Cora Sherlock of the Pro Life Campaign wrote an article for TheJournal.ie yesterday, in which she voices her opposition to abortion legislation. Unsurprisingly, the article is largely fallacious and shows women nothing but contempt and a complete lack of respect.
Here is my response.
If you’ve been following the news lately you will know that the Iona Institute have very conservative views on marriage and abortion rights: patrons of the self-styled ‘institute’ have appeared on various TV and radio shows over the last number of weeks to talk about some of the current major issues in Irish society at the moment. I was thinking recently about some of the positions held by the Iona Institute. While I expect them to be at odds with my own beliefs and opinions, I wasn’t really expecting the Iona Institute to have stances that, in fact, contradict and defeat each other. [Read More]
Have you ever found yourself faced with the manic hysteria from anti-choice people when trying to have a proper discussion? The sort of comments that make you facepalm and wonder if they ever take a deep breath and just listen to themselves for a moment?
Well, I have, unfortunately. When I read some of the comments made by people against abortion I sometimes fear that they’ll have a brain aneurysm or that they’re frothing wildly at the mouth out of sheer faux-outrage. I’m almost embarrassed for them!
Anti-choice people have, as I predicted, taken to mentioning the Gosnell trial currently taking place in the United States in an attempt to undermine the pro-choice campaign for safe and legal abortion in Ireland. They use the case where Kermit Gosnell, a physician in Philadelphia, is on trial for – among other things – performing unsafe and illegal abortions and for a number of counts of murder, as a way to try to promote their anti-choice stance. The trial is brought up time and time again in discussions – including on TV talkshows – as anti-choice people not-so-subtly imply that if abortion is legislated in Ireland, the country will somehow be overrun by people like Gosnell.
Of course, this is a ridiculous link to make. And while abortion opponents continue to throw around this trial as if it somehow supports their opinions, they seem to forget (or willfully ignore) the fact that women went to Gosnell to seek abortions because of their “pro-life” campaigning. [Read More]
Today, I am angry.
I am angry because draft legislation for the X Case created by Fine Gael’s Minister for Health, James Reilly, states that a suicidal pregnant woman must be seen by six consultants before she can have an abortion.
This not only shows just how this country treats women and how much it trusts them to take care of their own health, it speaks volumes about how mental health is viewed and reinforces the stigma. As Labour TD Ciara Conway said on RTE Radio One this afternoon, women who need an abortion would be “put on trial” if this legislation were to be passed.
It’s shameful, it’s embarrassing, and it’s sickening. [Read More]
A woman will always receive the life-saving treatment she needs and it’s not abortion because it’s not intended; and anyway, Savita’s tragic death had nothing to do with the law and she actually died from sepsis/system failures, unlike what the pro-abortionists say because they just hijacked her death to promote baby-murder like Gosnell.
If you’ve been following the abortion debate over the last year you’ll recognise the above as succinct summary of the oft-repeated rhetoric put forth by the anti-choice lobby. It’s easy to put it all into a few lines because when you look at it, they’re the same “arguments” repeated over and over; but once a good point is made to counter one of theirs, they simply jump to the next one, then the next, and so on, before repeating the cycle over again. [Read More]
Recently the Irish Medical Organisation held its 2013 AGM in Killarney, Kerry. During proceedings three votes were held relating to abortion and support of legislation, all of which were defeated. While this is certainly a disappointing result, anti-choice groups are using it as a victory to portray the incorrect view that Irish doctors do not support legislation for abortion.
The reality is that the voting was not representative of the medical community, and therefore the results of the votes don’t really matter. Here’s why. [Read More]
Today I looked at the Iona Institute’s document The Argument for Preserving Marriage in a Nutshell. This document has a number of bullet points that supposedly argue a case in support of opposite-sex marriage. I read through the points, but found that they’re a case of talking lots but saying nothing. In fact, they don’t even really talk about marriage that much at all. [Read More]
Following last night’s Prime Time on RTE (you can watch it here until April 25th), which discussed same-sex marriage, I decided to take a look at what the Iona Institute have to say about marriage. For those of you who haven’t heard of the group before, “The Iona Institute promotes the place of marriage and religion in society. We defend the continued existence of publicly-funded denominational schools. We also promote freedom of conscience and religion.” It is headed by Irish Independent columnist David Quinn.
On the Iona website I navigated to a section called ‘Marriage and the Family’ and there I found a document that was published prior to the Children’s Referendum last year. The document is called ‘Child Abuse by Family Structure’ and, considering child abuse is a serious issue, I decided that it was as good a place as any to start. [Read More]
In the midst of the growing discussion of marriage (or more precisely, the discussion on whether marriage between same-sex couples should be allowed) I caught a bit on BBC News that UK Prime Minister, David Cameron, is under fire from George Carey, former archbishop of Canterbury for “persecuting Christians”. Why are they being persecuted? Because the UK government is considering legalising full marriage rights to same-sex couples.
There are loads of things to write about how illogical such statements are, and I expect to write more about such “persecution”. But today I’d like to focus on something else: who owns marriage? [Read More]
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On science and cynicism