A recent court case in Belfast has caused not merely disquiet but orchestrated uproar in the media.
Speaking for myself, I’d be less upset if I were given a suspended sentence of three months’ imprisonment than if I was to be told that my life was to be arbitrarily terminated and my body chucked in a bucket.
Perhaps the Editor of The Irish Times and Kitty Holland and Eamon McCann and Fintan O’Toole and Miriam Lord and Una Mullally and Senator Ivana Bacik really, really want, me to believe that a three months’ suspended prison sentence is a fate worse than death?
Since penning the above lines I’ve read an excellent analysis of how the case arose by Breda O’Brien in THE IRISH TIMES on Saturday 9 April. Ms O’Brien is a regular columnist for the paper and apparently the only one licensed to submit principled and compassionate copy on the rights of parents and their existing but unborn children.
Well said.
I see the liberal media in Britain are making a big issue of this case but the casual destruction of the unborn surely cannot go without some sanction.
If the price of being viewed as a modern and progressive society is the wholesale and conscience free destruction of the unborn then the price is too high and should not be paid.
Clearly we will be locking up a lot of women in the future if religious fundamentalists get their way.
With the best will in the world, Donal , how can you mow that it was an arbitrary decision? It may have felt like the only decision she could take. I don’t attach any blame to her housemates: I wish that they hadn’t taken the decision that they did: they seemed from what I’ve read to have taken her outwardly blasé façade as just that, rather than as a sign of desperation. The place the foetus was found was regrettable , certainly, but this came about because the necessary, vastly safer, less distressing (nobody with any sense could say that abortion is not unpleasant for all involved, but I take the view that it’s better than forced pregnancy) but not yet legal operation wasn’t available. It’s odd, as a longtime lurker, when some people on this board regularly excoriate (rightly, in my opinion) the likes of the DUP and US Republican politicians for their staggeringly illiberal, cruel and bigoted views on nearly everything else, but seem to think that they magically become great beacons of compassionate wisdom and oul dacency .when in it comes to their views on the unborn child.
I’ll be honest – I would always pace the life of the mother above that of the child, who would have the rights that it’s mother wished to give it, would given support abortion on demand until around week 16 for reasons other than sex selection and maybe a few other things (cleft palates}. I respect the right of everyone to their own opinion, and I concede that some people might abort a child for frivolous reasons, but it the only alternative in the long run (because abortion is always going to happen, whether on a hospital table or in a bath with gin and knitting needles). would be incarceration in mental institutions for those who are desperate enough to throw row themselves on the mercy of doctors, and harassment of Irish women at airports if can afford the trip to the mainland. If you take the view that this is to prevent murder, that the foetus is a person with full human rights, you may think this is right. I think it’s a recipe for a consensus police state, or a kind of backdoor theocracy that would delight people like Jim Wells, Edwin Poots, and their ilk.
“I’ll be honest – I would always pace the life of the mother above that of the child, who would have the rights that it’s mother wished to give it” – I’m afraid I would differ on this, Patrick. The notion of one human being having it in their power to grant or withhold rights is a total non-starter for me.
Patrick
Human rights start with human life. Human life does not begin at birth.
In your philosophy the child in the womb rates with a wart, a cyst or an ingrown toenail.
It’s a brainless, heartless and gutless philosophy. The parroted slogans of birdbrained
correspondents in the IRISH TIMES and other media doesn’t give it any weight.