The utter madness of the debate around the new Maternity Hospital continued apace, yesterday. Senator Alice-Mary Higgins, for example, is a politician in her own right, obviously, and not only notable for the fact that she is the daughter of President Higgins. Still, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree:
Alice-Mary Higgins queries the mention of 'human dignity' in the SVHG constitution, pointing out it's an "interpretable" phrase, and it's not explicitly "human rights". She observes that there's a papal encyclical, and a pro-life political party in Ireland, with that in its title
— Gavan Reilly (@gavreilly) May 11, 2022
This is the second outbreak of overt conspiracy theorising in the Irish establishment on the subject of the new maternity hospital this week alone. On Monday, we flagged an article in the Irish Independent which suggested that the words “speaking for the voiceless” in the constitution of the new hospital were evidence that the whole project is a pro-life plot. And now we have Senator Higgins suggesting that only pro-lifers are committed to human dignity.
I mean, as a pro-lifer, I’ll take it. But still.
The interesting thing here isn’t really the objections to the hospital. As I wrote in that piece linked above, they amount to little more than conspiracy theories: We have eminent people like the good Senator, and Dr. Peter Boylan, publicly reduced to parsing through words in a legal document to find anything that might sound even tangentially like Catholicism. It’s a moral panic, and one might hope that in time those engaging in it will look back on their behaviour with some mortification.
No, the interesting thing, as ever, is the weakness of the Government. DCU’s Eoin O’Malley made an accurate observation yesterday:
This looks like a political mistake from Donnelly. It’s inviting more reviews and delays. Force it through now and in a few years time nobody will remember there was ever an issue. https://t.co/es4e5rXyac
— Eoin O'Malley (@AnMailleach) May 11, 2022
By indulging this nonsense, the Government is legitimising it. Those who falsely argue that the NMH is some sort of catholic conspiracy can now point to the Government’s vacillation on the project as evidence that the conspiracy has been uncovered just in the nick of time. The simplest way to prove them wrong, of course, would simply be to ignore them, and build the hospital. They could even invite Dr Boylan and Senator Higgins to the first abortion to take place under its roof, as ceremonial witnesses.
Pro-Lifers, of course, can only dream of having the power and influence that is being assigned to them by the conspiracy theorists driving the national conversation around this. Were we anything like as influential as claimed, or were the Church anything like as devious as claimed, then this project would not be happening on the sister’s land at all.
In fact, it is remarkable that the Sisters of Charity are getting away with it: This land, after all, was acquired with money handed over to them by the broadly impoverished faithful of Ireland at a time when giving money to religious was commonplace. That money was handed over to them in trust, in the belief that it would be used to advance charitable good works with a catholic ethos. Did anybody, at any time, who donated to the sisters really think that they would end up buying land to be used for an abortion clinic? Do the Sisters have any respect at all left for their own ethos?
It’s not enough simply to say that they are washing their hands of it – they are not. They did not sell the land. They simply handed it over, knowing full well the reasons why the state wanted them out.
This is pathetic: Those of us who oppose abortions as a general rule do so because we believe that the unborn child is a human being who has their life unjustly ended in that procedure. What a farce it makes of that belief to say “we oppose this killing, but here is some free land to build a facility where it can be carried out”. It’s outrageous.
And of course, it doesn’t win the Sisters any friends. Even the words “human dignity” are now being cited in the national parliament as evidence of their potential malfeasance.
But why are politicians so frightened of these Nuns? They’ve already compromised every principle they ever pretended to have. Why would anyone now imagine that they would try to interfere?
We can only hope the conspiracy theorists win out, on this one. And save the Nuns from themselves.