Advertisement
If you have a new account but are having problems posting or verifying your account, please email us on hello@boards.ie for help. Thanks :)
Hello all! Please ensure that you are posting a new thread or question in the appropriate forum. The Feedback forum is overwhelmed with questions that are having to be moved elsewhere. If you need help to verify your account contact hello@boards.ie
Abortion Discussion
Options
Comments
-
I don't think the unborn baby is capable of having an opinion, as most abortions occur long before anything remotely like consciousness is present. So, no, the unborn baby in my opinion is much more a potential human rather than an actual one, at least compared to a grown woman.Richard Bingham wrote: »"they" doesn't include the unborn babies obviously.And you think that nobody is forced to have an abortion? Seriously. You think that a girl is never driven to the clinic by her parents, boyfriend, pimp, abuser or put under pressure to get if fixed, sort it out etc.
I'm sure that happens. However coercion is a separate issue, and the ethics of that is separate from that of abortion itself.0 -
That's the bottom line. A 12 year old rape victim is pregnant. A full term pregnancy will almost certainly kill her because she was a small child.
Is killing that 12 year old 'the least worst wrong'?
Absolutely not in my view. To allow her to die would be barbaric. You may not be aware but in Ireland if a pregnancy has to be ended because not to do so would result in the woman's death, this is not referred to as an abortion and pregnancies were ended for this reason before the abortion act was passed and no doctor did a day in jail. Rhona Mahony from the National Maternity Hospital confirmed during the hearings last year that there were three terminations in the hospital in 2012 where the woman’s life was at risk and Sam Coulter Smith from the Rotunda confirmed that there had been six terminations in the Rotunda during 2012 in these circumstances.
The argument that abortion is needed to save the life of the mother is invalid as women don't die in Ireland for want of abortion. The pro-abortion side repeatedly claim that they do or they will but it's not true.0 -
Richard Bingham wrote: »Absolutely not in my view. To allow her to die would be barbaric. You may not be aware but in Ireland if a pregnancy has to be ended because not to do so would result in the woman's death, this is not referred to as an abortion and pregnancies were ended for this reason before the abortion act was passed and no doctor did a day in jail. Rhona Mahony from the National Maternity Hospital confirmed during the hearings last year that there were three terminations in the hospital in 2012 where the woman’s life was at risk and Sam Coulter Smith from the Rotunda confirmed that there had been six terminations in the Rotunda during 2012 in these circumstances.
The argument that abortion is needed to save the life of the mother is invalid as women don't die in Ireland for want of abortion. The pro-abortion side repeatedly claim that they do or they will but it's not true.
This is correct, but it's still an abortion as far as most people are concerned - it happens to be an abortion that is absolutely right to perform.
Surely this business of pretending such abortions are not really abortions is just because you don't want to admit that sometimes abortions are morally ok?0 -
I take abortion as an issue very seriously. Yes abortion does kill a foetus or embryo, which is very much not a trivial matter, however the life, health and mental well-being of the pregnant woman is - in my opinion - more important. I don't think life has any special sanctity - it has the value we give it.
No. We don't get to value anyone else's life. Not if it is only expected to last for 6 days or 6 minutes. Not if they will have less limbs than you, are less beautiful than you, can be expected to have less of a life than you, not if their parents have less money or less opportunity than yours. You don't get to value their life using the yardstick of yours.The death of a 5-year old child is not the same thing as a miscarriage at 10 weeks, to give an example of what I mean by that.
We're not talking about either of those things.If you want to protect the unborn with a blanket ban you have to accept that you are prepared to do a lot of damage to the lives, health and well-being of girls and women who might actually need or want an abortion. You must also accept that you are insisting on denying them what they want or need because you think your morality is so much better than theirs, that you are prepared to live with the unnecessary deaths of some women as part of your blanket ban.
Deaths. Women are not dying in Ireland for want of abortion.0 -
Richard Bingham wrote: »No. We don't get to value anyone else's life. Not if it is only expected to last for 6 days or 6 minutes. Not if they will have less limbs than you, are less beautiful than you, can be expected to have less of a life than you, not if their parents have less money or less opportunity than yours. You don't get to value their life using the yardstick of yours.
We make valuations of life all the time. Right now the constitution explicitly values an embryo the same as you or me. That constitutional clause was written by people, so people do create the yardstick. Other countries use different yardsticks, as they have differing laws of abortion for example, so I don't understand what you mean when you say we don't get to value some lives differently?
There are many things I think should be irrelevant to how we value life - for example, gender, ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation - but we still have to actively choose what is important and what is not. And when it comes to abortion, I think an undeveloped human being has less "value" than the autonomy of a fully grown woman.Deaths. Women are not dying in Ireland for want of abortion.
We don't have a complete ban on abortion in Ireland - so yes, in obvious cases where the threat to the woman's life is obvious, this is true. (Apologies - I misunderstood one of your earlier posts to mean that you were opposed to all abortions, even those permitted in Ireland.)
However women with fatal foetal abnormalities are still shipped off to the UK (if they can afford it) and there are many other women making voluntary trips abroad where they have abortions without proper medical follow up.
How do you feel about the right of Irish women to travel abroad for abortions - do you think that should be restricted?0 -
Advertisement
-
This is correct, but it's still an abortion as far as most people are concerned - it happens to be an abortion that is absolutely right to perform.
Are you seriously saying that if a woman had say an ectopic pregnancy (these are not viable by the way) and therefore there was no chance of the baby surviving and her life was seriously endangered (as it is in these cases) and she therefore had to have the pregnancy ended, that you would consider, or you think that other people would consider, this an abortion. Rubbish.
You can play the semantics game if you wish. If you want to call it an abortion so that you can put it in the same bracket as societal abortions and therefore help your argument go ahead but there has to be a word to describe each scenario and in Ireland doctors don't refer to these as abortions.Surely this business of pretending such abortions are not really abortions is just because you don't want to admit that sometimes abortions are morally ok?
I'm glad you mentioned the word 'morally'. You must have a very dim view of the English language if you think that it isn't capable of evolving to the point where it has one word for something which is moral (saving a life when there is only one life that can be saved) and a different word for describing something which is immoral (taking a life for reasons of convenience).0 -
Richard Bingham wrote: »...Deaths. Women are not dying in Ireland for want of abortion.
That is because they are travelling (mainly) to the UK
I quote from the UK NHS statistics...
"Between January 1980 and December 2012, at least 156,076 women travelled from the Republic of Ireland for safe abortion services abroad."
So basically Ireland turns its back on the problem and exports it... not a very moral stance in my opinion.0 -
Richard Bingham wrote: »...Are you seriously saying that if a woman had say an ectopic pregnancy...
That is a straw man argument and totally irrelevant. Who was discussing ectopic pregnancies? We were discussing abortion.
Calling removing a viable foetus something other than abortion simply to salve someone's conscience seems to me to be positively Orwellian double think. It is actually dishonest.!0 -
I do consider it an abortion if the foetus is killed, which is what happens when an ectopic pregancy is terminated. However, do you know that in Ireland it was common to remove the whole fallopian tube, with the embyo being killed an "unintended consequence" rather than simply kill and remove the embryo, leaving the fallopian tube intact? Why? So that "an abortion" would not have been performed. As far as I'm concerned if an embryo or foetus is deliberately killed as a medical procedure, the word "abortion" applies. However the word has no moral overtones for me, so perhaps I think differently to you about it.Richard Bingham wrote: »Are you seriously saying that if a woman had say an ectopic pregnancy (these are not viable by the way) and therefore there was no chance of the baby surviving and her life was seriously endangered (as it is in these cases) and she therefore had to have the pregnancy ended, that you would consider, or you think that other people would consider, this an abortion. Rubbish.I'm glad you mentioned the word 'morally'. You must have a very dim view of the English language if you think that it isn't capable of evolving to the point where it has one word for something which is moral (saving a life when there is only one life that can be saved) and a different word for describing something which is immoral (taking a life for reasons of convenience).
I take your point, for example we have murder and manslaughter as terms to describe different levels of intent when killing someone, but I don't think that abortion is as clear cut as you would imagine.
Most people can easily agree that murder of an adult or child is wrong. However it's the point at which a sperm and ovum become developed to the point where wen would consider abortion to be murder is where all the disagreement is.
I don't think killing a barely developed embryo or foetus is murder, others would disagree.
If you wish abortion on demand to be unavailable, to you think women who don't want to be pregnant should be forced against their will to carry on with the pregnancy?
Do you think they should be criminalised if they travel abroad for an abortion?0 -
Richard Bingham wrote: »We don't get to value anyone else's life.
Really? Did someone make you the boss of valuing things? Because it's very clear that people do make value judgements about other people's lives. And "personhood" isn't being stipulated in these cases, either. And come to that, you yourself said, on the definition of "human being":Richard Bingham wrote: »I don't think about it that much. This is just an arbitrary definition.
Indeed.
And elsewhere:Richard Bingham wrote: »(I'm not going to get into semantics about whether we call it an embryo or a baby).
There we have it, the perfect balanced sample, as Yes, Minister would have it. Let's not get hung up on terminology, if rigorous thinking is called for, but by all means let's insist on it for purposes of hitting others over the head with an emotionalist argument.Deaths. Women are not dying in Ireland for want of abortion.
I assume you're mentally reserving a very loud "any more" on the end of that sentence.0 -
Advertisement
-
alaimamerc wrote: »I assume you're mentally reserving a very loud "any more" on the end of that sentence.
Of course, where would Jugendschutz be without the blessed "mental reservation" technique mastered by the Catholic hierarchy.0 -
We make valuations of life all the time. Right now the constitution explicitly values an embryo the same as you or me. That constitutional clause was written by people, so people do create the yardstick. Other countries use different yardsticks, as they have differing laws of abortion for example, so I don't understand what you mean when you say we don't get to value some lives differently?
In my view as long as one life is not valued any more or any less than another, it doesn't matter by what yardstick it is valued. It's when we start saying that a life is less because the person has a missing limb, downs syndrome, a cleft pallet or a short life expectancy for example, that I have a problem with it.There are many things I think should be irrelevant to how we value life - for example, gender, ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation - but we still have to actively choose what is important and what is not.
Its not just you who thinks these things should be irrelevant to how we value life. I'm pretty sure its a universal truth at this stage albeit that some people haven't caught up.- but we still have to actively choose what is important and what is not.
This seems to resile from the the position you were taking that all should be equal.And when it comes to abortion, I think an undeveloped human being has less "value" than the autonomy of a fully grown woman.
You could just as easily argue that an old man has less value than a middle aged one. And the autonomy word can't fit in here, because the woman doesn't have autonomy from the baby she is carrying. If she could put it in a box and it would continue to live (and we certainly know that there are plenty who would gladly take that box of her hands i.e. adopt) I'd say let her do so if she wishes. She's not autonomous.However women with fatal foetal abnormalities are still shipped off to the UK (if they can afford it) and there are many other women making voluntary trips abroad where they have abortions without proper medical follow up.
I don't agree with abortion in the case of fatal foetal abnormalities. I don't get to value the life of a baby who may only last 6 hours or 6 days, as being worth any less than my life. If their whole life is only 3 hours long, it was still theirs to live. Many people are now choosing to continue these pregnancies and I think that without exception they are saying that they would do it all over again (rather than abort) if faced with a second fatal foetal abnormality in a subsequent pregnancy. There are several example of babies who were deemed incompatible with life, surviving for months or even years. It's a sh1t situation and my heart bleeds for them parents but the thing is that not everything is fixable and abortion certainly doesn't fix it.How do you feel about the right of Irish women to travel abroad for abortions - do you think that should be restricted?
I don't think about it any more than people who travel to The Netherlands to smoke weed or to Croatia to shoot guns. Each country is entitled to set its own laws and I don't believe that a particular country can limit travel if the authorities suspect it will result in an act which is unlawful in the home country. It wouldn't be workable anyway as you would have to be able to read minds.
I have to go but will return.0 -
Richard Bingham wrote: »Are you seriously saying that if a woman had say an ectopic pregnancy (these are not viable by the way) and therefore there was no chance of the baby surviving and her life was seriously endangered (as it is in these cases) and she therefore had to have the pregnancy ended, that you would consider, or you think that other people would consider, this an abortion. Rubbish.
Not that you're one for "semantics", of course. Like, uh, telling other people what is or isn't an abortion, and when it is or isn't appropriate to use medical terminology, or legal terminology, and so forth.
Strictly speaking they're not necessarily "not viable": in a literal handful of cases they've survived to term. Which of course feeds into the "double effect" school of theobioethics, wherein one doesn't immediately terminate such pregnancies (this an instance where medical terms are "OK"?), but instead insists one waiting until the woman gets sicker (tubal infection, etc), and then treats that "distinct" condition. And some would indeed insist on calling the "preemptive" treatment options in these cases, otherwise known as "best medical practice", as "immoral".
Here's the thing. You want to insist on terminology that not merely has value judgemental overtones, but has your moral judgements baked into it. Then you act surprised when people want to take issue with this.You must have a very dim view of the English language if you think that it isn't capable of evolving to the point where it has one word for something which is moral (saving a life when there is only one life that can be saved) and a different word for describing something which is immoral (taking a life for reasons of convenience).0 -
Richard Bingham wrote: »I don't agree with abortion in the case of fatal foetal abnormalities. [...] Many people are now choosing to continue these pregnancies and I think that without exception they are saying that they would do it all over again (rather than abort) if faced with a second fatal foetal abnormality in a subsequent pregnancy.]/QUOTE]
[citation needed]
Why should ALL women be forced to continue an essentially fruitless pregnancy, though?There are several example of babies who were deemed incompatible with life, surviving for months or even years.
For all of your harking on about "extreme cases make bad laws", have you ever considered that these babies, which end up surviving for months/a few years, are extreme cases?It's a sh1t situation and my heart bleeds for them parents but the thing is that not everything is fixable and abortion certainly doesn't fix it.
Why do you want to force all women to endure this shit situation?
If I was a women carrying a foetus with a fatal abnormality, I would want to terminate the pregnancy ASAP. I couldn't bear to spend another few months carrying a baby that would spend its few hours/days on Earth either in horrendous, hellish pain, or would essentially be a corpse on life support, unable to gurgle, cry, look towards me or do whatever healthy newborn babies do.0 -
Most people can easily agree that murder of an adult or child is wrong. However it's the point at which a sperm and ovum become developed to the point where wen would consider abortion to be murder is where all the disagreement is.
Murder is a legal term, and using it "free range" is a pretty short route to turning a discussion (even more!) inflammatory. Perhaps better to frame in terms of "point before/after which I think it should be (potentially) lawful/unlawful".
Also bear in mind that the human developmental point at which "termination of life" becomes murder is, potentially, a year after birth. (Infanticide act.)0 -
I read in a paper during the week that Liverpool Women's Hospital which does the bulk of the TFMR for Irish couples is going to have to restrict the numbers of Irish people it treats due to demand. So a lot more couples are going to be forced to carry babies against their wishes with all the extra heartache and mental anguish it causes. We have let these people down so badly, its disgusting we make anyone go through this. If the child was alive the parents would have the options of turning off life support but we force them to endure a pregnancy that won't result in a child.0
-
alaimacerc wrote: »Murder is a legal term, and using it "free range" is a pretty short route to turning a discussion (even more!) inflammatory. Perhaps better to frame in terms of "point before/after which I think it should be (potentially) lawful/unlawful".
Also bear in mind that the human developmental point at which "termination of life" becomes murder is, potentially, a year after birth. (Infanticide act.)
If the law recognised the unborn as important as the living abortion would be murder but its not, the laws on abortion are different, so even our legal system recognises the differences between a live born and a foetus!0 -
Sure - that's why why have anti-discrimination laws - because society has decided that legal protection was needed to enforce those values. However there is still a conscious process involved. The amount of foreign aid Ireland pays to developing countries definitely has an impact on lives lost or saved, but we value such lives less than we do our own or we would pay more. It's not nice to admit such a fact, but it's reality, we should face up to it.Richard Bingham wrote: »In my view as long as one life is not valued any more or any less than another, it doesn't matter by what yardstick it is valued. It's when we start saying that a life is less because the person has a missing limb, downs syndrome, a cleft pallet or a short life expectancy for example, that I have a problem with it.
Try telling that to same sex couples looking for equal rights. Or to women in Saudi Arabia or Afghanistan.Its not just you who thinks these things should be irrelevant to how we value life. I'm pretty sure its a universal truth at this stage albeit that some people haven't caught up.This seems to resile from the the position you were taking that all should be equal.
No - I think adults can be treated equally, but children are treated differently to adults, and an embryo is different again.You could just as easily argue that an old man has less value than a middle aged one.
Is some ways, and older man does have less value - try getting a 25 year mortgage in your fifties or sixties. It all depends on the context. Should an older man have less rights than a younger man? I don't think so. Should a child have the same rights as an adult - say to vote, buy alcohol, etc? I don't think so either.I don't agree with abortion in the case of fatal foetal abnormalities. I don't get to value the life of a baby who may only last 6 hours or 6 days, as being worth any less than my life. If their whole life is only 3 hours long, it was still theirs to live. Many people are now choosing to continue these pregnancies and I think that without exception they are saying that they would do it all over again (rather than abort) if faced with a second fatal foetal abnormality in a subsequent pregnancy. There are several example of babies who were deemed incompatible with life, surviving for months or even years. It's a sh1t situation and my heart bleeds for them parents but the thing is that not everything is fixable and abortion certainly doesn't fix it.
I think it's a little arrogant and lacking in empathy to tell the parents of a child which is not going to survive what they should or shouldn't feel, think or do. To be honest I think it's monstrously intrusive to dictate to people in that situation that they should continue with the pregnancy - they should have a choice and it should not be a choice that can be vetoed by you or me.I don't think about it any more than people who travel to The Netherlands to smoke weed or to Croatia to shoot guns. Each country is entitled to set its own laws and I don't believe that a particular country can limit travel if the authorities suspect it will result in an act which is unlawful in the home country. It wouldn't be workable anyway as you would have to be able to read minds.
Assume the Gardaí know the girl is planning to have an abortion. Let's say the father is opposed and has tipped them off.
According to the anti-abortion argument, the foetus is of equal value. That means an Irish "person" of equal value to any adult is being smuggled out of the country in someone's uterus to be killed abroad. Surely, following the "equal value" argument to its logical conclusion, this is completely different to someone going to Amsterdam for the weekend to smoke some pot? The whole pro-life argument is that the foetus is a person, a life, to be protected - so why not prevent them being smuggled out of the country to be killed?
The answer of course is that faced with a woman with a plane ticket and an appointment with an abortion clinic in the UK, it's hard to avoid the fact that there is a real live woman standing in front of you, and who the hell are you to tell her that she should have the baby if she really doesn't want to.0 -
If the law recognised the unborn as important as the living abortion would be murder but its not, the laws on abortion are different, so even our legal system recognises the differences between a live born and a foetus!
In fact, even the handful of US states that have "foetal murder" statutes also distinguishes between the two. (i.e. they don't have legal foetal personhood, they just have an extra clause in their "murder" law.)0 -
I'm not sure why you think that what you think about a little, or think about a lot, should detain us unduly long. There was a constitutional referendum about this. Some anti-abortion types got very excited about the attempt last year of a man, backed by one of the motley selection of "pro life" flying lobbyist "charities", to injunct his girlfriend from travelling to the UK for an abortion. Let's not be shrugging our shoulders and pretending it's not an issue.Richard Bingham wrote: »I don't think about it any more than people who travel to The Netherlands to smoke weed or to Croatia to shoot guns.
You believe wrongly. Furthermore, a state may also simply universalify its jurisdiction, and declare acts illegal regardless of where they take place. (For example, Belgium does this for some purposes.)Each country is entitled to set its own laws and I don't believe that a particular country can limit travel if the authorities suspect it will result in an act which is unlawful in the home country.0 -
Advertisement
-
alaimacerc wrote: »Some anti-abortion types got very excited about the attempt last year of a man, backed by one of the motley selection of "pro life" flying lobbyist "charities", to injunct his girlfriend from travelling to the UK for an abortion. Let's not be shrugging our shoulders and pretending it's not an issue.
Source?0 -
Each country is entitled to set its own laws and I don't believe that a particular country can limit travel if the authorities suspect it will result in an act which is unlawful in the home country. It wouldn't be workable anyway as you would have to be able to read minds.alaimacerc wrote: »You believe wrongly. Furthermore, a state may also simply universalify its jurisdiction, and declare acts illegal regardless of where they take place. (For example, Belgium does this for some purposes.)
It's been mentioned before but it's illegal to travel abroad for the purposes of procuring sex from a minor and people are prevented from travelling under that law.0 -
0
-
That is because they are travelling (mainly) to the UK
I quote from the UK NHS statistics...
"Between January 1980 and December 2012, at least 156,076 women travelled from the Republic of Ireland for safe abortion services abroad."
So basically Ireland turns its back on the problem and exports it... not a very moral stance in my opinion.
Your quotation that "156,076 women travelled from the Republic" was in response to my comment that "Women are not dying in Ireland for want of abortion" so it would seem you are implying that these 156,076 traveled for health reasons. Do you not think that the vast majority of these abortions were for societal reasons? Do you think that even 1,000 traveled because their lives were at risk?0 -
That is a straw man argument and totally irrelevant. Who was discussing ectopic pregnancies? We were discussing abortion.
No, its not a straw man argument, its a scenario which is relevant to the debate. What? I can't mention issues related to pregnancy, or a possible reason for a termination?Calling removing a viable foetus something other than abortion simply to salve someone's conscience seems to me to be positively Orwellian double think. It is actually dishonest.!
I didn't. Read my posts again. I only stated that removing a non viable foetus was not called abortion.
Calling it abortion is similar to calling the killing of a soldier in battle, murder. The result might be similar but don't you think the reason/circumstances are relevant.
Of course if you is acceptable and you want to make the other acceptable I could see the logic of you wanting to use the same term for them both.0 -
Richard Bingham wrote: »Your quotation that "156,076 women travelled from the Republic" was in response to my comment that "Women are not dying in Ireland for want of abortion" so it would seem you are implying that these 156,076 traveled for health reasons. Do you not think that the vast majority of these abortions were for societal reasons? Do you think that even 1,000 traveled because their lives were at risk?
Do you have any data as regards why they travelled at all?0 -
Richard Bingham wrote: »Your quotation that "156,076 women travelled from the Republic" was in response to my comment that "Women are not dying in Ireland for want of abortion" so it would seem you are implying that these 156,076 traveled for health reasons. Do you not think that the vast majority of these abortions were for societal reasons? Do you think that even 1,000 traveled because their lives were at risk?
I think you miss the point here. These women are travelling for abortions for whatever reason which neither you nor I know. You may be right BUT the point is they are leaving ireland because the Irish law forces them to do so. As I pointed out this means that you are simply shifting your problem onto other peoples shoulders. That is not very moral IMHO.0 -
Richard Bingham wrote: »No, its not a straw man argument, its a scenario which is relevant to the debate. What? I can't mention issues related to pregnancy, or a possible reason for a termination?
I didn't. Read my posts again. I only stated that removing a non viable foetus was not called abortion.
Calling it abortion is similar to calling the killing of a soldier in battle, murder. The result might be similar but don't you think the reason/circumstances are relevant.
Of course if you is acceptable and you want to make the other acceptable I could see the logic of you wanting to use the same term for them both.
You can mention anything you like BUT the introduction of ectopic pregnancy so that you could place a critique on others IS a straw man argument. It was not the point under discussion and your attempt to shift the focus to it is a red herring.
The point under discussion was specifically abortion and you pointed out that when the mothers life is at risk (ectopic pregnancy was not the issue at this point) an abortion was carried out BUT they did not call it an abortion. I replied to this point.0 -
Not only does the law force women to go abroad our constitution explicitly carries a proviso protecting the right of women to go abroad. We're a great little country, where you can have your illegal abortion in a country that takes care of women travelling from Ireland without asking too many questions. What'd be happening if other countries refused to treat women travelling from Ireland or had more restrictive abortion regimes? Would women simply continue being pregnant when they don't want to be? Or would we finally have to deal with the reality of the situation?I think you miss the point here. These women are travelling for abortions for whatever reason which neither you nor I know. You may be right BUT the point is they are leaving ireland because the Irish law forces them to do so. As I pointed out this means that you are simply shifting your problem onto other peoples shoulders. That is not very moral IMHO.0 -
Advertisement
-
Is the termination of pregnancy for a non viable foetus at a later stage of pregnancy called abortion?Richard Bingham wrote: »
I didn't. Read my posts again. I only stated that removing a non viable foetus was not called abortion.
Calling it abortion is similar to calling the killing of a soldier in battle, murder. The result might be similar but don't you think the reason/circumstances are relevant.
Of course if you is acceptable and you want to make the other acceptable I could see the logic of you wanting to use the same term for them both.0
This discussion has been closed.
Advertisement