Category: Current Affairs (Page 5 of 6)

I don’t yet fully know how I feel about a rape victim being forced to continue with a pregnancy until a caesarean birth was imposed. That this victim of rape, pregnancy and birth was abused by legislation I supported, makes sorting out my feelings that bit more difficult.

During the fraught passage of the Protection of Life During Pregnancy Bill, I opined that no one with suicidal thoughts should go near this legislation. What I failed to understand, was that poor women, girls in the care of the State and those mired in the asylum-seeking system, would have no choice but subject themselves to the vicious clauses of this law. A law I supported.

Now that this glaring inadequacy has been revealed in its nasty imposition, I am left hoping that this government, this government which I support, will do something. I am left hoping that a class of men and women, defined by cowardice and an aversion to controversy, will ameliorate the fully realised implications of this law.

It is not that this law denies choice, it is that this law only denies choice to the poorest and most vulnerable. A law I supported. Does this mean that I’m urging our politicians to finally grasp the nettle of the Eight Amendment?

No. I may as well urge a leopard to change its spots. The government I support will not risk the ire of those who now applaud forced pregnancies. I can understand why. It will only lose votes in this. Principles are of no use in opposition or worse, when one is without a seat.

But there is a way to demonstrate some kind of recognisable morality, while maintaining the sick practice of out-sourcing Irish abortions to the UK, but that also keeps the forced births brigade almost quiescent. All this government must do, this government I support, is pass legislation which recognises and ensures all women, whatever their circumstances, financial, legal, nationality, mental state or age, have an equal right to access reproductive services in the UK.

There will be dramatic consequences to this I know. Children accompanied by carers, women in handcuffs, women being means-tested, all accessing abortion paid for by Irish taxpayers. It’ll mean expediting all requests by asylum-seekers to prevent the risk of forced births. It might even go as far as requiring the State to purchase a clinic in the UK, for the sole purpose of providing abortions for women being supported by this State.

I would prefer living in a reality where our politicians thought to ask the people their opinion on the Eighth Amendment. I would support asking that question. I just don’t see it happening before more women are forced to continue with unwanted pregnancies for no other reason than a lack of funds or the freedom travel routinely between EU States.

In the absence of principle and backbone, I would be more than happy to support our politicians throwing money at this problem. It is a temporary solution (though politicians may think otherwise), but it is at least more realistic, for now.

Ever since Tuam, the overnight sensation that took 40 years to break, broke there have been calls for investigations and enquiries. Making me wonder, to what end? I’m not suggesting we leave the past in the past. Far from it. I just want to know what it is we want here?

Do we want an investigation to merely compile a list of all those survivors (and their descendants?) who must get compensation? Would we be looking for reasons why our parents, grandparents and great-grandparents appeared to hate sex so much? Or was it women they hated? Do we hope to discover even more incidents of Roman Catholic amorality? Will we finally know how little the State cares for the poor? Are we looking for reassurance that we are better people now than we were then? Do we think if we just know everything that happened, we can be certain to not repeat those mistakes? Or is it merely a macabre need to know all about those particular baby bones in Tuam.

I’ll be honest, my interest is mostly Discovery Chanel, Police Procedural, Mystery Novel reading, morbid curiosity. I want a forensic pathologist or perhaps a forensic anthropologist (I don’t know what the difference is) to lead a team of experts, who will carefully retrieve, catalogue and investigate each of the bones in whatever that is in Tuam. Then I want them to work with archivists to create a broad picture of what happened in that unhappy place and put together a data base of every single person who went through the doors of that particular institution.

After that, the sociologists, historians, apologists, politicians, lawyers, bloggers and talk-show hosts can begin the task of generating interpretations and consequences. What will most likely happen (and what in fact is happening, and I say this as a wannabe columnist) is the commentary will come before the science. So much heat and noise, that we’ll have no energy, interest or resources to do the actual forensic work. For example, has a single bone been examined by a scientist? Not that I’m aware of.

I’m as guilty of this as everyone else. I’ve written one blog post on Tuam and have written 3000 words of another blogpost on the same topic and yet no one with a white coat, white wellingtons and little trowel and brush is slowly unearthing those bones.

Must everything we do in this country be half-arsed? What is the point of a Departmental paper search, or a Judicial Review or even a list of death certificates? There is a pit of possibly human remains that may date from as recently as 60 years ago and the response has been bureaucracy. No, a parody of bureaucracy.

I love pointing the finger at Roman Catholic cruelty. I get a kick out of pointing out the inherent nastiness of conservatism. I enjoy seeing wronged people given justice. I think history is vital to understanding the present. I think sociology has a lot to teach us. And I love the sound of my own voice.

But just this once, can our dim-witted State send in a few bloody experts to actually see what, and possibly who, is buried in Tuam. If not the State itself, let it invite the Discovery Channel or Time Team or the archeology Department in Trinity to do the work. I bet they’ll be a damn sight cheaper and infinitely more useful than the gravy train of an ‘official enquiry.’ Most importantly, they might actually find some truth.

It’s not easy coming to terms with mass graves. A mass grave always denotes a tragedy of some sort. Be it war, genocide, epidemic, famine, earthquake or tsunami, it takes a disaster of epic proportions for us to dispense with the individual care our species routinely pays to its dead.

In Tuam there is a mass grave of babies. The pit in which they were disposed was a septic tank.

The normal response to such a departure from common decency is shock and horror. Followed by a call for justice. Who were these monsters who would fling dead infants into a shithole, a pit already clogged with the tiny bones of hundreds of dead babies? Let these demonic creatures be named and shamed and the sick philosophy which inspired them, be enjoined to perpetual silence.

A mass grave of babies. What ravening savages could visit such wanton destruction to common decency?

That is the difficulty here. This wasn’t an invasion. This wasn’t alien. This was the work of hundreds of ordinary women. This was the work of hundreds of women who were taught a thing no one should ever be taught. They were taught to not feel empathy. Difficult to do?

People are generally not cruel to people. In World War II, the Germans didn’t gas people, they killed untermensch. In Rwanda the Hutu did not massacre people, they killed cockroaches. Christians didn’t murder people, they burned heretics. Americans didn’t wipe out people or keep people as slaves. They civilised savages and owned livestock.

In Tuam and in an unknown number of other locations, ordinary women were taught that the children in their care were other, were less. The ordinary rules of empathy and decency need not apply. As each creature died, it could be disposed of without the ritual and reverence we would give the meanest murderer.

Ordinary women. Ordinary women taking babies from other ordinary women. Throwing dead babies into pits. Ordinary people being extraordinarily callous.

How far is the journey from normal empathic responses to a vulnerable baby, to dismissing it as a farm animal, or a demon or an insect? I do not like the term ‘evil’ as it has supernatural connotations, but if I had to use it, it would be to describe that journey.
Imagine looking after babies. Ordinary, noisy, smelly, snotty, perpetually hungry babies. Then imagine if you can, the kind of teaching that would be required to make you see those children as slightly less than human. Just ‘other’ enough that their cries of illness or hunger never quite reach you as the cries of a ‘normal’ baby would. Just ‘lesser’ enough that when it dies you could dump it into a septic tank and still sleep well that night.

Now we have a mass grave filled with the tiny bones of dead babies. And I am left wondering about all those ordinary women who filled it up with infant corpses. I am left pondering that all too short journey from common decency to throwing babies into a mass grave.

Empathy is a truly wonderful quality in our species, but it’s terrifying how easily empathy can be switched off and for the mass graves to appear.

I’ve a certain sympathy for Priests but…

I worked with children in Residential Care for about ten years. I began my career around the same time that the Madonna House scandal broke. It was discovered that this institution, this refuge for those most in need of protection, was a place where the sexual abuse of children was rife. For those of us starting out in the profession of Social Care, it was a body blow to our enthusiasm and our sense of ourselves as carers and advocates for society’s most vulnerable.

It was not without some positive effects. We quickly had to rewrite the rules of engagement. No longer was it acceptable to just trust a colleague. We had to put policies and procedures in place that made the abuse of children in our care, not just unlikely, but almost impossible (almost being the operative word, nothing is foolproof).

There were some missteps. For a time we believed no child would lie about being sexually abused. When it became apparent that an emotionally damaged child was capable of using allegations of sexual abuse, we became very wary of ‘mandatory reporting.’ I’m still uncomfortable with it to be honest. Our aim became making things so safe, for both service-users and staff, that if an allegation was viewed as credible, then no obligations would be necessary. That would be a career in jeopardy, whether innocent or guilty.

This need to be safe and to be seen to be safe impacted on a great many facets of our care, the way we hugged the children (only ever side-on), how we said goodnight (one foot outside the bedroom door at all times) and even how we spoke in private with them (staff detailed to ‘inadvertently’ walk into rooms where a staff and a child were having a meeting). It was a lesson in paranoia that I learned well. So internalised that even ten years later, I am still uncomfortable around children when there are no other adults around. I even hear alarm bells watching TV programs if I see an unaccompanied adult male with children.

It is a paranoia born of negative reinforcement. The fear of losing one’s career and the dread of having an allegation hanging over your head that could not be one hundred percent disproved. To be known as a possible child-abuser, the lowest of the low. So we became very consistent in our practice. And it paid off. The children in our care were safer. The culture of insidious impunity ended.

I know I was damaged by the process, but I do not regret that. I was part of a service that was evolving. It could not aspire to perfection, but it did aspire to safety and I think it largely achieved that. Of course, like with everything, vastly increased resources (even on top of the vastly increased resources we did receive) would have made the lives of a great many children, so much better.

I embrace that damage, because it was necessary. We were undoing a culture of abuse, while caring for the victims of that abuse and simultaneously attempting to find an intellectual basis for the policies and procedures we were trying to intuitively evolve. And always, trying to create therapeutic environments in those overcrowded houses.

I lasted ten years. I’m proud of about six or seven years of that. The balance was spent unaware that I had hit the wall. If I had it all to do again, I wouldn’t. It was terrifying and emotionally scarring. And I was exposed to the depravity that lurks in our species. But it was vital work. If I live to be a hundred, I will never again be involved in such a noble task. Can there be anything as important as caring for children?

I am proud of my efforts and I am proud of my profession. I am proud, despite knowing that my profession attracts more than its fair share of men and some women whose sole purpose is to prey on children. Every profession that brings adults into contact with children, is going to be targeted by predators.

As Tom Meagher says in this wonderful piece, the perpetrators of horrible crimes are for the most part, seemingly ordinary people. High functioning individuals who blandly go about their business of destroying lives while still part of society.

The Roman Catholic Priesthood with its unnatural strictures against sex and family was obviously going to have an above average number of sexual deviants. They should not be condemned for that. I can’t condemn them for those numbers because my profession has similar numbers. Some of our sick people even had partners and children of their own.

What then is different between me and a priest? It’s a question of loyalty. There is no one in my profession, even if they are a friend of 20 years, who I wouldn’t without hesitation, throw under a bus, if I suspected or knew they had abused a child in their care. That is not some kind of professional credo. In fact it’s goes beyond a question of loyalty. It’s a duty of care. It’s a morality that always and everywhere, puts children first.

Unfortunately, the apologists for the Roman Catholic Church continually fail to understand why they are perpetually condemned for the sexual abuse of children carried out by its priests. It is not the individual abusers that are the problem. It was and is, the continued prioritisation by the Roman Catholic Church of the Roman Catholic Church over and above all other considerations. Over and above children and over the evolved morals of the twenty-first century.

I have a great deal of sympathy for the paranoid priest. He is a man I can respect. I can relate to that paranoid priest. That is a man who knows he has a job to do and that he must do it in very fraught circumstances. He will examine the policies and procedures that govern his interaction with vulnerable people. He will do all to ensure that every ‘t’ is crossed and every ‘i’ is dotted in those polices and procedures. He will ensure his parishioners are aware of the policies and procedures and he will endeavour to be very public in his adherence. Ensuring the safety of all but also ensuring the education of all. Ensuring that a standard will be set that his successors will be obliged to meet.
Thing is though, that priest no matter how conscientious, still regards himself as having the right and the duty to keep the secrets of child abusers. That pernicious arrogance, that perverted morality, makes a mockery of any child protection policies and procedures. No one would trust their child with a child abuser, that’s obvious. But how many of us would trust our children with men who do not feel obliged to bring child abusers to earthly justice?

I do not think priests should be forced to break the Confessional Seal. There are just too many people in this country who believe in the magical properties of Confession. Further, a frontal assault would just reinforce the culture of martyrhood the majority religion likes to don. We are left then, with the simple hope that this ‘perverse belief’ will in time, simply dissipate under the weight of its own ugliness.

Till then I mourn for all the children that secrecy condemns and has condemned to continued abuse and rape. I mourn for the good men who have had their sense of decency so perverted that they place a duty to their god above their duty to children. That is a wound no one has ever been made answer for.

The Constitutional Convention recently had to address the issue of marriage equality. It attracted a great deal of attention and submissions. Even I had a go. The Convention ended its deliberations by overwhelmingly voting to recommend steps be taken to facilitate full marriage equality in this country. As expected, the entire process was quickly called into question by the opponents of equality.

While they were lambasting the process for not following its recommendations, the anti-equality think-tank, The Iona Institute, was being criticised for the misuse of a study on family trends. This crass ploy has been loudly and severally commented on. Follow these links, here, here and here to read about what was attempted by Iona.

I don’t wish to add to the quality commentary already made by other bloggers. I want instead, to highlight something that Iona Director and Irish Independent columnist, David Quinn, wrote in his response to being called out for this misuse of data.

I draw your attention to these few lines;
“The available data does not allow us to say how well children raised by same-sex couples fare compared with the biological married family.
It would be invalid, therefore, and a misuse of the Child Trends paper quoted above to pretend the available research shows that children raised by same-sex couples do worse than children raised by their own married, biological parents…

And to this day it remains the case that there are no large national surveys that allows us to draw reliable conclusions about the children of same-sex couples.”

An admission, that at best the only position one can take on marriage equality, if one is to rely solely on the best available data, is one of agnosticism. A remarkable concession for someone from a conservative anti-equality organisation to make. It is a tacit admission, that adopting a homophobic stance, is not a reasoned and scientific decision, reached after much investigation, but a confessional and reactionary position, rooted in the doctrinaire homophobia of the Roman Catholic Church.

Of course this lack of evidence works both ways. Gay couples have not been around long enough, nor exist in large enough numbers, for the kind of definitive studies which get taken seriously by dry academics and disinterested policy-makers. What those of us who are in favour of marriage equality have are, positive small scale studies and a particular view of history that indicate this, is the time to embrace change.

In the liberal democracies of western Europe and the Americas, changes to how we treat the vulnerable have always been incremental and careful. And these changes have consistently had to contend with the forces of inertia, prejudice and vested interest. Fortunately progress continues to be made.

Children no longer work down mines in horrible conditions. Today, even adults working in mines are afforded a level of safety unimagined a century ago. Women have moved from chattel to being almost equal with men (they still lag behind in financial and political power and continue to lack the kind of physical autonomy men take for granted, but progress to date has been transformative).

Slavery has all but disappeared in our liberal democracies. Where it remains, it is deep underground in the criminal world. Non-whites are legally the equal to white people in every way. Economic power remains centered in white elites, but again, property to citizenship is unquestionably a dramatic advance.

We once discriminated on grounds of religion. For centuries sectarian hate scarred and scoured our lands. Today things are so much better that it is now even safe to be an atheist. Have we achieved a truly secular democracy? No. The various sects still have an inordinate amount of political clout, but step by step, they are being excluded from the lives of those who do not wish to endure their interference.

Gay people have moved from the status of criminals to the cusp of gaining full marriage rights. They suffer rates of mental ill-health and abuse above the rest of us, but increasingly the homophobes who inflict this emotional and physical distress are being faced down.

Again and again the law is changed to demonstrate our growing empathy and humanity. And again and again there are those who rail against this desire to respect the marginalised, to empower the hated, to embrace the other. No study was required to demonstrate that treating another human as property was innately disordered, that is lessened us all. No scientific data is required to show that inhumanity begets inhumanity. No statistics need be examined to show that witless prejudice risks vicious impunity.

Quinn and his ilk have been, for centuries, on the wrong side of history. The narrowness of their vision and the spite they spew is insidious because it can delay and it does wound. But the ultimate demise of this vision of hate is all but assured. He doesn’t have the science, he doesn’t have the numbers, he doesn’t even have the confessional power his Church once wielded. All he has is a desperate and an emotive clinging to a prejudice.

History will not be kind to him, but he has succeeded in one thing. I now feel sorry for him. How could I not? For he has lost.

Last week I wrote an article about Organ Donor Awareness week. A friend from the twitterverse then contacted me to share his story.  

This is the story of my sister’s organ donation. I have changed some facts so as to protect the identities of those that I love. But it’s the story from my perspective, the only one I can tell. I will refer to my sister as Anne.

Just over three years ago, one Tuesday evening my sister called me to tell me that Anne who lived in America had suffered an aneurysm and was in hospital with probable brain surgery to happen any second. None of us had any idea what this really meant but brain surgery is never going to be an appendix operation. Bear in mind, I may have some of the fine details relating to medical procedures wrong, but that’s ok, I don’t pretend to be a doctor.

We learned very quickly that effectively there was a weakness that had always been there in her brain that for some reason popped, increasing pressure in the areas around it. She had been brought to hospital and after an initial period of lucidity passed out. She never regained consciousness.

She had three operations but effectively too much damage had been done and parts of her brain had been deprived of oxygen for too long for it to hope to recover. This all happened over the space of about a week. Our family travelled within days to be with her and her family. Even before I left I knew that there was no hope of her ever coming back and that the best that we could hope for was for her to survive in a vegetative state on ventilators etc.

When I got there it was a terrible thing to see, this strong, independent woman a shell of herself. Half her head shaved and dented where they had operated and put part of her skull into her stomach cavity (to maintain blood supply should they be ever able to replace it). Unable to feed herself, surrounded by tubes and machines that go bing. Despite it all, there was laughter, knowing she wasn’t coming back there was still laughter through it all. Tears and unspeakable grief but still laughter.

When it became obvious that she could not live independently of the machinery, we all agreed that we could not possibly bring what was left of her home, to maintain her body when her personality, her “herness” was gone forever. She had said to her family that she would never want to live like that and we knew that we just had to let her go. At this point we brought up the possibility of organ donation and timelines to switching off her life support. The staff at the hospital were amazing. No avoiding any hard truths, but also full of compassion and respect. Wonderful people. From the surgeons to the orderlies, the front of house staff to the two ladies who looked after Anne 24/7, wonderful people all. Sometimes I think about these guys and the power of what they do. The strength of these people. The decency.
We met with the Organ Donor representatives who explained all the potential outcomes, what needed to happen and by when, to allow her organs to be useful to someone else. We also dealt with the hospital’s ethics committee who were wonderfully compassionate and helpful. There was paperwork and discussions and more paperwork and more ethics meetings but over a three day period the decision was made.

When the time came we all knew that when they took her off ventilation that there was a possibility that she could go into arrest immediately, within hours or it could be that weeks could pass. There was an outside possibility that her body could continue for years without support.

For her organs to be donated there was a window of one hour from the removal of ventilation to the point where the organs would have been so depleted of oxygen that they would have been rendered unusable.
We said our goodbyes and she was taken away.

We had been offered but declined two places downstairs where the organ donation team were ready, it was a small area and in my mind’s eye I could see a team of surgeons, doctors and couriers with iceboxes, ambulances outside with their engines on and across the city, potential donors and their families ready to go to surgery.
At this point, our sister was well gone. All that was her had fled. What we had was not really her and could never be again. What was her was broken. We were waiting for the inevitable. Part of me wishes that I had stayed with her until she died but there is a difference between talking about “harvesting” and witnessing it.

A representative from the Donor organisation stayed with us while her colleague had left to be on hand when Anne’s ventilator was removed and I guess we all relaxed as much as we could. However, 15 minutes after we were told that she had been taken off life support, the rep’s phone buzzed. She looked at us and told us that Anne had arrested. There was a second or so pause while it sunk in and then, release.

We knew then that she would be declared legally dead and her body operated on. I don’t dwell too much on what that must have meant. I know intellectually it’s just a corpse and of course she had already gone, her mind had already gone before her body did, but I can fully understand another view that could consider this process horrific. But, then I think of what I know now and it helps me with my grief and makes me smile and be continuously proud of my sister. Helping others even after her heart had stopped beating. Typical of her.

We stayed at the hospital, sitting in the room she had been in for nearly two weeks only with no bed, no tubes, no machines, for only another ten minutes or so. The arrangements had already been made with a local undertaker and to bring her body home even before she had died.

Both her kidneys and her liver were successfully transplanted the day Anne died. Saving three lives. Her eyes and bone marrow were also donated, but I am to this day still unsure of what happened, whether they were donated or simply used in experiments. But all to the greater good.

After the dust has settled and life does go on, as the cliche goes, I am proud of my sister, that her final act benefitted others.

So, organ donation? Tragedy happens all of the time. This was a natural one, a fault in her brain that would pop one day. I can understand that. I can put it somewhere. To lose someone to a drunk driver or an act of violence… I don’t know how anyone can cope with that. But cope they do. But, in my case, from where I sit, the tragedy that occurred to us, to lose someone so precious has turned into an occasion of happiness and pride. Knowing our loss became a gain, a rescue, a lifesaving event for at least three other families makes my heart burst with pride for my sister.

The grief, brought to the front of my mind through the action of writing this, will always be there. But it genuinely is tempered by the happiness and second chance it has brought others. I’d always carried a donor card, always believed that it was the right thing to do, to donate your organs should the unthinkable happen, but I had never expected to be involved on what I call “edge” stuff, to be right there in the middle of it.

The gift of life my sister gave does not necessarily impact the grief of some but it has worked for me. Through it all, there’s happiness that others benefitted. Maybe I bury my grief with this, maybe I mask it but I grieved terribly for her before her heart had even stopped. I know that this is not a reason to encourage donations in general as if doing “this” will assuage “that” and it’s not the reason our family chose to be involved in the donation. But it is true anyway.
I don’t believe that organs should be state property, or even that an opt out system should apply, the decision that was made in our case was and is empowering. All I would ask is that people think about it. Whatever is right for you, is right for you, but at least think about it and be comfortable with it. I don’t think less of those that don’t carry the card, download the app or tick the box on their drivers license, as long as that’s a decision that they’ve made, rather than a default setting.

Maybe one day I will meet those that have my sister’s eyes, kidneys and liver inside them. Maybe someone else looking through her eyes at me would freak me out, perhaps kidneys and liver only then. And, they’re not my sister’s anymore anyway. They are a vital part of someone else who has been given a second chance at life.

I am not superstitious or religious, nor do I believe in divine intervention one way or the other, but there’s a part of me that likes to think that before Anne was brought down to the operating theatre and we had told her to let go, that it was ok to, that she knew somewhere inside she had to let go to make a difference even though she no longer had the capacity to do so. I wish that were true and that I could know it. That she chose to let go for others.

But whatever her intention or otherwise, people live today that otherwise would not. I know very little about them, vague occupations, family statuses and locations but it is of no matter. They live.

I miss my sister terribly and always will, she was something else. You would have liked her.

My column in The Kerryman. 10 April, 2013

Just before last Christmas I had myself subjected to a series of expensive medical tests, to see how my heart was doing. Approaching 40, over weight, an only recently reformed heavy smoker and a dodgy family medical history, led to me to think it would be best to have a quick look at the engine, to see if I’d done any real damage up to that point. Fortunately I got the all clear.

By all clear, I mean the complicated algorithm into which the consultant fed all my details, said, that I have a 5% chance of a heart attack. I’d have to be over 13% to merit medication. Dodged the bullet as far as I’m concerned. Not that I’m resting on my laurels. I’m still off cigarettes, I’ve lost over 6kgs since the tests and I’m exercising more. I can confidently say, that I’m probably now at less than 5% risk of suffering a heart attack.

Does that mean I definitely won’t have a heart attack tomorrow? No. The only people who are at 0% risk, are the already deceased. The rest of us must labour on knowing, that as we get older, the chances of suffering heart disease, or any other life ending or life altering condition, is always increasing.

Ultimately that 5% figure is meaningless. We are all educated enough these days to know what we must do to lower our chances of getting heart disease. It’s boring stuff. Move around more, eat less fun foods and stop hammering into the alcohol and smokes. We can do all that but we also know, that no matter how good we are, sometimes our genes just won’t play ball.

When we eat ourselves into heart disease or when our genes let us down, we are fortunate enough to be living in an age, where medical science can do remarkable things to save people who only a decade ago, would be facing death. There are surgeries and there are medications, which can cure or alleviate. They can even replace your heart! Think on the wonder of that. They take a heart from someone else’s body and put it into your chest. And they make it beat again. Perhaps we watch so many medical dramas on TV, that the mad wonder of replacing a heart is lost to us.

The first human to human heart transplant, took place in 1967. The surgery was performed by a South African doctor, called Christiaan Barnard. That’s how recent it was. Less than 40 years ago. Only a few years before that, the first lung transplant was carried out. The first kidney transplant took place in the 50s.

There was a high mortality rate in these early surgeries because they didn’t know how to stop the patient rejecting the new organs. Once immunosuppressive medications were developed, transplants became the everyday wonder we know today.

The next step is probably going to be the ability to grow blood and organs from scratch. Imagine that. Having replacement parts grown to order. No more waiting for years for a new kidney, or watching a child die as no suitable heart can be found for transplant.

Today however, the biggest problem these modern wonder workers face, is a lack of raw materials. And by raw materials I mean us, our organs. Remember that and then have the difficult and unpleasant conversation with your family. Let them know with 100% certainty, that every part of your body that can be used to help a living person, had better be used. Or else…

(I was sent this by someone familiar with my blog. She wished to tell her story, in her own words) 

The lines are being drawn as to deserved and non deserved abortions, for some the sound of the word is enough to induce judders, others blithely refer to agendas and rights and life as if it was a straightforward procedure with set points to slot in children and love and dare I say hope into linear trajectories.

I have no hope, I lost it a while ago and have found myself searching for it in strange places, in the FAS office, on the pages of Monster, in emigration visa forms, in my child’s face. Time and time again, letter after email thanking me for my interest or informing me that I failed to meet the criteria, another day of struggling to make ends meet and the small glimmer, that 13 will be a lucky number, that this year we will escape, that poverty is just a temporary state, that you are of worth, is scuppered by a few lines in windows on the cheapest pregnancy test I could get.

I’m pregnant, I’m in a long term relationship, I love him, and I know I would love this baby, but I can’t bring a child into this. I cannot have a baby and no job, no future, no escape. I know I should have been more careful, one mistake in 7 years, part of me is thankful, a small collection of cells reminding me that life continues outside of this daily stress, that those pills I take to make life bearable and save me from the suicidal mess I was in before are not the only thing that could bring joy. I find myself sobbing, the big loud body shaking sobs that rattle your soul, although I guess I don’t have one of those considering what I’m forced to consider.

So given my situation the only option I can take, is the proverbial boat. I am deeply saddened to have to do this. This is not an easy decision and it’s made harder still by the fact the I have to leave the country, I cannot talk to me GP, I cannot talk to a lot of my friends and family about it, it is an act that nobody wants but sometimes you have to commit to.

I don’t want to have an abortion but life is too hard already, I envy friends that announce their pregnancies and many years ago wished that I could have done so with my first child, another accident, I promised myself the next time would be different, older and wiser and far more aware. I know better now. I know the costs and I cannot do it to my family unit at this time. I must have an abortion, I don’t want it on some level, but that is a selfish level, the one that knows how full the heart can become with love for a child. I find my mind fluttering between the positive and negative parts trying desperately to balance them, and I cannot. I must act, an act I know will stay with me and possibly stop me from ever having a child again, but what choice have I when there is no hope? A baby, will mean I’m stuck here, I need a job, an income, security, even a roof over my head is a dubious proposition in the next six months let alone an infant.

Know this dear reader, I am not taking this decision lightly, I am not using this as emergency contraception, I am not going to have one of these every 6 months, I am not ruining my life, I’m trying to save it, and the only thing the abortion laws in this country cause is more suffering and time because I have to get a substantial amount of money together to do this. I suppose there are some who would say I deserve to suffer because of what I must do, fear not, I do! I must give up something I would like for something I need. I need to be well, I need to be secure, then and only then can I be safe enough to have a baby.

Well I learned something new today, I learned that it is important to tell one’s doctor that one has had an abortion. Just in case. Wow! I’m trying to imagine being in a situation where I might have to tell a virtual stranger something intimate about my life, knowing there is a risk that person will condemn my actions. To be honest, I’m struggling a bit. I just can’t imagine being so vulnerable, that I might have to endure the prejudices of someone I rely on for medical care.

Being a bit of an arrogant prick probably doesn’t help me imagine that. Also, I think that being a 38 year old single man, if I hadn’t got up to some naughtiness and suffered some bleakness, my doctor would probably be concerned that I was a shut-in. I also have a job, medical insurance and a car, so if my doctor did presume to raise an eyebrow out of turn, he would immediately become my former doctor.

And today I realise how thoroughly grateful I should be, to have that level of freedom and choice. I am grateful, that through nothing but good fortune, I am not reliant on the good opinion of a medical professional. And today I am for the first time aware, that many vulnerable women, my fellow citizens, do not share that freedom.

A woman who experiences a crisis pregnancy, has to plot a very careful and circumscribed path to a resolution. A path strewn with vicious ideologues, intent on imposing their theology on all and sundry. And now I know, that advice I would have assumed to be helpful, might now be considered less than ideal. Thankfully I have never had to advise a distraught women on her options regarding a crisis pregnancy, but after today, my first question would be, do you trust your GP?

In this climate of virulent condemnation, created by a cabal of toxically self-satisfied anti-choice activists, vulnerable women are reduced to subterfuge, to nods and winks with those who are trying to support them and they are confined, in too many cases, to silence. Today we are reminded that this is no longer a satisfactory route for women who experience crisis pregnancies. Today we learned that discretion is no longer an option. Today we learned that if the men who run this country are too cowed or too in awe of their own ideas, to provide abortion services in this State, then they should at least find the grace and backbones to support women accessing services abroad and also protect them from any consequent medical unprofessionalism.

And today I am reminded to be grateful that organisations like the Irish Family Planning Association exist. Try to imagine what it would be like for women in this country without the IFPA. Now imagine the glee being felt by some who are imagining that. Then imagine that lot being in charge of your womb.

Reading ‘The Report of the Independent Child Death Review Group’ and seeing the oh so obvious reactions to it, has proven to be a rather frustrating experience. No, not frustrating, the reactions have made me sick to my stomach. I just can’t decide who appalls me more, the ignorant or the ideologues. Taken together, I can only describe the reactions as being, in general, self-indulgent buffoonery.

 If we were a truly rational society, we would impose a decade long moratorium on reproduction, so we could decide what values and science we all agree to apply to the care of our children. What values and science we all agree to pay for and to monitor and what values and science we agree to pay to have monitored. Of course, even if we were to do something that radical, I would be very surprised if what that decade long exercise in navel-gazing produced, would be very much different from what we have today.

 And what do we have today? We have a system of Child Protection based on charity i.e. alleviating and ameliorating the very worst, but essentially leaving things as they are. There is nothing wrong with that. We produce children because of animal desire and future economic need. There is no all-encompassing authority which says we must raise said children in emotional and physical luxury.

 We pay lip service to the primacy of family, because statistically, a child does best in their family. Of corse, statistically the family is also the most dangerous environment for a child. So while I’m all for putting the boot into the Catholic Church for hiding rapists, let’s not forget that their Fathers did not ‘get at’ as many children as biological parents did and do.

And therein lays the most profound fallacy about Child Protection in this country. People think it is about finding the pedophiles. If only it was that simple. In truth the greatest enemy to a child’s welfare in this country, is poverty. It is this immovable object which so confounds Social Workers and their fellow professionals in Child Protection.

It is why we are content to keep our Child Protection system as reactive, as opposed to proactive, as possible. We are not looking for grand changes. Just keep the deaths down and the media focussed elsewhere. It’s not that we are heartless, it’s more that poverty is complicated. How does one even define it? And once defined, which method best eliminates it? Can it even be eliminated? How much will this cost? Why are we spending so much money, if we are not even sure we can eliminate it?

There is talk of a Constitutional Amendment which will elevate the rights of a Child to, at least, the level of the Family. This may make it easier to get recalcitrant Judges on-side, but I seriously doubt that there will be a Constitutional Amendment which guarantees a child’s right to never witness or experience disaffection, poverty, powerlessness, expendability and expediency.

 Nor do I imagine a Constitutional Amendment will enshrine the principal that if a Public Servant fails to do their job to an agreed standard, they will be disciplined, even sacked, and their Union will facilitate this process rather than frustrate it. The ability of our State to intervene, fruitfully in the lives of our children is stymied by a lack of funding. That’s OK. Only a very small minority of Irish citizens would agree to the tax changes required to address that deficit. We do however, spend some money.

Money which this report shows was spent on incompetence, both individual and systemic. I’m not saying we should fire a bunch of Social Workers. No, I’m saying we should fire a bunch of Social Workers, Social Care Workers, Care Assistants, Doctors, Nurses, Teachers, Psychologists, Gardaí, Judges, Solicitors, Barristers, Politicians and sundry Civil Servants. Every profession in this list, makes some money due to their interaction with children. Do members of these professions routinely lose their jobs or even face serious disciplinary action because of shortcoming in their professional interactions with children? No, they don’t?

 This is not because we don’t value children. We obviously don’t value them, but even if we did value children enough to put them at the head of the resource queue, our efforts would still be in vain because we suffer from another value. The value of non-accountability. A nasty nexus of mismanagement, Union amorality, political cowardice and conflicting aims allow precious resources bleed from our Social Services, meaning that what little we do allocate for the protection of children, is further reduced.

OK, perhaps firing a few thousand losers is a bit much, a bit ideologuey. I’m not anti Public Servants, be they Social Workers or pen pushers. I’m paid from the Public Purse and for ten years I worked with children who were in Residential Care. I have a lot of sympathy for anyone who works with children. It is a dangerous, thankless, stressful and often deeply unpleasant job. Everyone who works in that area knows that in the grand scheme of things, they are merely perpetuating a system of intergenerational damage and dependency. So one must focus on the individuals or risk insanity. One must embrace each individual horror story (and please know they are horror stories) because to contemplate the vileness that one cannot rescue too many children from, is to burn out, is to ingest bitterness.

Only the mad and the naive believe we will ever spend the kind of money required to keep all children safe, happy, content and fully equipped with the emotional wherewithal to live their life to its potential. To even suggest the possibility is silly and so bedeviled with ideology that I doubt one could even get a consensus on what ‘safe’ means. As for the other three? Well, good luck with that. 

What I think we can safely agree on, is that a Social Worker should maintain records to an agreed standard or risk censure. We can agree that the death of every child should be fully investigated and statistics collated, be they in or out of the notice of the HSE. We can agree that the in camera rule may be protecting the identify of an individual child, but it is blinding the entire Child Protection field, professional and academic, to what is happening to children in the Courts.

We can agree, because it was agreed nearly 20 years ago, that any Child who comes into the Care of the State should have an individual Care Plan. A Plan that is regularly assessed by a multi-disciplinary team. We can agree, or should agree, that the Professional Standards that professions such as Social Worker and Teacher and Doctor and Judge, apply to themselves in theory, should actually be applied in practice. And we surely can agree that anyone who aspires to a management position in any of the Child Protection Professions should be able to recognise as failing, any Professional they have responsibility for. And once recognised they should be able to support and if necessary terminate their employment. The job is just too important and too poorly resourced for bloody amateurs to be continually endured.