May 17, 2013
Letters to the Editor,
The Boston Globe
P. O. Box 55819
Boston, MA 02205-5819
To the Editor:
In his crude effort to revile us, Kevin Cullen was so busy hurling school yard insults and sophomoric invectives that he omitted a few salient facts about Prime Minister Enda Kenny and Ireland’s abortion laws, the core issues in the BC commencement controversy, (O’Malley lost me on this, 5/14/2013).
Cullen, with audacious revisionism, repeatedly refers to to a supreme court decision which he alleges is forcing the hand of an otherwise pro-life Enda Kenny to loosen Ireland’s prohibition on abortion. What he does not mention is that decision was rendered on March 5, 1992 — 21 years ago. The notion that an unoffending Kenny is under some imminent compulsion depriving him of all discretion is meretricious.
The reality is that Kenny, who was elected on a promise not to change abortion laws, is making a political pay-off to his coalition partners in the Labor Party, who want legalized abortion in Ireland.
Cullen also invents out of whole cloth the unsupported charge that women in Ireland have been dying because of abortion laws. Ireland has one of the world’s lowest maternal mortality rates, and abortion was never an issue until the tragic Savita Halappanavar case, whose death, according to the inquest, was caused by medical misdiagnosis.
Kevin Cullen castigates pro-life critics of Enda Kenny as zealots, but none of the groups protesting Kenny’s appearance at Boston College have resorted to the sort of abusive language or demeaning mockery which characterised Cullen’s column. It was a demagogic diatribe better suited to the airwaves of talk radio than the metro pages of New England’s leading newspaper.
Cullen was right about one thing. In too many cases in the past, the Church failed to stop the molestation of children. It is a pity, therefore, that Cullen seems to have no understanding of those who want to stop the killing of children before they are born.
Sincerely,
C. J. Doyle
Executive Director
Catholic Action League of Massachusetts
35 Montclair Avenue
Boston, MA 02132
(781) 251-9739
CATHOLICACTIONLEAGUE [at] GMAIL [dot] COM
Attention: Matt Bernstein
