Pro-life medic Dr Sean O’Domhnaill on US Christian telly station EWTN to drum up dollars and support (but mainly dollars) from devout Americans.

(Scroll to 39:00)

Sean O’Domhnaill: “We’ve a very strong connection with the pro-life movement in America it’s been really strongly developed really back kind of ’90 round about ’92. And em in 1992 we had our first if you like Roe vs Wade moment you know, a Supreme Court ruling. A 14 year old girl who you know she had become pregnant with rape because we had a constitutional ban on abortion, the Supreme Court interpreted the ban as allowing for abortion in cases where the woman was suicidal. So that was kind of left there. It’s been hanging. There was a big, big push and there was an American element to that as well because.”

Raymond Arroyo: “I gotta ask you a big push by whom?”

O’Domhnaill: “Oh yeah. The big money coming in on the pro-abortion side is coming in from Planned Parenthood. It’s coming in from Atlantic Philanthropies, you know Chuck Feeney’s Atlantic Philanthropies. So you know that’s big money coming in em from abroad for nearly 30 years you know. So we had that and then of course this recent thing where we had a very unfortunate case of an Indian lady who was 17 weeks pregnant and she miscarried and before…I mean.. the inquiry is underway at the moment and before the inquiry is even heard. The word was leaked and we know from the transcripts of you know Google Chat and stuff like this. The pro-aborts you know, 5 days before it hit the headlines em they were actually saying “How are we going to best use this situation?” you know. So they were exploiting this particular situation and our national media is 100% pro-abortion you know. So we had this storm, absolute storm there was probably, personally I’ve found it like the toughest in my pro-life work you know.”

Arroyo: “Tell me about this new piece of legislation being proposed. What would it do, briefly?”

O’Domhnaill: “Well basically it would allow for abortion where there was a threat to the life of the mother em..including the threat of suicide. So we had..”

Jeanne Monahan: “Which can be broadly defined…”

O’Domhnaill: “Oh absolutely, it’s the floodgates scenario. So we had the equivalent of a congressional hearing the week before last, those of us who, I’m a psychiatrist. Six psychiatrists testified before the committee and all 6 including the people on the pro-abortion/ pro-choice side, they all said you know abortion is not a treatment for mental illness. That abortion is definitely not a treatment for suicidality because it increases the risk of suicide.”

Monahan: “It’s a trauma. It further impacts the trauma.”

O’Domhnaill: “Exactly. Yeah. So there’s this crazy scenario where we’re going to legislate based on this Supreme Court decision, now let’s bring the experts and ask them how do we do this? And all the experts say actually, you don’t do this, you know. So the em obviously, to stop this we went to the people. And it’s always been the case that’s what we do. When government starts doing what the people don’t want we bring the people to the streets and em last Saturday we’ve fantastic Youth Defence, the em, which is really the engine of the pro-life movement back home, em brought those people out onto the street.”

[Later]

Arroyo: “Tell me are you, how aware are the Irish of the pro-life movement here in the United States and the gains that they have seen?”

O’Domhnaill: “We’ve been working actually hand-in-hand with the pro-life movement in America for you know, the last 20 years. I mean it is no exaggeration to say I have more friends in America than I have back home and I hope I’m not too much of a reject you know. It’s a case of em..an awful lot of Americans like for example, our organisation has em full-time voluntary workers and invariably one or two of them in the, our central office are American, you know. So they come over for a year and stay for 4 or 5 years we can’t get rid of them and em then they marry someone em but no it’s em…there’s this constant exchange and you know we’re at the stage now where you know that youth organisation that we founded 20 years ago, 21 years ago. And now say my eldest son is now working in that organisation, in the office. We’ve actually brought a pro-life movement across a generation which hasn’t happened before. So we’ve twenty years of pro-life work experience before our Roe v Wade and that’s why we know it has to be stopped. It’s rowing back on a Roe v Wade thing. It can take 40,50, 60 years. Stopping it in the first place, that’s what it’s about. So Youth Defence and the Life Institute are out there saying this has to be stopped.”

[Later]

Arroyo: “I wanna wrap with a question which I asked our last panel. The greatest hope you see and the greatest challenge ahead for this movement and for your cause, first in Ireland and then in the United States?”

O’Domhnaill: “Obviously, the biggest challenge we face is to hold the line, you know.”

Arroyo: “What was the reaction to the march last week? You didn’t tell us. Edna Kenny is now saying what..Enda. I keep saying Edna like Dame Edna. Edna Kenny says what?”

O’Domhnaill: “He has this, he has this serious worry because with a turnout like that all of a sudden it sends a shiver through the government, the main party in government em Fine Gael. And an awful lot of their TDs, which would be like their senators, congressmen whatever, they’re turning around and saying hang on you know..”

Arroyo: “Maybe we should shelve this baby..?”

O’Domhnaill: “This is something which should be kicked down the road a bit. There’s a serious risk in the marginal constituencies we could take a serious beating because the the the people who went to the rally and all the people out there beyond who are on LinkedIn, facebook and all that kind of stuff, they’re all signing a pledge. The pro-life pledge is they will not vote ever for anyone who votes for legislation to legalise abortion, right. So you’re talking about you know say in, if you look at the 30,000. That probably represents about 600,000 votes, right. That is an enormous, an enormous power surge em and if you take it away from one party, they’re finished you know. And they know it. So he’s hoping just to keep his party together.”

Previously: The Crazy Train Stops For Nobody

Hat tip: droid