One of the more insidious directions that the debate over abortion in Ireland has taken is the increasingly insistent claims that access to abortion is in some way a human right. Not only is the claim very clearly false, the perpetuation of this untruth has great potential to do spiritual damage.
It is abundantly clear that there exists nowhere in any international rights treaty that Ireland, or indeed any other nation, is a party to an explicit right to an abortion under any circumstances. In fact, these treaties do not mention the topic at all. After many years of trying to claim that such a right exists Amnesty International, which has made abortion advocacy one of its key areas of engagement, was forced to admit recently in correspondence to the Irish Times that no such explicit right exists. Naturally, it did not see this admission as being fatal to its contention that abortion is a human right. Instead it switched horses midstream, as it were, and claimed it is an interpreted right.
Now, an interpreted right is a real thing. It is quite common in jurisprudence for the courts to find a right to something exists of which the law it is considering makes no mention. However, Amnesty in this instance is not relying on interpretive decisions of some recognized legal body on which to make its claims. Instead it is making them on the basis of opinions which have been issued by various UN committees and other bodies. And the fact is that these committees have no power to make such interpretations.
The recent “finding” of the Geneva based UN Committee on Human Rights is a good case in point. This committee claimed that the human rights of an Irish woman had been breached because she did not have the option of obtaining an abortion in Ireland after the child she was carrying was diagnosed as having a life-limiting condition. It is to be noted that the committee operates under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. This covenant, as with all human rights treaties as noted above, makes no mention of abortion. However, the committee claimed that this lack of access amounted to torture, something that is covered by the covenant.
That the committee is willing to publicly declare that not being able to obtain an abortion is equivalent to torture says much about their ideological perspective but nothing at all about Irish law. And it must also be noted that the covenant which governs the existence and operation of the committee nowhere gives it the authority to exercise the juridical power of discovering in the covenant that which it does not explicitly contain. And it most certainly does not grant it any power to bind the states which have signed up to the Covenant with such “findings” that are outside its power to make.
The danger is, however, that along the principle that the lie endlessly repeated becomes regarded by many as the truth, so if it is repeated often enough publicly that abortion is some kind of a right people will come to believe that it must be. Indeed, the following rather bizarre story shows that the tactic is having some success.
Anyone who knows me is aware I am pro-life and not shy about making my views known. And so when the UN committee mentioned above tried to claim abortion is a right I expressed the view that it is not and that the committee has no authority to claim it is in a letter to one of our national papers, which was duly published (this view, it should be noted, is hardly a controversial one; no less a person than our Taoiseach has said much the same).
The day it was published I got a phone call from a gentleman who was most irate with me. He didn’t agree with my opinion. In fact, he didn’t think it was a matter of opinion at all. Ireland had signed up to these treaties; therefore Ireland had to do whatever the UN committee said. And if it said abortion was a human right, then it was. I, therefore, was a liar, a spreader of vile falsehoods, and someone behaving in a manner unworthy of a member of the clergy. His wife, he let me know, had travelled to the UK some years earlier for an abortion after the child had been diagnosed with a life-limiting condition. He had made his peace with God as to the decision they had made. And the day would come, he informed me, when I would stand before God and be judged for my behaviour.
Those who are pro-life are often accused of trying to force their religious beliefs on those who are in favour of abortion. So it was rather surreal to be told effectively that I was going to hell for opposing it. And I will admit that I found the personalized abuse directed at me, as well as its nature, to be quite disturbing. But more disturbing were the theological implications of what this man had to say. He had completely internalized the idea that access to an abortion is a human right; and therefore those who obtain one, and those who assist others in obtaining one, absolutely do nothing wrong. Abortion has become a moral good; and those who oppose it behave immorally by trying to prevent others from having access to this moral good.
The spiritual dangers of such an attitude are obvious. Abortion is the deliberate taking of an innocent human life and as such is evil. But if people are duped into believing that it is not evil but good then the likelihood of their repenting of their complicity in this evil is greatly reduced. Thus the falsehood that abortion is a right not only lures people into committing this great evil, it also denies them the opportunity to repent of what they have done and ask God’s forgiveness. It is therefore incumbent, I would suggest, upon all people of good will to speak out publicly and name this falsehood for what it is again and again. By doing so the lives of the innocent may be saved; as may the souls of those who might otherwise be led astray by so terrible a lie.
About the Author: Rev. Patrick G Burke
The Rev. Patrick G Burke is the Church of Ireland rector of the Castlecomer Union of Parishes, Co Kilkenny. A regular contributor to Position Papers, he was formerly a broadcast journalist with the Armed Forces Radio and Television Network. He blogs at www.thewayoutthere1.blogspot.ie, is a frequent correspondent to the letters page of the Irish Times and other national newspapers, and can occasionally be heard on RTE Radio One’s A Living Word.