Abortion/ *Note* Thread Closing Shortly! ! !

Corkfeen

Ya but unfortunately I'd say it will be brought to the table again.

Bannasidhe

Corkfeen wrote: »

Meanwhile in Texas, Republicans attempt to make abortions highly inaccessible.
http://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/us/texas-senator-speaks-for-11-hours-in-abortion-law-filibuster-1.1443099

I suspect we'd struggle to find a TD that could speak for 1 hour.....

unless 'ummmm', 'ahhhhhh', 'it was the previous gubbermint what did it' '*insert reference to IRA here*' count then they can go for days.

jill_valentine

I was following the filibuster all night, and it was incredible stuff. Grown ass adults reduced to watching a woman for 13 hours to try and catch her out if she leaned on something. I would love to say it's proof of the lunacy of American political systems - but then again, Davis herself is part of that system and she was magnificent. Kirk Watson is part of that system and he lent an almighty 11th hour save. And the crowd who stepped in to cheer for ten straight minutes just to run out the clock, they're part of that system too. So maybe it's not all bad.

It shouldn't have come to that, and obviously it's not the war, but it was stirring stuff that's hard not to be heartened by. "I will not yield" deserves to make it onto bumpers and t shirts all over North America.

Corkfeen

I was actually thinking that the Dáíl is a bit like a constant filibuster. TDs discussing absolutely nothing and probably reaching no conclusion on anything by the end of the year. :pac:

UDP

jill_valentine wrote: »

I was following the filibuster all night, and it was incredible stuff. Grown ass adults reduced to watching a woman for 13 hours to try and catch her out if she leaned on something. I would love to say it's proof of the lunacy of American political systems - but then again, Davis herself is part of that system and she was magnificent. Kirk Watson is part of that system and he lent an almighty 11th hour save. And the crowd who stepped in to cheer for ten straight minutes just to run out the clock, they're part of that system too. So maybe it's not all bad.

It shouldn't have come to that, and obviously it's not the war, but it was stirring stuff that's hard not to be heartened by. "I will not yield" deserves to make it onto bumpers and t shirts all over North America.

The filibuster is a terrible tool that has no place in a democracy. Could you imagine in Ireland if it were allowed. An idiot such as Mattie McGrath could block legislation that the majority of the Irish people support and have supported in two referenda.

Bannasidhe

UDP wrote: »

The filibuster is a terrible tool that has no place in a democracy. Could you imagine in Ireland if it were allowed. An idiot such as Mattie McGrath could block legislation that the majority of the Irish people support and have supported in two referenda.

I doubt if any of the current crop have the stamina...or the ability.
Bet Michael D could have done it.

Galvasean

For the unenlightened (ie: me) what is this Fillibuster and how does it work?

Delirium

Galvasean wrote: »

For the unenlightened (ie: me) what is this Fillibuster and how does it work?

A person talks for as long as possible to prevent a vote. AFAIK, you can't take a break/have some water/sit once you've started otherwise you're finished and the vote can go ahead.

Could be totally wrong as my knowledge is based entirely on an episode of West Wing where it happened :pac:

Quatermain

Galvasean wrote: »

For the unenlightened (ie: me) what is this Fillibuster and how does it work?

A means of extending a debate by just constantly yammering away for several straight hours, since nobody can really tell you to shut up and sit down. It means that the vote can be delayed or even prevented entirely.

Funny enough, it has its roots in the Spanish word "filibustero", meaning a pirate or brigand.

lazygal

Different rules in the Irish parliament as there's limits on speaking time, especially on bills. Its not a bad thing.

Galvasean

koth wrote: »

A person talks for as long as possible to prevent a vote. AFAIK, you can't take a break/have some water/sit once you've started otherwise you're finished and the vote can go ahead.

Could be totally wrong as my knowledge is based entirely on an episode of West Wing where it happened :pac:

Quatermain wrote: »

A means of extending a debate by just constantly yammering away for several straight hours, since nobody can really tell you to shut up and sit down. It means that the vote can be delayed or even prevented entirely.

Funny enough, it has its roots in the Spanish word "filibustero", meaning a pirate or brigand.

Sounds absolutely retarded...

Quatermain

Galvasean wrote: »

Sounds absolutely retarded...

Welcome to American politics, where a man who tried to denounce slavery once got the crap beaten out of him in the middle of Congress by a fella with a cane. A damned dirty business.

marienbad

Quatermain wrote: »

Welcome to American politics, where a man who tried to denounce slavery once got the crap beaten out of him in the middle of Congress by a fella with a cane. A damned dirty business.

whereas in our case we just beat them up in the corridors as for example when opposing CJH.

jill_valentine

Galvasean wrote: »

For the unenlightened (ie: me) what is this Fillibuster and how does it work?

Basically, the bill needed to go to Rick Perry's desk by midnight last night. If it didn't meet that deadline, it didn't go into law, the process expired and they'd have to start from scratch if they wanted to make it happen again.

So Davis had to keep the floor until that time to make sure it did. To do that, she had to meet a ton of conditions - she had to speak continuously, couldn't eat or drink, couldn't have a bathroom break, couldn't stop talking and had to stay on topic - and if she slipped up more than three times, that's it, game over. She couldn't sit, or even lean on anything, in the meantime, so it's a physical achievement as much as anything.

She managed to make it until 11 hours in when the Republicans made the third and final objection which was sustained - they insisted that talking about previous sonogram legislation was off topic, which was pretty special. The other Dems stepped up and made as many semantic enquires as they could to try and close the distance, and the crowd cheered for the last few minutes to delay the final vote. The timestamp on the vote had some decidedly shady shenanigans about it, but in the end, they'd managed it.


I'd say it's more like a loophole than a mechanism, tbh. It would be horrible in Ireland, and I agree that it's silly in itself, but I'm hugely impressed by Davis's guts and steel, especially given that the VRA decision on the same day means she's almost certainly going to lose her seat. It's a ridiculous way to make law, but the consequences if the bill had gone through would have been extremely grim, and even if all this has managed to do is delay it, it's brought some focus on a massive shift that was going to sneak in under the radar otherwise. It will also be interesting to see if the apparent timestamp tampering will come to anything.

Either way, it made for some incredible drama. It's going to be a humdinger of a movie some day.

Richard Bingham

Corkfeen wrote: »

the country voted on it so why not respect the choice that the public made. It shows no respect for the democratic process whatsoever.

I have heard this argument quite a lot and I'll explain what my difficulty is with it.

The situation faced by the Judges in the X case was at the extreme end of the scale and any reasonable person would have been sympathetic to the circumstances of the girl at the centre of the case however this, in my view, is not a basis for legislation. Had the Supreme Court been asked to rule on a different set of circumstances more akin to the majority of cases which the proposed legislation will apply to, I am confident the ruling would have been very different. Likewise I believe that the referenda which followed the X case were influenced by the case and were considered by voters in the context of it. Had the X case never occurred or had it been possible to frame the proposed amendments to the constitution without the background which the X case provided, I believe that the result may well have been different. If a motorist breaks the speed limit to get a critically ill person to hospital, it is dealt with as an exception – we don’t use the exceptional case to throw out a very good law which is for the good of the majority. If the proposed legislation was only going to apply to minors who had been raped I would have less objection but this is not the case. It would be possible to justify a lot of legislative changes using extreme cases but extreme cases make for bad law and this bill is a perfect example.

I'm not suggesting that it was deliberate or that there was any conspiracy at all, it was just the way that events unfolded but have a think about the following for a minute. If for some unknown reason you wanted to introduce abortion to a catholic country (lets pretend you own a chain of abortion clinics and you want to expand and the country is an island in the middle of the Pacific). An ideal way of doing it which might allow you to get it in by stealth would be to set up an extreme event which you expect religious people will be sympathetic to. Have a court case (lets call it the Z case). Get a favourable ruling in that as could be expected. Have a couple of referenda on some of the core issues with the details of the Z case firmly in the background and then seek to pass legislation which codifies how requests for abortions will be decided based on the Z case even though the legislation will apply to cases which bear little resemblance to the Z case.

I want to stress again that I don't think there was any conspiracy, its just the way the cards fell. The point I'm making is that I don't think the sequence of events which has led us to where we are is a good basis for making law.

I also think (and I believe that many pro choice people agree) that application of this legislation will be fraught with difficulty. That's bad law.

Corkfeen

Richard, the simple fact is the public are still in favour of legislating for the suicide clause. I've said this many times but I'll say it again. The government's legislation is very much so the bare minimum which they are required under the constitution to legislate for.

Feck, even in the legislation itself they try to appease the pro-life crowd by basically treating women like criminals with a potential sentence of fourteen years in prison for one who obtains an abortion illegally.

The pro-life crowd would have objected to the legislation, no matter what. Up until now, we have failed to legislate in any way which strikes me as the most the inadequate idea of law imaginable.

marienbad

Richard Bingham wrote: »

I have heard this argument quite a lot and I'll explain what my difficulty is with it.

The situation faced by the Judges in the X case was at the extreme end of the scale and any reasonable person would have been sympathetic to the circumstances of the girl at the centre of the case however this, in my view, is not a basis for legislation. Had the Supreme Court been asked to rule on a different set of circumstances more akin to the majority of cases which the proposed legislation will apply to, I am confident the ruling would have been very different. Likewise I believe that the referenda which followed the X case were influenced by the case and were considered by voters in the context of it. Had the X case never occurred or had it been possible to frame the proposed amendments to the constitution without the background which the X case provided, I believe that the result may well have been different. If a motorist breaks the speed limit to get a critically ill person to hospital, it is dealt with as an exception – we don’t use the exceptional case to throw out a very good law which is for the good of the majority. If the proposed legislation was only going to apply to minors who had been raped I would have less objection but this is not the case. It would be possible to justify a lot of legislative changes using extreme cases but extreme cases make for bad law and this bill is a perfect example.

I'm not suggesting that it was deliberate or that there was any conspiracy at all, it was just the way that events unfolded but have a think about the following for a minute. If for some unknown reason you wanted to introduce abortion to a catholic country (lets pretend you own a chain of abortion clinics and you want to expand and the country is an island in the middle of the Pacific). An ideal way of doing it which might allow you to get it in by stealth would be to set up an extreme event which you expect religious people will be sympathetic to. Have a court case (lets call it the Z case). Get a favourable ruling in that as could be expected. Have a couple of referenda on some of the core issues with the details of the Z case firmly in the background and then seek to pass legislation which codifies how requests for abortions will be decided based on the Z case even though the legislation will apply to cases which bear little resemblance to the Z case.

I want to stress again that I don't think there was any conspiracy, its just the way the cards fell. The point I'm making is that I don't think the sequence of events which has led us to where we are is a good basis for making law.

I also think (and I believe that many pro choice people agree) that application of this legislation will be fraught with difficulty. That's bad law.

You are just saying what every constitutional lawyer said before the issue was forced into the constitution. It is too complex a matter to be handled by such a method.

And this is all the natural working out of that initial mistake . And it will continue in this piecemeal fashion until/unless that original prohibition is withdrawn from the constitution. Hopefully sooner rather later.

PopePalpatine

I wonder whose idea it was to stick in the 14-year maximum sentence for procuring an "illegal" abortion. My money's on Lucinda Cretin.

Richard Bingham

Jernal wrote: »

There's an awful difference between a c u next tuesday poster as a counter protest to protest rally and people hounding the family home of a politician.

I'm against that bull sh1t. People do stupid things - its not relevant to the argument. I only brought it up in response to a comment levelled at stupid stuff people claiming to be from the pro life side have done. For all I care they can jail anyone who does something like that until after the vote. Its displays an amazing lack of intelligence to begin with for them to think that the politician they target is going to change his views based on intimidation or indeed for the woman with the cu next tuesday sign to think that she is going to win any hearts or minds.

Turtwig

PopePalpatine wrote: »

I wonder whose idea it was to stick in the 14-year maximum sentence for procuring an "illegal" abortion. My money's on Lucinda Cretin.

Given her blog posts and speeches I'd say that's very unlikely.

Richard Bingham

Nodin wrote: »

Ye do, do ye?

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/commentators/david-steel-there-is-no-case-for-changing-the-abortion-act-818002.html



...and they aren't.

I am aware that David Steel has said that there is no case for changing the abortion act. Most of what politicians say is for political reasons - how could he say anything else. He was never going to go to work 45 years and how many million abortions later and say they got it wrong.

eviltwin

PopePalpatine wrote: »

I wonder whose idea it was to stick in the 14-year maximum sentence for procuring an "illegal" abortion. My money's on Lucinda Cretin.

Good point. Is there any way to find out?

jill_valentine

Rick Perry calls a second special session. Round 2 it is.

http://www.texastribune.org/2013/06/26/rick-perry-calls-second-special-session/

jill_valentine

Also, it's a pity Wendy Davis never competed in Touch The Truck, she would have owned.

Cork24

Makes me laugh at the amount of prolife people out their on their high horse..

If they were in savita halappanavar shoes, I bet they would have done the same thing as savita ask for a abortion.

If a women's life is in danger of death then by all means do an abortion. Why risk the chance of two deaths just like the savita case

Gbear

Are these measures not unconstitutional?

What do they actually entail?

Corkfeen

Richard Bingham wrote: »

I am aware that David Steel has said that there is no case for changing the abortion act. Most of what politicians say is for political reasons - how could he say anything else. He was never going to go to work 45 years and how many million abortions later and say they got it wrong.

So you're basically ascribing meaning to his words based on your own personal opinion..

Richard Bingham

Cork24 wrote: »

Makes me laugh at the amount of prolife people out their on their high horse..

If they were in savita halappanavar shoes, I bet they would have done the same thing as savita ask for a abortion.

If a women's life is in danger of death then by all means do an abortion. Why risk the chance of two deaths just like the savita case

There were multiple failures in the care given to Savita Halapannavar so much so that the team didn't even realise how sick she was until it was too late. Its not ssurprising therefore that they didn't offer her the appropriate treatment and its not a case for liberalising abortion.

jill_valentine

Gbear wrote: »

Are these measures not unconstitutional?

What do they actually entail?

Republicans can't prohibit abortion outright after Roe vs. Wade, so instead, they're attacking it indirectly- constantly finding new ways to narrow the number of women who have access to it, and pretending it's about something else. Changing the eligible circumstances little by little by little, pretending it's about public money or the available facilities or whatever.

So for instance, on the surface, this bill was supposed to be about safeguarding women by imposing new minimum facility standards on abortion clinics. In reality, those standards were both unnecessary, and deliberately chosen to be so specific that they would have closed 37 of the 42 clinics in the entire state of Texas.

They'd be abiding by the letter of the law, in that abortion would technically be available - but only in five clinics in a 696,241 km² state.

You could expect their next measure to be "Oh, but only on Tuesdays" or "only for Capricorns", or "Only after you've solved this jigsaw and completed the obstacle course". The point is to make it so difficult as to make it effectively impossible, for most women, inch by inch.

Here's an example of how difficult it is to get an abortion in Texas already:

http://jezebel.com/5893993/one-womans-horrible-experience-with-texas-new-sonogram-law

Carolyn Jones and her husband learned halfway through her pregnancy that their baby was severely ill — even if he made it to term, his brain, spine and legs wouldn't develop correctly and he would need a lifetime of medical care.

...

Because Jones lives in Austin, Texas, where a litany of invasive antiabortion laws have recently been implemented, the decision to terminate her pregnancy was the beginning of a horror story for the "practical" couple that was "so predictable that friends forecast our milestones on Facebook." The doctor who broke the news had to refer Jones to a different specialist, since the hospital she works for is Catholic and doesn't allow abortions.

A new state law requires that women wait 24 hours before having an abortion, and Austin only has one clinic that provides second-trimester terminations, so the doctor stressed they visit a specialist for a second opinion as soon as possible as to not encounter long wait times. After meeting with a few more doctors, Jones and her husband went to Planned Parenthood, where they were told about another new law that had just come into effect that required her to have another ultrasound, hear a doctor describe her baby, and choose between seeing the sonogram or listening to the baby's heartbeat. She then had to wait a full 24 hours before returning for her abortion. Jones writes:

"I don't want to have to do this at all," I told her. "I'm doing this to prevent my baby's suffering. I don't want another sonogram when I've already had two today. I don't want to hear a description of the life I'm about to end. Please," I said, "I can't take any more pain." I confess that I don't know why I said that. I knew it was fait accompli. The counselor could no more change the government requirement than I could. Yet here was a superfluous layer of torment piled upon an already horrific day, and I wanted this woman to know it."

But the Planned Parenthood counselor had no choice but to comply with the law, and the doctor later told Jones that he could lose his license if he didn't describe her baby's development.

Little by little by little.

While Wendy Davis was giving a painstakingly outlined, coherent argument in favour of abortion access for 11 hours, one of the female Republicans in favour of the bill was suggesting that a rape exception was unnecessary because she thinks that Rape Kits "basically clean her out" and prevent the pregnancy anyway.

Something's... broken in these people. Deeply, deeply broken.

Richard Bingham

Corkfeen wrote: »

So you're basically ascribing meaning to his words based on your own personal opinion..

Yes. How else do you ascribe meaning to words?

I don't think he is overjoyed with the way the legislation has been applied but I don't think he is going to say it - what could it possibly achieve?