Originally Posted by hiding behind a poster

If the legislation to be enacted after the 8th is abolished is for unrestricted abortion up to 12 weeks, then the referendum to abolish the 8th will be deated.

I don't necessarily agree. There is no way amended language will be offered to the people...it would be another mess and the timeframe is too tight. So, it'll be a straight repeal or nothing.

Then it'll be about the campaign...just as much as one side can use the AOD line, the other can use equally emotive language about no repeal meaning that our daughters will still be exported, etc. etc. They could also ask what the alternative is? No 12 week regime, but instead women to be examined to see if they were raped, before a termination will be permitted?

Originally Posted by ger12

We're also a safer country for pregnant women than the UK or US.

Are you male or female? I read your byline and I think of kids who are homeless, or who will be handicapped by their address and parentage. Once all the children of the nation are cherished equally, should any one begin to think about an unborn child.
Furthermore, the decision to have an abortion should be choice open to women, with no input from males.

Originally Posted by Scitlipo

Are you male or female? I read your byline and I think of kids who are homeless, or who will be handicapped by their address and parentage. Once all the children of the nation are cherished equally, should any one begin to think about an unborn child.

Sounds very much like the argument that we should let the migrants drown in the Mediterranean because we have our own problems in Europe without dealing with those guys.

Originally Posted by petaljam

That's really all there is behind the claim that women would terminate a pregnancy because it was "inconvenient".
A poster a few weeks back was suggesting that women would abort a child shortly before birth as a way of punishing the father.

Amnesty International say abortion should be allowed if the pregnancy is inconvenient. Are they belittling women too?

Originally Posted by petaljam

Why did you ask then?

The young woman who died in a taxi trying to get home from England after an abortion recently was a mother who wanted to terminate a subsequent (wanted) pregnancy because she was in such pain from fibroids. Unfortunately for her, her life wasn't actually in danger, (unbearable pain doesn't matter when you're a woman) and she had to wait several weeks to save enough money to travel, by which time the problem was much more complicated to deal with.

If she had lived in a country with abortion for health reasons, or indeed for choice, she would have had the termination in Dublin when she decided she needed it, and her medical records would have been available to the doctors who did the procedure. She would also have been able to rest after the intervention, not get into a taxi to travel home immediately.

Why didn't she go to hospital in Ireland for treatment of fibroids?

Originally Posted by Scitlipo

Are you male or female? I read your byline and I think of kids who are homeless, or who will be handicapped by their address and parentage. Once all the children of the nation are cherished equally, should any one begin to think about an unborn child.
Furthermore, the decision to have an abortion should be choice open to women, with no input from males.

I think of my other half, born in a mother and baby home, adopted to loving but not flush parents. Who was the first in his family to go to third level, fathered three children and has changed the way Ireland thinks in his profession.

I keep hearing that he should have been aborted instead.

I've also seen a 17 week fetus and could not deny her humanity. I've seen ultrasounds early into all my pregnancies and I've been the unmarried not long out of college female in an Irish maternity hospital twenty years ago, felt the whispers, stares.

I'm an aunt to a niece with special needs, would life have been different if she'd been aborted? Yes. Better? No. She's taught us more than we've taught her.

I don't care for religions or believe in a god. What I do know, having spent a long time working with people who get a scary life threatening illness, is that we value our lives us humans, especially when they're threatened. Logic, for atheists like me, dictates that this is it. You get one shot at life, and I won't take "choice" as a reason to end a human life. I value that life like I value my own, and yours.

Originally Posted by Hitchcock

And the way to 'fix' it is to repeal it. This is the last bastion for the reactionaries hence their hysterics, they lost on divorce, they lost on contraception, they lost on criminalising homosexuality, they lost on same-sex marriage to name a few......

And this thread's past few pages show how complex a vote on repeal with a promise of legislation that does not "go too far" for the country. I'm pro choice and pro appeal, but how it will be put to the people is key. It is there for the losing...

Originally Posted by ger12

The last attempt to strengthen it narrowly failed, and Dana and her crew canvassed very hard against it.

And in part, we are at risk of doing a similar "shackle legislation into the constitution" approach. Aside from one's view on the matter, the pitch is going to be very tricky.

Originally Posted by Gin Soaked

And in part, we are at risk of doing a similar "shackle legislation into the constitution" approach. Aside from one's view on the matter, the pitch is going to be very tricky.

If you remove protection that's it. Restrictive legislation will be challenged and the SC will do as the SC did in the other common law countries with written constitutions, the US and Canada, privacy, bodily integrity will trump.

Originally Posted by ger12

If you remove protection that's it. Restrictive legislation will be challenged and the SC will do as the SC did in the other common law countries with written constitutions, the US and Canada, privacy, bodily integrity will trump.

That I think is the way to go. It is more honest. I don't think Abortion with a tonne of caveats has a coherent moral position. You either outsource it overseas as we do now, or accept that it is awful, but a reality.

It will also cut a lot of the b.s. in the debate too.