Marie Stopes abortion clinic opens in Belfast

[Minder]

What do yis think?

This place looks like a hand grenade for our politicians.

[T Fearon]

Another outlet in central Belfast named after a woman alongside Marie Curie,Dorothy Perkins

[theskull1]

Easyjet and Flybe will be lobbying government to try and put a stop to this abomination 

[Pangurban]

Its unlikely that they can operate within the law as it applies here and still make money, they will have to push the boundaries, and that will lead to legal challenges, which will be costly for them. Hopefully we will be rid of them sooner rather than later, they are an abomination

[Tony Baloney]

What is the Shinner position on this? Representative of Irish-Catholic opposition or simply ignore the issue and adopt the opposite  approach to the DUP, who no doubt also oppose it?

[Ulick]

Another outlet in central Belfast named after a woman alongside Marie Curie,Dorothy Perkins

In fairness to those two they weren't racist, fascist eugenicists who wholeheartedly supported Hitlers  sterlization of undesirables and cleansing the gene pool of all others who didn't measure up to exacting Ayran standards - Catholics and Jews in particular being at the top of her hate list.

[Hardy]

Another outlet in central Belfast named after a woman alongside Marie Curie,Dorothy Perkins

...Ann Summers.

[T Fearon]

In an act of uncanny telepathy, I just thought of Ann Summers myself!

In fact, how appropriate would a campaign warning against unwanted pregnancy be in using the strapline "Careful that a visit to Ann Summers doesn't lead ultimately to a visit to Marie Stopes!"

[Ulick]

I passed the protest yesterday and must admit I found some of the images very disturbing to the extent I wasn't able to get two posters in particular out of my head all night. One linked below (don't click if you are squeamish):

http://cdn.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/multimedia/dynamic/00720/nic_protest_24_720002s.jpg

Anyhow, in general principle I'd be anti-abortion but generally sympathetic to the emotions and conflict a woman must have to go through when considering it. In some ways I was kind of annoyed with the protesters for using those images yesterday but Jude Collins wrote a blog this morning which has caused me to reconsider:

That clinic on Great Victoria Street, Belfast

The establishment of the Marie Stopes clinic in Great Victoria Street has blown into flame again the abortion debate, and if there's one thing I don't understand it's the whole abortion thing. Questions? I've got plenty of those. Unfortunately answers are in short supply. It's a bit like the national question: a lot of people dance around the central issue rather than tackle it directly.

For example? Well, let's try this.  Pro-abortion people get  indignant if you refer to them as pro-abortionists. We're not pro-abortion, they say. We're pro-choice. We want women to have abortion as an option, and we appreciate that the decision to have an abortion is an agonising one and is never taken lightly by a woman.

Eh? If you are pro-choice/pro-abortion,  presumably you regard what's in the woman's womb as a bunch of tissue, not a human being. In which case  what's to agonise about? Getting rid of a foetus should need no more soul-searching than blowing your nose or trimming your toenails.  Yet pro-choice/pro-abortion people insist that abortion is a soul-searching decision for any woman to make.

And here's another abortion-baffler.  There are those who are opposed to abortion - pro-life people, as they prefer to be called - who say that abortion should never  be used, except the mother's life is at risk or it's a case of rape or incest.

OK with that first one, I get it.The mother's life is at risk if the child is not aborted, so to save the mother's life actions are taken that result in an abortion. Fair enough. That is a truly difficult decision - which life is it better to save, that of the mother or the child?  But I can see how many people would come down on the side of the mother.

But the stunner that leaves me cross-eyed is the no-abortion-except-in-cases-of-rape-or-incest argument. Rape and/or incest are indeed vile, cruel actions, and the thought of carrying the baby of a man who has violated you must be truly harrowing. But even when you concede that the child inside the woman has been forced on her, and that every second of her pregnancy must remind her of the horror she's suffered,  the awkward, painful fact remains that the foetus inside her remains human, every bit as much as if had been conceived by a loving couple.  To say that the answer to pregnancy brought about through rape or incest is abortion looks suspiciously like passing a death sentence on the  child in the womb for the foul actions of the rapist or incest-inflictor. 

Just two more and I'm done. There were a lot of picketers outside the Marie Stopes clinic the other day.  Some people say there should be no pickets, others that it's OK providing the picketing is "tastefully done".  What they're getting at here, I suspect, are those pickets carrying placards showing what a child in the womb looks like and/or what happened to it when it's aborted. But if that's what it actually looks like and that's what actually happens, shouldn't everyone involved in an abortion be reminded of what happens?

And lastly: some people say this is a women's issue, men should have no say in it. Mmm. So should women have no say in how the medical world deals with prostate cancer?

Questions, questions. How I envy those with certitude. 

-----------
Re the question about SF, I can understand why they are going to try to avoid this one like the plague as I can remember the division in the ranks when they were briefly pro-abortion in the early 80's. There is a very active lobby within the Party pushing hard for a return to this policy which were effectively silenced at the recent Ard Fheis and on the other hand there was a councillor down the country reprimanded for speaking at a pro-life meeting "in a personal capacity". Can't ride two horses forever I'd imagine.

[charlieTully]

scraping the barrell if you ask me.

[Harold Disgracey]

Normally I quite like reading Jude Collins but that is a load of bollocks.

[Tony Baloney]

I passed the protest yesterday and must admit I found some of the images very disturbing to the extent I wasn't able to get two posters in particular out of my head all night. One linked below (don't click if you are squeamish):

http://cdn.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/multimedia/dynamic/00720/nic_protest_24_720002s.jpg

Anyhow, in general principle I'd be anti-abortion but generally sympathetic to the emotions and conflict a woman must have to go through when considering it. In some ways I was kind of annoyed with the protesters for using those images yesterday but Jude Collins wrote a blog this morning which has caused me to reconsider:

That clinic on Great Victoria Street, Belfast

The establishment of the Marie Stopes clinic in Great Victoria Street has blown into flame again the abortion debate, and if there's one thing I don't understand it's the whole abortion thing. Questions? I've got plenty of those. Unfortunately answers are in short supply. It's a bit like the national question: a lot of people dance around the central issue rather than tackle it directly.

For example? Well, let's try this.  Pro-abortion people get  indignant if you refer to them as pro-abortionists. We're not pro-abortion, they say. We're pro-choice. We want women to have abortion as an option, and we appreciate that the decision to have an abortion is an agonising one and is never taken lightly by a woman.

Eh? If you are pro-choice/pro-abortion,  presumably you regard what's in the woman's womb as a bunch of tissue, not a human being. In which case  what's to agonise about? Getting rid of a foetus should need no more soul-searching than blowing your nose or trimming your toenails.  Yet pro-choice/pro-abortion people insist that abortion is a soul-searching decision for any woman to make.

And here's another abortion-baffler.  There are those who are opposed to abortion - pro-life people, as they prefer to be called - who say that abortion should never  be used, except the mother's life is at risk or it's a case of rape or incest.

OK with that first one, I get it.The mother's life is at risk if the child is not aborted, so to save the mother's life actions are taken that result in an abortion. Fair enough. That is a truly difficult decision - which life is it better to save, that of the mother or the child?  But I can see how many people would come down on the side of the mother.

But the stunner that leaves me cross-eyed is the no-abortion-except-in-cases-of-rape-or-incest argument. Rape and/or incest are indeed vile, cruel actions, and the thought of carrying the baby of a man who has violated you must be truly harrowing. But even when you concede that the child inside the woman has been forced on her, and that every second of her pregnancy must remind her of the horror she's suffered,  the awkward, painful fact remains that the foetus inside her remains human, every bit as much as if had been conceived by a loving couple.  To say that the answer to pregnancy brought about through rape or incest is abortion looks suspiciously like passing a death sentence on the  child in the womb for the foul actions of the rapist or incest-inflictor. 

Just two more and I'm done. There were a lot of picketers outside the Marie Stopes clinic the other day.  Some people say there should be no pickets, others that it's OK providing the picketing is "tastefully done".  What they're getting at here, I suspect, are those pickets carrying placards showing what a child in the womb looks like and/or what happened to it when it's aborted. But if that's what it actually looks like and that's what actually happens, shouldn't everyone involved in an abortion be reminded of what happens?

And lastly: some people say this is a women's issue, men should have no say in it. Mmm. So should women have no say in how the medical world deals with prostate cancer?

Questions, questions. How I envy those with certitude. 

-----------
Re the question about SF, I can understand why they are going to try to avoid this one like the plague as I can remember the division in the ranks when they were briefly pro-abortion in the early 80's. There is a very active lobby within the Party pushing hard for a return to this policy which were effectively silenced at the recent Ard Fheis and on the other hand there was a councillor down the country reprimanded for speaking at a pro-life meeting "in a personal capacity". Can't ride two horses forever I'd imagine.

Cheers Ulick. It is a stinker alright as it polarises opinion - not exactly great for a politician or party.

[Puckoon]

Thats a particularly poor and oversimplistic effort from Jude Collins, which clearly shows there is more than just one thing he doesnt understand. Particularly crass comment to suggest that if a woman decides to take the choice then it should cause her no more concern than blowing her nose or trimming her nails.

And lastly: some people say this is a women's issue, men should have no say in it. Mmm.

No prizes for guessing the gender of a writer who could come out with this...

Rape and/or incest are indeed vile, cruel actions, and the thought of carrying the baby of a man who has violated you must be truly harrowing (wait for it folks......). But....

[The Iceman]

I want to stress is that I am NOT judging women who have abortions. It is not an easy "choice" to make and I understand that sometimes women feel there is no other choice. But there are, there are so many more. And what is concerning about Marie Stopes is they are not providing anything that isn't already available in the North.  So it may on the surface look like a fantastic opportunity (and let me make it clear I don't think it is ) that such a clinic has arrived there, but they are going to charge women £450 for an abortion that the NHS already provides for free, and has done for some time. The guidelines and the laws that they work under are exactly the same. There is no need or demand for Maries Stopes. The 1000+ women that travel to the UK every year for an abortion will still have to travel over, because their abortion would never, and please God, will never be legal at home. And, furthermore, the number of women travelling for these abortions is actually decreasing, so the demand is even smaller.

With regards women who are raped, I can't agree that aborting the baby is the right option. Two wrongs don't make a right. Not only is the woman going to have to deal with the trauma of being sexually assaulted, but she is also going to have to deal with the trauma of the abortion. An unborn child, created in a moment of violence, is no less of a human being that you or I. Yes, it is harrowing circumstances in which the child is conceived, but that does not make their life any less worth living...

In terms of disability, the doctor can never be certain of what they are saying. Tim Tebow is a famous case where the Mother was told to abort him based on 100% chance he was severely disabled...thankfully the mother refused and the Jets now have two QB's.  Furthermore, I have a cousin in her thirties, who cannot walk or talk, can do absolutely nothing for herself, and never could, yet she is one of the happiest people you will ever meet, and she brings her family so much joy and happiness. We cannot attempt to measure what we think is a quality of life, or dare to suggest that disability automatically doesn't make a life worth living. I mean look at the paraolympics and the Special Olympics, those athletes are so elite and excel at their sports. Yet it makes sense to abort them before me? Only 1.1% of Abortions carried out last year in Britain where because the child was disabled and there are absolutely no statistics on Abortions after rape, because they are so rare!

The thing with abortion is that everything IS black and white. If you abort, a baby dies; if you don't abort, a baby lives. It is that simple. Ireland is the safest country IN THE WORLD to have a baby, it has the lowest maternal mortality rate. The doctors there do everything in their power to ensure mother AND baby can survive. Why do we need to have a service that exploits the vulnerability of women? Why do we need a service that promotes the culture of death? Why do we need a service that is already available for FREE on the NHS?

[Maguire01]

Its unlikely that they can operate within the law as it applies here and still make money, they will have to push the boundaries, and that will lead to legal challenges, which will be costly for them. Hopefully we will be rid of them sooner rather than later, they are an abomination

An abomination? is that you Iris?

Anyway, it doesn't have to make money - it's a not-for-profit organisation. As for legal challenges, given how grey the law is, it's difficult to know what way such challenges would go.

I'd imagine that there's a distinct possibility that rulings based on the current law (and lack of guidance for doctors) could lead to increased numbers of abortions here - it's quite possible that until now, doctors here have gone nowhere near the boundaries, never mind push them.