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Abortion Discussion
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Brian Shanahan wrote: »I absolutely love using those little Latinisms, despite not actually knowing the language myself.
Yeah I loved reading it in Schrodinger's writings. His English was so so good too in some publications. But I loved how he used viz. It would appear several times in some pages.
Anytime I was referencing the guy in any manner I'd try to use viz.
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Intact dilation and extraction, referred to as partial-birth abortion by pro-life advocates was an extremely rare procedure when it was used in the USA. In 2000, a survey conducted by the Guttmacher Institute found that the procedure was only used in 0.17% of all abortions.
It's a barbaric act and, even using your figures it has been used 96,654 times in the U.S. since Roe V Wade.I understand that you feel strongly about this issue and so I understand the emotive language. However, the only way we are going to make real progress in discussing the issues in this debate is with a lucid thought process and an even temper. So, as understandable as the comment above might be, it is deeply unhelpful.
Yes I do. Without apology.
I'll give my view as I see it and you aren't the arbiter of what is or isn't helpful.
It's easy to be matter of fact about it when you agree with what is going on. I, on the other hand, think that some emotion is appropriate.I've already answered this in the last post but to reiterate, the doctors who signed the declaration don't speak for all doctors either. The term direct abortion used in the Dublin Declaration is not found anywhere in peer-reviewed medical literature. The terms that are used in the medical literature to distinguish between medical and non-medical reasons are therapeutic abortion (i.e. to save the life/health of the patient) or elective abortions (i.e. where it is the choice of the patient).
The Dublin Declaration attempts to muddy these waters by conveniently dropping their own qualifier "direct" when it suits them. Therefore, you end up with claims from groups like Youth Defence. By dropping the qualifier and then stating:
"Abortion is never medically necessary."
groups like Youth Defence are misleading people.
I think that you are missing the point. I don't believe that the people who drafted the Dublin Declaration were trying to distinguish between medical and non medical abortion. I believe that they were distinguishing between procedures where the primary intent is to end the life of the baby and procedures where the intent was something else (to cure some ill) but which result in the death of the baby. Do you not think given the context and wording that this is the case?
Secondly, they never claimed to represent all medical professionals.There's no evidence that any of the polls I have quoted used leading questions. Do you have any evidence to the contrary.82% favoured legalization for cases when the woman's life is in danger
82% of voters supported "A constitutional amendment to extend the right to abortion to all cases where the health of the mother is seriously threatened87% would support legislation to provide abortion where the woman's life was in danger for reasons other than threat of suicide
70% felt that abortion should be allowed when the woman's health is at risk
All of the above statements infer that there is a need to introduce abortion to save women's lives. Now if you want to bring up ectopic pregnancy or cancer to justify the introduction of abortion go ahead but it's irrelevant as there is no law in Ireland which prevents the treatment of pregnant women. If any medical condition arises during pregnancy, such as cancer or ectopic pregnancy, doctors in Ireland will always treat the mother even if that gives rise to the unintentional death of their baby. That’s because the intent of the treatment is to save the mother, not to kill the baby.
You seem to put great stead in these polls, as if they were infallible when nothing could be further from the truth - most of them are worthless. Consider this; if the roof of the local church is in bad condition and we poll the congregation and ask them "do you favour the hiring of the trademan John Murphy at a cost of €5,000 so that the roof of the church will be fixed?" and 85% of respondents say yes, we should hire John Murphy, and if it turns out that John Murphy is an electrician, then the poll was misleading and had no merit and the result has no merit.
Even the following
80% would support legislation to provide abortion where there was a foetal abnormality meaning the baby could not survive outside of the womb
supposes that the medical profession can tell the extent of a foetal abnormality accurately which they cannot - they have failed on numerous occasions.For example, in 1966 Nicolai Ceaucescu introduced a law banning abortion in Romania. This resulted in an increase in maternal mortality from 16.9 per 100,000 live births in 1965 to 151.3 per 100,000 live births in 1982. In 1989, once Ceaucescu was deposed, abortion was once again legalised. This resulted in a 50% drop in maternal deaths in the first year post-legalisation alone.
I 'm not pretending to be an authority but I expect that any country which is not sufficiently medically advanced could reduce maternal mortality by aborting more babies. They answer however is medical advancements not abortion. If a woman is ill and pregnant removing the pregnancy probably simplifies her treatment. Ireland is not Romania however and women are not dying for want of abortion here. Romania and specifically the women of Romania would be better served by better care rather than abortion.
Originally Posted by Richard Bingham
Are you proposing that there is no definition of when life begins and ends so? Do you want to use this to justify not only abortion but euthanasia and sure can't we kill middle aged people in their forties so?No, what I am saying is that there is no authoritative definition. And I said nothing about euthanasia. For me, I believe that if we are to impose restrictions on abortion, that the first point that should give us pause is when brain activity begins at roughly 12 weeks. As Sarky previously pointed out:
"Brain activity can be measured. So can the level of connectivity within the brain. We've established when a foetus brain undergoes a rush of increasing the connections between cells (synaptogenesis, I believe it's called), and when it's finally complicated enough to be called a life. Without those connections, all you have is a lump of wobbly grey matter that's as much a person as the liver or pancreas it shares a body with.
Now there's no hard and fast timeframe for this to occur, it happens slower for some embryos, faster for others, and when you give or take a few days on nailing down exactly when conception occurred, you have a week or two window where this growth spurt happens. And even during the growth spurt there's no one point from non-person to person. Life just doesn't work in the black and white spectrum people so often want it to.
But it's a much more thought-out point than "life begins at conception".
I didn't say that life begins at conception? What's the point of this anyway? We won't decide when it begins or even agree between ourselves. It doesn't make any difference to my argument whatsoever. You may use it to say these things aren't human in much the same way Hitler said the Jews weren't human but it might turn out that you are wrong. Look at all the things that have been turned on their heads in the last twenty years alone. Even basic things like diet. The world thought fat was the enemy until recently, now everyone seems to be screaming about sugar. How can you be so sure.We don't need to rely on personal testimony, we have the actual figures from the NHS. The period specified by Bellatori was 1980-2012, during which 156,076 Irish women travelled to the UK for abortions. You stated that: "Do you think that even 1,000 traveled because their lives were at risk?" to which I replied that approximately 3000 women or approximately 94 women per year travelled because their lives were at risk. So a bit more than two handfuls.
I can't see where you are arriving at the 94 women per year?Availability is a factor but nowhere near as important as you seem to think. For example, Ireland has an abortion rate of 6.7 per 1000 live births. Croatia, on the other hand, where abortion is legal has a rate of 5.7 per 1000 live births. As I have said previously, restrictions on abortion have very little impact on abortion rate.
I agree that there are other factors but this is not an argument in favour of banning abortion. 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.
Well, I did post a link to the paper so you could have read that maybe before making claims about it. I don't see how the study suffers from any bias, given that it is a study funded by the WHO. However, obviously if you have actual evidence of bias rather than baseless mud-slinging, I'm sure we'd all love to hear it.
My point is that where there are a number of factors at play, you can't deduce that one factor directly causes an increase or decrease in X Y or Z - it could be down to something totally different or a combination of things.
I wasn't trying to use that as a justification for anything. You were using statistics as a justification, not me. I use plain facts. Women weren't dying in Ireland for want of abortion. Savita Halappanavar didn't die for want of abortion. Her death was exploited by Enda Kenny and the Pro Abortion side to get abortion legalised but it was a lie, she died due to inadequate assessment and monitoring. Enda Kenny had a motive for doing this which had absolutely nothing to do with saving women's lives - it was one of the promises he made to Labour to convince them to form a government with his party - simple as that.0 -
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