It’s reasonable to suggest that killing members of the human family is never a good solution to a crisis
ARCHBISHOP DIARMUID Martin wrote a very strong letter to this newspaper this week, rejecting the idea that there was some kind of rift or difference of approach between Cardinal Brady and himself on the issue of abortion.
Dr Martin is a man who enjoys considerable support and approval even among people who have little time for church leaders. It is very significant that he has taken such a firm stance, declaring the church “has a clear position on the dignity of every human life, which it has every right to present, rationally defend and lobby for in the public square”. He is signalling that there are some issues so central to our understanding of what it is to be human that he cannot but speak out.
There are some who hold a bigoted assumption that everything the church says is somehow suspect. But there is a highly developed, rational position that is anti-abortion and that can be shared by people of faith and those with no religious or spiritual belief.
For example, Kathryn Reed is a feminist, atheist, anti-abortion advocate who says she came to a pro-life position when she studied biology in school and saw the continuum of human life. She further refined her position when she studied anthropology in college, and how every culture designates some people as outcasts.
She saw abortion “as part of a larger phenomenon: the practice of defining who is and who is not human . . . It is commonly known that those who are excluded are treated in ways that would be considered unthinkable otherwise”.
I understand, I think, the motivation of people who are ideologically pro-choice. They believe women have a fundamental right to autonomy and control of their bodies, and that this right trumps all other rights. In the words of Clare Daly TD, there are many reasons why women opt for abortion, “none of them easy, all of them valid”.
Yet the fact that many women regret their abortions, she says, is none of the State’s concern, because people regret many things. All that matters is that any woman who desires an abortion should have access to one.
The Irish Contraception and Crisis Pregnancy Study 2010 compares levels of regret among women who opted for abortion and those who gave birth in 2003 and 2010. In 2003, 11 per cent of those who opted for abortion experienced a lot of regret, 22 per cent experienced some regret, and 68 per cent had no regret. But in 2010, 13 per cent experienced a lot of regret, 31 per cent experienced some regret, and 51 per cent had no regret, while 6 per cent don’t know.
It may be of no concern to Daly that the numbers experiencing a lot or some regret have risen to 44 per cent, but it is of some concern to the women themselves, I imagine. In contrast, only 2 per cent of those who gave birth have a lot of regret, 8 per cent have some, and 88 per cent have none.
I agree with Daly that a crisis pregnancy is never easy, but our solutions are different. I would think it is less the woman’s problem than a society’s that declares a crisis pregnancy is a disaster for a woman and that the only way she can regain autonomy is to kill.
I am not the one describing abortion as killing. Faye Wattleton, former president of Planned Parenthood, the major US abortion provider, said in 1997 in Ms magazine, “So any pretence that abortion is not killing is a signal of our ambivalence, a signal that we cannot say yes, it kills a foetus.”
I think it is reasonable to suggest killing members of the human family is never a good solution to a crisis. At least Daly is honest. There are others who claim legislating for the X case would result in “the most restrictive regime in Europe, if not the world” – not at all like the 1967 Abortion Act in Britain. But X provides no time limits.
How limited is that? And how can suicidal intention be treated by abortion, when we know abortion is in itself a risk factor for suicide? But Daly is wrong when she says the Irish people voted twice against removing suicide as grounds for abortion.
In the 2002 referendum, which proposed removing the threat of suicide as a grounds for legal abortion, virtually all of the 49.6 per cent who voted Yes did so for pro-life reasons, but at least 5-6 per cent of people who voted No also did so for pro-life reasons, many of them influenced by Dana, who believed the amendment offered no protection against embryonic stem cell research.
The worst of the rhetoric declares this is not an issue of morality or conscience, but of legislation. Of course it relates to conscience – if voting on whether to allow Irish doctors and nurses to end human life is not a matter of conscience, what is?
How odd it is to see socialists embrace libertarian values completely at odds with their once-core values of solidarity and community. I suspect the reason Dr Martin got involved is because it is a crucial time of choice for Irish society – where we either choose a model of the human being as an autonomous, isolated individual, or one where we recognise that it is “ar scáth a chéile a mhaireann na daoine” – we all depend on one another.