Abortion Discussion

obplayer

alaimacerc wrote: »

Ob, this may just be a pet peeve of mine, but can I ask that you not reply to people's messages by quoting en bloc and embedding your own comments in the quoted text? It makes it much less clear who said what, and far harder to re-quote to reply to in turn (since the bb software doesn't include "double-quoted" material).

Ok, I will try to make my replies clearer.

alaimacerc

Nick Park wrote: »

I'm not aligned with any side. Nor, I suspect, are the majority of the people of Ireland.

If by "side" you here mean "at-will abortion" or "no abortion, ever", I suspect your suspicion is correct. Indeed, there's opinion-poll evidence to support this.

Or at the very least, enough people in the middle that neither such "side" has a majority, either, but a minimal "there exists a case in which I would support permitting abortion, but not in all cases" likely rises to being a majority.

(It's perhaps more to the point, though, that in each of the cases of maternal health, suicidality, fatal foetal abnormality, rape, and incest, a majority do support it.)

obplayer

alaimacerc wrote: »

We can proceed either way. You could, on the one hand, just tell us when you believe a developing embryo or foetus becomes an "unborn child" (and/or a "human being", if you're not simply regarding the two as synonymous).

We can also play it safe by assuming that every sperm is a human being. We can play it safe by assuming that a collection of cells is a human being. Or we can be rational and say that as a rough dividing line for when a collection of cells becomes a human being it is around the time that a working brain develops and debate from there; not from conception.

Your question 'just tell us' is what I have been trying to ask. In red is how I have tried to narrowed it down. Let's see what answer we get.

Absolam

lazygal wrote: »

When someone's 'solution' to every single woman who is pregnant but doesn't want to be is to remain pregnant, it is very difficult to see the compassion in that.

This sounds like a familiar refrain... haven't you asked that question about twenty four times on this thread now? Yet you've never explained why you think anyone should be providing a 'solution' to every single woman who is pregnant but doesn't want to remain pregnant. It's hard to imagine a basis for society being responsible for providing a 'solution', so I'm interested in what the logic is?

lazygal wrote: »

Why is it ok for women to take unborn children to be killed out of Ireland but its not ok to kill them here? Do you think the law should be changed to prevent this from happening?

Rather than starting this all over again, would it not be easier to go back to here, and read the thread again? You could engage with all the people who answered your question the last time rather than just asking it another half dozen times...

lazygal wrote: »

But we restrict others from travelling to abuse born children. Why don't the unborn deserve such protection?

We seem to have been here before as well. But anyway, we don't restrict others from travelling to abuse born children, we assert the right to prosecute those who travel to abuse born children in a State where it is an offense to do so, as if they had abused born children within the State, once they've actually committed the offense.

alaimacerc wrote: »

If you look back through this thread you'll find pages and pages of discussion of this, in large part consisting of hand-wringing to the effect of "we don't do this Because Reasons, but yeah, we could.")

Wow. I thought it mostly consisted of people demonstrating they couldn't come up with (or hadn't even attempted to imagine) a practicable means of implementing such laws. I do recall the hand wringing bit though, it went along with mouthing phrases and rubbing hands in glee, didn't it? But 'Because Reasons'... interesting summation.

alaimacerc

Nick Park wrote: »

I've thought about this if it were to happen with my own daughter. It would certainly be a horrendous scenario. But I don't see that the unborn baby deserves to be killed.

I oppose the killing of rapists, and I oppose the killing of babies who are the products of rape. That might not be comfortable, but I think it is ethical.

Those are certainly inconvenient and challenging situations. But I don't see that killing an unborn child is a civilised way to handle them.

This certainly seems to be a case where your use of "baby" and "child" sets in essentially instantaneously. There will of course be even more tragic cases like Ms Y where her pregnancy isn't discovered until eight weeks later (or even after that), but that it doesn't seem to be the sorts of circumstance you're envisaging above. After a rape, would you be supportive of the use of emergency contraception? But not of medical contragestion? What about where uncertainty as regards the timing and mechanism of actions makes unclear which is which?

Plenty. I simply don't believe that compassion is somehow incompatible with a desire not to kill unborn children. To suggest it is demonstrates how poor the quality of debate on this subject has become.

And conversely, I think it would be especially poor debate if assertions of compassion were to be be taken at face value, in the face of evidence that it's readily trumped by said "desire".

Nor do I think Muslims should be prevented from leaving Ireland for the Middle East in order to join ISIS. Restricting people's travel rights on the basis of what they might do overseas seems to me to be a very poor way to run a country.

And in this case, would this be a matter of evidential threshold? Or is any amount of material preparation, criminal attempt, and conspiracy while in Ireland OK, as long as the actual signing of membership forms and subsequent murdering happens in Syria and the Levant?

alaimacerc

Absolam wrote: »

Wow. I thought it mostly consisted of people demonstrating they couldn't come up with (or hadn't even attempted to imagine) a practicable means of implementing such laws.

No, it very much did not. Your argument seemed to peter out after the demonstration of the lack of any actual constitutional obstacle -- other than the obvious and deliberate one added for this very purpose -- or any any actual legislative difficulty -- as opposed to "a need for legislation". "It might not be enforceable in all cases" somehow travels back in time and means that the constitutional freedom to travel in such cases must remain.

So, "Because Reasons" is pretty accurate. And mercifully concise, all told.

alaimacerc

obplayer wrote: »

We can also play it safe by assuming that every sperm is a human being.

It would certainly amount to "human life" by any reasonable biological criteria (as Nick also threw out in his grand tour of synonymous use of non-synonyms).

alaimacerc

Nick Park wrote: »

I do see the need for provision for abortion in the rare occasions where there is a real and significant physical threat to the mother's life. One death is a lesser evil than two deaths.

But if the two lives are of equivalent ethical value (as you keep implying, then denying you've said, without ever quite actually denying it's what you intended), surely you're of the view that the prevailing interpretation of "real and significant" is insufficiently "precautionary"? If the risk of two deaths is less than the possibility of saving both (or however precisely the utilitarian longhand works out; I'd bother to do it if I thought it would cause more appreciation than heckling) shouldn't there accordingly be no such provision?

alaimacerc

Absolam wrote: »

And... what's a full right to life? Can we confer a partial right to life? Or a right to a partial life?

It's not my phrase, clearly, but I would suggest from context it means as opposed to one that's (in some way) qualified, or lower in the hierarchy of rights than that of a "natural person".

Absolam

alaimacerc wrote: »

No, it very much did not. Your argument seemed to peter out after the demonstration of the lack of any actual constitutional obstacle -- other than the obvious and deliberate one added for this very purpose -- or any any actual legislative difficulty -- as opposed to "a need for legislation".

Ah.. I think your attention must have petered out rather than the argument then.
Since the actual Constitutional impediment was the Constitutional limit on jurisdiction, which is only extended in specific circumstances that don't cover abortion, that part rested there I think, since no one was inclined to believe a referendum to pass an amendment to extend the jurisdiction in this instance would pass.
From a legislative point of view no one ever did come up with a practicable legislative proposal; the closest anyone got was Volchitsas suggestion that we deliberately target women dealing with ffa, or that we enact a system similar to the UKs fgm legislation which results in no prosecutions.

alaimacerc wrote: »

"It might not be enforceable in all cases" somehow travels back in time and means that the constitutional freedom to travel in such cases must remain.

I can't recall anyone saying what you've quoted, so I'm afraid I don't know how it relates to travelling in time... sorry.

alaimacerc wrote: »

So, "Because Reasons" is pretty accurate. And mercifully concise, all told.

I think, after a quick recap, "Because no one has found a practicable way to do so, even supposing enough people wanted to" would be more accurate, if somewhat less concise.

alaimacerc wrote: »

It's not my phrase, clearly, but I would suggest from context it means as opposed to one that's (in some way) qualified, or lower in the hierarchy of rights than that of a "natural person".

In which case, the foetus already has a qualified right to life, and that qualification already places it lower in the heirarchy of rights than the full right possessed by a 'natural person' (or at least, since we have already established that the Constitution holds a foetus to be a person, than a 'born person' rather than a 'natural person'). So, is anyone actually advocating granting full "right to life" of a foetus? As distinct from equal, as specified in the Constitution, that is. I can't recall anyone on the thread doing so in the last few hundred posts, but maybe I'm wrong.

Shrap

Nick Park wrote: »

There is of course a third approach to the ethics of abortion, and that is to say, "I don't care if if it is a person or not - it's my body and I can do what I like with it." If we go down that path then it is our own humanity, rather than that of the unborn child, that is in doubt.

I would really like to curse you out of it now, as you were perfectly respectful while talking to someone with this approach and indeed managed to say that women who have abortions are not barbaric, not uncivilised and not murderers. You also did not dispute my point that you don't often see women killing 6 month old babies, so our humanity isn't as up for question as you imply. We spoke about how there is a distinction. Do you think that if we go down the path of unrestricted abortion services, we'll all lose our sense of right and wrong and will walk around killing born people willy nilly?

My sense of right and wrong might not be at the standard you would like and expect from your fellow human, but tbh, neither is your's to me.

How are Canada's people seen to be less humane all round, because of their no blame, no shame abortion laws?

lazygal

Shrap wrote: »

I would really like to curse you out of it now, as you were perfectly respectful while talking to someone with this approach and indeed managed to say that women who have abortions are not barbaric, not uncivilised and not murderers. You also did not dispute my point that you don't often see women killing 6 month old babies, so our humanity isn't as up for question as you imply. We spoke about how there is a distinction. Do you think that if we go down the path of unrestricted abortion services, we'll all lose our sense of right and wrong and will walk around killing born people willy nilly?

My sense of right and wrong might not be at the standard you would like and expect from your fellow human, but tbh, neither is your's to me.

How are Canada's people seen to be less humane all round, because of their no blame, no shame abortion laws?

Women travelling outside Ireland in their thousands every year go down just that "path" whatever that means. Nick, do the women have a different approach to humanity? Or the people who facilitate that path? What would happen in Ireland if the path to kill the unborn elsewhere was closed?
I'm still wondering what solution you would offer to a woman who wishes to kill an unborn child rather than remain pregnant.

Peregrinus

Nick Park wrote: »

There is of course a third approach to the ethics of abortion, and that is to say, "I don't care if if it is a person or not - it's my body and I can do what I like with it." If we go down that path then it is our own humanity, rather than that of the unborn child, that is in doubt.

lazygal wrote: »

Women travelling outside Ireland in their thousands every year go down just that "path" whatever that means. Nick, do the women have a different approach to humanity?

Hold on, guys. I think you‘re both doing a disservice here to women who have abortions.

The wider debate in Ireland, and the narrower debate on these boards, mostly focusses on questions of public policy. Should the law permit abortions? Should the state aim to prevent or discourage women from travelling to get abortions that they cannot get in Ireland? Does the unborn child [insert alternative term of choice here] have a moral claim on the community to protect it? Etc.

It’s important to note that these are not questions about what women should do. They are questions about what we, the community, acting through the state, should do.

The question of whether to have an abortion is a different question; that’s a question about what a woman should do. And, even if it’s a no-brainer for some, many or even all of us that the law should leave her to make that decision, and even if the law does in fact leave her to make that decision, that doesn’t mean that the decision itself is also a no-brainer. It may be a very difficult decision.

Nick, the assertion that “it’s my body and I can do what I like with it” is an assertion that by a woman that no-one else has a right to deny her an abortion, and to force her to go through with a pregnancy. It is not, and does not imply, an assertion that she does not care, or need not care, about the life she carries. She may strongly assert her right to an abortion, and still have extreme difficulty in deciding whether to have an abortion. Indeed, she may assert her right to an abortion, while simultaneously choosing not to have one. And, if she does have one, we have no right to assume that that’s because she “doesn’t care”. She almost certainly does care. I struggle to think that many women have abortions lightly or capriciously.

And - nitpick, but important nitpick - if you question whether she cares about the life she carries, you’re not questioning her humanity; you’re questioning her humaneness. Why is this important? Because if humanity is a quality we have to earn by our choices and behaviours and adherence to the standards others demand of us, where does that leave the claim that the unborn life is “human”?

Lazygal, I’m sure you don’t intend it that way, but I don’t think you can say that Irish women who travel to get abortions are going down the path that Nick describes - i.e. the path of asserting that they do not care about the moral status of the life they are carrying. They make a very difficult choice, and in the end it’s not the choice that, perhaps, Nick would urge them to make, but that doesn’t mean they don’t care, or that they deny the ethical significance of the choice they have to make.

Shrap

Thanks Peregrinus. Very well put.

aloyisious

Straying away from the issue of abortion for the moment, to my mind (on re-evaluation) a baby is the human being sitting in it's parents arms, not a feotus in a woman's womb. It all boil's down to the way the question is popped in colloquial terms: (when is the baby/child due?) with the resultant appearance that it's a baby/child in a woman's womb (not a feotus) as that's what it's usually referred to as, when the question is asked. No one (I think) usually ask's a pregnant woman: when is your feotus due?.

It's probable that those referred-to as Pro-life prefer the usual term of baby/child to be used when it comes to campaigning against abortion, as it put's forward a different image of what the creature being discussed is, a more endeared entity to that of a feotus or a clump of cells evolving in a woman's womb.

Ta to Nick Park and lazygal for popping the question into my mind.

Richard Bingham

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/italy/7646540/Baby-boy-survives-for-nearly-two-days-after-abortion.html

Any opinions on this?

aloyisious

Richard Bingham wrote: »

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/italy/7646540/Baby-boy-survives-for-nearly-two-days-after-abortion.html

Any opinions on this?

On reading this reporting of the abortion circumstances, one might take the view that: A, the baby was born through an unusual abortion: eg; not following the routine oft quoted here by some opponents of abortion of the feotus being torn apart by tongs during the operation, and B, the doctors might have failed to do what the law obliged them to do following the survival of the feotus to babyhood.

The apparent failure of the operation to go as planned, and as accorded for by Italian Law, does NOT make the operation of abortions under Italian Law a failure and necessitate a re-evaluation of the law. The doctor/s involved are apparently being investigated for a possible non-compliance with Italian Law.

One other point mentioned by Eugenia Roccella, the under-secretary of state in the health department, on Wednesday night was how Italian Law is applied to babies “We must remember that a baby, once born, is an Italian citizen equal to all the others, and is entitled to all fundamental rights, including the right to health and therefore to be given full support.”

By the way, welcome back Richard

Absolam

Richard Bingham wrote: »

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/italy/7646540/Baby-boy-survives-for-nearly-two-days-after-abortion.html Any opinions on this?

I'd be skeptical of the report, at least as skeptical as I was of some of the reporting in the Y Case.

The abortion was carried out using the induction method; a method usually used at a later stage in pregnancy than the d&c option described by aloyisious in his A option above. It seems rather remarkable that since this is essentially an early delivery which is supposed to kill the foetus in the process of being delivered, that the doctors and staff involved would simply leave a moving and breathing baby wrapped in a sheet to die for almost 24 hours; it seems to me that even if there was no evidence of life there would be a more immediate disposal process; equally I doubt that if they were aware that the baby was alive they would have chosen to leave it to die.

PopePalpatine

Richard Bingham wrote: »

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/italy/7646540/Baby-boy-survives-for-nearly-two-days-after-abortion.html

Any opinions on this?

A freak occurence, nothing worth emulating El Salvador's laws over.

Brian Shanahan

robindch wrote: »

Nope - I don't think there are "sizeable numbers", but there certainly are some and I suspect they're keeping their heads down because it's an unpopular view for atheists + agnostics to hold and not only on account of the association problem with wingnuts I mentioned above.Nope again. The abortion argument boils down to a decision concerning when one believes human rights, including the right to life, first inhere to a foetus.

Catholics are supposed to believe that human rights inhere from the moment of conception (whether they actually do or not is debatable). And it goes up from there - some people choose the subsequent moment of implantation, the moment when the first brainwaves appear, the moment the foetus can survive outside the womb, the moment of birth and so on. The "pro-choice" position arises by default, if the foetus is not believed to have acquired human rights.

One of the few things that people in the "pro-life" and "pro-choice" camps both agree, is that, at some point during pregnancy or very shortly afterwards, the foetus goes from having no human rights to having full human rights. The disagreement arises on where that point should be and that's less a scientific debate, and more of an ethical one, albeit one perhaps informed by science.

I do think that if both camps recognised this similarity in their debating positions, and where most of the disagreements arise from, the debate would be a little more positive.

The pro-choice position is a bit different than what you're painting it here. Basically you can be pro-choice and never want an abortion, or rule it out personally, because all the pro-choice position is is: "In terms of the law it doesn't matter a fcuk what my personal beliefs are, the right should be available to those who want it." There are many more people who personally would never contemplate having an abortion and are yet moral enough to be pro-choice, than there are anti-abortionists who aren't pushing their view as part of a larger misogynist agenda (because lets face it, the leaders of the anti-abortion movement both individuals and groups are deeply anti-women's rights).

Brian Shanahan

Nick Park wrote: »

When I was younger I was arrogant enough to think all my opinions were facts.

You still are arrogant enough to think your opinion is fact. Otherwise you wouldn't be trying to impose your views re abortion on others, and spouting nasty lies about your opponents (e.g. mischaracterising pro-choice as people who actively want abortions in a bad strawmanning argument).

Loafing Oaf

Brian Shanahan wrote: »

You still are arrogant enough to think your opinion is fact. Otherwise you wouldn't be trying to impose your views re abortion on others, and spouting nasty lies about your opponents (e.g. mischaracterising pro-choice as people who actively want abortions in a bad strawmanning argument).

Mr Park seems to have vanished as stealthily as he materialised, so I guess now we'll never discover whether it is a FACT that the embryo in a petri dish at the IVF clinic is a full-scale human being...

Brian Shanahan

Richard Bingham wrote: »

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/italy/7646540/Baby-boy-survives-for-nearly-two-days-after-abortion.html

Any opinions on this?

The Torygraph recently sacked the majority of its subeditors (which had already dwindled alarmingly), due to new head Jason Seiken's misguided push to go digital (despite having no revenue stream from digital). I wouldn't be all that suprised if the article was originally culled from somewhere like the Onion.

Oh, wait a little digging shows that the writer of the article Simon Caldwell has a long history (including present work) of being a PR shill for the rcc. I'll give a 95% confidence that he's deliberately misreported what actually happened to further his master's agenda.

aloyisious

I had been wondering about the priest mentioned in the report. I can't imagine that he'd like working in a hospital where abortions were carried out, as it was allegedly a location where abortions were carried out for non-medical emergency/pregnant woman life-saving reasons, they being totally contrary to Vatican teachings. Of course he may have been the chaplain appointed to the hospital general and, being aware of the ward/room where aborted feotus were usually kept, may have been doing his priestly duty in giving the feotus the last rites.

Brian Shanahan

aloyisious wrote: »

I had been wondering about the priest mentioned in the report. I can't imagine that he'd like working in a hospital where abortions were carried out, as it was allegedly a location where abortions were carried out for non-medical emergency/pregnant woman life-saving reasons, they being totally contrary to Vatican teachings. Of course he may have been the chaplain appointed to the hospital general and, being aware of the ward/room where aborted feotus were usually kept, may have been doing his priestly duty in giving the feotus the last rites.

Do foetuses even qualify for last rights? It wasn't all that long ago that children dying in childbirth were buried outside the rcc cemetary.

Absolam

Brian Shanahan wrote: »

<..> because all the pro-choice position is is: "In terms of the law it doesn't matter a fcuk what my personal beliefs are, the right should be available to those who want it."

Surely the notion that the right should be available to those who want it is a personal belief in itself?

Brian Shanahan wrote: »

There are many more people who <...> are yet moral enough to be pro-choice,

And the idea that being pro-choice is more moral than being pro-life is very definitely a personal belief.

Brian Shanahan wrote: »

<...>anti-abortionists who aren't pushing their view as part of a larger misogynist agenda (because lets face it, the leaders of the anti-abortion movement both individuals and groups are deeply anti-women's rights).

As is the idea that those who are pro choice are misogynist.
You've rolled a whole lot of personal beliefs into that pro-choice position there.

Brian Shanahan wrote: »

spouting nasty lies about your opponents

Like... saying they're less moral and that they're misogynists?

Peregrinus

The Telegraph report does not say that the chaplain was giving the child the last rites, or that he had any intention of doing so - just that he went to pray beside the child.

As for terminology, since the foetal stage ends at birth, and since this child was born alive, what the chaplain found was not a foetus but a neonate. You'r right to suggest that the priest would not have given it the last rites; they don't give any sacraments to unbaptised people. Once the chaplain found the child to be alive, he might have baptised it, rather than giving it the last rites. However the report doesn't suggest that he did either; just that he got medical assistance for the child.

aloyisious

I've just come across this video on facebook. The life Institute are holding the F/G and Labour Gov't responsible for Baby Hope's situation because of the 2013 act. The IFPA also get a portion of the blame accorded by the institute.

http://www.thelifeinstitute.net/current-projects/baby-hope/

Edit.. I just saw this and put it up for (maybe) discussion and info that the institute hasn't folded up, even though it's premises on Capel St is not being used by it now.

lazygal

Prime Time is covering women using the abortion pill having imported it on RTE at 935pm.

aloyisious

I've been seeing those abortion pill posties on lamp-posts all over Dublin city for about two months now. @lazygal. There's a safety distance between the debators.

Umm: there's something better for you than abortion..... Now would that be going full-term with the pregnancy (which the pregnant woman did not want) and giving birth to a baby (again which the pregnant woman did not want)?

Cora: (to the other person) you're just a campaigner!