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EARLIER THIS MONTH Fianna Fáil TD Niall Collins appeared on TV3′s Tonight with Vincent Browne and said the issue of repealing the Eighth Amendment was not something he came across on the doorsteps during the last election.
“The big issues for my constituency are jobs, health and education… the whole issue of repealing the Eighth and abortion, of course is very important, but is not top of everyone’s agenda.”
Fast forward two weeks and more than 20,000 men and women took to the streets in torrential rain for the March for Choice in Dublin’s city centre. Those people might disagree with Collins.
The Dáil was also subject to its own protest by the AAA-PBP TDs who entered the chamber in uniform this week – wearing black and white ‘Repeal’ t-shirts.
With those protest numbers and the fact that the issue has hit the floor of the Dáil, politicians can no longer sideline the topic – regardless of what their own personal views are.
Citizens’ Assembly
As politicians farm out the job of deciding on the Eighth Amendment to next month’s Citizens’ Assembly, momentum towards a referendum appears to be inching slowly forward.
The political landscape is uncertain and this minority government has already experienced a few wobbles and close calls. Politicians haven’t packed away their election posters just yet, as they know that at any moment, the house of cards could come falling down.
With this in mind, the current government is unlikely to rush a referendum through. Some critics believe they are simply biding their time – perhaps there will be another election next year, and the issue will be somebody else’s problem.
Anti-abortion activists insist that the push for a referendum has little support on the ground, with the Life Institute stating that amongst ordinary people there’s abortion debate fatigue.
However, now more than ever, there are members of government speaking openly about repealing the Eighth. Fine Gael’s Kate O’Connell and Health Minister Simon Harris (notably two of the party’s younger members) have not shied away from talking about the issue.
Independent Alliance members
Cabinet also has a number of Independent Alliance TDs and independents who have said on the record that they are in favour of repealing the Eighth.
These include Minister of State for Skills and Training John Halligan, Minister of State for Disabilities Finian McGrath and Children’s Minister Katherine Zappone, who actually donned a black and white repeal jumper and marched in the protest last weekend.
Last year, Halligan said the hypocrisy in the Dáil about the issue of abortion is “stenching”.
Most of the Dáil is made up of men, we’re never going to need an abortion so we don’t know what it’s like.
They’re completely out of touch with how women feel when they’re violated, and that’s shameful on all of us.
With support in the Dáil greater than ever, this week the Coalition to Repeal the Eighth Amendment took the opportunity tell politicians that there has been a shift in society, in their view.
Director of the National Women’s Council of Ireland, Orla O’Connor said:
I think there has been a real shift in the Dáil, for example in the march we saw Fine Gael TDs out there. We’ve also seen our Minister for Health Simon Harris giving a lot more positive comments in relation to the need for abortion services, so we would be very confident there will be a referendum, it is a matter of when, it will, we believe, within months.
‘Not coming up on the doorsteps’
Amnesty International’s Colm O’Gorman said the “old line” of “it’s not coming up on the doors” is something that is repeated by those who are either personally opposed to something, or people who just don’t want to engage in a certain subject matter.
“I think we heard it repeatedly during the marriage equality referendum from some of the few politicians who were opposed to that referendum saying: ‘oh, this isn’t something we hear coming up at the doors.’ We all know how that went,” he said.
Though the group disagrees the Citizens’ Assembly is the best process to proceed with getting to their end goal of a referendum, O’Gorman states that today’s political landscape is somewhat positive towards their cause.
Politically — there isn’t a single political party or grouping in the current Oireachtas who has it as a matter of party policy the retention of the Eighth Amendment – not one. Not one.
Every Party and grouping, bar Fianna Fáil, have a commitment to progressing the issue in some way.
He said a year ago people wouldn’t have said that would be the case. “We held two weeks of demonstrations outside government buildings during the negotiations for the programme for government.
On one particular day we had reps from every party bar Fianna Fáil present at the protest, supporting our collective call to repeal the Eighth Amendment and we had three party leaders there.”
“There is very significant political support – we perhaps aren’t hearing it publicly or voiced as much,” said O’Gorman.
Pro-life activists, such as the Life Institute are working to block such a ballot of the people on the issue.
Their hope is the government will reach the conclusion that there isn’t a big demand for a referendum.
As the second Dáil term gets underway, the government face significant challenges ahead – the Budget, water charges, Nama and Project Eagle as well as the Citizens’ Assembly and repealing the Eighth.
Unlike what was done with water charges, Smyth said politicians should read the public mood.
Any politician that doesn’t think that this comes up on the doors and that it is not an issue or that it is going to go away is living in cloud cuckoo land because I would be saying to them, there is no place to hide.
The group backs up its calls for more political support on the latest polls results The Amnesty Red C poll in February 2016 found that 87% of respondents are in favour of expanding access to abortion in Ireland, as did RTÉ’s General Election exit poll, finding 75% in favour.
“If there are politicians or parties that want to stay in hiding they won’t be able to do that for long,” concluded Smyth.
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That’s the problem with todays media reporting of live events, they are all so busy trying to get one up on the other channels that they don’t think for a minute about what they are saying. Imagine hiding out from some langer trying to kill you only for some idiot reporter to come on air and say “oh by the way there’s 4 hostages hiding out in the cold room”!
If you can get your hands on “the human face of big data”, there’s an interesting piece on how terrorists use data and how in more prolific hostage taking countries it’s now quite common for live selected killings to take place using human search engines and media outlets for info. Or even waiting to carry out an attack to see who is in their area. Next gen terrorism. Off point but interesting.
Its not just a modern thing – during a ground stand-off following an aircraft hijacking (in the 1970′s I think) special forces had approached the plane via a blind spot to launch a surprise raid on the hijackers. Unfortunately events were being broadcast on live radio and the hijackers were listening in and knew exactly what was about to happen, with disastrous results.
Amen.
What Globalist Murdoch said about the Sydney Siege comes to mind.
Bloodthirsty vampire.
http://www.thejournal.ie/murdoch-tweet-sydney-1836603-Dec2014/
Good move. Hopefully the media will cop on a bit more. If some aren’t making it up they are getting it all wrong.
Fox News springs to mind!
About time the tv media were taken to task, imagine if that lunatic had been watching the live stream and did go down to the chiller they were hiding in…unthinkable acts would have ensued.
In this day and age you would think tv news channels would have more cop on…but I suppose being more and more sensationalist is worth more than a life in this day and age. How many more lives would have been saved that day if that sick man was not put under the spotlight?
Its sad really that there is an appetite for this sensationalism.
Apparently the gunman was watching but must have missed that report. The cop is to blame here as well as he shouldn’t have told the media anything in the first place. With today’s communications it would be easy for any gunman to have someone else watching TV, twitter etc and keeping them informed of what was going on. Best keep the media away from they area and in the dark until it’s all over.
I wonder if that journalist would have been so eager to broadcast that information if one of his own relatives was hiding in that freezer?…..I think not…….which just goes to show how little empathy some journalists have with other people in deadly situations.
I wonder what nationality and religion the editor / producer : journalist are?
It’s like that film Night Crawler. Ratings are worth more to these stations than human lives. Check it out. Jake Gyllenhaal is great in it.
I was thinking more about the reporter from Die Hard and Die Hard 2.
Yes. Just what I was thinking. Great movie.
Some of these”repoters” are sociopaths.
Look at the way they vilify Israel for its conduct in the war against Hamas terror,though experts in this field attest that Israel took the most extraordinary efforts to keep civilian casualties at a minimum while Hamas used its own people as shields in some cases. But vilifying Israel feeds the Jew-hatred and sells so ‘to hell with the facts go for what sells’.
See excerpt from Colonel Kemp’s report
–Three days ago I spoke to an Israeli pilot that told me that the same morning he had aborted an enemy target a total of 17 times because there were civilians in the target zone, and eventually he abandoned the operation. I asked him, was that not frustrating? His answer was simply no. And that to me, is one of the best things about the IAF – that the last very thing they want to do is bomb a target and have that on their conscience for the rest of their lives. And it was the same thing with infantry soldiers. I spoke to soldiers who have been fighting in Gaza, and several of them said to me: ‘We know what the rules of engagement are but even without them, it is always on our minds that we cannot kill civilians.’ See for them, this has nothing to do with orders, it’s just always there at the forefront. We’re talking about [reservists who are] simply artists, metal-workers, musicians, they are not killers. They have absolutely no desire to kill civilians. In fact, in terms of civilian casualties, the attitude of IDF solders is the exact mirror image of the way they’re portrayed to the world.
http://www.algemeiner.com/2014/07/30/col-richard-kemp-israeli-pilot-aborted-gaza-strike-17-times-to-protect-civilians-jewish-people-should-be-proud-of-the-state-of-israel-interview/
Happy Easter All!
Truly and accurately stated. You’ll get red thumbs galore, no doubt, Patrick, but that just goes to show that many people don’t like the truth messing up their paradigm.
@Elias Khoury! Thanks for Elias’ sentiment. Your prediction was so but not so bad and some of them even red-thumbed Elias to spite me.Laughable isn’t it!
I worry not but to speak the truth as I see it. People have a very healthy scepticism about the newsmedia here and it’s just a matter of time before they cotton-on to the con-job the Hamas/PLO and other Jihadders have pulled on them via the self-seeking media.
Additionally, Jew-hatred is on the wane however imperceptible it seems.
Happy Easter…
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