IMO votes against abortion

[BabyMakesTheBellyGoRound]

In all circumstances including rape,fatal abnormalities and risk to life of the mother. They are afraid any little smidgeon of abortion will open the floodgates.
If someone could link I would be grateful as I am on my crappy useless phone.

Why are Irish women still viewed as a walking uterus,a step above the washing machine? Only last week I read where banks may ask mothers (not fathers or parent) to leave work to reduce childcare bills. A quick 'it wasn't meant like that' spin was put out shortly after but the sentiment was there. The little woman can give up her job,it wasnt that important anyway.

" In the UK there's plenty of controversy connected with health services, but fortunately abortion isn't much of an issue. "

That's not true at all, look at the situation in NI.

Also abortion rights are constantly under attack in the rest of the UK including proposals to reduce number of weeks, recent new legislation about private abortions and so on. No room for complacency IMO.

Tei may I suggest some historical reading before bringing English rule into the debate. You have just made yourself sound ignorant and ill educated,which I'm sure you're not.

Ireland has a written constitution which specifically gives right of life to the unborn,which,in my humble opinion,was written for an Ireland of a different time. If the issue was put to the people I think the outcome would vastly favour abortion,although restricted,a step in the right direction regarding women's rights.

"Ireland has a written constitution which specifically gives right of life to the unborn,which,in my humble opinion,was written for an Ireland of a different time."

No.

It was written, against legal advice, to satisfy a particular constituency of pro-life extremists.

There was American money involved then too.

Lies were told to convince Irish people that "copperfastening" abortion in the constitution was necessary to stop the EU forcing the legalisation of abortion on demand.

Thanks athinginyourlife - the point I was trying to make was that I personally might not have an abortion (might not never) but I believe it is the right of every woman to chose what happens to her body, yes Irish women should have the same rights as any other woman in the EU, it is barbaric to deny a woman an abortion or an ERPC in the cases you mentioned. And not just those extreme cases, no woman should be made to have a baby she doesn't want.

Absolutely, I agree.

But for now I'd settle for a recognition of a woman's basic right to life.

Currently there is a constitutional amendment that gives an embryo or foetus equal rights to life with the woman carrying them.

That is basically a personhood law. They can't get that passed is even the craziest US states because.

If an embryo if foetus in your body has an equal right to life to you, then you have far less of a right to life than a non-pregnant person.

BMTBGR, I'm not sure what you find wrong with my previous posting. Could you possibly be mistaking Gentle Irony for Genuine Ignorance?

My point was that the Irish law on abortion is genuinely Irish, and when someone asked the question "How backwards and ignorant do you imagine Irish people in Ireland are?" I tried to say say "Look at the laws Irish people have made for themselves and live under."

As you say, the 1937 constitution ("De Valera's constitution", I've heard it called) was written for a particular time and maybe it needs to be changed. Whether abortion would be permitted via a referendum, I don't know, and I wonder how confidently anyone would try guessing. Remember the same constitution wouldn't allow divorce, and it was finally changed, but it took more than one try and even then, the margin was tiny.

So finally I went and looked it up, and in fact abortion was nowhere in the 1937 constitution. It was added in 1983 as the 8th amendment, passed by referendum, and the vote was over 2 to 1. Maybe the country would vote to reverse that, but I'm doubtful.

The State acknowledges the right to life of the unborn and, with due regard to the equal right to life of the mother, guarantees in its laws to respect, and, as far as practicable, by its laws to defend and vindicate that right.

Seriously in this day and age a woman can't abort a baby when she is raped or could die! This is just horrendous :/

Whilst I am pro life to the extent that if I slipped up and got pregnant I wouldn't abort I am not to the point of the baby being none viable etc. So so sad

It was the flippant way of they didn't want English rule.
It was more than that,much much more.

It was a small margin of defeat on the fatal abnormalities vote.

If you have not read some of the Irish cases then be prepared to be fucking angry.

And I don't often use the 'f' word.

I have a relative whose much wanted baby had no brain. The term is Anencephaly but be warned google brings up pictures and they are not nice.

There was zero chance of her giving birth to a baby that would survive more than a few hours. Because she is not in Ireland she had a termination and now has 2 happy health children.

Had she been in Ireland she would have had two options;

a) go to England or another EU country for an abortion that she would have to pay for, along with flight and accommodation.

b) carry a baby to term that will either be born dead or may live for a few hours, the record is two days. That would be a baby with only 1/3 of a skull with only skin covering where the brain should be.

If she could afford option A then it is debatable whether Irish law could stop her leaving Ireland.

In case X a child was raped and became pregnant. The parents arranged an abortion in England but asked the Irish police if the fetal tissue could be used as evidence against the rapist.

The response was to stop the girl from leaving Ireland. The EU decided that this infringed her right to free travel in the EU.

It was reported that she had a miscarriage before she was able to travel after the EU ruling. I wonder about that, whether something was done to encourage a 'miscarriage' and if it was I think someone was very brave.

BTW did you know that until 1995 a woman from Jersey or other channel islands (1996 1997) who traveled to England for an abortion could be charged with murder? And it is still only allowed in very strict circumstances, as it is in NI.

I don't know whether this has anything to do with the Irish way of looking at abortion but before the abortion act many Irish girls would travel to England for a stay with some distant relative for 6 - 7 months before returning home.

During those months she would be looked after at an unmarried mother's home AKA the naughty girls home. I have two cousins who were adopted from one of those homes.

I believe the mother of one married her father, so she probably has (blood) siblings in Ireland.

Anyway, I wonder if Ireland just got used to sending problem pregnancies to England. I'm sure everyone knew Mary (pick another name) who went to help her aunt in Liverpool was actually pregnant, and that it just wasn't talked about.

There are things you can do outside Ireland.

There are rallies being held, I can't attend, too far away but paid 5 Euros to pay for someone else's busfare to a rally.

No woman should have to travel for a legal safe medical procedure, but Irish women do, there are charities that fund this, they need money.

They also need volunteers in England, Scotland, Sweden etc. Someone who can meet a ferry / airplane, provide a bed/sofa/floor to sleep on and get a woman to and from a clinic.

www.abortionsupport.org.uk/about/about-the-women-we-help/

www.abortionrights.org.uk/

Now go read case X, read 'Miss D' - and compare to the situation of my relative.

Then read cases A B and C.

Having learned a bit more about the Irish abortion law, that it was passed fairly recently, by referendum with a large majority, I'm even more sure of what I said Sat 06-Apr-13 17:04:00, that it's unfair to single out the doctors for refusing to perform abortions. I think as a matter of politics and morality, the doctors shouldn't go beyond what their community wants--and as members of that community themselves, they won't want to be rebels anyway. I'm sure they call Savita Halappanavar's death a tragedy too, but I'd expect them to add, "However, we must accept that there will be these cases occasionally if we're going to avoid abortion".

Everyone in Ireland ought to be saying the same. If they don't want to be hypocrites, they have to accept that women will die because of this law.

Meanwhile, "Savita Halappanavar death: Inquest set to resume on Monday"
www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-22037147

"At the moment, after a 1992 Supreme Court ruling, a pregnant woman can get an abortion if her life, as distinct from her health, is at risk because of the continued pregnancy...

But no enacting legislation was ever introduced to give doctors legal certainty as to when an abortion can be carried out.

Successive governments have shied away from bringing in such a law, but the current Fine Gael-Labour coalition has promised to do so and has indicated that it hopes to have the legislation passed by the Dail's summer break."

We'll see.

12 women a day travel from Ireland for an abortion.

Why won't Ireland face this fact?

Same country that had that Magdalene Laundry business, right?

I do believe there may be a trend there.

85% of their country is catholic.

That says it all.

So catholic women will have travelled here for abortions.

"Having learned a bit more about the Irish abortion law, that it was passed fairly recently, by referendum with a large majority," - hmm - do you have a link to this, TeiTetua? I thought Ireland relied on the 1861 offences against the person law to prosecute abortion, plus the amendment to the constitution from the early 1980s.

There have been a couple more recent referendums which tried to make it even harder (!) to get an abortion, but which have been defeated:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty-fifth_Amendment_of_the_Constitution_Bill,2002(Ireland)

"I'm even more sure of what I said Sat 06-Apr-13 17:04:00, that it's unfair to single out the doctors for refusing to perform abortions."

Look! There's the point going straight over your head.

This thread is about a vote by the Irish Medical Organisation.

Who do you imagine was voting?

I'll give you a clue. It was doctors.

Not the Irish people.

Just doctors.

The vote was not about whether doctors should perform abortions.

One was about whether Irish doctors should ask the government to legislate to clarify the legal position after a Supreme Court decision in the early 90s that said that Irish women had a right to an abortion if their life was in danger.

The ECHR has instructed the government to enact such legislation.

Who the fuck are doctors to tell Irish women that they can't have what their own Supreme Court and international human rights law says they are entitled to?

Of course people have a right to be pissed off with the vote.

Particularly when it is their lives put at risk by the extremist views of the IMO.

I've argued many times that Irish people can't wash their hands of what happened to Savita Halappanavar.

But I will not be told by an ignorant racist who clearly knows the square root of fuck all about the issue that this vote us acceptable because Irish doctors are just the same as all the other thick Paddies.

"Why won't Ireland face this fact?"

mrsrisotto, Ireland faces this fact with complete equanimity.

It's considered to be entirely acceptable to many to "export" the problem in this way.

Keeping Ireland "abortion free" while Irish women travel to have abortions abroad is a peculiar kind of Irish hypocrisy.

It is an issue that I have to step away from sometimes because if I think about it too much, I get incredibly angry on behalf of the poor women who have to suffer the consequences. I would be incandescent if I lived there.

Mooncup--yup, right here:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eighth_Amendment_of_the_Constitution_of_Ireland

Maybe you mean 1983 isn't "fairly recently". It's a question of one's age, harrumph harrumph.

AThingInYourLife, let us know when an ignorant racist walks in. Would it be the kind of person who talks about "a peculiar kind of Irish hypocrisy" or who mentions "thick Paddies"?

I'd rather talk about what Irish people, running their own country, think is a kind and just society. It might not be the same as the British think, and not all Irish people might agree about it. We might also wonder how Irish society thinks about women, and whether that's changed in the last generation or might change in the future.

Yep, I think it suits Ireland v well to be able to export the problem of unwanted pregnancies to England (indeed they endorsed the right to travel by another referendum). If this outlet didn't exist I wonder would abortion still be outlawed. Perhaps, given the strength of the pro life lobby in Ireland!

You're right, I don't think 1983 is fairly recently! Partly that's because thirty years feels like a very long time ago to me, but also because attitudes on all sorts of social issues have changed enormously since then.... especially in Ireland and with relation to the role of the Catholic Church in Ireland.

Wikipedia also quotes various Irish surveys that suggest that 80% plus of the Irish population are in favour of allowing abortion when the woman's life is at risk, and almost as many in favour of allowing abortion in the case of severe foetal deformity.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion_in_the_Republic_of_Ireland

I don't think the problem here is the views of the Irish people.... it's the government's fear of a small but noisy and influential lobby group that wants to keep abortion impossible.

"Would it be the kind of person who talks about "a peculiar kind of Irish hypocrisy" or who mentions "thick Paddies"?"

No.

That would be an Irish person talking about

1 their own people, that they have some insight into
2 ignorant attitudes towards Irish people.

What it would be is the kind of person who attempts to set the parameters for an argument about something about which they are embarrassingly ignorant and who keeps othering the people they are talking about.

"(indeed they endorsed the right to travel by another referendum)"

Yes they did, but they didn't endorse the right to travel for an abortion specifically.

The 8th amendment meant that there was a doubt over whether Irish women could leave the state whilst pregnant (or arguably of childbearing age) in case they got an abortion while there.

So although the vote did allow the massive numbers travelling for abortion to continue to go, there were important reasons why it had to be passed.

OK, 30 years is a while. Whether they'd vote to repeal now what they passed then?? Who knows. The 25th Amendment would have made the law more stringent and it failed, but only by a tiny amount. That was only in 2002--recent enough to say it shows what the national mood is?

It's encouraging that the government says they'll address the issue by the summer. Getting this thing talked about in public and debated in the Dail is a good start. As for the doctors, it's understandable that they say they don't want a law, but if there is one, they ought to welcome it.