Abortion Discussion, Part Trois

Absolam

aloyisious wrote: »

I assume this possible link to a US charity wouldn't affect the Irish Charity's standing in irish law?

I imagine it might take more than the spelling of two words to make the CRA leap into full investigation mode. Not that there would be any reason for an Irish charity not to be linked to an American charity. Would there?

Lurkio

Absolam wrote: »

I imagine it might take more than the spelling of two words to make the CRA leap into full investigation mode. Not that there would be any reason for an Irish charity not to be linked to an American charity. Would there?

Its the standards in public office crowd that youth defence fall under, and they have no power to investigate. All bodies that submit their books to them do so voluntarily afaik, and if you say no, theres nothing that can be done. Think its the same with Iona.

aloyisious

Sabina's remarks have certainly got the Pro-life group upset. A Rep was on the news complaining about the President's wife using her position to promote abortion. It sounded peculiar, almost like "woman, shut up, what would you know about it?". A constitutional law expert opined that the President's wife and family are NOT bound by the same rule of law that he is, when it come's to making statements. The paper mentioned she'd spoken to the midwives two years ago, left me wondering what she topic spoke about to them back then, & if it was about abortion.

Delirium

https://twitter.com/betaburns/status/729744263098052609

aloyisious

You mean I'll have to wait for Dave til Friday? Remind me, is it the Indo or the times?

Absolam

Lurkio wrote: »

Its the standards in public office crowd that youth defence fall under, and they have no power to investigate. All bodies that submit their books to them do so voluntarily afaik, and if you say no, theres nothing that can be done. Think its the same with Iona.

That rather depends on what context you're considering them to fall under; I imagine they fall under all sorts of regulatory bodies depending on what context you look at (Health & Safety, Advertising Standards etc etc). But the Charities Regulatory Authority (CRA) is Ireland's national statutory regulatory agency for charitable organisations. The Standards in Public Office Commission is responsible for supervising the disclosure of interests and compliance with tax clearance requirements, the disclosure of donations and election expenditure, the expenditure of state funding received by political parties and the registration of lobbying. They only intersect with Youth Defense insofar as keeping and making available a record of their lobbying activities, as far as I can tell?

robdonn

https://twitter.com/gavreilly/status/729629117985992704

https://twitter.com/gavreilly/status/729629905122693120

oscarBravo

robdonn wrote: »

[...] redacted at user's request [...]

This is a point that needs to be emphasised over and over as the single key point in the debate over abortion: making abortion illegal doesn't prevent abortion; it just makes it less safe.

Absolam

oscarBravo wrote: »

This is a point that needs to be emphasised over and over as the single key point in the debate over abortion: making abortion illegal doesn't prevent abortion; it just makes it less safe.

I'm going to take a wild swing and say I doubt it will show the number of abortions performed in the RoI (even per capita) is anywhere the number in the UK, regardless of the conditions they're performed under.

oscarBravo

Absolam wrote: »

I'm going to take a wild swing and say I doubt it will show the number of abortions performed in the RoI (even per capita) is anywhere the number in the UK, regardless of the conditions they're performed under.

Well, duh. Considering we've exported a significant percentage of our abortions to the UK (and elsewhere) in order to allow pro-lifers to feel smug, of course the number will be lower here.

Kantava

I am 6 weeks and four days pregnant. The foetus measures between 2-6 mm at the moment and looks like a tadpole. The heart should hopefully have started beating approximately two weeks ago, I wont know if everything is ok until I have the first scan. I have been aware of the pregnancy for three weeks. This is a very much wanted pregnancy, but I find it astounding that if anything were to happen to me requiring medical treatment, that this 2-6 mm much wanted being, has the same right to life as I do.
Its astounding!

Absolam

oscarBravo wrote: »

Well, duh. Considering we've exported a significant percentage of our abortions to the UK (and elsewhere) in order to allow pro-lifers to feel smug, of course the number will be lower here.

So.... the point "developed nations with more restrictive abortion laws have the same rate of abortions as in nations where it is legal, but simply performed under unsafe conditions" simply isn't true? Interesting.

robdonn

Absolam wrote: »

So.... the point "***" simply isn't true? Interesting.

International travel just hours after an abortion could be considered "unsafe conditions".

But how about we wait until the paper is actually published before picking it apart?

Penn

robdonn wrote: »

International travel just hours after an abortion could be considered "unsafe conditions".

But how about we wait until the paper is actually published before picking it apart?

And would also include the likes of abortion pills which some women have to resort to because safe and legal abortions aren't available in their nation.

Ragnar Lothbrok

Just wondering...........when do pro-choice people consider that the unborn child is an actual life as opposed to a foetus that can be destroyed?

As a pro-lifer I'm often asked when I consider "life" to begin, and as I'm not a medical or scientific expert, I don't have a specific answer. In my view it's certainly many months earlier than pro-choice people would agree to.

I'm expected to have a specific answer by those who support liberal abortion laws, so now I want to turn the question around and ask pro-choice people when do they consider that life begins?

robdonn

Ragnar Lothbrok wrote: »

Just wondering...........when do pro-choice people consider that the unborn child is an actual life as opposed to a foetus that can be destroyed?

As a pro-lifer I'm often asked when I consider "life" to begin, and as I'm not a medical or scientific expert, I don't have a specific answer. In my view it's certainly many months earlier than pro-choice people would agree to.

I'm expected to have a specific answer by those who support liberal abortion laws, so now I want to turn the question around and ask pro-choice people when do they consider that life begins?

It varies between people I'd imagine, some people believe life begins at birth, others at viability, and some at other stages, but even those who believe that life begins at earlier stages can still support the right of bodily autonomy of a woman over the right to life of the foetus. People can still support abortion, or pre-birth euthanasia (if that's not an oxymoron), in cases of FFA for example without the question of when life begins being a factor to them.

Lurkio

Meanwhile, at HQ......

"Voltaire once commented that “the most important thing in life is to speak your mind”. That’s exactly what I did last week. At a private meeting amongst colleagues, I raised concerns about legislating for abortion in Ireland, adding that should such a scenario arise, I would have grave difficulty supporting it."

sez the new health minister, and him barely out of shorts
http://www.broadsheet.ie/2016/05/10/abortion-and-what-simon-said/

Kantava

Lurkio wrote: »

Meanwhile, at HQ......

"Voltaire once commented that “the most important thing in life is to speak your mind”. That’s exactly what I did last week. At a private meeting amongst colleagues, I raised concerns about legislating for abortion in Ireland, adding that should such a scenario arise, I would have grave difficulty supporting it."

sez the new health minister, and him barely out of shorts
http://www.broadsheet.ie/2016/05/10/abortion-and-what-simon-said/

Oh FFS

aloyisious

Using per capita as the basis to estimate a figure for any identical procedure performed in the ROI and the UK, given the larger population in the UK (64.1 Million) to ROI (4.59 Million) it's understandable if a larger number were performed in the UK, even solely amongst it's own female population. If the number of women from a neighbouring country undergoing the same procedure were added to the procedures-figures, I'd reckon the difference in figures would be greater.

Absolam

robdonn wrote: »

International travel just hours after an abortion could be considered "unsafe conditions".

But how about we wait until the paper is actually published before picking it apart?

Sure, maybe posting about it before it came out wasn't a great idea

Ragnar Lothbrok

robdonn wrote: »

It varies between people I'd imagine, some people believe life begins at birth, others at viability, and some at other stages, but even those who believe that life begins at earlier stages can still support the right of bodily autonomy of a woman over the right to life of the foetus. People can still support abortion, or pre-birth euthanasia (if that's not an oxymoron), in cases of FFA for example without the question of when life begins being a factor to them.

Do some people seriously believe that life only begins at birth? I would hope that's not a view shared by many of the pro-choice people, as that seems a particularly barbaric point of view, given that we have all seen proof of children born as early as 24 weeks into pregnancy not only surviving, but thriving.

Kantava

Ragnar Lothbrok wrote: »

Just wondering...........when do pro-choice people consider that the unborn child is an actual life as opposed to a foetus that can be destroyed?

To me it is a life and a foetus at the same time. The heart starts beating at 21 days, but barely any of the other organs are in any way formed. (I think officially its called an embryo before 10 weeks and a foetus after that).

It becomes recognisably human around the 12-14 week mark which is when I would personally think the cut off for elective abortions would be that arent for medical reasons.

edit again: Its a long time after that that I think the foetus should have equal right to life to its mother. That is just a completely crazy concept. I cant get my head around it at all as a pregnant woman.

aloyisious

@Ragnar, re your "the feotus V the unborn child is an actual life" question, that'll probably never be answered completely enough, even to the nth degree, to satisfy everyone. The use of the words "unborn child" will probably dissuade some of those in the pro-choice side of the debate from replying as they see those words as being used by pro-life people for emotive and positional purposes.

Ragnar Lothbrok

aloyisious wrote: »

@Ragnar, re your "the feotus V the unborn child is an actual life" question, that'll probably never be answered completely enough, even to the nth degree, to satisfy everyone. The use of the words "unborn child" will probably dissuade some of those in the pro-choice side of the debate from replying as they see those words as being used by pro-life people for emotive and positional purposes.

I do try to stay away from emotive terms when discussing abortion, but it's very difficult at times. I genuinely see the "unborn child" as exactly that, so that's the only way I can describe it.

My terminology shouldn't dissuade anyone from answering a genuine question though.

Kantava

Ragnar Lothbrok wrote: »

I I genuinely see the "unborn child" as exactly that, so that's the only way I can describe it.

Do you think the 6 mm long tadpole-like embryo in my belly has an equal right to life to me? Would you deny me essential medical treatment to preserve that?

oldrnwisr

Absolam wrote: »

I'm going to take a wild swing and say I doubt it will show the number of abortions performed in the RoI (even per capita) is anywhere the number in the UK, regardless of the conditions they're performed under.

Your wild swing is just that "wild" and well wide of the actual facts.

There are several problems in using the ROI vs. UK alone as a tool for refuting OscarBravo's point. There's the different populations, the difference in cultural diversity, the fact that Ireland's problem isn't only exported to the UK but also to countries like Spain. However, the biggest problem is that it is cherry picking. When the problem is analysed on a global scale we do see that the restrictiveness of a country's abortion laws don't have any effect on the number of abortions performed.

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 at the bottom of this post) 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 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. We also know that unsafe abortions are a significant cause of maternal death accounting for approximately 13% of maternal deaths. These are factors which ought to be considered in the debate rather than being glibly swept aside as you seem to do.

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:

UN Abortion Worldwide Data

Guttmacher Institute - Facts on Induced abortion worldwide

Irish Abortion Figures

Abortion laws worldwide

Induced abortions: estimated rates and trends worldwide

Adding It Up: The Costs and Benefits of Investing in Family Planning and Maternal and Newborn Health

*Note: Abortion rate defined as number of abortions per 1000 women aged 15-44.

robdonn

Absolam wrote: »

Sure, maybe posting about it before it came out wasn't a great idea

Well I will remove reference to it then until it is released.

eviltwin

Ragnar Lothbrok wrote: »

Do some people seriously believe that life only begins at birth? I would hope that's not a view shared by many of the pro-choice people, as that seems a particularly barbaric point of view, given that we have all seen proof of children born as early as 24 weeks into pregnancy not only surviving, but thriving.

To me its a life when it can survive on its own. I support the woman's right to end her pregnancy at any stage.

oldrnwisr

Ragnar Lothbrok wrote: »

Just wondering...........when do pro-choice people consider that the unborn child is an actual life as opposed to a foetus that can be destroyed?

It's difficult to come up with an absolute definitive line when life begins. Firstly, trying to establish a line like that is difficult because you're trying to establish a step change in a continuously changing process. For example, we allow people to vote, drink etc. at 18 because we recognise that a step change has occurred. Now that's not to say that someone who is 18 years and 2 days old is any more mature than someone who is 17 years and 364 days old. It's just symbolic.

The problem we have in the abortion debate is to establish a line where we recognise that some significant change has occurred in the development of the foetus. IMO, the first line that should give us pause in the debate is 12 weeks. Beginning in this week we see the start of synaptogenesis (the rapid formation of neural connections in the brain) and the start of some kind of detectable brainwave. This is important for a number of reasons. Firstly, the brain is no longer really a lump of tissue but a working organ from this point on. Secondly, there is a nice synchronicity between establishing the beginning of life using brainwave activity and the already established method for determining death using brainwave activity.

This isn't a strict timeline because foetal development can vary between individuals. But it's the first point where we should start to think about restricting abortions and it's certainly a far more thought out position than life begins at conception.

Lurkio

Kantava wrote: »

Oh FFS

O yeah. And remember who the (effective) other party in the non-coalition are. Odds are its back to waiting for another disaster to force change.