Rosary bawlers silence euthanasia lecturer
A disturbing new breed of Catholic activists succeeded in stopping a lecture by Prof Len Doyal at Cork University Hospital.
The professor’s attempt to give a talk about euthanasia was called off soon after it had begun, when between 20 and 50 protestors jumped to their feet and began to loudly heckle the speaker. Some chanted the rosary while others accused him of being a “Nazi” and a “murderer”. One protestor shouted threateningly in Doyal’s face.
The emeritus professor of medical ethics at Queen Mary, University of London was escorted from the premises by security staff.
He has written a letter to the president of Ireland, complaining about his treatment:
I fear that this reflects badly on your country and on the officials that stood by and watched the blatant abuse of a Constitution that so many fought and died for.
Last Thursday evening in Cork was not tragic for me, but for Ireland.
Incredibly, there are some in the Seanad who think that the mere act of talking about the issue of euthanasia is “scandalous” and “deplorable”. Sen Jim Walsh, for example:
We have had tremendous disquiet about some of the goings-on in our nursing homes where there was a strong failure by the HSE to enforce proper standards and regulations,” he said.
I am sure it (the euthanasia debate) will scare every patient in nursing homes throughout the country. It is scandalous and deplorable.
And Ireland South MEP Kathy Sinnott expressed “outrage” that the Health Service Executive had facilitated the debate in the first place.
Won’t someone put them out of their misery?
I wonder if there will be any coverage of this in our newspapers, perhaps along the lines of “how dare these protesters call OUR BOYS murderers!”
If 15-20 attention seeking idiots in Luton gets loads of coverage, shouldn’t this also deserve equally outraged coverage? Or will they completely ignore it, like they did with the 1,000 or so protesters in Northern Ireland demanding an end to the resent reprise of sectarian violence?
I would really like someone to ask these people who are anti-euthanasia and cite ‘playing god’ and ‘only god should decide when you die’ whether they would be willing to go into a hospital and switch off the life-support machines of people and all the baby incubators for them all to die because the Dr’s are ALL playing god in these cases. Without the *artificial* support they would die.
If they refused then they are being hypocrites.
Down with this sort of thing……….Ted!
I really try to avoid wishing ill upon anyone but the anti-euthanasia lot, every one of them deserves to die in agonising pain as penance for the pain that they have inflicted on others. I think it is highly significant that their strategy, in this case and in others, is to avoid the matter being discussed at all. They clearly understand that they would lose if this issue was freely and openly discussed and so they are forced to resort to tactics such as this.
Come on, I think that one was fairly predictable: he clearly didn’t know quite how backward they are over there. They only recently made contraception legal after all.
Maybe the reaon they’re bawling is they’ve already been outmanoeuvred. Take a look on the Irish Council for Bioethics site at http://www.bioethics.ie/. There’s a report from a massive consultation on living wills which is halfway to law already as far as I can tell, and which has settled many of the Irish legal questions ready for other change.
Usual shite from ‘faith groups’ amongst the many consulted, but their arguments haven’t impressed anyone who matters and things are fairly flying along quietly towards change.