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SENATOR CATHERINE NOONE has described a booklet about next week’s Eighth Amendment referendum as an attempt to “fool” voters.
Some critics have argued that the booklet, entitled Your Guide to the Referendum – Information on the Government’s Proposals, intentionally resembles a government publication.
Some 200,000 copies of the booklet have been distributed throughout the country by pro-life group Save the 8th, which is targeting areas where there are large numbers of undecided voters.
The document states that a Yes vote would mean “unborn babies at all stages of pregnancy will have no constitutional rights” and that voters “will never have a say on this again”.
When asked about the booklet today, Noone said she was “very concerned” by it, “especially if it’s an attempt to somehow make it seem as though it is information from the government”.
“In terms of the overall poster campaign, the general messaging of the No side, I would think that this is just another example of the attempt to somewhat … blur the lines and the facts and the evidence.
That is not helpful to Irish people, it’s an attempt to actually blindside them and fool them, and I don’t think that that is in any way respectful of voters.
Noone, who chaired the Oireachtas Eighth Amendment Committee, is in favour of a Yes vote.
Responding to Noone’s comments, Save the 8th spokesperson Abigail Malone said: “If Senator Noone had read the leaflet she’d see that it in no way blurs lines. It sets out, much clearer than her government, what is actually in the legislation.”
Malone said that Save the 8th is “transparent” and denied that the booklet’s green colour was an attempt to make voters think the material was from the government.
“We are not blurring the lines. If anything, the government and campaigners for the Yes side are blurring the lines.
“If Senator Noone and Minister [Simon] Harris and the government are that concerned, we’d ask them to point out where they think the lines have been blurred and debate that,” she said.
On 25 May people will have the chance to vote on whether or not the Eighth Amendment, which gives equal constitutional status to the mother and the unborn, should be repealed.
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A precedence has been set with this. Well meaning as it is. Will not other survivors of state ineffectiveness want something similar.
@AnthonyK: At a risk of sounding controversial, I think this should have been dealt with under some form of compensation or redress rather than some blanket thing.
That it doesn’t preclude future settlements is an odd thing.
However, I’m more onboard with the Gov actually doing something rather than nothing for those people it’s completely failed.
maybe hold tony hoolahan to account? no, no, that would be too much to expect of this snide government.
@Niall English: What specifically should he be held to account for?
Are they going to do this for all individuals who have been failed by the state (and how is that defined)? There’s plenty of people who have suffered, including Stardust victims, people who can’t get or afford homes.
The amount of misinformation out there around what happened with cervical check is mind-blowing. The way some people talk you’d swear that the testing service actually gave people cancer.
@Jason Memail: Quite the opposite, it didn’t tell them that they had cancer so they didn’t receive the treatment they needed, in a nutshell
@Brian D’Arcy: That’s absolutely false, and part of the misinformation that’s common on this subject. 1) These women received tests from cervical check which told them that cancer cells were not present. 2) These women subsequently developed cancer, and a review of their original tests was carried out. 3) The reviews showed that the earlier tests missed what may have been cancerous cells, with these reviews aided by the fact that the reviewers knew what they were looking for, since the patients had developed cancer.
@Jason Memail: 4) The decision was made, and this is the real crux of the issue, not to go back and tell those women that the earlier tests missed the potentially cancerous cells, mainly because what good would it do? They now had cancer and knowing an earlier test missed it wouldn’t change that. 5) Overall, the suggestion that cervical check didn’t tell these people they had cancer is demonstrably false, because the only reason the reviews were carried out on the initial tests is because they had cancer, which they knew about. 6) Going back and checking original tests when something like this happens is standard practice, and the right thing to do in order to improve future testing, but
@Jason Memail: 7) you can argue whether or not it was the right decision not to inform people about what the earlier tests missed, but it would not and could not have changed the fact that they now, sadly, had cancer, and 8) Knowing that an earlier test missed something could not have allowed them to start treatment earlier, because it’s in the oast. 9) If you want to know the specifics of it, I’d suggest checking out care2much on Twitter, who has written some incredibly detailed threads on the subject.
While this is welcome and like one commentor said that it should have been done with compensation.
As a survivor of the industrial state/religious run institutions we never got compensation we were give an “Award” as if we won something, we cannot get enhanced medical cards that the survivors from the mother and baby home were afforded, we cannot get a contributary pension even though we had to work in these institutions, we now get another slap in the face by being excluded from theses tax benefits. I live in a council house and am grateful for that, I live with my ill husband and disabled totally dependant 23 year old son was told that I can purchase the house for a minimum of between 60 and 80 thousand euro, cannot get a mortgage as my husband is 70 as the cut off is 69 and we’ve have no where to go to help buy the house so our disabled son would have a roof over his head if anything happened to us.
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