Irish Abortion Laws

I have never understood why the rights of an unborn foetus trump the rights of a living human being, personally...

Pro lifers talk about giving birth as if it is like having a toenail removed. It is not! It's all very well if you none of your daughters lives was hanging in the balance when giving birth, if like us, you had very nearly lost a daughter during childbirth we would never, ever, require a woman to give birth against her will.

You don't sound as if you are pro life at all, you sound as if you are just pro life in the case of unborn children.

Some of you sound as if you want to punish women for having sex.

I don't understand what you're saying, Annie.

Thank you Sue.

perhaps, troubled children in need of adoption are the result of unwanted pregnancies ?

How long has abortion been legal in England, Wales and
Scotland ? Since 1967.

Sorry, I didn't think - it's termination of pregnancy, Annie.

SueDonim, sorry no idea what a TOP is. Perhaps children are abused because they are the result of unwanted pregnancies ? Perhaps not

The demand for adoption of infants has also fallen off a cliff due to the availabilty amd now NHS funding of IVF and other assisted conception techniques.

That is not an argument against NHS funding btw, just a statement of reality.

It is now easier and quicker even with (successful) IVF to have a birth child than be approved for infant adoption.

Adopters as a result have become (again, in no way a criticism) choosier about what children they will accept. Children at risk from foetal alcohol syndrome, children of mixed or non white heritage, children exposed to drug use during pregnancy, these are all infants who already struggle to find any adoptive placement.

People are rightly encouraged to be honest and say if they would find it difficult to accept an adoption child rather than their “own” child and are screened out as a result. Again, not a criticism. I know a number of couples with fertility difficulties who absolutely ruled out adoption on this basis.

This is not the 1960s. There are not desperate willing adopters for thousands of unwanted babies with poor prenatal circumstances.

Birth mothers have no legal recourse if the adoptive parents unilaterally decide to close the adoption and terminate all contact.

How do you know many TOP's take place because they are inconvenient, Annie? Have you carried out a poll to determine that?

You also contradict yourself. You say women have abortions because their pregnancy is inconvenient, then you state that many children available for adoption have had difficult and troubled lives. Perhaps that's a result of the mothers carrying on with an unwanted pregnancy.

The law in NI is one if the most restrictive in Europe. It’s draconian and can never be described as giving women choice - Lady Hale’s judgement says it all.

Birth mothers are not always allowed to maintain contact with their adopted children’s lives - it all depends on the circumstances. It’s estimated that between 3-9% of adoptions fail with more families needing professional help but a shortage of resources to fund the help needed. As you say ab many children up for adoption have very troubled pasts. Part of that results from the lack of resources in SS who can do less and less preventative/ supportive work and are doing more emergency crisis work when it’s nearly always too late.

Abortions are allowed in Northern Ireland

To preserve the life of the woman.

Adverse effect on the woman’s mental or physical health

The law regarding the morning after pill is wrong, this would save many healthy babies from being aborted.

The majority of children for adoption are deeply troubled children, many adoptions fail and the damaged child taken back into care. These children can be violent, abusive because they are so damaged. There are very, very few babies for adoption. If a small child is in need of a loving home the adoptive parents have to accept the birth mother will have a say in the child’s upbringing. It is not how it was fifty years ago. And Paddyann, I do not have a ‘my world’

So Annie in your world every 17 year old who gets pregnant MUST carry that child,disrupt her life and education and live on the state ..oh wait 17 year olds dont get benefits .Now how does that work.Families already under financial strain should be forced to look after it.You can bet your life most 17 year old boys wont step up and take responsibility .
I think on the other thread I told of the girl I know whose BF said he would kick it out of her ..a real charmer.
Of course YOU think theres always adoption ..only there isn't.There are hundreds of thousands of children in care already with no hope of a family ..so why add to that awful statistic with the extra issue of thousands of women reluctantly carrying babies they dont want/cant afford.
Safe terminations at an early stage of pregnancy is the only answer.Late abortions aren't a common occurence in this country and only given in very extreme circumstances

I think ab the cases of rape, ffa are brought up because in Ireland ( until now) and NI even these cases aren’t allowed and that demonstrates the utter inhumanity of societies that treat women as incubators irrespective of the circumstsnces of the pregnancy. Using the word ‘ inconvenient’ is also very ‘loaded’. Why should women continue with a pregnancy they don’t want, whatever the reason and who has the right to decide what the ‘right’ reason is?

Because the pregnancy is inconvenient , the reason for the majority of abortions, so why not say so.

ab not ‘inconvenient pregnancies’ but pregnancies that women chose not to continue with. Their bodies, their choice.

Thank you Alexa.

Someone very close to me had two small children, 3 and 18 months and was newly pregnant with a much wanted third child when she was diagnosed with aggressive breast cancer.

She chose an abortion and treatment and is , thankfully, still here to mother her little sons as they grow up.

In Ireland she would have been refused an abortion and probably any treatment that would have killed the foetus. Delaying treatment for 7 months would have fatal.

I think she made the right decision. But you would have that decision taken away from her Serkeen, two or maybe three children left without a mother, a husband who lost the wife he loved, parents who lost their daughter.

As Alexa says sometimes it’s about choosing the less bad option.

I’d be interested in your viewpoint on this.

The argument in favour of abortion on demand has used rape, incest, damaged foetus’s, .

Nearly 4,000 women in Ireland had abortions in England in 2016, seems there is a lot of rape , incest and babies with no chance of survival in Ireland.

It’s wrong to use the death of one woman or the rape of one 12 year old , why not just say ‘inconvenient pregnancies which is the reason for most abortions,
.

MawBroon.

Nobody 'approves of' or likes elective abortion.

We all know that in our lives we have to choose and on many occasions there is only a less bad option whatever we choose.

Serkeen
*I truly believe that in the UK people have a higher regards for animals over children
if this were an animal that were to loose its life how do you think the UK would react?*

I think you I’ll find millions of animals are killed horribly on a daily basis in abattoirs all over this country. You find them on plastic trays in the supermarket. You may have eaten a body part of one for dinner. I think many in the U.K. don’t care about animals loosing their lives unfortunately as long as they can eat them . Not sure what that’s got to do with this debate.

The jubilation was for many things. Savita Halappanavar will never be forgotten and the many women before her. Women with ffa rape victims and those with crisis pregnancies will now be treated in their own country.
Ireland was the first country in the world to legalize gay marriage so the law needed to be changed to bring Ireland into the 21st century. The experience of taking the boat will never be forgotten. The yes vote campaigned from 1983 for this vote. We also must not forget the Magdelen women and the tuam babies case. Ireland had to give women a choice and the women of Ireland gave there decision.

I think there was also great relief that women would not be left to die anymore because a non-viable fetus was deemed more important than the life of the woman.

I think the unnecessary death from sepsis of the young doctor Savita Halappanavar was an important case in Ireland. Savita was refused a termination because the miscarrying fetus still had a heartbeat and the effect of the delay was a terrible infection and death from septic chock.

Halappanavar was admitted to University hospital in Galway on 21 October 2012, when she was 17 weeks pregnant with her first child. Medical staff concluded that a miscarriage was inevitable but did not intervene – despite requests from Halappanavar and her husband for an abortion – as a foetal heartbeat could be detected.

A few days later, medics diagnosed infection as a result of ruptured membranes and, later septic shock. Halappanavar died on 28 October. In media interviews in the following weeks, Praveen Halappanavar said he and his wife had repeatedly asked for the pregnancy to be terminated after her admission to hospital, but they had been told: “This is a Catholic country”.
www.theguardian.com/world/2018/may/26/savita-halappanavar-father-thanks-irish-voters-for-historic-abortion-vote

We can discuss this all we like but the law will be changed and that is how it should be in the 21st century.

I suspect relief was behind most of the cheering, relief that there was a chance of legally avoiding the great unhappiness and turbulence of continuing with pregnancy and the raising of a child in one of the circumstances I listed. Plus a degree of jubilation at the success of their campaigning.