Abortion Discussion, Part the Fourth

Pardon me for thinking this but it appears that you are agreeable with Obstetricians being employed by the HSE in hospitals where they refuse to provide the abortion services their female patients want. You are clearly aware there limits on the numbers of obstetricians per hospital here in Ireland, that there is not an excess of them in hospitals waiting to provide abortion services when the female patients need them and that obstetricians who refuse to to provide abortion services while staying on the medical staff numbers in hospitals are deliberately preventing the employ of other obstetricians who will be of assistance to female patients. Hopefully your post above indicates you might have had a change of opinion and agree with the Minister and the HSE replacing conscientious obstetricians with obstetricians more able to be relied on by their patients.

I never held or stated any opinion on that at all.

As I expected and as is clear in your posts you have inability to see past your own prejudices. You'll note, if you actually bothered to look closely enough that I haven't expressed any personal opinion on CO.

It is neither here nor there whether I'm agreeable or not to doctors being able to conscientiously object. My point is, consistently, that they can. The law in Ireland and the codes of ethics/professional conduct, broadly internationally.

There's no evidence that current obstetricians being employed are preventing the recruitment of new ones. As i mentioned earlier the HSE is right in the middle of a recruitment campaign. Numbers or money are not the issue - fundamental challenges in recruiting staff is the issue - again, as I've said ad nauseam. And finally as I've also already said, even if it was possible (it isn't) to sack obstetricians that conscientiously object, you haven't solved the problem but created a whole new set of problems instead. Fundamentally your entire input is flawed and there's a strong sense of cutting off your nose to spite your face in your view points.

Its a pity you keep mentioning sacking obstetricians when the alternative is not renewing existing contracts, thus enabling the HSE to agree new contracts with new obstetricians. That would eliminate the whole new set of problem you seem to imagine would exist. As you have posted, It's perfectly agreeable and acceptable for a person to have conscientious objections to practice/s they do not agree with or wish to comply with. It's not agreeable for obstetricians to use that objection as a means to deliberately prevent females from obtaining the medical services lawfully available in hospitals here. There is a difference there. Thinking outside the box by the C/O obstetricians might solve the problem caused by them for female patients requiring abortion services here. I regret the personal comment level you have put into your posts again and again to play the player. I will not respond in kind.

Safe access zones should increase the number of GPs willing to sign up. We've been saying this for years and there's no reason the legislation needed to take this long.

Expect the bould kevin to get a severe kicking and start rowing backwards faster than those lads in the olympics

Probably not good. The state Governor is a Democrat, John Bel Edwards, since Jan 11, 2016 but he's staunchly anti-abortion to the point when the family doctor told him and his wife she was pregnant with a spina-bifida foetus and recommended she have an abortion, they decided [according to a 30 second TV anti-abortion Ad highlighting their anti-abortion views] `I was devastated,` Donna Edwards says. `But John Bel never flinched. He just said, 'No. No, we're going to love this baby no matter what.'` The commercial shows their grown-up daughter with her fiancee as Donna Edwards says, `Samantha's getting married next spring and she's living proof that John Bel Edwards lives his values every day.` Edwards said the ad was his daughter's idea `to make sure people understood where we are on that issue as it relates to our Catholic Christian faith, being pro-life.` It also draws distinctions from the national Democratic Party, as Edwards positions himself as the kind of moderate Democrat that Louisiana used to regularly elect to statewide office. He, on June 21, 2022, signed sweeping legislation Tuesday that would criminalize abortion in Louisiana and ban the procedure in nearly all circumstances from the moment of implantation if Roe v. Wade is overturned. The legislation does not include exceptions for rape and incest.

Margaret Sanger is a 'bete noir' for the forced-birth movement due to her 'theories' about eugenics, which were crap.

However, her 'start' came from being one of the first in the western world to help provide contraception to poor women. This is something that the criminal enterprise known as the RCC is still against and would love to ban anywhere they hold sway, like in the US via the RCC-dominated Supreme Court.

Here are some excerpts of letters written to Sanger from women imploring her for help avoiding getting pregnant. She apparently received over 250,000 of them in her lifetime.

That son originally endorsed his Pop but more recently is loudly against him. Son is a Conservative influencer who loudly denies he's gay but says he's interested in men.

The Dail, of course, at best is slow-walking any abortion legislation review afaik. But, some protestors are out reminding them we've not forgotten.

From The Medical Independent one day ago: New data published in the Irish Family Planning Association’s (IFPA) Activity Report for 2020 and 2021 shows that its early abortion service is working well.

Speaking on the launch of the report, IFPA CEO Mr Niall Behan, said: “We see the positive impact of the legalisation of abortion every day in our clinics. Most women in Ireland now have timely access to local abortion care, without having to explain or justify their decision to anyone. This has been transformative for reproductive health.

“758 clients accessed abortion care through the IFPA in 2020 and 2021. 89 per cent of women who attended our service were less than nine weeks pregnant at the time of their abortion. This suggests that women know where and how to access care, which is very positive news.”

The vast majority of IFPA clients (92 per cent) self-managed their early medical abortion at home, according to the data. In line with HSE guidance, 8 per cent of IFPA clients whose pregnancies were between 10 and 12 weeks or who had other additional medical needs were referred to hospitals for their abortion care.

However, as the Department of Health abortion review nears completion, the IFPA warns that the 12-week limit and mandatory three-day waiting period are harming women and the law must be reformed.

According to Mr Behan: “Due to the rigid 12-week limit for abortion care, hospital referrals for pregnancies over 10 weeks can be intensely pressurised and very stressful for women, IFPA doctors and hospital staff. Our experience reflects World Health Organisation (WHO) guidance, which is clear that gestational limits cause harm and should be removed.

“We also know from our specialist pregnancy counselling service that women are excluded from abortion care because of the 12-week limit. Our counsellors support women who are denied care in Ireland and forced to travel abroad for abortion services. These women experience significant stress, distress and stigma, as well as enduring the financial and logistical burdens of accessing healthcare in a different country. Forcing people to travel for abortion care is cruel and inhumane. It must stop.

“We also know from our services that the mandatory three-day waiting period causes distress and delay to our clients. It has no health rationale and interferes with women’s ability to make autonomous decisions about their healthcare. It is paternalistic and demeaning for women seeking care and it must be removed.”

Mr Behan concluded: “There is unfinished business for members of the Oireachtas with respect to abortion law. We know as a healthcare provider that legal restrictions – such as the 12-week limit and three-day wait – exclude, delay and cause harm to those seeking care.

“These barriers must be removed. Robust recommendations from the imminent abortion review will provide politicians with a critical opportunity to address legislative failings, reform the 2018 Act, and ensure access to abortion care for all who need it.”

When it happens it'll be about 55 years behind the rest of the UK.

Glad to see the NL finally got rid of the 'cooling off period,' which they'd made noises about in the past. Well past the time Ireland should do the same.

You are making a couple of assumptions there in your opening sentence 😉

But even for a man of such advanced and frequent guffage as Eamon Martin, that is some amount of guff. If you don't agree with abortion then don't have one... "implications for freedom of religion" my hole. Harassing women and staff at medical facilities is not an act of religious worship.

I haven't got a hold of todays print Irish Times yet to examine what it's content actually is and see how much it follows the apparently indicated content. The online edition is showing a short headline 2-sentence excerpt quoting the master of the Rotunda, Prof Fergal Malone as saying: A. that 95% of parents in Down Syndrome cases chose abortion, and B. that the hospital "does not advocate for termination, that is just the lived experience".

Umm. The article says Prof Whelan completes a 7 year term in December as Master of The Rotunda which means he was there in 2018.

It mentions that Prof Whelan said 95% of parents who's babies are diagnosed with Downs Syndrome at the Rotunda choose to have an abortion. Prof Whelan also said that those who CHOOSE TO TRAVEL do reach that decision themselves [without advocation from the Rotunda]. Linking those two quotes of Prof Whelan with the mention of the confirmation of such a diagnosis being confirmed at approx 12 weeks AND the same time period putting [except in the case of ANOTHER life-limiting condition existing for the pregnant woman] an end to a legal abortion for the woman here would lead me to presume the 95% figure may equate to 380 abortions being performed abroad for women with Downs Syndrome diagnosed pregnancies.

The Rotunda stated that between 20 and 25 Downes Syndrome babies were born there in 2018. I linked that figure to Prof Whelan's mention of 95% D/S diagnosed pregnancies ending in terminations to estimate the 20 births probably equated to 5% and multiplied the 20 births by 19 [95%] to get my figure of 380 terminations abroad for Irish women with D/S diagnosed pregnancies. My conflation of the quotes and my estimates may well be way out. The same applies to my linking of Prof Whelan's term as Master of the Rotunda with the Rotunda 2018 D/S birth rate there.

The words CHOOSE TO TRAVEL speak for themselves as being [quite probably] carefully chosen words to describe the situation the women and their partners are put in by the law and the diagnosis confirmation timing being the same indicating that the women may have ended up with no alternative but to TRAVEL.

Apparently there is a good reason why we have yet to see the Abortion law review

Well, even if removing conscientious objection is ruled out, if conscientious objection is in practice impeding anybody'e access to the service you need to identify that as a problem, and you need to recommend some workaround that isn't ruled out.

(And, if it's not working to impede access, it's desirable that you should know that it isn't.)

This'll be the only review for quite some time. You don't want to compromise it by treating getting the review done by a stated date as more important than getting the review done properly. *

* This is Lessons of General Application That We Learn From Watching Brexit, No. 17.

I thought that issue had already been ventilated? There's already a recruitment campaign under way for posts in maternity hospitals which explicitly include provision of abortion services as part of the required duties.

I took this to mean that they were now examining whether the rights to conscientiously object were "sufficient" from the point of view of the objectors (which I would regard as a waste of time, but however...)

It'd be nice to know who the public were the review consulted for a view on the operation of the act AND if Aontú was seen as part of the public, seeing as it is a party committed to opposing abortion on a "no if's" basis.

Yes well, I'd be surprised if the Aontú submission was much use to the reviewers in their task, given it's blanket commitment to ending the provision of abortion here. It will give the review body and the HSE the right to point out everyone was given a say in the review regardless of personal opinion and help reject any allegations of it being an exercise in futility.

Legislators in the US have cottoned on that period tracking apps could, at least theoretically, be used to provide evidence in states such as Texas to convict women for having out of state abortions:

Haven't heard that proposed as a time limit before 🤨

Figures.

Shame the PP have to take public opinion into account, unlike their political forebears.

Maybe some US Republicans will come to the same conclusion...

Didn't stop the church trying though in 2015 and 2018. Just making themselves look ever more irrelevant and out of touch with the lives of the vast majority of people.

Also very selective there in who got on air - not a single man - almost all housewives of a certain age shall we say. You'd be forgiven for thinking it was a 99% yes vote instead of just under two thirds - and some Dublin constituencies voted No, could they not have found a single No voter?

to be fair what did they expect?

they went to a catholic church which they probably don't most of the time and received it's teachings, they got what they asked for.

if people grew up and stopped taking part in a church they don't agree with then it's relevance would be where it belongs, yet they do and then complain when they get what they went for.