Mary Kenny
“how can we demand ‘rights’ from nature?”, questions Mary Kenny
Many campaigners aiming to dismantle the Eighth (Life Equality) Amendment to the Irish Constitution – protecting human life in utero – now march under the banner of “reproductive rights”.
It sounds such a simple demand: who wouldn’t allow parents their “reproductive rights”? But how complex such “rights” turn out to be – as illustrated by a current case before the British courts.
A young single woman, aged 28, sadly died of cancer. But before the onset of her final illness, she took the precaution of having her reproductive eggs frozen for future use. On her deathbed, it seems, this young woman told her own mother that she wanted her – the mother – to have the ova fertilised and implanted, and carried to term as a pregnancy.
The mother of the dead girl – who cannot be named for legal reasons, but is said to be aged 59 – has applied to the court of appeal for permission to release the eggs, so that she may take them to the US and have them fertilised via donor sperm. The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority had previously refused permission, but there is a chance that the court of appeal will overturn this ruling.
The 59-year-old mother, who would give birth to her own grandchild (or grandchildren) if her plan succeeds, affirms that it is her “reproductive right”, as well as her daughter’s dying wish, to embark on such a pregnancy. She says that her daughter regarded her eggs as “living entities in limbo waiting to be born”.
This is just one scenario arising from ever-advancing techniques now known as ART – “assisted reproductive technology”. ART covers everything from surrogates for gay couples to IVF to prisoners who are not in a position to procreate under the usual conditions – the European Convention on Human Rights guarantees this under Article 8 on respect for family life.
We are surely into judgement-of-Solomon territory here. On the one hand, how can we demand ‘rights’ from nature? On the other, a dying woman who regards her ova as “living entities” has implicitly perceived that there is something sacred about human life. It is not just ‘biological matter’.
Blowing your own trumpet
I’m not a party political person, but I was sad to see that Jimmy Deenihan, the Fine Gael TD for North-West Kerry, lost his seat after a protracted series of recounts. He seems a thoroughly decent man: a veteran GAA sporting champion who, when he wrote an autobiography, donated all the sales to reviving the Lartigue railway in North Kerry.
He has been a stalwart supporter of Listowel Writers’ Week and he had imaginative ambitions to further the arts in the coalition Government, though I think ministers for the arts are – in most legislatures – rather squashed down by budgetary considerations.
Modest
Mr Deenihan’s personal lifestyle remained modest, and he never claimed flashy expenses during his tenure as a minister.
He is similarly modest about his own achievements. Few people know that he is a scholar of 18th Century Gaelic poetry.
Maybe modesty isn’t always an advantage in politics. Maybe you have to blow your own trumpet rather ostentatiously. But if life can take a turn for the better in the 60s – he is 63 – there could be plenty of new opportunities for this admirable Kerryman.
Older people are among the happiest
It’s cheering to think that on average, people’s feelings of well-being increase after the age of 60.
A cohort of individuals born in 1946 have been closely followed by the British National Survey of Health and Development, and this study has found that people in their late 60s and 70s are among the happiest, most content and least anxious groups in society.
This is consoling to older people who sometimes feel marginalised in society today – technology seems to change at such a bewildering rate, and so many core values they grew up with seem to be so lightly overturned. You often hear older people say that we live in a culture that ‘worships youth’.
Actually, I think society has always worshipped youth, to some degree. The ancient Greeks certainly did. Young people have the monopoly on beauty.
But what older people sometimes say is that their accumulated experience seems to count for little.
Some of us must face the fact that we are being repaid in our own coin. Didn’t we tell our own mothers, back in the day: “Get with-it, Ma! Your old-fashioned ideas are so out of date!”
And yet quite evidently many oldsters do indeed achieve a level of contentment, which I think is much helped by a kind of spiritual acceptance – and a loss of covetousness. We all hope for an adequate material standard of living, but we’re glad to admit that we don’t respond to the ‘must have’ urgings of consumerism any more. Latest fashion? Not necessarily. State-of-the-art kitchen? Does it really matter?