out takes from the legalisation of murder in ireland

Coffee with Maisie Baines in the kitchen at Kilcullen parish centre.
She is holding forth.
"The priests aren't speaking out against abortion," she intones passionately. "I think it's a disgrace. It's their job to speak out. What's holding them back? Soon it'll be too late. They're really letting us all down. You'd think the priests would do more."
I am silent.
The necessity of a reply is obviated as the door swings open and a member of the Bridge Club bustles in seeking a tea pot.
From the corner of my eye I see that it is the mother of abortionist parliamentarian Martin Headon.
"What are you going to talk about at next week's prayer meeting  James?" continues Maisie Baines.
"I'm going to talk about the sanctity of life," I reply loudly. "I'm going to talk about how it is a crime until the end of time for anyone to kill an unborn child or to vote to legalise the killing of an unborn child, or to tell peasants that killing an unborn child is exercising control over your own body."
The parliamentarian's mother bustles out.
Maisie Baines looks at me aghast.
"That's a terrible thing to do, what you just did, terrible," she cries. "The way you just said that. That's terrible. That woman is our neighbour. You can't say that in front of Martin Headon's mother, James, you're really too much."
Her encomium to the malfeasance of mentioning the sanctity of life in front of an abortionist politician's mother went on for some time.
I let her finish.
Then I said:
"Do you see the irony here? You were complaining that priests weren't speaking up enough to defend the unborn. And now you're complaining that I'm speaking up too much when I drop the gentlest of hints in front of a politician's mother that there are consequences for a nation that willingly chooses Nazism. I mean isn't it ironic? Maisie? Maisie? Come back Maisie. Ah I didn't mean it."