The 8th amendment(Mod warning in op)

tigger123 wrote: »

The Irish Times political podcast discusses the result of the Citizen's Assembly this week, some great analysis in there.

Have you a link for this?

Thanks

Outlaw Pete wrote: »

If you were in Holles St tomorrow (for whatever reason) and while sitting there shooting the breeze with some other lovely folk, spied a man walking over to an incubator, picking up a baby from within it (that had just recently been prematurely born at 23 weeks gestation) unhook it from it's tubes, hold it to his chest and then slit its throat throwing its remains on the floor.... you wouldn't think you had just seen a person murdered??

Come on now, of course you would and you'd be dialing 999 in a heartbeat. So why, pray tell, should a baby being aborted at that same gestational stage, be considered a non-person? It's location? Is that what makes the difference between them being considered a person or a mere 'blob of biological matter' which the killing of can be considered being aptly referred to as a "medical procedure"? Even when both the mother and the child were of good health?

Nah. Both are the killing of a human being.

Wow what an amazing unhinged rant of a post. Ending a pregnancy is not infanticide.

Outlaw Pete wrote: »

slit its throat throwing its remains on the floor.... you wouldn't think you had just seen a person murdered??

You are making 2 errors here, not even 1.

Firstly you are conflating legal distinctions with moral ones. MORALLY terminating the life of a fetus in the womb at X-weeks or killing it after premature birth at X-weeks are pretty much equivalent. But not in law, as several other users have already pointed out to you like "......." and "January".

Secondly you are also ignoring the difference between a mother choosing to terminate THEIR OWN fetus by THEIR OWN choice........ and some external agent coming in and killing it against her will (be it inside her or not at the time) which very much should be legally and morally abhorrent.

So you are not EVEN comparing apples and oranges here with your little analogy they are that different. I am with the others, you are just resorting to hysterics in your posts on this topic at this stage.

But AGAIN I would add to this that EVERY TIME you keep going to 23 and 24 weeks in order to force emotional weight on your otherwise intellectually bankrupt arguments on this issue. The VAST, near TOTALITY of choice based abortions occur in or before week 12 and certainly by week 16. Yet you never couch your arguments in that reality, going to the almost statistical non-entity of nearly 2 months later in the process.

keano_afc wrote: »

I'm a citizen of Ireland. I can only influence what happens in my country.

keano_afc wrote: »

I believe drug use to be wrong. Should I be standing in Dublin airport preventing people boarding flights to Amsterdam?

I admit quite a lot of ignorance of law myself so people more informed than I will have to answer this, but do we not police our citizens travelling to other countries to commit crimes quite often? Even if the crime in question is not a crime in the jurisdiction where they are performed?

For example, what is done to people who travel to countries where pedophilia is either legal, or illegal but easily done?

Was there not cases only in the last year or two in the papers (can not remember if it was the UK or Ireland to be honest) of people prosecuted at home for sex crimes against children in other jurisdictions?

Hellrazer wrote: »

The whole premature baby thing shouldn't really be brought into the argument as long as the upper limit for an abortion is set below the lowest survival age for a premmie.

The problem there of course is that "lowest age" is a quickly moving target as our medical science progresses. Only yesterday my news feed threw up a story about the successful use of an artificial womb in the treatment of premature born animals.

I genuinely wonder how far off we are from a stage when the woman's womb is not required at all, and a fetus at ANY stage of development can be successful nurtured from premature birth to external survival with relative ease.

So I would just fear that using such a moving target TODAY would result in parameters that would be out of date in 5, 10, 20 or so years.

padd b1975 wrote: »

Not entirely accurate, one of the victims of the Omagh bombing was pregnant with twins, her family requested and were granted that the unborn twins were mentioned in the list of victims at all times.

I am not seeing how this fact means that what the user said is not entirely accurate? They appear to be entirely parallel statements, neither negating anything of the other in any way. What am I missing?

keano_afc wrote: »

I believe drug use to be wrong. Should I be standing in Dublin airport preventing people boarding flights to Amsterdam?

Unlike other activities which attract criminal sanctions (e.g. purchase of illegal drugs), abortion is the only one for which there is a express constitutional right to travel. So whereas it may be possible for the State to stop someone travelling to buy drugs, it is impossible to do so in regards to having an abortion. The unborn's right to life is secondary to the pregnant woman's right to travel or access information about abortion services elsewhere.

Which begs the question; if a woman has a constitutional right to have an abortion at any time, for any reason, as long as she gets on a boat or a plane, can she not have a legislative right to have an abortion in Ireland in circumstances other than where there's a real risk to her life?

Hotblack Desiato wrote: »

A few years back it would have been unthinkable that a citizens' assembly would have come to the conclusions that this one did.

What has been unthinkable for our politicians since the 90s was to ask the question, because they knew (based on the 90s referenda) they would not like the answer.

Instead they reran the exclusion of suicide in 2002 (and lost again). They are a generation behind public opinion.

nozzferrahhtoo wrote: »

So I would just fear that using such a moving target TODAY would result in parameters that would be out of date in 5, 10, 20 or so years.

This is precisely why any limit should be in legislation, not the constitution. The govt. of the day can then revise it in line with medical advice without a 2 year rigmarole to update the Constitution every time we need to do it.

....... wrote: »

This post has been deleted.

It's a bit like the old Catholic Dad kicking his daughter out for getting pregnant - "Not under my roof!". It doesn't help anyone, in fact it makes things worse, but he gets to pretend that he is not responsible.

Likewise our abortion ban is generally ineffective, makes things worse in cases where it does anything at all, but it lets Holy Catholic Ireland say "Not on our Holy soil!", and let on to the neighbours that we don't have That Sort Of Problem Here.

Zubeneschamali wrote: »

No cut-off point. Leave to women and their doctors. Pregnant women and their doctors do not do late terminations for the craic. Keep the law out of it, it is a personal matter.

This is the legal position in Canada since 1988, and society there has not descended into cannibal gangs, most abortions are done early, and abortion rates have been declining.

I've read that late abortions in Canada are less common than in the neighbouring US states, because difficulty in getting access to early abortions is what leads to unnecessarily late abortions.

....... wrote: »

This post has been deleted.

The Constitution doesn't get into the specific of laws, it simply makes those laws applicable in the jurisdiction.

....... wrote: »

This post has been deleted.

I looked up the stats, there are about 400k births a year in Canada and about 65k abortions a year. That works out at about 1 abortion to 6 births

at least 88% of all these abortions take place before 12 weeks, probably much closer to 95% because the clinics don't report gestational age, only the hospitals do, and hospitals are more likely to deal with medically necessary abortions in later term.
http://www.statcan.gc.ca/tables-tableaux/sum-som/l01/cst01/demo04a-eng.htm
http://abortionincanada.ca/stats/annual-abortion-rates/

Akrasia wrote: »

I looked up the stats, there are about 400k births a year in Canada and about 65k abortions a year. That works out at about 1 abortion to 6 births

at least 88% of all these abortions take place before 12 weeks, probably much closer to 95% because the clinics don't report gestational age, only the hospitals do, and hospitals are more likely to deal with medically necessary abortions in later term.
http://www.statcan.gc.ca/tables-tableaux/sum-som/l01/cst01/demo04a-eng.htm
http://abortionincanada.ca/stats/annual-abortion-rates/

while even 1 abortion to 6 births is nowhere near the 1 in 4 mentioned even that 1:6 doesnt take into account miscarriages. I think we can safely dismiss the 1 in 4 stat.

ohnonotgmail wrote: »

while even 1 abortion to 6 births is nowhere near the 1 in 4 mentioned even that 1:6 doesnt take into account miscarriages. I think we can safely dismiss the 1 in 4 stat.

Also, 1 in 4 (25%) is equal to 1:3, and so 1:6 is, in the manner the poster expressed the statistic, 1 in 7 (14.25%). Further away again from the suggested stat.

The rate for Ireland is at minimum 6%, but we don't know because we can only know a certain proportion of those who travel for abortions, or whatever number of abortion pill imports are detected.

AnGaelach wrote: »

In Canada 1 in 4 pregnancies ends up aborted. I'd much rather not see that statistic replicated here.

(Ignoring for a moment that that stat is BS)

Why?

What difference does it make to you how many women do or do not have abortions?

Riskymove wrote: »

The difficulty, as ever, is how these work in pracice and what is required to be proven etc.

The health and serious foetal disability grounds have precedence in other jurisdictions so there's shouldn't be massive difficulties there.

There may be difficulties with the rape ground, especially to deciding what burden of proof is placed on it. Here's how other countries deal with it:


This is all assuming that TDs legislate in line with the CA recommendations, which they may not choose to do in all cases.