The current Irish Government, like its predecessors, wants to do no more than endlessly talk about abortion, while ruling a land which is free of the horrors of back street abortion, by courtesy of the British. Here it is all talk and no action, as the Government resolutely goes about the business of doing nothing meaningful at all, either to address the daily realities of Irish Abortion - or to reduce the numbers of unintended pregnancies. We force our citizens to go abroad to do what they cannot do at home. President Bush exports his form of anti abortion totalitarianism, forcing people abroad to be silent in a way that would be unconstitutional on US soil. Abortion, the right to choose it or the right to talk about it, is an issue that has some politicians on both sides of the Atlantic contorting principles and morality.
Abortion produces the most incredible political hypocrisy imaginable.
There is no doubt that Bush's gag rule will damage family planing programmes worldwide. There is no doubt that Bertie Ahern's endless tendency to prevarication and pandering to the Independents has acted as a roadblock to investment in improved sexual health programmes. In their different ways they are increasing abortion by hampering efforts to provide reproductive choice. It is now six months since the All Party Report on Abortion unanimously recommended a 50,000,000 programme be established to address crisis pregnancy. The Government has not mentioned it since.