Cardinal Martini was a ‘prophet,’ says Vatican cardinal

CNA Staff, Apr 1, 2020 / 07:01 pm (CNA).- As the British Parliament’s permissive abortion law takes effect in Northern Ireland, pro-life leaders strongly criticized the law, pointing to the coronavirus response as proof of the need to protect the lives of the most vulnerable.

“Every unborn baby matters regardless of age or ability, gender or background. He or she has the right to be protected in a community where everyone belongs and deserves our respect,” the Catholic bishops of Northern Ireland said March 31. “Every woman faced with an unplanned pregnancy matters too. She has a right to be cared for within a community where she is protected from any pressure to abort her baby.”

“As the number of deaths caused by Coronavirus continues to rise, news reporters frequently remind us that behind the statistics are real people. Their lives matter regardless of age or ability, gender or background,” said the bishops, noting the heavy government investment in treating patients and protecting medical staff.

“Against this background, we are saddened and dismayed at the Government’s decision to introduce extreme regulations for the delivery of abortion services in Northern Ireland,” they said, citing an “overwhelming will” among the people of the region to “protect the life of every human being.’

Previously, Northern Ireland’s laws only permitted abortion in cases where a woman’s life is at risk, or where there is a permanent or serious risk to her mental or physical health. Backers of the law said it had saved over 100,000 lives by avoiding the permissive law that took effect in other parts of the United Kingdom in 1967.

The new law and accompanying regulations took effect March 31. They mean no explicit legal protections for unborn children up to 12 weeks into pregnancy, compared to legal abortion allowed up to 24 weeks in other parts of the U.K. In some respects the law is more permissive than the rest of the U.K.

Doctors, registered nurses, and registered midwives may perform abortions under the rules. In situations where pregnancy is believed to risk a woman’s physical or mental health, abortion is legal up to 24 weeks. There is no time limit where the pregnancy is deemed a risk to the life of the mother or in cases where the unborn child is deemed to have a fatal abnormality or a substantial risk of severe mental or physical impairment.

The Northern Ireland pro-life group Precious Life has focused on the responses to the government’s late 2019 consultation on the new abortion law. About 79% of respondents voiced opposition to any abortion in Northern Ireland.

Bernadette Smyth, director of Precious Life, said, “thousands of pro-life people throughout Northern Ireland responded in total opposition to a change in the law.”

“Yet, we have seen this week, that the U.K. Government are willing to ignore the results of its own consultation because they are so bloodthirsty and devoted to destroying and killing human lives through abortion in Northern Ireland, even at a time of unprecedented national crisis,” Smyth continued. “People are outraged, upset and hugely frustrated that their democratic voice has been ignored.”

“It is horrifying to learn that one of the most permissive, extreme and inhumane abortion regimes in Europe will be introduced to Northern Ireland by the British Government,” she said. “This is in spite of the fact that our elected representatives returned to Stormont in January and at a time when the U.K. has been brought to its knees by the Coronavirus pandemic.”

“And right in the middle of a national crisis, when people in Northern Ireland and across the world are uniting under the shared understanding that all human life is precious and must be protected, the British Government are still intent on killing and destroying innocent and vulnerable human life in Northern Ireland,” she said.

The Catholic bishops too said the consultation process had been “utterly ignored.”

While Precious Life is circulating petitions asking legislators to repeal the abortion provisions, the bishops said members of the Northern Ireland assembly have some influence. However, their remarks suggested repeal would be very difficult.

Politicians and others opposed to the regulations should not “meekly acquiesce to their promulgation,” they said. Where the regulations exceed the 2019 Act of Parliament, legislators can repeal them.

The traditionally Protestant and pro-U.K. Democratic Unionist Party also criticized the new abortion law.

Paul Givan, DUP Member of the Northern Ireland Assembly said they were “the most extreme, radical, abortion laws anywhere in Europe.”

“It is a travesty that this has been allowed to happen,” he said, objecting that the laws were introduced despite the return of devolved government to Stormont.

While abortion is typically a devolved issue of local control, the British Parliament legislation was passed during an absence of a local government. The parties of the Northern Ireland Assembly could have blocked the law from taking effect, but failed to reach any governing agreement due to a dispute between the two leading governing parties, the DUP and the second-largest party, the nationalist Sinn Fein. The nationalist Social Democratic Labour Party also walked out of a final critical meeting.

Besides the Catholic bishops, leaders in the Church of Ireland, the Methodist Church in Ireland, the Presbyterian Church in Ireland, and the Irish Council of Churches had called on the Northern Ireland Assembly to reconvene to block the abortion legislation.

The nationalist parties traditionally draw support from Northern Ireland’s Catholics. Sinn Fein has turned towards backing legal abortion, while some SDLP leaders have made comments welcoming the changes.

Caoimhe Archibald, a Sinn Féin MLA, said it was “only right and proper that woman can access abortion services without having to travel, that they are free to be able to have healthcare in a modern and compassionate way”.

Among the nationalist critics of the new regime is Peadar Tóibín, leader of the new political party Aontú.

“The right to life is a human right. It is the most important human right that anyone of us have. With out the right to life no other human right can be guaranteed,” he said April 1.

“The current crisis has seen society radically change its behavior, to protect the lives of the most vulnerable. This is something that we in Aontú have always understood,” he said. Sometimes we all have to limit our personal choice and autonomy to protect the lives of others. The slogan ‘my body, my choice’ rings particularly hollow now when we realize that in reality we are all in this together.”

Tóibín cited the Sinn Féin Mayor of Belfast’s statement in response to the coronavirus pandemic that “Every Life Matters.”

“The hypocrisy is breathtaking,” he said. “The abortion law that Sinn Féin helped introduce will directly end thousands of live.”

Tóibín was deputy whip of Sinn Fein’s delegation to the Republic of Ireland legislative body known as the Dail, and still holds a seat in that body. However, he was pushed out from the party over his support for the unborn and opposition to legal abortion. Like the nationalist party Sinn Fein, Aontú competes in both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, which is part of the United Kingdom.

He charged that the Westminster-based Parliament, Sinn Féin and the SDLP leadership had “forced abortion on demand into the north of Ireland against the wishes of the people.”

“I say forced, because every opinion poll in the north stated that the majority of men and women sought that the issue of abortion would be decided, not in London but in the north of Ireland. It was not just public opinion that held this view. Legally it was a devolved matter. It was for the elected representatives of the north to decide,” he said.

He objected that Sinn Féin had rejected its nationalist stand against British legislation in Ireland and had instead “openly lobbied for Westminster to legislate for abortion on demand in the north.”

“For the first time in 200 years of republicanism, its leadership went cap in hand to London and demanded that it legislate for Ireland over the heads and against the will of the people,” he charged.

Across all Ireland, pro-life advocates have voiced concern about possible changes to government policy to allow at-home abortions using abortion pills during the coronavirus pandemic.

Pressure to legalize abortion in Northern Ireland increased after a 2018 referendum effectively legalized abortion in the Republic of Ireland by a vote of over 66% in favor of removing constitutional protections recognizing the unborn baby’s right to life as equal to the mother’s.

The new law also requires the recognition of same-sex marriage in Northern Ireland.

[…]

Carissa Carroll, pictured with her son Jack, founded the nonprofit organization Jack’s Basket to celebrate babies with Down syndrome / Credit: Screenshot/EWTN Pro-Life Weekly

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Mar 21, 2024 / 09:00 am (CNA).

As many countries celebrate World Down Syndrome Day on March 21, a panel of pro-life leaders and scholars is calling attention to the threat that prenatal testing poses to preborn children who are diagnosed with Down syndrome in the womb.

“[The mother] often faces tremendous internal and external pressure to undergo an abortion,” said J.D. Flynn, who moderated the panel at the Catholic University of America’s Institute for Human Ecology and is himself the father of two children with Down syndrome. 

Prenatal screening within the first 11 through 14 weeks of pregnancy can determine whether a preborn child has a higher likelihood of having Down syndrome, but a follow-up diagnostic test can confirm whether the child has the condition. Although efforts to destigmatize the condition have had some success, the likelihood that a mother will abort her child increases dramatically after such a diagnosis. 

A 2012 study that compiled data from 24 studies between 1995 and 2011 found that more than two-thirds of preborn children who were diagnosed with Down syndrome in the womb were killed via abortion. Rates throughout Europe are even higher — more than 90%. In Iceland, nearly all preborn children diagnosed with Down syndrome are aborted and only about two or three children with Down syndrome are born every year.

Mary O’Callaghan, a visiting fellow at Notre Dame University’s McGrath Institute for Church Life, noted a disconnect between the “more positive” attitude the public expresses about people with Down syndrome and the “more aggressive targeting” of abortion for preborn children with Down syndrome.

“Those with Down syndrome are increasingly showing us their ability to flourish,” said O’Callaghan, who also has a child with Down syndrome. In spite of this, she said, “we’re in a much worse place in respect to abortion and Down syndrome.”

Bridget Brown, a 36-year-old woman with Down syndrome who serves on the National Catholic Partnership on Disability Council on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities, expressed the same concern. 

Noting the trends in countries such as Iceland, Brown said she may be from the last generation of people with Down syndrome: “The world may never again benefit from our gifts.”

“This is genocide — the systematic killing of a whole people,” Brown added, citing a letter she wrote to Pope Francis about the situation in Iceland before meeting the pontiff in 2017.

According to Tracy Winsor, who co-founded an organization to support couples who carry their children to term after a prenatal diagnosis called Be Not Afraid, many women consider abortion after a diagnosis because receiving the news is a “traumatic event” for most couples and is presented as a “worst-case scenario.” 

Winsor noted that doctors will present a lot of information, which “can be overwhelming” at the moment. She advises parents to immediately connect with parents who have children living with Down syndrome and to advocates for individuals with Down syndrome.

O’Callaghan agreed: “Meeting with other parents around this time is very helpful [in reducing abortion].” Prenatal testing, she noted, should be oriented toward preparing for their child.

“They need to think about prenatal testing oriented toward the health of their child,” O’Callaghan said.

Brown similarly noted that like everyone else, her “life is filled with hopes and possibilities” and encouraged couples who receive a prenatal Down syndrome diagnosis for their preborn child to approach the situation positively. 

“Make plans based on dreams and not on fears,” Brown said. “Believe in yourself and your child.”

[…]

Bishop Earl Fernandes of Columbus, Ohio, carries the Blessed Sacrament during a procession at Pickaway Correctional Institution on June 28, 2024, at one of the stops on the Seton Route of the National Eucharistic Pilgrimage. / Credit: Catholic T… […]