The sad demise of truth

According to the ancient Greek dramatist and father of tragedy Aeschylus, the first casualty of war is truth. The sentiment was voiced by Agamemnon, in the playwright’s three-part tragedy The Oresteia. Sadly, though the war has changed, the adage is as true today as it was back then – be it warring armies, as seen in the conflict in Ukraine; the war against Covid; or the war to enforce society’s rebranded values.

The latest support for the axiom is a recent vitriolic article in the Sunday Times by journalist Poppy Koronka, alleging that in the US Christian fundamentalist bigots are pushing a highly risky abortion-reversal pill, exposing women who succumb to a risk of ‘severe’ haemorrhage (https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/us-activists-pushing-unethical-and-risky-abortion-reversal-pill-2vp7g8mgh). She further alleges that they are deliberately misleading women by saying that one in ten abortions result in severe complications requiring treatment. In reality, she asserts, and according to NHS guidance, only one in 1,000 abortions will have serious side effects, while 70 in 1,000 may need secondary procedure. In sum, they are safe.

This is interesting, because following freedom of information requests made to 226 NHS Trust hospitals in 2020, it was revealed that, following taking abortion pills at home, 10,000 women suffered serious complications requiring hospital treatment. When further broken down, it was revealed that 5.9% of women required treatment because of incomplete abortions, with 3% requiring surgical evacuation of the remains, and 2.3% being treated for haemorrhages (https://percuity.blog/foi-investigation-into-medical-abortion-treatment-failure/).

So why is there such a big discrepancy, one asks? Perhaps the outcomes are different in the US? Or perhaps we should assume that the NHS Trust Hospitals to whom the requests were made deliberately falsified their returns?

Somehow neither justification appears very convincing.

The truth is, there is an ideological war being waged in society at the moment, with the liberal elite battling to overturn the ‘old’ order and what they call outdated values. As Aeschylus so memorably said, the first casualty of war is truth.

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