David Quinn
More and more doctors will be willing to end a life deliberately and doctors who disagree will be driven out, writes David Quinn
Eight years ago, during the furore following the death in a Galway hospital of Savita Halappanavar, the then bishop of Kilmore, Leo O’Reilly, warned that introducing abortion legislation even in a limited way would be “a first step on the road to a culture of death”.
Then Minister for Communications, Pat Rabbitte, described the language as “strident”.
Bishop O’Reilly told RTÉ: “This would be a radical change in the culture of life that we have had here in this country – and let’s not make any mistake about it – it would be an irrevocable change, there would not be any going back.
“And that, we believe, would be the first step on the way to what Pope St John Paul has called a culture of death,” he said.
Dr O’Reilly insisted that even if the intention is to have very limited abortion, it inevitably leads to a more liberal regime.
Events have since fully vindicated what he had to say. Almost as soon as the ink was dry on Ireland’s first piece of abortion legislation in mid-2013, the way was being paved for a referendum to delete the Eighth Amendment from the Constitution. The only thing that delayed it until 2018 was the marriage referendum of 2015. They wanted to get that out of the way first, followed by a further softening up of public opinion.
Arguments
Today, we have one of the most permissive abortion regimes in Europe, and in its first year of operation, as we learnt recently, 6,666 terminations took place in the country. If that is not the culture of death, then what is?
In the run-up to the 2018 referendum, Bishop Kevin Doran warned that if we repealed the Eighth Amendment, we would then move on to euthanasia and assisted suicide.
He said: “I am convinced that if we concede any ground on abortion, the very same arguments which are now being used to justify abortion will be used to justify ending the lives of frail elderly people and people with significant disability. This is the final frontier. If we cross it, there will be no easy way back.”
Bishop Doran was accused of scaremongering.
But in 2015, even before we repealed the pro-life amendment, John Halligan TD (now retired) introduced a Private Members Bill to the Dáil that would have paved the way for assisted suicide if passed.
An Oireachtas committee considered the matter of assisted suicide a couple of years later. Another left-wing TD, Gino Kenny, has now take up the Halligan Bill.
We can see that both Bishop O’Reilly and Bishop Doran were entirely correct.
It’s worth looking back at Evangelium Vitae, published in 1995, to see what it said about the ‘culture of death’.
In Belgium, pro-life doctors have clearly been all but driven out of working with unborn and newborn infants”
Introducing the term, Pope St John Paul, said it obscures the right to life and is “actively fostered by powerful cultural, economic and political currents which encourage an idea of society excessively concerned with efficiency. Looking at the situation from this point of view, it is possible to speak in a certain sense of a war of the powerful against the weak: a life which would require greater acceptance, love and care is considered useless, or held to be an intolerable burden, and is therefore rejected in one way or another. A person who, because of illness, handicap or, more simply, just by existing, compromises the well-being or life-style of those who are more favoured tends to be looked upon as an enemy to be resisted or eliminated. In this way a kind of ‘conspiracy against life’ is unleashed.”
Liberal societies places such an extreme emphasis on personal freedom that we think we have a right, in the name of that freedom, to dispose of anything we consider burdensome including the unborn, our marriages, and now, increasingly, our own lives and those of others who are very old or infirm.
Belgium has had abortion for a long time now, in addition to euthanasia and assisted suicide which are becoming more commonplace and the law permitting them ever more permissive.
New poll
Now a new poll of doctors working in neo-natal units in Belgium’s Flanders province has revealed that 89% of them would support a law allowing them to kill newborn babies found to have severe disabilities, including those which are non-life threatening. Presumably this includes Down syndrome.
In Belgium, pro-life doctors have clearly been all but driven out of working with unborn and newborn infants.
The ones left do not believe in the inviolability of all human life. They do not believe that the first duty of a doctor is do no harm. They believe it is alright to take an innocent life in certain circumstances, when that life is considered ‘burdensome’ by someone.
This is horrific and it is exactly what happens when the culture of death strengthens its grip. More and more doctors working in the fields of obstetrics and gynaecology and end-of-life care will be willing to end a life deliberately and doctors who believe it is always wrong to do so will be driven out, and so things will become ever worse.
What is notable is that, as it has strengthened its grip here in Ireland, no-one who attacked Bishops Doran and O’Reilly a few years ago has thought to come forward and say the two men were right, and they were wrong. I’m not sure what it would take for those who are ‘pro-choice’ to come forward and say things are going too far.
Nothing, I suspect.