Abortion Discussion, Part Trois

robindch

Delirium wrote: »

Member of Iona withdraws [...]

As a catholic, isn't that the only option available?

rainbow kirby

robindch wrote: »

As a catholic, isn't that the only option available?

Even then isn't there something about "every sexual act being open to new life" and the sin of Onan being to "spill his seed"?

aloyisious

Delirium wrote: »

Member of Iona withdraws from committee.

https://twitter.com/gavreilly/status/920903035743866882

With Ronán complaining on RTE today about there being NOT enough equality in witnesses before the committee, can't say he'd be happy in this.

Huntergonzo

Just heard Ronan Mullen on Newstalk, why on earth is this man not given more air time! Few things could do more damage to the anti-abortion campaign than his authoritarian catholic opinions.

robindch

Seems that Senator Mullen has been doing the rounds of the media - he showed up on RTɒs "Today with Sean O’Rourke" with the following:

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/social-affairs/ronan-mullen-strongly-criticised-for-comments-on-savita-1.3262015

Ronan Mullen wrote:

If there was abortion on demand she wouldn’t have been in the hospital because she wouldn’t have been pregnant and she wouldn’t have been having a miscarriage.

Irish Times wrote:

Asked about his comments on Newstalk on Thursday afternoon, Mr Mullen said any criticism of his remarks was not in good faith.

robindch

Subsequent to the above, the IT includes a picture of Senator Mullet:

Huntergonzo

robindch wrote: »

Subsequent to the above, the IT includes a picture of Senator Mullet:

Haha, it's basically Will from the Inbetweeners.

Hotblack Desiato

Vile comments from a vile person.

smacl

Huntergonzo wrote: »

Haha, it's basically Will from the Inbetweeners.

I was going to say more like Gonzo from the Muppets, but that would be an insult to Gonzo and Muppets everywhere.

frag420

Why do all these pubic anti choice folks look like 40 yr old virgins?

MrPudding

frag420 wrote: »

Why do all these pubic anti choice folks look like 40 yr old virgins?

Because they are?

MrP

aloyisious

The one thing about the last committee meeting that stood out for me was that there were no objections or demurring from the three NO members on it when the visiting expert witness said that everyone in the room was an abortionist.

Hotblack Desiato

Mullen doesn't seem to realise that it's a long time since the Irish people were willing to have catholic celibate males determine the course of their private lives.

Loafing Oaf

MrPudding wrote: »

Because they are?

MrP

Ah here, that's uncalled for.

I'd say he's at least 45...

aloyisious

Pat Casey has give the reason for withdrawing from appearing before the Committee as it being a political "stitch-up with no interest in hearing evidence that might challenge the pre-determined outcome favouring abortion, she was not prepared to add any further credibility to this deeply flawed process and for this reason reached a decision to withdraw her name from it on Thursday.

I understand from the above that she meant not to appear and give evidence to the committee, thus denying the pro-life side of the debate from having some-one give evidence on its behalf, though she is a believer in the Pro-life ethos.

Pat, in her comment-piece in todays Indo went on to write that the committee were most likely unaware of information on UK abortion clinics and alternative views on acquiring such information. Pat followed that up with "but then again, one has to have a curiosity about alternative views to acquire such information and when some members of the committee exposed what Pat wrote as an imbalance last week, the committee then asked that further witnesses be invited to prevent a pro-life perspective.

Pat wrote that the committee voted 15-3 against retaining the 8th amendment. I assume from that that Pat didn't read the reports on the committee vote result or hear/talk to the three members who voted NO to find out what the vote was on. The alternative to that is that Pat was being economic with the truth of what the vote was actually on.

Personally, I don't know if any committee members were aware or unaware of the information Pat had in her possession and whether such may affect their opinions. The notion that Pro-Life committee members did not make the other committee members aware of such facts would surprise me. I am aware of the information through media sources, including Pro-life people who gave their arguments and links here on this site and debate, giving me curiosity to obtain the facts.

I am also aware of the situation of pregnant women where it come to availability of abortion here, and of the [currently illegal] availability of abortifacient pills here. They haven't made me change my belief that pregnant women should be the ones allowed make the decision of a personal choice on an abortion. Either you trust the women to make sensible decisions or you treat them as incapables. I trust the women.

Hotblack Desiato

I'm not going to start hunting on the Indo, of all places, for an article by her, of all people, but what is this amazing information she claims to have that the committee does not?

lazygal

Hotblack Desiato wrote: »

I'm not going to start hunting on the Indo, of all places, for an article by her, of all people, but what is this amazing information she claims to have that the committee does not?

Jesus?

aloyisious

Hotblack Desiato wrote: »

I'm not going to start hunting on the Indo, of all places, for an article by her, of all people, but what is this amazing information she claims to have that the committee does not?

Pat didn't divulge that in the Indo, possibly something on the mish-mash of stats from Britain & other European countries on abortions there favoured by Pro-Life groups, and/or the abortion videos that Ronán has and wanted the committee to watch.

Delirium

Some pro-life person/group is sending religious warnings to politicans regarding repeal the 8th.

https://twitter.com/SenLynnRuane/status/922769961701052416
https://twitter.com/sharmander_says/status/922858760682557441

robindch

Delirium wrote: »

https://twitter.com/SenLynnRuane/status/922769961701052416
https://twitter.com/sharmander_says/status/922858760682557441

"Judas - this time, no tongue!"

veliktom

I was very disappointed that Mattie McGrath decided to have his little strop yesterday. The cynic in me thinks that he did it to avoid grilling the TFMR witnesses so that he wouldn't look bad in front of his voter base, and I was so looking forward to seeing how he handled that one.

Delirium

veliktom wrote: »

I was very disappointed that Mattie McGrath decided to have his little strop yesterday. The cynic in me thinks that he did it to avoid grilling the TFMR witnesses so that he wouldn't look bad in front of his voter base, and I was so looking forward to seeing how he handled that one.

It's theatre to take media focus away from facts that he (and Mullen) have no rebuttal for.

Any of the outlets covering it yesterday were all about McGraths performance with feck all about the facts being related to committee by other parties.

veliktom

Delirium wrote: »

It's theatre to take media focus away from facts that he (and Mullen) have no rebuttal for.

Any of the outlets covering it yesterday were all about McGraths performance with feck all about the facts being related to committee by other parties.

Absolutely, and I hope the majority of the voting population can see right through it when it comes to ballot time.

aloyisious

I know I'm quoting from the Indo. In Thursday's print issue, Dr Boylan took a swipe at Senator Mullen after the Senator passed comments on the Dr's evidence on the death of Savita not being what the report on her death gave. Dr Boylan slammed Sen Mullen for not attending most of the committee hearing and coming in late after he had given his evidence.

Loafing Oaf

veliktom wrote: »

I was very disappointed that Mattie McGrath decided to have his little strop yesterday.

You kidding? I found it mesmerising!:P

aloyisious

More UCD students body and Katie Ascough.

https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/ucd-students-vote-overwhelmingly-in-favour-of-removing-su-president-katie-ascough-36265977.html

The below was part of the earlier Friday Indo online issue. I'm unable to download the original link to that article. I can't see in it the reason she did not reveal the legal advice she was given on the wording in the reprinted SU booklet on abortion.


Ms Ascough also addressed questions shared by the student body over why she didn't share the legal advice she sought with the sabbats.
"The COO and I discussed at length the illegality and its implications, but the sabbatical officers still wanted to move ahead. The illegality ultimately wasn’t an issue for them. And that’s fine. They wanted to take the risk upon themselves, and that can be considered noble by some. But it is not very noble of four men to gang up and demand that one woman, against her will, break the law.
"You cannot mandate someone to break the law, even our own UCDSU Constitution recognises this. It was not right and it was not fair to try to make me do something against my will, and then to say that the advice they were giving me was for my own sake. That argument doesn’t stand up and is self-serving. They wanted me to do something illegal and I didn’t want to do it – that is the bottom line.
"And when I didn’t do what they wanted me to do, they did not forgive me for this. Shortly after, all but one called for no confidence in me as their President. This, to me, is inherently unfair."

......................................................................................................................

In the Examiner, a very short article.

http://www.irishexaminer.com/viewpoints/columnists/alison-oconnor/availability-of-abortion-pill-means-the-genie-is-out-of-the-bottle-461724.html

seamus

And the Students Union have voted to remove Ascough.

https://www.rte.ie/news/2017/1026/915464-ucd-students-union/

It does go to show how she got elected in the first place though. There are 33,000 students in UCD, all of whom are eligible to vote in SU elections and polls.

This was probably the most high-profile thing that has happened in the SU in decades, and yet just 6,600 ballots were cast - 20% of the student body.

The poll which elected Ascough in the first place had a turnout of just 3350 - 10% of the student body.

In this case Ascough was impeached simply by people bothering to turn up and vote. The "No" vote is basically the people who elected her president, plus a couple of hundred. The "Yes" vote being the 3,300 "new" people who bothered to vote, and anyone else who voted against her in the election.

It looks like the best thing Ascough did as SU president was inject some life into student politics and get students interested in it.

aloyisious

seamus wrote: »

And the Students Union have voted to remove Ascough.

https://www.rte.ie/news/2017/1026/915464-ucd-students-union/

It does go to show how she got elected in the first place though. There are 33,000 students in UCD, all of whom are eligible to vote in SU elections and polls.

This was probably the most high-profile thing that has happened in the SU in decades, and yet just 6,600 ballots were cast - 20% of the student body.

The poll which elected Ascough in the first place had a turnout of just 3350 - 10% of the student body.

In this case Ascough was impeached simply by people bothering to turn up and vote. The "No" vote is basically the people who elected her president, plus a couple of hundred. The "Yes" vote being the 3,300 "new" people who bothered to vote, and anyone else who voted against her in the election.

It looks like the best thing Ascough did as SU president was inject some life into student politics and get students interested in it.

I haven't seen the parts of the booklet that were seen by Ascough as illegal. I may be wrong [offering advice on how to get an abortion - as distinct from repeating in print the places where one might look for advice] but if the handbook merely had the second and not the first, then [IMO] it looks like Ascough is trying to be clever with her self-description of herself as being bullied by four males.

Speaking after the result, Ms Ascough thanked her campaign team and said: "This is a sad day for me, but it is also a sad day for our university.
"Universities should be a place of freedom of speech, freedom of thought and freedom of association."

When Ms Ascough was elected earlier this year, she promised that she would not interfere with the union's position on the issue of abortion. Failing that promise in the way she did was denial of freedom of speech and thought "you cannot learn about a topic which you are denied knowledge of" esp in a centre of learning and a union which you have enrolled into...

Mark Hamill

Anyone hear her on Newstalk just now? Basically unchallenged on most/all of her claims. They pointed out that the 4 other Sabbatical Officers were against her, but didn't have any of them on to defend their side.

Open letter from Barry Murphy on Monday 23rd, one of those sabbatical officers who supposedly bullied Matie Ascough is here (pretty long so I'm just posting the facebook link, but it seems to be publicly viewable without logging in).

Some interesting parts:

[Katie] insisted I reduce [the budget spend on the repeal campaign] back down. Our accountant was arriving 10 minutes later and she insisted I reduce it and send it to him and her. I maintained my budget and sent it without reduction. Due to the accountant arriving and accepting my budget, and those circumstances alone, my budget increased. Katie has claimed in interviews she allowed me to increase my Repeal spend- when in fact, she ran out of time to decrease it.

it was extremely unlikely any case would have been made against it. This was the lawyers original advice over the phone. He had stated that he was willing and ready to defend us in the very unlikely case that a claim was made.

[SNIP]

[Katie and Barry] were both set to go on annual leave and that Thursday evening had become our print deadline. 20 minutes before she was due to leave, Katie decided to look at the book for the first time. She discovered a page on abortion information that caused her to become distressed. She insisted the info would have to be removed. She stated her family, friends and campaign team would be horrified if she stood over a book that contained information on abortion.

Another sabbat and I, with Katie's and the overall SU's interests at heart, convinced her to leave the information in. We couldn't be seen to recede on last year's efforts. We wanted the information there for a female students welfare. In distress a student can view that information and doesn't have to change their name and email (out of shame) to access it. Katie reluctantly agreed to leaving the information in but wanted nothing more to do with the book and asked that we remove a page on her class trip. The book went to print. 5,000 copies arrived when I was away.

I am the sabbat who was called into Katie's office 3 weeks later to be told the book would be scrapped because she had suddenly become aware the information was illegal. We had been given a talk during our crossover training discussing the proud history of the SU and how we had distributed the illegal information in the previous year’s Winging It edition. Katie was present at this talk. We also received the same talk during our election campaigns, as candidates.

So it seems that she decided that she couldn't morally stand over what was in the book (despite promising not to even look at it) and then brought up the "suddenly aware of legal advice" excuse to remove it, despite all officers necessarily being aware of the advice twice over at that stage.

I spent an afternoon with a colleague working out what we could say on the page. It was legal, informative and focused directly at a student’s welfare. Katie would not entertain this suggestion and insisted she was deciding what replaced the illegal content. We had time for the lawyer to look at it but she refused. The following Monday I was called into the office from our orientation tent to find Katie re writing the page herself. I was allowed no input and was physically blocked from accessing the computer. It has since been raised that the current information is still illegal anyway, Katie did not seek legal advice before sending the book to reprint. This prompts the question was she really concerned about the legal issue in the first place?

She said on Newstalk that the page now has phone numbers for various support groups including the SU itself and the SU will give out the same information over the phone that was originally printed there. She claims that this protects the SU from the possibility of legal action, that giving the information by request avoids the issue of printing the information for anyone to see. That seems like a bizarre loophole, does anyone know if it is true? I'm presuming it's not and it's why her approved page isn't really legal either.

In the build up to that week Katie tried to manipulate me out of having UCD for Choice at our Freshers stand. I was given the task of organising the week and I gave them a space at our stand. The past two SU teams had done the very same and this year, being the referendum year, it was most important for them to be there. When Katie realised, she was unhappy, she wanted them to be removed. Again for her own sake, I told her students would notice and blame her. She put me under extreme pressure to get them out but then accepted that they'd be shoved in the corner, away from the pizza. I had no intention of making them do that. She later went to the tent organisers behind my back to try remove the group we are mandated to support. She also warned me to not recruit reps "interested in repealing the 8th amendment". She insisted I didn't post about it and told me it's something she thought about during her original campaign. She didn't want a "council chamber full of pro-choice reps".

So much for claims of delegation :rolleyes:.

MrPudding

Mark Hamill wrote: »

Anyone hear her on Newstalk just now? Basically unchallenged on most/all of her claims. They pointed out that the 4 other Sabbatical Officers were against her, but didn't have any of them on to defend their side.

Open letter from Barry Murphy on Monday 23rd, one of those sabbatical officers who supposedly bullied Matie Ascough is here (pretty long so I'm just posting the facebook link, but it seems to be publicly viewable without logging in).

Some interesting parts:




So it seems that she decided that she couldn't morally stand over what was in the book (despite promising not to even look at it) and then brought up the "suddenly aware of legal advice" excuse to remove it, despite all officers necessarily being aware of the advice twice over at that stage.


She said on Newstalk that the page now has phone numbers for various support groups including the SU itself and the SU will give out the same information over the phone that was originally printed there. She claims that this protects the SU from the possibility of legal action, that giving the information by request avoids the issue of printing the information for anyone to see. That seems like a bizarre loophole, does anyone know if it is true? I'm presuming it's not and it's why her approved page isn't really legal either.


So much for claims of delegation :rolleyes:.

Might be worth posting thin in the Afterhours thread, if it is not there already.

MrP