Saturday, April 27, 2013

The Hypocrisy of the Labour Party

I logged on to the online edition of the Irish Times just now, and this headline really jumped out at me:

Restrictive Regime on Abortion will be Agreed by the government, Rabbite Says.

Why did it leap out at me? Because of the conjunction of the terms "restrictive", "abortion", and the photograph of Pat Rabbite directly underneath.

The report says:

Speaking in Dublin today, the Labour Party minister acknowledged the “delicate and sensitive” nature of the issue but said he believed the Government would produce “a workable solution”.

I would guess that pretty much every Labour TD, and most of the active members of the Irish Labour party, believe in abortion on demand, and further believe that the issue is not "delicate and sensitive" but clear cut. The fact that they are willing to use the Savita Halappanavar case, and professions of concern about women's mental health, as a pretext to establish the principle of abortion in Ireland is pretty hypocritical and cynical.

They should come out and say what they believe in loud and clear. At least Ivana Bacick does that much.

4 comments:

  1. I would agree with your assessment of where Labour stands (the party name now taking on ironic overtones ... they should call themselves the Labour Prevention Party!); Fianna Fail is starting to look better and better ... whoever thought that day would come?

    http://www.irishtimes.com/news/politics/delegates-affirm-fianna-f%C3%A1il-status-as-pro-life-party-1.1375441

    By the way, have you come across this yet?
    http://anirishordinariate.blogspot.ie/
    It was linked on the Big Pulpit a couple of days ago ...

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  2. How's your dad doing these days?

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  3. Thank you for asking! He has recovered from the spell of bad health he had, thank god. (The "g" on my laptop keyboard doesn't work. I have to copy and paste. So capital "g"'s are a pain.) He has submitted his memoirs, which he has been writing and I have been typing for some time, to a second publisher-- one publisher was interested in them already but ultimately passed. I really hope they get published. Aside from deserving it in their own right, they are something of a dissenting view on the received, liberal version of Ireland in the last six decades or so.

    The idea of an Irish ordinariate is interesting, I wonder is there much of a demand for it? The Walsingham Ordinariate seems to have been prompted by a demand from members of the Church of England seeking admittance to the Catholic Church, I'm not sure if there is a similar demand here.

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  4. Glad to hear your dad is doing well. All the best with the book! As to 'demand' for an Irish Ordinariate, I'd imagine there's truth in what you say; on the other hand, demand for something often doesn't exist until the thing is there! So perhaps if the word gets out (if you build it, they will come!)?

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