Reported death of woman, following 2012 London abortion, introduced in final week of Ireland's abortion debate

The pro-abortion forces and the liberal media in Ireland know something about timing and use it to deadly effect. We saw for example the barefaced exploitation of the Savita Halappanavar case which was used very effectively to begin the process of the introduction of abortion in Ireland and now we see what seems to be the ‘coup de grace', timed to coincide with the final debates in the Senate before it is voted into law. The Media are reporting on the sad case of a woman, a foreign national living in Dublin, who died from ‘extensive internal blood loss’ following an abortion in a Marie Stopes clinic in London in January 2012.

Whilst the reports are carefully worded the obvious conclusion that abortion is dangerous for women as well as being deadly for babies is not even considered and neither is the question of why this report was not presented in January 2012 but saved for the week in which the final vote is to be taken in the Senate. 

Judging by the headline of the article in which a non-national living and studying in Ireland is morphed into 'A woman FROM Ireland' one can be forgiven for cynically concluding that this story is already in the process of becoming yet another 'cause celebre' for the pro-choice movement.

The carefully crafted story rather than focusing on the real issues implies that the problem arose from the fact that the woman could not obtain an abortion in Ireland.

Interestingly an article by John Waters appears this week in the Irish Catholic Newspaper in which he says of Ireland's pro-abortion media;

For one thing, the ‘debates’ are almost invariably hosted by ‘liberal’ journalists, and, for another, the skewed dynamics of the ‘debates’ ensure that these are really dramas in which traditionalist forces are pitted against liberals in a manner that ensures only the liberal argument can win.

The Independent reports as follows (see this link)

THE woman who travelled to the UK from Dublin for an abortion died from a heart attack caused by “extensive internal blood loss” hours after having the procedure.

Police in the UK are investigating the death of the mum-of-one who travelled from Dublin to London for an abortion.

Today, the Irish Independent can reveal that a post-mortem conducted on the woman concluded that she died from a heart attack, caused by extensive internal blood loss.

The London Metropolitan Police confirmed today that they were investigating the woman’s death, which occurred in Slough, on January 21, 2012, and a file will be sent to the Crown Prosecution Service.

The 32-year-old married woman was understood to be a foreign national living in Dublin.

A spokesperson for the London Metropolitan Police confirmed that detectives from Homicide and Serious Crime Command are investigating the circumstances surrounding her “unexplained” death which occurred around midnight on Saturday, 21st, 2012, in Slough.

Medical personnel were called but the woman was pronounced dead at the scene.

“Next of kin are aware and an inquest is scheduled to open in due course,” a spokesperson said.

“A post mortem which took place on 23 January at Wexham Hospital concluded that the cause of death was a heart attack caused by extensive internal blood loss.

“We continue to investigate the death and are liaising with the Crown Prosecution Service currently,” the spokesperson added.

A report in today’s Irish Times said the woman sought an abortion at a maternity hospital in Dublin.

However, the mother-of-one was told that it was not possible to obtain one in this jurisdiction.

It is understood she had a condition which raised the chances of a miscarriage – however, it was not believed to be a life-threatening condition.

The woman travelled to a Marie Stopes clinic in London.

However, she died in a taxi just hours after the procedure.

Speaking anonymously, the woman’s husband said she had a child in Ireland in 2010 but the pregnancy was a painful experience. It was also complicated by fibroids. Treatment for such a condition could have caused infertility, the man.

The man said they worried what would happen if she fell pregnant again.

He said his wife was approximately 20 weeks pregnant when she travelled to London for an abortion.

He told the newspaper she would have underwent the procedure sooner, but they spent some time exploring all their options.

It also took some time for the couple, who were on student visas at the time, to save the sum required for such a procedure.

Thousands of Irish women travel each year to England and Wales for an abortion.

Latest figures show that almost 4,000 women travelled to the UK last year for an abortion.

This is also reported in the Irish Times under the following heading

UK inquiry as woman from Ireland dies after abortion

London Metropolitan Police are investigating circumstances surrounding death of 32-year-old.

Irish woman almost dies from botched abortion: Abortionist struck off

There were various news reports last Saturday on the case of an Irishwoman who was left "fighting for her life" after a botched abortion at London abortion clinic. see this link and this link

The case, which occurred in 2006, emerged as part of a Fitness to Practise Inquiry by the UK General Medical Council into the conduct of a gynaecologist Dr Phanuel Dartey, who was struck off for his treatment of five patients -- including that of the botched abortion -- at the Marie Stopes International Clinic in Ealing.

The inquiry was told that Dartey perforated the uterus of the unidentified Irish woman and left parts of her aborted baby inside her. When she returned to Ireland she was rushed to hospital where she was in a critical condition for two months. It is believed she eventually recovered.

The Ghanaian surgeon, who qualified in the former Soviet Union and did not attend the hearing had no valid medical indemnity insurance at the time.

It is also reported that Marie Stopes Reproductive Choices manager in Dublin, Gabrielle Malone, confirmed that the Ealing clinic was among the recommended facilities on a list given to Irish women seeking pregnancy "counselling". (It should be noted that referral for termination is illegal in Ireland so the fiction of counselling is used by agencies to remain within the letter, if not the spirit of the law .)

Ms Malone also claimed that Marie Stopes clinics had an excellent record and the Dartey case was an isolated one. This claim is in keeping with the notion that abortion where it is legal is supposed to be safe, needless to say it is never safe for the unfortunate baby but in addition such claims are suspect in the light of the generally available evidence but in particular the evidence presented in the European Court of Human Rights, A,B and C v Ireland Case, Grand Chamber Judgement last year, which sets out that the three women in this case all suffered medical complications following abortions in Britain.

According to Ms Malone 498 Irishwomen had abortions at the Ealing centre last year. The number of Irishwomen having abortions in the UK and elsewhere has been falling for nine years, but 4,402 had terminations last year. It would be interesting to discover what percentage of these women suffer some level of medical complications quite apart from the well documented Psychological problems which arise for the vast majority of women who decide to terminate the life of a baby.

Eugenics and other Evils

A draft law is being considered in The Netherlands that would punish 'unfit' parents by forcing women to use contraception for a number of years and taking the baby away as soon as it was born if the woman refused the order to take contraception and became pregnant.

Khaled Diab in The Guardian, voices disquiet at the proposed law, warning:

This government may have all the best intentions, but what's to guarantee that a future government doesn't use the law, or an amendment of it, to target "undesirable" groups, such as Roma, gays, religious minorities and immigrants?

More immediately, there's the question of how we would define the "unfit parents" who should be deprived from the right to bear children. Should the law apply only to parents who pose a clear and present danger to potential offspring or could it be more loosely interpreted to apply to those of whose parenting style the state disapproves?

As numerous commentators at the end of the article point out, this is essentially just another piece of legislation stemming from the eugenicist ideology so popular during the Interwar period, which was of course promoted by the likes of Marie Stopes and Margaret Sanger. Others quote the number of European countries and US states that had eugenicist laws in place until the early 70s, which involved the compulsory sterilisation of those regarded as mentally and physically unfit, along with some racial minorities.

An article in Second Spring analyses the work of G.K. Chesterton in campaigning against and defeating the Mental Deficiency Bill in 1912. Chesterton was one of the only vocal and influential opponents of eugenics at a time when eugenics was being publicly embraced and promoted by England's liberal intelligentsia.

As the horrors of past eugenics programmes fade in memory and this evil ideology once again takes hold of society, we need another G.K. Chesterton to sound the alarm.

Marie Stopes funding stopped

USAID has made the decision to stop funding Marie Stopes International, one of the biggest international promoters and providers of abortion, because of its role in China's coercive population control policy. Steve Mosher of Population Research Institute stated that MSI's “aggressive promotion of abortion, and its longstanding collaboration with China's coercive program leave little doubt that it is not only aware of the massive human rights abuses that have resulted in that country, but is actively collaborating with it.”

It is almost unbearable to witness the self-righteous behaviour of these organisations when their collaboration with human rights abuses is exposed, the denials and counter-accusations, usually with the backing of the media. It is probably too much to hope that groups like Marie Stopes and UNFPA will do the decent thing, come clean and issue a formal apology to the women whose rights they have wilfully ignored whilst having the hypocrisy to campaign in their name. Much too much to hope.

The Curse of Marie Stopes

The Daily Mail has published an article on the Marie Stopes stamp controversy. It makes for interesting reading but what gripped my attention more were some of the reader comments left in the combox. As a pro-life campaigner, I am all too aware of the eugenic mentality behind the abortion and contraception industries but they are usually quite careful to keep quiet about it and do everything possible to deny any association with eugenics. However, voxpop is less guarded and the comments were spine chilling. Here are some examples

"Why is it acceptable to selectively breed better animals but where humans are concerned, we bend over backwards to help the most lazy and unhealthy specimens to have families?"

"Just imagine what a stable, well-ordered society we'd have if compulsory sterilisation had been adopted years ago for the socially undesirable. The prisons would be almost empty, and the law-abiding majority could walk any streets without fear."

"The opposite of Eugenics is dysgenics. This aims to multiply the number of cripples, incompetents, idiots, criminals, murderers, whores, thieves, delinquents, drug users, stupid brutes and drunks in society. The social engineers have been successfully making our society in this mould for the last sixty years. No wonder decent people want to emigrate. This society has no hope."

A young British pro-life campaigner once told me that she sometimes wondered what would happen if the millions of men who died fighting the Nazis were to come back from the dead and see what the world looked like now? In her words, 'would they think the Nazis had won?'

I am not sure I would take things that far, but I think it is true to say that society has never learnt the terrible lessons of Nazi Germany when it comes to respect for basic human freedoms. Judging by the response to the Daily Mail article the eugenic philosophy is clearly still alive and well. Ironically, eugenics is founded on junk science, the entirely misplaced assumption that every facet of a person's physical, mental and moral development is based on their background. But more to the point, I would like to ask people who casually assert their support for eugenics, precisely whom they feel should decide which members of society has the right to have children? What criteria should they use in making such a decision? Would they accept that decision if an appointed judge were to decide that they were either too bigoted, or too heartless or perhaps even too ill-informed to be allowed a child? And ultimately, would anyone wish to live in a country where the state held such absolute power over the most intimate area of a citizen's life?

I think it was Mahatma Gandhi who said: "The best test of a civilised society is the way in which it treats its weakest members." We have failed that test.

More on Marie Stopes

The news that Marie Stopes is to appear on a Royal Mail stamp has caused outrage among Catholic bloggers. Catholic Perspective,The Hermeneutic of Continuity and Saint Mary Magdalen to name just three have all carried the story of Marie Stopes and her racist, eugenicist ideology.

Just out of interest, I looked up the Marie Stopes International website to see what they have to say about their founder. The timeline of her life has a large gap in it between 1930 and 1958 when she died, which is a pity as they could have informed people about such significant events as Dr Stopes' appearance at the International Congress for Population Science in Berlin, held under the auspices of the Third Reich [1935].

The Marie Stopes website describes Stopes and her fellows as having "played a major role in breaking down taboos about sex and increasing knowledge, pleasure and improved sexual and reproductive health." Of her anti-Catholic, anti-semitic views and her promotion of eugenics, they have not a word to say. Oddly enough, I could not find any links to her publications either. This is surely an unfortunate oversight on the part of the MSI directors - why else would they deprive the public of the opportunity to appreciate Dr Stopes' love poems dedicated to Adolph Hitler?

Marie Stopes a 'woman of distinction'?

In October, Royal Mail is issuing a series of stamps entitled 'Women of Distinction' which will include Marie Stopes, a eugenicist who was so extreme in her beliefs that she disinherited her son Harry for the 'eugenic crime' of marrying a woman who wore glasses.

A woman who continues to be lauded as a champion of 'reproductive rights' was not terribly bothered by basic human rights when they got in the way of her ideology and she campaigned openly for the "sterilisation of those totally unfit for parenthood (to) be made an immediate possibility, indeed made compulsory."

We live in an age where millions of women around the world continue to suffer as a result of state-enforced sterilisation and abortion and where a supposedly developed country like Britain kills the overwhelming majority of babies with disabilities before birth because society has still not faced up to the inherent evil of eugenics. Marie Stopes and the other architects of this society should be treated with the contempt they deserve not be honoured for promoting policies that continue to cause so much suffering.