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Post by hibernicus on May 4, 2013 20:22:56 GMT
On Friday May 3 on Chris Donoghue and Norah Casey's Breakfast show on Newstalk 106-108 FM Gillian ni Cheallaigh described having an abortion in Liverpool 18 years ago (she became pregnant just before her final exams). She claimed never to have regretted her choice, used the slogan "Every child a wanted child" and described her work as a volunteer with the Abortion Support Network (a group which assists Irish women to get abortion in Britain). She declared that nobody else should make choices for women. "Abortion needs to be detoxified in Ireland... the discourse of shame surrounding it needs to be lifted completely... Ireland needs to respect women". She spoke of research being done on the history of Irish women coming to Britain for abortions by researchers [This BTW is another reason why pro-lifers need to document our history more than they have done.] She emphasises the role of financial considerations "being realistic" - She declares "life does not have an absolute value" and it is better to have three children you can support than four children who are starving. She declares she wants abortion "practically on demand" up to a certain stage (she doesn't say what stage that is) and complains that the legislation does not go nearly far enough. In response to a text saying that the unborn child is human she repeats the phrase "life does not have an absolute value" and says women are human too and it is better to look after children who are already living. I must say the interviewer gives Ms Ni Cheallaigh a very soft ride. This is the hardest of hardcore pro-abort views, and it comes from a pro-abort network in Britain and Ireland which has been developing for years and getting ready for a struggle like this, while pro-lifers have not been remotely as well-organised. The person who told me of this interview expressed the hope that the repeated words "Life does not have an absolute value" would awaken some people to where the pro-aborts are really heading. I have my doubts about that - our national motto, I fear, is "Taimse ina codladh agus na eirigh me" - but if even one or two people can be brought to see the edge of the precipice this represents perhaps it will do some service. In order to listen to this section go to Newstalk Listen Back, choose the Breakfast show for Friday 3 May and click on Part 3. www.newstalk.ie/breakfast |
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Post by assisi on May 5, 2013 13:24:30 GMT
Letter from Friday's Derry Journal which is worth a read:
Published on 03/05/2013 11:28
Sir,
Learning is defined in the philosophy of education as, “A change in behaviour as a result of some experience.”
Due to a decision by 3 judges on the X case and abortion, we the Irish citizens and politicians may well have to make life and death decisions soon that will have serious consequences for our people for generations to come.
Let me share with you three memories on the abortion debate:
In 1967 I was working in an industrial parish in Scotland. I recall well what happened.
Fr. John Symons was a lecturer in Drygrange Seminary in East Scotland. He was friendly with the Liberal MP for Midlothian, David Steele. Steele assured the Catholic Bishops via Fr. John that his new bill was merely to stop the tragic deaths resulting from “back street abortions.” Somehow the hierarchy and all of us were misled and said little or nothing to mobilise the people or stop the bill. (Since 1967 this Act of Parliament has now taken over 6 million lives. Surely this is another holocaust.)
A year later, I recall the Christian population of Scotland having protest marches in public parks in Glasgow and in Edinburgh. It was too late. We had failed to shepherd the holy innocents as we trusted that politicians, liberal or not, would know better.
Secondly in 1981 the hunger strike in Long Kesh prison took ten prisoners’ lives. More people died in the riots, protests and violence that followed.
At our Friday night prayer meeting while the hunger strike was at its worst we had our usual prayer meeting in one of the prison’s H Blocks. There a young republican prisoner prayed, “Lord, forgive us. Give eternal life to the thousands of babies murdered last year in England. Bless their mothers with forgiveness and healing.”
A long silence followed. It took me a few seconds to realise he referred to the children aborted that year. While the entire world was focused on the ten dead or dying men on hunger strike that summer, very few of us gave a second thought to the children aborted. I will never forget that evening.
On 5th April 2013, the 6pm RTE News covered the national doctors’ debate and votes on the abortion issue. The news reports show that there were three attempts to introduce abortion, again by using the thin edge of the wedge. Thankfully the Irish doctors strongly defeated all three motions. They took pro-life decisions each time.
These men and women are dedicated carers and defenders of our health and lives. That is their vocation.
Let this vote of the doctors be an inspiration and a guide to politicians. The public need to understand that what we call “the act of two effects”, saving the life of the mother, while regrettably and indirectly resulting in the abortion of the child, has always been the morally acceptable position held by Church and state in Ireland.
Ultimately all of us need to respect and reverence human life from conception to natural death. Catholics would hold that there was a profound morally wrong decision made on the X case ruling. It would be an even a greater tragedy if that wrong became a basis for change in law or constitution that would ultimately lead us to follow Britain in having abortion on demand.
Learn from the experience of some of us who have met so many troubled souls suffering from the consequences of abortion.
Another important point to be made on this issue is this. Even if our secular state and its politicians were to permit abortion in Ireland as in GB, it is paramount that our Catholic people still see direct abortion as the deliberate killing of a child and a seriously morally wrong act. This may seem self-evident to those of us who have worked as priests in GB.
However, if for some ninety years, the Church has virtually piggybacked and depended on state legislation on this issue, it is quite possible that some people would conclude that morality on this issue is what the state allows.
The good that may result from such legislation is that there will be a clear demarcation line evolving between the dock of the state and its worldly values on the one hand, and the bark of the Church with its Christian values on the other. In that sense good will come out of evil. The challenged Church will recover, be somewhat smaller but will clearly stand for Christian values.
Yours etc.,
(Rev) Neal Carlin,
(Director, White Oaks Rehab. Centre),
Co. Donegal.
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Post by Deleted on May 5, 2013 22:44:48 GMT
I do think that the legislation will pass, because reason and evidence-based practice have nothing to do with it.
I think FG will be on their knees come the next election, worse than FF after the last election. What is the alternative though?
I did note that one of the TV3 newscasters the other day immediately hopped on the fact that this will allow abortion up to birth. Kathleen Lynch mumbled something about.. well doctors and sure it won't come to that. I hate to say it but some of our TDs are studies in ignorance and stupidity.
I also don't believe for one second that the abortion business will allow a bit of legislation to stop them from setting up clinics here. They want profit and the doctors' panel will be bypassed, they'll do what they're doing in Belfast, as they did in Canada. Set it up and deal with the flack later. Profits come first.
The only saving grace is that we have friends abroad who are up to date on the tactics of PP and know how the game works, hopefully they will advise and help us. If I may, I would also urge anybody here who has a spare bit of cash to donate it to the pro-life groups. They're going to need it and are cut down to the bone right now.
I am hopeful that when Cardinal Brady said that he will mobilise the Catholic Church he means it. I am proud of them this week.
Enda Kenny - is it just me or does he look haunted? Powers and principalities are at work here, as one of the posters here alluded to earlier in the thread.
We must pray too, pray and fast.
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Post by hibernicus on May 7, 2013 19:32:21 GMT
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Post by hibernicus on May 7, 2013 19:52:48 GMT
In relation to the Newstalk item noted a couple of posts back - I recently discussed it with someone who is familiar with a lot of recent literature on medical ethics, and was told that the view that the absolute value is not life but personal autonomy pervades that literature to a terrifying degree.
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Post by hibernicus on May 11, 2013 22:22:43 GMT
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Post by hibernicus on May 12, 2013 18:59:51 GMT
The SINDO has a piece glorifying Deputy John Halligan (Waterford) for calling for a referendum to remove Article 40.3.3 so that abortion can be made even more widely available than proposed by Herod Endipas. Methinks the salami-slicer is already being revved for the next slice: www.independent.ie/opinion/analysis/carol-hunt-the-deputy-who-dares-to-speak-up-for-women-29260017.htmlNOTE this paragraph has been corrected after re-reading the article in question Yesterday the IRISH TIMES (also known to readers of this board as MOLOCH'S HERALD) ran a piece on women who have had abortion wishing to make their voices heard in the debate. They gave the views of three post-abortive women - one "pro-choice", one who had an abortion because of foetal abnormality, and one who regretted her abortion. he women who was glad she had an abortion forcefully declared it was outrageous that abortion was not freely available here a la Britain, while the woman who regretted her abortion said she still believed in women's right to choose, albeit more hesitantly than before, though she did say quite forcefully that she believed the new provisions would push women towards decisions they would later regret and the answer lay in caring for women in crisis pregnancies rather than widely available abortion - and of course the two-to-one divide also carries implications. If they wanted to hear from a post-abortive woman who is more outspokenly pro-life it would have been easy to find some (one such woman spoke at the big pro-life rally in Merrion Square some months ago, and gave her real name). This is how MOLOCH'S HERALD gives a superficial appearance of balance while shielding its readers against the possibility that they might conclude Moloch isn't all he's cracked up to be. |
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Post by hibernicus on May 14, 2013 20:21:56 GMT
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Post by hibernicus on May 17, 2013 14:39:07 GMT
Regina Doherty reports that some so-called "pro-lifers" have made death threats to her and uses this as a way of justifying the whip system as safeguarding deputies against such threats. These so-called pro-lifers' actions are not only criminal in themselves but harm the cause by playing into the hands of the pro-choicers who wish to present all pro-lifers as lunatics. We need to distance ourselves from people who are not really interested in preserving life but only in venting their own psychiatric problems; this should include reporting them to the police if necessary. BTW I am not saying this to appease the pro-choicers - who are insatiable - but because (a) it is the right thing to do, consequences bedamned (b) because it is the confused and uncommitted general public to whom we need to appeal, and who will be put off by this sort of exhibitionism. www.politics.ie/forum/culture-community/210758-do-pro-lifers-support-murder.htmlwww.irishexaminer.com/ireland/pro-life-activists-threaten-to-slit-throat-of-td-231358.html |
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Post by hibernicus on May 17, 2013 14:51:44 GMT
This Irish Independent report on the Kermit Gosnell case is a classic example of slanting the report to discourage connections being drawn between Gosnell's crimes and the intrinsic nature of abortion: www.independent.ie/opinion/analysis/caitriona-palmer-grisly-gosnell-trial-reawakens-us-abortion-debate-29271116.htmlEXTRACT But even these macabre anecdotes have been lost in the hysteria of the ensuing debate where abortion activists on both sides of the divide have seized upon the Gosnell case as a means to justify their cause. To the anti-abortion activists who chain themselves to the railings outside American abortion clinics, Gosnell is a gift from God: proof, in their eyes, that the horror committed in his backroom clinic is no different than the fate meted out to defenceless unborn foetuses in abortion clinics across the country every day. "Some abortionists may have cleaner sheets than Gosnell, and better sterilised equipment and better trained accomplices, but what they do, what Gosnell did – kill babies and hurt women – is the same," said anti-abortion politician Rep Christopher H Smith. Pro-choice activists say that Kermit Gosnell is what happens when you cut funding for Planned Parenthood services and government assistance for abortion procedures; ultimately forcing low-income women like Karnamaya Mongar to seek back alley abortions from butchers like Gosnell, a decision for the 41-year-old Nepalese refugee that ended in her death on Gosnell's operating table. Banning abortion, as has been shown in Ireland, does not limit or curtail a woman's ability to end her pregnancy. It just limits her access to terminating her pregnancy in a medically safe way. And, as the tragic circumstances of the 'Women's Medical Society' clinic in West Philadelphia demonstrate, the resulting horror can be hard to bear. But even for anti-abortion activists in Ireland who are gearing up for their own fraught battle in the coming months, the reality is that the Gosnell case is unlikely to shift the American public's deeply ingrained positions on abortion. A recent Gallup poll conducted during the height of the Gosnell trial showed that the amount of Americans who support legal abortion in certain cases has remained steady. As much as ideologues on both sides of the divisive issue of abortion would like to cite the Gosnell case for their side, it may be that his case does not fit neatly into either side's propaganda. He is simply a monster, whose stomach-churning crimes could have occurred in a society with or without legal abortions... END Note the following points: (a) The pro-lifers are implicitly described as hysterics ("chaining themselves to railings"), whereas no such epithet (e.g. "have no problems with abortion up to 15 seconds before full-term delivery") is attached to the pro-choicers (b) The article as a whole emphasises that the women who came to Gosnell were barred from having legal abortions because of time-limits, parental notification issues etc - in other words, it's implicitly supporting the pro-choicers' claim that all restrictions on abortion are wrong. (c) Gosnell is presented as a tragic figure who started out with 'noble' intentions (abortion freely available) and became corrupted, rather than entertaining the thought that his abortionism was itself a moral corruption right there from the start. |
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Post by Young Ireland on May 18, 2013 15:56:29 GMT
Two events coming up on the abortion front:
National Vigil for Life on 8th of June from 3 to 4 in Merrion Square, being organised by the PLC.
All-Ireland Rally for Life on 6th July in Dublin, and YD as usual are organising this.
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Post by Deleted on May 18, 2013 16:09:04 GMT
Two events coming up on the abortion front: National Vigil for Life on 8th of June from 3 to 4 in Merrion Square, being organised by the PLC. All-Ireland Rally for Life on 6th July in Dublin, and YD as usual are organising this. To be honest, I am rather puzzled as to why the pro-life groups have returned to organising separate events, given the success of the two Unite for Life vigils. Have they fallen out again, or what's the story?  Young Ireland that summer rally has been happening for a few years now, organised by YD and Precious Life. The Rally for Life is held in Belfast one year and Dublin the next. Last year was Belfast and this year is Dublin's turn. Last year's one on youtube. www.youtube.com/watch?v=e6wqz8KnkXsThe Vigil for Life is a follow up of January's one, specifically to protest the legislation. I am going to put it in the events thread so it doesn't get lost. |
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Post by gemmagal on May 19, 2013 18:45:26 GMT
I have been reading the posts on Ireland's fight to defend future generation's lives.
I lived in North America, specifically in Canada while legalization of abortion was systematically introduced, applied, and finally, as mentioned above, given unrestrained status.
The impact of this evil is irreparable. I am deeply saddened that there is nearly a blow by blow repeat of what happened there taking place now in Ireland, it is a frighteningly excelerated replay. It appears that what took years of brain washing in America is being accomplished within months in Ireland.
I am at a loss to say how it can be stopped. We were not able to stop it then with all the efforts of the brightest minds and writers. Once abortuaries open, or worse, doctors are forced to give abortion on demand, there are so many repercussions, we didn't even think about those during the fight we waged and lost.
After abortion is made legal there are large losses and difficulties that you may want to propose for consideration to anyone who is in a good position to stop the legalization of abortion, such as:
- How will people wrestle in their minds about paying taxes to government institutions that fund equipment and doctors, for basically killing your future Irish people?
- How will parents deal with their daughters having abortions without even knowing about it? Worse yet, knowing your daughter murdered your grand child. You may well be torn between compassion for your murderous child and not having a grandchild to hold in your empty aging arms. Or even worse, will you ever behold your grandchild's face in eternal bliss, a baby having missed the sacrament of baptism?
- Think how the knowledge of abortion effects little childen. Even now with all this in the newspapers, how do you explain to them that mothers are going to be allowed to kill their own babies if they choose to? On the one hand it makes the ones who have survived feel special for just being born into the world naturally. They will feel special because they were selected to live. I 'm not sure this is a good sort of specialness.
- How can children trust mothers who are allowed by law to kill their own children?
How can children be taught to respect the laws of their great country if they are Catholic, laws that uphold mothers killing children within their wombs?
I pray Irish people will think now, for it will be too late to do anything about the general shifts in your culture once abortion is legalized and condoned by newspapers, rock stars, models, judges, well known Catholics.
-People seem to become gradually worn down by the onslaught of the abortion promotion. Eventually no one will speak of it. It slips away, becomes somebody else's individual choice, not your problem.
- What about law? How can a parliament pretend to be a respectable law making power after they have allowed the weakest and most vulnerable of its citizens to be murdered, justifying that one human can decide she does not want to carry the citizen to birth?
In my opinion this is the beginning of a corruption of law and law making which because of its inherent injustice infects the entire governmental system of the country. Possibly it is the kind of degrading problem which cannot be fixed by one or two good members of parliament. It also has a sort of permeating effect on everyone, whether they are Catholic, Muslim, atheist or whatever.
- Another most unfortunate outgrowth of the fight against the legalization of abortion, beginning from its earliest stage, is what it does to Catholics.
It polarizes them.
Abortion activists quickly turn Catholics and anyone else who delares abortion to be wrong(for instance as murder of citizens, killing off future generations, fetus' are human beings, however one might say it). The abortion promotion campaign will keep insisting and twisting things until Catholics begin to be spun into the appearance of rebels, prigs, old fashioned, medieval fanatics who torture young innocent women into carrying their unwanted babes into painful births, and that then somehow Catholics force these young women into paying birth costs, or greatly exagerate the costs of taxpayers costs for same, force them to raise their unwanted expensive children, or to give a baby for adoption, all this damaging mother's mental health which somehow addes up to the universal hatred of women instad of a love for all humanity.
- Catholics will be made to appear as those mean people who force young women to gain weight, to raise children when they would rather be getting to college or having a career. Catholics and pro lifers begin to be pegged as naive or types who would perhaps be for getting the father of the babies to sharein the responsibilities and costs of child bearing and rearing, rather than force doctors to pick up the instruments of destruction and cut life from mothers. And what is wrong with that?
-Catholics can become to appear to be hyper traditionalists, fanatical nuts who simply dont understand 'medical necessity', hardship, poverty, etc. In a word Catholics who are against abortion become a fringe group. And who, WHO can blame them if they begin to feel like ghetto Catholics under a pressure that will come from everywhere eventually?
Who would not understand how this could so easliy lead to a marginalized sense of the experience of being Catholic?
- Catholics who understand the concept of life, who are sure of their faith, become to be seen against the shades of those who think abortions are ok for some people, some of them Catholics also. And so maybe from this shady background the isolation of Catholics into ghettoes, not because they want to be marginalized, or choose it, but because they really are being marginalized by the manipulation of concepts, law, ideas.
- Soon families with a few children feel out of place, guilty. Mothers who decide to give birth in the face of poverty, difficulty, with absent fathers are ridiculed, despised even. Certainly birth can become a scary choice if even grim alterntives are being offered on a tray.
- There is a silent kind of pressure. Most of us think it wont happen to my cousin, my aunt, my daughter, my grandchild. But still, people are influenced by the notion that now there is this choice, it is now legal, they have heard about it. There is this notion that our baby's lives are debatable.
- Many Catholic parents will probably begin taking their children out of schools and turning off TV, isolating young ones from popular culture when the predominant ideas are so demoralizing. After all, at some point, everyone will have to make the decision about how to deal with the knowledge that abortions are happening. Mothers and fathers will be making decisions, doctors will be performing abortions. People will be paying to have their relatives killed. Logically most Catholics will take measures to protect their children from the increasingly dominating culture of anti catholicism.
-After a time, a few years perhaps, things quiet down in the news, in blogs, in conversation. Once the abortionists get what they want most people tend to think of abortion as something that happens in an abortuary, dictated by laws and some individual woman's decision. There is a false sense that everything is ok, its somebody else making those decisions, somebody else's physician I dont know or go to that is killing those babies. It is the silent genocide.
- In truth they are not isolated events. There are nurses, doctors,receptionists, cleaning people, equipment suppliers, removal agencies are set up to deal with the dead fetuses. How will Ireland cope with this?
- It means nothing that the noise and official debates do stop. Abortion made legal and part of the mechanism of government and health care corrupts culture. It is because we know things even if they are not said or written that everyone suffers from something like this.
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Post by hibernicus on May 19, 2013 19:35:01 GMT
All too true, Gemma - quite a few of the things you describe in Canada are happening here already, and the corruption of culture is well under way. Compared to 30 years ago, when most opponents of the pro-life amendment denied they favoured legalising abortion, the pro-abortionists are now out in the open; indeed some of them are already taking the "radical" position which amounts to advocating completely unregulated abortion a la Canada, and this of course helps our government's proposals to seem "moderate" by comparison with "the ideologues on both sides".
The newspapers (most of them) are busily promoting "life-saving abortion". Various celebrities (including the two writers of the FATHER TED series, who are also well-known atheists) have endorsed the pro-choice position. The "cruel Catholics" line is in full swing, and the last 20 years of scandals concerning the MAgdalen laundries, industrial school, clerical child abuse etc are being rehashed to proclaim "this is part of the great struggle to free ourselves from Catholic misogyny and sexual repression", "pro-lifers don't care about born children being raped by priests" etc.
Finally, perhaps the greatest asset Herod Endipas and his associates have in pushing this legislation is the pretence that if it is passed the trouble will all go away and Irish society can rest in peace. Since the X-Case pro-lifers have been put into the position where we need to keep pushing just to keep things as they are (something a lot of pro-lifers haven't realised; the absence of explicit legislation lured them into a false sense of security) while the pro-choicers have had inertia on their side as the pro-life side is steadily undermined. The leaks are already grievously wide; now Endipas and his cohorts are preparing to open the floodgates while pretending that they are only making a few minor adjustments.
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Post by hibernicus on May 19, 2013 19:44:51 GMT
Lest we forget; at present it is compulsory for all Irish pharmacists to sell the morning after pill, since it is a "legal medication" and conscientious objection is not allowed. This article on its over-the -counter sale in the US points out the underlying assumption behind this - that teenagers will inevitably engage in casual sex and must be facilitated in dealing with the "consequences" and that anyone who thinks it is possible/desirable to abstain from nonmarital sex is either cruelly repressive or a hypocrite, probably both. Once this view is taken for granted - as it now is to a considerable extent in Ireland - abortion as a facilitator of this worldview is much more easily accepted. www.catholicworldreport.com/Blog/2264/morning_after_pills_and_the_loss_of_moral_bearings.aspx#.UZkpuLWmjW4 |
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