If you Google the name of ‘Catholic Arena’, one of the top results stems from the summer of 2019. During that time, the Irish media rounded on us and blamed us for organising the prolife vigil outside Holles Street Maternity Hospital. Their anger came centred around the use of coffins to illustrate the horrific nature of abortion. We didn’t organise the vigil and we weren’t there, but we absolutely support them. We absolutely supported them again in January of this year too when Simon Harris spread a fabricated story about women being asked if they were using the hospital to abort their baby that day. The story was composed as a smear yet Harris did not retract it even when the prolifers (many of them young families) received death threats as a result.
This was part of a wider media and political agenda wherein prolifers are presented as hysterical, irrational and even dangerous. Lies are used to maintain this image if possible.
Yet lies can't hide the brutal reality of a country where the unborn now have NO right to live.
Simon Harris, Catherine Noone, Leo Varadkar and Josepha Madigan celebrating the removal of the right to life of unborn Irish children
This brutality came to the surface this past week with a report entitled ‘Fetal medicine specialist experiences of providing a new service of termination of pregnancy for fatal fetal anomaly: a qualitative study', published by BJOG, a journal of obstetrics and gynaecology. Although some pro government journalists are trying to claim that this report is evidence that wider abortion laws are needed, it is actually the opposite that is apparent, Ireland needs far tighter controls on abortion.
In interviews with several doctors, those performing abortions on those with ‘foetal abnormality’, there were some stark revelations. They described the procedure as ‘stabbing the baby in the heart’. They referred to themselves as ‘Doctor Death’.
The report also discusses babies being born alive during such abortions, stating that there was concern over who would take care of babies born alive during abortions. It recommends feticide as ‘it was in the best interest of the baby to not be born alive’.
The report also notes of how ‘Ireland’s legislation is without gestational limits’.
One respondent talks about the delivery of a baby ‘with life limiting, with a poor quality of life, which may limit the duration but it is certainly going to have an impact on the parents and the other children in the family for the rest of their lives’.
Half of those consulted claimed that they had experienced conflict with neonatologists. They also stated that meetings were divisive and difficult. They also discussed who would ‘look after those babies’ if a baby was born alive during an abortion and they had been ‘begging people to help’ with palliative care for babies born alive during abortions.
These stories are only the tip of the iceberg. Other questions that need to be answered: Are the organs or limbs of aborted babies being sold to pharmaceutical companies? How long is it taking for babies born alive during abortion to die?
If you were offended by the coffins outside Holles Street, but not by babies being ‘stabbed in the heart’, then the best that we can do is to pray for you, because only someone devoid of logic and basic compassion could support that.
Ireland’s politicians voted in 2018 to make sure that babies born alive during abortion would not be assisted. They voted to make sure that they would not receive pain relief during the procedure.
With abortion laws up for review in the coming year, people need to get emailing their TDs and raising awareness. This inhumanity cannot be allowed. A full removal of the abortion law is not likely any time soon, but we can reasonably expect amendments that outlaw leaving babies to die when born alive, that ensure pain relief and that ban the sales of organs and limbs of aborted babies. We should also aim to defund abortion of taxpayer money.