A (divided) nation once again as generational gap grows over NMH
WOMEN’S reproductive healthcare is at the centre of a heated debate being hammered out at kitchen tables across the country as I type. Many of my generation believe that the Catholic Church should have no say in the decision-making process of an expectant mother. For our country’s main maternity hospital – where, in all likelihood, abortions will be carried out in a few years time if the recommendations of the Citizens Assembly are supported by popular vote in a referendum – to be owned by any religious body is counterintuitive to say the least.
The Catholic Church’s conservatism when it comes to sexual behaviour, reproduction and its anti-abortion stance has put it at odds with tens of thousands of people. Many young people, some of whom have had abortions in the UK, feel the church has held them back sexually and put them at odds with themselves through guilt, preachy moralism and anarchic dogma, some of which was evident in the sentiments expressed by Bishop of Elphin Kevin Doran and Maynooth theologian Vincent Twomey in recent days. 100,000 of these have signed an Uplift petition calling for the Sisters of Charity not to be designated sole owners of the country’s new National Maternity Hospital – to be located on the St Vincent’s Healthcare Group site in Dublin 4, which is owned by them.
Health Minister Simon Harris tried to pour cold water on the rising tensions over the weekend by suggesting that the site may be leased, thereby gingerly side stepping the issue of sole ownership.
Pandora’s box has been opened and the country is divided once again on a Catholic issue.
As an organisation which has done great work down through the decades, but which also presided over two Magdalene Laundries where women were literally shorn of their identities, the Sisters of Charity have become the figureheads for everything that is wrong with the Catholic Church – whose symbolic power is so evident across our country in churches in every town and village. In a totally unrelated event, last week New Orleans began removing the vestiges of its racist past by tearing down the first of four Confederate monuments.
Nobody is suggesting anything so dramatic in Ireland, but there is a similar desire for a break with the past as for many the Catholic Church has no place in their day-to-day lives. According to last year’s Census, Ireland is still a Catholic country but secularisation is gathering momentum. It recorded 3.7 million Catholic worshippers among the 4.7 million population, albeit 8,084 are described as lapsed Catholics. The way the Census approached religion, for me, was inadequate, bordering on biased. If you ask someone who was baptised, Confirmed, married and had major milestones celebrated in a church, their religion, they will invariably respond Catholic, unless they are vehemently anti-Catholic. There was no question asking people if they were practising Catholic and if there was the figure would probably be halved. In late April the Citizens’ Assembly group recommended replacing the 8th amendment and that the ban on abortion here should be relaxed –including allowing terminations in all cases up to 12 weeks gestation.
Cases of fatal foetal abnormality, health risk and rape leading to pregnancy were all discussed and controversial recommendations will be made. The kitchen table debates will rage on, but what is clear is that a new, non religious hospital is needed urgently.