Friday 28 December 2012

One of the most moving blogposts you will ever visit, the story of baby John Paul

I want to draw my visitors' attention to four important blogposts recently published by my pro-life colleague, Pat Buckley, of European Life Network.

In a blogpost today, Pat cites a formidable editorial from the January edition of The Alive newspaper, a free monthly Catholic newspaper distributed throughout Ireland. The editorial warns Enda Kenny, the Irish Taoiseach (Prime Minister):
There is a higher law ... and he is bound by that law. According to that law to deliberately kill an unborn child is evil. And for any government to legally permit such killing is profoundly evil ... reference (by Mr Kenny) to "abortion on demand" looks like an attempt by Mr Kenny to soften up people to accept "limited" abortion, that is, that the law would allow the killing of a limited number of unborn children. Whether or not such a law would lead to "abortion on demand" is not the point.If it permitted the intentional killing of just one unborn child it would not be a law but the utter corruption of law ...
Likening Mr Kenny's situation to one of the accused Nazi judges being tried for war crimes in Nuremberg, the editorial concludes:
... Mr Kenny now stands at perhaps the most momentous crisis point not only in his political career but in his personal integrity ...
Pat's second post, published yesterday, draws attention, in full, to an opinion piece in the Irish Independent by Patricia Casey, Professor of Psychiatry at University College Dublin. Her opinion piece is written in the context of Ireland's health minister's statement that
"The legislation will be drafted in accordance with the 20-year-old Supreme Court ruling on the X case, which allows for abortion when a woman's life is in danger - including the threat of suicide."
Professor Casey writes:
" ... I have examined the major textbooks of psychiatry and of perinatal psychiatry and nowhere can I find a list of any psychiatric grounds for abortion. Furthermore, the medical royal colleges, headed by the Royal College of Psychiatrists, carried out a review of the impact of abortion on mental health in 2011 and found that women with a prior psychiatric history were at an increased risk of mental health problems if they did have an abortion ... "
The third blogpost from Pat Buckley to which I draw your attention features "a beautiful yet simple message for Christmas" which speaks for itself:



And the fourth blogpost, in my view one of the most moving you will ever visit, features Cliona Johnson and her family (Cliona is Pat's daughter) and her baby John Paul who suffered from the congenital condition known as anencephaly.

You can watch their incredible story on this short youtube video.



Pat says:
" ... Cliona Johnson describes the devastation she felt in getting the diagnosis and her determination to let her baby, whom she and her husband JP (John Paul) decided to name John Paul, develop and live every minute of the short life he was capable of living ... "
Baby John Paul's story is particularly poignant since, earlier this year, the Irish Times published an article which clearly sought to use the short lives of anecephalic babies and babies with other conditions to justify introducing an abortion law designed to kill them.

Comments on this blog? Email them to johnsmeaton@spuc.org.uk
Sign up for alerts to new blog-posts and/or for SPUC's other email services
Follow SPUC on Twitter
Like SPUC's Facebook Page
Please support SPUC. Please donate, join, and/or leave a legacy