Liberal mindset induces total blindness on abortion
After your recent firm and commendable defence of abused children, I thought you might, at the very least, be prepared to entertain the notion that the weakest and most vulnerable child of all – the baby in the womb – might be entitled to some legal protection. Sadly, I was mistaken. Apparently, the liberal mindset induces total blindness where this class of tiny human beings is concerned.
Your language is very revealing. You describe our support for unborn children as “visceral”, ie, a gut reaction. Your view is, of course, “rational”, ie a head reaction.
You say we are washing our hands of the problem of Irish women going abroad for abortion. The logic of this statement seems to be that you want the killing to be available at home – you wouldn’t use the word “killing”, of course, probably “termination”. But who is being terminated?
Recently your columnist, Steven King, described people like me as “extremists” because we don’t see the killing of the totally innocent baby as the solution to pregnancy resulting from rape. We remember, of course, from a previous column that Mr King saw no problem in funding an abortion for a friend for whom the baby was simply an “inconvenience”. It seems from this that he supports abortion on demand.
How would he, or any of the “liberals” at the Irish Examiner, feel about giving the raped and pregnant woman the choice of having the guilty rapist or the innocent baby executed. After all, you are “pro-choice”. For my part, I don’t want to see anyone – innocent or guilty – put to death.
A recent pro-abortion letter to your newspaper described people like me as “anti-choice.” This is a fair description to only a very limited extent.
I believe that a woman has the right to choose whether to have a baby or not, whether by abstention or contraception. However, nobody should have the right to kill another human being, especially one who is totally innocent, and more especially still when that human being is the woman’s own child. Most people abhor infanticide. How can they be so comfortable with foeticide? The infant and the unborn are both human beings. Your editorial wants a “rational” debate on assisted suicide.
Some weeks ago your political correspondent, Shaun Connolly, bemoaned the fact that there cannot be a “mature” debate on abortion. Rightly or wrongly, what I tend to hear in these words is “why don’t these pro-life people go away, or else see that rational, mature people like us must have right on their side?”
Assisted suicide is a much more complex issue than abortion. We have the power to choose it, whether directly or by living will, unless we are hampered by law or by religious belief.
Abortion is different. No choice is given to one of the human beings involved. It is a matter of the right of every human being – believer or unbeliever, big or small, born or unborn, handicapped or not – to be permitted to live.
Unless we are totally committed Darwinians, believing we are no more than clever animals, and that survival of the fittest allows us to destroy the weak and vulnerable, then this has be the rational and mature position. It is surely the default position.
In his column (May 26), Fergus Finlay wrote: “There are still invisible children in Ireland. Children whose voices aren’t heard, who may be suffering in silence.” Will your voice be for their protection or their destruction?
Oliver Broderick
Montserrat House
Ashe Street
Youghal
Co Cork
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