Yes, there should be a push for perinatal care in these sad situations. Maybe there would have been more support in Ireland as in one account, it seems a woman was walking the streets shortly after her abortion so it didn’t seem that the care was too good or overly supportive. I lost three babies in Irish hospitals and wasn’t turfed out that quickly, but was allowed to hold my babies, to cry and to mourn with the support of doctors. kindly midwives, social workers, a lovely lady chaplain and family and friends. The only sad thing was that there was no chance of my babies ever taking a breath. I’d love to have seen them live, even for an hour or so.

AlMar and Layla are correct. What this group is looking for however would require a constitutional amendment, not just ordinary legislation so this is not going to happen anytime soon.

Abortion is the ending of the life of a human being. Anyone who wishes to deny this is basically just ignoring scientific fact. It amazes me that people continue to advocate for abortion when we know for a fact that the unborn child is a living human.
Abortion is not a personal choice or a religious issue – it is a human rights issue – The issue of the basic right to life for the most innocent and vulnerable in society. If that right is not present how will any other right even matter?

Adam the issue here is that they wont survive past birth so why not let them do it here instead across the sea. I only support abortion when there is proper medical reason not for something like “its incontinent to me to be pregnant!”.

Please do not cite scientific fact in this debate. That can cut both ways. To say that a fertilised human egg IS a human being, is to say the tomato seeds in the seed packet ARE tomatoes.

And it is a fact that, like tomato seeds, not all human seeds “sprout.” In fact four out of five of them do not even implant in the uterus, but are eliminated from the body in a menstrual flow, where, being not much bigger than a dot in this sentence, they would be hard to find, never mind hold, cherish or bury with ceremony.

These fertilised egg losses never even register as a pregnancy, because it is only when the fertilised egg implants in the wall of the uterus that hormonal changes are detectable. At that point, the fertilised human seed has found its proper “soil” but still has only somewhere between one third to one half a chance of surviving past the magical first trimester. The natural (or intelligently designed) winnowing processes at both these early stages dispose of far more potential human seeds than have ever been removed by doctors on behalf of a woman refusing a forced pregnancy, something which, in 95% of cases will take place early in the first trimester.

Later abortions are exceptionally uncommon as a refusal of pregnancy, and instead are often the unwanted, but necessary option in a WANTED pregnancy that has suffered an adverse health outcome which threatens the life of the mother, who IS a human person.

This is not a Church issue. Look into this topic and you’ll find that there are Catholics, Protestants, Muslims, Jews, Agnostics and Atheists who are all against the abortion of defenceless, vulnerable human life. Are people really willing to suspend their natural sense of empathy in pursuit of an ideology? I have kids and have discussed all sorts of aspects of relationships and sexuality, but find it impossible to talk too much about abortion because I believe they would be horrified at the reality of the widespread practice and the lie that has been sold to women about abortion being some sort of kind option. There’s always a better way, but the voices of those who’ve been damaged by abortion seem to be ones that we don’t often get to hear.

This is more of an informative text, so I’d wonder a bit about the number of thumbs down. People couldn’t be against this sort of care.

More care is a truly excellent thing. If made available to EXPAND choice it is even better. As a ploy to DENY choice it is not. Most likely, though, parents will continue to be denied both care and choice.

AlMar! Any response to the Cardinal Brady articles? Didn’t see you there.

P.

Paul – not sure what cardinal brady has to do with this story. However I did comment on that this morning.

Please do not misrepresent that paper, which was printed in an ETHICS journal and made no calls whatsoever for legislation.

It was putting forth a number of comparisons in order to generate DEBATE, you could read it either way, either it was advocating after birth abortion or showing why abortion could be considered wrong, it was all down to how the person reading it took it (three guesses how you or the person who wrote the article your read took it). This is the purpose of ethics papers..

Now, when you bear in mind that the authors received DEATH THREATS from “pro-life” groups, this shows a single mindedness that launches a full scale attack on a mere suggestion, in failing to comprehend that it was purely to open up a discussion, these people were happy to threaten the lives of the authors.. Besides showing sheer ignorance of the facts, it’s hardly “pro life” is it?

It’s a feotus. “defenceless children”, as you want to call them, are the entities that the church and religious orders, who’s archaic views and twisted pro-life morals you wish to regurgitate, that were raped and abused and covered up for years in Ireland. Take your hypocritical morals and take your religious views and stick them. …. Let the people have a choice how to live their own lives.

Actually, Shanti Om, there was widespread anger at that paper. And, it wasn’t just from the usual pro-life sources. It’s easy to say it was for “discussion” purposes, but image if a paper was printed to discuss in theory if it was ok to kill toddlers or older children. There is a belief in some circles that there’s little difference in ending the life of a pre-born disabled child as compared to one that’s just born. And if we can end the life of a baby that’s just born, why not that of an older child?

Maria.
Arch tried to suggest that the paper in question was calling for adoption of the practice. This is blatantly untrue.
Indeed, a lot of the coverage the paper recieved gave that impression too. It was in an ethics journal, that should have been the first sign that it wasn’t intended as policy making.
The whole point of ethical debates is to look at our morals and see where they are pointing. This is how we would have come to renounce some of the more barbaric elements of our past, so I’m not just passing it off as discussion. Ethics journals are the kind of place you would find people discussing the pros and cons of Malthusian Eugenics, whether or not it’s right to forcibly medicate people, whether people should have RFID chips like animals.. They discuss stuff that would enrage anyone if they thought for a second that any of this was intended to guide policy, that’s the point.

Horse poo

Not your decision to make bp.

I can see where you are coming from, in a sense, yes, they are lobbying, and by definition of their number they are a group. But the definition of “lobby group” that has emerged from this aspect of politics has a different meaning. If they were writing on behalf of say, the IFPA, then they would be from a lobby group.
It appears these ladies wrote independently and solely with relation to the situations they have experienced, rather than the situations other groups are campaigning about. So it is fair for them to say that they do not represent a “lobby group”.