In my experience, any programme emanating from RTÉ looking at abortion is always likely to be biased – and, since repeal, it is also now likely to push a narrative that seeks to widen the existing law even further. However, even with those low expectations, Monday’s documentary from RTÉ Investigates was astonishingly, deplorably, remarkably, one-sided and unfair.
In truth, since the referendum in 2018, it’s very rare to hear a pro-life voice on our taxpayer-funded station. Most airtime on the issue is instead given to cooing at the National Women’s Council in syrupy, softball interviews which avoid uncomfortable truths such as our rocketing abortion rates, or the tragic and profoundly dangerous mistakes being made in abortion provision.
Instead, the national station is broadcasting a steady drumbeat demanding that we open up life-ending abortion services even further.
So the latest production by RTÉ was always going to be, as one observer noted on X, a hit piece on the most defenceless. The was predictable. That doesn’t mean it was acceptable.
“RTÉ Investigates the realities of Ireland’s current abortion services,” the station proclaimed in its descriptor of the programme – and, as she walked around Dublin Castle in its introduction, reporter Aoife Hegarty intoned that the review would not examine the “rights or wrongs of abortion”.
That was all sort of half-true. There was almost an hour given to abortion ‘rights’: but no investigation at all of most of the horrific wrongs – the reality of much of what’s happening around abortion in Ireland.
A blind eye was turned to even the latest alarming outcome where a woman almost died after an abortion in Limerick – and the piece certainly did not make any attempt to examine the many negative aspects of abortion provision. Those realities were left uninvestigated.
For days beforehand, RTÉ was running promos on, eh, RTÉ, advertising the documentary, while current affairs programmes like Morning Ireland and News at One did their bit to stoke up views by interviewing Ministers or solemnly previewing what was billed as a look at the “stark reality” of Ireland’s abortion services.
Except it wasn’t. The ‘stark reality’ was mostly avoided. This documentary was dishonest and manipulative and horribly one-sided. And yes, I know I’m a pro-lifer, and therefore an advocate of that position that is one of RTÉ’s favourite punching bags (along with the belief that biological sex is real, or that open borders are a mistake) but those are the most polite descriptors I can think of, to be honest.
For most of the programme, the bias in favor of abortion was open and and obvious and brazen: there was no attempt to make the film in any way fair or balanced, or to explore the idea that maybe, just maybe, abortion mightn’t always be an entirely positive thing – or that maybe, just maybe, 10,000 unborn babies killed and discarded before birth in just one year alone shouldn’t give us pause.
Instead, from the outset, solemn music and the use of words like ‘forced’ and “denied” and “abortion care” were employed to create a narrative that abortion is often the only option available to women.
In fact, one of the opening scenes in the programme shows a woman calling the Positive Options service offered by the Department for Health. Yet she never hears about any options. She is ONLY offered an abortion. Where is the choice in that?
Quite the start to #rteinvestigates.
A simulated phone call between the HSE and someone at 14 weeks.
The framing is very clear.
This isn't a push to alter the 3-day wait and FFA cases.
It's a push for full UK alignment.
Not all YES voters support this. pic.twitter.com/OkbWfcM1ci
— David W. Higgins (@higginsdavidw) April 15, 2024
Similarly, the personal stories around difficult diagnoses for unborn babies are undoubtedly heartbreaking, but what about the reality that there is another option than abortion in that instance too? Why wasn’t that explored? Why didn’t RTÉ acknowledge that when parents in this situation can access the right support, continuing to love and cherish their baby until birth can be enormously rewarding and comforting – as well as a bridge to healing after such a terrible loss?
Research showing that continuing with the pregnancy where baby has a life-limiting condition can be of benefit to women – with at least one study showing that, after a diagnosis of anencephaly, women who terminated reported “significantly more despair” than women who continued the pregnancy – wasn’t even discussed
The documentary was deliberately coy in its reporting around the reality of the late-term abortions, using terms like ‘termination’ and ‘stillborn’- although it sought to broaden the circumstances where the procedure can be carried out here. In reality, a feticide is carried out, where a lethal injection of potassium chloride is administered to the baby’s heart. A paper from UCC published in the British Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology included quotes from doctors in Ireland carrying out these late-term abortions, and describing them as “‘brutal’, ‘awful’ and ‘emotionally difficult’ – and as ‘stabbing the baby in the heart’.
RTÉ might want to shrink from that reality, but keeping the truth from women actually doesn’t offer them a full and informed choice. That’s a key aspect of what’s actually paternalistic and cruel about the system, not asking women to think about a decision they might feel pushed into.
And where was the acknowledgment that the deeply shocking case of Baby Christopher, where the State was brought to court by parents who did feel pushed towards abortion after a diagnosis – mistaken as it turned out – of Trisomy 18. A real investigation would have examined what has gone wrong in the culture in Irish maternity hospitals to cause such a devastating and life-ending mistake to happen just three months after abortion was legalised here.
There’s also the undeniable fact that the changes to the abortion law RTÉ were seeking would usher in broader grounds for abortion in regard to babies with disabilities.
The most recent statistics from the British Department of Health clearly show that most Irish parents who seek an abortion after a diagnosis of a life-limiting condition now have an abortion in Ireland – since they are no being longer showing up in any significant numbers in the British data. It also shows another deeply saddening and shocking trend.
The British statistics show that the number of abortions carried out on women travelling from Ireland to England and Wales because the baby has Down syndrome has tripled between 2018 and 2021 – with a 3.7 fold jump in the number of Down syndrome abortions in that period. In fact, Dr Fergal Malone of the Rotunda has said that 95% of babies now diagnosed with Down syndrome in the hospital go on to be aborted.
Did RTÉ look at those statistics? Would that have been beyond their ‘investigative’ capabilities? Or was that just another inconvenient truth to be ignored?
Instead, there was a strong and blatant drumbeat right throughout the documentary for changes to the law, including the scrapping of the 3-day period of refection before abortion – a measure, which, according to figures released to Carol Nolan TD, likely leads to some 1,000 women every year changing their mind or not going through with an abortion.
Yet the RTÉ film saw the 3-day wait described as “cruel”, They didn’t bother speaking to Deputy Nolan or to any pro-life TD or pro-life doctor, or to a woman who had changed her mind during the wait. They had that in common, of course, with Marie O’Shea, the chair of the Abortion Review, who in an appearance before the Oireachtas Health Committee admitted that she hadn’t spoken to one woman who had decided against abortion in that time of reflection.
RTÉ said the production team spent 7 months on this ‘investigation’. They cannot be serious. Where was the thoughtful and comprehensive analysis of the impact of the law? Where was the deep dive into the possible coercion of women to undergo abortion? What about a look at the social reasons for – and negative effects of – the steep rise in the number of abortions? What about any attempt at a discussion of the deeply concerning abortion trends rather than another nodding heads fest where the same lame pro-abortion talking points were re-aired and re-broadcast.
Seven months – funded by you and me – on what was effectively a campaigning video. I suppose they got an “exclusive” interview with Marie O’Shea so that she could reiterate her claims that what Ireland needed was the ‘courage’ to widen our laws further and increase access. Because 10,000 abortions a year isn’t enough? What is? 15,000? 20,000? A limitless number?
The real courage, of course, is displayed by those ordinary women and families who give their children the gift of life despite a society which pretends to be pro-choice but is really just telling women that that ‘choice’ means they’re on their own.
And then, for all the talk about choice and freedom, the programme also contained a strong pitch for abortion zones, which would jail and otherwise punish people for even praying silently at an abortion centre. Their was a real smack of vindictiveness in that section of what was aired.
I wrote to Aoife Hegarty in RTÉ last week to ask the following questions about the programme:
1. Does the piece investigate the possible reasons for the sharp rise in the number of abortions now taking place?2. Does it examine whether parents who have received a diagnosis of disability for their unborn child feel they may be being nudged towards abortion – as happened in the Baby Christopher case?3. Is the case written up in the Irish Medical Journal in March discussed in your investigation – and the fact that doctors have warned that failing to provide an ultrasound before prescribing abortion pills may lead to women dying?4. Does the piece examine the difficulties with late-term abortion provision – as outlined in the Abortion Review – where babies survive abortion and doctors struggle to get the assistance they need in that instance to provide care?5. The tone of the [promotional] clip posted [on social media] seems to point to a report which leans towards the case for further liberalisation of the law. Is that a fair comment?
I received a media release in response which said the documentary was examining “the realities of Ireland’s current abortion services as many are still forced to travel abroad.”
Right then. A great sweeping under the carpet of any of the awfulness and sadness and cruelty and broken bodies produced by the abortion regime. Heads firmly in the sand about the near-death of a woman after abortion in Limerick. Nothing to see regarding late-term abortion and babies surviving the ghastly procedure. A steadfast refusal to examine the inconvenient truth that the promise abortion being “rare” has been smashed to pieces. Ignoring the fact that 38,000 abortions took place in just 5 years, but insisting the real issue is access.
RTÉ, as ever, is busy ignoring all the abortion elephants in the room, crashing about and breaking the furniture and creating a clamour which, for the ordinary person, is becoming just too disruptive to ignore.
At one point in the documentary, an abortion advocate receiving sympathetic coverage for her role in abortion provision is seen typing into a laptop. It bears a sticker boasting: “I use abortion as birth control”. No hard questions asked about that stance by RTÉ either – but it shows how deeply out of sync with public opinion these people actually are, and how the supposed public service broadcaster’s bias is shown as much by omission as anything else.
Have they learned nothing from the Tubridy fallout and other recent shocks to the system? The climate is changing. Many TDs who would have rushed to obey the demands of O’Shea and the National Women’s Council are now still reeling in shock at the double NO vote in March – the landslide rejection of Official Ireland’s view of what society should be.
RTÉ are slow on the uptake, it seems. They’re still dressing up biased reporting as investigation, and campaigning as fair reporting. No wonder fewer and fewer people are listening to them.
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Great article. We need to call RTE out ever step of the way on their blatant one sidedness.
I often think that the media in conjunction with the government are actively trying to terrorise & manipulate people into not having children using a three pronged approach
1. The so called housing crisis : who is going to want to have children if they are worried about not being able to put a roof over their heads. I say so called housing crisis as the government have no shortage of money & innovation to house illegal invaders.
2. The so called childcare crisis: who is going to want to have a child if they are fearful about not being able to find affordable childcare for them so that they can go out to work to provide for their families. Again , I say so called because the crisis is caused directly by the government deliberately underfunding the sector.
3. The so called climate crisis where we are constantly told stories of people who are choosing to lead amazing child free life’s all while doing their bit to save the planet.
The country voted to repeal the 8th based on certain terms . That vote must be respected , however under no circumstances can the terms of what people voted for be widened.
We must flag the staggering numbers of abortions & insist that real data be provided about the reasons why people are choosing to have abortions . We must then insist that the government examine the findings & try to bring the numbers down by changing their policies on housing, childcare & tax credits and supports for families to ensure that children & helping people to have families are at the heart of all our tax & welfare policies . After all that’s what we voted for with the recent care referendum.
The entire abortion referendum was fought entirely on the terms of the pro-abortionists. We knew at the time that their arguments were based on lies, misrepresentation and sophistry. They are hardly going to change tactics now that they have been so successful. At the time people got their news and formed their opinions based on what RTE and the MSM told them. You can still tell the people that do this based on their parrotting of terms that are favoured on these media outlets. That has changed in the meantime and people are now beginning to wake up to the lies they are being fed. However it is far too late on this issue. Ideology has won over humanity.
I think a lot of people gave a SOFT yes to repeal, but now see the numbers skyrocket. 38,000 abortions , All those little lives that could be playing with their toys right now or learning to take first steps. what a waste of human life.
that’s 38,000 murders – unless you are not yet certified as mentally insane
I gave up looking at R.T.E as the slanting of the stories posing as “news ” and ignoring what does not suit their agenda ,No surprise their “investigation ” had their pro-abortion liberal agenda
This is absolutely the last straw!
Where is respect for innocent human life?
Where is respect for the intelligence of ordinary people?
Where is the compassion, equality, inclusion, diversity and tolerance that they bleat endlessly about?
If there are any pro-life people out there, still paying RTE a TV licence fee, PLEASE STOP!
It was more like rte indoctrinates than investigates. We had a doctor pushing the who following their advice, jaysus, anyone with a brain knows that the who funded by kill gates is a violation of the nurenburg code in itself ffs.We had a barrister that clearly has a programmable chip on her brain coming out with the un communist speak. It was like the ghost of david rockerfeller went into their bodies and was speaking through them. As for their victim, how the hell do we know if her experience is real and she wasnt just a crisis actor. To be honest, I would not put it passed rte to do that and even if she was real, has she ever heard of a condom ffs, god forbid you can ask her to keep her legs closed.
Would ye go on outta that james! Nurenburg code my hat. By your logic, under the code all surgery in all hospitals would be put on hold..forever.
You really should post more factual comments like that Pat, you have outdone yourself there in fairness and I now capitulate completely to your well constructed factual argument which completely disproves anything I said. Tbh I think you are more upset at the point that women should say no to random sex with people like you. How would you get off then outside palm.
Lol😄very good james. Did you search the internet looking for a good comeback?? You definitely research all the conspiracy rubbish very well! Stick another gold star on the side of your fisher price laptop there😄
No Pat, i am just more intellectually superior than individuals who shout utter nonsense because they lack the intellect to come up with any form tangible or constructive response and are so bitter in themselves they feel the need to cast their own insecurities on other peoples views in a vain attempt to make themselves feel somehow superior for 15 seconds. I believe we call them people the left neo marxists. Its people like that is the reason why the country is in the state it is today so pat yourself on the back for that. My favorite conspiracy theory is where dubai cloud seeded itself and caused all its flooding…. oh wait, sure geoengineering is only a conspiracy theory pat…. https://nypost.com/2024/04/17/world-news/historic-uae-storm-may-have-been-self-inflicted-by-cloud-seeding-meteorologists-claim/
Or my other favorite conspiracy theory is how a guy called richard Kallergi wrote about about wiping our western civilization through mass immigration of africans and asians who will mysoginate and turn europe into half casts. Thankfully I was so wrong about that one too, no such thing is happening and all the protests are just a figment of my imagination.
Or another one is where the jews and the muslims would start a war to kick off hell on earth leading to a 21pc reduction of oil and 15pc reduction of gas coming to us sparking a massive inflation crisis leading to the crash of the financial system kicking us into crypto. But no such war is there is it pat.
But yes, you are correct, my comeback was pretty awesome, tell palm I said hi will ya!
Neo marxists😄 great novel there! Are you okay hun? You need a hug?
lol… the ego a bit bruised? I can tell because that was the best you could do. I understand, it must be tough dealing with someone intelligent and with integrity who tells the truth regardless of feelings, you are probably not used to that sort of thing. Pedos before profit are looking for candidates, they do you’re kinda truth Pat. You would fit in there perfectly. Alternatively there are plenty of beaches around the place where you can stick your head. I dont think the current grade of sand is suiting you pat.
‘Intelligent and with integrity’…then goes on to say pedos before profit.
You are a true statesman james.
And you need a hug.xx
Try again pat, you might succeed in hitting a nerve, you never know. You sure as shit aint gonna do it with facts, thats for sure. Im not a politician bud, so you’re statesman comment is a bit ridiculous but thats the most anyone can really expect from a neo marxist.
😄But..but…what about the illuminati!!
In March 2020 Taoiseach Varadkar was so concerned about the possible covid deaths of elderly grannies that he insisted on lockdowns and was part of a government imposed vaccination programme.
Four years later we know 8500 elderly folk died of covid despite the very costly measures. Yet not a single Euro was spent trying to save the lives of the 38000 mostly (99.9%?) healthy babies. I find this scandalous and even more so because no politician will be held accountable, not in this life, and the media silence is deafening.
Great article Niamh. I admire your perseverance in watching this propaganda. It would be too much for my blood pressure !!
I’ve only one thing to say (and not to disparage the earnest effort of Ms Ui Bhriain to evaluate this particular programme) – RTE’s output – bar the weather forecast and Lyric FM – is pure, unadulterated shite. Avoid its programmes at all costs !!
I’ve never understood how on the one hand it’s apparently deeply traumatising to travel to the UK for an abortion but not for other procedures. How does travelling 50 -100 miles within Ireland become a ‘less traumatising’ experience than boarding a flight and taking a taxi just a couple of hours away in the UK. Denial and delusion of pro-abortionists, as with the pro trans mob.
Firstly, sincere thanks to Niamh for this great article. I did not see the programme – I did not have the stomach for it – but I read some of the promotional material from RTE, and I have just written to the Irish Independent about that. But what Niamh has produced here is far better than anything I could have come up with.
I hope I am not deluding myself here, but I see some grounds for hope that, on this occasion, the mainstream media did not follow RTE’s example and in fact seem largely to have ignored this latest propaganda piece from RTE. The Indo has recently featured two articles, from Sarah Carey, actually defending the three-day reflection period, and has published letters from me and others about it.
Isn’t it quite bizarre that the most biased coverage of the abortion issue in Ireland is coming from the national broadcaster, which has a statutory obligation to be fair?
Birth control, now called planned parenthood from Sanger and the Rockefeller’s was the first shot at this – they have spent billions and billions and then more billions over the years, globally, to ensure that we have been marketed and taught how to lower the population and then use abortion – birth control being the gateway drug, in all its forms, to normalise promiscuity. Eugenics and then euthanasia are also on the Irish agenda and coming to a doctor near you. (If you can get one)
You see, Buffet, Gates, Rockefeller (sounds like a conspiracy theory, right?) et al would happily tell you that we have too many people in the world. However, look up birthgap.org. and realise that Ireland’s birth rate is at 1.6. We should genuinely be panicking about this. Population replacement needs to be at 2.1 or higher or your population will hit a point where it is impossible to replace.
In the 60s when we (as in humans, not Irish) bought the lie of free love and then using abortion as birth control, (like what is now predictably happening in Ireland) we enacted intended and insidious consequences brought on by marketing campaigns that have been honed and sharpened by these aforementioned “people”.
Think with me for a minute…
Abortion drugs market size crossed USD 24.4 billion in 2023 and is projected to expand at 8.2% in 2024. The abortion drugs were originally patented by Rockefeller and are licensed to Pharma under the name RU-486. And sold in every country in the world. (Gates has bought up enormous shares in all the Pharma that push these drugs) Rockefeller has also patented and marketed the gender castration drugs which are so popularized by the woke ideologues. All this is public knowledge. So ask yourself. Given the decades of fine tuning and buying out virtually all governments and calling it pro choice and then ensuring that those same populations vote for the savagery and population controlling drugs and abortion. We never had a choice. Our children’s children’s children, are lost to us.
Socially and legally, the last two decades, culminating from the previous 60 years has broken humanity.
I thought I could not be shocked by RTE’s bias until I saw that programme on Monday night. The one sided approach was breath taking.
The Irish people were, in my opinion, hoodwinked into voting for abortion and RTE was instrumental in this. I voted no but think few would have voted yes had they realised the carnage which ensued. Unsurprisingly RTE covered up the barbaric nature of the abortion process. I hope our politicians will not legislate to make this mass infanticide even more common.
Thank God for Gript which tells us the truth. It is insulting to charge us €160 per annum to be told lies, half truths and twisted facts by grossly overpaid presenters.
“After a fetus dies, labour will usually begin on its own within 2 weeks. But if you don’t want to wait that long, you can choose to have labour induced. This means going to the hospital and, usually, getting medicine that starts the labour process”.
Considering the above facts, why was most of RTE Investigates taken up with sob stories from women in that situation complaining about no access to abortion?
They didn’t need an abortion!!!
“Abort and import” the mantra of the woke marxist driven consensus in Ireland
There was a comment on here at one stage that put this issue in perspective and it stuck with me.
Something along the lines of happy parents on one ward celebrating the birth of their newborn whilst on the other, misery and death (I’m sure the latter had their reasons).
I seldomly comment on this issue and I’ve listened to all the arguments at the time of the referendum but irrespective of the situations,me personally ie me,couldn’t find it in my heart to agree to it.
RTE pushing the murder of the wholly innocent. RTE should be prosecuted for inciting violence against the innocent.
Bottom line here is that the majority of voters voted to make abortion legal in ireland. The author needs to respect and make peace with that fact. The government should provide clear and to the point instructions to the medical profession with regards to abortion services and more importantly make sure those services are of the standard expected by the public so people do not still have to travel to access termination of pregnancy. There are always going to be rare mishaps and accidents in the medical game but trying to make out they are commonplace is just misinformation.
This argument is about as plausible as your re-appearance in the shower scene in Dallas.
Lol😀 a teacher in primary school always insisted on calling me bobby!
“Rare mishaps and accidents” ! This line actually translates into plain English as ; near death experiences for many unfortunate women, actual death for many innocent healthy babies misdiagnosed as “lethally deformed” and almost 10 years since a “rare mishap” in Galway where a lethal case of sepsis was ignored due to HSE resource mismanagement and medical negligence we still have pregnant women dying due to septic shock even with abortion as a “cure all prescription” (shocking fact: pregnant women have been dying and continue to die with misdiagnosed or ignored sepsis in that abortion nirvana across the Irish Sea)
Do you have the official stats for that claim?
Yes indeed it’s all documented in countless online news sites including “mainstream” Irish & UK newspapers for starters.Historical record + access +motivation+ objective mindset = truth as the old equation goes.It appears that all you’re missing are 2 components and then you’ll be able to speak/troll with authority. Furthermore I have my own daily newspaper archive curated over the years which contains countless accounts of tragedies that can be attributed to the “abortion(don’t) care industry”.Newspaper journalism is the first draft of history as they say and I have my historical archive fully stocked.You’re welcome to meet me sometime to fully inform yourself if you have manners.Furthermore your own initial “claim” has zero “official stats” and is merely the top of the head waffle that abortion enthusiasts assume they can get away with.
For a start see link below just to demonstrate my point; a 30second search for UK+pregnancy + sepsis deaths revels “sepsis as the leading cause of maternal deaths” Despite abortion up to 24 weeks being freely available without geographic restriction.And that is not some pro life biased website that is an official UK health site.
https://www.npeu.ox.ac.uk/ukoss/completed-surveillance/ss#:~:text=In%20the%20UK%2C%20the%20incidence,MMR%20increased%20to%201.13%2F100%2C000.
The people didn’t vote for abortion, they voted to remove Article 8 from the constitution which banned abortion, leaving the government free to legislate.
The mistake was made in the early 80s when a referendum was held to insert a ban on abortion into the constitution. If that referendum hadn’t happened, the government could have legislated for limited abortion.
It was the complete ban on abortion that has brought us to this state.
Yes, but they legislated for what the majority wanted…(the majority being the ones that voted to repeal the 8th)
This is called democracy.
Ostensibly it was democracy in action… but deep down I think most intelligent people would readily accept that many many people – and likely a significant enough proportion to swing it – voted yes as a result of the biased campaign conducted by the establishment.
👍 when signing you name on the dotted line have we read the small print 🤔 the top on my Guinness looks bit flat maybe I should drink it!
An average of more than 20 abortions per day! What percentage do you think voted for that?