Ireland has voted to kill unborn children. And the streets are filled with cheering, laughing, happy people. Why does no-one in the media think this is just a little creepy?
I know - it's not really about the children. It's really about the way that the church has mistreated unmarried mothers for centuries, and how they have connived in the sexual abuse of children, and generally been a misogynistic, powerful, men's club apparently more interested in maintaining the club than serving the people who made up their membership.
But why kill children just to punish the church?
Because it's not really about the church either. That was just a convenient excuse.
It's really about sex. About my right to have sex with anyone I want, whenever I want and not have to bear any of the consequences. The ready availability of contraception was meant to drastically reduce abortions. The facts are that wherever contraception has been made easily available, abortions, unwanted pregnancies and domestic violence have increased at massive rates.
The logic is simple enough. Men (in general) used to hold some sort of honour principle. If you got a girl pregnant, you had to help her out. Marriage, payment of child support, or some sort of assistance was regarded as reasonable unless you were an utter cad. Of course, it wasn't always as simple as that!
Now that women can easily access contraception, if they "let themselves get pregnant", some men think that it is the woman's own fault and they don't need to take responsibility. Now we won't condone that thinking for a moment, but we can perhaps understand it.
The genie came out of the bottle the day that we all agreed that you could just have sex with anyone because there no consequences anymore. Some men might think that they are being manipulated or taken for a ride. Or they might just think that it is not their responsibility.
When a thoroughly modern woman finds that her activities have led to a pregnancy, she thinks that since the man won't take responsibility, why should she? Parenting needs two, and if one opts out, then what is good for the gander, must be good for the goose.
No doubt if the child had a voice, he or she might object to the termination of their life, since they have had a chance to enjoy so little of it. But without a voice, their cause is easily sunk. Politicians won't speak for them; doctors and nurses won't; even much of the Protestant church won't. So selfishness wins the day. After all, if I don't stand with my sisters on this, I might find myself in the same predicament soon enough.
In the meantime, we spend small fortunes on medical procedures to keep babies alive who arrive early, at anything from five months on. We spend fortunes and apply our best brains to performing intra-uterine operations to repair organs and to keep alive this little person, who, if their parent had not wanted them would not have been called a person at all.
Madness? Yes, I'm afraid so. But no less mad than the ignorant pagans who placed their children on red-hot iron statues called Moloch, or sacrificed them alive to Inca gods. We have just figured out a way to do it inexpensively on the National Health.
We don't throw away plastic bags anymore, because they harm fish. We just throw our children away because they might harm our free loving. After all, love is love, the sloganeers tell us. Tell that to the aborted child!
Meantime, an Irish blessing for a newborn baby:
May you have a sunbeam to warm you
Good luck to charm you
An angel to protect you
Laughter to cheer you
And faithful friends near you.
