True. They are clutching at straws. Labours pro choice stance where necessary had remained unchanged for years. They also had a record turnout at the last general election rather than a drop as stated. While they will probably bomb in the next election and I won’t be supporting them, the claims made in this article are a propagated fiction which smack of desperate fundamentalism and diminish ‘The Life Institutes’ credibility to null.

The Compulsory Maternity people don’t know their James Connolly. Connolly’s view of the women and girls incarcerated for life in the Magdalene Slave Laundries was no different than the RC clergy. Connolly thought these women & girls – some the victims of rape and incest – were ‘fallen women’ and not deserving of human, political and citizens’ rights. Instead these Compulsory Maternity people should be hailing the Irish Labour Party who, in 100 years of existence, never managed to close any of those slave laundries, or any of the institutions where children were physically and sexually tortured by supporters of compulsory maternity.

“” During the 1913 Dublin Lockout one of the strikers, Mary Ellen Murphy, was sentenced to one month in custody for “assaulting one of the girls employed by Messrs Jacobs by giving her a box on the face and calling her a ‘scab’.” [43] Because she was only 15 she could not be put in Mountjoy jail with the other strikers. Instead she was committed to High Park Convent in Drumcondra, where the nuns ran an Industrial School and Magdalen [Slave] institution on the same site. In demanding Mary Ellen Murphy’s release, both Connolly and Larkin used the language of priests and bishops against the women of the Magdalen institution. Instead of railing against the use of slave labour, with its inevitable undercutting of wage rates for workers in commercial laundries, they complained that Mary Ellen would be forced to mix there with “fallen women”. Connolly said that “when that girl was sent into that institution her character was foully besmirched and a damnable outrage committed”. He answered criticisms from the employers that he was exaggerating when he said the girl was in a “home for fallen women”:

… the girls of the reformatory were in the same chapel with the fallen women and in view of them, a partition only dividing them … she was not forgotten by her friends, though the hell hounds of the capitalist system were trying to blacken her character. [44] “”

SOURCE: http://bit.ly/UsUgdl

The X Case controversy – actually a child made pregnant by rape – will give Labour a chance to parade their ‘socialist’ credentials but it should be remembered exactly where Labour came from: They bowed the knee and tugged the forelock when the Catholic Church reigned in Ireland; and they prostrate themselves at the feet of the Troika today.

It must be asked as to what the Labour Party has been doing in the 20 years since the X-Case

Eamon Gilmore makes me want to be sick. He’s no more than a confidence trickster. Why we don’t have a full on revolt taking place within the Labour Party defies common logic. Power corrupts like nothing else on this planet.

You mean like adult women dying because a foetus has been elevated to having equal rights to them by a cult of self-righteous celebate ‘fathers’ and their cling-ons?

Yeah, that has been a great success for the Labour Party so far….

James Connolly lived in the past, a piece of history. I can see the connection there.

Paddy, if you want people to take you seriously, try not to use terms like ‘pro abortion’.

@ werejammin
Well I believe it is still a free country, and I only expect 1 in 5 to take me seriously here, you’re just one of the four. I see nothing wrong with “pro abortion”, if abortion is the outcome of a well oiled liberal agenda. In old Ireland we called it, calling a spade a spade.
But take the term “pro choice”, well we know it certainly is not the babies choice, so not so appropriate. And people are very against some of the other descriptions that are very apt.
We in the pro-life movement are for the life of the mother, the baby, the father, and society; so that looks correct (I hope). But I’m sure you’ll correct me if I’m misguided.

You in the ‘pro life’ bunch want to impose your views upon everybody whether they like it or not (in other words you want to jam your fingers in your ears and sing la la la la so all societies problems will go away)
Pro Choice is ….now look past your own nose to the words he…… in favour of CHOICE …..

If you dont like abortion dont have one yourself – and keep your self righteous holy roly nose out of everybody elses business

Paddy, if it’s a free country like you say don’t you think that it’s an anomaly that there is no legislation covering the constitutional right of pregnant women, whose lives are in danger because of their pregnancy, to opt for an abortion?

Paddy can you explain to me what this “liberal agenda” you speak of actually is? It’s a term I have frequently heard used by people who oppose policies such as protecting women by legislating for abortion or providing for marriage quality.

Would you care to inform us what this often cited agenda entails?

@ Dave Harris
As a member of the implied “bunch”, I’m listening, actually I’m only upholding the law of the land, including the constitution, so I would not be so certain as to who is not listening to we the people. As I said it is certainly not the choice of the baby, have a look at “the silent scream” and convince me that baby was trying to embrace the tools of its destruction! If you wish to construct the laws of the country on the basis of a free for all, (if you don’t want an abortion don’t have one), just a little too much anarchy for me.
@ John Everyman
The liberal agenda, supports the liberation of our laws in areas such as abortion, the redefinition of marriage, euthanasia etc. It promotes what are perceived as liberties of the individual over any ethical considerations, or the good of society as a whole. It is based on a misunderstanding of freedom, and would substitute licence, for true freedom. But that definition is from me, I’m sure a philosopher could do better.

@ Paul McGovern
Paul, the constitution supports each of our lives, including the pregnant mother. I don’t know how many times it has to be said before it sinks in, but when the mothers life is in danger (cancer, preeclampsia, Fallopian pregnancy etc.) the baby by current practice will be removed. We do not consider this to be abortion, as it is not exclusively an attack on the baby with the sole purpose of destroying the life of the baby.
Those of us pro-life are happy to support legislation enshrining these existing medical guidelines in law.
OReillys board, following his guidelines, without ethical input, considering his other decisions, is indeed suspicious to put it charitably.

So Paddy basically this liberal agenda promotes the idea that a person’s rights should not be constrained by one set of subjective ethical standards.

I fail to see how this is somehow a bad thing. Could you please advise why it is?

@ John Everyman
Not what I said John. But if you believe ethics should have nothing to do with our laws, just say it.
What I do say is that the good of society must be considered in our laws, and that an aggressive secular agenda is a poor basis for the good of society.

To quote from your previous comment Paddy: The Liberal Agenda “promotes what are perceived as liberties of the individual over any ethical considerations.”

You said that Paddy, not me. Now since ethics are completely subjective, why should one set of ethical standards be applied to sociert as a whole?

Ethics, Paddy??

As dictated by that paragon of infallible morality, the Roman cult that brought us centuries of crusades, inquisition, bigotry, indoctrination of pre-rational children, superstition and heretic burning, abduction and enslavement and sexual abuse followed by rotation of perpetrators and cover-up all the way up its self-preservatory pyramid of occult power?

No thanks. I’ll not grant any spurious ‘equality’ to a foetus over an adult(or immature)woman or girl on the ‘ethical’ diktat of a patriarchal clique of unelected and anti-democratic pseudo-intellectual hair-splitters of bald angels dancing on pinheads.
Its just not ethical or responsible for adults to grant such dictatorial privilege to cross-dressing cloistered self-nominated ‘fathers’ wedded to their fantasised ‘mother church’.

@ John Everyman
I am not asking for any specific set of ethical considerations. There are good ethical guidelines free of any specific faith, and indeed many atheists who follow good ethical considerations. For instance there are many good atheists against abortion, and many gay persons against the redefinition of marriage.
I think is is insulting to many to believe ethics is exclusive to one faith or another. If you cannot see the benefit of any ethical considerations, I’m afraid we are from different understandings of life. Is life valuable? Are there human rights, how do we define them? Are there limits to human freedoms? Have we responsibilities to society? These surely have ethical dimensions.

Paddy, “ethical considerations” are very much a subjective and personal matter. If you wish to believe that the Pope, the Dali Lama or Ian Paisley is the ultimate arbiter in moral matters, that’s your choice, and there’s no suggestion of anyone being forced to act against their conscience.

What you seem to be suggesting, however, is that there is a single ethical code or outlook that should be enforced on everyone, irrespective of their personal beliefs. Which doesn’t sound much anything like “true freedom” to me.

@ Paddy Scully – None of that changes the fact that you are coming at this from the viewpoint of the Catholic church. Or is that a different Paddy Scully who belongs to Catholic Comment and who is listed as a speaker on their website?

Nicely flexible, relativistic and subjective so Paddy.

But the isssue boils down to whether an adult woman’s rational decision about her own health and welfare is to be reduced to ‘equality’ with her dependent foetus’s interests as dictated by a superstitious external cult who find it difficult to digest that sometimes hard decisions must be made by adults who have prior rights to those external dictators.
To be against abortion in such cases amounts to being anti-appendectomy on some idiotic abstract ethical principle that preserves a spurious delusionary sense of moral superiority and pristine unsullied purity.
Adult realities tend to be a little messier than such juvenile ideals allow.

@ Damien Flinter
Damian, always good for a tirade. Equality by definition is neither above nor below, so the rights of mother and child are equal, but good practice protects the mother when both are endangered.
As for your other issues, nothing can relieve your angst.

Paddy those questions do of course have ethical issues attached to them and nowhere did I say that ethics are exclusive to one faith or another.

What I asked, and what I ask again is why one set of ethical standards should be applied to our society. For example, why should gay people not be allowed to marry just because some people think it is unethical? What about all the people who believe the opposite, that it is infact more ethical to treat people equally? Why are their ethical viewpoints not considered by you?

Tut tut, Paddy, personalising is a sign of desperation and inability to address the issue.

Exhausted your intellectual resources have I?

The issue is the mother’s precedence over her foetus as dictated by such external dictators as your deluded and intrusive self and your irrational cult of some spurious puritanical hypothesized abstract ethos.

Are you capable of grasping that ethical issue?If not you disqualify yourself from your attempted ethical dominance of the issue.

@ voodoo_criminology
I hope your name is not encompassing your ethical disposition. I believe the ” Pope, the Dali Lama or Ian Paisley” could all agree on some basic ethical considerations. And no I do not believe in a denominational state, but neither is pluralist devoid of ethics! The suggestion was that ethical considerations should be considered, not that we rule for one group or another. To suggest that only Catholics are pro life is insulting to many.

And to suggest that those of us who give priority to the woman’s life over the foetus are anti-life, which the pre-emptively clever arrogation of pro-life status does, is insulting to many of us parents.

@ Brian
Does that mean that because I’m self identified as a catholic, part of the 82%, I should be quite and retire to my knitting?

@ Brian
Does that mean that because I’m self identified as a catholic, part of the 82 percent, I should be quite and retire to my knitting?

@ John Everyman
I am ethically in favour of equality, the question is whether the redefinition of marriage is an equality issue? Perhaps this link may help, but I doubt it.
http://ionainstitute.us1.list-manage.com/track/click?u=ff0e987b97d2fcfad2787f607&id=22f0aa69bf&e=0d7236d2ef

@ Damien Flinter
Just to mention Damien, an appendix, based on our current knowledge, will never discover a cure for cancer, but the dismissed foetus just might have.

Paddy, my handle refers to a piece by the criminologist Jock Young on the use of spurious statistical and “scientific” methodologies in criminal justice policy.

However, if I were a practicing voodooist(!), so long as the exercise of that right is equally compatible with the rights of other citizens, I would expect the state aparatus to be sufficiently flexible so as to allow for freedom of conscience.

The ethical issue around abortion that’s currently under discussion is whether the life of the pregnant woman should be treated with equal regard to that of the foetus. This has been decided by way of decisions of the Supreme Court, the European Court of Justice and a number of referenda, where the Irish people voted 60%-40% in favour of allowing abortions in circumstances where the life of the mother was at risk – another referendum seeking to remove the risk of suicide from that equation was defeated, albeit narrowly, in 2002.

There’s no real argument against going at least as far as enacting legislation to operationalise the constitutional provisions, the people have spoken.

On the broader issue, I personally think the question of when life begins is in no way settled, and is very much a matter of personal conscience, so I would therefore be in favour of allowing people to make up their own minds on it, but that’s for another day.

Just to add, the concept that only those who are anti-abortion are “pro life” is insulting to many in the context of recent events, also.

NOT the issue, Paddy.

Savita might have given you mouth-to-mouth respiratory resuscitation if you collapsed in the street.

Kindly address the issue. Or else admit you are out of your ethical depth and have not given it adequate thought because of your cultish conformism to the dictates of collective presumption to the exclusion of personal individual conscience.
These are serious medical matters of life and death, not some frivolous theological point-scoring seminarian debate.

@ Damien Flinter
I’m a self confessed lightweight in many issues, and it is very easy to intellectually stretch me. Sorry if I was nasty to anyone, but I’m under machine gun fire, many at once.
In reality the current excellent medical guidelines, could be interoperated as being in favour of the mother. But the pro choice view can be justifiably viewed as anti child.

Paddy if you wish to be taken seriously, you should refrain from citing articles by from Iona. Their homophobic record only discredits your argument.

Why is it a question if marraige equality is an equality issue? To assert that it is not is just silly. Marraige equality promotes the idea that people should be treated equally. How is this not an equality issue?

Anything can be justified by semantic obfuscation and sophistic jesuitical linguabatics, Paddy.
It is just such rationalisation, as opposed to rational thinking, and liguistic gymnastics that allows the Roman cult to wrap itself in a cloak of moral superiority and dictate to adults how to conduct their personal lives, despite its glaring public record on both childtren and women(to say nothing of men) over centuries.
Its called, among othet things, double-think smug self-delusion. And that is NOT written for the sake of any insult, but to try to bring home the seriousness of the fatal consequences of your self-hypnosis. Your cult has no authority to dictate to adults on ethical issues. It has failed too often.
Either think for yourself, conscienciously, or drop your pretentious claim to any ethical right to be even heard on such issues.
Just make ‘the pope says so’ your argument.

@ Damien Flinter
I’m often out of my depth Damien, but I don’t have that experience with you.
I’m sure Savita, RIP, would have been generous in what you describe, but so would I, I hope.
Again we all understand now that Savitas tragedy was callously manipulated and abused by the pro choice movement. It is clearly not established that she requested a termination, and if she did there are no restrictions to this, if it would have helped her in Irish medical practice. What is clear is that the pro choice movement were organising their response, days before the Irish times news item.

Sorry Paddy, but there’s no question of “exploitation” of the Savita case, RIP – in fact, I find that to be a pretty offensive argument.

Two years ago, the European Court of Justice held that the Irish legal framework is unsufficiently clear to allow for abortions to be performed in cases like this, but because of resistance from the likes of Iona and Life Institute, our craven political class decided to hold the line – “sure can’t they head off to England if they want, and isn’t it grand for them”.

The fact is that the recent tragedy was only too foreseeable, the issue had been flagged, and it’s about time that the anti-abortion lobby bow to the will of the people, expressed in the constitution.

Sorry, forgot to add this, link to the wiki page on the A, B and C v. Ireland decision. The full judgment can be accessed by a link on the right of the page – think this roundly eviscerates the contention that guidelines are sufficient or “great”:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A,_B_and_C_v_Ireland

I would think the pro-choice people have been trying to organise against the superstitious arrogance of Rome since the cult was burning doctors at the stake for speaking out about church hypocrisy.
My own involvment did not start until 1983 when I was asked by a couple of nervous women to accompany them on an information leafleting distribution effort as they were being threatened.
I was myself threatened with asault by a public representative for just accompanying them and answering questions put to me by a young innocent pro-lifer.
Thats when I became aware of the thuggery and manipulation behind the suave exteriors of the political surfers on this blinkered bigotry and anti-women agenda and its falsified ‘ethical’ superiority complex.

@ John Everyman
John if you wish to be taken seriously please don’t dictate to me whom I’m allowed to quote from.
If you have difficulty understanding equality as a principle, I’m afraid I can’t help.
I as a heterosexual man, am treated exactly the same as a homosexual man, I can’t marry another man!
But that discussion is for another day.

@ Damien Flinter
Sometimes life is funny Damien. I love how you accuse the Catholic Church of “sophistic jesuitical linguabatics”, have you read your own posts, if they are not linguabatics (is that a word), then the pot is calling the kettle black.
Here is a note from myself… hopefully not overinflated by any “cult”, life is precious.
I don’t want to short circuit your castle of rationality, but do consider, you just might have the whole thing wrong. Boommmm..sorry!

First off Paddy, I didn’t dictate to you, I offered you some advice on improving your debating skills. As Iona is a hardline Catholic group which is ardently homophobic in nature, citing their views on marriage equality is as silly citing Leviticus. By all means cite peer-reviewed, scientific articles to support your assertions.

Secondly, I have no problem understanding the concept of equality, but I would contend that you do. Just because you can’t marry another man does not mean you are treated the same as a gay man. You can marry the consenting adult you love, he cannot. How is that equality? You’re type of equilty seems to say, “we’re equal because we both can’t marry men, it’s his fault that he doesn’t fancy the type of partner we’re both allowed marry.”

Slight difference Paddy.

I’m not setting myself up as some ethical arbiter of how you or the pope should run your personal lives.

Life is precious?No problem. I just happen to prioritise the life of an extant adult woman above that of her dependent foetus. A housefly is ‘life’. Larvae are ‘life’. Adults have ethical capacity and developed humanity(usually). Foetuses are potential human life. As are ova and sperm cells. How far do you wish to take your abstract ethic of ‘life’?The right of every ovum to fertilisation is the logical extension of your tendentious reasoning.
What are you sorry for?I constantly ‘short circuit’ my own rational conclusions to examine as objectively as feasable the opposite proposition. Its called exercising your conscience. I do not approach real dilemma with preconceived recipes for their resolution. Its called de facto reasoning, as opposed to a priori presumption.
Try it sometime.

@ John Everyman
John would you define homophobic for me please. It seems to be applied liberally against many who disagree with any issue discussing the redefinition of marriage.
I’d like to point out that the Catholic Church is home to many gay men and women, and almost 25 percent of gay persons in the UK indicated they opposed the proposed changes to marriage.

@ Damien Flinter
Damien, your dislike for the church and its structures are clear. Contrary to your belief, I love thinking for myself. Am I influenced by the church, I’d hope so. We all make our choices.
Whether our heroes are:
1) Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Marie Stopes, Margaret Sanger etc. or
2)John Paul ii, mothers and children, the little flower, John Vienney etc.
We all choose. Very few of us are an island unto ourselves.
I do expect we all select our bedfellows and live with the consequences.
Foetuses are not potential human life, but human life with potential. And that is the fissure between your philosophy and mine.

No Paddy, thats wordplay again.
The gap is between your presumptive dictation that the foetus should have equality of rights with the adult extant responsible woman who must make her own ethical decisions, and my recognition that I have no right to dictate, whatever my emotional prejudices, her subservience to my judgement.

You are depriving women not just of that right to their own control over their own lives, but their responsibility to educate themselves and take autonomous adult decisions. In short, you are attempting to arrest their human development at an infantile and dependent stage through patriarchal authoritarianism.
I am recognising the limitations of my finite rights, subject to the rights of others. You are claiming an absolute right for a fallible human institution in the name of a hubristic assumed infallibility which blinds that institution to its recidivist crimes against humanity.

@ Damien Flinter
Word play if I say it, reason justice and logic if Damien says it.
Applying your logic to all other crimes, and abortion is still a crime in this country, anyone has the right to steal, kill or defame, as long as by their personal ethical standards its justified. Wait a minute that sounds just like the reasoning of the Monk, and I don’t mean the cloistered ones

Paddy’s referral to the Iona Institute certainly discredited his argument. He’s makes wide sweeping statements too including on the use of statistics. This 25% of gays in UK against gay marriage? Did you dig them up from a homophobic right wing catholic organisation too? As the abortion issue I firmly believe it’s a woman’s body and should be her decision. Allegedly non sexually active Papists in dresses shouldn’t dictate the reproduction rights of others or State (non religious) marriage equality.

Paddy, we have laws that define the paramaters of acceptable behaviour – the best example being the Constitution, where the Irish people actually get to vote on its content.

And the Irish people voted overwhelmingly to allow for abortion in circumstances where the life of the mother is at risk, and voted again to ensure that “risk” in this context includes a risk of suicide.

The difficulty is that, while the Constitution defines principles in broad strokes, legislation is needed to clarify the finer details, so that doctors can be sure that they’re not going to be prosecuted for saving a woman’s life.

This is what it all comes down to, and legislation is coming, whether you like it or not.

@ Keith Wizzy
Keith I was asked specifically about the equality issue, and that is what the link was about. I’m an admirer of the Iona institute, and the dislike you convey tells me I should take more heed of them.
Might I suggest your anti catholic papist comments, are just as extreme as anything I have said.
I have myself spoken with an Irish gay/lesbian group, and I was told by a member that they would not support a change in the understanding of marriage. So things are not clear cut.

Bravura, Paddy.

I write that my rights are constrained by the rights of others, and you somersault that into an apologetics for criminal mayhem. Simultaneous self-elevation with en passant tendentious smear.

Thats what I meant by verbal acrobatics and semantic gymnastics. Nice illustration of the perversity of thought at the heart of the perversity of action your cult has become synonymous with.

I believe the word is irredeemable.

@ voodoo_criminology
We are all in favour of termination when the mothers life is at risk, what we are not in favour of is abortion at the threat of suicide, a view supported by the majority. If suicide is accepted as qualifying grounds, then there are psychologists ready and willing to sign on the dotted line. Their professional indemnity alone would prevent them going against a statement from any woman, no matter how implausible. In the stokes clinics in the UK there was an incident where there were even pre-signed forms, indicating suicide, without patient names.
There are regular terminations in accordance with the guidelines in Ireland, and no legal threats.

Paddy keep the truth coming. It’s great to see it. We need more like you willing to take on the liberal agenda.

And that, Paddy, gives you the divine right of intervention and dictating against the woman’s own autonomous decision?

What if in two centuries time when the technologies are perfected some cult decides that, because it worships the maximisation of hominid births, your great great etc grand-daughters are to be kept fruitfully pregnant at all times?
And they say, but thats the natural extension of pro-life philosophical reasoning.

What are you, anti-life?We decide.

@Paddy Scully – I presume you’re referring to the 82 per cent of Catholics in this country that were ‘self-identified’ in the last Census? You know as well as I do that this figure is nowhere near accurate but feel free to use it because it suits your agenda.

On which..was there not a recent poll that stated 83% of people want X legislated for?

@ Damien Flinter
Autonomous decisions are not enshrined in law, TG.
You are really going from the ridiculous to the sublime. Permanent pregnancy, wow, that’s a new one on me. Might I suggest that would be a cult, unlike your abuse of the term previously. The church to the best of my knowledge supports responsible parenthood, and its understanding of how that’s achieved is obviously different to yours.
Babies galore, has nothing to do with pro-life, we just fight against the taking of life, once its conceived.

You might clear something up for me Paddy.

When does a cult become a chuch?When the established power aristocracies perceive its usefulness?

@ Brian
Thanks for your permission Brian. I always taught the census was above reproach, and it would be a criminal act to supply fraudulent information.
@ Damien Flinter
As I understand it the majority don’t want abortion on demand, but we all know the crazy decision in the x-case needs to be handled. That may need another referendum, if the will of the people is to be considered.
Your sarcastic question on cults is quite interesting. It usually not something you can say about the mainline faiths, with their history and methods. It would be used where enforced separation from family, together with techniques such as sleep deprecation are used, love bombing,and other extreme forms of psychology to manipulate persons into unquestioning adherence to a set of beliefs. This is just my understanding, but I’m sorry to inform you that neither I nor any of my family experienced these techniques. We’re you a catholic once? Is anybody after you, I suspect not.

Let’s be honest here, Paddy. You and your ilk are basically trying to impose your own moral agenda on society. That’s the bottom line. When people object (quite reasonably) to this you just can’t handle it and start screeching about the liberal secularisation of Irish society, etc. Get over it. The country is moving on, with or without the Catholic church. The sooner you understand and accept that the better.

Ta Paddy.

Your description of a cult fits my indoctrination into the Roman credulity(credo). Don’t start me on their history.

@ Brian
Well Brian I’m much more interested in a moral society than an amoral society. I was at the march last week at the dail, and I noticed a pro-life group there from cork. These are not a catholic group, and I’m sure they can distinguish moral from any specific view of catholic morality. But we shared a vigil for life.
Your tone is to say the least condescending, what you fail to see is that me and my ilk, are the majority in this country. I’m sure you’d love to move forwards/backwards, with or without us.
What the government does tomorrow is critical, but if they go against the people with the liberal agenda, I believe they will experience a huge backlash.
You may also be surprised how attractive beauty and truth are to individuals, abortion is certainly not beautiful, and it certainly denies the truth of the humanity it is killing.
You may discover it is you who are out of step.

@ Damien Flinter
Lets leave others make up their own minds in that respect.
Good night Damien, and God Bless.

Paddy
Just jam your fingers in your ears and sing your favourite hymn – it doesn’t matter what you say, abortion on demand is available , just not here. It simply doesn’t matter what you say, you’ve already lost.

@ Dave Harris
Dave, you may wish to ignore us, but were resilient. I admire your honesty, at least you’re upfront about what you want, abortion on demand. What is annoying are those who will pretend there is such a thing as restricted abortion, and the politicians who may vote for abortion, behind the cloak of the whip, and then present themselves at church gate collections, or worst still, parade up for communion. To a catholic that’s anathema.

Paddy,
It’s ok for you to be resilient and believe what you want. Just stop banging on about it and pretending you are arguing about something that is already happening and you will not stop it with the pro life movements increasingly desperate actions ( those automated phone calls????)

@ Dave Harris
I’m concerned about Ireland only at the moment, and to the best of my knowledge abortion is not allowed here today. I don’t think I’m banging on about anything, just responding to respondents to the original post. I’m certainly in the minority here, perhaps you would prefer to discuss the issue on a one sided basis only?

@bpdeasy
Thanks for the encouragement!

Resilient, Paddy, like the US NRA, who have a considerable cross-ownership (inadvertant pun) of their arsenals with pro-life hypocritic pontifications.
But then their development to independent adult conscientious thinking is arrested by a different sectarian dogma.

And ‘anathema’, Paddy, is that not a fatwa with knuckledusters?

@ Damien Flinter
Damian your lateral reading does supply you with some amusing antidotes. I’m not altogether sure if you are attempting to insult me? I practice what I say, as best I can, so I’m not hypocritical. Comparing my views to those of the NRA, is like me comparing you to a member of the Chinese communist party, they do after all promote abortion.

I try not to drop to gratuitous insult, though I am capable of returning serve.

Just happen to be working my way through JK Fairbank’s excellent ‘China, A New History’(Harvard UP, 1992).
I had many arguments with doctrinaire Maoists in my youth(mostly stately plump Buck Mulligans today).

Given the corruption and incompetence of the GMD, the savagery of the Japanese invader, the parasitic interference over several centuries of European and US capital, and the discipline and solidarity with the impoverished and grossly exploited peasantry displayed by the CCP in contrast, it is not difficult to see why they won the grateful loyalty of their people.

Perhaps you would prefer to see 20-child families return to Ireland, Paddy, but I remember the poverty of Dublin in the ’50s, and the animal squalor of many of those families bullied and harrassed by stately plump parish priest parasites if they tried to use condoms to imrove not just their prospects, but their overstretched health.

The church builds its heavenly luxury on the hell it inflicts on the poor.

@ Damien Flinter
Very interesting Damien, I’ve had the pleasure of visiting the country myself, and I must say it is a most beautiful interesting country, with a great people. But I’d be careful about what I would write about my experiences with real people there, as some of the things told to me could lead to individuals being put into prison and loosing their jobs. This is not my restriction, but the request of those who told me their stories.
I must admit I enjoyed sneaking out of the hotel in the mornings, to find the local catholic mass, and I remember crying at the back of the church as the Chinese sang the rosary.
Beautiful and great, but the iron fist is ever present, and this is most evident in the application of forced abortions.
Do you still believe in world overpopulation? Perhaps you might like to track down a documentary called “The Demographic Winter”.

Paddy, you are tired and emotional…stick to your rosary beads and stop interfering with women’s PRIVATE lives and parts.

It is nun of your fracking business.

@ Damien Flinter
Tut tut you’re self. Emotional and proud of it, tired not now. One of the strange things about society, is the extent to which our actions, private and otherwise, effect out neighbours.
We are by now talking to ourselves, so adieu until Enda makes his announcement today.

so her cervix being dialated for 3 days didnt have any impact? even without the health concerns what a cruel thing to do to a woman suffering a miscarriage, to leave her in agony when theres not a hope of saving her child!

Savita wasn’t in a “dying position” when she went to hospital! She was feeling “unwell” but not to such an extent that she was serious

If a termination would have saved her life she should have been given one , no woman should have to die for the lack of legislation, but that’s not why she died.

True but pro abortionists are determined to bring abortion to this country so using a case like this for their gain is nothing.

1. If she had septicaemia when she arrived at the hospital, she would have been in ICU much faster.
2. E. coli is a bacteria found in the faecal matter. The anus is very close to the vagina.

Having a dilated cervix leaves the woman at high risk for both of the above. Her cervix was dilated for THREE days. She was admitted miscarrying, leaving her wide open was only maximising her risk of infection. Septicaemia works FAST, to try and suggest she may have had it on arrival at the hospital is ludicrous.

Because we’ve done a great job of ignoring it for the past 20..