Abortion Discussion, Part Trois

end of the road

NuMarvel wrote: »

And yet you oppose repeal which is the only way we can change our laws to allow for abortion in the cases of "permanent injury or disability, cases of FFA or other reasons where the baby will not survive to term or cannot be viably caried to term".

And before you say it:

1) No, these circumstances can't be allowed under the 8th at present, and
2) No, we can't change our constitution to properly cover these scenarios.

yes i repose repeal because i will not vote for something that will allow abortion on demand, even if it would also allow abortion in the circumstances that it should be allowed in . the government have put me and many others in this position by planning to legislate for abortion on demand which is not required in ireland.

smacl

end of the road wrote: »

the government have put me and many others in this position by planning to legislate for abortion on demand which is not required in ireland.

Surely whether or not abortion on demand is required in this country, as with any democracy, is a matter of public preference and will be voted on by the public. You are clearly of the opinion that it is not required but that doesn't make it fact.

end of the road

smacl wrote: »

Surely whether or not abortion on demand is required in this country, as with any democracy, is a matter of public preference and will be voted on by the public. You are clearly of the opinion that it is not required but that doesn't make it fact.

it is fact that it's not required. it's fact that it's only wanted, which is not the same as required.

PopePalpatine

Ever thought of providing sources for these "facts" of yours?

Delirium

end of the road wrote: »

it is fact that it's not required. it's fact that it's only wanted, which is not the same as required.

I really need a gif of Janet from 'the good place' saying 'not a fact':pac::pac::pac:

aloyisious

end of the road wrote: »

yes i repose repeal because i will not vote for something that will allow abortion on demand, even if it would also allow abortion in the circumstances that it should be allowed in . the government have put me and many others in this position by planning to legislate for abortion on demand which is not required in ireland.

Abortion on demand will NOT be legislated for. If you think otherwise, wait until tomorrow to read what we will be voting on in the referendum.

Ref your other post with this [it is fact that it's not required. it's fact that it's only wanted, which is not the same as required] written in it, I dispute it being factual as well. Any pregnant woman seeking an abortion will have to satisfy medics on her actual need for an abortion.

It won't be a case of her arriving at her GP DEMANDING and GETTING an abortion, however much you and other opponents keep using that statement as a weapon in your campaign to convince others to vote to retain the 8th.

recedite

aloyisious wrote: »

I think I see the point you are arguing but disagree as I see HEALTH as an overall - not just a nebulous - concept. I see health as akin to the aphorism

Well yes, in a broader interpretation life is an extension of health and even happiness, as in the phrase "quality of life".
But in the specific context of abortion legislation the main difference between the regimes in place in England and in RoI is due to the use of the word life in RoI as opposed to health in the English version (as in a threat to the woman's life or health).

So in that context, it seems very surprising that a NI judge would unilaterally reinterpret the word life to mean health.

As you quite rightly pointed out, judges are inclined to make their own interpretations, which can sometimes be overturned by a higher court.

end of the road

aloyisious wrote: »

Abortion on demand will NOT be legislated for. If you think otherwise, wait until tomorrow to read what we will be voting on in the referendum.

abortion with no restriction up to 12 weeks is still abortion on demand in my view.

aloyisious wrote: »

Any pregnant woman seeking an abortion will have to satisfy medics on her actual need for an abortion.

It won't be a case of her arriving at her GP DEMANDING and GETTING an abortion, however much you and other opponents keep using that statement as a weapon in your campaign to convince others to vote to retain the 8th.

i believe that was the original plan in england. doesn't seem to have stayed that way, with abortions for all sorts of non-medical reasons being able to take place. so i don't think that long term we can have a situation by where women have to satisfy medics with their need for an abortion. we will likely have to harmonise with britain.

aloyisious

recedite wrote: »

So in that context, it seems very surprising that a NI judge would unilaterally reinterpret the word life to mean health.

The difference being a different legal judisdiction. Lawyers might take a peek at what courts elsewhere have ruled on similar legal cases for the purpose of legal advantage [chancing one's arm] in the hope that the judge hearing one's case might see the other jurisdiction's ruling as being relevant [guidance-wise] to the matter being heard.

I'm not saying that a judge might feel the liberal urge to issue a ruling which would make a splash in local or national jurisrudence for career advancement purposes.....

Even poiticians have to get their liberal thoughts from somewhere.....

Edit...... On the topic of liberal, the word can mean more than that usually thought it means by a variation of same: favoring or permitting freedom of action, especially with respect to matters of personal belief or expression: I'm sure people don't uaually acquaint being liberal with what is seen as being doctrinaire in belief but......

aloyisious

Does anyone have any idea where this quote ["The Eighth Amendment has saved 5,000 lives every year and if we didn't have it then unborn human beings would have no protection."] came from and how the lives were - by definition - saved? It's on the front page of the online Irish Examiner about two rallies in Dublin today, one from each side of the debate.

smacl

end of the road wrote: »

it is fact that it's not required. it's fact that it's only wanted, which is not the same as required.

Define required. It seems your definition is that anything that doesn't lead to probable death in the short term is not required, merely wanted. By your logic, and noting that yesterday was international women's day, you could equally well say that women don't require the vote. I would suggest that when we're legislating we extend the definition to include unfair treatment and undue suffering.

smacl

Delirium wrote: »

I really need a gif of Janet from 'the good place' saying 'not a fact':pac::pac::pac:

Yep, definitely call bull-shirt on that one. And with regards to the unborn....

Peregrinus

aloyisious wrote: »

Does anyone have any idea where this quote ["The Eighth Amendment has saved 5,000 lives every year and if we didn't have it then unborn human beings would have no protection."] came from and how the lives were - by definition - saved? It's on the front page of the online Irish Examiner about two rallies in Dublin today, one from each side of the debate.

It’s rather loosely based on this report, commissioned by the Pro Life Campaign and published in 2016, which in turn is based on calculations by Brendan Lynch, a consulting actuary.

Essentially, the actuary’s calculation looks at abortion rates (percentage of pregnancies terminated by abortion) in England and Wales, Spain and Belgium between 1994 and 2014, and in Portugal between 2007 and 2014. If you apply those rates to Irish pregnancies, you can work out how many Irish abortions there would have been if Ireland had experienced English, Spanish, etc. rates of abortion. You can then compare that to the amount of abortions we actually had, and work out how many extra births we had on account of our lower abortion rate.

Expressed in annual terms and rather round figures, over the period we had 3,750 more births a year than we would have had if we experienced the Belgian abortion rate, 6,000 more births a year than if we experienced the Spanish rate, 7,000 more births a year than if we experienced the Portuguese rate, and 10,000 more births a year than if we experienced the English rate.

I’m not actually sure where the figure of 5,000 extra births a year comes from - perhaps it's the weighted average of the figures from the four comparator countries, or something like that.

The Pro Life Campaign (but not the actuary) assume that the lower Irish abortion rate is attributable to the 8th amendment. This seems dodgy to me; we know that other factors can affect abortion rates, if only because the four other countries studied have widely different abortion rates, and none of them are affected by the 8th amendment. It may well be that for social and cultural reasons Irish women have a lower propensity to seek abortions in the first place, and that the Irish abortion rate would be low anyway, even in the absence of constitutional constraints. And it’s worth noting that Ireland had very low abortion rates even before the 8th Amendment. (In fact, I don’t know that there was any fall at all in Irish abortion rates following the enactment of the 8th Amendment.) There is certainly no basis for assuming that the entire difference between Ireland and the comparator countries is attributable to the 8th Amendment.

NuMarvel

In addition to Peregrinus's analysis, here are some other problems with that publication:

1) The assumed abortion rate for Ireland is based solely on British statistics, which are in turn based on the addresses women give. The stated abortion rate doesn’t account for women who travel to Britain but don’t give Irish addresses, or women who import pills. In short, the actuary assumed the British statistics are the totality, when in reality they are just the minimum known.

2) It states there were Irish court cases in the early 1990s regarding bodily integrity and privacy that without the 8th, would have led to abortion laws similar to the rest of Europe. However, the cases aren’t cited and I can’t find anything from that timeframe on those matters. So the claim that such cases exist is dubious and unproven.

3) Even if there such cases, it for some reason assumes that the government would have been reasonably quick to legislate for those cases. This has NOT been our experience to date. It took 20 years, two referendums, 5 governments and an ECHR case before legislation was passed just for the X Case, which was about risks to a woman’s life. Imagine how much longer it would take to legislate for court cases that would have allowed abortion on less restrictive grounds.

4) It assumes abortion laws similar to the rest of Europe would have been introduced in 1994. This is the year before our second divorce referendum passed by the tightest of margins. I don’t think so.


In summary, the publication is saying that if we assumed Ireland had similar abortion laws and rates to other European countries, then we’d have similar abortion laws and rates to other European countries. But they haven’t provided anything to support their assumptions in the first place, so there's no reason to give credence to any findings based on those assumptions.

aloyisious

Ta Peregrinus & NuMarvel. I was thinking it was a comparison between figures obtained from abroad and a computation of them to guestimate what would have happened if similar laws applying abroad were in use here. I reckon other people can also see that the figure of 5,000 would also have to be worked off against the number of women who did travel abroad for abortions to have any level of verity.

Edit... The figure of irish Women would presumably have to rely on home addresses given to UK clinics and other UK bodies in respect of foreign visits for abortion.

I copied this Govt PDF link - http://www.oireachtas.ie/documents/bills28/bills/2018/2918/b2918d.pdf - on the referendum paper from the Examiner.
Provision may be made by law for the regulation of termination of pregnancy......

recedite

Peregrinus wrote: »

And it’s worth noting that Ireland had very low abortion rates even before the 8th Amendment. (In fact, I don’t know that there was any fall at all in Irish abortion rates following the enactment of the 8th Amendment.)

Stating the obvious here, but that's because abortion was illegal

aloyisious

recedite wrote: »

Stating the obvious here, but that's because abortion was illegal

The sting in the tale is that the majority of Irish abortions - abortions performed on Irish women - were performed abroad. The figures provided by the various Irish anti-abortions groups and bodies have to be based on some verifiable source and the UK ones [those of abortions performed on irish women] are those referred-to and relied on in the anti-abortion publications. Leastways that's whom they state their quoted abortion figures performed on irish women are obtained from - official UK figures data.

Edit; Taking the figures used by the anti-abortion groups here to be correct, then if abortion is legalised here in the way the groups claim the law-change would allow, the 5,000 Irish women going to the UK yearly for abortions could have them here instead. The only actual change in relation to abortion operations data for Irish women would be the country they took place in. It would then, in theory, present the vista that the groups would dislike, that the 5,000 lives they claim the 8th saved [abortion operations NOT performed here] would no longer be saved here because the abortions could take place here and not in the UK. My figure of 5,000 women is based on the 5,000 abortions figure presented as factual by the anti-abortion groups.

Mark Hamill

end of the road wrote: »

abortion with no restriction up to 12 weeks is still abortion on demand in my view.

In that case, abortion on demand already exists even with the 8th amendment. Women just have to be able to afford to go the UK to demand it. Am I right in thinking that you don't agree that women travelling for abortion should be prevented in doing so? How do you square that?

ohnonotgmail

Peregrinus wrote: »

Actually, no. The UK legal regulation of abortion is crapulous, hypocritical, anti-choice and anti-woman. From that point of view it suits Iona's purposes quite well.

any chance you clarify what you mean by this and how you came to that conclusion?

ohnonotgmail

Mark Hamill wrote: »

In that case, abortion on demand already exists even with the 8th amendment. Women just have to be able to afford to go the UK to demand it. Am I right in thinking that you don't agree that women travelling for abortion should be prevented in doing so? How do you square that?

EOTR has made it clear that he has no problem with women travelling for abortion.

NuMarvel

ohnonotgmail wrote: »

EOTR has made it clear that he has no problem with women travelling for abortion.

And his rationale for being okay with it is that it shows women have really thought whether they want to proceed with an abortion. So he's actually okay with "abortion on demand" as long as women have jumped through enough hoops. So much for wanting to protect the unborn...

Mark Hamill

I've a question for all those who are anti-abortion -
Do you think that all miscarriages should be investigated like any other sudden death?

aloyisious

People who are going to vote YES for the deletion of the 8th and the change in the constitution should be aware that a TD thinks the youth of the future will be culled as a result, or so RTE news has reported him as saying in the Dail debate today.

Mattie McGrath is losing the plot, he's commnented that May 25th is childrens day in the US and he believes we will be following the US in abortion law.

PopePalpatine

Let me guess, he whipped out the old canard of "We're aborting future Einsteins/Mandelas/Hawkingses/MLKs!"

smacl

aloyisious wrote: »

Mattie McGrath is losing the plot, he's commnented that May 25th is childrens day in the US and he believes we will be following the US in abortion law.

The implication there is that he was at some point in possession of said plot which is a matter of conjecture

end of the road

Mark Hamill wrote: »

In that case, abortion on demand already exists even with the 8th amendment. Women just have to be able to afford to go the UK to demand it. Am I right in thinking that you don't agree that women travelling for abortion should be prevented in doing so? How do you square that?

you are not correct. i personally do believe women traveling for abortions should be prevented from doing so in theory. i recognise however that it's not really practical to do it.

smacl

Mark Hamill wrote: »

In that case, abortion on demand already exists even with the 8th amendment. Women just have to be able to afford to go the UK to demand it. Am I right in thinking that you don't agree that women travelling for abortion should be prevented in doing so? How do you square that?

As i see it NIMBYism plain and simple. While I don't think EOTR is by any means the worst in this regard, I suspect that a large part of the pro-life effort is an attempted show of strength by a conservative supposed moral majority who I seriously doubt give a flying fork about looking after the best interests of babies once born or the disadvantaged young children they are likely to become. I think they're neither moral nor in a majority and if I'm honest find them rather hateful. Problem is that there are no doubt many who's concerns are entirely genuine and it is difficult to distinguish one from the other.

NuMarvel

end of the road wrote: »

you are not correct. i personally do believe women traveling for abortions should be prevented from doing so in theory. i recognise however that it's not really practical to do it.

LOL Good one. :D

aloyisious

end of the road wrote: »

you are not correct. i personally do believe women traveling for abortions should be prevented from doing so in theory. i recognise however that it's not really practical to do it.

Nor legal under our constitution.

end of the road

aloyisious wrote: »

Nor legal under our constitution.

correct. however even if it wasn't illegal it wouldn't be practical.