Shame on the Irish government, on the Catholic Church, and on their apologists

I would rather not write a third consecutive post on the pernicious Catholic Church, but I write this to show solidarity with those who mourn the death of Savita Halappanavar. I don’t have much more to say that hasn’t already been said with righteous anger by PZ Myers. I can’t add anything substantial to what has been expressed by Grania Spingies. And I certainly can’t improve on Dr. Jen Gunter’s professional assessment of this tragedy.

But I will say this: if you think that the Catholic Church is innocent of Savita’s death, that the manslaughter of a young woman is a crime to be pinned on the Irish government alone, or the hospital, you are a shameful apologist for the Church. If you even dare to glibly mention how the Church doesn’t forbid abortion when the mother’s life is in danger, as if this oh-so-generous accommodation reflects the Church’s magnanimity, you only show how warped your moral reasoning is.

Let me spell it out for you: Savita’s death, and the deaths and suffering of other women like her under similar circumstances (having an abortion denied on religious grounds), would not have happened if the idea that fetuses had souls and that aborting them was a mortal sin DID. NOT. EXIST. We can thank the Holy See for such baseless, superstitious ideas, ideas that reach out far from Rome to blight the lives of people living in distant places. Like Savita, they don’t even have to be Catholic to be victims of the Church.

I will concede that the phrase “religion poisons everything” is an exaggeration. But only marginally so.




15.11.12