBBC News in Birmingham, AlabamaWhen Alabama’s Supreme Court defined frozen embryos as children, the shock and confusion was immediate. Major hospitals pulled fertility services and would-be parents scrambled for clarity on what would happen next.The debate over reproductive rights in America has long been driven, in part, by opposition to abortion from Christian groups – but this ruling has divided that movement and ignited debate about the role of theology in US lawmaking.Margaret Boyce is soft-spoken, a private person, and certainly not – in her words – a “crier”.She had been taking fertility drugs for 10 months and was days away from her first appointment for in-vitro fertilisation (IVF) when the justices of Alabama’s top court upended her life.Their ruling, which prompted many fertility clinics to pause their work, has left her turning to the Bible daily for comfort.The 32-year-old and her husband have a young boy but, second time round, she is experiencing unexplained infertility. Building a family has always been the dream.”I’m one of three. I feel like it’s the greatest gift to give your child a sibling,” she said.”The journey to becoming parents is different for every single couple – mentally, emotionally and financially,” she added, welling up.”This ruling has added more unnecessary anxiety to something that is already so hard.”For a devout Christian like Margaret, the ruling – given its consequences for what she sees clearly as a process to create life – is even more difficult to comprehend.”God,” she said, “tells you to go forth and be fruitful and multiply.”What is the ruling and what does it mean for fertility patients?IVF is a difficult and lengthy treatment, involving the fertilisation of a woman’s eggs with sperm in a lab to create a microscopic embryo. The fertilised embryo is then transferred into a woman’s uterus, where it may create a pregnancy – but a successful outcome is not guaranteed.Embryos are often frozen or eventually destroyed as part of IVF, which accounts for around 2% of US pregnancies.The Alabama court ruled that an existing law – wrongful death of a minor – covers not just foetuses in the womb, but embryos held in a lab or storage facility too.It did not explicitly restrict or ban IVF, but it has still created deep uncertainty for clinics and medical workers who handle embryos and fear prosecution. In recent days the office of the state’s attorney general said he had “no intention” of pursuing criminal charges against IVF clinics – but one clinic told the BBC this statement lacked detail and did not quell their fears.While the majority of the justices rooted their ruling in law, Chief Justice Tom Parker also had a higher authority in mind, repeatedly invoking scripture in explaining his decision.The people of Alabama, he wrote in a concurring opinion, had adopted a “theologically-based view of the sanctity of life” in their state constitution.Image source, Supeme Court of AlabamaImage caption, Chief Justice Tom Parker, of the Alabama Supreme CourtDelving into religious sources from classic Christian theologians like St. Thomas Aquinas and also a modern conservative Christian manifesto, he concluded that “even before birth, all human beings have the image of God, and their lives cannot be destroyed without effacing his glory”.Some anti-abortion groups celebrated the explicit use of scripture in Justice Parker’s opinion to justify what for them was a momentous decision. Tony Perkins, president of evangelical activist group the Family Research Council, described it as “a beautiful defence of life”.But the chief justice’s theocratic justification has left Margaret puzzled. She doesn’t believe in abortion but she also struggles to see a frozen embryo as a living person. For her, life begins with a heartbeat.”Nobody understands more that an embryo is not a child,” she said, before taking a pause, “than the person yearning for that embryo to be a child.”US courts do sometimes make decisions that seem to be based on religious premises, said Meredith Render, a professor at the University of Alabama School of Law.But, she added, “rarely do you see it as explicitly stated” as in the chief justice’s opinion.Alabama IVF row an election-year political bombshellTrump calls on Alabama to protect IVF treatment The ruling was however “not an outlier” for a conservative court in a red state, said Kelly Baden, the vice president for public policy at the Guttmacher Institute, which tracks abortion legislation across the US. “We do see that many elected officials and judges alike are often coming at this debate from a highly religious lens,” she said.While the Alabama state Supreme Court is not appointed by the US president, more than 200 judges were appointed by Donald Trump to federal courts during his four-year term, winning him lasting support from American evangelicals.During his presidency he was able to nominate three new justices to the nine-member Supreme Court – all of whom sided with the majority in striking down the 1973 Roe v Wade decision that had guaranteed a federal right to abortion.Since that decision in 2022 re-opened a national battle over reproductive rights, courts in Missouri have quoted Biblical teachings to justify restricting abortion rights and a Trump-appointed judge in Texas who previously worked for a Christian legal organisation tried to impose a nationwide ban on Mifepristone, a commonly used abortion pill.While many Republican politicians comfortably agree with such rulings, restrictions on abortion imposed by conservative courts have proved a potent campaign issue for Democrats in recent elections, including the 2022 midterms. Image source, ReutersImage caption, Donald Trump has said he supports the availability of IVF treatment, calling on Alabama to find “an immediate solution”The Alabama decision, made by Republican judges and affecting fertility treatments widely supported by the US public, went one step further, prompting immediate fear of a political backlash in a presidential election year. Any sign of IVF being endangered could worsen the anger that’s already cost Republicans since the fall of Roe v Wade, especially among suburban women and those who are uncomfortable with abortion bans.Donald Trump himself, the clear frontrunner in the Republican nomination race, came out strongly in support of IVF, calling on Alabama lawmakers to preserve access to the treatment. His last remaining rival Nikki Haley at first appeared to support the ruling, but then backtracked.Alabama IVF ruling a political gift for Democrats, headache for Republicans”It’s a win philosophically for the pro-life movement because it carries on the pro-life recognition of unborn life,” said Eric Johnston, president of the Alabama Pro-Life Coalition. “But you get into a very difficult situation, where you have this medical procedure that’s accepted by most people, and then how do you deal with it? That’s the dilemma.”I agree with the opinion overall – I think it’s well written opinion from the legal side and from the medical side,” he added. “But I think the pro-life community in general supports IVF, and I’ve known and worked with many people who have had children via IVF. And at the same time, they think abortion is wrong. This issue is so different from abortion, but it has to do with life.”What next for fertility patients in Alabama and beyond?For patients in the deep-south state, the last week has been one of panicked phone calls to clinics, emails to local lawmakers and a rush by some to try and transfer frozen embryos out of the state.Rodney Miller, 46, and his wife Mary Leah, 41, spent a decade trying to have children, before IVF allowed them to give birth to a set of twins 18 months ago, who were adopted as frozen embryos.He said he “thanks the Lord for the advances in science and medicine” that made that possible.Image source, Ian DruceImage caption, Rodney Miller warned the ruling could mean fewer children are bornThe couple are now going through the process again, and waiting to see if two embryos transplanted this week will develop into a pregnancy.”This is not a win [for the Christian right],” says Rodney, who works for Carrywell, an organisation that supports families through infertility.”It’s the classic case of you won the battle but lost the war. Fewer children will be born because of this unless things change.”How did we become a state where if you want to terminate a pregnancy, you have to leave the state and if you want to initiate a pregnancy, via IVF you [also] have to leave the state?”Whether the ruling in Alabama influences decisions elsewhere is an open question. Foetal personhood bills, which enshrine the idea that life begins at conception, have been introduced in more than a dozen states. But these bills, while pushing the idea that a foetus or embryo is a person, don’t explicitly relate that to the context of IVF, said Kelly Baden of the Guttmacher Institute.The Alabama ruling – with its implications that go far beyond abortion access – does not therefore constitute a trend, she said.Alabama family lawyer Ashleigh Meyer Dunham, who has used IVF herself, has been working with a large number of cases affected by the ruling. She said she was “terrified” that fertility patients in other states could eventually be affected.Image source, Ian DruceImage caption, Ashleigh Meyer Dunham is worried that more states might make similar rulings”I think the biggest concerns are that people elsewhere forget about us and they think, ‘Oh they’re just the conservative state, and they’re all country bumpkins. Don’t worry it will never happen here.'”And the next thing you know, it is happening in other states that are ultra-conservative.”Because the Alabama ruling involves an interpretation of state, not federal law, it is unlikely to reach the US Supreme Court. Currently a bill is going through the state house in Alabama, introduced by Democrats, which would aim to effectively pause the ruling and allow treatments to resume as before. Republicans are expected to propose their own bill. If they do, they have to find a way to balance a divided religious constituency, with some celebrating the court’s ruling and others disturbed by its potential implications for IVF.Margaret is praying that lawmakers find a solution.”I’m not very outspoken, I keep myself to myself. But if any of my friends or family heard that I was sending emails to every single representative and senator, I think they would be shocked.”She takes a breath.”But this has got me fired up. It is all I can think about now.”Alex Lederman contributed reporting from Alabama. Additional research from Kayla Epstein in New York.Related TopicsIVFAlabamaUnited StatesMore on this storyAlabama clinics pause IVF treatments over court rulingPublished3 days agoWhat does Alabama ruling mean for fertility patients?Published3 days agoTrump calls on Alabama to protect IVF treatmentPublished1 day agoAlabama IVF row an election-year political bombshellPublished2 days agoTop StoriesDeputy PM declines to say whether MP’s remarks were IslamophobicPublished5 hours agoZelensky says 31,000 troops killed in war in UkrainePublished4 hours ago’Fewer children will be born’: Alabama embryo ruling divides devout ChristiansPublished3 hours agoFeaturesThe converted landmark buildings given new lifeIn pictures: Celebrating the Lantern FestivalDissent is dangerous in Putin’s Russia, but activists refuse to give upThe winners and nominees at the SAG AwardsKim Petras on sexual liberation and fighting TikTokInside the long-abandoned tunnel beneath the ClydeHow a £525 bet gave birth to your morning commuteThe man who tried to eat every animal on Earth. 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