Abortion Referendum Thread

Current Affairs
3447

Prevention is the best method.

If you donā€™t want to get pregnant, take the proper precautions, donā€™t engage in the activity that prompts it.

Abortion is a horrible and selfish choice in most cases. There should not be a choice to put your life ahead of the life you have created through your own actions.

Abortion as a birth control method is horrific.

3448

How has the on demand availability of the morning after pill affected the numbers of abortions.

The same people arguing against abortion also argued against morning after pill and contraception.

1 Like
3449

hard to sift through the bull shit on here with someone who wants to actually discuss it.

To further some of your points. Adoption solves a parenting issue, it does not solve a pregnancy issue. A woman who does not want to go through with pregnancy, adoption doesnt help her. Also, adoption in Ireland is pretty much non existent as it currently stands. There have been 31 total infant adoptions in Ireland in the past 5 years. There have been circa 15,000 abortions by Irish women in the last 5 years. Married couples also cannot give up a child for adoption. Adoption will not come close to solving the problem. Also, the national adoption agency of Ireland have come out in full support of a yes vote.

There are plenty of people voting yes who themselves do not see abortion as an option for them or like the thoughts of abortion. But there is a realisation that it is necessary in a number of circumstances, hard cases aside, and that to vote no will not give those people a choice to have the health care in their own country and get the necessary support. Voting no will not stop abortions by Irish women, it will just keep sending the issue to the UK as was voted in our constitution.
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7 Likes
3450

Would I be right in thinking that there are still plenty of adoptions in Ireland but theyā€™re mostly of foreign kids. Romanian orphans and the like?

3451

I cant remember off hand. There is far more foreign adoptions than national ones anyway, but rare enough to have Irish infant adoptions.

3452

yes but thereā€™s a growing number of fosterers adopting kids in care, but normally just before their 18th birthday

3453

but why is the focus on abortion, why isnt it on the prevention of crisis pregnancies?

1 Like
3454

I dont know. Iā€™m not a campaigner nor a legislator. Why havent the no campaigners fought for it for the last 35 years? Granted, a lot of no voters are not religiously inclined, but all of the no campaign organisations are religiously invested and its those organisations who have stifled those sort of answers in the past.

If the yes vote goes through, then the no campaigners should shift the focus to preventing as many abortions as possible.

3455

Good post

Its obviously really tough to go through a pregnancy you donā€™t want but Iā€™m just never going to agree with abortion on demand and I think adoption should be used more, but as you say it doesnā€™t solve the issue of going through the 9 months of pregnancy itself.

On the law not preventing Irish women from getting abortions, you are correct, but it does limit them

3456

I think because:

  1. conservatives (by which I mean the old-school FFers) used to pay lip service during the abortion debates to the issue of preventing crisis pregnancies but they were often the same people who were slow on the roll out of contraception and proper sex ed. They would prefer to focus on ā€œalcoholā€ instead, which they obviously were never able to do anything about. Whether that had anything to do with the same old FFers being the biggest pack of alcos in the country, I donā€™t know. There are still problems with doing proper sex ed in this country, namely the Catholic Church / lobby and their control over education. That undermines their ability to talk about that credibly.
  2. Slightly related to that, statistically the countries that have most successfully reduced crisis pregnancies and the Dutch and Scandinavians with a very liberal model that includes abortion, and thatā€™s the exact same social model the conservatives are trying to resist at all costs, so they canā€™t really let the debate go down that road too far.
3457

Exact same contradictions in US politics.

3458

Iā€™m not sure it actually does limit them. Say a woman wants an abortion, she books the English clinic, books her flights, pays out, there is no turning back. She goes and its done. Whereas here, there is no significant cost involved, you book, see 2 separate specialists and have to wait 3 days before going through with it. I think there is more of a chance of a woman backing out of it here. Plus, abortion pills are apparently easily bought online now, so instead of a woman going to England, she is doing it unsupervised and not being medically checked. Those numbers are also not included anywhere now either that I have seen.

I dont know, no one does I suppose, but I dont think the flood gates are going to open just because it may be legalised here.

There is also the issue of the 8th amendment itself, which is a total pile of crap and causes harm to women in wanted pregnancies. That should be repealed by those who have vested interests in it and not concerning what other people are doing.

1 Like
3459

Exactly.

3460

Because we need to remove the 8th to deal with crisis pregnancies.

3461

Irish people do all their adopting from China, US and eastern Europe.

Not sure of numbers but I have spoke to numerous people about adoption and itā€™s always been foreign.

Church put a stop to internal adoptions

3462

Some great posting.

3463

Thatā€™s idiotic to the extreme. Remove the 8th by all means but when doing so you put in place plans to obviate the need for abortion in all but the most necessary of cases such FFA and risk to motherā€™s health

3464

Because crisis pregnancies happen no matter how well up the populace is on sexual education and focussing solely on prevention isnā€™t a solution.

1 Like
3465

The point here being that the discussion is purely on a cure rather than prevention.

3466

Given that any measures to help prevent crisis pregnancies will never fully work, repealing the 8th and introducing the proposed framework must come first