“The unweary, unostentatious, and inglorious crusade of England against slavery may probably be regarded as among the three or four perfectly virtuous pages comprised in the history of nations.” The Irish nineteenth century historian W. E. Lecky wrote these lines of the anti-slavery campaign in Britain at the beginning of that century. Someday, undoubtedly, historians will write similar words of the pro-life campaigns of our day. Whatever the result of the Irish referendum on abortion on May 25, the hard – “unweary, unostentatious, and inglorious” – work of those who spoke in TV and radio debates, put up posters, canvassed door to door and handed out flyers on the streets has done much to ensure that there is a “virtuous page” in the history of this country.
No society or epoch is, of course, perfect but there are instances in history when something particularly aberrant takes root and attains widespread social acceptance. We could think of the gladiatorial shows in Rome, the infanticide of the ancient Greeks, the hundreds of thousands of slaves bought and sold in the Roman Empire and in the New World, and the witch hunts of seventeenth and eighteenth century. (While of a much different scale, we could perhaps think of our own Industrial Schools as a once socially accepted aberration).
We look back at such episodes with perplexity. Even when we – rightly – contextualise such behaviour within the historical setting we still find it hard to fathom how such things happened. We ask did people not oppose this? Were ordinary people not horrified by what was going on? Were there not some who tried to wake up the others to the reality of what they were doing? Invariably when we look back we do find voices – always few in number but there nonetheless – who did speak up in defence of our common humanity, protesting against the aberrant social norm and risking ridicule, ostracisation and even persecution in the process. And these few have always ensured that even the dark pages of the history of a people is not without its virtuous pages.
There will come a time when abortion will be a thing of the past. It will take its place in the sad museum of gigantic societal aberrations, alongside the likes of infanticide, slavery, and witch-hunts. And then the names of those who campaigned against it and who helped restore society to sanity will be remembered with great gratitude.
In this month’s issue of Position Papers we dedicate three pieces to the pro-life question: my own “A Guide to The Eighth Amendment Referendum” in which I present some basic information on the Referendum; Fr Kevin O’Reilly’s article “Abortion, autonomy and rights” which looks at how the “autonomy” talk of those campaigning for abortion founders on the rock of the undeniable humanity of the unborn person; and finally Jennifer Kehoe’s very moving account of her personal experience of the birth of her daughter Louise: “I hoped she’d die that night”.