Eighth Amendment poll

Started by Farrandeelin, May 01, 2018, 03:36:55 PM

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Are you in favour of repealing the 8th amendment?

Yes
47 (21.8%)
Yes but have no vote
73 (33.8%)
No
40 (18.5%)
No but have no vote
36 (16.7%)
Undecided
20 (9.3%)

Total Members Voted: 216

Voting closed: May 24, 2018, 03:36:55 PM

sid waddell

Quote from: gallsman on May 13, 2018, 08:03:44 AM
Quote from: armaghniac on May 13, 2018, 12:44:35 AM
Quote from: longballin on May 12, 2018, 07:59:47 PM
Monsignor Dermot Farrell, Bishop of Ossory, says abortion after rape was far worse than rape for women who experienced both. The ignorance, arrogance and cruel attitude of some church leaders towards women is staggering and will drive thousands more people to vote YES.

No, he said that was the case for some women he had met, are you calling these women liars?

I would imagine that he's not, but is instead calling Monsignor Farrell a liar.

Monsignor Farrell is clearly a liar.

At the same time though, it would be perfectly logical that a Roman Catholic bishop would believe that a rape victim having an abortion is worse for the victim than the actual rape itself - in all cases.

To be a believing Roman Catholic, you have to believe such.

Tubberman

Quote from: gallsman on May 13, 2018, 10:50:25 AM
There is absolutely nothing immoral or wrong about allowing a woman autonomy over her own body.

Agreed
"Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall."

sid waddell

Quote from: gallsman on May 13, 2018, 10:50:25 AM
There is absolutely nothing immoral or wrong about allowing a woman autonomy over her own body.
100%. It's actually the genuinely moral position.

Also, countries in which abortion is banned or highly restricted have a higher rate of abortion than countries in which there is access to safe, legal abortion.

But sure ignorance is bliss, as they say.


whitey

Quote from: gallsman on May 13, 2018, 10:50:25 AM
There is absolutely nothing immoral or wrong about allowing a woman autonomy over her own body.

You (and others on the Yes side) view it as just HER body.......many others (on the No side) view it as TWO separate people.





gallsman

Quote from: whitey on May 13, 2018, 11:14:53 AM
Quote from: gallsman on May 13, 2018, 10:50:25 AM
There is absolutely nothing immoral or wrong about allowing a woman autonomy over her own body.

You (and others on the Yes side) view it as just HER body.......many others (on the No side) view it as TWO separate people.

I'm quite familiar with the argument.

longballin

Quote from: armaghniac on May 13, 2018, 12:44:35 AM
Quote from: longballin on May 12, 2018, 07:59:47 PM
Monsignor Dermot Farrell, Bishop of Ossory, says abortion after rape was far worse than rape for women who experienced both. The ignorance, arrogance and cruel attitude of some church leaders towards women is staggering and will drive thousands more people to vote YES.

No, he said that was the case for some women he had met, are you calling these women liars?

I don't believe him. It is v cynical of him - is actually sick.

The Boy Wonder

Quote from: trileacman on May 11, 2018, 11:38:00 PM
The problem is when the argument of rape is mobilised as a trojan horse in which to augment support for more wide-ranging abortion laws as if to draw equivalence between the traumatic experience of rape and cases where the pregnancy is an more an inconvenience. Perhaps I'm different from other people but I'm uncomfortable with the casual elimination of a developing life because it's come at an inconvenient time or isn't just happening the way you wanted to. I think there is a detachment involved in that viewpoint and requires a certain level of dehumanisation.

Could yes voters find solace in a society where a baby (up to 12 weeks and potentially more in future) can be aborted for any reason at all, no matter how trivial? If a person chooses to abort their child because it's the wrong sex or because they don't want to be having a baby at Christmas or maybe they just forgot to use contraception on a one-night stand, is aborting a child for those reasons, or something similar, morally acceptable to Yes voters? I'm uneasy about the diminishing of a growing person into a commodity or accessory, something that can be dispensed of so easily and who's existence can be so inconsequentially disregarded.

If, in some peoples eyes, this makes me a chauvinist, a religious zealot, an alt-right fascist or a "whinger" then it's a label I'll comfortably bear. Personal convictions are more inclined to be reinforced when challenged by personal abuse and derision.

The above is an excellent contribution from trileacman in my opinion.

sid waddell

Rape is not a trojan horse for anything.

Ultimately there is only one argument for keeping the 8th Amendment.

That is that you believe a one hour old zygote should be exactly equal in status and rights to the fully grown woman carrying it and that this right should be imposed on every pregancy across the board. And in practice it gives the zygote (and the embryo and foetus it later develps into) greater rights than the woman.

That is not a fact based argument - it is an absolutist, dogmatic moral argument that few people agree with.

It is an argument that even fewer people can sustain with a straight face when questioned.

By necessity such an argument involves the belief that it is thus acceptable to impose all sorts of horrible things on women - denial of access to cancer treatment, forcing rape and incest victims to carry a pregnancy against their will, forcing women for whom a pregnancy is a serious risk to their health to carry that pregnancy to term, threat of imprisonment of women, and abandonment of women who have abortions inside this state.

A No vote is a statement that all of those things are acceptable.




Rufus T Firefly

Quote from: Itchy on May 13, 2018, 10:26:18 AM
I also read with interest no FF or FG canvassing going on. Doesn't that tell you all you need to know about those spineless cowards, intent to sit in the fence and see how the wind blows. No solid conviction on this hugely important issue. I don't know how anyone could vote for people like that.

I disagree. I realize there are very emotive and embittered arguments going on here, but one thing I think we can agree on is that there are two contrasting sides of firmly held beliefs. Surely in that instance, this should be a matter of conscience for each individual and should therefore be apolitical. The stance of FF and FG is in contrast to Sinn Fein who discipline party members who vote against the party's support for legislation that liberalises abortion. 

sid waddell

#369
Quote from: Rufus T Firefly on May 13, 2018, 01:16:51 PM
Quote from: Itchy on May 13, 2018, 10:26:18 AM
I also read with interest no FF or FG canvassing going on. Doesn't that tell you all you need to know about those spineless cowards, intent to sit in the fence and see how the wind blows. No solid conviction on this hugely important issue. I don't know how anyone could vote for people like that.

I disagree. I realize there are very emotive and embittered arguments going on here, but one thing I think we can agree on is that there are two contrasting sides of firmly held beliefs. Surely in that instance, this should be a matter of conscience for each individual and should therefore be apolitical. The stance of FF and FG is in contrast to Sinn Fein who discipline party members who vote against the party's support for legislation that liberalises abortion.

One is a firmly held belief that each individual should be allowed to exercise their firmly held belief.

The other is a firmly held belief that the firmly held belief of some should be imposed on everybody else.

Dougal Maguire

You've hit the nail on the head there Rufus. There are a lot of pro life people within SF who have real difficulties with the Party stance. To discipline them for having these views, which are matters of individual conscience is very wrong
Careful now

sid waddell

If somebody truly believes "keeping the 8th Amendment" is about "saving lives", the logical follow up to that is that they must believe that the 13th Amendment should be overturned.

Anything else would be highly illogical and would contradict the stated aim of "saving lives".

The 13th Amendment specifically grants the right to travel in order to have an abortion.

By overturning the 13th Amendment, women would no longer have the right to travel outside Ireland to obtain an abortion.

How can one claim to want to keep the 8th Amendment to "save lives" and yet think that the 13th Amendment is acceptable?

Because the 13th Amendment specifically grants Irish citizens the right to travel to have an abortion, ie. it enshrines the right of Irish citizens to have an abortion, full stop.

Do those Irish "unborn babies" now simply not matter because their lives are taken outside the state?

If you're a No voter and favour keeping the 13th Amendment, your problem is not with abortion at all - it's with the location of abortion.

Which isn't an anti-abortion or "pro-life" position at all.



armaghniac

Quote from: sid waddell on May 13, 2018, 01:54:02 PM
If somebody truly believes "keeping the 8th Amendment" is about "saving lives", the logical follow up to that is that they must believe that the 13th Amendment should be overturned.

Anything else would be highly illogical and would contradict the stated aim of "saving lives".

The 13th Amendment specifically grants the right to travel in order to have an abortion.

By overturning the 13th Amendment, women would no longer have the right to travel outside Ireland to obtain an abortion.

How can one claim to want to keep the 8th Amendment to "save lives" and yet think that the 13th Amendment is acceptable?

Because the 13th Amendment specifically grants Irish citizens the right to travel to have an abortion, ie. it enshrines the right of Irish citizens to have an abortion, full stop.

Do those Irish "unborn babies" now simply not matter because their lives are taken outside the state?

If you're a No voter and favour keeping the 13th Amendment, your problem is not with abortion at all - it's with the location of abortion.

Which isn't an anti-abortion or "pro-life" position at all.

This is a good example of the bollix logic associated with this matter. There are things you can do abroad that you cannot do here, it is not the business of government to restrict people with fast cars from driving them to Germany to do 200kmh on the autobahn.
The whole point of independence is that you can have different laws than other places, yet you have the SF  advocating that laws be cannot be different than England.
If at first you don't succeed, then goto Plan B

Syferus

Quote from: armaghniac on May 13, 2018, 02:05:10 PM
Quote from: sid waddell on May 13, 2018, 01:54:02 PM
If somebody truly believes "keeping the 8th Amendment" is about "saving lives", the logical follow up to that is that they must believe that the 13th Amendment should be overturned.

Anything else would be highly illogical and would contradict the stated aim of "saving lives".

The 13th Amendment specifically grants the right to travel in order to have an abortion.

By overturning the 13th Amendment, women would no longer have the right to travel outside Ireland to obtain an abortion.

How can one claim to want to keep the 8th Amendment to "save lives" and yet think that the 13th Amendment is acceptable?

Because the 13th Amendment specifically grants Irish citizens the right to travel to have an abortion, ie. it enshrines the right of Irish citizens to have an abortion, full stop.

Do those Irish "unborn babies" now simply not matter because their lives are taken outside the state?

If you're a No voter and favour keeping the 13th Amendment, your problem is not with abortion at all - it's with the location of abortion.

Which isn't an anti-abortion or "pro-life" position at all.

This is a good example of the bollix logic associated with this matter. There are things you can do abroad that you cannot do here, it is not the business of government to restrict people with fast cars from driving them to Germany to do 200kmh on the autobahn.
The whole point of independence is that you can have different laws than other places, yet you have the SF  advocating that laws be cannot be different than England.

You literally compared basic healthcare to driving a fast car. Wooooow.

sid waddell

#374
Quote from: armaghniac on May 13, 2018, 02:05:10 PM
Quote from: sid waddell on May 13, 2018, 01:54:02 PM
If somebody truly believes "keeping the 8th Amendment" is about "saving lives", the logical follow up to that is that they must believe that the 13th Amendment should be overturned.

Anything else would be highly illogical and would contradict the stated aim of "saving lives".

The 13th Amendment specifically grants the right to travel in order to have an abortion.

By overturning the 13th Amendment, women would no longer have the right to travel outside Ireland to obtain an abortion.

How can one claim to want to keep the 8th Amendment to "save lives" and yet think that the 13th Amendment is acceptable?

Because the 13th Amendment specifically grants Irish citizens the right to travel to have an abortion, ie. it enshrines the right of Irish citizens to have an abortion, full stop.

Do those Irish "unborn babies" now simply not matter because their lives are taken outside the state?

If you're a No voter and favour keeping the 13th Amendment, your problem is not with abortion at all - it's with the location of abortion.

Which isn't an anti-abortion or "pro-life" position at all.

This is a good example of the bollix logic associated with this matter. There are things you can do abroad that you cannot do here, it is not the business of government to restrict people with fast cars from driving them to Germany to do 200kmh on the autobahn.
The whole point of independence is that you can have different laws than other places, yet you have the SF  advocating that laws be cannot be different than England.
It was the 8th Amendment itself which originally introduced the ban on travel for abortion.

From your postings, it's obvious that you consider abortion to be murder.

Which is why it's now so surprising and bizarre that you're comparing it to breaking the speed limit in another country.

You haven't actually addressed the point at all here, by the way.

The point is, if one claims to want to keep the 8th Amendment to "save lives", it's totally illogical to be in favour of keeping the 13th Amendment, which allows the right to travel to "take a life", as "pro-lifers" would see it - especially as this actually was the pre-1992 position in this country, so theoretically, it is a position it can return to if there is enough support for it.

That the pre-1992 position on travel was unworkable is neither here nor there - the 8th Amendment itself is unworkable and is being ignored by thousands of Irish women having abortions inside this state, and yet you and others still favour keeping it.

If you support one farcical and unworkable constitutional provision, sure you might as well follow that logic to its natural conclusion and support the re-imposition of a second unworkable one, which would at least make your position consistent, if no less farcical.