An anti-abortion “activist” was found guilty of harassing the head of a Belfast clinic last month.
One of Ireland’s most prominent anti-abortion activists has been found guilty of harassing the head of Belfast’s Marie Stopes clinic.
A judge at the city’s magistrates court warned the Precious Life director Bernadette Smyth that she could face jail for her protests against the former Progressive Unionist party leader Dawn Purvis and the clinic.
The deputy district judge Chris Holmes said the campaign of harassment had been carried out “in a vicious and malicious fashion”.
Smyth was told she would have to pay compensation and would be barred from the area around the clinic on Great Victoria Street in Belfast.
The clinic has been picketed often since it opened two years ago.
In a scathing ruling, the judge said: “I want to make it absolutely clear that I do not feel it is appropriate for anyone to be stopped outside this clinic in any form, shape or fashion and questioned either as to their identity or why they are going in there and being forced to involve themselves in conversation at times when they are almost certainly going to be stressed and very possibly distressed.”
Well that’s the point, isn’t it – to make them feel worse and worse and worse.
Giving evidence in the case, Purvis said she was left frightened for her safety following two incidents.
During an exchange with protesters on 9 January this year, the clinic director said she had put her hand up and asked them to stop harassing her. Smyth was said to have replied in an exaggerated drawl: “You ain’t seen harassment yet, darling.”
Religion as hatred and malice. So pretty.
Smyth left court without making a comment, but her solicitor Aidan Carlin described the verdict as “a disappointment for Christians worldwide”.
For malicious shits, he means. I don’t believe all Christians are like his client.
Why is it that the most vile examples of a group have to make it their duty to speak for all members of their group? Seriously, no, not all Christians are anti-choice. Not even all those Christians who personally oppose abortion are anti-choice, and not even all those Christians who are anti-choice want to harass and intimidate people over it.
Yet, I bet you, if anyone criticises “Christians who harass people under the pro-life banner” they’d be the first to complain about generalisations and demonisation. I think the regressives have a handbook somewhere.
(Yay for the courts, btw.)
Athywren; Kitty Wrangler (#1):
No, but the harassers are only taking the anti-abortion position to its logical conclusion. The fundamental assumptions underlying opposition to abortion are deeply authoritarian with a strong purity-sanctity component (and this is true even for non-religious opponents of abortion – pick the arguments apart and the same quasi-religious assumptions shine through). That these assumptions dehumanise women is pretty much inevitable, because it’s a dehumanising way of thinking that downplays people as individuals with their own lives and goals, as opposed to components in some narrowly-defined grand teleological vision. So really, Smyth is different from the “respectable” anti-abortionists mainly in that she doesn’t bother to hide the ugliness of what she believes. If she wasn’t such a loathsome excuse for a human being I’d offer some grudging respect for at least being consistent in her principles.
On an unrelated note, the Progressive Unionist Party is (a) that rarest of beasts, a left-wing Unionist party, and (b) the political offshoot of the loyalist terrorist group the Ulster Volunteer Force. Purvis apparently resigned as leader (and as a member of the party) because of the ongoing failure of attempts to sever the paramilitary relationship. She also appears to be a person of principle, and a rather more admirable one than Smyth.
Iain Walker #3
In a way, yes. In particular, if someone really thinks and feels that abortion is on a par with murder, then it’s indeed sort of logical to make the next move and to justify harassing behavior as a ‘noble fight against the murderous establishment’ or at least as a ‘lesser evil’.
Sorry, but the difference still looms large to me. Somehow in the last years I have stopped valuing consistency that much. I still value it in theoretical work, but in politics? In everyday life? Less and less, I must say. Instead of praising people for their skill in drawing logical (and horrible) conclusions, I prefer to value them for shying away from some conclusions … even if the conclusions are logical and the evasive strategies rest on shaky foundations.
If your principles (perhaps the ones you were born into) logically require that you throw acid in somebody’s face, but instead of doing it you try to find excuses and loopholes, grasping at straws perhaps, defending yourself as best as you can – then and only then you have my grudging respect. Consistency? Phew!
Ariel (#4):
Well, grudging admiration for internal consistency is itself compatible with a rather less grudging admiration for basic human decency, even when the latter does involve a degree of cognitive dissonance. So I suspect we’re not particularly disagreeing on that point.
However, the thing about problematic beliefs, even if the believer normally hesitates to act on their nastier consequences, is that they remain available as motivators for (e.g.) supporting or acquiescing in lesser evils. Or indeed as potential rationales for overriding the believer’s conscience in future, given sufficient motivation. So while I agree that one shouldn’t make the perfect the enemy of the good, I’ll still hold out for decency plus consistency as being preferable to decency without. Because the former is more likely to result in, well, consistent decency.
Iain Walker:
Indeed, we are not.
I guess the difference between us – if any – is that I stopped expecting consistent decency from people (not just from Christians). It’s not so much about decency, mind you, as about consistency, which I view as a truly rare bird. In addition, it is also my impression that in most cases the relentless and consistent adherence to one’s principles (no exceptions out of the blue, no special pleadings) would make the final overall outcome worse, not better. That’s probably why I’m not a very harsh judge of inconsistency and cherry picking.
Just in case: please, treat what I wrote as a remark about *people*, not about ideals or abstract belief systems.