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Abortion Referendum

angrysoba said:
Let’s say in cases where it is forced on women - rape - and the foetus has yet to develop a central nervous system. Whose rights do you favour? The foetus? It has no brain yet! The father? Do you think the rapist should get a say? The government? The Catholic Church? The doctor? I literally want you to explain whose rights should trump those of the woman who has been raped and explain why.
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No one else's should, ever, one of the reasons I am not good with the CC or fundy xtians or conservatives or other related who want to force others to follow their **** preferences. Note though, once the chosen to by the mother only child has been safely born I believe everything that can be done to help and protect and love it should be done.
 
JesseCuster said:
My cousin got pregnant in the 1990s. She was married and was planning a family. However, the foetus had a medical condition (can't remember the details, it's not important) which meant that if it survived to full term, it would be born and would die within hours. There was 0% chance of the baby being viable.

Legally there was nothing she could do to terminate the pregnancy. She could have regular scans to see if the foetus was still alive and could have had it removed if it was dead, but the foetus survived full term. For some reason (don't know her personal situation, doesn't really matter) she chose not to travel abroad to have an abortion but instead carried the foetus to term, and it died almost immediately, as expected.

"Joy" is not the emotion women in her situation would feel if they could legally and safely terminate their pregnancies.

What a situation. To be forced to carry a non-viable foetus to term because some **********-up law considers it to be a full human being with full rights. Yet people on these forums seem to think there's something wrong with remove the extreme legal barriers that would allow a woman to legally and safely terminate the pregnancy in those kind of situations.

If you want another example, look up the "X case" that happened in Ireland during the 1990s, where a 14 year old girl who got pregnant as the result of rape, and had reported felling suicidal because of her situation, but when the police learned that she intended to travel to England to have an abortion, they prevented her from doing so. The situation was ludicrous and tragic and the result of the 8th amendment we have just voted to remove from the constitution.

These are the kind of tragic situations that women are forced to put up with precisely because we have preposterously conservative and extremist laws regarding abortion, because of what is enshrined in our constitution. Removing the 8th amendment will allow for terminating pregnancy to be sensibly legislated for.

I'm shaking my head at yours and others incoherent and rather silly objections to what has been done here in Ireland.
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I hope the police who prevented her going had the unfortunate ends they richly deserve.
 
Vixen said:
OK, so let's look at rape.

(a) who calls this? Does a woman have to prove it was rape, because it can take over a year for a case to come to court, and then only something like 2% of rape complaints end in a conviction.
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And so what, if it's not rape beyond reasonable doubt? Let's say, in the extreme case, that the sex was consensual but the woman had regrets about it afterwards (*). Do you want her to carry a foetus from a father with whom she doesn't want a (long lasting) relationship? Do you want her to carry the foetus to term and raise the child on her own? Didn't you say earlier that the family is the cornerstone of society or words to that effect? Or do you want to force her into an unwanted marriage?

Either way, your "christian" ethics are despicable.

(*) FTR, I'm not saying this is common, but it happens.
 
fuelair said:
I hope the police who prevented her going had the unfortunate ends they richly deserve.
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The police didn't prevent her going anywhere, Jesse Custer has the details of that one wrong. Her parents asked the police who were investigating the rape if there was any forensic evidence they would need preserved from the termination for use in prosecuting the rapist. DNA from an aborted foetus would have been a novel use of science in an Irish courtroom so the Gardaí quite rightly sought the advice of the Attorney General.

It was the Attorney General, Harry Whelehan, who reacted to the Gardaí's question by immediately asking the High Court for an injunction to prevent Miss X from having an abortion. The High Court found in the AG's favour, then the family appealed to the Supreme Court who over turned the lower court's ruling in the landmark decision that allowed the risk of suicide to be used as a grounds for abortion under Irish law.

Its all moot now the 8th has thankfully gone, but it was the X case which knocked the first chip out of Irish society's faith in the 8th amendment.
 
Anti-Abortions laws don't prevent abortions.

We can argue the morality of this until the cows come home and we're all blue in the face and then argue with the cows about the exact shade of blue we turned but time and time again in multiple time frames, multiple exact legal situations, and even multiple countries have shown that abortion go down when abortion is legalized.

Abortions rights don't cause women to have abortions. At best (or worse depending on how you want to look at it) all it does is make women have safe abortions in a medical environment then back alley ones and near universally you see a dramatic drop in the raw per capita number of abortions performed when abortions are made legal.

If you have a moral problem with abortions, making them legal should be your primary goal.

If you just want to make sure women are criminally punished, socially shamed, and put at higher medical risk for "being sluts" then sure by all means keep fighting it.

https://www.nbcnews.com/health/heal...n-when-countries-make-it-legal-report-n858476
 
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Strawberry said:
The police didn't prevent her going anywhere, Jesse Custer has the details of that one wrong. Her parents asked the police who were investigating the rape if there was any forensic evidence they would need preserved from the termination for use in prosecuting the rapist. DNA from an aborted foetus would have been a novel use of science in an Irish courtroom so the Gardaí quite rightly sought the advice of the Attorney General.

It was the Attorney General, Harry Whelehan, who reacted to the Gardaí's question by immediately asking the High Court for an injunction to prevent Miss X from having an abortion. The High Court found in the AG's favour, then the family appealed to the Supreme Court who over turned the lower court's ruling in the landmark decision that allowed the risk of suicide to be used as a grounds for abortion under Irish law.

Its all moot now the 8th has thankfully gone, but it was the X case which knocked the first chip out of Irish society's faith in the 8th amendment.
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Ah glad to have better info on it!!! Thanks kindly.:):)
 
Lothian said:
The reasoning is that if people don't ask for (demand) an abortion they probably don't want one. If they demand one they have probably considered the options and do.

If they want rid of the parasite growing inside them I am in favour of allowing them to get rid of it. If it can survive on its own great. If not, so be it.
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That's exactly what Hitler called people he wanted rid of. 'Parasites', 'vermin', 'rats'. Objectify them first, as less than human, then exterminate.

At least your stance is more honest than an appeal to fancy slogans such as 'Women's right to choose'. Just get at'em.


Edited by zooterkin: 
<SNIP>
Edited for rule 0 and rule 12
 
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Vixen said:
That's exactly what Hitler called people he wanted rid of. 'Parasites', 'vermin', 'rats'. Objectify them first, as less than human, then exterminate.

At least your stance is more honest than an appeal to fancy slogans such as 'Women's right to choose'. Just get at'em.



Edited by zooterkin: 
<SNIP>
Edited for rule 0 and rule 12
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Strawman and Godwin in one short post. Well done.
 
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JesseCuster said:
So what? You can't just brush the awkward and extreme cases under the carpet and ignore the fact the law makes it impossible for women to do anything to fix the situation just because most of the time the problem fixes itself.

This is exactly the kind of stupid nonsense we no longer have to deal with and instead we can have sensible legislation to deal with the actual situations that actually happen that pregnant women actually have to deal with instead just doing what you're doing and shrugging your shoulders and doing nothing about it because most of the time it doesn't happen. Christ, what an attitude!

You assume wrong.

Well, living in Ireland, and having listened to the arguments from both sides of the debate, I've never once come across this bizarre strawman of an argument from anyone except you. What on earth are you talking about?

Who ever claimed that congenital conditions were the fault of sexism? No-one ever blamed my cousins situation on anything other than rotten bad luck. A situation with no-one to blame for existing in the first place, but plenty of people to blame for because she couldn't have the situation quickly, safely and legally

The fact that sad situations are always going to exist is a rather pathetic and heartless excuse for enforcing an extremist set of laws that prevent anything from being done about the sad situation and just shrugging your shoulders and forcing the victim to put up with the situation and the suffering for months on end.

Forcing a woman to carry a non-viable foetus for months, to go through with the entire pregnancy and give birth to some pointless non-viable baby with extreme medical problems which nothing could be done for, which if gone to plan would and should have been a joyous occasion for her and her husband, to give birth to it, etc. just because 'it would have been sad anyway'. That's a genuinely cruel and callous attitude to have for people in that situation.

What she should have been allowed to do was to have the pregnancy terminated as soon as the foetus's medical condition was allowed, so she could get on with her life and plan and prepare for the family she wanted, instead being forced to endure the horrific situation she did.

How can you actually have such a casual attitude to defending these kind of situations? To force a woman to go through with an entire pregnancy carrying a brain-damaged thing inside her which will never survive after the pregnancy, on the basis that it mostly doesn't happen? Jesus Christ.

You can't allow these situations to just continue just because they're rare, or awkward to deal with, or generally sort themselves out, etc. When laws are unable to deal with the fringe cases and rare cases, we don't just shrug our shoulders and think that's just the way things are, instead of we change the law, we campaign to change the law, and we've done so successfully in Ireland, remove the extreme legal barriers to abortion to allowing for it to be replaced with sensible legislation for safe and legal termination of pregnancy, instead of the ******** that currently exists.

Good riddance to the 8th amendment.
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OK, fair enough. You claim your cousin was 'forced' to carry an unviable foetus 'for months'.

I'll take your word for it that this is a fact and not an emotive exaggeration to make a point.

Of course there should be medical discretion in cases such as these.
 
Lukraak_Sisser said:
Have you ever looked at countries where abortion is legal?
Because it is here in the Netherlands, has been for decades now, and your fantasies about abortion on demand are quite far from the truth.

Yes they do happen, even in cases where the parents are just not ready for a child, but it's not a 'go get groceries and an abortion' level event.
There is counselling, there is discussion with the mother and father if she wants.

But in the end, it is the mother that has the choice.
I'm sure that in an ideal world a 16 year old who got pregnant by a drunken one-night stand, or a couple about to split up due to arguments with a mistake would carry the pregnacy to term and then angels and happiness for ever, with all those children growing up in a Dickensesque form of happy poverty or a rom-com getting the parents back together.

But that is usually not the case. Why is it such a problem for people to decide, not yet, and wait until they are at an emotionally more able time?
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As I understand it, the Netherlands (or was it Belgium?) also has euthanasia centres where people can go to 'die with dignity'.

The statistics for the UK says there were 182K abortions last year (nearly a quarter of a million!) of which two were of women who had had eight previous abortions. These can't all be 'rape victims' or 'women forced to carry babies with severe congenital conditions'.


There is a silent holocaust going on here.
 
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Vixen said:
As I understand it, the Netherlands (or was it Belgium?) also has euthanasia centres where people can go to 'die with dignity'.

The statistics for the UK says there were 182K abortions last year (nearly a quarter of a million!) of which two were of women who had had eight previous abortions. These can't all be 'rape victims' or 'women forced to carry babies with severe congenital conditions'.


There is a silent holocaust going on here.
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Have you not read this thread? What about abortion never going away and abortion rates decreasing when it is legalised?
 
Giordano said:
Committing to an abortion almost always involves a heartbreaking, agonizing, and deeply personal decision by the pregnant woman made only after deep thought and much consideration. It is the pregnant woman who is most knowledgeable as to her current circumstances and the lives that she and a child would face. It is the pregnant woman who will have to carry the embryo to term. It is the pregnant woman who will be responsible for the child at birth, and typically, for decades thereafter. It is the pregnant woman whose own religion, and whose own moral views of abortion, are the most relevant.

How dare some sanctimonious politician or some dried-up religious fraud accuse her of lacking the intelligence or morality or thoughtfulness to make her own decision! How dare they imply that it is a casual, selfish decision on the part of the woman. How dare they attempt to impose their own views on her when they have no understanding of her circumstances and are not committing to any personal obligations themselves. Interestingly, when anti-abortion advocates have been faced with an unwanted pregnancy in their own lives, there are many cases where they have become pro-abortion- at least in secret even as they have continued to spew their anti-choice rhetoric publicly.

Inherent in the desire of many who wish to impose/retain anti-choice laws is the concept that pregnant woman cannot be trusted to make the correct, moral decision themselves. This is why I see much of the anti-choice debate as originating from a sexist bias and being based, consciously or not, on a need to control women (and of course for purely political gain). It is fundamentally insulting to woman. And ironic, because inherent to this belief is the idea that these very same "selfish" and "untrustworthy" woman, when forced against their judgement to become moms, can then be trusted to fulfill that awesome and massive responsibility in a wonderful and highly praiseworthy manner.
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So what about if the same woman, whose 'right to choose' is sacrosanct, has an elderly parent who is suffering a painful and distressing terminal illness. Is it her right to choose to euthanise this parent, rather than having to be lumbered with the burden of caring for him or her, possibly for many years?

As you say, it doesn't matter what we perceive her intellectual capability to be. It is her right to choose to do away with 'em.
 
Vixen said:
The statistics for the UK says there were 182K abortions last year (nearly a quarter of a million!) of which two were of women who had had eight previous abortions. These can't all be 'rape victims' or 'women forced to carry babies with severe congenital conditions'.
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Yes around 180 thousand abortions were performed in the UK last year where it is legal and (at least somewhat) socially acceptable.

In Pakistan last year 2.25 million abortions were performed. Abortion is highly restricted legally in Pakistan.

Again the more legal and socially accepted abortion is the less it happens.

If your concern is "too many abortions" what you are arguing for is completely divorced from reality and implies an ulterior motive.
 
Vixen said:
So what about if the same woman, whose 'right to choose' is sacrosanct, has an elderly parent who is suffering a painful and distressing terminal illness.
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Is the elderly parent literally living in and off of the woman's body?

Then sure in that hypothetical scenario knock yourself out.
 
ddt said:
And so what, if it's not rape beyond reasonable doubt? Let's say, in the extreme case, that the sex was consensual but the woman had regrets about it afterwards (*). Do you want her to carry a foetus from a father with whom she doesn't want a (long lasting) relationship? Do you want her to carry the foetus to term and raise the child on her own? Didn't you say earlier that the family is the cornerstone of society or words to that effect? Or do you want to force her into an unwanted marriage?

Either way, your "christian" ethics are despicable.

(*) FTR, I'm not saying this is common, but it happens.
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Think rationally, ddt. What do you think happened in the olden days? People had sex, got pregnant, had to get married in a hurry.

People cared about the fate of those offspring. Gave them a name and a secure home.
 
Vixen said:
Think rationally, ddt. What do you think happened in the olden days? People had sex, got pregnant, had to get married in a hurry.

People cared about the fate of those offspring. Gave them a name and a secure home.
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Bullcrap.

Again, yet again there were more abortions in the "Good Old Days"

You aren't the least bit concerned about either the children or the unborn. You just want it to happen in secret.
 
JoeMorgue said:
Yes around 180 thousand abortions were performed in the UK last year where it is legal and (at least somewhat) socially acceptable.

In Pakistan last year 2.25 million abortions were performed. Abortion is highly restricted legally in Pakistan.

Again the more legal and socially accepted abortion is the less it happens.

If your concern is "too many abortions" what you are arguing for is completely divorced from reality and implies an ulterior motive.
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And in countries like yesteryear China, more girls were being aborted than boys. But this is all right, as individuals have a 'right to choose' to have boys rather than girls.

This throws up the ethical issue of the natural balance of populations.
 
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