When the X Case story broke in 1992, it sparked a months-long media frenzy in Ireland, all with the intent of opening the door to abortion and securing the right for minors to access abortion. There was the infamous Martyn Turner cartoon in The Irish Times at the time featuring a map of Ireland surrounded by barbed wire with a girl standing in the middle, next to the words: “The introduction of internment in Ireland… for 14-year-old girls”. Day and night, the media bombarded the public with reports demanding the introduction of abortion.
However, when news broke earlier this week that a minor in Ireland was recently locked in a room and forced to take abortion pills, it was met with no cartoons emblazoned across the front page of The Irish Times or indeed wall to wall media coverage. Aside from a small mention in The Irish Examiner, there was stunned silence in the media about this truly horrifying case.
Fair play at least to the Examiner for reporting on the story. But the refusal of the mainstream media in general to shout from the rooftops about the obscenity of a minor being held prisoner in a room to undergo an abortion is proof that their tears and outrage are strictly reserved for stories that serve a pro-abortion narrative.
We know that coercive abortion is not an isolated reality wherever abortion is legal. Research conducted recently by Savanta ComRes for BBC Radio 4, revealed that 15% of women in the UK (aged 18-44) said that at some point in their life they experienced pressure to go through with an abortion they didn’t want to have.
Earlier this year, in reply to a parliamentary question on telemedicine abortion from Carol Nolan TD, the HSE conceded that “meeting the woman in person increases the likelihood of the provider identifying any coercion or domestic abuse”. Despite this, the Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly has continued to defend at home telemedicine abortion and has indicated that the Government intends to allow the practice to continue.
As for the media, they appear much more preoccupied with giving cover to the pro-abortion movement than protecting the welfare of women and vulnerable children from coercive abortion. Journalism has been replaced by zealous campaigning when it comes to the abortion issue. Troublingly, that has proven to be the case once again this week.