Bernie Smith of Pro-Life group, Precious Life is interviewed in today’s Belfast Telegraph.
Q. Do you not think you are adding to a vulnerable woman’s distress by trying to make her feel guilty about her choice?
A. Let’s turn this around and look at child abuse. If there was a child abuser in a community is that not the responsibility of people in society to highlight how horrible child abuse is. Abortion is the ultimate child abuse and for a woman in that situation it couldn’t be made worse because there is nothing worse for a woman than to have an abortion. I have sat with women who were suicidal because they had an abortion because there was nobody to say to them beforehand there was another way.
Q. What about the young girl or woman who is suicidal because she doesn’t want to go through with the pregnancy?
A. Well what do we do when people are suicidal? Take a woman who has just given birth and she has postnatal depression. I suffered from severe postnatal depression and like many women I needed someone to help me through that difficult stage. Would eliminating that baby, killing that baby have prevented me from being suicidal? I needed medical intervention. In some cases women who are suicidal during pregnancy may even need to be institutionalised in some cases.
Q. Are you saying a woman who is feeling suicidal about their pregnancy and doesn’t want to continue with the pregnancy should be institutionalised?
A. Well if her life is at risk.
Q. So you would do this against her will?
A. Not against her will, but if someone’s life is in danger we immediately have to offer medical intervention. Abortion does not eliminate suicidal thoughts. Abortion causes suicidal thoughts. I don’t believe aborting a child for any reason is in anyway beneficial to that child.
Q. What about the young girl in the republic, raped and suicidal. Was it not cruel to force her to continue with her pregnancy?
A. Well how much more cruel would it have been to rip that child from her womb. A loving society offers support and help to women. If she was suicidal she should have received immediate psychiatric care and sometimes that involves medical intervention that would include hospitalisation and the proper medication. The right decision was made in this case not to abort the baby. She’ll never regret giving birth to her baby but she would have regretted an abortion.
Previously: Come Dine With Me (Pro-Life Edition)
The Language Of Compassion And Care
Meanwhile, On Great Victoria Street, Belfast
Meanwhile, In Belfast
In the RoI, there is a Constitutional Amendment, inserted at the behest of PLAC, in 1983, which they were confident would ensure that abortion would never be legal in this Republic, regardless of the wishes of the legislature, and to ensure that Constitutional ban could only ever be overturned by the people, through a Referendum.
They, PLAC, found out that inserting clauses into a Constitution which can be a dangerous thing, as Justices of the Irish Supreme Court have a propensity to Independent thought and expanding rights, in the event of a challenge they are required to rule on.
And they were required to rule on a case, on appeal, in 1992,”Ms. X”, regarding this 14 y/o, raped, pregnant and suicidal child, and they decided, in their wisdom, that the aforementioned PL Amendment, 40.3.3, was equally pro-life in favour of the girl/woman, whose life was threatened by the continuation of a pregnancy, including a threat to her life from suicide ideation, which was certified by a medical practitioner, and they ruled that a termination of pregnancy, an abortion, could legally be carried out, in the RoI, as long as the equal right of the”unborn” [fetus], was vindicated, and protected “as far as is practicable”.
Of course, potential fetal viability is not reached until into the 22nd week, and is 0% [zero] at 21 weeks and less.
Ruling, Justice Egan said this:
Having regard to the construction and meaning, however, of the Eighth Amendment and my opinion that an abortion in this case would not be unlawful, I was satisfied that the orders made in the High Court should be set aside.
Justice McCarthy said this:
On the facts of the case, which are not in contest, I am wholly satisfied that a real and substantial risk that the girl might take her own life was established; it follows that she should not be prevented from having a medical termination of pregnancy.
This conclusion leads inevitably to the recognition that [b>the wording of the Amendment contemplates abortion lawfully taking place within this State.
Chief Justice Finlay ruled:
I am satisfied that the test proposed on behalf of the Attorney General that the life of the unborn could only be terminated if it were established that an inevitable or immediate risk to the life of the mother existed, for the avoidance of which a termination of the pregnancy was necessary, insufficiently vindicates the mother’s right to life.
I, therefore, conclude that the proper test to be applied is that if it is established as a matter of probability that there is a real and substantial risk to the life, as distinct from the health, of the mother, which can only be avoided by the termination of her pregnancy, such termination is permissible, having regard to the true interpretation of Article 40, s. 3, sub-s. 3 of the Constitution.
Those were the judgements, in 1992, of the majority in the Supreme Court.
Those are the judgements which remain as law, only regulated and implemented by the recent Act, The Protection of Life in Pregnancy.
No changes were effected by the new Act, as that would require a Constitutional Amendment.
But, I believe that this perfidious, odious Amendment must be removed by the people, and the Legislature must enact legislation which institutes a properly regulated Abortion regime in the RoI, in line with that in effect in England/Scotland and Wales.