James M Bourke reflects on his new book and explains what motivated him to write a book about the obscenity of abortion.
Reflections on the Abortion Issue in Ireland:
My monograph, Reflections on the Abortion Issue in Ireland was launched in Limerick on 23rd November, 2019 at the Annual Conference of the Catholic Voice newspaper. It consists of 12 critical essays which tell the story of how abortion was legalised in Ireland. It is not a very edifying story. In fact, it is a tale of unparalleled deceit, disinformation, fake news, low cunning and outright lies on the part of the government, the godfathers of abortion in the media and a cluster of pro-abortion bodies. The manner in which the government succeeded in persuading the people to remove all legal protection for the unborn child and to give the members of government a blank cheque to legalise wide-ranging abortion constitutes an exercise in brainwashing and propaganda that Joseph Goebbels would have envied.
It was my first visit to Limerick, a fine modern city rich in history. Everywhere I went, I met charming people willing to talk to the ‘stranger’ and my taxi driver set the tone by declaring: ‘Ah sure, they’re all mad hatters up in Dublin!’ The conference in the Strand Hotel was a revelation for me, with speakers from many different countries describing issues affecting people of faith in a world that is being plagued by ‘galloping secularisation’, moral decadence and anti-God rhetoric.
Of course, the attack on religion and people of faith is not new. What is new for me is that apparent retreat from moral principles in Irish society and most shockingly, the tolerance of secularist ideology, including human killing. Killing unwanted persons is now legal in Ireland. I am referring to the intentional killing of unwanted unborn babies. Any female, over 15 years of age may now if she so wishes ‘terminate’ an unwanted pregnancy, which in plain English means ‘kill’ an unwanted, unborn child. She may do so for any reason. According to our government, human killing is now a matter of choice. It is a woman’s human right.
‘Why did you write this book?’
My book describes the sheer awfulness of abortion and its unforeseen consequences, namely, the killing of an estimated 800 – 900 innocent unborn babies every month. At the conference, some people asked me the question: ‘Why did you write this book?’ I did not expect to be asked that particular question. I am not an expert on the abortion issue or moral theology or medical science. I am a writer of fiction – short stories, novels and plays. I have never ventured into the world of polemic but it seemed morally correct for me to express my reflections on a matter of such gravity as human killing. Let me therefore explain my motive in writing about the obscenity of killing unwanted human beings.
I do not wish to live in a country that where human killing is legal. I am an alien in the New Ireland. For me, no state has the right terminate the life of a human being. To kill an unborn human life at any stage of the gestation process is an unspeakable crime. The Abortion Act 2018 has legalised murder in Ireland.
The Nurder Machine of Our Time:
For me, abortion is the murder machine of our time. In a civilised society, nobody gets killed. Of course, history is full of ‘terminators’ – Genghis Khan, Stalin, Hitler, Mao Zedong to name but a few. And we all know what terminators do. Our Health Minister, Simon Harris, has now joined the illustrious band of terminators by virtue of his Abortion Act 2018, known officially as the Health (Termination of Pregnancy Act) 2018. It takes a lot of stealth to call an Act of Parliament designed to kill people a ‘Health Act.’ In his profound ignorance of the English language, the Minister does not seem to know that the verb ‘terminate’ is a transitive verb and as such it requires a grammatical object which ‘suffers the action’. In this case, the object is not an abstraction; it is a human child. The Minister and his colleagues in that neo-liberal cesspit known as the Oireachtas will henceforth be known as the ‘Butchers of the Unborn’. They have blood on their hands; the blood of innocent unborn human beings.
The right to life is the most fundamental of all human rights. It is both a universal moral law and a natural law. It is an innate attribute of human beings. It has existed through the ages before the mention of any man-made law or constitution. No law and no government can extinguish the right to life. It is embedded in our genetic human inheritance. If the right to life is removed, all other rights become meaningless. Clearly, our pro-abortion politicians and even the members of the Supreme Court seem to be ignorant of the Ciceronian principle of Natural Law which is the bedrock of all jurisprudence.
The Harris Abortion Act 2018 not only legalises abortion, it also legalises infanticide. Any child that survives a botched abortion must be killed since that is the purpose of the procedure. Also babies born with a foetal disability may be terminated. Now that politicians can decide who lives or dies, we do not know which other unwanted persons may be terminated in future. Where does one draw the line?
A Massive Fraud on the Irish Nation:
The pernicious ideology of secularism is so pervasive that it is influencing people of faith and even church leaders. Many bishops and priests were silent during the abortion referendum just as in Nazi Germany they remained silent during the Holocaust. An order of nuns has even agreed in principle to allow the State to build a maternity hospital offering a full range of abortion service on the campus of St. Vincent’s Hospital. However, Canon Law does not permit the Catholic Church to dispose of property for immoral purposes and nothing is more immoral than killing of innocent unborn babies. No Catholic institution can condone an act of legal violence and no Catholic doctors or nurses can be required to participate in the government’s killing scheme.
There are two things in life that I cannot tolerate and they are the abuse of power and the abuse of language, both of which are practised arts by the ruling coalition. A government that legalises human killing can hardly be said to be acting in the national interest. And a government whose prime function is propagating its insidious secularist ideology by disinformation and euphemism is guilty of gross language abuse. The legalisation of abortion by the government was a massive fraud on the Irish nation.
Abortion Can and Will be Stopped:
It is time to stop the rot. People of faith must stand up and fight back for the right to life for all human beings born or unborn. Abortion is evil and must be resisted. We must heed the wise word of Edmund Burke:
‘The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.’
We can all do something. We have a powerful weapon; it is called prayer. Furthermore, we should adopt a two-pronged approach. On the one hand we need to raise grassroots awareness of the sheer awfulness of abortion not only for the unborn but for mothers. We can and should support the local pro-life movement in that endeavour. On the other hand, we should support and vote for pro-life politicians, both local and national. Eventually, the Abortion Act will be overturned because we know that evil always destroys itself in the end.
Finally, be assured that abortion can be stopped. It will be stopped. Irish people did not vote for an Irish Holocaust. It was godless Irish politicians who voted for abortion. [Reflections on the Abortion Issue in Ireland is published by Lumen Fidei Press, 2019. It may be purchased online HERE