If the political will existed, there could have been a reasonable discussion about the Eighth Amendment, writes Cora Sherlock
It didn’t have to be like this. But, unfortunately, the Oireachtas committee on abortion decided otherwise from the get-go. As each week passes, this becomes clearer as one abortion advocate after another presents to the committee.
The number of pro-repeal witnesses now stands at 24, with just four pro-life speakers invited to present. Just as with the Citizens’ Assembly, no invitations have been extended to families who say their children are alive today thanks to the 8th Amendment, even though pro-choice groups like the British Pregnancy Advisory Service, the Centre for Reproductive Rights and the Irish Family Planning Association have all been invited as ‘impartial’ witnesses.
Three weeks into the hearings, in a most bizarre and unusual move, the committee voted in favour of making sure the Eighth Amendment is not retained in full. After having heard from less than a third of the witnesses, they decided to give their verdict before hearing all the evidence.
When it dawned on them that this looked really foolish to members of the public, there was a scramble to invite pro-life speakers in an attempt to cover over the cracks. In recent days, some committee members have taken to attacking pro-life witnesses for not going along with the farce. It is the height of disrespect for the committee to now expect pro-life speakers to come before it and present when the committee has already given its verdict in favour of abortion.
Slowly but surely, the public are starting to see through the charade. Thanks to TDs like Mattie McGrath and Peter Fitzpatrick along with Senator Rónán Mullen, the public is being kept in the loop and can see up close how undemocratic and unjust the process has become. If these members of the Oireachtas weren’t present, the farce that is taking place would never have been exposed.
Most of the media are still giving cover to the committee and are congratulating the chairperson, Senator Catherine Noone, in particular for the way she is chairing proceedings. But deep down they know the credibility of the process is in freefall.
Last weekend, Senator Noone said the Committee was having difficulty finding pro-life experts to present as witnesses. But this isn’t the full story, not by a long shot. The pro-life experts are out there – they always were. They just weren’t invited at the critical time – at the outset, before the vote – and now they’re not prepared to be used by the committee organisers who are running for cover.
It could have been very different but the committee organisers planned a one-sided, imbalanced process that would lead on to a referendum. The timeline proves this and the committee’s vote for abortion early on means there can be no going back. The committee’s out of control imbalance must be further exposed to the wider public and any attempt to use pro-life individuals or groups as scapegoats for the panicking organisers must be vigorously challenged.
Guest speaker
Someone who should have been invited as a witness to the committee early on is Abby Johnson, who is guest speaker at the Pro Life Campaign’s National Conference in the RDS on December 3. Abbey is a former director of a major Planned Parenthood clinic in the US, one of the largest abortion providers in the world. You’d think that any committee recommending abortion would first of all want to scrutinise closely what abortion legislation has led to in other countries.
But that is not what this committee is about. It’s about ideology before evidence. It’s wonderful that the public is starting to see through it all. Nothing at this point can restore the credibility of the committee which never had any intention of been fair and impartial.
Cora Sherlock is a spokesperson for the pro-life campaign.