Irish abortion laws

[crumpet]

In all the publicity about the gay marriage referendum Aibu to wonder why there hasn't been mention of the abortion laws? Have I missed discussion on this?

I see Bumbly never came back to answer your question jusd

Tough question I guess.

I knew I would come back to those types of comments! I do have a life outside of MN and I've been wasting too much time on here recently.

Right..
Jus,

Firstly, the existence of a 'body' does not require personhood which afaik is a legal/philosophical concept that applies to 'born' individuals.

Your questions seems to come from the 'forced birth' angle. Allowing a woman to remain pregnant isn't done by force. You're not 'controlling' gestation - your body is. Without interference it will proceed - sometimes to term and sometimes not. We don't actually have control over that ourselves anyway - hence miscarriages/pre-term births etc. the idea of us always having control over our own bodies is somewhat flawed there) The 'force' only comes in with abortion because you are interfering with that process. Allowing a pregnancy to proceed isn't forceful.

Also. if you look at reasons for why women choose abortion the reasons given aren't to do with bodily autonomy. They are actually typically societal pressures - and I think that needs addressed because no woman should feel that she can't continue with a pregnancy because she doesn't feel that she has the support/resources to do so. I also think that it is a much deeper issue - almost 'resentment' of women's own body/biology in some instances. It has come up a few times on this thread and others - they idea that woman want to have control over their body 'just like men'. This need to be the same as men even though we are biologically different (and arguably superior in many ways!) which actually results in women taking action against their own biology.

Anyway, no doubt you will disagree and this will go on and on. I'll just say that I do have a lot on IRL at the moment so I will pop in and out but I won't always be 'on call' to respond to posts within set time frames. Can I just say though that I appreciate that even though we have different opinion you have made your points politely and not resorted to personal attacks/insults

Bathtime - sperm isn't 'part of a man's body'.

Bert, I said I wouldn't engage with you because I know what you're actually like on these threads but I know I will be accused of avoiding your question because it is 'difficult' rather than because I know it is pointless to even try to have a civilised discussion with you. FWIW I agree with jus that it's not really good form to use people's children but hey, when has not being 'good form' ever put you off posting things on these threads before! Anyway, it always puzzles me why teenage rape victims come up in these arguments. Rapes account for

Preventing a woman from accessing safe legal abortion is forcing a woman to stay pregnant.
I love how you say "allowing" a woman to remain pregnant isnt forcing them. The 8th amendment prevents women getting safe medical care during pregnancy, whether thats an abortion if she chooses or to stay pregnant and know her life isn't at risk. She's not allowed choose to not be pregnant. All you've done is change the word force to allow.
I feel desperately sad for any woman who cant access an abortion if thats what she wants. To be forced to continue with a pregnancy and then be forced to become a mother. Its barbaric

Well that's the point Lucy, you're not 'forcing' her - that's the way it is. It's like saying you are 'forcing' your hair/nails to grow. It happens without interference. The 'force' is applied to change that ie abortion.

Lucy, I don't remember what you said your views are. Are you pro-choice in line with the UK laws?

"Allowing a woman to remain pregnant isn't done by force."

Pure ugly sophistry. "Oh, I didn't FORCE her to stay pregnant. Her body just did that ITSELF! I just prevented her from having an abortion!" If a woman is pregnant, doesn't want to be, is in a country where abortion is illegal, and can't afford to or otherwise can't leave the country, she is compelled to remain pregnant and, if it goes to term, give birth. That is forced birth and you well know it.

Also - my last (wanted) pregnancy nearly killed me (hoorah for pre-eclampsia) and would have killed me in the days before C-sections, and my first birth brought on vicious PND. Among people I know, wanted pregnancy has given them such delights as prolapse, postnatal psychosis, blood clots in the lungs, birth injuries that required significant repair surgery, SPD so bad the woman ended up in a wheelchair, and a lovely case of severe pneumonia because pregnancy suppresses your immune system. It's an amazing process if you want to go through with it but it's also (like all evolved processes) full of compromises and can be fucking brutal - the idea that women just want to avoid it "to be like men" or "deny their true biological nature" is ridiculous.

Personally pregnancy has made me more viscerally pro-choice than ever before, I cannot imagine making anybody do that if they didn't want to. I'm a woman, I'm a mother, but because I live in 2015 I'm not an inevitable breeding machine, and thank fuck for that. I'm all for "taking action against my biology".

"the woman still ends up the victim! ... Abortion in those cases is kind of a 'band-aid for a bullet wound' situation."

Yay, it's anti-choicer bullshit bingo. Nobody has ever claimed that letting a pregnant rape victim have an abortion makes her no longer a victim of rape (unless you're actually referring to women who terminate pregnancies as "victims of abortion"). And you'd really, truly think that comforting a specific pregnant rape victim who doesn't want to carry her rapist's child to term with "You're going to have this baby - but it's ok, though, I'm going to try and stop rape in general!" would make her feel better? I suppose I should be happy you didn't actually come out with "abortion lets rapists get away with it/destroys the evidence of their crimes", as some other gobshite did recently.

"Well that's the point Lucy, you're not 'forcing' her - that's the way it is. It's like saying you are 'forcing' your hair/nails to grow. It happens without interference."

So if you denied someone medical treatment for cancer that wouldn't be forcing them to remain ill because hey, that tumour is growing all by itself, it's happening without interference? Right

If a woman is pregnant and doesnt want to be pregnant but has no access to safe abortion then she is being forced to remain pregnant. I don't know what it is you don't understand about that fact.
I am pro choice in line with the uk law bumbly but I feel a woman should have the right to an abortion to term.

"I don't know what it is you don't understand about that fact."

I believe she understands it completely but is tying herself up in linguistic knots trying to make her views seem CARING and REASONABLE and NATURE and BABIES.

leedy, I was asked the question and I answered it. I know some people won't agree with me. I don't agree with some of your opinions either.

And the point about rape was that you'd try to stop the rape/pregnancy arising in the first place. Surely that's A Good Thing rather than just saying 'we need abortion for rape victims' Maybe just stick to 'we need to stop rape'.
Kind of in line with pro-choicers focussing on lack of abortion in some countries rather than access to contraception. Prevention better than 'cure' and all that.

Lucy, " I feel a woman should have the right to an abortion to term."

So, not in line with UK law then? You think the limit should be extended?

The abortion I had after I was raped as a teenager, and after the MAP failed, didn't make me "more of a victim".

It made me less of a victim.

It saved me from a lifetime of being a shit mother to a child I didn't want. It ended a pregnancy that horrified me in every way, that my mind was unable to cope with.

I would have done literally anything to stop being pregnant. I was terrified and completely unable to deal wit what had been done to my body and what was happening to it as a result.

I didn't even know then that I was allowed to call it rape. So I call absolute bullshit on your figure for abortions post rape.

But having my bodily autonomy restored meant everything to me at that time.

If inhuman forced birthers, such as yourself, had had your way and I had been unable to travel to the country I will always be grateful to for treating me as a human, I would have taken steps myself to end that pregnancy.

They might have killed me.

But sure. You really give a fuck about rape victims and how they feel and what is best for them.

I don't know how you can live with yourself telling women who have been through terrible traumas that their suffering should have been increased in the interests of some kind of ideological purity.

You sure as fuck don't care about the foetusus you are saying should exist until they die of pain or the pregnant woman kills herself (and them).

bumbley with respect I don't think you answered my question. You just described how you wish things were?

How, in the absence of abortion, do we make good the unwanted consequences of ensuring women stay pregnant and give birth?

Things like - physical injury and illness, serious mental health issues, poverty, harm to existing children, loss of opportunity?

Just saying ideally women would be valued and would always want to have babies isn't helpful really.

FWIW while I am very much pro choice I would also love to live in a world where abortion was never required. Why would I want any woman to experience it? But that's a utopian ideal. We don't live in that reality, women will always need access to abortion because of our actual reality. Even if all other things were equal - some pregnant women just wouldn't want to give birth or be mothers as it's just not the life they choose. That's a valid choice. And I don't think you should be forced to live as a nun and forego sex if it is your choice. I also take some exception to the idea that women's value a tied up with their reproduction, really don't like that at all.

I agree with your points regarding extreme cases - I don't think you can form a coherent or informed position by only considering them. For example, I think you're wrong I at least think your position is more coherent that people whose pro choice stance is founded on blame (so victims of crime deserve abortion access but nobody else). But I guess that they do at least serve to test peoples' reasons for their positions.

^Maybe just stick to 'we need to stop rape'.

And in the meantime?

Before you have stopped rape and women are still getting pregnant as a result of being raped?

You must be OK with termination for those women, since you recognise how awfully they've been violated and that their pregnancy prolongs their violation?

No?

Maybe you need to stick to 'I don't give a fuck about rape victims.'

What Bathtime said. And yes, I entirely agree that "treatment to prevent pregnancy occurring at all" should be made widely available, but that would only prevent all need for abortions if it was 100% effective (it isn't, like all contraception), and if all women who've been raped had access to it within the appropriate timeframe (for various reasons, they don't). And y'know what, even if a raped woman just didn't get the MAP because it didn't occur to her or she just didn't want to, that still doesn't mean she has to "face the consequences" and give birth to her rapist's child.

"Maybe you need to stick to 'I don't give a fuck about rape victims.'"

At this stage, I'd vote for 'I don't give a fuck about women', full stop. Real live breathing women with actual lives and loved ones and possible actual existing children whose needs and wants can be trumped by the life of a recently fertilized egg because "they're exactly the same".

Bumbley, you also didn't answer my question about what you'd recommend in a case where the pregnancy would have a serious and lasting impact on the health of the woman, but wouldn't actually kill her. Because under the 8th, that's a "tough shit" situation.

Maybe just stick to 'we need to stop rape'.

And meanwhile back on planet earth...

"few personal attacks from Bert thrown in for good measure"

So being called a radical pro lifer and possibly a SPUC supporter is a personal attack, bumbley? Why do you think that?

At this stage, I'd vote for 'I don't give a fuck about women', full stop.

OK, I'm changing my vote to that.

Just to say- I'd love to live in a world where nobody ever needs to have an abortion too. Pro choice people don't actually like abortions, you know.

Yes, I'd love to live in a world where everybody wanted to be pregnant could get pregnant straight away, and being pregnant was easy and caused no harm, and nobody ever got pregnant when it wasn't what they wanted.

Also, all chocolate would be free and everyone would have a pet snake. Or lion. Or griffon.

I'm getting a ponycopter!

And the point about rape was that you'd try to stop the rape/pregnancy arising in the first place. Surely that's A Good Thing rather than just saying 'we need abortion for rape victims' Maybe just stick to 'we need to stop rape'.

But in the meantime women are getting raped and experiencing unwanted pregnancy. I don't know the stats for Ireland but in 2013 in England and Wales 85 000 women were raped, these figures are rising and as we know the conviction rate is tiny.

If you really are interested in tackling the rape culture we live in then one thing you could do is to campaign for women's rights. All the while women are regarded as little more than incubators who have no say as to whether they continue with a pregnancy I see little hope for those figures falling, do you?

I had a termination following teen rape. I know 100% that being able to have that termination saved my life because the only way I was granted that termination was because of the effect it would have on my MH. And I think I probably would have killed myself if I hadn't been able to access it.

So I appreciate the laws that allowed me to have the termination and I think a termination should always be available to a woman that wants one. Whether a victim of rape or not.

Legislation is one thing and my personal view is that terminations should be available. But I don't think pro-lifers hate me or any other woman or consider women to be just incubators. I just think they have a different view. Not one I agree with and one i'd fight against but not one that is based on 'not giving a fuck' about anyone IMO.

(Slinks away from being flamed).

I don't think anyone at all on here would flame you for any of what you said there aint

I suppose there are all sorts of different people who identify as pro life. And whether they view women as incubators or not, sadly the ultimate upshot of a really hard line pro life approach can see women treated as such. For example there was a case recently in Ireland where one side was seeking a ruling that a lady who was brain dead and 17 weeks pregnant should be kept hooked up to life support in an effort to gestate her foetus until it could be born by section (her partner and parents wanted to let her die with dignity, in their words). Another case saw a young asylum seeker basically pushed around by state agencies to prevent her having an abortion - they prevented her from travel, sectioned her to force feed her when she was trying to starve herself as a result of being forced to continue with pregnancy, and ultimately the child was born by 'consensual' c section at 25 weeks, immediately a ward of the state.

Now, those are extreme examples, but they're real. See also the significant number of women in Ireland refused abortion of dying foetuses. Those without funds to travel won't access termination. What's the point of that of the woman doesn't want it? Other than gestation for the sake of it?

Some people support that and there is at least some element of forced incubation about it I think.

Thanks jus - I'm aware of those cases. I am quite involved in keeping up to date with what is going on in the world because this is an issue I've lived. And my personal view is that life starts at birth. Before that, it is a foetus - a living entity but not a 'life' IMO because life is everything about our heritage and everything we experience after we are born. So if you're born at whatever number of weeks, you're being born into a life. If you're a terminated pregnancy at however many weeks, you are not being born into a life.

But when I had my termination. Even at the age of 14, I knew that I was preventing a possible future 'life' from being realised and lived. It was absolutely the right decision for me and I have never regretted it but it was something I took into consideration.

I don't think MOST 'pro-lifers' would hate me for what I did or think my life should have been sacrificed or damaged for the sake of that foetus. They just think that 'life' starts earlier than I think it does and that someone should think of 'that life'.

I don't disagree we should think about that. Doesn't mean that should prevent a termination. And if people are campaigning outside abortion clinics or bombing them - or trying to remove the legal right to an abortion then I will fight that.

But I can't hate them for believing something different nor think they just don't give a fuck about anyone that wants a termination.

Oh and thinks for the flowers Jus. MN is really the only place I talk about it all these days (under many NC) over the years so those little acknowledgements from someone of that scared kid I was and not the professional, respected and whatever. . adult I am now. Anyway, thanks.