I don’t know who Maïa Dunphy is. Unfortunately one of her Tweets came up on my feed. Ms Dunphy tweeted to her 90k followers on the Saturday the 13th of September at 9:13am: “Never ceases to amaze me how the militant pro-life brigade do f*ck all for the children who are actually already in the world and need help. Beggars belief.” And a good morning to you too.
Ms Dunphy’s Twitter bio says that she is a “broadcaster, writer, happy wrangler of a small boy.” So she is a mother to a small boy and also a broadcaster with a decent platform (I by contrast have a respectable but smaller 50k followers.)
It caught my attention because of the current atmosphere and I had read again Brendan O’Connor’s vile piece of journalism on the assassination of Charlie Kirk in the Sunday Independent. He ended it with a call for humour and kindness.
I also noted, after doing a quick search Ms Dunphy that she said “I try to stay off social media at weekends.” Sadly, she failed to do that last Saturday and if this is her contribution to public debate she should stay off Twitter for the foreseeable future.
First, saying, “the militant pro-life brigade do f*ck all for the children who are actually already in the world and need help” is just patently bizarre and untrue. Ms Dunphy could not possibly know everyone in the ‘militant pro-life brigade.’ In fact I’d hedge a bet she does not know a single person with pro – life views, but I am happy to be proven wrong on that.
Ms Dunphy could not possibly know what charitable work, charitable giving or just general day to day doings your average ‘militant pro – lifer’ and his or her brigade might be involved in. Perhaps some are indeed quite insular and selfish. Perhaps others spend their Saturday mornings at their local St Vincent de Paul Charity shop and not Tweeting unkind statements to their 90k followers about people they know nothing about. Who knows? I don’t and Ms Dunphy certainly could not know either.
Perhaps Ms Dunphy was talking in general. I still think even giving the benefit of the doubt it is just not a nice thing to say. Ms Dunphy has a son and she will understand that despite the nursery rhyme sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me, that this is actually not true. Names and words can hurt and often can be even more hurtful than the sticks and stones part.
What Ms Dunphy is saying is not just that people with pro – life views are wrong on the issue of abortion but that they are unethical, immoral hypocrites. She is saying that pro – lifers only care about unborn children/foetus but do not care about children once they are born. This is not true as it makes no sense. If you care about human life and dignity before birth you will care about that at all stages of life.
What Ms Dunphy is saying is that pro-life people are just uncharitable, meanies.
This would not bother me so much but for the fact that so many on the left spend a lot of time calling for kindness in political debate while throwing around insults and engaging in name calling. That’s my generalization for the day.
I noticed in the replies to the Tweet that there were a fair few pro – lifers saying they were pro – life and they gave to charity. Really I wouldn’t bother trying to prove your humanity to Ms Dunphy. She has already made up her mind about you, she made up her mind about pro-life people a long time ago. They are the bad guys, a militant brigade who “do f*ck all for the children who are actually already in the world and need help.”
The fact that someone in the mainstream media holds this view and broadcasts it so publicly, beggars belief.