This is from a very clear article in today’s Irish Independent. What hope is there that any of those we have empowered to make decisions about our lives and deaths will open their ears to reason, even just to listen and try to answer instead of spouting out meaningless spin?
Our Constitution upholds the right to life of the unborn as well as the born. This helps keep notions of death as a treatment for any condition out of our healthcare services. The other heads of this bill go to great lengths to reaffirm our commitment to the lives of pregnant women and the unborn. The approach taken to suicide during pregnancy contradicts these commitments and questions the legitimacy of the proposed approach.
International medical evidence shows that abortion is not a safe treatment for suicide. Those parts of the bill should be removed, and a commitment given to provide the most effective, evidence-based treatments for pregnant women with suicidal ideation. That would better serve the health and rights of pregnant women and their unborn children.
Read the full article by Dr. Donal O Mathuna here.
The stark choice, a choice in which each one faces a lifetime of guilt depending on the decision made, now confronts Ireland’s elected representatives. The voices of reason, experience and compassion are loud and clear. The Irish Government has refused to listen to them. It now remains to be seen if the joint houses of the Irish parliament will rubber stamp a proposed law which will put unborn babies and their mothers at the mercy of unscrupulous medical practitioners. The evidence from across the world shows that there is no shortage of these in every jurisdiction. Why would Irish politicians think that the situation would be any different there?
It’s is now all down to conscience and the letter from a good nun which appeared in yesterday’s Irish Times speaks clearly to the consciences of every Irish man and woman – but above all to each and every elected representative who will have to get up from his seat in the chamber next July and walk to the division lobby. On that day they will take Ireland across a Rubicon. What that journey will lead to is in their hands. Sr. Consilio Fitzgerald is very clear about what their choice involves. Would that they were all so clear. She writes,
Many of the distressed women who came to Cuan Mhuire over the past 50 years, came because they were suffering distress having undergone an abortion. Our mission at Cuan Mhuire is to help them understand their own goodness and their infinite value before God. They tell us of the difficulties they encountered at the time of their decisions. Despite all of our support and encouragement to help them rebuild their lives and relationships, many find it exceedingly difficult – almost impossible – to cope with their sense of loss.
It has long been accepted practice in Ireland that there are rare occasions where intervention may be necessary to save a mother’s life. This sometimes results in the unintended death of the child. This causes deep grief for the parents but mothers intuitively understand the reasons and may come to accept them.
The Government seeks to make abortion available in Ireland on the grounds of a “threat of suicide”. Medical and psychiatric evidence does not indicate abortion as an appropriate treatment for suicidal tendencies. In my experience abortion has never proved to be the appropriate response to the threat of a suicide. On the other hand we have helped many, many women who had abortions and had subsequently developed suicidal tendencies. Many of them did not really understand the consequences of an abortion and the devastation it causes. They needed love and care and non-judgmental support.
We – all of us – will have to live with our conscience if we allow, or acquiesce, in the enactment of this legislation. It is for this reason that all political representatives should be free to follow their individual conscience in deciding how to vote. Our medical, nursing and midwifery professions are central to the values, loving culture and quality of our society. They have long protected the right of an unborn child to live and fulfil God’s plan. Let us recall the words of Christ: “What does it prophet a man to gain the whole world and lose his soul”.
I am writing this letter – the first such letter I have ever written – in defence of the unborn child and the welfare of the mother. Also, I will know on my death bed that I have done all that I can to speak out on their behalf and on behalf of so many more were such legislation to be enacted in our name by our political representatives.
The following statement and analysis was issued yesterday bt the Iona Institute.
The proposed abortion bill will limit the conscience rights of pro-life doctors
Hospitals with maternity units will have to carry out ‘lawful terminations’ regardless of ethos
The restrictions on conscience rights and religious freedom go further than most countries with more permissive abortion laws than our own
THE Government’s proposed abortion bill is first and foremost an attack on the right to life of unborn children. But there is another aspect of it that also deserves attention, namely its frontal assault on freedom of conscience and religion.
Head 12 of the proposed bill deals with conscientious objection. (See full text below).
It allows doctors not to perform abortions unless they are presented with a ‘medical emergency’.
However, the right of conscientious objection recognised by the proposed law is limited in other ways. For example, if a patient seeking ‘a required medical procedure’ (that is, an abortion) goes before a pro-life doctor, the pro-life doctor must refer her to a pro-choice colleague.
In addition, and even more worryingly, every maternity unit in the country must be willing to perform ‘lawful terminations’ regardless of their ethos. There is no exemption for hospitals with a religious ethos.
This is simply stunning. Even countries with much more permissive abortion laws than our own rarely go this far.
For example, Britain does not require hospitals with a religious ethos to perform abortions, nor does British law, so far as we can ascertain, require pro-life doctors to refer patients seeking an abortion to pro-choice doctors.
In this regard it is relevant to refer to a Resolution passed by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe in 2010. The European Court of Human Rights is another of the institutions of the Council of Europe.
The resolution is called ‘The right to conscientious objection in lawful medical care’.
Paragraph one is a sweeping and robust statement of the right of conscientious objection both of individuals and institutions.
It reads: “No person, hospital or institution shall be coerced, held liable or discriminated against in any manner because of a refusal to perform, accommodate, assist or submit to an abortion, the performance of a human miscarriage, or euthanasia or any act which could cause the death of a human foetus or embryo, for any reason.”
The explanatory note to Head 12 describes how the European Convention on Human Rights must be balanced against other rights. This is fair enough.
But the proposed law does not balance it properly, very far from it. The above quoted resolution, which will have taken into account the Convention on Human Rights as well, strikes the balance in a very different way.
In fact, Head 12 is extreme in its philosophy and its scope and as mentioned goes much further than other countries with more permissive abortion laws than our own.
This is simply one more reason to reject the proposed bill.
A final thought; would the proposed limitations on conscience rights and freedom of religion violate the Constitution?
ENDS
Nothing in this Bill shall be construed as obliging any medical practitioner, nurse or midwife to carry out, or to assist in carrying out, a lawful termination of pregnancy.
(2) Nothing in subhead (1) shall affect any duty to participate in treatment under Head 4.
(3) No institution, organisation or third party shall refuse to provide a lawful termination of pregnancy to a woman on grounds of conscientious objection.
(4) In the event of a doctor or other health professional having a difficulty in undertaking a required medical procedure, he or she will have a duty to ensure that another colleague takes over the care of the patient as per current medical ethics.
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Copyright (C) 2013 The Iona Institute All rights reserved.
The defenders of children in the womb are still reeling in Ireland today after the majority of their political representatives have clearly abandoned them and are proceeding with legislation which will legalise the killing of the unborn in Ireland for the first time.
They are now looking at what options remain to them to defend those whom they see as the most defenceless, children awaiting birth – those whom the pro-abortion camp refuses to call human at all and insistently and disparagingly refer to as simply “ fetuses”.
The first option is the intensification of lobbying of the members of the Oireachtas (the two houses of the Irish parliament). But other options are also on the agenda. Earlier this year between 25 and 30 thousand pro-life people from all over the island gathered at the parliament building to demand that the majority party in the Coalition Government keep its election promise not to legislate for abortion. That party is now seen as having blatantly has broken that promise. No one doubts that it did so in order stay in power by keeping faith on the deal it made with its socialist partners in Government.
There will be more street demonstrations between now and the time this legislation comes before the two houses for debate. Unless there is a major shift in the balance of support for it within the parties the bill will become law in the summer.
What options exist after that? Well they can launch a major campaign for the repeal of the legislation leading up to the next general election. “Repeal” is a word with enormous historic significance in Irish history. For the decades stretching from the 1830s up to the final violent struggle for Irish independence from the United Kingdom beginning in 1916, repeal of the Act which held that union together was the centrepiece of all Irish politics. No Irish politician would want to be seen facing down a new Repeal Movement of the scale and with the emotional potential which this one would have.
For those for whom this is a matter of faith as well as a matter of moral social policy in purely human terms, people from all over Ireland are gathering for a Vigil for Life in Knock, Co Mayo tomorrow (Saturday, 4th May). It will be the first major demonstration on the issue since the Government’s approval on Tuesday. Knock is the Irish national shrine of the Blessed Virgin and ironically is situated on the home turf of the Taoiseach, Enda Kenny. Not many expect to see him there tomorrow, however.
The language of opposition to this proposed legislation is already gathering momentum and strength. Senator Ronan Mullen, independent of parties, said yesterday that It is clear already that the Taoiseach and his Government are proposing a dangerous and destructive thing – the legalization of abortion on the ground of threatened suicide. There is no credible evidence that abortion is any kind of treatment for suicidal ideation in women. We know the consequences for the unborn child. And we know what this kind of legislation has started elsewhere.
Legislating for abortion on the suicide ground, he explained, is not required by the European Court judgment.This was a Court ruling in 2010 which many see as fig-leaf being disingenuously used by the government to justify the pursuit of this legislation forced by the socialists on the major party as a condition for entering government with them. The European Court simply required that the Irish government would “clarify” the legal situation for women with regard to its abortion laws. We could, Senator Mullen said, provide the necessary clarity by introducing guidelines which would protect women in pregnancy by re-affirming that they receive all necessary life saving treatments in pregnancy and requiring that we also exercise a duty of care towards the unborn.
Ireland has one of the best records in the world when it comes to a question of maternal health.
He also clarified that legislation for abortion on the suicide ground is not required by the X-case. When he was Taoiseach, John Bruton said he would not introduce legislation in line with the X-case because that would have the effect of bringing abortion into Ireland. The Oireachtas has the prerogative of not legislating for a Supreme Court decision if it believes it would be harmful to do so. Mr. Bruton, who was leader of the same party as the current Taoiseach, spoke out last weekend in opposition to this proposed legislation.
Mullen went on to say that this legislation will not be about ‘life-saving’ treatment but, in fact, the opposite. The Government has produced no evidence to show that abortion is ever beneficial in the treatment of the mental health of women. We know from the latest review of the evidence (Fergusson et al.) that abortion is not associated with any mental health benefit for women. In fact, it is associated with a low to moderate increased risk for women’s mental health. And, of course, we know a child always dies. So it is dishonest to pretend that this proposal is about saving life.
That is why over 100 psychiatrists last week signaled their opposition to being involved in certifying women as needing abortion to save their lives because this is not evidence-based medicine. International experience shows that provision for abortion on the mental health ground will be abused. It is hard to see how things could be different in Ireland, given the nature of what is proposed today.
The big question for many is of course who will choose the medical team to assess whether or not an abortion is “warranted”. Everyone in Ireland knows that in Britain two doctors are needed to sign off for abortions and that in many cases this is done without any scrutiny. Last year the Daily Telegraph uncovered widespread and totally unscrupulous ethical behaviour by doctors.
The third path being mulled over by activists defending life is the constitutional one. Ironically just this week a judgement was handed down by the Irish Supreme Court which some think has a bearing on the proposed legislation.
In a case where a woman was seeking confirmation of constitutional right to commit suicide – and be assisted in doing that by her husband – the Supreme Court held that there is no constitutional right to commit suicide or to arrange for the determination of one’s life at a time of one’s choosing. This decision follows from the constitutional obligation to respect life and to refrain from taking away the life of another.
The Court rejected the ‘autonomy’ argument to the contrary, ruling that “It is also possible to construct a libertarian argument that the State is not entitled to interfere with the decisions made by a person in respect of his or her own life up to and including a decision to terminate it. However, it is not possible to discern support for such a theory in the provisions of the Constitution, without imposing upon it a philosophy and values not detectable from it.”
Pro life legal experts are now suggesting that if the mother of an unborn child does not have a constitutional right to willfully end her own life, a fortiori she can have no constitutional right to take away the life of her unborn child, or to obtain assistance in that regard.
There are some who think that contradictions are inherent here between two Supreme Court rulings and that in this they may find an Achilles’ heel in the proposed legislation to render it null and void should it get into the statute books.
One way or another Ireland is heading into protracted political and constitutional warfare which may wreak havoc on more than a few political careers and reputations. This has even the potential to radically shake up the tired old political landscape, possibly leaving Ireland with a party structure reflecting the real divisions of opinion in the country. “They are all the same” is the helpless cry of many Irish electors going to the polls in recent years – followed by “one is worse than the other but I can’t trust any of them”. Apart from the tragedy of the unborn which this current debacle represents, there is for many the further erosion of all trust in the political class.
On the personal level Enda Kenny is already smarting under his newly earned title as “the abortion Taoiseach”. The long culture war ahead for the life of the unborn in Ireland will only serve to harden it for posterity. For a large segment of Irish people Kenny is now joining Quisling, Petain and some others in history’s Hall of Infamy.
Ireland’s Pro Life civil rights politics back on the streets?
Following the Irish Government’s publication last night of the Heads of the Bill – preliminary draft for legislation – on abortion, the country’s Pro Life Campaign has dismissed the Prime Minister Enda Kenny’s reassurances that the law will be restrictive.
The Bill provides for abortion on the ground of threatened suicide with three doctors certifying the abortion.
Cora Sherlock, Deputy Chairperson of the Ireland’s Pro Life Campaign reminded the Campaign’s followers this morning that it was a very sad day for her country. “For the first time an Irish Government has launched a proposal to introduce abortion.”
But, rallying the Campaign’s troops, she reminded them that the law had not yet been passed. “They haven’t succeeded yet. And so our job remains the same. Together we must redouble our efforts, never lose heart and continue our engagement with politicians, the media and the wider public. We will be dignified, respectful but insistent at all times.
“On days like this, we remember the nobility of the pro-life cause. There will be irritants, provocations and frustrations. But the more dignified and persistent we are in these days, the more our cause will benefit into the future.
“Don’t be disheartened. Each of us has a part to play. Today is the first day of a new and sustained fight on behalf of the unborn and their mothers.”
Commenting on the release of the Heads of the Bill, Caroline Simons of the Pro Life Campaign said:
“The Taoiseach and Minister Reilly have been talking up the proposal as very restrictive. But, in reality, these reassuring noises are empty and misleading. What matters is what’s contained in the Bill and what’s in the Bill is dangerous. For the first time an Irish government is proposing to introduce a law that provides for the direct intentional targeting of the life of the unborn child.
“Talk of the legislation being ‘life-saving’ is simply dishonest. There is no evidence that abortion ever helps women’s mental health and in fact it may damage women. It’s astounding that the Fine Gael leadership has caved in to Labour, allowing ideology to win out over evidence.
“The two-panel six-doctor proposal for signing off on abortions is utter nonsense. All it takes is three pro-choice doctors to sign off on every request and all restrictiveness is gone. It is an insult to women and their unborn babies to pretend that it could operate in an evidence-based manner.
“The Government has claimed all along that there is no option but to legislate. This is untrue. If the Government were really concerned about protecting women’s lives and respecting the unborn, we would have appropriate guidelines drawn up to assist doctors in various cases. The law already protects good medicine and life-saving treatments.
“If the Government continues to press ahead with the proposed legislation, we cannot continue to airbrush the reality of what abortion entails in countries where it is legal. There has been a huge spotlight on Ireland’s abortion laws but the public deserves to know what’s going on in other countries before any final decision is taken on the matter.”
If only Eamon Gilmore, Enda Kenny and company would acknowledge some of these facts and their relevance to the treachrous path they are trying to lead Ireland along.
The New York Times reports on the Gosnell trial summing up:
PHILADELPHIA — They are known as Baby Boy A, Baby C, Baby D and Baby E, all of whom prosecutors call murdered children and the defense calls aborted fetuses — the very difference in language encapsulating why anti-abortion advocates are so passionate about drawing attention to the trial of Dr. Kermit Gosnell, which wrapped up here on Monday with summations by both sides.
To anti-abortion leaders, the accounts have the power to break through decades of hardened positions in the abortion wars, not just because of the graphic details but because they raise the philosophical issue of why an abortion procedure performed in utero is legal, but a similar act a few minutes later, outside the womb, is considered homicide.
The distinction “is maybe a 15-minute or half-hour time frame and 10 inches of physical space,” said Michael Geer, the president of the Pennsylvania Family Institute, an anti-abortion group. “I think it’s going to resurrect a debate about the humanity of the unborn child.”
Sssh! The Week’s daily briefing reports:
OBAMA: MORE GOLF THAN ECONOMICS
US President Barack Obama has spent almost 1,000 hours on holiday and playing golf since he took office in January 2009 but has spent less than half that amount of time, 474.4 hours, in meetings about the economy. The claim comes in a report from the Government Accountability Institute, based on analysis of the presidential diary and newspaper reports.
Is this the most lethal euphemism of all? We have had ethnic “cleansing”, a clinical-sounding term for numerous and variously bloody instances of forced migration. We have had “cultural revolution” for mindless communist barbarities. We have even the benign-sounding term “re-education” veiling the gulags of soviet Russia. There was, of course – until now – the daddy of them all: the “final solution” covering the Nazi attempt to exterminate the Jewish people.
But how about “planned parenthood”? We are fast reaching a stage where that very term, suggesting an acute sense of responsibility and connected with the most elemental and sublime of all human experiences, must send a shiver through us. But despite the horrendous evidence from the Gosnell trial in Philadephia, illustrating just the tip of the iceberg of human depravity which the abortion industry represents, and industry which is itself the very flagship of Planned Parenthood, we have the leader of the “free” world championing this “cause”.
This industrial health-service complex – which has nothing to do with health and less to do with service – has accounted for the deaths of millions and millions of human beings, children and women, across the world in the past 50 years. You can take any approach to statistics you like and the figures will still come out showing that this is the single greatest human disaster that the world has ever seen. Don’t get distracted by the statistics but just for the record, one source cites
approximately 42 million abortions occurring every year worldwide. The same source calculates that abortion killed 73 times more Americans than died in battle in their last 12 wars combined.
There seems to be little doubt that the local Planned Parenthood group had been aware of complaints about what Dr. Gosnell was up to but did not intervene. The Philadelphia Daily News quoted the local group’s leader as saying that women had complained to the group about conditions at Dr. Gosnell’s clinic, and that the group would encourage them to report their complaints to the health department. That’s responsibility?
In the context of Obama’s shameless support for Planned Parenthood, show most recently by his going out of his way to celebrate with them last week, Marjorie Dannenfelser, the president of the Susan B. Anthony List, an antiabortion group said: “President Obama blatantly ignored this inconvenient truth about the abortion industry’s horrific lack of oversight and disparaged the pro-life advocates who wake up each morning with the goal of saving the lives of unborn children and women from the pain of abortion,” said.
Mr. Obama at the dinner last week ignored the Gosnell case but condemned lawmakers who have targeted Planned Parenthood. “When politicians try to turn Planned Parenthood into a punching bag, they’re not just talking about you, they’re talking about the millions of women who you serve,” he told the group’s gathering, at a Washington hotel. “And when they talk about cutting off your funding, let’s be clear they’re talking about telling many of those women you’re on your own.”
He pledged his loyalty to the group. “You’ve also got a president,” he said, “who’s going to be right here with you fighting every step of the way.” Now they are chilling words.
Matt Barber in his TownHall.com column pulls no punches when he confronts these horrors.
I mean, why are we surprised that an abortionist and his staff would, behind the walls of an always-lethal abortion clinic, commit one of the most horrific serial killings in American history? What did you think abortionists do, heal people?
Why are we taken aback that there was no oversight, no regulation, or that Planned Parenthood, though privy to the clinic’s filthy, medieval conditions, refused to report it to the Department of Health? After all, Planned Parenthood, Barack Obama and the DNC have vehemently opposed all laws – such as those in Virginia, Mississippi and elsewhere – designed to prevent exactly the same kind of squalid conditions found in Gosnell’s clinic (and others), laws that simply direct abortion mills to meet the same minimal safety standards required of all other medical facilities.
You didn’t really buy that whole “women’s health” nonsense, did you?
We live in bewildering times. The President of the United States won his second term by a slender enough margin of the popular vote. But he is not just the President of the United States. He is the most powerful man in the world and for the old West he is effectively the unelected primus inter not-so-pares. As we were reminded during his last election campaign, had the peoples of Europe had a vote in that election he would have won by a landslide. Frightening.
Congratulations to all Irish parliamentary deputies and senators taking a stand against the legislation threatening to bring abortion on demand into Ireland. The stand of some is reported in this morning’s Irish Times.
Those who say that the legislation which is being prepared is not going to lead to a very liberal abortion law in this country in due course are either burying their heads in the sand or are being disingenuous. They are ignoring the overwhelming evidence of history from the past 50 years.
What those of you who are opposing this legislation as it is currently drafted are doing is to my mind the first example of principled and even heroic political action that I have seen in this country for a long time.
Consensus politics has a place in a political system but where consensus trumps values and principles of life and human dignity then we are on a short path to corruption.
This week The Thirsty Gargoyle’s blog turned its attention to the utterly despicable manipulation of public opinion in which the sad case of Savita Halappanavar has become mired. Not having got the verdict they wanted from the inquest into her death the abortion campaigners – ably abetted by a national and international media which long ago made up their minds that she died because a hospital refused to abort her baby – they are by-passing the verdict and spinning out the very peculiar evidence given by a pro-abortion doctor.
The Gargoyle writes:
It’s astonishing to look at the reaction of so many people in Ireland to the recent inquest into the death last October of Savita Halappanavar in Galway, and in particular at how so much attention is being paid to Dr Peter Boylan, erstwhile master of the National Maternity Hospital, that the inquest seems to be being rewritten in the popular mind.
Everyone seems aware of what Dr Boylan said at the inquest, but in directing the jury towards its verdict, the coroner didn’t so much as acknowledge Boylan’s claim that Savita would have survived if the law permitted doctors to terminate pregnancy in order to pre-empt hypothetical risks rather than real ones.
The jury could, of course, have disregarded the coroner’s advice and given a narrative verdict which would have given due weight to Dr Boylan’s belief that the law was the problem. Instead it opted for a verdict of medical misadventure, accepting the coroner’s recommendations, the emphasis of which was almost wholly on procedures and systems failures, with the sole reference to terminations being a recommendation that the Medical Board and An Bord Altranais should have a common, clear, and explicit set of guidelines for how situations such as Savita’s should be handled. It looks, in truth, as though the inquest implicitly rejected Boylan’s analysis.
The official response from Galway University Hospital seems to recognise this, with lots of browbeating about systems failures and not a word said about the law putting Galway’s staff in an impossible position.
If the inquest implicitly rejected Boylan’s analysis, Savita’s widower Praveen seems to have gone rather further, going so far as to cast aspersions on Boylan’s integrity.
Read the rest of The Thirsty Gargoyle’s dissection – with access to all the relevant links – of this shameless and sinister plot to subvert Ireland’s Constitution.
Garvan Hill 