The Late Late show

[omaghjoe]

I'm a wavering yes voter. I don't like the idea of abortion on demand as I believe people should take responsibility for their actions. I do believe in extreme cases such as rape, incest etc that abortion should be allowed. However my wavering is that a law seems to be being justified by a tiny minority of extreme cases. Maybe my position isn't possible to legislate around

Not bringing an unwanted child into the world is taking far more responsibility for your actions than a lot of people who have children.

Good Lord!

This sent me dashing to the dictionary for the definition of responsibility. Thankfully my understanding was close enough to it... so I could only conclude that this poster either has no idea of what responsibility means or they just have no idea what is involved in raising a child.
Presumably its the latter

[Syferus]

I'm a wavering yes voter. I don't like the idea of abortion on demand as I believe people should take responsibility for their actions. I do believe in extreme cases such as rape, incest etc that abortion should be allowed. However my wavering is that a law seems to be being justified by a tiny minority of extreme cases. Maybe my position isn't possible to legislate around

Not bringing an unwanted child into the world is taking far more responsibility for your actions than a lot of people who have children.

Good Lord!

This sent me dashing to the dictionary for the definition of responsibility. Thankfully my understanding was close enough to it... so I could only conclude that this poster either has no idea of what responsibility means or they just have no idea what is involved in raising a child.
Presumably its the latter

Sometimes I wonder how people can so totally miss the most obvious of points just to get a dig in, and then I remember on GAABoard you're usually on the right track assuming the person is arguing in bad faith.

[BennyCake]

Savita Halappanavar died because she couldn't have an abortion.

It's great the way a tragic case of medical malpractice has been cynically used by pro-abortion activists to open the door for abortion on demand.
There's a world of difference between Savita and a Sharon who got a drunk and pregnant by a Spanish sailor.

I thought it was Georgie Burgess?

[omaghjoe]

I'm a wavering yes voter. I don't like the idea of abortion on demand as I believe people should take responsibility for their actions. I do believe in extreme cases such as rape, incest etc that abortion should be allowed. However my wavering is that a law seems to be being justified by a tiny minority of extreme cases. Maybe my position isn't possible to legislate around

Not bringing an unwanted child into the world is taking far more responsibility for your actions than a lot of people who have children.

Good Lord!

This sent me dashing to the dictionary for the definition of responsibility. Thankfully my understanding was close enough to it... so I could only conclude that this poster either has no idea of what responsibility means or they just have no idea what is involved in raising a child.
Presumably its the latter

Sometimes I wonder how people can so totally miss the most obvious of points just to get a dig in, and then I remember on GAABoard you're usually on the right track assuming the person is arguing in bad faith.

You could easily have made your point without having a dig at parents.

I thought your main point dug a big enough obvious hole for itself to even warrant a rebuke, Sy. Your point is that.... abortions are carried out by people undertaking a responsibility....
Sorry Sy, but the opposite is the case.
This reminds me a bit of Brexit & Trump say the opposite of what is actually the case, and for some reason people will start to believe it.

[Asal Mor]

I've no interest in the abortion debate Sid. I won't be voting and abortion had nothing to do with the reason I found that line of yours annoying.

Lack of comprehension is the reason.

"There is no situation in which I, as a man, cannot access treatment to protect my health if I need to."

It's a blinkered middle-class pontification and your condescension about my comprehension goes well with it.

[sid waddell]

I've no interest in the abortion debate Sid. I won't be voting and abortion had nothing to do with the reason I found that line of yours annoying.

Lack of comprehension is the reason.

"There is no situation in which I, as a man, cannot access treatment to protect my health if I need to."

It's a blinkered middle-class pontification and your condescension about my comprehension goes well with it.

And you conveniently left out the next sentence: "Women do not have that right according to our constitution."

Again, you show your lack of comprehension skills, and it's also clear you're lying about not having an interest in the debate about the 8th Amendment, otherwise you wouldn't be commenting.

There's only one possible reason for that - that you have a vested interest in denying women healthcare by retaining the 8th Amendment.

And you still can't name one situation in which I would be denied healthcare because I'm a man, preferring to invent an imagined little strawman scenario abot mysef in your own head to suit your own agenda.

[Hound]

I thought Savita was a case of medical negligence rather than the 8th? Albeit a mis-reading of the 8th seems to have caused it. There have been many many women who received the treatment that Savita required, and very few who died from lack of it.

Unfortunately, it's nearly every day that there's a report in the paper about a compensation case against the HSE for medical incompetence in some hospital or another leading to death or life altering circumstances

[sid waddell]

I thought Savita was a case of medical negligence rather than the 8th? Albeit a mis-reading of the 8th seems to have caused it. There have been many many women who received the treatment that Savita required, and very few who died from lack of it.

Unfortunately, it's nearly every day that there's a report in the paper about a compensation case against the HSE for medical incompetence in some hospital or another leading to death or life altering circumstances

The 8th Amendment enshrines medical negligence in the constitution.

A woman cannot get essential healthcare when there is a threat to her health.

The threat to her health has to develop into a threat to her life.

Until it's too late, in other words.

Essential healthcare in Savita's case was an abortion. She couldn't get one. If she had, she'd be alive.

The 8th Amendment is barbaric.

[seafoid]

I thought Savita was a case of medical negligence rather than the 8th? Albeit a mis-reading of the 8th seems to have caused it. There have been many many women who received the treatment that Savita required, and very few who died from lack of it.

Unfortunately, it's nearly every day that there's a report in the paper about a compensation case against the HSE for medical incompetence in some hospital or another leading to death or life altering circumstances

The 8th Amendment enshrines medical negligence in the constitution.

A woman cannot get essential healthcare when there is a threat to her health.

The threat to her health has to develop into a threat to her life.

Until it's too late, in other words.

Essential healthcare in Savita's case was an abortion. She couldn't get one. If she had, she'd be alive.

The 8th Amendment is barbaric.

What made it worse was that she was a foreigner.  She would still be alive if she had gone to hospital in France.
She wasn't one of our women who can be abused because they are Irish and deserve it.
The law isn't very good when it comes to the messy business of human bodies.

[sid waddell]

Justine McCarthy in the Sunday Times reports that our new National Maternity Hospital "will have to uphold the ethos of nuns".

It's time for the Roman Catholic church to fook off and leave ordinary people alone.

[seafoid]

2013

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/c62bbd6e-5661-11e2-aa70-00144feab49a.html
January 6, 2013 7:29 pm

Savita Halappanavar checked into a hospital in Galway, a city on the west coast of Ireland, on October 21 last year with back pain and was found to be having a miscarriage. A week later the 31-year-old dentist from India, who was 17 weeks pregnant, died of septicaemia following the refusal of medical staff to perform an abortion.
"They told my wife they couldn't terminate the foetus when there was still a foetal heart beat even though the baby could not survive. They said it was because this was a Catholic country," says Praveen Halappanavar. "I have no doubt that Savita would still be with us if we lived in another country. How can this happen in a country like Ireland in the 21st century?"

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/no-point-in-saving-economy-if-child-s-right-to-life-compromised-says-harte-1.963998

Tyrone football manager Mickey Harte told thousands attending Saturday's "Unite for Life Vigil" in Dublin he was "most concerned that this Government proposes to legislate for abortion".
There was, he said "no issue more important than the protection of human life. There's no point in saving the economy if a child's right to life is compromised or forgotten".
Introduced by Dr Eoghan de Faoite of Youth Defence as "the most successful Tyrone manager of all time, GAA hero and all- round Irish statesman", Mr Harte continued: "our political leaders must not give in to the inclination to be pragmatic".

The idea, now enshrined in our Constitution, that there is an equal right to life of the unborn child and of the mother is nonsense, as is the contention that the unborn child has an unconditional right to life, irrespective of what cost that might be to the person (ie the mother) who alone can give that child sustenance until birth.
There is no unconditional right to life on the part of anybody. For instance, a person in need of a kidney transplant has no right to demand of a suitable donor to give over their spare kidney to them.
Just think of the reaction there would be were the Oireachtas to pass a law requiring healthy males to donate a kidney to another person, urgently in need of a transplant, even though a healthy male could easily live a healthy and full life thereafter with the remaining kidney.

https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/equal-right-to-life-of-the-unborn-is-a-nonsense-1.961962

How is that worse than requiring a woman to give her body to the sustenance of another human being when doing so would injure her life very considerably?
Suppose a healthy male, in hospital for a minor operation, were to awake to find himself hooked up to another person for a few months, so that this other person would live. Would any of us consider it would be okay for a law to be passed that criminalised that male for refusing to give sustenance to the other person? And criminalise anybody who assisted that healthy male in unhooking him from that other person, even when thereby that other person would die?


2014

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/17/ireland-woman-forced-birth-denied-abortion
A young woman has been legally forced to give birth by caesarean section after being denied an abortion in Ireland, in a case experts say exposes flaws in recent reform meant to allow limited terminations.
The woman, who is an immigrant and cannot be named for legal reasons, was refused an abortion even though at eight weeks she demanded a termination, claiming she was suicidal.
After she then threatened a hunger strike to protest the decision, local health authorities obtained a court order to deliver the baby prematurely – at around 25 weeks according to some reports – to ensure its safety. The infant has been placed in care.
The case is the first proper test of the 2013 Protection of Life During Pregnancy Act, which allows for limited abortions in Irish hospitals. The law provides for cases where the woman's life would be in danger if she goes full term, or in cases where she is suicidal in such instances as rape and incest. Critics say that in this instance the law has proved of no practical value to the woman concerned.
The case also highlights medical guidelines given to Irish doctors, which pro-choice organisations said would seriously obstruct suicidal women seeking abortions. The guidelines mean that women seeking an abortion could need approval from up to seven experts.

and the absolute pits

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/dec/18/irish-doctors-legal-advice-brain-dead-pregnant-woman

Ireland's highly restrictive abortion laws have come under renewed focus after it emerged that doctors in an Irish hospital are seeking legal advice over whether they can switch off the life support machine of a brain-dead woman who is 16 weeks pregnant.
The family of the woman want the medical team there to allow her to die. The woman, who is understood to be in her mid to late twenties, suffered head trauma and a clot to the brain.
But even though there is no chance of revival, doctors at the hospital are reluctant to carry out her family's wishes because she is 16 weeks pregnant.
Under the 8th amendment to the Irish Republic's constitution the foetus inside her is as much an Irish citizen as the clinically dead mother.

[seafoid]

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/politics/why-ireland-became-the-only-country-in-the-democratic-world-to-have-a-constitutional-ban-on-abortion-1.1907610

Why Ireland became the only country in the democratic world to have a constitutional ban on abortion
Opinion: Sectarian, paranoid, apocalyptic ideology gave us the eighth amendment


Fintan O'Toole

Tue, Aug 26, 2014, 12:01
First published:Tue, Aug 26, 2014, 12:01


The most successful single issue movement in the history of the State, the Pro-Life Amendment Campaign (PLAC), was established in January 1981 by 13 organisations: the Congress of Catholic Secondary School Parents' Associations; the Irish Catholic Doctors' Guild; the Guild of Catholic Nurses; the Guild of Catholic Pharmacists; the Catholic Young Men's Society; the St Thomas More Society; the Irish Pro-Life Movement; the National Association of the Ovulation Method ("natural" contraception endorsed by the Catholic church); the Council of Social Concern (COSC); the Irish Responsible Society; the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children; the St Joseph's Young Priests Society (young Catholic priests, that is); and the Christian Brothers Schools Parents' Federation. The initial meeting was chaired by the head of a 14th organisation that was immensely influential on the campaign behind the scenes, the secretive, all-male brotherhood the Order of the Knights of Columbanus.
These are the bodies that made Ireland unique in the democratic world in having a ban on abortion in its constitution. In spite of a great deal of revisionism, their sectarian character is obvious: 10 of these bodies were explicitly and exclusively Catholic. The other four were almost entirely made up of conservative Catholic activists. (By contrast, all Irish Protestant churches opposed the amendment.) For all of these groups, abortion was just one front in a wider religious war.
Amendment
The meeting that established PLAC was called by John O'Reilly, described in Tom Hesketh's fine history of the amendment (written from a pro-amendment point of view), The Second Partitioning of Ireland, as "perhaps the main instigator of PLAC". He was vice-chairman of COSC and secretary and co-founder of the Irish Responsible Society.
He seems to have been the person who first conceived the idea of an anti-abortion constitutional amendment, as far back as 1974. O'Reilly generally kept a low profile but he broke the surface in an extraordinary court case.
In 1973, he got his daughters, aged 10 and nine, to write to the Irish Family Planning Association in Dublin, posing as adults, enclosing money and asking for condoms and spermicide. He then succeeded in having criminal charges brought against the IFPA.
John O'Reilly explicitly regarded a successful anti-abortion amendment as a prelude to action against contraception and "illegitimacy": "The campaign for a pro-life amendment would enjoy widespread support now and the success of the campaign would serve to halt the permissive tide in other areas."
For O'Reilly "pro-life" was the opposite of "anti-life", a term which incorporated the availability of contraception and (weirdly) the rising number of babies born out of wedlock.
But COSC's agenda was wide: its first attack was on the formation of a multidenominational primary school in Dalkey in 1976. Its member organisations, such as the League of Decency, cut their teeth in campaigns against "dirty" TV shows, family planning clinics and the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre.
The Irish Responsible Society, of which five key PLAC leaders were members, was the Irish branch of the group led by the English right-wing Catholic activist Valerie Riches (now a papal dame). For Riches, the degeneration of society through sexual permissiveness was a conspiracy driven by International Planned Parenthood.
She and her Irish followers were especially obsessed with the dangers of sex education, especially that which "emphasises that homosexual activity is normal and natural".
The morning-after pill was also, in their eyes, a special horror because it changed "the definition of the moment when human life starts from fertilisation to implantation". All of this conjured an apocalyptic vision: "the issue at stake concerns the very fabric of society, the very future of the human race."
Headquarters
Riches warned a meeting at the Knights of Columbanus headquarters in Dublin in 1980 of an ascending scale of moral depravity from contraception to abortion to homosexuality.
The first action of her Irish followers was to campaign against a small State grant to the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre. Its next campaign was against the removal of the stigma of illegitimacy from children born out of wedlock.
This is the ideology – sectarian, paranoid, apocalyptic – that gave us the eighth amendment. It was utterly dismissive of any qualifications to its absolutist views and saw all "sob stories" as liberal conspiracies.
Bernadette Bonar, a leading PLAC and Responsible Society figure, warned of pro-abortion conspirators turning up at a TD's clinics: "seemingly respectable little women giving him sob stories about 12-year-olds being raped."
Loretto Browne, also a prominent PLAC and Responsible Society leader, told me in 1982 that rape very seldom results in pregnancy because "men that go in for rape are usually not fertile, they tend to be impotent".
She pointed, moreover, to the rising numbers of alleged homosexuals in Ireland as further evidence of conspiracy: "By natural law we couldn't have that many misfits ... there couldn't be that many physically deformed people in society."
These were the people who created the Irish abortion regime. Most of them are long gone from the public stage – COSC and the Irish Responsible Society no longer exist. Their world view is marginal. But their legacy abides for women not born when it was in its pomp

[Hound]

I thought Savita was a case of medical negligence rather than the 8th? Albeit a mis-reading of the 8th seems to have caused it. There have been many many women who received the treatment that Savita required, and very few who died from lack of it.

Unfortunately, it's nearly every day that there's a report in the paper about a compensation case against the HSE for medical incompetence in some hospital or another leading to death or life altering circumstances

The 8th Amendment enshrines medical negligence in the constitution.

A woman cannot get essential healthcare when there is a threat to her health.

The threat to her health has to develop into a threat to her life.

Until it's too late, in other words.

Essential healthcare in Savita's case was an abortion. She couldn't get one. If she had, she'd be alive.

The 8th Amendment is barbaric.

I'm voting Yes, but I disagree with you using the tragic Savita case. She may not be the only one, but she's the only one I'm aware of who died from medical negligence as a result of an interpretation of the 8th. Many women received the treatment that Savita didn't. 

Your last sentence is interesting. A lot of people believe abortion is barbaric, and not just the religious. That's what makes it such a difficult subject. It really is best not to even think about the procedure where the baby's body has been formed.

I don't know anything about the workings / side effects of the morning after pill, but you'd think having it widely available and easy to obtain would be a good thing and vastly reduce the need/want for abortions. Although perhaps there is a medical reason for not having a container of them beside your vitamins, etc.

[sid waddell]

I thought Savita was a case of medical negligence rather than the 8th? Albeit a mis-reading of the 8th seems to have caused it. There have been many many women who received the treatment that Savita required, and very few who died from lack of it.

Unfortunately, it's nearly every day that there's a report in the paper about a compensation case against the HSE for medical incompetence in some hospital or another leading to death or life altering circumstances

The 8th Amendment enshrines medical negligence in the constitution.

A woman cannot get essential healthcare when there is a threat to her health.

The threat to her health has to develop into a threat to her life.

Until it's too late, in other words.

Essential healthcare in Savita's case was an abortion. She couldn't get one. If she had, she'd be alive.

The 8th Amendment is barbaric.

I'm voting Yes, but I disagree with you using the tragic Savita case. She may not be the only one, but she's the only one I'm aware of who died from medical negligence as a result of an interpretation of the 8th. Many women received the treatment that Savita didn't. 

Your last sentence is interesting. A lot of people believe abortion is barbaric, and not just the religious. That's what makes it such a difficult subject. It really is best not to even think about the procedure where the baby's body has been formed.

I don't know anything about the workings / side effects of the morning after pill, but you'd think having it widely available and easy to obtain would be a good thing and vastly reduce the need/want for abortions. Although perhaps there is a medical reason for not having a container of them beside your vitamins, etc.

The Savita case is highlighted because it proves that having medical neglicence enshrined in our constitution results in unnecessary death.

There's a reason people don't like it being highlighted. It forces Irish people to confront the reality that our constitution discriminates against women.

The Michelle Harte case in another which shows the reality of Ireland's unequal access to healthcare based on the sex of the patient.

https://www.independent.ie/regionals/goreyguardian/news/abortion-nightmare-for-cancer-sufferer-michelle-27340507.html

The UN Human Rights Committee has found that our abortion laws are "cruel, inhuman and degrading".

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/health/un-says-ireland-s-abortion-ban-cruel-inhuman-or-degrading-1.2678246

That situation can only be rectified by obliterating the 8th Amendment.

A 12 week old foetus is nowhere near a fully formed human being and has no ability to survive independently. It has no ability whatsoever to feel anything.

[seafoid]

I thought Savita was a case of medical negligence rather than the 8th? Albeit a mis-reading of the 8th seems to have caused it. There have been many many women who received the treatment that Savita required, and very few who died from lack of it.

Unfortunately, it's nearly every day that there's a report in the paper about a compensation case against the HSE for medical incompetence in some hospital or another leading to death or life altering circumstances

The 8th Amendment enshrines medical negligence in the constitution.

A woman cannot get essential healthcare when there is a threat to her health.

The threat to her health has to develop into a threat to her life.

Until it's too late, in other words.

Essential healthcare in Savita's case was an abortion. She couldn't get one. If she had, she'd be alive.

The 8th Amendment is barbaric.

I'm voting Yes, but I disagree with you using the tragic Savita case. She may not be the only one, but she's the only one I'm aware of who died from medical negligence as a result of an interpretation of the 8th. Many women received the treatment that Savita didn't. 

Your last sentence is interesting. A lot of people believe abortion is barbaric, and not just the religious. That's what makes it such a difficult subject. It really is best not to even think about the procedure where the baby's body has been formed.

I don't know anything about the workings / side effects of the morning after pill, but you'd think having it widely available and easy to obtain would be a good thing and vastly reduce the need/want for abortions. Although perhaps there is a medical reason for not having a container of them beside your vitamins, etc.

The Savita case is highlighted because it proves that having medical neglicence enshrined in our constitution results in unnecessary death.

There's a reason people don't like it being highlighted. It forces Irish people to confront the reality that our constitution discriminates against women.

The Michelle Harte case in another which shows the reality of Ireland's unequal access to healthcare based on the sex of the patient.

https://www.independent.ie/regionals/goreyguardian/news/abortion-nightmare-for-cancer-sufferer-michelle-27340507.html

The UN Human Rights Committee has found that our abortion laws are "cruel, inhuman and degrading".

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/health/un-says-ireland-s-abortion-ban-cruel-inhuman-or-degrading-1.2678246

That situation can only be rectified by obliterating the 8th Amendment.

A 12 week old foetus is nowhere near a fully formed human being and has no ability to survive independently. It has no ability whatsoever to feel anything.

The amendment was overwhelmed by reality.
The Savita case, the suicidal migrant case and the dead woman on life support case all happened because of the Amendment.