Opinion

ROME, October 15, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The video here was sent along by email from contacts in Ireland fighting a massive propaganda campaign claiming that the country’s pro-life law is a threat to women’s health. Play it, and think about the battle that is happening right now in the land of saints and scholars. Ireland has been through a lot in the last few centuries, and the Irish have defied many long odds and survived, but the threat it is facing now is a foe that seems invincible. 

There’s a lot going on in Ireland, so much one might, if one were inclined to a conspiratorial mindset, be starting to wonder if all of this has been planned. Certainly our friends in Ireland are wondering it quite loudly. Ireland is one of the last 1st World nations that has held out against the abortionist mindset, against the incredible pressure of the international abortion lobby.

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As such, the country has been a thorn in the side of a massive and immensely wealthy global coalition of organisations, seemingly impervious to any opposition and motivated by a totalitarian ideology that will not rest until it has the whole world in its grip. So far, the Irish, both north and south, have refused to bow and accept the killing of their children as the price of being considered part of the “modern” world.

But the resistance is flagging; particularly the Church has failed to hold the line, and the work of standing up to the abortionist bullies is left to a fierce and indomitable but tiny cadre of determined lay people. And no matter how determined, the pro-life people of Ireland do not themselves have the political power to wield, but can only try to persuade the politicians not to allow the country to go down the road taken by so many others.

I have watched developments in Ireland, the homeland of my ancestors, for several years now and, though I hate to say it, I have to agree with Liam Gibson from SPUC, who told me the other day that the situation seems very grim. The abortion juggernaut just keeps on coming, with seemingly unlimited funds, the support of nearly every international body from the UN to the World Health Organisation, the medical associations, the European Union…seemingly all the world’s wealthy and powerful. It is becoming difficult to imagine that anything could ever stop it, or any people hold out against it forever.

The first breach of Ireland’s pro-life defences came with the “X case,” in which abortion activists used a young pregnant girl, and manipulated a court decision in 1992 that said abortion could be allowed in cases where the “mother’s life was in danger” – even if that danger came from an hysterical threat of suicide from a 14-year-old girl. It took another 20 years, but abortion activists finally pushed forward to the next step, and, in 2010, the European Court of Human Rights ordered the Irish to rethink their law. If abortion can be allowed in some cases, the court said, it must be made clear exactly what those circumstances are. This was the opportunity the abortion-pushers in the national legislature had waited for so long. 

Now, the public is being inundated by messages from abortion groups like the Family Planning Association (affiliated, as so many of them are, with International Planned Parenthood) saying that the nasty old pro-life laws are a threat to women’s lives, that the Constitutional amendment of 1983 acknowledging the unborn as real people to be protected under the law, is standing in the way of women’s’ health care. And it’s a lie.

No doctor not motivated by the abortionist ideology would claim that an abortion accomplishes anything beneficial or healthful for a mother. But ignorance, the failure of the Church to step up over the last 40-odd years and unflinchingly tell the truth, and the ordinary, natural willingness of people to believe uncritically what they are told by anyone who looks like an authority, has eroded the public’s confidence in the law. A symposium of medical experts issued a statement a few weeks ago saying that abortion cures nothing, treats nothing and helps no one. It seems unlikely, however, that the message was heard beyond a tiny range.

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From the ECHR decision, the government set up an “expert group” who would “study” the law and give recommendations. This group, stacked with members of the abortion lobby, has deliberated behind closed doors and no submissions from anyone but their own “experts” was allowed. The country is waiting breathlessly for the report from this group to see which direction it will be taken.

We are now within only weeks, or perhaps days, of this report being made public, and suddenly, the shocking news came that Marie Stopes, one of the largest abortion organisations in the world (£145 million/year +) had brazenly defied the law of the province of Northern Ireland, and said it will open an abortion facility in Belfast on October 18th – three days from now.

The incredible arrogance of the act has so shocked Northern Ireland’s politicians that they have yet to respond. Pro-life people have told me that their political leaders, who have held out against the rest of the UK’s abortion-mania, simply do not know what to do. With an act of such breathtaking defiance and the giddy backing of the mainstream media, it is hard to imagine that it will be possible to prevent Marie Stopes from beginning the killing of unborn Irish.

Some of my ancestors came from a Northern Irish town called Ballymena, and others from the great ancient city of Limerick in the south. I have never lived in Ireland and did not even visit until two years ago, but I have been told all my life that I look Irish, and that I have many typical Irish character traits. When I went to visit, I looked around and was astonished to be in rooms full of people all of whom looked faintly familiar.

We’re a fighty race, and have never taken kindly to the many times in our history when we were oppressed and ruled by an alien power. And the abortionist ideology is probably the most alien of all, for a country so devoted to the family and the Faith. As a Catholic and a member of the world’s Irish diaspora, I know a little of the ancestral history: of the priests who gave catechism lessons to children behind hedges and said Mass on a stone in the middle of a field, with a man set as a lookout for the soldiers. Some of those priests were hanged. I know a little about how much the Irish are willing to do to fight evil when it comes to visit their land. I know they won’t ever stop fighing the evil that threatens it now.