Does the abortion debate reveal what some people really think about women?

matrim wrote: »

I hate this argument.

The core of all abortions arguments is when do you think human life begins. After that point it's not just the life of the mother to consider. Yes, if medically necessary for the health of the mother there should be a choice, and personally I'd be in favour of any abortion up to about 12 - 16 weeks. But after whatever point people decide life begins there are 2 people to consider

Should a 7 months pregnant woman be allowed to say "I'm sick of being pregnant, cut the baby out of me" even thought there is no medical reason to do it? At 7 months the baby will likely live but being born so early will likely damage it's health.

The law is full of cases where one persons right to do something is withdrawn because doing that thing will damage other peoples health / well-being. This is just another an extention of that. The fact that it only effects women doesn't make it anti-woman it just means that physically women are the only one's that can give birth

I never said anything about the stage of development of the foetus. Once the foetus has not developed organs, it's central nervous system etc. give me one single arguement (non-religious please) why a woman shouldn't have the right to her own body? Forcing somebody to term is a disgusting thing to do in my opinion. And it really speaks volumes of you that your assumption is the standard case is a woman who says "I'm sick of being pregnant, cut the baby out of me"

How that is anything but anti-woman is beyond me. And I said it already, I don't care if the gender of the pro-life is male or female.

I also find it hugely ironic that these type of people are campaiging as pro-life when they have no concern for the mothers life at all.

lazygal wrote: »

Do you not see how absurd it is to force women to remain pregnant and undergo labour and birth against their wishes? Or does your Christianity prevent you from having any empathy for women who want to avail of abortion?

I'm talking about what you've said. Its a simple syllogism.

1. Anyone who is not pro-choice (I.E is pro-life) is anti-women.
2. Many women are pro-life.
3. Ergo some women are anti-women (anti themselves).

That's a bit nutty.

Morag wrote: »

All the floodgates and slippery slope shíte annoys me, we already have the same abortion rate per capita as other eu countries, 12 women a day travel to the UK for abortion.

Ok those figures are actually wrong or at least utterly unprovable. There was 4,600 Irish abortions in the UK, add another 2000 to be on the safe side and take into account some travel to other countries.

6600/4,487,000(irish pop)= 0.14709 % for Ireland

for the uk figure

195,296 (total abortions) -6,862 (foreign abortions) = 188434

188434/62,641,000(uk pop) = 0.3008%

So the UK rate is around double the Irish rate actually and as the UK rate is broadly in line with the rest of the EU

http://fullfact.org/factchecks/uk_abortion_rates_compared-28456

I fail to see how you came to the conclusion using the figures and sources you quoted (unless its too fit an agenda but we all know that would never happen )

(nobody is ever thanks the person that actually checks the figures though :mad: )

In terms of the figure of 150,000 could you show me the source for that one too, looking at table 1 in the attached pdf, there's a total of 814,112 non national abortions since 1968, dividing by the current percentage of irish woman at 67% and we come out with a vastly higher number than 150,000 but as there's no breakdown of the country of origin its a bit useless.
Similarly tables 12 A, B and C don't have any useful information for creating a historic figure. I'm actually curious where the 150,000 figure comes from?

Peregrinus wrote: »

And (more substantial point coming up) I don’t think it’s “innate”. It’s influenced by what’s happened in the UK, where legislation allows abortion up to 24 weeks where two doctors certify that continuing the pregnancy is more dangerous to the life or health the woman than terminating it, and this translates in practice into abortion for anyone who wants it within that time limit. The UK has a staggeringly high abortion rate, and if those abortions were really motivated by concerns for women’s health, that would point to the UK - the home of the NHS - having standards of maternal health that would disgrace a third-world country. It would be a major scandal, and a national disgrace.

But nobody’s bothered because they all know that, despite what the legislation suggests, abortion is available on demand, and relatively few abortions are in fact motivated by concerns about maternal health. What looks from the legislation like a medical-needs-based abortion regime is in fact an abortion-on-demand regime, and everyone knows this.
.

This is actually something that influences my thinking on this subject, as the 1967 act would actually be pretty restrictive if applied properly, I'd say if some one had claimed on here 2/3 years ago that sex selective abortions were being approved and Doctors were lying on their forms to allow it in the UK they would have been laughed out of it or accused of being a youth defense fantasist (A british newspaper did a sting on some Doctors showing exacly this) after that I have my doubts about how valid the ascertations that the later term abortions only occur in cases of fetal abnormality (refering to 18-24 weeks).

On the actual question, nobody is ever going to convince the OP that they aren;t Sexist if they aren;t "fully" pro-choice but its a bit of fallacy.
To use a possible male equivalent, just because I consider that in most cases men should have to make mandatory child support payments doesn;t mean I'm a self hating man because I remove part of their financial independence (child support payments can have a massive affect on a mans life including a possible risk to life and health from depression and working more dangerous highly paying jobs, or even the simple well proven link between life expectancy and income class).

The abortion issue isn't about woman as such its about differening view points on rights/and or biology/philosphy (the question of life) and I genuinely think in modern Ireland most people would feel the same if it affected men as directly as it affects woman (and the issue what ever your view point on it definitly does affect men).

If it really was a question of wanting to dominate a womans reproductive rights we would be back in the bad old days of highly restricted access to contraception..

On a purely practical level medical professionals do tend to be bossy and a bit arrogant no matter your gender of problem IMO but as long as they do the job well it shouldn;t be a problem (and Ireland is still pretty decent for maternity care according to the stats)

Morag wrote: »

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dW0N0w3Pllc

I got the figures from here after a bit of poking around (the hot topic link below the video is actually gone)

http://www.ifpa.ie/Hot-Topics/Abortion/Statistics

I wasn't disagreeing with the 150,000 figure I was just unsure how they arrived at it from that report (but I now see it refers to a more limited time period than 1968 to present)

It doesn;t change the fact though that your statement that Ireland actually has an abortion rate similar to the UK/EU is massively incorrect.

seenitall wrote: »

Well, I genuinely think that that is most certainly not the case. Furthermore, I genuinely think that were men the sex who had to carry pregnancies, there is no way in all smouldering, sulphurous hell that abortion would ever be illegal, anywhere. I base that opinion on what I have learned on the practices of the traditionally patriarchal societies (such as most of Europe in the past) and structures (such as the Catholic Church) throughout history.

As for not being back in the bad old days of restricted contraception, those values are still very much in the teaching of the church, which in its turn permeats the minds of many pro-life people (please note that I acknowledge many, not all). These two issues are definitely connected on a wider scale.

To my mind, freely available contraception was a step in the right direction for people's reproductive rights. The abortion rights are the next steps, however they are much slower to come about as the lack thereof does not (and cannot) affect the power structure directly.

Yeah its a bit unprovable I didn;t mean that as a statement of fact at all. I would say though that the gender related argument makes some vast assumptions that abortion is "good" for woman and "bad" for men.

Interesting that you mention patriarchal society, as the Roman Empire the society that actually gave us the word Patriarch (and there's no denying it was highly male oriented!) actually didn;t have a big issue with abortion and practiced it.

RDM_83 again wrote: »

The abortion issue isn't about woman as such its about differening view points on rights/and or biology/philosphy (the question of life) and I genuinely think in modern Ireland most people would feel the same if it affected men as directly as it affects woman (and the issue what ever your view point on it definitly does affect men).

If it really was a question of wanting to dominate a womans reproductive rights we would be back in the bad old days of highly restricted access to contraception..

Was about to reply more fully than this but I agree basically with what seenitall replied to.

I'd just like to add that, while we (and only recently I might add) have made the right step in allowing access to contraception, women still do not have full reproductive rights even ignoring the abortion debate. You will be hard pushed to find a doctor who will perform a hysterectomy unless your of a certain age and have already had children.

jaffacakesyum wrote: »

Was about to reply more fully than this but I agree basically with what seenitall replied to.

I'd just like to add that, while we (and only recently I might add) have made the right step in allowing access to contraception, women still do not have full reproductive rights even ignoring the abortion debate. You will be hard pushed to find a doctor who will perform a hysterectomy unless your of a certain age and have already had children.

Yes but I'm fairly sure as younger man without children you'd have a similarly difficult time getting a vasectomy and thats a much easier reversed procedure, so again I wouldn;t consider it as a gender issue.

jaffacakesyum wrote: »

You will be hard pushed to find a doctor who will perform a hysterectomy unless your of a certain age and have already had children.

Replace the word hysterectomy with tubal litigation and the above sentence is also true. Although in fairness a man cannot get an elective vasectomy in Ireland under a certain age and childless also. I would argue in both cases that it is more to do with the medical profession having had experience of people changing their mind after such a thing rather than it being about the control of female fertility.

It's interesting to hear that Enda Kenny has been branded "worse than Herod" for his move on legislating for abortion in limited instances. Seriously, this abortion debacle is really bringing the backward people out of the woodwork in droves.

For the record, I sent Enda Kenny an email congratulating him on the move.