The following is a response from Ms Cora Sherlock to last week’s on-line article ’All Opinions My Own’ from Donal O’Keeffe:
“Last week, this newspaper ran an article by Donal O’Keeffe with the title “The anti-choice argument is lost. Hence the dirty tricks.”
The writer was aggrieved at personal comments that had been made to the comedian Tara Flynn, a friend of his and a woman who has spoken publicly about her abortion. In his own words, ‘things got personal’ when someone photo-shopped a photograph of her wearing a jumper with the word ‘repeal’ across it.
What followed was some personal comments of his own – pro-life supporters (many are most likely regular readers of this newspaper) are ‘cowards and bullies’ who engage in ‘calculated cruelty’, ‘nasty, cruel or downright irresponsible behaviour’, are ‘vicious’ and prone to fits of ‘unrestrained venom’.
I suppose given the fact that I’m the only pro-life spokesperson name-checked throughout this piece, the description of pro-life leadership as ‘off-the-wall’ is directed at me, ostensibly in the piece because I stated during a recent panel discussion that some families in Ireland feel pressured to have abortions when they are told that their babies might not live very long after birth (a claim, incidentally which I stand over considering it has been verified by families before and since I ever mentioned the fact).
Back to the article. The writer wants a referendum. He thinks it’s going to be ‘horrible’. Well, I have news for him. It doesn’t take a referendum for discussions on abortion to be ‘horrible’ if all we’re interested in is taking pot-shots and swapping one personal insult for another. So I’m not going to do that.
Instead let’s talk about repeal, and what it would mean. After all, pro-choice campaigners and groups are very vocal about the 8th Amendment and how much they want it repealed, but they suddenly go quiet when it comes to addressing the realities of what lies behind the slogan ‘repeal the 8th’.
Let’s strip away the euphemisms. The 8th Amendment is about what kind of laws we want in place in our country to protect the lives of human beings. Abortion affects wider Irish society in a number of ways but there are two very definite things that we can say for sure:
– Abortion exposes a woman to the risk of serious psychological and physical harm.
– Abortion ends the life of a living human being – an unborn baby at a certain stage of development in the womb.
As to the first, this is something that should really concern us far more than it does at the moment. In 2012, a woman who travelled from Ireland for an abortion in a Marie Stopes clinic bled to death in the back of a taxi. The standard response from many is to insist that she wouldn’t have died if she had had the abortion in Dublin, but there is no proof of this. Why aren’t we asking questions about the abortion procedure itself – is there really any such thing as a ‘safe, legal abortion’? In a separate incident, another doctor was struck off the medical register for nearly killing an Irish woman in a Marie Stopes clinic. So when are we going to ask whether abortion is really safe?
Then there’s the issue of abortion regret. Quite frankly, the way women who regret their abortions are treated in this country is appalling. There is no call from groups like the National Women’s Council of Ireland, encouraging them to tell their stories – stories that are heartrending to hear. Go to the website of Irish group Women Hurt and you’ll hear about women who grieve the death of the child they lost in abortion. Yet when Women Hurt reached out to other women who might be suffering in silence in 2011, the then-director of the NWCI criticised their campaign. We also had the case of Ms C, who was taken to England for an abortion and has since come out to say she deeply regretted it and even attempted suicide. So why aren’t we talking about abortion regret?
Are we going to continue to ignore issues like the risk of psychological harm from abortion? A comprehensive Finnish study by Mika Gissler shows that woman who have abortions are more likely to end their lives by suicide than women who continue with their pregnancies. A study by Professor David Fergusson, published in the British Journal of Psychiatry found that there was no study that could show that abortion reduces mental health risks. Surely if we care about women, we should take these facts on board and discuss them in a calm and rational way?
Secondly, no matter how much pro-choice campaigners want to get away from the fact, abortion is a life and death issue. A living human being has his or her life ended. We don’t think that’s right in any other area of Irish life – so why are we even considering it for unborn humans, the most vulnerable members of Irish society? Yes, they’re dependent on their mothers for a short time but there are many other groups of dependent people among us – newborn babies, the elderly and severely disabled. We don’t talk about removing their right to be alive.
Because at the end of the day, this is what ‘repeal the 8th’ means – removing the most basic human right of all from our Constitution, a document that is intended to add to human rights protections, not remove from them.
As for the Amnesty opinion poll quoted by O’Keeffe – well, unfortunately Amnesty ignores the aspects of the debate that it doesn’t like as well. When Amnesty Ireland presented their research, there wasn’t a mention of abortion regret, or the fact that the group is now advocating for a law that would end the lives of unborn babies, completely betraying its mandate to protect human lives.
It doesn’t concern itself with the scandal that there are families in Ireland who travel to abort their baby diagnosed with a life-limiting condition and only then discover that perinatal palliative care is available in Ireland. Imagine that for heartbreak – finding out that there was a model of specialist care that could help you spend more time with your baby, but because campaigners and politicians spend so much time talking about abortion, you never heard that this type of care existed.
That is horrific, but it happens in Ireland and it would be great if powerful organisations like Amnesty Ireland decided to highlight the plight of these families. Instead, they focus on stories that mean the debate in Ireland is hopelessly one-sided, so opinion polls are skewed in turn.
I agree with O’Keeffe on one thing – there is no room in this debate for personal attacks, or inflammatory language. The issue is too serious. The issue is life and death.
But it’s up to O’Keeffe and other regular commentators to start practising what they preach. Enough with the ‘allegedly pro-life’ or ‘anti-choice’ descriptions. Most pro-life supporters I know, including myself, support every choice – the only one we oppose is the one that ends the life of a human being. This goes for all media outlets. Let’s stick with ‘pro-life’ and ‘pro-choice’. Otherwise we start going down the road of ‘anti-life’ and ‘pro-abortion’ and nobody wants to be described as that.
We all deserve to be treated with the respect and dignity that we are due as human beings, regardless of what opinion we hold on this, or any other issue. The Government has just announced that Judge Mary Laffoy will chair the Citizens’ Assembly which holds its first meeting in October. Maybe now would be a good time for everyone interested in this issue – commentators, campaigners, supporters and voters – to reflect on how we want to discuss an incredibly sensitive and complex issue in such a way that we can differ but avoid the personal insults that are so harmful both to the individual and to society as a whole.”
