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Showing posts with label Anti-Choice/Pro-Life. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Anti-Choice/Pro-Life. Show all posts

Dr John Coulter ✍ Just as the lunatic fringe of so-called street preachers cannot be allowed to tarnish every Christian who responsibly uses open air evangelism, so too, the Christian faith must purge itself of the lunatic fringe in militant fundamentalism who have come to dominate Ireland’s pro-life movement.

Because of the activities of a section of the Christian faith anti-abortion lobby, new laws were recently introduced implementing the creation of safe zones around some medical clinics.

The law is known as the Abortion Services (Safe Access Zones) Act (Northern Ireland) 2023, which received Royal Assent on 6th February this year. Under this law, anti-abortion protests and other behaviours are prohibited within any Safe Access Zone once it has been established, and this may be enforced by the PSNI.

These Safe Access Zones were introduced across Northern Ireland on 29th September. A section of Christian fundamentalism views such zones as a denial of freedom of expression, but could it be a question that as a result of the behaviour of the lunatic fringe of the Christian faith at anti-abortion demonstrations, Christianity has only itself to blame for the introduction of such laws?

Many of the health clinics previously targeted by militant fundamentalist protests because of their abortion services also provide care on other services, such as blood disorders and helping women who have lost babies through miscarriage.

For many couples, including Christian couples, the loss of the unborn child through miscarriage can cause as much grief, pain and mental suffering as the loss of a child after it has been born.

Another interesting statistic to ponder, if it could be found, would be the number of Christians, especially born again believers, who privately have either had terminations themselves or paid for family members or friends to have abortions ‘on the quiet’ whilst publicly adopting a pro-life stance?

How would a couple feel, especially a Christian couple, if they were attending one of these medical clinics to be treated for the physical and mental effects of a miscarriage - having just lost their precious baby - and were confronted with a mob of militant fundamentalists waving placards containing photos of unborn babies?

And its not just a case of the protection and welfare of the folk attending such medical clinics, but also the well-being and safety of the staff themselves who work in such centres.

The key question is - when does peaceful Christian protest become militant fundamentalist intimidation? More significantly, has the Christian pro-life movement been infiltrated by the ultra-Calvinistic wing or ultra-conservative Catholic lobby of Christian fundamentalism?

If theological fascism is slowly, but surely beginning to dominate the anti-abortion lobby, how can Christians generally claim the faith is being persecuted when the activities of militant fundamentalism’s lunatic fringe brought these laws on themselves?

Put bluntly, the Christian faith can claim it needs its rights protected, but who protects folk from the excesses of militant fundamentalism? Broadly speaking, many Christian prayer meetings pray for what they term ‘the persecuted Church.’ But what about prayers for victims who have been persecuted by the Church?

How many people over the years have gone cold in their Christian faith or abandoned it completely because of a bad experience either in a church, or been persecuted by folk who called themselves Christians?

During my own spiritual journey, especially during church services where there would be prayers of intercession, the persecuted church would often be remembered.

But as a young teenage Christian, I remember being punched in the face by a Presbyterian elder in Sunday school, and the kicking I got to my lower back in a church hall simply for being the Presbyterian minister’s son.

As a teenage Christian in the 1970s, I would think to myself: 

I don’t need to go to Soviet Russia or communist China to get persecuted; all I have to do is walk a few yards into the Presbyterian church hall and I’ll get all the persecution I want!

Having endured that mincing mill as a young Christian minister’s son, I can fully understand why so many folk abandon their faith. I have chosen not to abandon mine.

The big danger is that it would be so, so easy to judge the Christian faith based on the actions of folk. That’s why it is equally important for true Bible-believing Christians to take a firm stand against the actions of militant fundamentalism.

Such actions by theological fascism have resulted in these new safe zone laws. Another key question remains - what section of society will these militant fundamentalists turn their attention to next?

Will there have to be safe zones imposed outside post primary schools and colleges in the New Year when teachers have to deliver lessons on Relationships and Sex Education (RSE)?

Just as militant fundamentalists used online social media abuse to target politicians in the abortion debate, will the same online abuse now be heaped on teachers delivering the RSE curriculum?

Militant fundamentalist targeting of the media has already kicked off with past online abuse accusing those who work in the media of being part of a satanic deception. I wonder does this online abuse against the ‘media’ include the numerous Christian magazines, radio stations and TV channels?

The bottom line is that if we Christians cannot police our own activities, we cannot complain when society brings in new laws to protect itself from the excesses of militant fundamentalism and theological fascism.

Follow Dr John Coulter on Twitter @JohnAHCoulter
Listen to commentator Dr John Coulter’s programme, Call In Coulter, every Saturday morning around 10.15 am on Belfast’s Christian radio station, Sunshine 1049 FM. Listen online. 

True Christians Need To Face Down Militant Fundamentalism

Anthony McIntyre ✒ The Catholic Right were on the march in Dublin yesterday celebrating the ruling by right wing US judges in the country’s Supreme Court that overturned Roe V Wade. 


In case anyone might be left in doubt, the theme of the march was “Bye Bye Roe Hello pro-life future.”

The event wasn’t an exact descriptive fit with Mencken’s A Religious Orgy In Tennessee but similarities abound. Images of red smoke - the thought of supposed witches burning in hell for the assumed sin of abortion is Viagra to the adherents of Hate Theology. It's what gets them up . . . not just in the morning. 

These days, religious arguments against a person not behaving in accordance with the religious opinion of somebody else, are so easily ridiculed that the holders of such gunk mask their religiosity in the discourse of human rights or child protection. Citing a religious reason as to why another should or should not be doing something is a sure way to obtain a beaten docket. A tell tale sign that the theotard is at large is to be found in the assertion that life is sacred from conception, followed by the false equivalence being drawn between zygote and infant-teen-adult. This has resulted in calls to ban the morning after pill on the grounds that it is an abortifacient, something which only a religious zealot could object to. The engine room of opposition to abortion is tightly manned by the religious lobby, and the captain wears a mitre.

There are of course some who find abortion abhorrent for authentic secular reasons, but they seem few and far between. Their arguments are of interest and should be considered in a way that a religious one should never be. What the pastord or the practitioner of priestcraft might believe the unicorn thinks about abortion should not be factored into the considerations of society. That is not to exclude religious people from expressing an opinion on whatever they like. Just that in an evidence-guided quest for clarity, superstition can have no place. The bishop has as much right - but no more - to a view as the captain of a cricket club. The cricketer might genuinely believe that the wicket fairy at the bottom of his crease opposes abortion. There is evidence aplenty that wicked nuns hate both abortion and children but none to show the same of wicket fairies.

Prior to yesterday's march, Catholic Primate of All Ireland and Archbishop of Armagh, Archbishop Eamon Martin referred to the ruling by the right wing Scotus judges as “hopeful and encouraging”. He would, wouldn't he. Still, his right not to have an abortion when he gets pregnant is something that must be vigorously defended even though we could bet our last cent on the certainty that if altar boys could get pregnant the bishops would declare abortion a sacrament.

Bernadette Smyth, a long term opponent of reproductive rights for women, told the crowd that it was the “pro-life generation”. It is anything but. That generation had its day and was eclipsed by the Repeal the 8th movement.  Aontú’s Peader Tobin, still a polished performer who at least believed in something when so many of his colleagues in Sinn Fein believed in nothing, and who was hounded out of the party for his anti-choice stance, seems to have lost his marbles on this one. He compared anti-abortion groups to the “abolitionists who brought the slave trade to an end” in America. The abolitionists stood for a freedom hardly consonant with enslaving women. But sure if it sounds good - even if it overlooks the US pro-life movement having more in common with the Ku Klux Klan than with abolitionists - say it. 

The Catholic right had the streets of Dublin to themselves yesterday. Few felt sufficiently threatened by the rightwing lurch in a far off courtroom to come out on the streets to counter the anti-choice marchers. Let them party on five loaves and two fish, washed down by the wine from Cana, there being more than enough to go around. The young activists of the Connolly Youth Movement had considered mobilising against them but in the end expressed concerns about rushing in and bringing people onto the streets without sufficient safety measures in place. On the balance of probability, a prudent decision on their part. 

Still, Kate Murphy on her Tod faced down the marchers, who to their credit did not physically attack her: a solitary figure holding aloft her placard proclaiming “The Christian Far Right Can Go And Shite”. Crude but effective. 

Photograph: Tom Honan @ Irish Times

It is what they do, Kate, every time they open their mouths. There is no sewer big enough to carry their effluent theobabble away so that it might part the Red Sea in two. Holy shit.

⏩ Follow on Twitter @AnthonyMcIntyre.

Kate Against The Catholics

Robin Schiller writes that Dad who lost twin sons slams 'thoughtless and horrible' coffin protest

'They've never had to carry their baby in a little white box' - father who lost son slams Holles Street protesters 

A Father whose twin sons died following their premature births has described the use of baby-sized coffins for a protest outside a Dublin maternity hospital as horrible and thoughtless.

Last Saturday protesters held a pro-life rally outside Holles Street Maternity Hospital and have said they plan to continue with their protests.

The group placed three white baby-sized coffins on the ground which led to widespread backlash with Health Minister Simon Harris describing it as “grossly insensitive”.

Damien Basquill , whose infant twins Fiachra and Éanna tragically passed away following their premature births two weeks ago, said the form of protest was “the most horrible thoughtless thing I’ve ever heard”.


Continue reading @ The Herald.

White Coffins

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