Michael Kelly“Campaigners who are pushing abortion should be honest about what they want”, writes Michael Kelly
Having spent time living in Italy, I have to confess a mild addiction to caffeine. No day has truly begun for me until I’ve had a fix of coffee. But I was stopped in my tracks recently while ordering an Americano in a branch of a well-known coffee shop. Just after I ordered, I noticed that the barista was wearing a badge advocating the repeal of the Eighth (life equality) amendment in the Constitution.
I put my wallet back in to my pocket and politely informed the cashier that I didn’t want political slogans with my coffee so I would be ordering elsewhere instead.
In the last few months we have witnessed attempts by campaigners pushing for wider access in abortion in Ireland to colonise public space and, crucially, public discourse.
What is hidden, or course, by badges and murals proclaiming ‘Repeal the Eighth’ is the horror of what that phrase actually means: campaigners are working towards removing the right to life of unborn children from the Constitution – a move that would legalise the killing of unborn children. When campaigners say they support ‘repeal’ they should be honest in asserting what that means. What they are really saying is that they want it to be legally permissible to kill children when they are at their most vulnerable – in their mother’s womb.
Similarly when someone proclaims themselves to be ‘pro-choice’ they really mean that they are in favour of the choice to kill a child.
The ghoulish fact at the heart of the campaign for abortion in Ireland is that advocates for a change in the law are pushing it by pitting mothers against their unborn child.
Advocates for abortion never want to talk about the rights of the child. They used to dismiss talk of the child by denying his or her humanity or referring to a woman as being a ‘clump of cells’.
But, of course, technology dismantled that argument. The availability of three dimensional and four dimensional imaging and ultrasounds have made it patently obvious that the child in the womb is human.
Campaigners to remove the right to life of the child don’t want to face the reality that abortion kills children. This is why ‘repeal’ has become the chant rather than ‘abortion on demand’.
As well as the badges, some people now don sweaters and tee-shirts with the slogan ‘repeal’ as if campaigning to remove the right to life of a child is something virtuous or to be proud of rather than a disgraceful attack on humanity.
Campaigners who are pushing abortion should be honest about what they want. And those proudly standing up for the unborn – the most vulnerable section of society – should never shy away from pointing to the humanity of the child and his or her right to life.