NMH row is not about women’s rights, it’s about scoring points
THERE is no debate over the new National Maternity Hospital. What you’ve been hearing, ever since the move to the St Vincent’s Hospital site was first mooted, and especially in the past week or so, couldn’t possibly be called a debate.
A debate involves each side putting forward its arguments so they can be considered and challenged by the other. It involves listening to your opponents’ reasoned position, and either countering it with sound reasoning of your own, if you can, or conceding some points, if you must.
The current ‘debate’ over the hospital is more akin to the sort of face-off you get between bewildered journalists and those particularly extreme Donald Trump supporters you find at MAGA rallies. These are the folks who will argue, with utter conviction, that Joe Biden is actually Jim Carrey in a crazy disguise and that JFK Jr, who died in a plane crash in 1999, will emerge as Trump’s running mate in 2024.
The more anyone tries to question their views, the more they see that as proof of a massive conspiracy, in which everyone who disagrees with them is part of a secret plot to take over the world. Merely by interrogating their opinions, you’re showing your true colours: you have an agenda, you’re in on it, or you’ve been brainwashed or you’re just plain stupid.
Right now, here’s how the ‘debate’ about the location of the new maternity hospital is playing out: either you believe that the siting of the muchneeded new hospital on a Church-owned site is part of a sinister political/medical/social/ religious conspiracy, or you are up to your tonsils in that same conspiracy.
By this logic, those conspiring to turn back the clock, reinstate the Vatican as the final arbiter of social policy and deny women abortions/sterilisations/fertility
treatments in the new hospital include the following: the Taoiseach, the Minister for Health, the previous master of the National Maternity Hospital, the present master of the NMH, the director of midwifery and nursing at the NMH, and any journalist or commentator who has the cheek to attempt a balanced analysis of the row.
There may well be grounds for concern about the possibility of religious interference at the new hospital, although those best placed to know – such as the doctors and midwives who’ll be running it – don’t appear to think so. But possibilities or even probabilities, much less provable facts or expert opinion, count for nothing with the mob. And make no mistake, this furore is being fuelled and run by the social media mob, aided and abetted by many politicians and commentators whose greatest fear is falling foul of the online ‘woke’ brigade.
Poisonous
Never mind that this row could delay the provision of essential services for Irish women, there’s some valuable virtue-signalling to be done, some points to be won with the nastiest and most self-righteous of Twitter trolls.
I read an article on the subject yesterday in an uber-woke online journal, which was heavily slanted towards the fashionable ‘conspiracy’ take. The male author wrote the entire piece without ever using the taboo word ‘women’ outside of quotation marks; instead, he religiously – and this new dogma is indeed a religion – described the maternity hospital’s patients as ‘people who can get pregnant’.
And they have the brass neck to tell us that this is about our rights, about hard-won services and freedoms for Irish women, when they can’t even name us.
This isn’t about women; far from it. This is about scoring yet another victory in the fascistic, intolerant, poisonous and increasingly dangerous culture wars. These people don’t care if the project is scrapped or delayed by a decade once they win, once the hated Catholic
Church gets another kicking, and the poor fools who persist in their deluded observances are shown up for suckers.
Witness the vile personal abuse, the vicious attacks, the careerblighting accusations directed at anyone who blasphemes against this new woke creed. Stick your neck out and say you’re satisfied with the assurances of the NMH master, Professor Shane Higgins, or its director of midwifery Mary Brosnan or its former master Rhona Mahony – all of whom have been overseeing abortions since the law changed four years ago – and prepare for a monstering on Twitter.
One right-on commentator opined that she needed to hear it from the nuns and the Vatican to convince her they have no plans to interfere. So she won’t believe the Taoiseach, the master of the NMH or the Minister for Health, but she will believe the Pope? That, folks, is the quality of logic that passes for ‘debate’ in this country today.