abortion classic or dud?

"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.

There are different ways to perform abortion but a D&C is one of them. It's used for lots of things including terminating a pregnancy if one is present so I think that MH is right in that there would definitely be doctor's present who could have done so.

Dilation (or dilatation) and curettage (D&C) refers to the dilation (widening/opening) of the cervix and surgical removal of part of the lining of the uterus and/or contents of the uterus by scraping and scooping (curettage). It is a therapeutic gynecological procedure as well as a rarely used method of first trimester abortion.[1][2]

It's not the most common way to perform early abortions (I think that would be http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dilation_and_evacuation maybe though I might be wrong on that) but it can be used. Oh but she way way further along than that so nevermind.

I think a D&C can only be used for abortion in the first trimester.

It's not used very often for abortion anymore because there are better/easier/safer ways that don't involve as much sedation, but it's still used for miscarriages in countries that don't allow other things that could be used for /easy/ abortions. Some first-trimester abortions are still done as "post-miscarriage" procedures in countries in a hush-hush manner

But yes, not applicable in this case

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.

Well, voter turnout has been so apathetic the last decade and old people are probably the single most reliable group anywhere so they are right to assume that this would be strongly fought by the No side. I would personally be pro abortion on demand, as would a lot of people I know, but...we emigrated. We have no vote! The part that worries me is not if there is popular opinion to change the law because I've fully believed there has been for some time now, but whether low turnout and the removal of likely Yes votes from contention would still force a No.

agree fully, but i think events/occurrences like this could galvanise the yes vote (course, they yes side would need galvanising in order to force a vote in any case as things stand)

I don't doubt you for a second, and I also wonder if prospective No voters would stay at home if there was a vote. I see that there are protests outside the Dáil and the Embassy here in London. Good.

http://www.cnn.com/2013/03/06/opinion/oconnor-surrogate-abortion/index.html?hpt=hp_c3

interesting story. parents pay woman to be their surrogate; when they see that the child will be born severely disabled, they ask her to terminate (something they agreed to beforehand). she refuses, but tries to haggle with them: for an extra $10k she's morally against it, but make it $15k and we'll talk

in Arkansas today the legislature overrode the governor's veto of some of the most egregious abortion restrictions in the country

christ. on the bright side, have to figure that'll be enjoined pretty quickly

reading my post again i don't mean to sound so critical of the woman - obviously the decision is hers and i recognize that many of the people who decide to be surrogates are poor. just interesting in the sense that it's the kind of thing you probably think about if you're a law student but i've never seen a news story like it before