I can still be astounded at what the religious say. In Ireland, Michelle Mulherin provides an astonishing insight into a pressing problem.
Fornication was the single greatest cause of unwanted pregnancies in Ireland.
Good to know. I’m going to suggest a few other revelations for Ms Mulherin.
Driving was the single greatest cause of auto accidents in all of Ireland.
Drinking was the single greatest cause of alcoholism in all of Ireland.
Living was the single greatest cause of dying in all of Ireland.
Catholicism was the single greatest cause of ignorance and stupidity in all of Ireland.
Deal with it.
Does the Pope defecate in Vatican City?
I’m pretty sure she was making the point that abortion shouldn’t be illegal for religious reasons because we don’t outlaw the rest of the stuff that’s a “sin” in the bible eg. fornication and fornication is the leading cause of unwanted pregnancy.
Any bets Ms. Mulherin jumped the gun before she got married? Oh, that’s right, oral or anal don’t count.
Now some of you may be wondering about that ‘in Ireland’ qualifier…
(/The thing is, see, well, if this is Nazareth…)
No! I’m flabberghasted. Really.
Read this earlier today and has put me in a real bad mood. I am ashamed to say that this buffoon is a TD of my home county, Mayo. She is a complete lunatic who wants to bring back National Service because it will get rid of “the culture of entitlement bought on by the welfare state.” Also reported in the link is that the Government defeated the Private Members Bill which would go towards legalising abortion if the woman’s life was at risk by 111 votes to 20. The fact that abortion is still ILLEGAL in a first world country is a depressing reminder of the grip the Catholic Church still has over my country. Michelle Mulherin is also a great reminder not to get so smug when reading about idiot wingnuts in America. Idiocy is a worldwide problem.
peterdwyer:
Oh ffs, what a load of shit. If you want to stop appearing to be such a fuckwitted fool, I’d suggest you lose the apologetics for Ms. Mulherin.
I wonder if she has the data to back that up.
How many babies were born in Ireland in the time period she’s talking about, eh? How many of them out-of-wedlock? Those’d be your fornication products right there. How many were born as the result of church-authorized marital intercourse (female orgasm optional)?
She is assuming that all fornication-initiated babies were unwanted.
She is assuming that all pregnancies of married women were wanted. But just cuz you are married and are gestating, don’t mean you are happy about it.
You know, that last is especially iffy in a country where a very old-school, large patriarchal religion is at the helm. Women can’t get abortions. And I am not up to speed on access to reproductive rights, laws, education and access in Ireland, let alone what kind of culture actually surrounds it.
But I’m thinking her whole statement is a malodorous tower of falsehood, propaganda and pathology stacked up like a pagoda of bu!!shit pancakes.
I can’t think of anything that smacks more of evil. It’s all, Let’s not help people, let’s confuse, shame and control them!
Because any pregnancy that happens when you’re married is “wanted”.
@peterdwyer: Where’d you get that interpretation?
@8 – well, in the US the religious right wants to define “honest rape” in conjunction with their anti-abortion nonsense. Essentially, I believe they mean date and marital rape aren’t honest rapes.
So yeah, I’m quite certain in the Catholic utopia, there are married women having babies they do not want.
@Caine, Fleur du mal
I like to bash religious folk as much as the next, but I also think, having read the full text of Mulherin’s text, that peterdwyer is correct. Believe me, I am sickened with rage at the betrayal of Irish women that yesterday’s vote represents, and I don’t think the Dail is the correct forum for such blatantly faith tainted speech, but Mulherin’s point was that we don’t outlaw all biblical sins, and thus arguing against abortion on religious grounds is not beneficial. I think the following lines;
”Abortion as murder, and therefore sin, which is the religious argument, is no more sinful from a scriptural point of view than all other sins we do not legislate against, such as greed, hate and fornication… At the end of the day, however, it is the nature of religion to fuss over appearances above the truth and the inner state of the person.”
are fairly telling. That said, I think people should not take my word for it, and should go read her entire speech. It’s the skeptical thing to do.
In my opinion, the internet has decided to jump down her throat over these issues in a way that is wholely unproductive, and missed her original self deprecating point. I also feel that criticism of her wouldn’t have been nearly as harsh and sexualized were she a man. (I’m speaking of course of criticism in other places, and not here of course. PZ and freethoughtblogs in general have an excellent history regarding treating women as actual people, and I do not suggest otherwise)
Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls
Someone owes Bill Clinton an apology…
Fornication was the single greatest cause of unwanted pregnancies in Ireland.
Well, I’m kind of glad to hear that, because the other possible causes of unwanted pregnancies in Ireland or anywhere else seem…improbable:
1. Yaweh goes on a celestial rape/impregnation spree all over Ireland.
2. Irish women getting drunk and breaking into sperm banks to shoot themselves up with sperm without considering the consequences.
3. A sudden change in the socioeconomic system that means that virtually all of the formerly wanted pregnancies are now unwanted because the situation is so bad that no one wants to bring a baby into it. (Unfortunately, this could really happen, but even in the worst of times most people still think their baby is a good idea, even if they think humanity in general ought to rethink this whole survival thing.)
4. All the “pregnancies” in question are actually due to aliens implanting chest bursters in people.
5. Mysterious forces have changed all fetuses in Ireland to zombie fetuses and the pregnant women are tired of them chewing their way out and eating their mothers’ brains.
So, yeah, fornication. Not such a bad cause of unwanted pregnancy.
I live in Ireland (though I’m American really) and this definitely was making the rounds on my facebook. To be fair, Mulherin was indeed pointing out that it’s hypocritical to use religious beliefs to justify legislation. Of course, she’s still anti-abortion in any form, and the fact that she called premarital sex “fornication” makes her an idiot in my book anyway. (And if she’s not using her Catholocism as her reasoning for why she’s so anti-abortion, then I don’t know what her reasoning is. Of course, I haven’t read the entire debate, just the articles reporting on her asinine statements.)
I’m currently in grad school here, and I see the pro-life student group’s protests and chalkings pretty frequently. Which just makes me want to shake them and yell “ABORTION IS ALREADY ILLEGAL HERE! What more do you want?!” I was already outraged by the idea that they’re making it that much harder for women, who have to travel (typically to the UK) to get abortions already. And then I found out that they campaign against stem-cell research, and… yeah. I can’t stand those jackasses now.
@dianne, you forgot the stork!
Also noticed in Ireland:
Marriage is the leading cause of divorce
Excessive water consumption is the leading cause of drowning
Sadly, you’re both wrong; subsequent statements by our godbothering TD from Mayo reveal that she made the statements specifically to introduce religion into the debate in the Dail. This, not to forget, being a debate on whether or not medically necessary abortions should be permitted (ie. where not aborting a fetus would harm the mother) in order for Ireland to abide by the rulings in the X case and later A, B and C cases in the European Court of Human Rights (the cases use letters instead of the names of the women involved in the cases for anonymity, and the X case goes back over a decade).
In other words, we’ve needed this law to be on the books for longer than some of our electorate have been alive; we finally get to a debate on a bill that partially addresses that need, put forward by the opposition instead of the government, and a government TD then decides that we need to bring religion into the debate explicitly, and does so in a way that makes the entire educated Irish population facepalm.
We had a big debate here a while back about bringing in gender quotas for political parties to meet with their presented candidates for election. We should, it seems, have brought in cop-on quotas instead, or at least a basic intelligence test…
In the context of the quote in the OP, I understood “fornication” to mean sexual activity (esp intercourse) outside of marriage; hence the likelihood (from her perspective) that any resulting pregnancy might be unwanted. It’s an old-fashioned/religious usage, isn’t it, whereas often nowadays, especially without a religious context, we use “fornication” to mean “sexual activity” or “sexual intercourse”?
That’s not to condone or support her position – just to suggest that she might be using that word in the archaic sense.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fornication
[preview was not working despite several attempts, so I hope this posts OK]
And doorknobs, dont forget doorknobs….
@markdennehy If so, that is quite sad. I found many of the things she had to say in her speech to be quite liberal, for a Catholic. In particular she seemed to be broaching the notion that even if she thought it was wrong, people should still be allowed to make their own decisions on the matter, as well as raising a few other more liberal and feminist ideas. That said, if it was simply a means of injecting religion into a debate that would otherwise have been free of it, that is particularly devious. Could you link to her follow up statements please? I’ve found a few through google, but perhaps I’m missing some of the more pertinent ones?
Quodlibet, over here the word fornication doesn’t mean “sex between unmarried people”, it means “the sin of sex between unmarried people”. With heavy, catholic, stress on the “sin” part of the definition.
Sin being, of course, exactly the concept you want in a debate on medically necessary abortion…
malbouryjones, there are links to follow-on material on the broadsheet.ie article (including her claims for approximately €1000 per week in expenses and other lovely testimonies to her suitability as a legislator), and on the thejournal.ie articles (that link is to the latest of those).
@markdennehy Thanks for that. How very, very depressing. Those follow up comments are awful, and do totally reframe what she had to say. Sigh…
What a messed up country we’re living in. 111 to 20 against. I’ll remember it the next time the main parties are out canvassing. Thanks again for the informative links. +1
If I recall Ireland does not exactly have a choice and is required to introduce a proper system for the provision of medically necessary abortions following a European court (can’t remember which one) ruling that merely allowing such abortions under the law is not sufficient if it is not possible to obtain one in practice.
If I were living in Ireland and found myself pregnant, I’d hop on the first boat to England and get an abortion right away. Even if I wanted a baby. Because I would be too scared that I’d end up dying in a pregnancy gone bad and too sick to get out of there to continue the pregnancy. Nice pro-life work, Irish leaders.
Pretty sure that happens a lot in Ireland.
Might even be easier. Northern Ireland is for some mysterious reason, right north of Ireland, part of the UK, and contiguous. I’m guessing they just cross the border a lot.
No, abortion is illegal in Northern Ireland. It’s legal in Britain, so one would, indeed, travel to England, Scotland, or Wales to have it done, and this is what happens a lot. Of course, it means crossing the North Channel/Irish Sea, which is the whole point: this makes it quite difficult for anyone who needs to have an abortion quickly and quietly without anyone noticing.
The Catholic Church totally fucked up Ireland — as they have pretty much everywhere else they’ve been.
But if the Irish joined the modern world, they would lose all their charm, all the leprechauns would leave, and what would become of their tourist industry? My Irish ancestors didn’t much like the place or the culture; they left and came to North America; unfortunately they brought their religion with them.
if fornication is the single greatest cause of pregnancies, i would like to know what the second greatest cause is.
storks?
On a visit to Ireland I was once asked (very politely, I should add), “Don’t you English dislike paying for your NHS to perform abortions for Irish women?” I replied “No, we try to look out for our friends and neighbours. It’s the Christian thing to do.”
Total silence. I had to buy a round to get the craic flowing again.
@#28 mikeconley
Indeed. Remind me again why we practically fought a war to keep it part of the UK? Many in Northern Ireland may wish to remain part of the UK. This is largely due to religion and the very fact that religion still plays such a huge role in Northern Ireland makes it more like the Republic than mainland Britain (as the similarity in abortion law across all of Ireland seems to show), even if many in Northern Ireland subscribe to a different brand of religion than those in the Republic.
@supernova #32:
It’s a hugely complex situation, which I don’t doubt you’re aware of. I once had a Chinese girlfriend who asked me to clarify and explain the Irish situation to her (by the time I met her she’d lived in the UK for several years). I ended up having to research more and more, and to rethink my own opinions, yet I was never able to summarise it properly for her, neither to my satisfaction or to hers. It’s not easy.
Personally I would have said…
…since other religions infect my wee island too.
To be kind though, this was said in a political forum – which also seems to be safe from the ravages of the ignorance and stupidity famine.
Ironically, Irish obstetrics care today is among the best in the world. Not kidding – hospitals like Holles St. have an excellent international reputation, and having just come from the delivery ward there four weeks ago today, I can say it’s justified. And that’s despite Irish obstetrics care only fifty years ago being basicly a violation of human rights (look up the scandals over symphysiotomy operations in Ireland).
But if you’re a teenager with an unwanted pregnancy, or a rape victim who’s pregnant (or for that matter, wishing to see her rapist behind bars), then Ireland is quite possibly the worst place in the Western world to be.
@35: Or a 35 year old woman with a wanted pregnancy that’s gone wrong and is going to kill her in the next few hours.
I’m sure you’re right about the OB care, but if they’re willing to just sit there and watch someone die rather than perform an abortion to save her then I’m not interested in being pregnant there.
Fornication leads to pregnancy ?
I’m shocked! Shocked ! /captain Renault
but wait!
if two gay men (or lesbians) were to ahem, fornicate, doesn’t that mean one of them might become pregnant ? Oh, wait . . . you mean fornicate not have sex. Um. right. I’ll be over here on the confusion stand, being confused and eating popcorn.
This was an actual headline once: “Carcinogens cause cancer, studies reveal.”
I have long regarded Northern Ireland as the UK’s equivalent of Vietnam. Not in the fighting, or anything like that, but in that it is impossible to arrive at a rational explanation of events.
How many products of this rampant fornication have been stolen by the catholic church and on sold to “proper” parents that in the church’s opinion are going to better raise the kid and indoctrinate the child into the RC (read whole christian/jew/muslim) nonsense?
It’s been reported there are hundreds of thousands of children stolen by the church in Spain, Australia and the very catholic Ireland. Jees they’re a bunch of dumb asses.
Of course, the single most common factor in unwanted pregnancies – in Ireland and elsewhere – is the failure or omission of contraceptives.
The omission part is prevalent in a country where the sale of contraceptives was illegal till 1980. It makes sense to be proactive in getting them into the hands of the demographic most vulnerable to unwanted pregnancy; namely, the young and unmarried. But the Roman Catholic Church, who don’t do sense, would much rather brand the sexual activities of these people with terms like “fornication” and regard unwanted pregnancy as a fitting punishment for “misdeeds”. Denying access to contraception helps greatly in that regard, and I have little doubt that the Catholic Church in Ireland would forbid it again if they could.
Heck, as recently as 2009 there’s been support to ban contraception within marriage. What’s it like for young Irish people trying to buy condoms and morning-after pills in communities where the Church still wields a lot of influence? My prediction is “no picnic”.
I guess she considers fortification to be sex inside the marriage, too:
http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2011/10/most_surprising_abortion_statistic_the_majority_of_women_who_ter.html
Tsss, never forget the slutty Miss X who let herself be raped by a neighbour when she was still a child and then wanted to get an abortion.
Women like her are the real problem, don’t you see?
I love Leprechauns and fairies. I have Lady Gregory’s complete works and as far I can see, the problem of abortion isn’t mentioned once. And they never seem to go to the catholic church to get married. Looks like the scriptual opposition to fairy-abortion is even smaller than the biblical one.
pipenta “She is assuming that all fornication-initiated babies were unwanted.
She is assuming that all pregnancies of married women were wanted. But just cuz you are married and are gestating, don’t mean you are happy about it.”
not to criticize you or the comment in any way. The anti-abortion and anti birth control people do not consider choice in reproduction it is all about surrendering to the will of god. Birth is up to god life is up to god. You do not get choice we are all slaves of god and are at the mercy of god, and gods overseer the church and the priest and after we submit to the authority of the father.
choice is the big sin the only choice that is good is choosing god all others are less good.
the religions of the mid east are slave religions!
uncle frogy
GCSE grade A+ “Stating the bleedin’ obvious.”
The Vatican’s relationship to the Republic of Ireland resembles the relationship of Ophiocordyceps unilateralis to carpenter ants
Really, I think we need to be intellectually honest about what Ms Mulherin said and meant; otherwise, much of our criticism risks being misplaced, and can be waved away as a strawman. Obviously Ms Malherin knows that babies are created as a result of penises ejaculating in vaginas.
What she meant:
Of the n unwanted pregnancies that occur in Ireland each year, the most common cause thereof is sex between people who are not married to each other. Unwanted pregnancies occur in Ireland under other circumstances as well, but she doesn’t care about those because she can’t criticize them.
This is equivalent (by Ms. Mulherin’s religiously-motivated standards), not to “driving was the single greatest cause of auto accidents in all of Ireland”, but to “driving while intoxicated was the single greatest cause of auto accidents in all of Ireland”.
(Whether her statement is factually accurate doesn’t matter, though, since it’s not actually relevant. But we shouldn’t misinterpret her.)
Dude, it’s called a joke…
Do you know this thing called humor? People make jokes and ridicule stupid ideas to be funny. We know both what she said and what she meant, it doesn’t make it any less stupid, judgmental religious bullshit that should be ridiculed.
Intellectually honest, yes, but we need to be accurate as well. The word “fornication” does not mean “sex between unmarried people”, but “the sin of sex between unmarried people” in the context in which it was used, in general use in the country where it was used, and in the mind of the person who used it in these statements (she has since released several more statements which clarify what she was trying to say, and it was indeed specifically meant to signify “the sin of sex between unmarried people”).
The problem here is not that a TD doesn’t know where babies come from or some other gleeful tabloid headline. The problem is far darker – it is that this was a debate on a bill to amend Irish law to permit abortions in cases where they were medically necessary for the health of the mother and where there was no hope of the fetus surviving to term (Edwards Syndrome, Patau Syndrome and Anencephaly were three specific conditions mentioned in testimony to TDs and Senators by families who’d endured our medical system in these kinds of cases – and there’s another news story in the press at the moment about a Senator who alleged that these families were doing so to play some sort of political game). At present these kind of abortions are not legal in Ireland (ectopic pregnancies however, can be aborted, in yet another illogical quirk of Irish law that everyone opposed to abortions seems to turn a blind eye to).
This was a debate on amending a law which the European Court of Human Rights has in effect ordered Ireland to amend because it is inhumane, a law that applies to people who are already experiencing intense mental stress and anguish because a pregnancy has gone horribly wrong, and which then requires them to carry that pregnancy to term regardless of medical concerns for the mother’s physical or mental health.
The original order stemmed from the appeals in the “X” case, where a child was raped by a neighbour and became pregnant, her parents were taking her to the UK for an abortion and the father called the Gardai to find if the fetal tissue would help convict the rapist – the attorney general then prevented her from going to the UK because abortion is illegal in Ireland (the wikipedia article on the case is a reasonable summary). This is how perverse the law on abortion is in Ireland.
That debate (and the overall debate on this topic) is one of the worse places I can think of to deliberately try to introduce religion and sin into the discussion. It was inhumane and reprehensible to do so in my honest opinion, and I think it’s deeply questionable behaviour from a legislator. So if we’re going to be intellectually honest about her intent, let’s be intellectually accurate about the problem with that intent!
@49 – oh, I completely concede the point you’re making, she’s a bible-thumping idiot, and I didn’t intend to imply otherwise.