Why tolerance of abortion is the height of economic folly
We don’t know the details of the case because the State is unwilling to release them, though it again has implicated every Irish citizen in judicial murder.
Your editorial referred to the ‘X’ case ruling allowing abortion in exceptional circumstances. That ruling, in fact, allows widespread abortion with no time limit. It is impossible in the long run to confine direct abortion to exceptional circumstances.
I spent a few days in Madrid recently doing some historical research. It is reported in the Spanish pro-life weekly Alba del Tercer Milenio (December 9-15, ‘05) that one in six Spanish pregnancies ends in abortion now. Twenty years ago abortion was decriminalised in Spain for the second time in the 20th century.
Ninety-seven percent of Spanish abortions are performed on the pretext that the mother’s physical or mental health is at risk. A million Spanish unborn children have been aborted since 1985, and the number is rising every year.
As regards the trend among Irish voters being in the pro-abortion direction, you are assuming that people can’t learn from ethical lapses in their past and change their opinions.
Ireland, though enjoying the highest fecundity rate in western Europe, has fallen below the fecundity replacement level. Already we are relying on tens of thousands of immigrants to maintain our economy at its current rate. In a few short years, if this trend continues, we’ll experience serious difficulties with regard to pensions. It is foolish beyond words for us to be following the general European trend.
There would be no question of cheap foreign labour putting Irish jobs at risk if we had a sufficient number of native Irish workers. By now even the political left in Ireland has taken on the issue of cheap foreign labour.
Leaving aside the primary ethics of abortion itself, the State has no economic interest in funding abortions, or artificial birth control for that matter. It is lunacy for them to be doing either. The recent mass demonstrations in regard to Irish Ferries have shown there is still a lot of support for the type of social concern traditionally associated with trade unions.
However, European socialism has become increasingly anti-life and anti-family. What is needed now is a marriage of traditional left-wing social concern to the culture of life as promoted by the Christian and other churches and by people of goodwill without religious belief.
But are there politicians in any of the mainstream parties to take this thinking on board? Utopian this-worldly solutions can be pursued only in Utopia. In the end we are all mugged by reality.
Séamas de Barra
83 Beaufort Downs
Rathfarnham
Dublin 14.
