Do you think a referendum on abortion would be passed?(not how you'd vote)

seamus wrote: »

The thing in the Miss Y case is not so much how horrible it is to consider that she had been "force fed" and incarcerated before being "forced" to give birth.

In practically all places with widely available abortion there is an upper gestational limit for a legal abortion. A woman presenting as suicidal and looking for an abortion after this point will be treated differently, but certainly a woman at 24 weeks will not automatically be given an abortion. And most jurisdictions would likely have an ethical debate around it, which would end up in the forced caesarian of the child.

That's not really the issue in the Miss Y case though. People presenting as suicidal over an unwanted pregnancy don't appear out of the ether at 24 weeks. If abortion had been available, she could have availed of it at 7 weeks when she discovered she was pregnant. And the whole case wouldn't have happened. Instead a catalogue of misunderstandings and nervous professionals meant it was 17 weeks before she could obtain proper help and have a decision made. And caused a woman to be detained and forced to give birth, in the 21st century.

Very true.

Although for that part I've bolded, I'd guess that the so-called "pro-life" stance in Ireland has in fact resulted in an unnecessarily poor outcome for the child as well, which wouldn't have happened had there actually been an ethical discussion about that particular case (as opposed to the pro-life determination to have a very generalized "ethical" debate about how bad abortion is and how we're all agin it.)

The problem is that the law here doesn't allow the unborn any right other than "life", with no consideration of outcomes.

Surely any functioning law should look at all the factors, not just "mother suicidal vs baby possibly viable" - so if for whatever reason a forced birth was still the decision arrived at, then a forced birth at 24 weeks followed by resuscitation and probable disability is still the wrong decision.

Either she should have had an abortion, preferably much earlier, or she'd left it too late and needed to wait until at least 30 weeks.

It's been pointed out that the HSE's priority seems to have been to prevent her having any input into the decision (logical I suppose given the legal approach here) and that as an asylum seeker she would quite likely by that stage have been willing to wait a few weeks longer had anyone given her good reason to (help with her asylum claim, in particular).

Instead the HSE were determined to enforce their decision, or lack of it, on her because the law puts them in a position of authority over pregnant women.

I'm dubious about whether the amendment could pass. I'd like to think it would and certainly the vibe I get from everyone under 50 is a yes, but so often these things can be won in the scaremongering arguments. The people for whom it's not a big issue but manage to have their opinion swayed by emotive arguments or even plain nonsensical ones, "DeValera would be spinning in his grave".

Yes that is the risk. I'm just hoping they've maxed out their credibility in the fearmongering stakes after the MarRef fiasco (fiasco for the antis, obviously).

Interestingly, in the PP case, the judges did discuss the outcome for the child and as part of the decision did take into account no only the life of the unborn, but also what was in its best interest (in this case not to be supported) which is a step in the right direction, albeit only an opinion. But opinions are how case law is made, so a positive step.

ProfessorPlum wrote: »

Interestingly, in the PP case, the judges did discuss the outcome for the child and as part of the decision did take into account no only the life of the unborn, but also what was in its best interest (in this case not to be supported) which is a step in the right direction, albeit only an opinion. But opinions are how case law is made, so a positive step.

I'm posting from memory only, but I thought the issue wasn't the child's future health etc, but the fact that the child could not possibly reach viability at all, given the state of the mother's body?

If so, then a very, very baby step at best I fear, because still a binary life/no life judgment. Much as I'd like your take on the judgment to be correct.

One eyed Jack wrote: »

What I'm saying is that if it could be argued that a woman attempts to induce a miscarriage (the "throwing herself down the stairs" presents very limited circumstances), by whatever means could be deemed to be an indication of ill mental health (providing an assessment was carried out and so on, and in the Miss Y case, I'm nearly sure she was assessed as experiencing depression following her ordeal, but not actively suicidal), and in those circumstances, I'm saying that she would fall under the provisions of the mental health act if it could be shown that there was a risk either to her own life, or the life of the unborn. While she wouldn't be arrested for attempting to end her own life, I wonder did LittleCuchullain mean that a woman could be arrested and involuntarily incarcerated in a psychiatric facility for attempting to end the life of the unborn.

Quite rational and quite understandable in certain circumstances to you and I and to other people perhaps, but realistically her mental state would be assessed by a panel, likely the same panel that the opinion of two mental health experts were ignored and over-ruled by the consultant who performed a termination by c-section in the Miss Y case.

As far as I can see this post (and your general take on the mental health issue here) seems to be entirely speculative. That's not meant as a criticism, I'm just wondering why you think all those things, because many of them go against everything I know about mental health (which is not a great deal) and consent issues (where I'm on rather more solid ground, having done research into human biology at post grad level - but still not an expert).

ProfessorPlum wrote: »

The 'panel' only comes into play if the woman is suicidal, not if she just wants to end her pregnancy. The two usually have no bearing on each other. I think you're conflating the issue.

I think there's so much that is downright contradictory in what has been leaked about the HSE's actions in that case that it would be foolhardy to speculate on who did what and when.

For example they claim not to have known that she was suicidal, but they got a letter from a doctor asking that she not be given metal cutlery and not left alone - and how did she get to Liverpool, with €1 in her pocket? Did HSE staff take her?

The preliminary report is just not plausible. So who knows what decisions were taken about her, or who was involved in them.

One eyed Jack wrote: »

Well I'm just wondering about the scope of the mental health act and speculating about a hypothetical scenario where if a woman tried to induce a miscarriage, then if she was assessed by a panel of mental health experts, as in their opinion, experiencing mental health issues which led to her attempting to induce a miscarriage, they could argue that she be involuntarily incarcerated to protect the right to life of the unborn.

I don't know the legal answer to that, but it strikes me that it seems more likely in countries where abortion is available than in Ireland where public revulsion at the treatment of the girl in the X case led to suicide ideation becoming one of the exemptions to the ban on abortion. So now we have two entirely contradictory approaches to the problem of suicidal women, because of the 8th amendment.

One eyed Jack wrote: »

I'm also wondering, since you mention consent issues (just looking for your opinion really as I'm not too well up on it myself), about the whole issue of legal consent with regard to people with cognitive disabilities and the wording of the upcoming assisted decision making bill which appears to suggest that if a person is found to lack mental capacity, they can be denied legal capacity to make decisions that they believe are in their best interests, which contravenes the UN convention on the rights of persons with disabilities. For example like the case of the woman in the UK who chose to forego medication because she believed it was harmful to the unborn, she was forcefully incarcerated against her will, forced back on her meds, forced to have a c-section, and the child that was born taken from her.

So, first off, my experience is more about eliminating from possible studies anyone who is not able to give free and informed consent, and what the requirements for such consent are (so giving someone the choice between forcefeeding them and performing surgery on them would probably not fulfill those requirements, despite what the HSE draft report said).

How to treat people who can't give consent but who require treatment anyway is rather more complex I imagine. But we no longer presume that mental health illness automatically implies incapacity, so being depressed would not necessarily remove her right to consent. She would probably have to show signs of hallucinations or other indications that her grasp of reality was altered. That would be the case of someone having a psychotic episode due to coming off their meds.

But then of course here we also have the 8th which removes or at least reduces the woman's rights to consent when pregnant. No need for her to have any cognitive impairment, it's just the law. But it's a law whose practical application may not go down well before the ECHR, if/when these cases end up there. As we saw with the A, B and C cases a couple of years back. (Even the cases that lost did so on technicalities.)

One eyed Jack wrote: »

The way I had always interpreted that was that it meant as far as it was practicable to protect the equal right to life of the unborn, and I would think that rather than the law being loosened to protect the equal right to life of the woman, it could be broadened to push the boundaries of medicine which could lead to more ghoulish scenarios like we saw in the PP case where the unborn was kept alive incubated in a corpse until it could develop to a point where it could be delivered safely.

EDIT: I know in the end it the outcome was that the unborn wasn't delivered, but the intent was there is what I mean.

I guess the point I was making was that these clauses will always be interpreted according to the prevailing view of the judges, which may not be unrelated to society's opinion, even if it tends to be half a generation behind!

So if public opinion was becoming more conservative than in the 80s, then the ruling in the PP case could well have been that the hospital couldn't switch off the life support until the fetus had already died. If OTOH the judges had been rather more progressive than they were, the rights of the woman and her family to respect in death might have played a more important role in the judgment than they did (those rights were mentioned but not really given any weight, iirc.)

Selene Dry Apartment wrote: »

I'd imagine the vast majority don't have a clue about our laws nor is it something they even think about. "oh I cant move to Ireland as I cant have an abortion :rolleyes:"

Ireland is probably one of the best places in the world to have a child we have very good maternity services and people should be very pleased moving here knowing they will get some of the best care available in the world. If you don't want to move here because you might want to kill your unborn child then frankly you are not the type of person we want here in the first place.

Who's we paleface?

Selene Dry Apartment wrote: »

I'd imagine the vast majority don't have a clue about our laws nor is it something they even think about. "oh I cant move to Ireland as I cant have an abortion :rolleyes:"

You think people relocate around the world with families etc without checking out the country their company is sending them to? That's not my experience. We're not talking asylum seekers here, these are people who make a reasoned decision.

The risk is that they'll hear Ireland and, rightly or wrongly, think "OMG isn't that the place where the Indian dentist was left to die in agony after a miscarriage even though she'd asked for a surgical termination? I can't take my wife there!"

Ireland is probably one of the best places in the world to have a child we have very good maternity services and people should be very pleased moving here knowing they will get some of the best care available in the world. If you don't want to move here because you might want to kill your unborn child then frankly you are not the type of person we want here in the first place.

So what did happen to Savita then?

My other half works in a sector that relies heavily on recruiting from outside Ireland. Abortion services and poor maternity care here are regularly cited by possible recruits as why they won't come here, alongside the denominational and discriminational education system. Maternity services here aren't world class by any measure despite those who think they are.

Selene Dry Apartment wrote: »

EU (other than Ireland) and non-eu people make up a large number of the people where I work. A lot, particularly in more experienced positions are moving here with family and having kids here. Doesn't appear to be any issue with recruiting here from abroad and I've heard some comment on how great a place Ireland is to have a child and raise a child.

With all due respect, and I don't mean this in a bad way, I've very rarely seen your experiences matching those of the majority of posters in a thread. Maybe it's because of the part of the country where you live, but from weddings and marriage to relocation, your experience is nearly always very different to mine, and apparently also different to the experiences of many posters in the relevant threads.

I'm actually one of the people who would be discouraged from moving back to Ireland due to the standard of maternity services. I would personally feel nervous about starting a family there as it is at the moment, but my other half (who is Irish) feels more strongly than me about it. Some of my close family and friends are expecting, and to be quite honest their stories aren't a great recommendation for maternity services in Dublin.

anothernight wrote: »

I'm actually one of the people who would be discouraged from moving back to Ireland due to the standard of maternity services. I would personally feel nervous about starting a family there as it is at the moment, but my other half (who is Irish) feels more strongly than me about it. Some of my close family and friends are expecting, and to be quite honest their stories aren't a great recommendation for maternity services in Dublin.

Me too, it's a huge deal for me, and many other Irish people considering the pros and cons of moving back. Where I am, I have excellent health insurance and bodily autonomy. Despite the worse maternity leave and the obvious lack of family support should I need it, I'd still rather start a family here than Ireland.