Watch: Megyn Kelly rips Patricia Ireland over NOW’s attack on Little Sisters of the Poor

FOX host sarcastically remarks: "I know—the nuns are opposed to birth control; it’s a shock."

I watch very little television news, but last night I happened to catch FOX’s Megyn Kelly interview Patricia Ireland, former president of NOW (National Organization for Free Contraceptives); the video is below. Kelly was clearly angered that NOW’s campaign against “The Dirty 100” includes the Little Sisters of the Poor (the list also includes numerous Catholic schools and dioceses). Early in the segment, Kelly sarcastically quips, with an eye roll, “I know—the nuns are opposed to birth control; it’s a shock.”

Ireland keeps trying to claim that the “Dirty 100” reference is a play on “The Dirty Dozen,” which makes very little (if any) sense as the twelve men in the 1967 film—set near the end of World War II, in the spring of 1944, are “a small band of the Army’s worst ex-soldier convicts (some awaiting execution) and turn them into commandos to be sent on a suicide mission, an airborne infiltration and assault on a chateau near Rennes in Brittany.” What, exactly, is the connection? Are these 100 institutions and groups supposed to represent evil doers who are going to be sacrificed for the sake of a greater good: The Pill?

Of course, trying to make sense of the “logic” used by Contracepting and Aborting Fundamentalists is a thankless task (and, really, they are religious zealots when it comes to such matters). There is no logic, just a mad, blind demand that they be able to pursue and finance irresponsible, unhealthy, and anti-life choices—financed by others. Ireland throws out all the usual nonsense, including that claim that “98% of Catholic women use birth control,” a claim that even the Washington Post, hardly a Vatican-operated institution, says is nonsense. And so forth. Here is the entire segment:


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About Carl E. Olson 1229 Articles
Carl E. Olson is editor of Catholic World Report and Ignatius Insight. He is the author of Did Jesus Really Rise from the Dead?, Will Catholics Be "Left Behind"?, co-editor/contributor to Called To Be the Children of God, co-author of The Da Vinci Hoax (Ignatius), and author of the "Catholicism" and "Priest Prophet King" Study Guides for Bishop Robert Barron/Word on Fire. His recent books on Lent and Advent—Praying the Our Father in Lent (2021) and Prepare the Way of the Lord (2021)—are published by Catholic Truth Society. He is also a contributor to "Our Sunday Visitor" newspaper, "The Catholic Answer" magazine, "The Imaginative Conservative", "The Catholic Herald", "National Catholic Register", "Chronicles", and other publications. Follow him on Twitter @carleolson.