No Hail Marys at Ireland’s departure gates

It appears that the allegedly “pro-life” camp has belatedly acquired an interest in the power of prayer, writes Gene Kerrigan

THERE are creepy things going on. It involves some people from the allegedly “pro-life” camp.

Abortion is a political matter, it’s also a very personal matter, about which there are big differences of thought.

Public arguments and campaigns are fought in a political arena. That arena is made up of the Oireachtas, councils, the media, public meetings, rallies, posters, marches, street protests and social media.

And there is a personal arena; most of us keep them separate.

The personal arena is where we engage with relatives, friends and neighbours. It includes the home, obviously, but also the normal social territory — workplace, schools, restaurants, entertainment venues, shops, hospitals, streets and transport.

Pretty much anything is fair game in the political arena. Lies, betrayal, threats, backstabbing, collusion, confidence and supply.

Mostly, though, people respect the protected nature of the personal arena.

When the two arenas meet (for instance, when political parties call to the homes of voters, to canvass support) we treat this intrusion courteously, but the overlap of the political and the personal makes us uneasy. We want them gone as quickly as possible. We lie, to get rid of them: “Oh, yes, I’ll certainly read the leaflet and consider a No.1.”

Respect for the separation between the political and personal arenas explains the reaction against recent incidents where people picketed the homes of Government ministers.

Most of us recognise that politicians are entitled to a private space; and their relatives and friends are entitled to privacy. As long as we have the freedom to act within the political arena, there’s no justification for intruding on their personal lives.

There was some hysteria after the Eighth Amendment was repealed. I won’t pay any taxes, claimed one stalwart; I’m leaving the country, said another.

I’ve no idea how those promises worked out, but these people were paragons of restraint compared with the quite shocking stuff that’s going on now.

Most people who oppose abortion do so respectfully — they are aware that beliefs on both sides are genuine. Some others have responded to the Repeal decision with bile, deceit and a dangerous contempt.

A woman has claimed that having had an abortion, she received a phone call from a man who had her name and address.

She said he tried to entice her to an address, for a follow-up scan.

She claimed that when she checked with the National Maternity Hospital and found no such scan was planned, she rang the man back and was verbally abused for having had an abortion.

I’ve no idea what’s going on, or why someone would want to entice a woman to an address she had no reason to visit.

People picketing a Drogheda hospital claim information on the scheduling of abortions is passed to them.

The front of a GP’s surgery was covered in abusive graffiti.

The HSE had to go to the High Court to get a website taken down — the website, run by a veteran antiabortion activist, aped the HSE’s own advice website.

It could, a judge ruled, “only be construed as an attempt to confuse” women seeking advice from official services.

Ellen Coyne and Katie O’Neill of Times Ireland found an American antiabortion group that confronts women going to clinics in the USA. They admitted they were training Irish people to set up a similar outfit here — as Sidewalk Advocates, pressuring women approaching hospitals and clinics.

The group used the name of an alleged counselling service here — connected to an anti-abortion group. Everyone seems to deny everything.

I live here and I hadn’t heard of this alleged counselling body. How an American anti-abortion outfit found and had connections with a Dublin “service” is beyond me — unless they’re in the same business.

Colm O’Gorman, who campaigned for Repeal, was as a child raped by a priest. The campaign is long over, but some of the worst antiabortion activists still target him with particular bile.

Last week, he got this tweet: “You were raped and abused by a homosexual posing as a priest. Many boys of the same age were in a position whereby they could have been abused. But they simply denied access by not presenting themselves. Don’t expect sympathy when you promote death for babies.”

There were, it seems, no abusive priests. They were homosexuals in priestly disguise. A mind that could embrace that can easily imagine rape as a matter of “presenting” yourself. It’s a mind incapable of comprehending its own distance from reality.

The new push from the Catholic activists is the notion of “vigils” at hospitals and clinics. They just want to pray, they say. And if they can have a word with a woman with an appointment, sure, where’s the harm in that?

A woman, in a country that has been discussing abortion since 1980; where last year there was a twothirds vote to repeal the ban; who has thought the issue through, who has thought through her own circumstances and made a decision... Whoa, lady, time out. There’s a chap here, fresh from picketing outside the Rotunda, and he’d like a chance, (between his Hail Marys) to tell you what he thinks about your decision.

The mind that can think it has the right to interfere between that woman and her decision is a mind that cannot conceive that anyone could think of these matters and not come to the conclusion it has reached.

So, this woman just hasn’t bothered thinking about her decision. Therefore, the righteous people demand that women must endure “prayer vigils” when approaching hospitals, so the woman has a fair chance of being influenced by their thinking.

The arrogance is almost entertaining in its absurdity.

Last week, on Today with Sean O’Rourke, a woman from the Iona “Institute”, a Catholic activist group, explained to Colm O’Gorman that it’s all about the right to pray. O’Gorman had suggested the campaign belongs in the public arena — let them pray outside the Dail, or Simon Harris’s office, not where a woman is making a personal choice.

“Oh, so you’re against prayer, now, Colm, are you?”

This kind of argument should be reserved for 12-year-olds debating the merits of Justin Bieber -vTaylor Swift.

“Do you have a problem with prayer?”

Where was the “Institute” from 1992 to 2018, when the right to travel to the UK for an abortion was protected by two clauses of the Irish Constitution?

No campaign. No “prayer vigils” at airports or ferries.

Not one year or two passed, not 10 years, or 15 years. Twenty-six years. That’s over one-hundred thousand Irish abortions — but that wasn’t worth a single public Hail Mary at Terminal 1.

This is the great shame of the allegedly “pro-life” camp.

The abortions were happening in the UK. Not on the holy soil of Ireland. Alone among the nations of the earth, we went to the extraordinary lengths of Constitutionally protecting the right of women to avail of our neighbour’s abortion facilities.

And those now pining for “prayer vigils” sent the women off without even the comfort of a Glory Be.

For these people, it appears there’s just three things that matter: location, location, location.

‘There were, it seems, no abusive priests. They were homosexuals in priestly disguise’