Marie Stopes abortion clinic opens in Belfast

[Maguire01]

I agree that parents play a huge part in influencing the choices their children may make, but I don't think you appreciate the limits to their role. Your reference to "bad'uns" misses the point spectacularly. The best behaved children/teens can make wrong choices.

[Tony Baloney]

I agree that parents play a huge part in influencing the choices their children may make, but I don't think you appreciate the limits to their role. Your reference to "bad'uns" misses the point spectacularly. The best behaved children/teens can make wrong choices.

Come on then, you are itching to tell us!

[The Iceman]

I agree that parents play a huge part in influencing the choices their children may make, but I don't think you appreciate the limits to their role. Your reference to "bad'uns" misses the point spectacularly. The best behaved children/teens can make wrong choices.

They do, I agreed we all make mistakes. My kids will too - but the gravest mistakes will hopefully be minimised by the time and effort I put in.

[Maguire01]

I agree that parents play a huge part in influencing the choices their children may make, but I don't think you appreciate the limits to their role. Your reference to "bad'uns" misses the point spectacularly. The best behaved children/teens can make wrong choices.

Come on then, you are itching to tell us!

Eh?

[lawnseed]

its well worth noting that the handful of women travelling to the UK for abortions from the six counties wouldn't pay the rent of that building in Belfast if they were to avail of the stopes' services. in truth stopes are here to service the whole island and will infact make a fortune from private patients from south of the border probably setting their rates slightly below the cost of a plane ticket and accommodation in the UK.

On the basis that Marie Stopes is a not-for-profit organisation, your post makes no sense.

And as for the 'handful' of women who travel from NI, as far as I'm aware, it's just under 1,000 a year.

maguire its £450 for "guidance" from stopes. even if all of the 1000 nordies use the service thats only 450 grand it wouldn't pay the wages,rent,electric etc.. like i said they're banking on 'guiding' quite a few Mexicans

[Maguire01]

An interesting perspective:

ALEX KANE: Key questions in abortion debate

Published on Monday 22 October 2012 09:29


LET me tell you a little about Lilah-Liberty, the younger of my two girls. She was three a couple of weeks ago and has just started play school. She knows what she likes and doesn't like when it comes to food, clothes and television.

She can throw a tantrum of epic proportions if she doesn't get her own way (a trait she inherits from her mum), yet melt an iceberg with a smile.

She crawls into our bed in the middle of the night, sleeps sideways, kicks the covers down, knees me in the small of the back and then snores like a mouse with a hangover. She is, in fact, much the same as every other three-year-old: a complex bundle of physical, mental and chemical elements working away to let her develop and grow.

It may be a trite thing to say – and regular readers will know that I'm not particularly sentimental – but Lilah and her 14-year-old sister, Megan, really do make life worth living.

OK, I'm a doting dad, so what? Well, maybe the age difference between the girls will give you a clue. Megan was born on October 7, 1998, after a trouble-free, uncomplicated pregnancy. Lilah-Liberty was born on October 9, 2009, after four miscarriages and a pregnancy where every unexplained ache, twitch and sensation was a source of huge anguish for her mum and me.

In every one of those miscarriages we saw our baby; saw the gentle flashing beep of a heartbeat. We knew that they were alive: not just a collection of bits and bobs that would become 'life' nine months later. Believe me, no one could ever come close to explaining the nature, let alone the scale, of the loss you feel or grief you carry when told that the heart has stopped beating.

You have lost a baby: lost the life being carried and nurtured in the womb. At that moment you rage against the world, often believing you are unique in your loss and often believing that you are somehow, in some way, to blame.

And then, particularly if it is your first miscarriage, you discover an awful, often unspoken truth. About one in four pregnancies ends in miscarriage. In the vast majority of those cases it is nothing to do with either parent: it is just nature, red in tooth and claw, stepping in and making yet another brutal decision.

Most women who miscarry (even those who have had multiple miscarriages) will go on and have children and quite often more than one. Indeed, so common is miscarriage that consultants don't usually even bother to do tests or express any concerns until the second or third one: and even then, unless something very obvious is wrong, their advice is usually to "just carry on trying".

I don't think there is a day passes when something doesn't remind me about the 'missing' members of the family: Milly-Mandy, Conan, April and Eve.

And yes, I'm only too aware of the fact that if Milly-Mandy and Conan had been born then we wouldn't now have Lilah-Liberty. But that does nothing to lessen an ongoing sense of loss.

I still cry when I think of Conan: he miscarried at 17 weeks and we cremated him and scattered his ashes in the grounds of Stormont.

So, as you can probably imagine, I have huge problems with abortion. Every single fibre and instinct of my being rebels against abortion: rebels against the calculated, deliberate decision to terminate a life. And yet I have no idea what I would have done if told that childbirth would almost certainly have resulted in Kerri's death.

I have no idea how I would have reacted if we had been told that the pregnancy was viable but that the baby would have multiple physical and mental handicaps and never be capable of living an independent life.

I have no idea how I would react if Kerri or the girls were ever raped and became pregnant as a consequence. I have no idea how I would react if Megan or Lilah-Liberty were pregnant in a few years' time and told that there was a risk to either their own lives or the babies they were carrying.

And because I have no idea how I would feel – and, more importantly, because I couldn't ever be pregnant – I don't believe I should have the right to tell Kerri, Megan or Lilah-Liberty what they should do in those cases.

Ultimately, it has to be their personal choice: but a choice I would hope they would make after talking to those of us who love them and want only the best for them.

Where I do have difficulties, though, is when abortion seems to be a form of delayed contraception. The vast majority of pregnancies are the consequence of consensual sex between people over the age of 18.

Some of them may have been drunk at the time, or carried away by 'the moment', but does that really justify aborting what may well be a healthy pregnancy? One of the things we need to learn in life is the necessity of living with the consequences of our actions, not running away from them or getting rid of them.

Back in the mid-1960s, in the run-up to the 1967 Abortion Act, proponents argued that it would help in cases of specific medical/mental threats to the mother and child; eliminate 'backstreet' abortions and encourage proper sex education to reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies.

Since the Act became law there have been almost seven million abortions performed in Great Britain, almost all of them for 'social reasons'. That is a truly awful statistic.

Life is precious. I don't want to repeal the 1967 Act, though, but I really do think we need to ask one very simple question: what, exactly, is an 'unwanted' pregnancy and why are there still so many of them at a time when contraceptives have never been more easily available?

http://www.newsletter.co.uk/community/columnists/alex-kane-key-questions-in-abortion-debate-1-4395235

[Tony Baloney]

That article would reflect my own feelings.

[lawnseed]

it must be ok to kill a child as long as its in a nice office by someone well eduacated wearing a white coat using big words in a soft voice.. "now i'm just going to give you these wee pills and your little problem will disappear'

[Maguire01]

That article would reflect my own feelings.

It's pretty close to where I am on the issue as well.
For me, that article illustrates how pro-choice doesn't necessarily equate to pro-abortion.

[Maguire01]

it must be ok to kill a child as long as its in a nice office by someone well eduacated wearing a white coat using big words in a soft voice.. "now i'm just going to give you these wee pills and your little problem will disappear'

I assume you're just as opposed to the morning after pill?

[lawnseed]

it must be ok to kill a child as long as its in a nice office by someone well eduacated wearing a white coat using big words in a soft voice.. "now i'm just going to give you these wee pills and your little problem will disappear'

I assume you're just as opposed to the morning after pill?

theres nothing wrong with the night before pill. apart from the exceptional circumstances mentioned before most of these 'little problems' are easily avoided. women/men a hundred years ago didnt have half the gear to hand to avoid unwanted pregnancies and yet they managed without stopes.

[ludermor]

it must be ok to kill a child as long as its in a nice office by someone well eduacated wearing a white coat using big words in a soft voice.. "now i'm just going to give you these wee pills and your little problem will disappear'

I assume you're just as opposed to the morning after pill?

theres nothing wrong with the night before pill. apart from the exceptional circumstances mentioned before most of these 'little problems' are easily avoided. women/men a hundred years ago didnt have half the gear to hand to avoid unwanted pregnancies and yet they managed without stopes.

yes , they had the luxury to fall back on the parish priest to sort out the young mothers and babies.

[Maguire01]

it must be ok to kill a child as long as its in a nice office by someone well eduacated wearing a white coat using big words in a soft voice.. "now i'm just going to give you these wee pills and your little problem will disappear'

I assume you're just as opposed to the morning after pill?

theres nothing wrong with the night before pill. apart from the exceptional circumstances mentioned before most of these 'little problems' are easily avoided.

What about the morning after pill though?

[lawnseed]

it must be ok to kill a child as long as its in a nice office by someone well eduacated wearing a white coat using big words in a soft voice.. "now i'm just going to give you these wee pills and your little problem will disappear'

I assume you're just as opposed to the morning after pill?

theres nothing wrong with the night before pill. apart from the exceptional circumstances mentioned before most of these 'little problems' are easily avoided. women/men a hundred years ago didnt have half the gear to hand to avoid unwanted pregnancies and yet they managed without stopes.

yes , they had the luxury to fall back on the parish priest to sort out the young mothers and babies.

and now they have social services and the housing exec. i think the trick is to use any of the endless methods of contraception. the word mean contra.. against or anti and ception part of the word conception. no conception.. no child to kill. you know that they kill the baby then mutilate the body so it passes from the mothers womb.. but theyve got medical degrees and white coats so its ok

[Maguire01]

women/men a hundred years ago didnt have half the gear to hand to avoid unwanted pregnancies and yet they managed without stopes.

Clueless. Do you know how many women died from unsafe abortions a hundred years ago? Do you know how many still die?
According to the World Health Organisation, approximately 68,000 women die annually as a result of complications of unsafe abortion; and between two million and seven million women each year survive unsafe abortion but sustain long-term damage or disease.
Stopes didn't invent abortion.