I could not sleep last night. A combination of it being very warm and the fact that my broken (but healing) arm was throbbing made it impossible to stay asleep. So, I headed downstairs to make a cup of tea. I found my 8 year old daughter sitting on her window sill, under the curtain, staring out at the window watching the sunrise. It was 4.45am.
‘Why are you not asleep Alesha?’ I asked.
‘I am watching the sunrise Dad. It’s beautiful’ she answered.
‘It reminds me of the Lion King’
I was really struck that this little 8 year old with the heart and strength of a lioness could appreciate the beauty of a sunrise.
‘Are you struggling to get to sleep?’ I asked.
‘Yes’ she said. ‘I have too many things running through my head. I just cannot relax.’
‘Are they good things’ I probed.
‘Oh yes’ she answered. ‘The problem is there are too many of them!’
The innocence and joy of youth. My children constantly remind me that I once had their sense of innocence and joy and exuberance for life. Time in their presence is energising and wonderful. I would even say its healing.
Getting older though means you inevitably become less exuberant, more cynical and ultimately you lose your innocence. In my opinion it does not necessarily make you a better person. You are less fun to be around; you take less risks. You don’t laugh as much as you used to.
Children pull you back from all of this. A world without children would be a very boring place. It would function and we would have processes and routines to get things done as our days tick by, but it would be less joyful, less fun, be more predictable and ultimately a desperately dull place to exist in. It sometimes feel likes this these days.
In many ways children are the essence of life. They are the life bringers, the energy creators, the enthusiasm cultivators, the future.
Children should be treasured.
6 months ago, my family and I came back to Ireland. We had been in Tasmania for just over three years. We came back to Ireland for family reasons. I consider Ireland to be one of the best places on Earth to raise a family.
Whilst we were away, Ireland, one of the last places in the developed world to have a law that constitutionally protected the life of children in the womb, repealed that law and removed any right to life for unborn children from our constitution. Ireland, like every nation that legalised abortion on demand before it, succumbed to the greatest sophism that human kind has ever created.
That sophism (or clever lie designed to deceive) pretty much says that we have the right to kill our unborn children as they are growing in the womb because it is a reproductive right. To back that argument up another sophism is routinely used. The unborn are not growing children. They are just bunches of parasitic cells feeding off the mother so ‘removing them’ is simply a matter of the right chemicals or the appropriate surgery in much the same way you would remove a tumour.
Finally, to defend the above, the argument is made that only women have a say in deciding whether the unborn child lives or dies. It’s their body and so it’s their choice.
None of the above arguments are based on facts. They are fallacious arguments that unfortunately have dire consequences to children, the women bearing them, any supporting men involved and society generally.
I don’t write the above to judge anybody. I write it with a heavy heart that makes me realise how far human evolution needs to go before you can honestly say we have left our animal heritage behind. We are so easily led.
In the referendum, two thirds of those that voted, voted to repeal the laws. That amounted to almost 1.5 million people genuinely believing that repealing the rights to life for unborn children was progress for Ireland. After the successful repeal campaign, there were celebrations across the country. People were dancing on the streets. Ireland had thrown off the shackles of its repressive past and was now a proud and liberated country that was now suddenly, with abortion legalised, a more compassionate country, a place to be proud of, a better place to raise a family.
A number of things stand out for me since legislation to replace the 8th amendment has been passed.
Ireland will have approximately 10,000 abortions a year going forward (the number of people travelling to the UK to terminate their pregnancies before repeal was around 3000).
It will cost the exchequer somewhere between 20 and 50 million euros annually to fund this ‘service’. Around 30% of those taxes will come from people who conscientiously object to abortion. Our health system is already stretched to the brink.
Doctors and medical practitioners who disagree with abortion will be forced to participate in the abortion system regardless of their beliefs and perspective. Remember the Hippocratic oath that all medical practitioners subscribe to: ‘First, Do No Harm….’
3 months into the new legislation a perfectly healthy second trimester baby was killed when it was discovered that the initial ‘fatal foetal abnormality’ proved to be false. A lot of people do not realise that there is significant controversy in the medical community about what a ‘fatal foetal abnormality’ actually is. There is significant evidence to suggest that in many cases the tests are not accurate enough to construct an accurate diagnosis never mind a long-term prognosis.
There is no obligatory healthcare for children that survive an abortion. You may think that this does not happen. It routinely happens in abortion clinics around the world.
Let me stay with the last point because it genuinely disturbs me deeply.
All the major parties in our parliament voted against obligatory healthcare for a child that has survived an abortion.
Picture this (and without going into the graphic details of what happened during the abortion): a child survives the abortion procedure. It is gravely ill and is lying on a hospital operating theatre table. It is completely vulnerable, probably dying, probably in pain. Our parliament, despite numerous good people pointing out that this exact scenario happens in abortion clinics across the planet, have been unable to put a law into place to guarantee that that child will be afforded care so it can have a dignified life/death?
How on earth did it come to this?
No human being, in their right mind, would deny a sick child proper appropriate care.
It goes to the deepest part of what it means to be human. We care for the most vulnerable. Compassion is our most outstanding and distinguishing feature. It’s what sets us apart as a species.
So again, why are we not able to put a law in place to guarantee healthcare to children who survive abortion?
The primary reason is this.
As soon as you acknowledge that you are now dealing with an actual child who, a few minutes prior to the abortion procedure was in the womb of its mother you have a major problem.
A child is a child is a child.
Suddenly it’s not a ‘parasitic bunch of cells’ that our abortion procedure was removing because it was legal to do so.
Its’s a child. A child in need of care.
The entire house of cards argument that justifies abortion falls apart. The sophism is exposed.
However, to avoid facing this dilemma, it is easier to bury our heads in the sand and pretend that the argument, the sophism that has convinced so many that abortion is healthcare, still holds true.
That is until we actually face the reality of the above scenario.
With 10000 abortions a year this is likely to happen at some point in the near future.
It may actually take something as awful as this scenario to get us to pull our heads out of the sand and face what abortion actually is:
Abortion involves deliberately killing a human being at its most vulnerable stage in development. No amount of spin can hide this truth.
And this is what we as a country and many before us have legalised.
Since the late sixties and seventies, when abortion was legalised in the UK and the USA, around 1.3 billion (1000 million) abortions have been performed. That is the population of China and about twice the population of Europe.
About 60 million abortions are performed every year globally – about the same number of people that died in the 2nd World War.
We have aborted more children than the population of planet Earth in the 17/18th century. The romantic period of Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert amongst others. I mention these three because there were all born into poverty and more than likely would be aborted today.
When you are dealing with numbers this large there is a part in all of us that says, given how prevalent abortion is across the planet, surely its OK? Surely with so many women going through the abortion procedure, it must be fine?
Imagine if we are wrong.
Imagine in a distant future we look back at this abortion generation as one of the darkest periods in human history.
Imagine if we have made the greatest and gravest mistake in history.
I unequivocally believe this to be the case.
I am male, middle aged and was born into a Catholic family. I have 4 children. I apparently have no say in the issue of abortion and even if I ignore that perspective nobody will listen to me anyway or so I am told.
Perhaps I am shouting into an echo chamber of my own making.
I still think the truth is worth shouting about.
Abortion is an entirely artificial construct. It has been around a long time. Its legal origins are believed to have been the legalising of infanticide during the Roman Empire. Ancient Roman texts refer to infanticide as an accepted practice as it was the only way people could control the size of their families in a time before reliable contraception. This happened because there was no safe way to abort an unwanted child and protect the mother when the baby was in the womb.
As horrifying as the killing of newborns seems to us today, in ancient Rome, babies weren’t considered fully human upon birth. Instead, they gained their humanity over time, first with their naming a few days after birth, and later when their teeth emerged, and then when they could eat solid food.
There is a disturbingly similar argument to justify abortion today.
We evolved as mammals because we nurture our young (through the mammary glands hence the name). Unlike reptiles who lay eggs and more often than not, leave their young to fend for themselves, mammals give birth to live young who cannot survive on their own without parental help. We evolved as placenta-based mammals (there are other types of mammals like marsupial mammals) to afford the best possible protection to our unborn children. Longer pregnancies are associated with higher functioning mammals and more evolved brains.
We did not evolve as placenta-based mammals so we could arbitrarily decide to kill our unborn before they were born because it was a reproductive right or because our young were just bunches of cells.
In fact, we evolved this way to give our young the maximum possible protection whilst they were developing in the womb.
That is the stark truth, backed by science, that explains why abortion is wrong and fundamentally at odds with our humanity.
That is why I oppose it.
Who am I though? I am male. I cannot get pregnant. What business is it of mine anyway?
Do I really have to convince people that men have a key nurturing role in supporting children and their mums? Do I really have to tell you that abortion suits men? That it allows us to take no responsibility for pregnancy? Do I really have to tell you that good men will protect and even die for those they love especially their children? Do I really need to tell you that children help men grow up, become better people?
To dismiss men who oppose abortion in this debate is folly at its most ludicrous.
To the men that support abortion - dig deeper and face the truth. You will be better men for it.
Women bear the brunt of the consequences of pregnancy. Nobody denies that.
Women also bear the brunt of the consequences of abortion. Pretty much everyone on the pro-abortion side denies this.
It’s a lie. Abortion has a profound impact on us all particularly women. Having your unborn child killed is anathema to our core humanity. The consequences of this are not always something we are consciously aware of.
A note on my middle age baggage badge.
Here are some honest thoughts on many of my female friends and connections I have made over my middle-aged life experience:
I know women that have had an abortion. I really do feel for them. The evidence I see is that it has a profoundly negative effect on them.
I know women who have children who are very ill. My heart and support goes out to them and I truly wish society made it easier to support mother and child throughout their lives.
I know women who would not have an abortion themselves but are pro-choice. I really question this perspective.
I know women who never want children. I respect that choice.
I know women who want children but cannot have them. I feel for them deeply.
I know young women who want children but are still very young. I encourage them to be careful and bide their time. It’s a big responsibility to bring a child into the world.
I know women who have adopted children. I salute them.
I know women who have had children in awful circumstances where there was no consent. These women humble me to tears.
And from this range of connections to the stronger, more beautiful, more awe inspiring sex I want to leave you with two truisms that I can honestly stand over:
Lots of women that I know who have had an abortion now regret it and wish they could reverse the decision.
No woman has ever said to me that they regret having their child regardless of the circumstances of their birth. None.
And a final word on children....
Children want to be supported, encouraged, accepted and loved. They are the future. Its is our responsibility to support and enable that future. If we build a society on these principles, bringing children into the world becomes an easier choice and abortion disappears as an option. This society is something we should all be striving for. Abortion plays nothing but a desperately negative role in this ambition.
And finally we were all children once. Many of us came into the world in the unplanned, less controlled, unexpected part of the probability curve. I for one am glad of that. I can also speak for my own children especially my 8 year old lioness.
GMcD 10/07/2019
