Irish Papal Nuncio urges leaders to oppose new abortion laws

darao, I think he means that even though medical workers can save lives in emergencies, they shouldn't do it if it violates his sense of "life." Using medical technology to end one life to save another life would never be "progress," on his view. It would be like using a sophisticated, high-tech weapon for mass murder. He thinks that even though doctors can tell in the first trimester that a fetus is anencephalic, it would not be "progress" to abort the fetus to prevent its suffering and inevitable death. (About one in 1,000 pregnancies involve anencephaly, in which the fetus lacks all or part of the brain. You won't see "pro-lifers" carrying photos of "anencephalic monsters" at their protests outside women's health clinics.) When infants with severe defects like anencephaly are born, hospitals hide them from view until they die, slowly and often painfully. I think the papal nuncio considers such slow painful death "progress" because it preserves life as long as possible-- innocent, suffering life-- whereas using medical technology (vacuum aspiration) to prevent suffering by ending the developing life would be like high-tech murder.

What in any universe does the following statement form The Papal Nonsencio mean ... Brown cited the mass killings in Newtown, Connecticut last month when he spoke of scientific and technological advances that were “not completely identical with human progress.”

Portia , "777 " Are your readers aware of what these figures represent ? Anyway my dear your insults are so infantile ,also please spare us your bigotry ! You would not dare make such wild statements against a representative of Islam !!!

Max Tiger, the Catholic bishops of Ireland have spoken, and they will not give an inch on their insistence that the law must give "equal" protection to the "unborn" and to the pregnant woman. In general practice, not only in Savita's case, that stance means that medical workers may not perform an abortion of a fetus with a heartbeat even when they know that the miscarriage is irreversible and that the fetus cannot live. The appropriate medical treatment in such cases, the one stipulated in emergency procedures for crisis pregnancies in the USA and around the world, is abortion of the doomed fetus for the sake of the woman's survival. So you're wrong, and "Catholic teaching," incorporated in the constitution, DOES forbid the appropriate medical treatment. Only the most confused person would speak of an abortion of a four-month fetus as "induced delivery." Physicians "deliver" women of both stillborn and living infants, but not when they've been only four months in the womb. Since the nuncio opposes ANY change in the law, he DOES oppose abortion to save the life of a woman in incomplete miscarriage because Irish medical practice under the 1861 law and the constitution's article 40.3.3 does not clearly allow abortion to save a woman's life--under ANY threat, medical or suicidal.

eiriamach, You are relying on media speculation as to what happened in the Savita case. The reality is that Catholic teaching does not forbid the appropriate medical treatment for women suffering such miscarriages - the induced delivery of the child, which is not the direct killing of the foetus. The papal nuncio is referring to legislation which will allow abortion where there is no medical threat to the mother, but where the threat comes from her own hand. Abortion as a treatment for suicide ideation is baloney.

Max Tiger, please explain to me what convinces you that a four-month fetus, doomed by miscarriage to die, has, in the papal nuncio's words "the awareness of a natural moral law, which is present in a person as a fundamental sense of what is right and wrong, even before a person has any faith in God or any religious instruction or training." Then, please explain to me why the "fundamental sense of what is right and wrong" of a four-month fetus should take precedence over the "fundamental sense of what is right and wrong" of a woman who has chosen to give birth but whose life is now in jeopardy because doctors will not perform an abortion of the already-doomed four-month fetus. The papal nuncio's romantic illusion that all life, including the life of a non-viable fetus, has an equal value such that we must never deliberately end it leads to a result that many like me see as clearly immoral: the unnecessary loss of a human life. I find it impossible to believe that the nuncio's immoral demand represents, as you say, "the religious views of many people in Ireland."

Jesus did say that if anyone harms children, or causes children to be harmed, they should have a millstone tied round their necks and be cast into the deepest oceans. I haven't heard any splashes emanating from the Vatican!

Portia, darling, nobody in Ireland voted for the supreme court justices who interpreted the pro-life amendment in a way the electorate never thought of when they voted for it. Neither did any Irish person vote for members of the European Courts of Human Rights, or the government 'expert' group on abortion. The papal nuncio represent the religious views of many people in Ireland and as such his views are important.

Could the papal nuncio look through his files and retrieve the letters from parents of abused children in the Ferns dioces. These parents had written to his predecessor naming priests in the diocese who were raping Irish children. The letters of warning were sent on to ... wait for this now ... wait ... one cardinal Josef Ratzinger. What did Ratzinger do when he received these letters? Did he move to protect the children? Those questions would have been put to the nuncio's predecessor by the Murphy Commission but, unfortunately, he declined to be questioned. And the Irish Government declined to intervene.

Did any of us citizens vote for this man in a dress? No. He has a title....so what. He is entitled to an opinion but under Universal law he has no right to force it on other beings. He is a man not a wombman and will never experience pregnancy, birth and mother hood so what gives him a right to dictate to complete beings fe-males as he is only 50% whole.? Time for Eire to send the boys back to Roma and their cult members with them but here is no place for legalised child rape- mols and murder of women breeders because some man in a fish suit says so.