Sinn Féin happy for the bad Brits to do its abortion dirty work

The motion was carried by 17 votes to 10. There were many abstentions, presumably members either confused, or afraid of being called a choose-your-phobic, or denying the “choice” to end a human life. At the same council meeting, a motion was passed unanimously to prevent cruelty to animals. 
Decriminalising abortion means the removal of all rights and protections in law from preborn humans. Since then, in the Westminster parliament, the decriminalisation of abortion has been imposed here in the north by politicians – not one of whom was elected to represent us. Any of our MPs who were present voted against. Whatever your views on the question of abortion law, this is an assault on democracy.
Incredibly, New Sinn Féin’s leaders travelled on three separate occasions to ask that Westminster legislate on this, despite claiming not to recognise the mother of parliaments’ authority here. The SDLP, anxious not to be out virtue-signalled, went along too. PBP, to be fair, have at least been consistent on this. Their ideology is firmly based in Communist roots. The USSR was the first regime to offer the masses abortion.

The obscene returns of the multibillion-pound abortion industry, or the fact that many of the campaigns to decriminalise abortion are funded by the extreme right don’t seem to trouble them. Watching these antics, many republicans now wonder what was meant by self-determination and sovereignty?

Despite the oft-repeated mantra, abortion is not health care. Ireland, with laws which protected the health and wellbeing of mothers and their unborn children, had one of the lowest maternal mortality rates in the world.

Irish doctors have testified that they never were prevented by the constitution from acting in the mother’s best interests. A heart transplant has been successfully undertaken in a pregnant woman. Cancer chemotherapy is now routine. Robust evidence exists to show that pregnancy is protective against mental health problems. A Finnish study recently showed a six times higher rate of suicide in women who aborted their babies compared to those who did not. In none of the medical literature is abortion cited as a treatment for mental illness. But ideologues don’t do science.

I worked in perinatal intensive care in the Belfast Maternity Hospital, a job with little sleep, but one full of magic moments. Wee ones were born, many well below the 28 weeks gestation from whom this bill is likely to remove protection. They undoubtedly felt pain, they fought us and protested with all their pitiful strength for annoying them with blood tests and ventilator tubes and machines. Yet to dismember them and take them piecemeal from their mother’s womb, without even pain relief, will now be a choice in law.
As a doctor, I’ve helped hundreds of women through pregnancies, most celebrating the new life within, but some in despair as to how they might cope. Even in the most desperate of cases, I’ve never had a woman come back and say I wish I’d aborted that child. And I’ve had some, not all, but many who’ve induced abortion and have suffered and regretted that decision for all of their lives.

To decriminalise abortion leaves the unborn child, where we all began, without any legal protection whatsoever. Furthermore, the decrim zealots want potent medicines to be available for women to use unsupervised and alone. Every bathroom can now become a back-street abortion facility.

The “my body, my choice” narrative which writes males out of the human story is pernicious nonsense. Fathers matter, and are 50% of who we are. My father was my guide and inspiration, and I think of him every day. A hypothesis yet to be tested is that the alarming rate of suicide and self-harm in young males may be related to this exclusion of them as co-creators of their children, and their relegation to essentially being sperm donors. Conversely, for the traffickers, the violent thugs and abusers, decriminalisation is a dream come true. It will do away with nosey doctors and social workers asking awkward questions, about their victims. 
We know that if abortion is decriminalised in the north it will be largely Sinn Féin’s doing. As they did with the euphemistically named “welfare reform”, they ask those bad Brits to do their dirty work, and then cry foul.

We pro-life feminists of the left, and members of Aontú, the republican party I represent, are pro-life for all of life. There has to date been little class-based analysis of the complex issue of the right to life of children versus the advancement of women. What a sterile and narrow vision of progress is it, when a woman’s rights and welfare are pitted against the lives of her children. When women are forced to relinquish their maternity and deny their biology to progress their careers and sometimes to even survive in today’s world. 
It is a fact that abortion disproportionately affects the poor, ethnic minorities, and those who have additional needs. Globally, things proven to improve outcomes for women include education, maternal nutrition, clean birthing rooms, antibiotic provision, the treatment of sepsis, blood transfusion facilities and so on. But the multibillion-dollar abortion industry won’t divert their obscene profits to these remedies.

Worldwide, the most fatal of fatal abnormalities is to be female. There are tens of millions of us missing because of our gender. Thankfully however, women in the developing world are speaking out to reject this new imperialism. Those parties who promulgate this culture of death should hang their heads in shame.
But the tide is turning, as people are beginning to wake up and realise that the future can be better. This is the human rights issue of our generation.

l Anne McCloskey is an Aontú councillor on Derry and Strabane District Council and a medical doctor.