The 8th amendment referendum - part 4

Stonedpilot wrote: »

OK here's a new point.

What about women who regret the abortion and think it was a terrible decision?.

They might perhaps be on the fence as such with the pregnancy decision, are they are heavily pressurized by abortion clinics to terminate.

There are two separate issues to address here:

Firstly the regret aspect. Should every elective medical procedure be illegal because a person might regret it? Should sterilisation be illegal in case somebody might regret not having kids? Should breast implants be illegal in case someone regrets getting them? Hell, should tattoos be illegal because someone might regret having on?

It's not for the state to police what constitutes a good personal choice vs an unfortunately regretted one.

Regarding harassment, I am in full agreement with you that this sounds horrendous and is entirely unacceptable. However, I would draw your attention to another issue which is a big current news story, that you might already be aware of - the GDPR, or General Data Protection Regulation, is a new EU law which is the reason you may have been receiving large numbers of emails with subjects such as "if you want to remain subscribed to our newsletter, click here to opt in" or "we have updated our privacy policy, click here to read about the changes". The EU have just passed an extremely strict and revolutionary data protection law which basically means that if you want a company to delete any personal information it holds regarding you, it is now required by law to do so and faces very serious financial penalties if it refuses. So for abortion providers who harass people that no longer want any contact, they are now obliged to delete a person's phone number or email address upon request, or face fines reaching into the hundreds of thousands of euro if they refuse.

The kind of spam you allude to has therefore, thankfully, been very effectively and conclusively outlawed.

Just her wrote: »

I was expecting a reply like that from someone.

Readers are intelligent enough to know that what I am saying is true. They won't need scientific proof. It's common sense.

I expected that from someone who can't back up their lies.

Cabaal wrote: »

People can also regret getting married, getting married can have long term legal and financial implications and a divorce doesn't always mean you don't have to deal with your ex for the rest of your life.

If regret is the bar that we used to make stuff illegal then I guess we need to make marriage illegal.

and eating donuts.

hatrickpatrick wrote: »

Let me add to this: everyone makes the argument (let's say, regarding DS) that if a particular foetus was aborted, then a currently living human being wouldn't be here.

A different problem with this argument is that in today's world of contraception and fertility treatment, family sizes are, by and large, chosen. So if a couple looks at the test results and aborts a pregnancy because of some issue or other, they are probably going to try again.

So instead of one child with Downs syndrome or cerebral palsy or total blindness, they have one healthy child. The healthy child would not exist without that abortion. The world is not one person short because a currently living human has been killed, the person with the health issues has been swapped for one without.

How is that bad?

Trasna1 wrote: »

There was an interesting thread here a few months ago about whether or not people regretted having their children. If I recall correctly almost no one did.

Cool. “Almost” sounds like it would correlative to the fact that most pregnancies don’t end well n abortions. That doesn’t mean the option should be off the table. Besides, preference to having an abortion doesn’t always factor: if you start miscarrying, that’s usually it for the fetus, they have no chance at viability before 24 weeks, but doctors in Ireland need to wait for the heartbeat to stop do intervene. This means a woman could be miscarrying for days. Seems pretty barbaric.

greenpilot wrote: »

Have you read my post? I'm encouraging everyone to make an effort to vote and not to be complacent.

Well, great, but you are also giving out yards about the Yes campaign volunteers, and how it will be their fault if they lose.

There is no "they". "They" are just us up off our arses.

BarleySweets wrote: »

What she stated was “I’m voting no because less lives will be lost”.

Which didn’t warrant the asymmetrically pointed and snarky response it got, in my humble opinion.

hatrickpatrick wrote: »

I'm not really sure to be honest. When someone (for instance Peader Tobin last night on Prime Time) brings up the whole "there are two individual humans involved" argument, nobody from the yes side ever counters with "many people do not believe an early term embryo to count as an individual human", instead the issue is generally avoided altogether. I presume this is to avoid getting into a pointless philosophical debate (to which there is no possibility of finding a definite answer) and instead focus on the more quantifiable issues. But in my view it's a missed opportunity.

Catching up on the thread but I think it’s probably because there is a spectrum of yes voters and taking that stance might turn off those voters that do believe it be a person but on balance think the rights of the mother (be they FFA only or all) outweigh those of the foetus in those early stages of pregnancy-an oversimplification on my part but don’t have much time here!

amcalester wrote: »

Well what we have now is the exact opposite, people pressuring women to keep their babies under the guise of "we'll support you" and then nothing once the child is born.

Neither is ideal.

Not "nothing".
They get "thoughts and prayers"

Malaya Red Sandlot wrote: »

There's no perfect answer here. Whatever happens on Friday we will have an imperfect solution. But I'm voting for what I consider to be the least imperfect, and that is a NO vote because in my opinion that is the one that will result in the lesser number of lives being lost.

I hope you never have to look in the eye of someone whose life hangs in the balance as a result of this decision.

Just her wrote: »

I'd just like to add to that, a lot of pressure comes in from partners and parents to give birth as well. The reality isn't women making this decision all alone, there are often parties around them who instead of showing support for them to go ahead with their terminations and they will help them, will be pressurising them into birth

The flip side of your arguement