If the foetus has the same right to life as the mother, how come the mother’s life always comes first?
 
Wouldn’t time-and-time-about be fairer?
Over the last couple of weeks we have heard the phrase “the equal right to life of the unborn child” a hundred times, it seems, from Trinity egg-head (or unborn-chicken-head) William Binchy, the man who, back in the day, derided anybody – Gene Kerrigan comes to mind – who suggested that the courts might interpret the “pro-life” Eighth Amendment – “The State acknowledges the right to life of the unborn and, with due regard to the equal right to life of the mother etc., etc.” – to mean what the Supreme Court was eventually to say that it meant.
Others who have been banging on about the equal right to life of the foetus include Indo dimwit David Quinn, stumblebum senator Ronan Mullen, Ballymena bubble-brain Bernadette Smyth and a slew of others of the same illogical ilk. These people are either knaves or fools: invariably, having insisted on the foetus’ equal rights, they go on to declare that no woman will ever die as a result of these rights coming into conflict.
Why not? Why should it always be the foetus whose life is forfeit? Where’s the equality in that?
In practice, the idea of allowing a woman to die so that a pregnancy can be brought to full term would be regarded by anyone of minimal moral sensibility as execrable, outrageous, unthinkable. Including, as their save-the-mother mantra confirms, by the pro-lifers.
Binchy, Quinn, Mullen, Smyth, Caroline Simons, the Cardinal, the Catholic bishops etc., etc – not one of them really believes that the life of the mother and the life of the “unborn” have equal moral weight.
Their mission is about more than abortion. They are out to hold back the secular tide, ward off encroaching rationality, repel the advance of women. Bluffers, one and all.
 
It’s been confirmed that Queen Elizabeth is an interfering old bag with no respect for democracy. No surprise there.
British Cabinet papers just released show that Ministers and civil servants are required to win the consent of the Queen and/or Prince Charles for laws touching on areas including higher education, paternity pay, child maintenance and identity cards. As well, the Queen and Charles have an effective veto over any measure affecting the revenues, personal property or personal interests of the family. They decide for themselves how much taxpayers’ money they can loot from the Treasury each year.
Thus the Queen can gift her grandson and Kate Middleton a 10-bedroom, £6 million mansion at Sandringham to mark the birth of Ms. Middleton’s baby, due in July, knowing that the people will have no option but to cough up the cash.
There’s more. The Queen’s agreement had to be sought before introduction of the 2004 Civil Partnership Act.
In 1999, the Queen vetoed a Military Actions Against Iraq Bill which would have given parliament rather than the monarch the power to authorise invasion. She should be held as guilty as Blair for the bloodshed which followed.
And yet, filmmakers, rock singers, writers, sports stars, supposedly radical politicians and commentators and all manner of others have shown themselves willing in the past year to bow the head and bend the knee in homage to the frumpy parasite.
These are mainly British, of course. Not that that’s an excuse. Some of my best friends are British and they’d wring the Queen’s neck as quick as look at her. But what possible excuse can there be for the forelock-tuggers of the Republic – every mainstream newspaper editorialist, for example – who wheedle that reverence for the Royals is essential for “reconciliation” on this island?
Bollocks to that.
 
That fact that rock stars stand in line for the favour of a Royal audience is a depressing indication of the state of popular culture just 35 years after the eruption of punk.
A couple of weeks ago, Henry Rollins wondered where all the anger had gone and wished for music to offend his own generation. I know how he feels. There’s no shortage of bands around to admire for their musicianship, inventiveness, energy and wit. But where’s the outfit that channels the rage of the hordes of 10 to 20-year-olds I see gathered in surly array in areas abandoned by hope?
Where’s the 17-year-old snarling through her guitar at the bigot Pope who presides over the oppression of her sex?
Has not street-cred become an entirely abstract entity when half the acts at many a festival appear to have OBEs and suchlike suffixed to their names?

I was surprised during that flurry of interest in Mayan matters last month that nobody mentioned Tony and Cherie Blair.
During a Mexican holiday in 2001 the couple smeared mud from a sacred Mayan site over one another’s bodies while communing in a cave and then ran hand-in-hand into the ocean, allowing the cleansing waters to soak away the sacred mulch. Then Tony went back to London and got the go-head from the Queen to start the Iraq war.
Are these people mad or bad? Maybe they’re both.