Abortion/ *Note* Thread Closing Shortly! ! !

lazygal

I find the arguments saying that suicide as grounds for abortion shouldn't be considered very unnerving. Its a somewhat chilling and paternalistic approach to take. The argument seems to have two main points, namely, that an abortion is not appropriate treatment for suicidal feeling as a result of an unwanted pregnancy or that women will 'fake it'. The second argument is very much implied rather than overt, and I find it grossly unsettling that it seems acceptable to argue that a medical procedure shouldn't be offered to a woman in Ireland because she's somehow faking symptoms. I find it insulting that men and women like William Binchy, Ronan Mullen, Terence Flanagan, James Bannon, Breda O'Brien, Caroline Simons and others think women like me are so hell bent on procuring an abortion we'll read up on how to fake suicidal thoughts and get around what's likely to be an incredibly restrictive law.

Given the very, very real and serious issue of suicide in this country, I'm really offended by the implied view of the people I mentioned that feeling suicidal isn't grounds for getting what could be lifesaving treatment. No one argues that people fake suicidal feelings to get other forms of treatment, yet it seems that some people think Irish women can't be trusted to not fake it.

ShooterSF

Where I find it unnerving as I have mentioned is that people want the government to ignore the rules of our republic and not allow for a constitutional right that has even been protected during direct democracy in a referendum. They want the government to impose a micro-dictatorship on the country on this issue.

lazygal

ShooterSF wrote: »

Where I find it unnerving as I have mentioned is that people want the government to ignore the rules of our republic and not allow for a constitutional right that has even been protected during direct democracy in a referendum. They want the government to impose a micro-dictatorship on the country on this issue.

Yeah, the referendum outcome on judges pay was implemented within a few months, but 20 years dealing with abortion is too rushed. :rolleyes:

Corkfeen

Had CNN on in the background and they had a woman on from the Iona institute and choice ireland(think that was name). Iona's jackpot line was 'Crossing the moral rubicon' plus that safest mother stat got repeated over and over.:rolleyes: CNN reporter looked rather dumbfounded by her........

The Black Oil

Patricia Casey from the Iona place?

Nodin

Corkfeen wrote: »

Had CNN on in the background and they had a woman on from the Iona institute and choice ireland(think that was name). Iona's jackpot line was 'Crossing the moral rubicon' plus that safest mother stat got repeated over and over.:rolleyes: CNN reporter looked raher dumbfounded by her........

'jesus...I thought only our nuts were like this...maybe its airborne now.....I hope stage two isn't flesh eating zombies'

goodie2shoes

the lulaas are rolling up their sleeves.
we're expecting some terrific action.

grab a seat and some popcorn.
it's gonna be fun!

Corkfeen

The Black Oil wrote: »

Patricia Casey from the Iona place?

Just checked, t'was Maria Steen..

Mr. CooL ICE

aloyisious wrote: »

Youth Defence on the matter, leaflet in my door.

Bah, I did the same thing and had just uploaded the images to my computer when I saw this post.

Gave Enda's details and told people to contact him and report back to YD so they can "keep an accurate log of calls". They're calling out for a synchronised bombardment of politicians' phone numbers. How rational.

GCU Flexible Demeanour

lazygal wrote: »

I find it insulting that men and women like William Binchy, Ronan Mullen, Terence Flanagan, James Bannon, Breda O'Brien, Caroline Simons and others think women like me are so hell bent on procuring an abortion we'll read up on how to fake suicidal thoughts and get around what's likely to be an incredibly restrictive law.

I'm open to pretty much any reasonable case for any level of access to abortion. I'm pragmatic on this agenda, and willing to support any compromise that people in general can accept as fairly accommodating (to the extent that it's possible) the range of views that people have on this topic. My only fundamental value is that our domestic practice should reflect our domestic realities. Instead of pregnant women in their forties taking a plane to Cardiff, where they can source a service that will test if they are likely to give birth to a child with Down Syndrome and abort before they return if that's the case.

But I really can't stomach this manufactured outrage about the perfectly obvious reality that women will spout whatever nonsense is required to be deemed eligible for an abortion on grounds of suicide. Let's be truthful with each other, just as a starting point.

Mark Hamill

GCU Flexible Demeanour wrote: »

But I really can't stomach this manufactured outrage about the perfectly obvious reality that women will spout whatever nonsense is required to be deemed eligible for an abortion on grounds of suicide.

In what way is it obvious? Do you think that its something that women just do in general, "spout whatever nonsense is required" to get what they want?

Lets just say for a second, that a woman is genuinely suicidal because they are pregnant and gets an abortion because of that. Do you think that once they get the abortion the will be, basically, kicked out or ignored by the health service, because abortion = cure for suicide?

You see, I'm trying to figure out why you think someone who claims to be suicidal because of a pregnancy, will simply be given an abortion and never re-evaluated again.

nagirrac

With all due respect, I think it is generally men "sprouting whatever nonsense is required" to "get what they want" that truthfully is the root cause of many unwanted pregnancies.

Peregrinus

Mark Hamill wrote: »

In what way is it obvious? Do you think that its something that women just do in general, "spout whatever nonsense is required" to get what they want?

Well, that’s a very pejorative way of putting it.

But, being realistic, there’s plenty of experience from abroad which suggests that, once you establish categories of abortions which are permitted and other categories which are not permitted, women who consider that they have a right to an abortion and doctors who consider that women have a right to an abortion can tend to slot themselves into the permitted categories, one way or another. We can see this fairly clearly from the UK experience, where nearly all abortions are performed under the section of the Abortion Act which permits abortions where the health risk of continuing the pregnancy exceeds the health risk of terminating it. The reality is that the great bulk of those abortions are not really motivated by any concern about health risks.

And everyone knows this. One in five British pregnancies ends in an abortion justified on the basis of the health risk. If we took that justification seriously for an instant there would be a massive outcry about what is obviously a colossal crisis in maternal health. There would be protests, Royal Commissions, constant discussion about why Britain, the home of the NHS, had a maternal health problem that would put most third-world countries to shame. But we have none of these things, because everyone knows the truth.

You can be judgmental about the dishonesty and hypocrisy involved here, but you don’t have to be judgmental about the women involved. If you take the view that a woman has a right to choose, then she is denied that right if her choice has to be acceptable to someone else before she is allowed to act on it. So if she and her doctor tacitly agree to document this abortion as one justified by a health risk, that’s simply what she has to do in order to evade an immoral and unjustified restriction on her freedom of choice. Any negative judgments we might make if we proceed on those premises are not about woman, or her doctor, but about the legislature which imposes these restrictions on her freedom of choice.

But that doesn’t make the problem go away. If, in the UK, women and their doctors exercise a certain latitude in how they characterize abortions for legal purposes, it seems reasonable to think that something similar might happen in Ireland. Recognizing this possibility doesn’t necessarily mean that you condemn the actions of the women concerned; you might support them. But the question would still remain as to whether it was a good thing to adopt an abortion law which would contain restrictions or parameters which, quite likely, would be frequently circumvented.

At the very least, I think it means that you should think carefully about what categories are, and what categories are not, practicable. It’s difficult to evade a restriction which says, e.g., that a woman may freely choose an abortion up to, say, 14 weeks. There can be a little room for manoeuvre if the pregnancy is round about 14 weeks, but not at say 20 weeks. Whereas a “mother feels suicidal” restriction strikes me as one that is more open to manipulation.

Nodin

nagirrac wrote: »

With all due respect, I think it is generally men "sprouting whatever nonsense is required" to "get what they want" that truthfully is the root cause of many unwanted pregnancies.

Do please expand on this notion.

nagirrac

Nodin wrote: »

Do please expand on this notion.

I find it interesting that some older men come up with the notion that women are not to be trusted and might "make stuff up" to get access to an abortion. The same men who likely earlier in life "make stuff up" to indulge in intimacy (in sex free Ireland remember) and played their part in consensual conceptions. Women were generally left with the consequences. I know times have changed in Ireland but it is simply amazing to me that some women could be against the right for a woman to choose to be pregnant or not, to the medically agreed point of viability.

Nodin

nagirrac wrote: »

I find it interesting that some older men come up with the notion that women are not to be trusted and might "make stuff up" to get access to an abortion. The same men who likely earlier in life "make stuff up" to indulge in intimacy (in sex free Ireland remember) and played their part in consensual conceptions. Women were generally left with the consequences. I know times have changed in Ireland but it is simply amazing to me that some women could be against the right for a woman to choose to be pregnant or not, to the medically agreed point of viability.

......so women need to be tricked into sex?

aloyisious

LordChessington wrote: »

Bah, I did the same thing and had just uploaded the images to my computer when I saw this post.

Gave Enda's details and told people to contact him and report back to YD so they can "keep an accurate log of calls". They're calling out for a synchronised bombardment of politicians' phone numbers. How rational.

Yeah, they want us to contact our local TD and urge him/her to vote against the Govt, yet seem to think (according to the leaflet) that Enda
is the TD that all of us must contact as the local TD. :rolleyes:

eviltwin

lazygal wrote: »

I find the arguments saying that suicide as grounds for abortion shouldn't be considered very unnerving. Its a somewhat chilling and paternalistic approach to take. The argument seems to have two main points, namely, that an abortion is not appropriate treatment for suicidal feeling as a result of an unwanted pregnancy or that women will 'fake it'. The second argument is very much implied rather than overt, and I find it grossly unsettling that it seems acceptable to argue that a medical procedure shouldn't be offered to a woman in Ireland because she's somehow faking symptoms. I find it insulting that men and women like William Binchy, Ronan Mullen, Terence Flanagan, James Bannon, Breda O'Brien, Caroline Simons and others think women like me are so hell bent on procuring an abortion we'll read up on how to fake suicidal thoughts and get around what's likely to be an incredibly restrictive law.

Given the very, very real and serious issue of suicide in this country, I'm really offended by the implied view of the people I mentioned that feeling suicidal isn't grounds for getting what could be lifesaving treatment. No one argues that people fake suicidal feelings to get other forms of treatment, yet it seems that some people think Irish women can't be trusted to not fake it.

The attitude of those people is that those women who want an abortion are so immoral they will think nothing of making up a story to procure an abortion. It really does show how black and white their thinking is, they must assume that women who choose to have abortions are a certain type, that they are nasty characters who will lie, abuse the system etc.

nagirrac

Nodin wrote: »

......so women need to be tricked into sex?

not nowadays silly, the law in Ireland is based on when women were second class citizens.. why would any woman today want to remain so?

Praeglacialis

Sorry in advance for the slow reply!

Peregrinus wrote: »

If I understand you correctly, we should have an abortion law which affirms a woman’s right to choose, but we should restrict her access to information that we fear might lead her to make a choice of which we would disapprove.

I don’t think this is a defensible position. First, if our present abortion law is criticized for being hypocritical, isn’t this law much more hypocritical? We would be claiming to give women a free choice, while doing our damnedest to impede the practical exercise of that choice. Secondly, if we are morally entitled to prevent a woman from choosing to abort for reasons of which we disapprove, isn’t the direct and most effective way to achieve this to prohibit the abortion? It seems to me that trying to do this by limiting her access to information (a) is less effective, because we can’t prevent her getting the information outside the country, and (b) imposes an unreasonable and unnecessary burden on people who would like access to the information for reasons other than to inform a choice about abortion.

In fact, I can’t think of any reason why it would be a good idea to do things this way. If you think we’re entitled to impede “designer baby” abortions, then ban them. Why not?

Well, I reckon that banning “designer baby” abortions would be impossible because if information available for certain aryanesque/sex traits were available in the ''on request'' zone of abortions then there would be no way to really know if the woman was having the abortion for which reasons. You would have to ban scanning for such traits at this ''on request'' stage which is akin to the same thing.

I don't think it's unrealistic or bizarre to ban revealing certain traits to the parents. It's quite the same as banning certain forms of genetic manipulation on an embryo. This situation I'm postulating is probably unlikely to become a major issue, or even AN issue, hopefully. If it does then it will be dealt with I'm sure. Britain and other countries dealing with the same problem might all opt for the same solution, not revealing aryanesque traits thus potentially dealing with the problem. This is getting to a point of high hypothetical. And beyond that, my point about which traits should be considered fit for deletion (diseases etc) falls somewhat into the realm of a different sort of ethics. [Might start a new philosophy thread.]

Peregrinus wrote: »

So aborting a baby because it’s a girl doesn’t come within the class of “designer babies”, and you’re fine with it? Even if so, you can see that others might not be fine with it, and that their not-being-fine need not be theologically grounded, can’t you?

Oh no, it does. You've taken me up wrong on that.

Peregrinus wrote: »

Nitpick: Down Syndrome isn’t inherited, so aborting where Down is detected does not result in Down being “eliminated”. Whether or not you abort this case of Down has no implications for the number of future cases that will arise. Whereas if you systematically abort cases of inheritable diseases like Huntingdon’s, say, over time you will significantly reduce the incidence - indeed, all but eliminate - the incidence of Huntingdon’s in the population. (In the 1970s Germany was remarkably free of certain inherited diseases, and we know why that was, don’t we?)

It may not (will not) decrease their numbers through genetic means. It will still effect their overall population. As in, less aborted down syndrome foetuses will result in less people with down syndrome, per generation.

Peregrinus wrote: »

But this doesn’t necessarily amount to a moral justification for the abortion. You can easily imagine advocates for people with Down, or for people with Huntingdon’s, or for the disabled generally, opposing the suggestion that such a diagnosis ought to be grounds for an abortion. And you don’t have to agree with their stance to see that it need not be theologically-based (which, of course, is the question you first raised).

I think my original point was to exclude religious based arguments from responses to my post. I don't find them particularly interesting.

Obliq

Before it all kicks off about the other men telling us what to think today, here's a VERY interesting, informative and powerful piece by Michael Nugent with some revealing writing about the Life Institute. Enjoy

http://www.michaelnugent.com/2012/12/19/%E2%80%98the-men-have-shown-great-interest-and-support%E2%80%99-schittl-scheidler-sullivan-and-the-wacky-world-of-the-irish-american-anti-choice-movement/

"Schittl, Scheidler and Sullivan would also make excellent dark-comedy characters, if only they could remain within their own fantasy worlds, and not interfere with the real world where real people live. Schittl is an Irish American immigrant then emigrant, who promotes anti-choice propaganda to Irish Americans by citing the leaders of the 1916 Easter Rising. Scheidler is an anti-choice activist and author, one of whose books I had banned from the Catholic bookshop Veritas twenty years ago. And Sullivan is a board member of Life House Ireland who, without any irony, believes that Ireland is a key to the re-evangelization of the world."

lazygal

eviltwin wrote: »

The attitude of those people is that those women who want an abortion are so immoral they will think nothing of making up a story to procure an abortion. It really does show how black and white their thinking is, they must assume that women who choose to have abortions are a certain type, that they are nasty characters who will lie, abuse the system etc.

Yeah, its like women SHOULD have to have difficulties in deciding on abortion. Its almost a hangover of the churching of women post pregnancy - like they can't make you feel bad AFTER forcing you to undergo pregnancy, so they'll sure as hell make you go through an agonizing decision making process before you decide what to do.

As I said, pregnancy has made me more pro choice than I was before because I know how bloody hard it is to gestate a foetus for nine months.

Bannasidhe

lazygal wrote: »

Yeah, its like women SHOULD have to have difficulties in deciding on abortion. Its almost a hangover of the churching of women post pregnancy - like they can't make you feel bad AFTER forcing you to undergo pregnancy, so they'll sure as hell make you go through an agonizing decision making process before you decide what to do.

As I said, pregnancy has made me more pro choice than I was before because I know how bloody hard it is to gestate a foetus for nine months.

There is also still a perceptible undercurrent that women should feel bad for having sex - the durty hoors - sex is for married women and only so they can have babies. If they have sex for pleasure or...outside the sanctity of marriage :eek:...then they cannot complain if they have to pay the price. It's their own fault like...

eviltwin

I heard a woman from the Iona Institute on the radio last night saying exactly what Lazygal said, women will lie and exploit suicide to get an abortion. Of all the talk in recent months that is the one thing that upset me the most. Its just like Bannasidhe said, there is still this idea that when it comes to sex and abortion there are the "nice" girls and then their are the other ones, the ones who will have sex outside marriage, have babies to get houses, have abortions.... its so bloody judgemental and narrowminded and its what we have to try and end, this idea that its a certain type of woman who will look for an abortion. :mad:

OldNotWIse

Sarky wrote: »

It's all very well to rise above it, but it's still wrong. You can use emotional appeal to make anything popular even if it's completely flawed, and Youth Defence et al. do exactly that, and I think they're despicable for it.

"Wrong" is completely subjective. It's legal, which is why your neighbour is doing it and getting away with it. I think life is far too short to get het up about what someone else decides to put on their car tbh. I wish that was my only problem!

lazygal

eviltwin wrote: »

I heard a woman from the Iona Institute on the radio last night saying exactly what Lazygal said, women will lie and exploit suicide to get an abortion. Of all the talk in recent months that is the one thing that upset me the most. Its just like Bannasidhe said, there is still this idea that when it comes to sex and abortion there are the "nice" girls and then their are the other ones, the ones who will have sex outside marriage, have babies to get houses, have abortions.... its so bloody judgemental and narrowminded and its what we have to try and end, this idea that its a certain type of woman who will look for an abortion. :mad:

That was Breda O'Brien. She's incredibly judgmental and self rightious, a real whiff of 'I'll put you in your place, you little slut' about her. I shudder to think how she judges any of her pupils who get pregnant or those who come from non Catholic standard issue families.

eviltwin

lazygal wrote: »

That was Breda O'Brien. She's incredibly judgmental and self rightious, a real whiff of 'I'll put you in your place, you little slut' about her. I shudder to think how she judges any of her pupils who get pregnant or those who come from non Catholic standard issue families.

That was her, is that woman really a teacher ?! :eek:

lazygal

eviltwin wrote: »

That was her, is that woman really a teacher ?! :eek:

Yes, she is. Horrifying isn't it? Imagine being 14 years old, pregnant as the result of rape by a neighbour and feeling suicidal as a result, and being in one of her classes.

Hotblack Desiato

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2012/1219/breaking1.html

Archbishops urge free vote on abortion amid tensions

The four Catholic Archbishops last night called for TDs to be given a free vote on the Government’s proposed legislation on abortion which will be introduced next year.

In a strongly worded statement, they encouraged “all to pray that our public representatives will be given the wisdom and courage to do what is right”.

The archbishops said “public representatives must consider the profound moral questions that arise” in relation to the decision “by the Government to legislate for abortion”.

Ironic that the representatives of a theocratic dictatorship which tolerates no dissent or free expression, want TDs to be allowed vote according to their conscience.
When are catholics going to get a vote on RCC policy?

Bannasidhe

ninja900 wrote: »

When are catholics going to get a vote on RCC policy?

Ah now - we know they wouldn't understand what the vote was really about and would really be voting about septic tanks or the HHC or bailouts or some such worldly nonsense. Or they would vote the wrong way and have to do it again until they get it right.
Better off just telling 'em...saves time (and souls )