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Abortion Discussion
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Richard Bingham wrote: »That's 436 too many for me (and quite a lot of people).
OK, two things here.
Firstly, it's not as if a pregnant woman goes into a hospital and asks for an induced labour abortion. The reason that induced labour abortion is selected over another method like, IDX, for example is because it is in line with best medical practice. Induced labour abortion is favoured in situations where a fatal foetal abnormality is present, particularly since it allows the parents some time with the foetus and a degree of closure.
Secondly, as I already pointed out, however unpalatable the procedure may be to you or the number of these abortions carried out, they are unrepresentative of abortions in general and irrelevant to any debate on abortion. What you are doing is arguing the red herring fallacy, trying to tar the entire abortion debate with something you find to be distasteful.Richard Bingham wrote: »I've addressed the problem with this analogy in an earlier post.
No, you really didn't. In fact, you pointed out here:Richard Bingham wrote: »Shipman was supposed to be curing patients and he was instead killing (some) of them.
Gosnell was supposed to be aborting babies and he was instead killing them.
exactly why the analogy is valid. They were both killing people when they should have been doing their appointed duties.
Furthermore, there is another reason why this analogy holds. Harold Shipman is not representative of geriatricians and thus you can't use his example as a stick to beat his entire field with. Similarly Gosnell isn't representative of abortion doctors and yet you seek to make generalisations about abortion in general based on this one unrepresentative example. This is the same red herring argument that you use above. Probably because you don't have a real argument to offer.Richard Bingham wrote: »Your using the minority case to justify legislation - it doesn't work that way. Extreme cases make for bad law.
Richard Bingham wrote: »There's no point regurgitating the "woman's life at risk" argument ad nausem. It can't be an argument for abortion because doctors don't call this abortion, and no woman who needs a termination in these circumstances should be made to feel like she had an abortion.
Eh, no. We've heard this "doctors don't call it an abortion" argument before and it doesn't hold any water. Doctors do refer to it as an abortion. What doctors also do, however, is add extra descriptors to the term abortion to distinguish the reasons for performing an abortion.
Options for early therapeutic abortion: a comparative review.
When doctors perform an abortion for medical reasons it is commonly referred to as a therapeutic abortion but an abortion nonetheless.Richard Bingham wrote: »Brian Shanahan wrote: »
Also the majority of the population are currently in favour of a more liberal system than we have
No, not true. The debate last year was coloured by two big factors;
Well, actually it is true:- A 1997 Irish Times/MRBI poll found that 18% believed that abortion should never be permitted, 77% believed that it should be allowed in certain circumstances (this was broken down into: 35% that one should be allowed in the event that the woman's life is threatened; 14% if her health is at risk; 28% that "an abortion should be provided to those who need it") and 5% were undecided.[14]
- A September 2004 Royal College of Surgeons survey for the Crisis Pregnancy Agency found that, in the under-45 age groups, 51% supported abortion on-demand, with 39% favouring the right to abortion in limited circumstances. Only 8% felt that abortion should not be permitted in any circumstances.[15]
- A September 2005 Irish Examiner/Lansdowne poll found that 36% believe abortion should be legalized while 47% do not.[16]
- A June 2007 TNS/MRBI poll found that 43% supported legal abortion if a woman believed it was in her best interest while 51% remained opposed. 82% favoured legalization for cases when the woman's life is in danger, 75% when the foetus cannot survive outside the womb, and 73% when the pregnancy has resulted from sexual abuse.[17]
- A January 2010 Irish Examiner/Red C online poll found that 60% of 18-35 year olds believe abortion should be legalised, and that 10% of this age group had been in a relationship where an abortion took place. The same survey also showed that 75% of women believed the morning-after pill should be an over-the-counter (OTC) drug, as opposed to a prescription drug.[18]
- A September 2012 Sunday Times/Behaviour and Attitudes poll of 923 people showed that 80% of voters would support a change to the law to allow abortion where the life of the woman was at risk, with 16% opposed and 4% undecided.[19]
- A November 2012 Sunday Business Post/Red C poll of 1,003 adults showed that 85% of voters would like the government to "Legislate for the X case, which means allowing abortion where the mother's life is threatened, including by suicide", with 10% opposed and 5% undecided. The same poll also found that 82% of voters supported "A constitutional amendment to extend the right to abortion to all cases where the health of the mother is seriously threatened and also in cases of rape", and 36% of voters supported "A constitutional amendment to allow for legal abortion in any case where a woman requests it". In addition, 63% of voters also supported "A constitutional amendment to limit the X case, by excluding a threat of suicide as a grounds for abortion, but still allowing abortion, where the mother's life is threatened outside of suicide".[20][21]
- A January 2013 Paddy Power/Red C poll of 1,002 adults found that 29% of voters believed that there should be a constitutional amendment to allow abortion "in any case where the woman requests it". 35% supported legislating for the X case allowing for abortions where the life of the mother is at risk, including from suicide. 26% supported legislating for the X case but excluding suicide and 8% believed no legislation at all was necessary.[22]
- A January 2013 Sunday Times/Behaviour and Attitudes poll of 916 voters found that 87% would support legislation to provide abortion where the woman's life was in danger for reasons other than threat of suicide, 80% would support legislation to provide abortion where there was a foetal abnormality meaning the baby could not survive outside of the womb, 74% would support legislation to provide abortion where the pregnancy was a result of rape, and 59% would support legislation to provide abortion where the woman displayed suicidal feelings. Overall, 92% supported allowing abortion in one of these four circumstances, while 51% supported allowing abortion in all four circumstances.[23]
- A February 2013 Irish Times/Ipsos MRBI poll of 1,000 voters in face-to-face interviews in all constituencies found that 84% felt that abortion should be allowed when the woman's life is at risk, 79% felt that abortion should be allowed whenever the foetus cannot survive outside the womb, 78% felt that abortion should be allowed in cases of rape or incest, 71% felt that abortion should be allowed where the woman is suicidal as a result of the pregnancy (the X case result), 70% felt that abortion should be allowed when the woman's health is at risk, and 37% felt that abortion should be provided when a woman deems it to be in her best interest.
Richard Bingham wrote: »I don't think about it that much. This is just an arbitrary definition. It's defined by different people using different criteria, none of which are supreme.
I certainly believe it is life when the heart starts to beat which is at about 18 to 22 days and if it is life, it is human life. Dogs have dogs. Cats have cats. Humans have humans.
If there is no supreme definition and its just arbitrary then why do you hold to life beginning when the heart starts to beat. What makes that a more authoritative starting point than any other? After all, you can have a heart beat and still be legally dead.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?
Well, yes actually. The UK are quite comprehensive in publishing abortion statistics and we know that approximately 3,000 women travelled to the UK for medically necessary abortions in the period specified by Bellatori.Richard Bingham wrote: »There would be close to 200,000 illegal or exported abortions among the poplulations of England and Wales each year if abortion was legalised? Seriously?
A ban on murder would only drive it underground....
I'm not sure why you're so surprised by Bellatori's comment. It should be plain to most people that there is no relationship between the restrictiveness of abortion laws and the amount of abortions carried out.
There is no correlation, much less causation, between the restrictiveness of abortion laws and abortion rates.
From this link, out of 53 African countries, only 3 have abortion on demand (i.e. Tunisia, South Africa, Cape Verde). However, the abortion rate for this group (defined number of abortions per 1000 women aged 15-44t) for 2003 is 29.
Again from the link, the number of countries comprising Latin America and the Caribbean is 30. Again, only 3 countries have abortion on demand (Cuba, Guyana, Uruguay). The abortion rate for this group is 31.
Now, let's look at North America. Both countries have a category 4 (i.e. abortion on demand) legal system. However, the abortion rate is just 21.
Finally, if we look at the developed world (Europe, USA, Canada, Japan, Australia, New Zealand) we see that out of 40 countries there are 26 with abortion on demand laws and yet the abortion rate is 19.
We have a good understanding of the causal factors of social issues like abortion. The real issues that we need to tackle if we want to reduce abortions globally are women's rights, education, access to and promotion of modern contraceptive methods and access to safe abortion.
We already know that one of the principal factors in the procurement of an abortion is an unplanned pregancy and in this we know that 82% of unplanned pregancies in developing countries result from a lack of uptake in contraception.
The numbers of Irish women seeking abortions abroad has already been falling over the last 10 years from 6320 in 2003 to 4402 in 2010. This has not been implemented through toughening abortion legislation.
Finally, just to put a point on this topic, the people who actually research this area have already concluded that abortion laws have no impact on abortion rates or demand:
"The findings presented here indicate that unrestrictive abortion laws do not predict a high incidence of abortion, and by the same token, highly restrictive abortion laws are not associated with low abortion incidence. Indeed, both the highest and lowest abortion rates were seen in regions where abortion is almost uniformly legal under a wide range of circumstances."
Sources:
Induced abortions: estimated rates and trends worldwide
Adding It Up: The Costs and Benefits of Investing in Family Planning and Maternal and Newborn Health0 -
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alaimacerc wrote: »I'll start with the bit you're clearly very keen to avoid, eh, I mean, "seem to have inadvertently omitted", hence the need for all the subsequent bluster:
Or do you "literally not have time for" the simplest and most relevant matter to hand?
Hardly. I'm trying to progress a discussion that you seem to think you can conduct by throwing out random emotionalist canards, and then dictating to people as to whether they're allowed to ask you what you're advocating be done about them.
You literally have time to type out reams and reams of blather, but you don't have time to read what you're supposedly writing about.
Oh, I didn't accuse you of doing anything so sensible as stating it. I said (and I quote!) "your chosen means seems to be" (emph added). That's your cue to say "yes, I believe that procuring an abortion should, broadly speaking, be illegal, and subject to criminal sanctions up to and including imprisonment", or "no, I don't, you've made an incorrect inference from my 'pro-life' fulminations". This "I might think it, but you'll never prove it!" guff is getting no-one anywhere.
And I never said you said that. No, as I said, you envisaged it being legalised in the UK, where quite clearly you meant "made illegal". Literally didn't have time to read what I said, and literally didn't have time to write something that made any actual sense in the first place, apparently.
Of course, one can envisage something without favouring it as a course of action; though one would wonder why you were wasting your supposedly scarce and notionally valuable time doing so, well, it certainly beats me.
Isn't it terrible when those nasty "pro-abortion" types "get personal", as opposed to your own dispassionate masterpiece of precision, above.
Look, just try making an actual argument, rather than merely waving your arms around, and yelling "You'll never prove I actually said anything! Another masterstroke on my part!"
It's very simple. Criminal sanctions for abortion, or not? If that's "impossible for you to respond to", I don't think your pub-fight fantasies about me are at all related to your difficulty.
I like that post so much I think it deserves this:
Thanks for kicking it up a notch!0 -
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