abortion classic or dud?

clever concern-trolling by the right, since it calls into question an abortion doctor's credentials

yeah i've worked for some attys on some med mal litigation and opposing counsel is always making a big deal about this in front of the jury and the fact and expert witness docs are like, ummm yeah not a bfd.

http://www.cnn.com/2012/07/25/world/americas/dominican-republic-abortion-teen/index.html?hpt=hp_t2

this is enraging

also, this is exactly where we are headed

that's unspeakable, and obviously there should be no such prohibition in the first place, but wtf at those hematologists - the law seems vague enough that the situation seems clearly "treat now, worry about defending yourself in court later"

also, this is exactly where we are headed

Yeah. It really makes concrete what the whole fight is about -- whether your body is your own, or whether you lose control of it as soon as a sperm wanders into an egg somewhere inside.

http://www.cnn.com/2012/08/17/world/americas/dominican-republic-abortion/index.html

tragic follow-up

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/22/us/politics/todd-akin-controversy-may-hurt-republican-chances.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1&hp

Mr. Romney’s views align with that of the Mormon Church, which opposes abortion except in cases of rape and incest or when the life of the woman is in danger. He has said he is personally opposed to abortion; as a Mormon bishop in the 1980s he attempted to talk a congregant out of terminating a pregnancy after doctors advised her to do so because of a potentially lethal blood clot.

this view has come up elsewhere lately too for obvious reasons. is the line of thinking, for a pro-life / abortion-is-murder person, supposed to be that you would definitely be killing the baby, but MAYBE the mother might still live, so the mother is supposed to chance it (or both are supposed to chance it), as being the most moral course of action?

Oh my god:

http://www.examiner.com/article/new-law-arizona-states-pregnancy-begins-two-weeks-before-conception

the fucking balls on these ppl

People are funny

Jordan Goldberg is the Center of Reproductive Rights state advocacy counsel. He stated that the law “disregards women’s health in a way I’ve never seen before. The women of Arizona can’t access medical treatments that other women can.”

What do you think? Should gestational age be figured from the first day of the last menstrual cycle or from the date of conception?

WHAT DO YOU THINK?? waiting to see polls on when other important events like hurricanes, solar flares, volcanic eruptions, presidential elections, etc. ought to be figured as taking place

why didn't they just write into the bill that according to the bill the bill became law two weeks before the legislature voted on it? two weeks before it was written?!?

why couldn't they have aborted this bill two weeks before it was written

"Women’s Health and Safety Act", Orwellian as fuck

i dunno if anyone mentioned this in this thread but i was hearing on npr a federal appeals court in texas said it's ok if texas wants to take away all the non-abortion state funds away from pp because it's *associated* with abortion in people's minds. and it's not a violation of the first amendment right (taking away money due to pro-abortion-rights advocacy) because texas has first amendment rights too. makes sense.

and this lady they talked to was like "this is what's best for women in texas"

wonderful imo article about abortion provision and how we neglect to afford the same moral and legal protections to conscientious providers as we do objectors

(i think this is free) http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp1206253

http://jezebel.com/5944213/abortions-increase-by-25-in-totally-pro+life-arizona

YES

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/frontpage/2012/1114/1224326575203.html

Wretched.

fucking awful

Ireland's law against abortion was inherited from a British law enacted in 1861. It has never gone off the books, making Ireland one of only two nations in the European Union to ban abortion completely (the other being Malta). Ireland also amended its Constitution in 1983 to recognize a right to life in the unborn, "with due regard to the equal right to life of the mother."

But in 1992, the Irish Supreme Court ruled that abortion was permitted if there was "a real and substantial risk" to the life of the mother. This judgment came in the wake of the X Case, when a 14-year-old girl, who was suicidal after becoming pregnant following a rape, was sequestered by the state in order to stop her obtaining an abortion in the UK. She subsequently miscarried.

Despite the ruling, Ireland's abortion ban was never revised to incorporate the court-mandated exception, leaving a legal limbo.

yeah. Posted that to the irish politics thread. Just dreadful.

that's terrible.

one of the things that really stuck with me from reading this io9 report on an ongoing longitudinal study on women who are denied abortions was the finding that "even later abortion is safer than childbirth" -- it's so easy to forget just how dangerous pregnancy is, even without laws like this.

The court unanimously found there had been a violation of article 8 in respect of applicant C [ie a woman with cancer]. It concluded that the Irish authorities failed to comply with their obligations because of the absence of any legislative or regulatory procedure by which the applicant could have established whether she qualified for a lawful abortion in Ireland in accordance with article 40.3.3 of the Constitution. The court awarded her €15,000 in damages.

Cardinal Seán Brady has pre-empted the report from the expert group appointed to examine how best to implement the judgment of the court, saying that Catholic bishops and priests will launch a full-scale campaign of opposition if there is any attempt by the Government to legislate for abortion.

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/health/2012/0904/1224323571167.html

"Politicians privately admit this is due to a belief on their part that people in the Irish Republic don't want abortion in Ireland as long as there's a British solution to the country's abortion problem."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-20321741

i don't think the majority of irish politicians believe any such thing.

mainstream parties still made up of politicians that lean towards religiously conservative, and whether that's a public stance or held belief the effect is the same. they're also very conscious that , while a divisive issue, the loudest, longest and more focused protest will come from the 'no' side. shameful that this has kept them so long from legislating for even the medically necesasary cases.

there's a british solution to the country's abortion problem, though sometimes it requires a cancer patient 'unemployed, depressed and living in poverty' to borrow €650 from 'a moneylender' to pay for the trip

sometimes feel like the whole fuckin country is the dragging tail-end of the solution to a british problem tbph

this death is directly consequential from the failure by the legislature to confront the catholic hierarchy, whose bishops instituted a widespread cover-up of child rape by clerics and who now conspire to endanger the lives of pregnant women, and create a clear statutory exemption for these cases

the doctors in this instance were craven, but they suffer from the same uncertainty that the ECHR established was unlawful -- the best that could be said is that they ~probably~ would not have been prosecuted

hierarchy, probably not so much. Relations there are prob at a low since kenny's speeches of last year. But the on-the-ground catholic vote would come out strong against any party legislating for abortion, whereas the people either for or unbothered either way is probably a nebulous camp

do you think a case like this will have any effect on public opinion, legislators or even the catholic hierarchy, or do you expect their responses to be entrenchment of the existing position?

dunno if i'm out of touch with home, but I reckon a yes vote would be carried, perhaps not resoundingly but i don't think it'd be so tight. am i wrong?

i'd be pretty surprised if nothing changes after this, photogenic middle class woman dying of septicaemia because 'nothing could be done', it's going to be a media shitstorm

it's rare to see a case that more perfectly illustrates the idiocy and moral squalour of a particular law for campaigning purposes

i think it will have an effect- i think that ireland is a growingly liberal country, certainly it's well past the days of church influencing most social issues in any meaningful way. A case like this might be the focal point needed to counteract the minority but hardcore catholic/conservative groups that have punched above their weight in the political discourse about abortion up til now.

That's hopefully not just wishful thinking, y'know? I do think there's a groundswell in favour of *at least* legislation covering abortion during medical intervention- our own supreme court has ruled this was a legal necessity almost a generation ago.

it's amazing it's been so overlooked as an issue since whenever that information referendum happened.

early 90s was it?

x case etc was 93 iirc

and FF in power for most of the intervening time. Tight buddies.

jesus christ

can't really think of any excuse that these doctors aren't 1) evil, 2) cowards, or 3) both

i think there's a fair case for (c) incompetence, that they were not aware that there was a serious risk to the life of the patient, but rly there's not enough hard info to claim that just yet.

In a country where abortion is banned, how many doctors even know how to safely perform one?

you'd need to have been in an irish hospital in the last while to credit that fully, maybe. Health system's chronically understaffed

iirc most hospitals would be trained in d&c which is used sometimes post-miscarriage, which is basically the same procedure

idk just1ne, seems a fair question.

A clinic opened in belfast, ie in another country, last month- caused uproar as they will be offering family planning services

wtf ireland

ianad but I think a d&c is a scraping of the womb, actually terminating a pregnancy is different

This story makes me so goddamn mad.