The Irish Abortion Referendum

Voting Yes changes the current position of the life of the mother being equal to the life of the unborn and makes it illegal for suicidal women in care to travel for an abortion.

Voting No maintains the present legal position, the right to life of the mother is equal to that of the unborn.

The reason we are having ANOTHER referendum on this matter is because the right to life of the unborn is enshrined within the Constitution, and can only be changed by public vote.

Yes 48.something No 51.something.

Meta question, isn't it bloody ridiculous Britain can have their election results by the end of the day nearly and yet it takes us longer with our 2.5mill electorate.

In any event, I'm unclear as to how a very common pro-life POV, "abortion is only permissible in cases of rape, incest, or endangerment to the mother's health", engages in "removal of this issue from its complex ethical and social context"; to me, that stance would seem to acknowledge at least a measure of that context, and is no more indictable for said removal (i.e. its recourse to moral principle) than is veganism/animal rights advocacy or opposition to the death penalty. It's largely a question of whether you believe policy ought to refer to (moral) principle, or confine itself to social utility -- and in turn whether you believe that principle to be revealed or materially based.

well i think we're handling this with the expected level of maturity and consideration

Useful reading. I don't know everything about it but the thing in America is that 8th, 8th and 10th generation "Irish Americans" use this shit to support their nauseating anti-abortion stance. And unlike them I had an actual Irish grandparent who didn't agree with anti-abortion politics.

Draft legislation due

Debate on the issue isnt inspiring

nobody on primetime calling the language describing a foetus as a human life. this is a basic thing to pull ppl on if you want to regulate a debate on this stuff

fighty lady shouty psychiatrists on primetime is good, pro-legislation one is my new favourite irish person

damn, christian comment spokeswoman is ws of shame material

lol

im so sorry but tbf im not sure that this hasn't occurred to the group at the same time

this debate is covering the ground nicely now, tbf, everyone is a p good advocate for their position, pro-choice side i obv found by far the more impressive

http://www.irishtimes.com/news/politics/d%C3%A1il-vote-on-abortion-bill-carried-by-138-to-24-1.1450291

creeping towards the 20th century

dirty immigrants gonna cause a no vote is the latest angle

Christ help us.

if they're dirty surely they'll be in favour

Gays vs Immigrants - FITE!

It's cominggggg

100k marching in dublin today against repeal of the 8th

they can all fit into a space that under normal circumstances cant have more than 17k

and half of them are kids and grandkids

its no wonder a few loaves and fish feed a crowd if thats how they count

good luck éire

oooof

scenes on boards.ie thread

plants pictured holding v inflammatory banners at previous pro-choice events (one saying 'abort sick children' or somesuch, another hoisting the logo of a british fascist org) have been spotted and identified as stewards for today's pro-life events

xp feires feire

Omg link the thread please darragh? I haven’t been on boards in years and find it incomprehensible now.

Wonder how many of the marchers were American? Did you see that mess with the pro-life activist running the @ireland account?

save u going to boards heres the tweet for first

twitter.com/SPE32/status/972512845232508930?s=19

cannot seem to link tweets properly soz

and second

https://m.facebook.com/SolidarityTimes/photos/a.341910489331727.1073741828.341899462666163/780496845473087/?type=3&theater

on that latter i might have confused that hes not a steward today but was def a plant at a womans day march prev

not sure if firm link other than cointelpro tactics

srsly tho these lunatics

Thank you! Will check those out now. Was reading the times article on this and just making a face at this:

“Ten weeks to ensure that the best of Irish people vote No to abortion,” she said. “Stand in the gap against the media and the international elites who think they could browbeat and bribe the Irish people into accepting the unacceptable, the killing of our own children,

the abortion industry sin é an rud nua now, abortion industry

id feel like saying "but we could use the jobs nach bfhuil ha?" but believe it or not im not actually a troll

Yeah totally unsurprised by the conclusion drawn by the Facebook page, it’s alluded to in the speech I partially quoted from above.

xp I mean...

i am getting the feeling its going to be tighter than coverage might have you think

on the likes of boards the presence and amount of obvious bots is getting more and more prevalent and its v unsettling

Are the Archbishoprics running bot campaigns now

xxp I never expected a walkover. In my lifetime, I couldn’t even foresee it passing. But the amount of people I know voting to repeal has me heartened. There are a lot of ordinary women coming forward and speaking up on things like the In Her Shoes - Women of the Eight page.

Re: the attendance padding:

Some may mock, but that's only because they can't see that everyone on the march is surrounded by several angels. (Unfortunately none of the angels are eligible to vote in the referendum)

— Ray (@ray_cun) March 10, 2018

fact

a lot of attendees are children

was thinking today about the split being one side raised to their strong opinion and the other arriving at it, whether that was fair, how true it was, what did it suggest, did it matter

then i made a pretty good apple pie

i think repeal will pass.

A lot of attendees aren’t citizens either, I’d go so far to say.

Arriving at it? Hmmm, I don’t know. I have always been strongly pro-choice as far as I can remember - I’d go so far as to say that it’s the single issue closest to my heart in terms of politics at home. But then I was growing up reading about the X case and the C case...

It’s not the way that people arrive at their opinion that matters; it’s the issue itself. Gay marriage was a simple and positive campaign comparatively - who is against love? Abortion isn’t quite so straightforward and it’s not something you can make a soft focus, media friendly case for. It’s a lot of grey where the anti choice side operates in strict black and white.

agreed

i think upthread there's discussion on how in ireland its not strictly a liberal/conservative divide (as they fall along normal lines) in that you might be surprised how a person feels about it

im not sure if that still holds true but i suspect ive a few people i kniw quite well who would be against repeal. i dont think i met anyone except my father in law who was eh out as against marriage ref

I’d agree with that. Though I’ve been surprised by the number of people I know in favour - and even more so by the numbers vocally in favour. Especially as doing so will earn you the full attention of YD and the rest.

....

we may or may not have yd in the office I'll be damned if i poke the bear if she doesnt

google noel pattern, noel patrun, nollaig o patrun for more of this malarkey

this is gonna be ugly stupid close

the tactics and behaviour and contempt for decency of the large no fringe is ... maddening, shocking, idk

LG's first post in this thread reveals a family connection

update your former ilxor .xls accordingly

It’s vmic for anti choice campaigning the world over. I’m not surprised by them. I was surprised by, for example, Farmers for Yes and “It upsets me to think of somebody’s daughter afraid, alone, unsafe, taking medication that they smuggled into the country. Afraid of breaking the law. Afraid to seek help. We can do better. We need to do better. We need to care for our women at home in Ireland.”

I’ve been desperately trying not to follow the coverage* too closely because it is important to me that it pass and I don’t want to get too involved. I’m still on the register and get a polling card delivered to my parents’ house, but of course I can’t use it.

Today was the first time I looked at the polling and yeah it’s close but it’s going to depend on turnout.

I am sure you’ve seen the thread by Paula on @ireland last week but for anyone who hasn’t, this is desperately sad and honest and is exactly why this amendment needs to go:

Ok I’m going to share a story with you regarding a crisis pregnancy I had many years ago, I have previously shared this story on my own account but think it might be good to revisit it. I was 15 when I became pregnant, 15 when I gave birth too. My eldest is now 27 #togetherforyes

— Ireland / REFCOM (@ireland) May 18, 2018

*except In Her Shoes - Women of the Eighth. I can’t get over how brave those people are for telling their stories.

otm to the stories and otm to avoid most coverage

fb have an "abroad for yes" page where theyre matching donors to people who cant afford to get home to vote under their own resources

#hometovote is worth following

feeling hopeful

high turnout reported

which is good, very good indeed

good luck eire

was just coming here to post that exact phrase

(This could have gone in the bad Guardian thread, but really there should be a collected bad take repository!)

Laurie Penny published a now locked piece about the referendum, it sounds like an absolute car crash. Irish twitter users have been queuing up to critique it. So much cringe. She actually used her own Irish background to deflect from the fact that she doesn’t know the difference between the Taoiseach and the Dáil!

This thread captures the worst of it:

I wrote a lot of stuff on my IG story about how bad I think this Laurie Penny article (https://t.co/4cPGQK2DKE) is, then remembered Twitter is meant to be the one for opinions.

so:

— thot experiment (@NaoiseDolan) May 28, 2018

In fairness, Laurie is pretty aware that she's fucked up:

https://twitter.com/PennyRed

She actually used her own Irish background to deflect from the fact that she doesn’t know the difference between the Taoiseach and the Dáil!

That is not something she did, no.

Yes, anyone can go on her timeline and see shite like this:

Because I’ve learned to my cost that there are some people for whom only deleting my whole account and never writing anything again would ever be enough.

— Laurie Penny (@PennyRed) May 29, 2018

Although I did ungenerously misrepresent the point, so yes, you’re right on that. Can’t imagine what made me view her so ungenerously!

Yeah, that is an unfortunate feature of her writing these days - to be honest any idea that starts with "I was hanging around with Amanda Palmer and she said" is unlikely to go anywhere good.

I'm actually in awe of her ability to make herself the story time and time again. Tone deaf cultural insensivity followed by frantic backtracking and apologies is kinda her MO at this point.

'Laurie Penny becoming the story' is something that's only happened because dozens of people have a weird obsession with her and have chosen to tweet about how bad this article is, though? It's weird to see so many people tweeting complaints that's she crowding out more informed/relevant voices given that most of us probably wouldn't even know that the LP piece existed if it weren't for those same tweets

that sounds like a pretty woolly defence tbh

havent read the piece whatre the objections

Marie Le Conte had the point earlier that there's definitely a case to be made for Patreon, but if you're using it to free yourself from the clutches of copy editors and fact checkers, maybe don't.

On one level I feel almost bad for her because she’s not the first British person with a catastrophically bad take.

On the other, the kind of inaccurate shite she’s peddling isn’t any less patronising coming from someone who’s supposedly on the side of the progressives.

And as Naoise Dolan so cuttingly put it:
https://twitter.com/naoisedolan/status/10016084485539676

It would be nice if British media didn’t feel the need to explain stuff through the voices of people not familiar with the country. Someone else in the thread pointed out that even emigrants had to tread lightly which I thought was interesting and accurate - I can comment on the culture but I don’t live there anymore and the country feels different every time I go back!

I feel it is slightly rich to expect Ireland to be this familiar with the Work of someone who was not herself familiar with the difference between Taoiseach and Dáil. https://t.co/kYU3Vxay6W

— thot experiment (@NaoiseDolan) May 29, 2018

What is her Irish background anyway?

big father ted fan iirc

'Laurie Penny becoming the story' is something that's only happened because dozens of people have a weird obsession with her

FWIW this happens to most female journalists especially young, left-wing feminist writers. LP's just especially blunder-prone, even though her heart's in the right place. To be fair this irritates me a lot less now that she's no longer the automatic go-to voice for lazy commissioning editors.

LP's writing is 1/3 "yeah, this is my view, good article" 1/3 "this is my view but I'm uncomfortable with you in my corner because this isn't the best take on it" and 1/3 "oh god no wtf" for me

condolences to the people of ireland on this one falling in that latter 2/3rds I guess

I did enjoy this post, clearly written by someone seething in about five minutes, that addresses how bad general British coverage of Ireland is.

https://www.joe.ie/amp/politics/10-rules-british-journalists-covering-irish-627662

Doing a good job conflating British with English there though that's what we expect from the Irish.

It does never cease to amaze me how little English people know about Ireland. Its right there! I always get asked if I'm from "southern Ireland." I had never heard this expression before I lived here! At first I was confused. I'm from the west! I know this seems petty, but in the aftermath of the EU referendum I went around lecturing people about the effect on the good friday agreement, until I realised that I was telling most people about the existence of the good friday agreement.

"and which part had the war?"

xxxp MLC actually mentioned commissioning editors in her list of things that Patreon deprives us of, but that's a good thing, I reckon. For perspective, I'm sure that we can all agree that anything that happened with Laurie is nothing compared with the fact that John Waters, the Raffles of oxygen, has been getting regular work all the way through this.

https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2018/05/ireland-an-obituary

the Raffles of oxygen

vg

most english ppl don't know much abt england either

there's a really distinctive lack of curiosity its true. I also recently explained to somebody (from brighton) where east anglia is.

https://proxy.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fi.dailymail.co.uk%2Fi%2Fpix%2F2009%2F03%2F03%2Farticle-1154159-067F4A5C0000044D-724_233x356.jpg&f=1

people whose mind is blown by the existence of "Dún Laoghaire" and think it's some sort of niche reference that only Ireland experts will get

passed and off to himself for signing

I saw this and haven’t really followed, are they still planning to charge €300 for the procedure?

Twitter moments categorised Savita’s death as “Indian woman who died in Ireland” and it made my eye twitch, so here are my favourite pictures of the Savita mural back in May:

The scene at Savita’s mural in Dublin’s Portobello as polls closed in Ireland’s abortion referendum pic.twitter.com/VAbVPSpCgi

— Rita O'Reilly (@RitaOReilly) May 25, 2018

The Savita mural in Dublin right now @rtenews pic.twitter.com/cbE2z9nnHl

— Samantha Libreri (@SamanthaLibreri) May 26, 2018

Flowers and messages left at a mural for Savita Halappanavar, who died in 2012 after she was refused an abortion pic.twitter.com/eXGqN7vOoq

— Eleanor Barlow (@EleanorBarlow) May 26, 2018

Flowers and tributes were left at the Dublin mural of Savita Halappanavar, who died in 2012 in an Irish hospital after she was denied an abortion while suffering the complications of a septic miscarriage. “I’m so sorry. My vote was for you,” one note reads. #8thRef pic.twitter.com/b5DRnfZFs9

— Sinéad Baker (@sineadbaker1) May 26, 2018

</3

idk gyac about the charges but id imagine not, possibly that was a reporting of some of the amendments that the religious td/senator crowd were tryinf to have implemented while it went through oireachtas

stress im not sure on that tho

I guess we can crowd fund a um, fund for people who need abortions?