Around 5,500 people gathered at a prayer vigil in County Mayo in Ireland last weekend in response to a controversial draft abortion bill.
Lobby
Cardinal Sean Brady, Ireland’s most senior Catholic, urged the crowd to lobby politicians about the draft legislation and warned them against “ambiguous language which cloaks the true horror of the situation.”
He said: “We live in a twilight sort of world where, unfortunately, the perception of the seriousness of abortion has grown progressively obscured in the minds of many of our contemporaries.
Last week, the Irish Cabinet agreed the terms of the Protection of Life in Pregnancy Bill that would allow the credible threat of suicide as legal grounds for an abortion.
Savita
The proposals were introduced following the death of 31 year old Savita Halappanavar, who died at an Irish hospital after suffering from blood poisoning caused by a miscarriage.
The pro-abortion lobby used the case to push for a change in Ireland’s abortion laws, even though current legislation permits a termination to be performed where the mother’s life is in danger.
Lesson
The prayer vigil was led by Bishop Leahy who warned that there was “a lesson to be learnt from the experience of other countries” where laws on abortion have already been introduced.
He added: “Around 97% of the nearly 200,000 abortions in England and Wales in 2011 were on mental health grounds. Such a statistic was in no way envisaged when abortion was first introduced there.”
Not justified
But he said that abortion could not be justified on grounds of the threat of suicide, a situation which he said should be addressed by “providing the appropriate psychiatric and psychological intervention, medication, nursing and social support.”
He added that the public needed “both to affirm our conviction that abortion is never the solution while at the same time re-launching Ireland's care of mothers and babies.”
Statistics
Department for Health Statistics for 2011 show that 98 per cent of abortions in England Wales are performed under Ground C, which permits a termination when the risk to the mother’s mental health is deemed greater if she continued with the pregnancy than if she has an abortion.
Earlier this year, the BBC’s Panoroma show highlighted that there was “no evidence” that in all 98 per cent of cases there was a genuine risk to the mother’s mental health.
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