Time to repeal the abortion ban in Ireland

Mpsox said:
All I'll say on it that if it was legal in Ireland over the last few decades, how many people currently posting on here would not exist?
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What difference does that make?
If I never existed I wouldnt mind, because I wouldnt exist to mind my lack of existance.
 
orka said:
Same is true of the unavailability of contraception but does that make current availability wrong?
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This is not the same thing contraception is to do with stopping something from happening but abortion is killing a viable human being.
 
S.L.F said:
This is not the same thing contraception is to do with stopping something from happening but abortion is killing a viable human being.
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The implication being that all abortions are one of convinience rather than necessity or other reasons?

But the crux of the argument isn't religious, but moral and to some extent scientific, when does ending or preventing a viable human life become "killing"?
 
I wonder if you add up the 5 to 6 thousand women who go to the UK (and actually confirm they are Irish) and multiply this over say the last 20 years how many of our sisters, mothers, aunts as a percentage of the current female population have had an abortion. I wonder for you men who were 50% responsible for the pregnancies of our wives, daughters, mothers, aunts, girlfriends and grandmothers who had abortions what percentage of the male population that would be and then if you added the men involved in the pregnancies to the women involved what percentage would we arrive at of the Irish population. That would be a very interesting figure.
 

I had to read that twice - but yes, that would be a very interesting figure!!
 
Thanks Bronte

The real issue is that Ireland's abortion rate is higher than other more liberal countries, despite it being illegal in this country.

My thesis is that, if we allowed terminations to be performed in this country, and
Gave our citizens full access to information, that the abortion rate could fall as low as that in the Netherlands.

I don’t think any sane person would welcome either a rise in our abortion rate, or the continued status quo whereby we happily export societal problems, at the expense of confused and hurt women
 
truthseeker said:
IMO what the church thinks is no reason to legalise or not legalise something. The church should not have any influence in matters of laws of the state. Thats a different debate altogether though!
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I agree, which makes it all the more irritating when posters continually throw in comments about the RC in order to validate their point. It's a bit similar to current threads where every second post is just a rant against FF.
 
I don't follow this, we are not cut off from access to information and if people are willing to travel to get the procedure, why would numbers drop if it was available here?
 
truthseeker said:
I had to read that twice - but yes, that would be a very interesting figure!!
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I type too fast sorry. We would then also have to add all those women who had taken the morning after pill ! plus the men involved in this. Though that figure would be suspect as no pregnancy may have occured. And then what about the coil, em think about that a bit, and finally what about the French abortion drug R something but I'm not too sure that's available in Ireland.

But of course when you add up all these people none of us are even remotely linked or related to anyone ever who had anything to do with abortion.
 
I'm afraid your contention and your top-o-the-head "thesis" are entirely incorrect. Britain has the most liberal of abortion regimes, it's population is 15 times ours but it's abortion rate is 40 times ours (200,000 each year). You refer to the Netherlands, perhaps you have figures, but I suspect you are unaware that abortions up to 12 weeks are not counted in the Dutch figures . . making such figures worthless.
 
MrMan said:
I agree, which makes it all the more irritating when posters continually throw in comments about the RC in order to validate their point.
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If you are referring to my post #9, I think it was a relevant response to Truthseekers reference to the anti abortion lobby and not an attempt to validate anything really.
 
Caveat said:
If you are referring to my post #9, I think it was a relevant response to Truthseekers reference to the anti abortion lobby and not an attempt to validate anything really.
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This thread in my opinion should be about whether you and I as individuals feel that abortion should be legal. As it is currently illegal i don't see how the church should come into this argument at all.
If i said that it was against Gods teachings etc i would be rightfully told that God doesn't write our laws so keep him/her out of it.

It wasn't a personal dig at you, it's just that like the public sector bashing that is now commonplace here, RC seems to be lured into more and more debates when I don't see the need for it.
 
S.L.F said:
This is not the same thing contraception is to do with stopping something from happening but abortion is killing a viable human being.
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A foetus is not viable until 24 weeks of pregnancy. This viability is determined by its ability to survive outside of womb. In most jurisdictions (if not in all), it is illegal to perform an abortion after 24 weeks.

I am a 34 year old married woman who ended up in a 'crisis pregnancy' situation. I never wanted a child of my own and got pregnant not as a consequence of being drunk or stupid but as a consequence of an unfortunate sequence of medical events which impaired my chosen method of contraception.

Abortion was an option which for a while felt right for me but not for my husband influenced by his RC stigmatised upbringing. I went for counselling, talked to abortion clinic in UK and in Holland all in order to try and regain some control over the situation. It is impossible to explain or describe a torment of an unwanted pregnancy, especially if you are surrounded by people with mentality of no-choice and no-option. The fact that I'd have to travel abroad and keep my choice a secret was as hard as accepting the pregnancy itself. In the end, I have decided to continue with the pregnancy for reasons I don't want to go into but am even more pro-choice now than I was before. My baby is due in less than 3 weeks.

None of us in a position to judge other's decisions on the basis of what we see. If I went ahead and bought a plane ticket that time, anyone could have assumed that my choice was out of selfishness BUT nobody other than my counsellor knew of my darkest thoughts and the emotional turmoil pregnancy caused for me. Has anyone who hasn't been through crisis pregnancy sat at the N4/M50 roundabout and contemplated driving down the wrong side of the motorway? I don't think so.

Everyone has a duty to make choices best for them regardless of how contrary they may be to the social norm. I still believe that most of the stigma is due to the RC church and its teachings. In my humble opinion, we would all be much better off knowing the full extent of the physical and psychological consequences of abortion in order to enable women to not only decide for themselves but also to get support which they need.
 
Yachtie said:
A foetus is not viable until 24 weeks of pregnancy. This viability is determined by its ability to survive outside of womb.
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The problem I have with this is that you generalise, are you saying no baby born has ever survived that was less than 24 weeks in the womb?
 
S.L.F said:
The problem I have with this is that you generalise, are you saying no baby born has ever survived that was less than 24 weeks in the womb?
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I am not generalising, this is a milestone adopted (no pun intended) and recognised by the medical science. I recently read about an exception but it doesn't disprove that majority of foetuses are not viable until then.
 
Yachtie said:
I am not generalising, this is a milestone adopted (no pun intended) and recognised by the medical science. I recently read about an exception but it doesn't disprove that majority of foetuses are not viable until then.
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Correct but you won't know if a baby will survive till you take it out.
 
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