Irish maternity hospitals remain a safe place for both expectant mothers and their babies; the scaremongering to the contrary should stop.
Scaremongering? You claim it's an agenda and scaremongering that women are genuinely upset and concerned that the choice over whether their lives and health is at the whim of a doctor and ethics panel? I would prefer the scaremongering over condescending trivialisation of genuine heartfelt concern to suit a religious agenda.
But let's focus on one key aspect that is trotted out by the government and the church and people on this forum. I'm confused because first I'm told that legislation in the X Case wouldn't have prevented the death. Just on that, it's almost said with some sense of smugness (not you personally) as in "take that liberal baby murderers, even if we hadn't aggresively faught against legislation for 20 years, even if we hadn't set up Choose Life in the face of the ABC case, she would have still died!". I'm not entirely sure that does much for the morality of the argument being made.
Second, if it is indeed irrelevant to this case, then perhaps you can explain the relevance of the Maternity Mortality rate to the abortion discussion. I keep hearing this and I keep hearing how we compare to the UK, what with it's buy-one-get-one-free abortions in the supermarket. But while you were the most recent to use the statistic, perhaps you could explain its relevance.
I'll give my perspective first. According to the [broken link removed] there are 14 countries that have better maternity mortality rates than Ireland.
Of those, 10 allow abortions on request and 3 for health and other circumstances (which is where the UK would fit in). So every single country that is better at looking after pregnant women allows abortion. Of those the vast majority have 70% have the most liberal abortion laws. So how come the church and the government only mention the UK?
And if this really is a relevant statistic, surely the evidence suggest that liberalisation of abortion laws saves more lives, if we are to use the "rationality" of the church by using this statistic.
Look at it this way, for example, one of the few countries with a complete ban on abortion, the Dominican Republic has a MM of 150.00/100K, Estonia (abortion on request) is 2.00/100K. Ahhh, but, but, but, you see, that's not fair, you're not comparing, no, but, but, but.... Do. You. See. How. Irrelevant. And. Unrealted. To. Abortion. This. Statistic. Is?
Perhaps we can stop using this, albeit impressive, Ireland is safe stat as it is meaningless. For one it doesn’t take into account the hundres of thousands of women who travel to the UK for abortions. That's another strike against promulgating this tripe. Second, the UK's and the USA's higer rates again have nothing to do with abortions, it is mostly to do with poverty and in particular that the maternal moratlity is usually skewed towards poor immigrants. In the USA's case, there are issues with affording prenatal care for immigrants (largely illegal). And in the UK, it tends to not get mentioned for fear of racism accusations, but again the maternity mortality higher rates are from women from poor areas, tend to be ethnic minority, tend to have not partaken in vaccination programmes, etc, etc, etc, and not at all related to abortion.
Where abortion does feature, "unsafe abortions" (note it is clearly stated "unsafe" not "abortion") is in those developing countries where, in some cases (like the Domincan Republic) where abortion is illegal, so women get unsafe abortions, or where overall medical care is not to the high, hygienic standards we expect and have grown accustomed to.
So, from my perspective, the actual data says a lot, but if we apply the current pro-life logic to it, then the data actually supports abortion in order to save more lives. But I'm willing to hear your views on this as I assume that as you keep quoting the statement, you've also had a look at the data.
IMHO many people are genuinely outraged regarding this case, others are more calculating as it serves their agenda (indeed some had prior knowledge that the story was to break and used that effectively). In any event, we need the facts of the case and therefore we will have to await the report(s) of the various investigations. In the interim, nothing will happen.
So, to conclude. Everyone who is pro-choice needs to get their facts straight and wait for evidence before making any judgement. I agree. But pro-lifers can:
1. Judge people without any evidence by claiming that "others are more calculating as it serves their agenda"
2. Judge women as scaremongering despite evidence that they are genuinely concerned.
3. Twist a statistic that actually does not support their argument to pretend it does.
What's the point in getting facts when pro-life has demonstrated that it will just twist and turn and wriggle and resort to pretty low and dispicable name-calling in order to keep its rapidly diminishing argument relevant? What good will facts serve when those pro-life commentators will just lie?