To think abortion law is a tough nut to crack?

[chandellina]

so the Telegraph has revealed doctors allowing abortion on sex-selection grounds. I see a couple threads on In the News expressing disgust over this, a view shared by many, I'm sure.

But as far as I understand you can have an abortion on demand for just about any reason - not feeling able to cope, not feeling financially secure, too young, too old.

So even if you were terminating for gender, couldn't you just give another reason? And if you believe in a woman's absolute right to choose - why require a stated reason at all?

My point is that the law seems very flimsy, and why be moral about sex selection and not other things - like terminating because a pregnancy interferes with a desired age gap between children, or it otherwise not being "the right time." I know there are cultural issues involved too with gender selection, but those probably are also in play for women coerced by family not to have a child out of wedlock, etc.

thoughts?

No, it's not a life. It's a 24 wk fetus. It can experience pain according to some scientists and therefore different in law. It is also a more viable chance of life outside the womb.

So is it the fact that it experience pain and can survive outside the womb what makes you think it has a right to life then? Or does it still mt have the right to life? When do you think it actually becomes alive? Do you really think a 36 week old foetus moving around inside you isn't alive?

From the Telegraph in 2010:

Ireland condemned for anti-abortion law

Ireland will be forced to change its anti-abortion laws after the European Court of Human Rights ruled that the restrictions had endangered the life of a woman because doctors feared prison if they gave her an abortion on medical grounds.

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/ireland/8207578/Ireland-condemned-for-anti-abortion-law.html

The Strasbourg judges condemned Roman Catholic Ireland for having laws that made it effectively impossible for a woman to get a lawful abortion, even if her life was threatened.

Catholic anti-abortion campaigners have reacted furiously to the ruling and called for a constitutional referendum on any future changes to the law, a popular vote that would be risky in Ireland as resentment to an EU-IMF austerity package grows.

*

Has the legislation been put into place since this ruling?

I'll give you one guess.

Yah, Irish women can TOTALLY have an abortion if their life is in danger without one.

I doubt anyone is arguing it is a great thing to do Schehezerade.

I think a 6/24/36 week foetus is alive. I don't think it has a right to life that trumps a woman's right to choose though.

AThing, I linked to the actual documents earlier (not a newspaper article) that showed that abortion is allowed when the mother's life is in danger and that it is not unethical for a doctor to perform an abortion under those circumstances.

The point of the ECHR judgment the article is about is that women in the ROI don't have meaningful access to abortion, even where their life is in danger.

That is because there is no legislation covering the 1992 Supreme Court judgment, as I have stated repeatedly.

You are obviously happy for women to die because of the state of Irish abortion law.

But you'd better think again about being pro-"life".

bumbley, you conveniently missed out "has its own body and not inside someone elses" when making your crass argument.

And yet again, what do the rules matter when the reality is different? Thats like continually asserting my right to food while standing there and watching me starve. The actual documents didn't help Michelle Harte or others like her, did they?

I don't know at what point this thread became focused on Ireland. As far as I know they have to follow European law now but, certainly, it is hard to defend the old catholic institutions on many levels, misogyny included!

Well, a 24 week old foetus does have its own body and can survive outside its mother's, peppy.

AThing, 'happy for women to die' Don't be ridiculous. Are you going to go back to the 'woman hater' argument as well? The law is there. How people interpret it is up to them. There are bound to be cases in the UK where someone disagrees that an abortion can/can not be carried out for medical reasons post 24 weeks. Equally, there have been cases where a doctor has illegally aborted for gender - so do those few cases make the entire abortion provision in the UK a complete shambles?

Larry, it hasn't. There are just a couple of posters talking about abortion not being available in Ireland.

Its not focused, its a tangent.

The law on the Irish books follows the EU ruling that abortion must be available in cases where her life is at risk, and has been for 20 years. However it has never been implemented and as such it is not available, even if you are dying, even if the pregnancy will kill you. You are simply sent to the UK.

The abortion laws of the UK do impact on Irish women though, and any lowering of the limit would be detrimental to them, who already have to suffer later, expensive, difficult to access abortions.

It has its body attached to someone elses, inside someone elses, and can possibly survive on its own. It doesn't mean its an independent entity, or a life.

Peppy,

You keep going on about something being an "independent entity" as if that had some huge moral weight. Does it? If so, why? Many disabled people are not independent entities and depend on many people to sustain their lives. Does that lower the bar for their right to life?

So what is it peppy? If it's not alive what is it? A full term baby in distress in the womb that needs an emergency section - alive or not? What makes something 'alive' afayac?

I'm answering questions from others. And I'm not interested in yours or anyones "moral weight", since I don't believe anyones morality matters.

I simply giving an alternative to those who assert that a foetus is a full human life. I don't agree, and I think that the minimum requirement for being a human person is being born.
Arguing that that stance is analagous to removing the right to life for the disabled is deeply offensive, as well as illogical and unfair.

Bumbley,

I think the problem with the right to abortion until term lobby is that they have such theoretical certainty from their feminist theories that they ignore the visceral reality that is obvious to everyone else. It is a fundamental truth for most humans that they find it hard to kill what they regard as human, so they label people they want to kill as subhuman or somehow other to their own humanity.

For me, it is impossible to regard a term baby as anything other than a human baby, regardless of whether it is born or not. And, to be honest, in a wanted baby, I think people would be horrified if the medical establishment decided to prioritise its life below a born baby. That is, in a sense, the corollary to those like Peppy and Posie. Would they be happy is the medical establishment allowed their foetuses to die if they were in distress, as they were not yet human?

bumbleymummy Mon 27-Feb-12 15:04:11
So is it the fact that it experience pain and can survive outside the womb what makes you think it has a right to life then? Or does it still mt have the right to life? When do you think it actually becomes alive? Do you really think a 36 week old foetus moving around inside you isn't alive?

I'm not sure why you are asking me these questions, I don't make the law although I am happy with their definitions of life. A 36wk old fetus would be alive if it were inside of me, but am happy to accept that the law would see a woman as alive and a fetus as not. The law has to deal with broad applications so in a situation where a woman was in a car crash and in order to save her the fetus would die the definition is helpful.

Larry: Women are completely and utterly entitled to have sex with as many men as they want to, as many times as they want to, and yet not have a baby if they don't want one. It's up to the woman, not up to any man. Why is that so hard for men to accept?

"The law is there. How people interpret it is up to them."

Wow.

Just fucking wow.

Proof positive that pro-"life"ers are only interested in life up to birth.

The law is not there, not in any meaningful form.

But you know that. You are just OK with it.

You really think it's OK that women's lives are at risk, as long as there is an unenforceable guideline you can link to.

Nice morality.

A salient reminder that pro-lifers have the same moral standing as racists and homophobes.

They are people who tell lies to forward their own extremist agenda.

Larry., You make ridiculous charges against me that are frankly laughable. What I think about law and how I view my OWN pregnancies are completely different.

Do you think anyone has denied that SGB? Im confused.

Posie,

HAHA! Well, you said it yourself. Theory is fine as long as it is not applied to you.

Now, that is frankly laughable.

Posie, you said just a few posts ago that a foetus isn't alive so were just talking about the legal definition then? I was asking when you thought a foetus became a life.

Larry, I think you're right. Sometimes I wonder if people feel that they have to have these opinions in order to be a 'proper' feminist.

Ita not about ignoring a visceral reality, though thats convenient for you to assume. You can acknowledge the reality while still holding the opinion.

The reality and the theoretical are part of the same package.

I believe that women should have the right to abortion on demand at any stage.

This does not mean that I am personally fine with this happening.
This does not mean I think that you would actually find a doctor willing to do it (and that is the doctors right).
This does not mean that I would do it.
This does not mean that I think you would very many women who would want it.
This does not mean that I think that born babies should be killed or that disabled people are any less human. (Your baseless and insulting assertions should take note)

All it means is that I think that the only person who should decide what grows inside their body and what lives inside their body and what comes out of their body should be the person whose body it is.

Now, is there anything still unclear for you?

SGB,

They absolutely are. It is called contraception. And, even if that fails (or they don't bother with it) they still have an absolute right to abortion until 24 weeks. If they fail on both the above counts, they lose that right, as THEY HAVE TO INVOLVE OTHER PEOPLE INCLUDING, BUT NOT SOLELY, THEIR UNBORN CHILDIN THEIR DECISION. What is hard about that for you to understand?