by Clare Cromie
Recently I stopped to have a conversation with a young man
raising funds for Amnesty International on College Green. We bantered back and
forth about what it really meant to be a person, and why babies didn’t make the
cut. His response was telling and it put me on the back foot.
He summed up Amnesty International’s recent push to
introduce abortion to Ireland as not rejecting the essential humanity of the
developing fetus, per se. Instead, he insisted, it was just “really all about
healthcare.”
It’s easy to find yourself on the back foot when abortion is
introduced as simply a “healthcare” measure. Healthcare, you see, has such
immensely positive, humanitarian connotations. How can a person really argue
against providing access to healthcare?
It’s important to recognize that the “abortion as
healthcare” line is not new to the political discourse. But, is it true? Can
abortion really be called healthcare?
If we look at the definition of healthcare in any number of
established dictionaries, the answer has to be - absolutely not. Cambridge
defines healthcare as “the set of services provided by a country or an organization for the treatment of the physically and the mentally ill.”
Abortion is factually the exact opposite of healthcare; rather than treating
ill health, it purposefully takes the life of a human being.
The concept that abortion is healthcare because it serves
the health and mental well-being of the mother (rather than preference or
convenience whether her own, her partner’s, or society’s)
also deserves scrutiny. Treatments
that ended a pregnancy that were necessary to save a woman’s life were always
permitted in Ireland. We
also know that there is no medical evidence to suggest abortion as a treatment
for suicide or mental health problems, in fact quite the opposite. We know that
post-abortive stress syndrome is a significant threat to women’s mental health.
It is our duty to call attention to these fallacies and
carefully and respectfully steer the conversation back towards objective
truths. Truths about what abortion is - the termination of the life of a human
being - and what it is not. We know for example that abortion is not an
evidence-based treatment for suicidal ideation. We know for example that
abortion does not eliminate the pain of an infant’s life-limiting diagnosis for
his or her mother and father.
We know that all of us at some stage in our lives will
receive news of life limiting diagnoses for either ourselves or for our loved
ones. While this will never be welcome news, we know that all human beings,
regardless of their age or diagnosis, deserve respectful, end-of-life
palliative and hospice care. We also know that meeting your baby and holding
him or her in your arms is not accurately described as “torture.” We know that
Ireland tops global statistics for excellence in maternal health.
Playing around with the meaning of the term “healthcare” is
not a small matter of semantics. Abortion advocates are attempting to shroud
abortion in the same positive humanitarian halo with which actual healthcare is
rightly associated. Let’s challenge this misappropriation, arm ourselves with
the facts and have the courage to add our voices to the conversation.
