Irish Abortion Rights

[beth]

Human rights court to rule on Irish abortion rights


The European Court of Human Rights is to rule on whether Irish anti-abortion laws violate women's human rights




The case was brought by three women who say their health was put at risk by having to travel abroad for abortions.

The government argues that the Republic must retain the sovereign right "to determine when life begins".

Thursday's ruling could require a change in Irish law. Abortion is illegal there but technically allowed if a woman's life is at risk.

However, at the original hearing at the Strasbourg-based court in December 2009, a lawyer for the women argued that the reality under Irish law was that doctors could lose their licence or face jail if a woman's life was later found not to have been at risk.

In 1992, the Irish Supreme Court ruled that termination should be allowed if a woman's life was at risk, but that ruling has never been adopted in Irish law.

The issue has divided the deeply Catholic nation.

The Irish Republic has become much more liberal and secular in recent years, says the BBC's Mark Simpson in Dublin, but there is still strong opposition to abortion in many quarters.

It is estimated that more than 4,000 Irish women every year have an abortion overseas, most of them in England.

'Profound moral values'

The lawyers for the three women have argued that having to leave their country for an abortion was humiliating and caused them distress and health complications.

Their identity has been kept confidential, but two are Irish and one is a Lithuanian national living in the Republic. They are known only as A, B and C.

They went to the UK to have abortions after becoming pregnant unintentionally. One woman was at risk of an ectopic pregnancy, where the foetus develops outside the womb, while another woman was undergoing chemotherapy for cancer.

The third was a former alcoholic who feared having another child would jeopardise her chances of getting her first four children out of foster care.

If the court rules in the women's favour, as a signatory to the European Convention on Human Rights the Republic of Ireland would be obliged to accept any changes to its law the court recommends.

But the court could rule that medical treatment and advice were available in the Republic or that the women did not take their case first to the Irish courts, as the Convention requires.

The Irish government has argued that in the past the Convention has recognised individual state's traditions regarding the rights of unborn children and that the country's abortion laws were based on "profound moral values deeply embedded in Irish society".

www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-12005803

[Erasmus]

The real issue would be to ask why women want abortion and whenever it is because of practical difficulties, to alleviate those difficulties. Abortion and contraception are ultimately ways of eliminating 'female' concerns from society so that women can conform to traditional demands upon men, not men (and those demands) accept women's sole 'difference' on an equal level to be handled as a social right instead of a 'problem'.

This is one of those many occasions where democracy is bad news, because in the three plebiscites that have been held, popular opinion is far more overwhelmingly against abortion than the State, and women generally more opposed than men. Abortion deprives women of recognition as equal in their own right to men unable to give birth, and absolves the State (or anyone else) from having to acknowledge women in their own right as having an ability that men do not.

I'm all for women's freedom to choose abortion - but the reality is that that freedom really means an excuse for the State to avoid paying support for women to exercise their generative ability, and to reduce them to the wage-slave servitude traditional to men. It is like saying that everybody is of course absolutely free to live however they choose - but it takes money and if you choose wrong, you won't get that money.

Still, it is absolutely your free choice, and if men traditionally would rather earn money (and status) before family commitment and women mostly follow them into the same because nothing and nobody will support them to do anything else, then that is their choice - like in the past many people chose slavery - the alternative being death.

The more abortions, the less the State needs to pay for women to exercise their ability to produce children, and the more they can be servants to produce profit like men, instead of liberating men to equality with women.

[biglin]

I am against abortion except where the woman's life is in danger or the pregnancy results from rape or incest.

Of course the rights of the unborn baby never get considered.

[beth]

Dec 17, 2010 9:08:22 GMT -5 @biglin said:

I am against abortion except where the woman's life is in danger or the pregnancy results from rape or incest.

Of course the rights of the unborn baby never get considered.

Lin, I agree with you exactly on this one. Since I am a mid-road liberal, I often lean one way or the other as a matter of personal values rather than what we're told we should think. In this case I wouldn't do it, won't condone it.

Ah but there's a "on the other hand" coming.

I know (trying to count exactly) 4 women who have had early term abortions for totally personal reasons. While I do not think it's right and feel it's a shame in each case .. I don't condemn them either. Each of them suffered making the decision and will regret (what they saw as) the necessity of it all the rest of their lives.

Fortunately, they were able to go to a clean, well equipped clinic and go through that with a professional doctor, traumatic, but not really dangerous from a medical standpoint.

My mother knew women who self aborted with whatever kind of sharp implement they could find or by drinking something toxic prescribed by a quack or a friend who had heard it worked. She lost one friend who went into hemorrhage 24 hours after losing her baby.

So it comes down to this ... are people who believe the government should not make the call PRO abortion? Are those who do not want to return to arcane abortion practices, ANTI life?

To me, that's ridiculous. I do not support late term or mid term abortions. I do not actually SUPPORT any abortions at all except when the mother's life is at risk or in cases of incest and/or rape. But, I won't try to set myself up as judge and jury for what goes on in the hearts and minds of others, either.

[fretslider]

Rights of the unborn child?

Perhaps we should arrest all women who miscarry too, they obviously did not consider their unborn child.... or did they?

Many mothers and families damage children, so much so that often an abortion is kinder to them than a life of misery.

The usual religious knee-jerk is totally inadequate when it comes to making judgements on abortion, it absolutist tosh and... just a belief.

[biglin]

Dec 17, 2010 14:51:32 GMT -5 fretslider said:

Rights of the unborn child?

Perhaps we should arrest all women who miscarry too, they obviously did not consider their unborn child.... or did they?

Many mothers and families damage children, so much so that often an abortion is kinder to them than a life of misery.

The usual religious knee-jerk is totally inadequate when it comes to making judgements on abortion, it absolutist tosh and... just a belief.

Wouldn't it be nice if once in a while you actually treated people who disagree with you with a little bit less contempt?

You might think it silly to be on the side of compassion and life rather than on the side of cruelty and death.

I guess we just have different moral values.

[fretslider]

Dec 17, 2010 18:54:24 GMT -5 @biglin said:

Dec 17, 2010 14:51:32 GMT -5 fretslider said:

Rights of the unborn child?

Perhaps we should arrest all women who miscarry too, they obviously did not consider their unborn child.... or did they?

Many mothers and families damage children, so much so that often an abortion is kinder to them than a life of misery.

The usual religious knee-jerk is totally inadequate when it comes to making judgements on abortion, it absolutist tosh and... just a belief.

Wouldn't it be nice if once in a while you actually treated people who disagree with you with a little bit less contempt?

You might think it silly to be on the side of compassion and life rather than on the side of cruelty and death.

I guess we just have different moral values.

Don't you think its compassionate to spare a child a life of abject misery?

This post has been scanned for traces of contempt

[Erasmus]

Religious argument has been used to support contraception and abortion: if you truly believe in an immortal soul then there is no 'death' and abortion eliminates an unpleasant period when it's possible to contract all sorts of sins that do the afterlife no good at all.

What really bogs me of is that I have never yet heard any opponent of abortion to offer an alternative that would preclude the desire for abortion. They are the most likely to oppose contraception and any support for these feckless girls wasting our taxes to enjoy breeding like rabbits. So maybe the girls are feckless and maybe their children are no better - but they won't be better when these self-righteous bigots are happy enough to see them born but to nothing thereafter to support them or to respect a woman as an equal human being whether she works for their reward or not.

They are hypocrites mouthing life without the slightest intention of putting themselves out to make that life they call into existence worth living, and when it is grown up, valued for its own sake instead of for what can be got out of it. Given reliable adoption procedures, there is no real need for abortion apart from dangerous medical conditions.

The fudge that abortion is an immoral form of infanticide except for cases of rape and [raped] incest is hypocritical: the argument concerns destroying a potential child. It is met on that level, how the pregnancy came to exist is irrelevant: either the foetus has a right to life or it doesn't regardless of conceptual circumstances. The exception there concerns the nature of that life, whether a woman has the right to condemn her potential child to a life that may well be short and agonising. Personally, I believe that women who do not abort a severely disabled foetus are morally no different from those who would inflict the same injuries on a healthy child, and their progeny have every right to sue them for the injury of inflicting life on them (always a bad deal!) knowing the problems they would face.

Then there is the other side, the feminists who give the impression of despising any women who dares to think of emotional allegiance to her child or lover as more important than her money and status supporting a world developed around men unable to produce children, so excluded from the emotional intimacy expected to go with that.

There should be no need for abortion - so since there is, we need to look at the reasons. For a miniscule minority that is represented as typical, abortion is contraception for girls who can't be bothered with doing it in advance. I've known one - girl shacked up with my brother when she was 15 and said to have had at least three before she turned 20. The convention was that when the girl refused contraception, the boy was expected to pay for her weekend in Southampton to get rid of it - and my friend Dawn came in for some almighty stick from other girls because she refused to get rid of it - it reminded them of growing up instead of being free teenagers with no responsibilities.

Why do women choose abortion (or even contraception)? The obvious, that they can't afford a child. That girl is very much an exception, but her case is still a form of can't afford because looking after would interfere with ambition that might look valid when you are teen but when you grow up you think instead, why sell my abilities for these people to decide how much of a person I am?

Like Tony Blair said about tough on crime and the causes of crime, if you dislike abortion, then remove the causes for abortion, don't just take the easy route of moral pontification with ban.

There was a TV programme quite a long time ago that has never been repeated because it interviewed cripples affected by Thalidomide 20, 30? years on. Far too many were in their wheelchairs with their stumps for limbs saying How dared they condemn me to this life of suffering? What have I to look forward to? Even if somebody appears friendly, it is natural to think it pity. What is life for me except they'll find some way to make money out of employing me. I wish I had never been born

They probably speak for all of us in depth. There is an aspect of feeling life as Karma, the negative reward for past sin. there is also a positive side. But that positive is the radicals who do not exist so far (but made a brief emergence in the late 1960s) saying that if women want abortions it's because they live in a social system that denies them the freedom to be individual mothers, just as it denies men equal fatherhood should a woman choose them - a child is, after all, a woman's, not a man, so 'father' is the man she chooses to be so and accepts, not necessarily the progenitor.

But again, we all know the Arch-Feminist Lesbian and I recall arguing with her insistance that only the man who 'quickened' a woman has rights and responsibilities over her child, not the woman herself to choose a man as father to her child and partner regardless of impregnator - if she even knows who he is. That taught me a lot about 'feminist' opposition to women's autonomy - though a pagan High Priestess had warned me off before, and like a fool I still believed in 1980 that feminism was part of matriarchal equality instead of the conservative reaction against it.

[mouse]

Dec 17, 2010 14:51:32 GMT -5 fretslider said:

Rights of the unborn child?

.

i had tried to avoid asking what the RIGHTS of the unborn child are..... as far as i am concerned an unborn child has no rights...the mother does
i am neiter pro or anti abortion..each case should be weighed on its own merits...personally i dont like the idea for my self...but then i never was in the position of having to choose
i can see why women choose abortion...too many prenacies..rape..finance etc etc
am not happy when i see little slappers who use abortion as a means of birth control....
and better to not be born than live a life of poverty and misery..cruelty and neglect..better not to be born than never stand a chance in life
but this every thing and every one has rights is just plain daft imho of course
and i speak as an unwanted pregnacy who was attempted to be aborted...the youngest live birth of 7 and the youngest pregnacy of god knows how many and as one whose 32 yr old mother died because of my birth which was the straw which broke the camels back a it were

disclaimer for what ever points i have unwittingly left unwriten..what ever hypocracy and dishonesty i may have shown in the above post

[mouse]

the real compassion would have been for abortion to be available to my mother..instead of the back street abortionists..the knitting needles..the jumping down stairs...the too many kids to feed etc..and all witnessed by my elder 16 yr old sister and the rest of the brood
the real compassion is preventing situations like that and other equally horrific..not wittering on about the rights of the unborn...

[fretslider]

Dec 18, 2010 4:25:54 GMT -5 mouse said:

Dec 17, 2010 14:51:32 GMT -5 fretslider said:

Rights of the unborn child?

.

i had tried to avoid asking what the RIGHTS of the unborn child are..... as far as i am concerned an unborn child has no rights...the mother does
i am neiter pro or anti abortion..each case should be weighed on its own merits...personally i dont like the idea for my self...but then i never was in the position of having to choose
i can see why women choose abortion...too many prenacies..rape..finance etc etc
am not happy when i see little slappers who use abortion as a means of birth control....
and better to not be born than live a life of poverty and misery..cruelty and neglect..better not to be born than never stand a chance in life
but this every thing and every one has rights is just plain daft imho of course
and i speak as an unwanted pregnacy who was attempted to be aborted...the youngest live birth of 7 and the youngest pregnacy of god knows how many and as one whose 32 yr old mother died because of my birth which was the straw which broke the camels back a it were

disclaimer for what ever points i have unwittingly left unwriten..what ever hypocracy and dishonesty i may have shown in the above post

I agree, unborn blastulae, gastrulae, embryos, foetuses etc do not have rights.

No different from the equally illusory right to have a child; its self-induced hysteria.

[biglin]

There is NO genetic difference between a newly formed foetus and a new born baby (or an adult human being.)

I happen to believe that it's better to be compassionate and on the side of life.

I can't prove that kindness and consideration are morally better than cruelty, indifference, hatred and cruelty.

All the same, that's what I do believe.

[annaj26]

Dec 19, 2010 12:37:07 GMT -5 @biglin said:

There is NO genetic difference between a newly formed foetus and a new born baby (or an adult human being.)

I happen to believe that it's better to be compassionate and on the side of life.

I can't prove that kindness and consideration are morally better than cruelty, indifference, hatred and cruelty.

All the same, that's what I do believe.

But, I don't see compassion and kindness for the women in these thoughts. Flaunting emotions just to try to prove a point is not the same ting as really caring.

Are you saying that people who believe women should have the right to choose are indifferent, hateful and cruel?

I do not agree. In fact just saying that is hateful on your part.

[fretslider]

Dec 19, 2010 12:37:07 GMT -5 @biglin said:

There is NO genetic difference between a newly formed foetus and a new born baby (or an adult human being.)

I happen to believe that it's better to be compassionate and on the side of life.

I can't prove that kindness and consideration are morally better than cruelty, indifference, hatred and cruelty.

All the same, that's what I do believe.

I hate to point the obvious out, so I ask...

How could there be a genetic difference between a newly formed foetus, when it is a new born baby and when it becomes an adult? The genes are there from the moment the spermatazoa fertilises the ovum. Its a rather pointless statement.

Why would you need to prove that kindness and consideration are preferable to hatred and cruelty? I think most of us have worked that out for ourselves.

Deontology was never my bag. Why? Typically in any deontological system, the duties, rules, and obligations are determined by God.

Nuff said.

[biglin]

Dec 19, 2010 14:30:51 GMT -5 fretslider said:

Dec 19, 2010 12:37:07 GMT -5 @biglin said:

There is NO genetic difference between a newly formed foetus and a new born baby (or an adult human being.)

I happen to believe that it's better to be compassionate and on the side of life.

I can't prove that kindness and consideration are morally better than cruelty, indifference, hatred and cruelty.

All the same, that's what I do believe.

I hate to point the obvious out, so I ask...

How could there be a genetic difference between a newly formed foetus, when it is a new born baby and when it becomes an adult? The genes are there from the moment the spermatazoa fertilises the ovum. Its a rather pointless statement.

Why would you need to prove that kindness and consideration are preferable to hatred and cruelty? I think most of us have worked that out for ourselves.

Deontology was never my bag. Why? Typically in any deontological system, the duties, rules, and obligations are determined by God.

Nuff said.

The point is that a feotus IS a human being in embryo. As such, there is NO moral difference between abortion and infanticide and the only practical difference is timing.

To assume that it's OK to kill unborn babies and not to kill once that have been born just strikes me as really weird.