Ireland faces Anti-Catholic hysteria ... Gene's advice: stick to your guns Ireland and do not bow to world pressure to adopt abortion

Anti-Catholic hysteria reaches new heights, as the worlds' media respond to the tragic death of Savita Halappanavar ...

Gene's advice: stick to your guns Ireland and do not bow to world pressure to adopt abortion 

The Irish Tricolour
(source: Wikimedia Commons)

Yesterday’s hysterical and prejudicial media reaction to the tragic death of a pregnant woman in a Galway hospital highlights a growing trend towards irrational and dangerous speculation by members of the press. The way most Irish, British, and global newspapers and TV news channels reported 31-year-old Savita Halappanavar’s death following a miscarriage seemed highly irresponsible. Many journalists appeared to cynically use the Halappanavar case as a means of promoting their anti-Catholic and pro-abortion agenda.

All across Europe, and beyond, headlines hysterically screamed: Ireland’s law and Catholic culture allowed a woman to die (New Statesman), Not a Happy Diwali for Family of Dead Hindu Woman Denied Abortion in ‘Catholic’ Ireland (France24), Ireland Abortion Scandal: Death of a Pregnant Woman Prompts Soul-Searching (TIME), "I am a Hindu and not a Catholic, please save me" (Bangalore Mirror), Ireland: Savita Halappanavar killed by church state links (Socialist Resistance), "This is a Catholic country": Woman dies of septicaemia after being refused an abortion in Irish hospital (Independent) ... to highlight but a few.

The way many of the stories behind the headlines were reported seemed highly reckless, either prejudging the inquest that will soon be held into the tragic death, or even suggesting that ‘enlightened’ Hindus were somehow denied their basic human rights by a medieval ‘Catholic culture’ – see the France24 (surely the French are still at least culturally Catholic, on the whole?) article above, which could barely conceal its hatred of Catholics and the Irish. Under a (frankly disgusting) cross-head that read ‘Not Tonight – or Tomorrow – Darling, We’re Catholic’, the France24 article (which seems to reflect the attitude of commentators in other press outlets) stated:

Now for one of the more galling details in a deplorable tale: At one point, Savita was told she couldn’t have an abortion because - get this, “This is a Catholic country,” she was informed. [Who said this? Why is this quote being constantly used in reports on this story, even though the actual words haven't been attributed to any specific person?]

Oh yes it is. In case anybody had any doubts about it – especially the legions of folks across the world who go all warm and fuzzy about “ye olde Oireland” or “good ol’ Eire" – this is a very Catholic country.

So Catholic that nobody bothered to listen to a 31-year-old member of the medical profession – even when she noted, “I am neither Irish nor Catholic”. [But, surely someone residing in a nation must abide by that country's laws ... even if it seems that there appears to be some confusion surrounding Ireland's laws on abortion?]

The Halappanavars are Hindu, hailing from Karnataka in southern India. As I write this, Hindus across the world are celebrating Diwali – the festival of lights, the most joyous feast on the Hindu calendar. (Comments mine.)

A YouTube video was then published, showing how Savita joyfully participated in a 2010 Diwali dance in Galway. The emotive use of this video highlights, as far as I’m concerned, the bizarre way many in the West now appear to promote irrational reactions to events whilst pretending that we are the most rational and rationalist culture the world has ever seen.

The rest of the France24 article continues in the same vein. Under another cross-head worded “Ireland’s God-fearing Men of Science”, the article went on to say:

If they [the Halappanavars] happened to be back in their native, un-Catholic India, the couple could have sought and got a legal abortion without any problems.

But they were immigrants in Ireland, Catholic Ireland, which has one of the world's strictest anti-abortion laws with a ban on abortion written into the national constitution. Terminations are only permitted if there is a substantial risk to the woman's life. Under Irish law, destroying or aiding the destruction of the unborn carries a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.

Did you see that? Terminations are permitted if there’s a substantial risk to the woman’s life. That would apply to Savita Halappanavar’s case.

But here’s the twist. Not only does Ireland have one of the world’s most repressive abortion laws, but even when it’s permitted, it’s extremely difficult to get an abortion in this most pure Catholic nation. [Actually, wouldn't it be best for the media to wait until the findings of any inquiry before rushing to such generalisations? It may also be best to wait and find out what happened, and what the Church actually teaches concerning the particular circumstances involved?] (Comments mine.)

So, there we are: Catholic Ireland is an evil place, full of leprechauns and banshees, whereas enlightened India is a haven of virtue and human reason.

Sadly, though, the journalist responsible for the France24 article appears to have missed out the fact that deaths during pregnancy are extremely rare in Ireland, whereas such painful tragedies remain a persistent problem in many of India’s poorer parts. Of course, the horrendous burying alive and killing of new-born girls also continues to be an unspoken part of daily life in the Hindu-majority nation, too. This BBC report from last year asks the troubling question: where are India’s millions of missing girls? It’s feared that at least 8 million girls were aborted in India during the past 10 years, for the simple reason that they were not boys.

For me, a mark of an enlightened, in the truest sense of the word, society is the desire to protect and promote life. Human life is an amazing gift, it is the crowning glory of creation. A society that is truly rational and compassionate values the integrity and worth of all its members, especially the most vulnerable: the sick, the elderly, the unborn, and the pregnant. Wanting to protect human beings – regardless of age or ‘usefulness’, or the stage in life they are at – is always good.

It can never be wrong to wish life to succeed, to want the vulnerable to be safeguarded from systems that are, ultimately, designed to kill, to terminate, to abort. Yet, it seems that, even amongst people of faith, or those who believe there is a profound value to life, we Catholics stand alone in standing up for the human … and we get rubbished for it: from secularists, atheists, and even those who profess other religious beliefs.

Vast sections of the liberal press seem to have used the tragedy of the Halappanavars to propagate their vehement hatred of all things ‘Catholic’ and to campaign for abortion. Savita Halappanavar’s tragic death has been portrayed as some kind of religiously-motivated murder by some irresponsible commentators. Her case is proof, if any were needed by the secular press, that 'abortion = good' and the 'Church = evil'.

This story, and the way it has been presented, highlights something that needs to be confronted -- the media's constant and unjust Catholic-bashing. The reporting of this tragic case demonstrates how most members of of the press are totally ignorant of Catholic teaching as regards abortion and / or miscarriage, whilst many journalists and commentators (especially in the West) have an irrational contempt of the Church. They do not want to report facts, they are not interested in the truth -- what matters is the promotion of an anti-life, anti-family, agenda. This bias usually leads to an anti-Catholic prejudice.

Yesterday, a human tragedy was used by members of the press in a rather emotionally ill-thought way as means of pushing the myth that abortion has no consequences, or that it is an entirely safe medical procedure, detached from complexity or ethical questions. Some of the articles that appeared in yesterday's press even seemed to suggest that it’s always better to abort than to be pregnant – choosing to ignore the fact that this particular pregnancy-related death was tragic precisely because it was rare.

Of course, many in the media choose to ignore those tragic deaths that occur inside abortion clinics. I do not mean here the hundreds of thousands of unborn human lives ‘terminated’ every year, but the mothers who have died during botched abortions performed by professional ‘health care providers’. Earlier this year, one of the world’s biggest abortion providers apologised to the family of a 24-year-old woman who died in one of their clinics. According to the tiny number of news agencies that covered this story (see here, here and here), the woman had bled to death after a second trimester abortion in a Chicago-based Planned Parenthood clinic. Most media outlets chose to ignore this tragedy, and continue to ignore many more like it.

Tragedies are only newsworthy, it seems, if they can be used to promote certain agendas. A cruel, if not sometimes all too sad reality when it comes to the media.

Here in the UK, it has become apparent in recent weeks how dangerous unchecked press hysteria can be -- just look at the problems caused by Newsnight (BBC 2). Hysterical reporting leads to a desecration of justice, to knee-jerk lynch-mob reactions, and to unnecessary bitterness and anger.

What many nowadays fail to realise, though, is that when Europe was more Christian, its politicians, journalists, historians, and social commentators were also far more reasonable and rational – grounded in objectivity and a desire to get at the real truth. In today’s savage and overly emotionally-driven world, men and woman chant the ‘We are rationalists’ mantra, even as they drive us ever closer to the brink of the abyss of irrational relativism and the insanity of an unadulterated culture of death.

"Professing to be rational, they became irrational, and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man." (cf Rm 1:22)