Mary Kenny
One of the most striking Tweets I saw – in connection with the Referendum debate – was from a young man who said he was deeply “angered” to notice that so many pro-life demonstrators were women.
At least he noticed that fact. It’s a point which has been either studiously ignored or entirely missed by most media reporting on the national debate.
Yes, very many of those canvassing for ‘Love Both’ and ‘Save the Eighth’ are indeed women. Some of the most ardent and committed voices I’ve heard, and spoken to, came from younger women, who feel deeply that unborn life should be cherished and protected.
I received a phone call from a cousin who I haven’t seen in some time who was just so distressed at the thought that this protection might be removed: she herself is a mother of a large family and a very maternal woman.
And that, I believe, is in great part what is driving so many women to be active in the pro-life campaign: it’s the maternal instinct. It is that spontaneous feeling, which can be overwhelming, and even involuntary, to protect unborn life.
To her great astonishment, the American feminist Naomi Wolf had this experience when she was undergoing an ultrasound scan during pregnancy, which she had approached in a rational frame of mind. Then something “irrational” happened when she saw the baby’s hand and foot. “Some voice from the most primitive core of my brain…said: You must protect that little hand at all costs: no harm can come to it or its owner. That…small human signature is more important now than you are. The message was unambivalent.”
I have heard pro-choice people say that the maternal instinct can also prompt the termination of a difficult pregnancy, where the mother feels she must survive to care for her children already born. I respect the sincerity of that viewpoint too: maternal instincts can be activated in different ways. But one thing is for sure – it is one of the strongest forces on the planet – and it surely accounts for so many women in the pro-life movement.
Some Irish Republicans dislike the fandango over Saturday’s royal wedding (when Harry marries Meghan [pictured], lest anyone doesn’t know): one Donegal hotel has had to cancel an event which opened up the ceremony to general celebration.
Well, some folks like these jollifications and some think it a form of ridiculous kow-towing to an unelected elite. It’s a free country!
My own straw poll yields the following results: all the women I know plan to watch the nuptials, already riveted by the prospect of the £100,000 frock. Most of the men show scant interest (there’s some big football game going on simultaneously). The gender divide is probably more significant than any differences on the position of dynastic monarchies.
The Meghan and Harry show – especially with last-minute flaps about family crises – does offer this general benefit: it’s a distracting escapism from all the sorrowful things going on in the world. And the bride did go to the trouble of getting baptised as a full-on Anglican in preparation for plighting her troth!
Compassion of a very Georgian Irish priest
The actor Hugh Grant portrays the British Liberal leader Jeremy Thorpe in A Very English Scandal, on BBC television this Sunday, May 20.
Thorpe seemed a dazzlingly charismatic politician in the 1960s, often appearing on David Frost’s much-watched chat show That Was the Week That Was. A confident old Etonian whose ancestors were Irish, Thorpe was a highly successful party leader.
Although married twice, Jeremy Thorpe [pictured] also had a homosexual boyfriend, Norman Scott, who became a nuisance – and a hit-man was hired to kill Mr Scott. He fled to Dublin where, according to Hugh Grant, he was sheltered by Fr Michael Sweetman.
Fr Sweetman was a priest well known for speaking at protests to save Dublin’s Georgian architecture: he was active in a number of causes, and had brought a rosary to Constance Markievicz on her deathbed. He evidently felt that Norman Scott deserved shelter and asylum and provided it for him.
In the event, the murder plan went awry, and the incompetent assassin only managed to kill Scott’s pet dog instead.
In a very English sequence, Auberon Waugh launched a ‘Dog Lover’s Party’, not just to appeal to pet-lovers, but to draw attention to Jeremy Thorpe’s complicity in the attempted homicide.
At the Old Bailey trial, Thorpe was acquitted of charges of conspiracy to murder. But his political career was ruined, and he lived on in the shadows until 2014, succumbing to Alzheimer’s in his senior years.
It’s a sad story of human failings, but Fr Sweetman’s role provides a cameo of compassion for a very frightened young man fearing for his life.