Tuesday, October 23, 2007
Assembly buries head in sand
Before they discussed the AWB, the Assembly had a lengthy debate yesterday on the Department of Health’s draft guidelines on termination of pregnancy. The motion, proposed by the DUP’s Iris Robinson and Jeffrey Donaldson both of whom made reference to this petition, opposed “the introduction of the proposed guidelines on the termination of pregnancy in Northern Ireland; believes that the guidelines are flawed; and calls on the Minister of Health, Social Services and Public Safety to abandon any attempt to make abortion more widely available in Northern Ireland.” After the second half of the debate the Assembly resolved, without a recorded vote, in favour of the motion. Leaving the Health Minister to re-draft guidelines which took 3 years to draft and which the Department, after a lengthy court battle, had to be instructed by a High Court ruling to produce. However, despite the expressed concerns of various MLAs during the debate, the legislation involved is a reserved matter and, as such, the proposed guidelines do not, as some argued, change the legal position here on this issue.
The MLAs resolved the following
Question, That the amendment be made, put and negatived.
Main Question put and agreed to.
Resolved:
That this Assembly opposes the introduction of the proposed guidelines on the termination of pregnancy in Northern Ireland; believes that the guidelines are flawed; and calls on the Minister of Health, Social Services and Public Safety to abandon any attempt to make abortion more widely available in Northern Ireland.
Sending the Health Minister back to the drawing board.. [Have the NI Human Rights Commission got anything to say? - Ed]
Pete Baker @ 04:39 PM
Abortion is contentious within political parties and voting suicide hence public debate on the subject tends to be stiffled in NI. Whilst acknowledging that morally/politically it is relevant to men and women, I also think that this will remain the case as long as men dominate political parties (and the fourth estate!).
Posted by on Oct 23, 2007 @ 06:56 PMIt seems we are british with british rights only when it suits the DUP
Posted by on Oct 23, 2007 @ 07:43 PMThere were some truly apalling speeches in the Assembly yesterday; according to Tom Buchanan, women getting an abortion are like Nazis shovelling Jews into the ovens at Auschwitz. Yes, of course Tom, flighty women get abortions for a laugh because they can’t control their base lusts. Nice stereotype.
It’s a bit like my one that DUP politicians are a shower of semi-literate, self-righteous, hate-filled bigots who are obsessed with shoving their 17th Century morality down other people’s throats… oh, sorry, Tom actually confirms that stereotype.
It’s a pity that other crises meant this shite didn’t get more coverage in the media, it might make a few people realise that they need to get off their arses and make it clear to their MLAs that many people in this country take a less restrictive pro-life or actively pro-choice position. You would be surprised how many of our elected representatives would change their tune on this subject if they didn’t get 10,000 postcards from the Ustashe and two letters from members of the Family Planning Association every time it came up.
I’d guess there are maybe 6-10 overtly pro-choice MLAs, and probably the same again who would be against any form of abortion on demand but would favour some expansion of the welfare and health grounds in which abortion is already permitted in Northern Ireland. There might be more as I suspect a fair minority of the SF MLAs take a more liberal approach in private but their party policy currently forces them into voting for the status quo.
I actually think that a hell of a lot more than 10-18% of the population here would favour either limited or total relaxation of the abortion laws. I therefore don’t buy into the idea that being pro-choice is political suicide. There is a huge gap in the political market for people prepared to stand up and be counted on this issue - although you would have to put up with serious abuse (late night phone calls, pickets on your house, random weirdos hurling abuse at you on the street) from the Gerry McGeough fan club, sorry, I mean Precious Life.
Then again, maybe as long as Easyjet flights to Glasgow are cheaper than a night out and the NHS pays the abortion bills, people can keep their head down and pretend that they don’t need to take on the Ustashe-Orange coalition. Anything for a quiet life, and it won’t be my daughter who’ll sneak off on her own, terrified, to a clinic in Scotland at the age of 17 anyway.
Disgusted of BT15.
Posted by on Oct 23, 2007 @ 09:03 PMWhat a boring snob you are Sammy. Oh (Church of Ireland) God (in heaven), will the day ever come when APNI types wake up and understand that people can disagree with them without being monsters, cf the spittle flecked rant above?
Quite relaxed about abortion being legal of BT49
[Not Darth, obviously]Posted by on Oct 23, 2007 @ 09:46 PMI don’t know if I can even find the energy to keep on being appalled at the gutlessness of our politicians. Maybe that’s how they get away with it.
We have a situation where a comfortably off couple who get inconveniently pregnant have an abortion, while a homeless teenage rape victim has a baby. No-one, whatever their views on abortion, can possibly think this is a good thing. Abortion on demand, but only for the wealthy and well-organised, is indefensible. And this is what our MLAs are defending when they scurry, shuddering, away from any examination of the issue.
I think it’s probably true that the public here takes a more nuanced view than it’s given credit for, but I doubt that hypothesis will be tested for a very long time.
Posted by on Oct 23, 2007 @ 09:52 PMI thought the ‘right on’ Shinners were pro women / pro choice. they certainly are down south.
ermintude - good to see you standing up for the homeless teenage rape victim. how about the HTRV’s baby?
Posted by on Oct 23, 2007 @ 10:02 PMActually, I think that they are probably reading the mood of the electorate correctly on this subject.
Northern Ireland is a very conservative place, and abortion is one of those subjects that makes people very twitchy. I did a few posts here on Slugger some months back following one of the cases in the South, and the vitriol I received personally was incredible, both on and off line. Any time Susan McKay writes about it in the Irish News, there is a deluge of letters declaiming her in the paper as well.
I was talking about this to someone recently, and I am of the opinion that when we migrate to our less sectarian future, people like Paisley will be appealing to an unimagined audience by virtue of his uber conservative views on sexuality and abortion. I have heard catholics whisper their admiration of their views on abortion, and it will only be a matter of time before we see right and left wings emerging here (hopefully)
So, while it may look like the same old same old from the Assembly, I reckon they truly speak in the name of the people on this issue.
We could always test it with a referendum. Look how successful that was down south!
Posted by on Oct 23, 2007 @ 10:05 PMOK, as a resident of Northern Ireland, the rights that you would expect from a normal 21st Century democracy can be guaranteed from one source and and one source only….and that’s Westminster. Wake up Sammy.
Posted by on Oct 23, 2007 @ 10:05 PMmiss fitz
They weren’t discussing changing the law.
They were just opposing further discussion on draft guidelines that they had been forced by the courts to publish.
Posted by on Oct 23, 2007 @ 10:10 PMEven the Alliance shy away from this issue leaving it “as a matter of conscience”. My conscience says that it’s a disgrace for young women to be forced to run off to Liverpool or London in order to have abortions. While I strongly disagree with idiots using abortion as a form of contraception (there are far better and less painful options) the Assembly position on abortion is apallingly backward this is the 21st century.
Posted by on Oct 23, 2007 @ 10:10 PMWhat a boring snob you are Sammy. Oh (Church of Ireland) God (in heaven), will the day ever come when APNI types wake up and understand that people can disagree with them without being monsters, cf the spittle flecked rant above?
Don’t talk shite.
People obviously have the right to disagree with me (but it is your form to assume that I think they can’t); and there is an entirely reasonable pro-life case to be made. It was made by (say) John McCallister or Carmel Hanna.
It wasn’t made by Tom Buchanan badly reading out a speech that said:
“As we look back, we cringe at the number of Jews who were gassed or murdered by Hitler, and rightly so, yet in today’s so-called civilised society, we witnessed 200,000 abortions across the UK last year, which is 600 a week and 50 to 60 children an hour”
That’s right, anyone who supports any relaxation of the current abortion law is a Nazi and a mass muderer! And of course, anyone who responds to being called a Nazi and a mass murderer is a ‘snob’.
And why is this Auschwitz taking place…
“Virtually none of those abortions are performed on women who become pregnant through rape or incest, or because the babies are unhealthy or handicapped or because those pregnancies may cause a threat to the life or health of the mother.”
That’s right, flighty little floozies getting abortions for frivolous reasons because of their debased lusts leading them into trouble. They were probably drunk when they did it as well.
So twats like Buchanan perpetuate a situation where the abortion rate (which no-one really knows) in Northern Ireland seems to be higher than that in some abortion-on-demand countries like Holland and Belgium, and where working-class women are effectively denied reproductive health options that middle-class women get access to (albeit often at great personal cost) by going to Scotland, England or Holland.
But I’m the snob?
Oh, and use your normal user name. You never change your writing style anyway.
Posted by on Oct 23, 2007 @ 10:29 PMOK, as a resident of Northern Ireland, the rights that you would expect from a normal 21st Century democracy can be guaranteed from one source and and one source only….and that’s Westminster
So why didn’t they extend the 1967 Act during 26 years of unimpeded direct rule. An Act which, despite the vitriol I’m going to receive, I think is insufficiently restrictive.
Actually, I think that they are probably reading the mood of the electorate correctly on this subject.
Do you really think that over four-fifths of the electorate are opposed to any liberalisation of the abortion law?
As for the abuse people get, that’s a direct result of the propaganda pushed by people like Tom Buchanan going unchallenged. If you spend years telling people their political opponents are Nazis, you’re going to see some fairly unpleasant opinions expressed. Not to mention schools and church groups pushing propaganda like The Silent Scream.
Some years ago, I got into a little tussle with some of the pro-life lot about the Brook Clinic appearing at a community event. The irony then was that I was at that stage in life opposed to abortion in most circumstances, probably holding a position not terribly different from the current legal position in NI in fact, and the issue was a simple freedom of speech one for me. Over a decade later, one of these loonies still feels he has the right to hurl abuse at me - often quite literally spittle-flecked - on the street.
But at the end of the day, are you going to roll over and play dead because of this lot?
Posted by on Oct 23, 2007 @ 10:42 PMPete
Please don’t lecture me in a condescending manner. I am aware of the substance of the debate, and I have made my contribution to the wider context of the issues concerned.Thank you
Posted by on Oct 23, 2007 @ 11:28 PMmiss fitz
Sorry if you thought I was patronising in my comment, that was not the intention.
I was just attempting to clarify what the actual discussion in the Assembly was about.
Not the same old same old, but actually a retrograde step from where they had been forced to be by the courts.
Posted by on Oct 23, 2007 @ 11:34 PMThe same Iris Robinson who declared that integrated education feeds off sectarianism! Yeah Iris, the same way police feed off crime ffs.
Jeffrey Donaldson! Number 1 career politician, who knew the UUP boat would sink under the weight of GFA transitions, only for him to jump to the DUP to ensure he wouldn’t lose his seat and the means by which to get his voice heard; only for him to re-operate under the very same form of governance which the DUP and he condemned.
Political scoundrels the pair of them and if what Pete suggests is true then they are both merely flying in the face of a predetermined policy which is in need of guidelines.
Such people of great integrity. Feed us more moralism please - aye catch yourselves on.
Besides, the health service should be accessible to all with each case having the chance to be put to a professional doctor and considered on an individual basis. Where’s the equality in all this, eh? The opportunity to avail of the Health service in itself is hardly an inticement to do as one pleases as it can be a very intrusive enivronment and one likely to encourage better protection next time round.
And moreover, if the morning after pill wasn’t so damn expensive and itself quite restrictive then this may well help to cut down on state intrusion into people’s sex lives. Those individuals who wish to access the health service have to countenance certain political-cohorts’ moralism in such an overbearing way that disproportionately affects their chances of accessing good medical care and leaves a stigmatism on them in certain quarters even if they get that chance.
The voting bloc in N Ireland is conservative, that’s agreed; but then it would be the same receptive parties that if politically expedient would wish to castigate homosexuals and bi-sexuals and so on and so forth.
More state moralism, nah you’re alright, just give us all access to services which other UK citizens seem to be able to get local access to.
Posted by on Oct 23, 2007 @ 11:43 PMI had to watch my then-girlfriend get on a plane at the age of 21 to go to England for an abortion about 13 years ago.
The lies we told. The sneaking around we did to get money to pay for it all. To this day, I don’t know how we “got away with it”...how our respective parents never found out.
It is with some considerable sadness that I find that the political attitude to this has not changed in that time.
We can get the Chuckle brothers around a table. Get the guns off the street (mostly).
But offer abortion to people who frankly (and I talk about herself and I here) were too immature to consider bringing up a baby, at a time when careers were starting, when we had no money, when we would still have been marked out as social pariahs, and when ultimately, we had no idea if we’d still be together as a couple six months hence? That isn’t possible?
There are those who would take a “did-the-crime-do-the-time” line on this. I don’t want to get into the rights and wrongs of what we did. I probably shouldn’t even be posting this stuff, but hey - the site offers a certain anonymity, and I can bear the slings and arrows of whatever criticism follows from afar.
But I really wish - right or wrong as it may have been - that we could have done what we did without an 800 mile round trip, and that some form of support other than the Samaritans, bless them, had been there.
Apologies if I have transgressed any site rules by getting personal about this.
Posted by on Oct 23, 2007 @ 11:49 PMNot at all, Raven.
Thank you.
Your personal testimony is a very welcome intrusion of the reality of the circumstances of individuals who find themselves compromised by this debate.
Posted by on Oct 23, 2007 @ 11:59 PMSammy
“Oh, and use your normal user name. You never change your writing style anyway.”
Just in case you mean me, despite the uncanny similarity of declared email addresses, Ahem and I are different people. Ahem, I assume no confusion was intended, or was “spittle flecked” an homage to the recent contretemps between Sammy and I. (Feel free to tell me that you’ve got a life and have no interest in our arcane squabbles.)
From my perspective, I think Ahem’s criticism of you was intermperate, yet understandable. I think the issue is one on which people rarely give of their best, because the tendency is always to see (and, worse, to portray) the other side of the debate as unfeeling monsters - as Mr Buchanan did in the Assembly. Disappointingly, you criticise Buchanan, seemingly without a sense of irony, yet in the same breadth call down your outrageous Ustaše calumny upon the heads of pro-lifers.
Personally, I’m pro-life, but certainly not unthinkingly or un-nuancedly so. I have genuine respect for those whose views on this issue are informed by compassion for both lives concerned. I just generally hear those views coming more from the pro-life side of the debate. Not an easy position for a lefty - many close friends think of me as a kind of “one-issue Antichrist”. Some former close friends are no longer close friends due to discussions on this issue.
I’m not sure whether I prefer the law here or in the south, but I sure as hell prefer them both to the situation where a 24 week-old British child can be destroyed. I certainly don’t have any definitive answer on how a democratic, yet compassionate and culturally-Christian society should address this issue, but I think that starting from a point where our opponents are, ipso facto, fascists is neither helpful, nor mature.
As for the argument that we should change our laws because neighbouring countries have different laws affording a lower level of protection to the unborn, I think that’s a staggeringly weak, intellectually lazy and unprincipled position. Pragmatism is not always admirable, particularly where it relates to the taking of children’s lives.
This is one area where I think our society does better than other societies, and where public policy and law reflect the mood, belief and policy preference of the populace. I can understand why some people are dissatisfied with that. So, organise, campaign, persuade. Don’t just call those who disagree with you fascists and have done with it.
Raven
Thanks for sharing. In honesty, I’m not sure that I think our society should have allowed you to take another life, however early on in that life, however traumatic you found the prospect of parenthood and social opprobrium, simply because taking responsibility for that life would have been inconvenient for you from a career perspective, or because you considered yourself insufficiently mature to take such responsibility (a curously mature analysis).
However, “do the crime, do the time” is, of course, a hopelessly un-compassionate attitude to this issue. Having helped a close friend and her boyfriend through this horror at university (and, I hope, maintaining some measure of both integrity and compassion thoughout), I can only sympathise with what must have been an uncomfortable position. However, sometimes it is the role of the state to take such decisions out of our hands. I don’t think it’s really so bad that there’s one country in Western Europe where the unborn child is afforder at least in-principle protected against those in such positions of discomfort.
Not an easy one at all….
Posted by on Oct 24, 2007 @ 01:14 AM“However, sometimes it is the role of the state to take such decisions out of our hands.”
Perhaps out of our hands, but it doesn’t go further, like an all encompassing entity, and bring it up on the individual’s behalf.
You are describing an end outcome to an input that isn’t commensurate with the belief that you hold around conception in that moralism is the driver behind it when ultimately it is natures curse in the throes of young life or early adulthood where the brain’s development is left in second place to sexual development.
Christian moralism is not necessarily what drove the desires and to apply it retrospectively upon individuals who themselves have no desire to pursue such thoughts leads to the opinion that it is a battle for Christian supremacy insides the individual’s minds.
Posted by on Oct 24, 2007 @ 01:41 AMAnd the primacy of the female is the reason for emphasis on the primacy of the individual in providing the reason around the definitive decision.
Posted by on Oct 24, 2007 @ 01:54 AMI fail to see how it took 3 years to draft these guidelines-given that he is only in post 5 months,they are so vague they could be interpreted to mean anything-constructive ambiguity raising it’s head again.Dr Deeneys contribution to the debate was most informative,the interpretation of guidelines in England have led to de facto abortion on demand.incidently marie stopes had a vision that allowing the poor or uneducated to have children weakened the species, exactly the kind of eugenics that the nazis subscribed to.Watch out Al Gore will be advocating euthanasia and abortion to save our planet from environmental calamity caused by over population.
Posted by on Oct 24, 2007 @ 04:58 AMDC
Genuinely, some of that went over my head. I’m not sure what you meant by your first sentence and your second post.
As regards you second sentence, conception is not a curse for the child conceived. You simply choose to disregard that child’s interests. I cannot respect such a position. I think you are trying to decry my position as one based on moralism - nothing could be further from the truth. I haven’t a moralistic bone in my body. My position is based on a balance of compassion, and a recognition of competing, and difficult-to-reconcile interests.
As to to your third sentence, again, if you choose to decry and dismiss my position as “moralism”, this cannot be anything other than a sterile, hostile debate; a mere exchange of conclusions. Up to you, but no-one admires the attacker of straw men.
I’m not seeking to impose any Christian precepts upon the parents of unborn. My view is simply not informed by Christian principles. I’m a big believer in pluralism. Instead, I’m saying that the parents have interests and the child has interests, and the State must protect both those interests to the extent possible. To my mind, it will be in rare occasions that the interests of the parents (financial security, physical well-being, mental health, social standing, ambition, convenience) will outweigh that of the child (existence).
Is that really such a difficult position to respect that it must alwasy be dismissed as Christian moralism?
Posted by on Oct 24, 2007 @ 06:01 AMFeel compelled to agree with MCT on one point: I genuinely can’t understand what DC is waxing so poetically about in those last few comments. Assuming DC is actually is; about something; whatever that may be.
Dismissing positions on abortions as moralistic is redundant, because that’s really the bulk of the argument. The fundamental problem is when and why you draw a line during the time between (even) a half-cell and a full kid pushed out into the world.
Posted by on Oct 24, 2007 @ 06:30 AMahem
Nothing to do with APNI.
I disagree with Sammy‘s comments on the issue, although I agree entirely about the standard of contribution (low from Buchanan, high from Hanna, etc).
And can we stop this “pro-life”/“pro-choice” rubbish? It’s “pro-abortion” and “anti-abortion”.
Posted by on Oct 24, 2007 @ 08:20 AMIJP, the “pro-life” and “pro-choice” descriptions amount to an attempt to try to make the debate more civilized, so that people don’t have to be called “anti-” anything. Otherwise, the pro-choice folks would want to refer to those who disagree with them as “anti-choice” and as such portray their opponents as authoritarian. I appreciate that this probably seems a bit twee, but trying to set parameters for civilized conversation seems to be necessary in this particular debate as it doesn’t take long for the respective sides to become entrenched in a nasty slanging match. Let’s see how far we get with this thread.
I find the contradictions on the pro-life side of things to be the most interesting part of these discussions. I’m not characterizing anyone on this thread, but the people you hear foaming at the mouth on this matter are the same people foaming at the mouth about single mothers on welfare, supporting the death penalty, etc. I also feel that if people are going to take the view that life is precious and must be preserved from the moment of conception, surely that continues to apply after the child is actually born.
Personally I tend to slavishly avoid dealing with the question of abortion. I think most people do not agree with a free-for-all abortion on demand situation (as Sammy Morse says, the 1967 act is too liberal here), and as such I’d suggest that the first step is to ensure proper education and availability of support concerning family planning etc, so that people resort to abortion less and less. As a society we also need to look at why teenage pregnancies are occurring at greater frequency, and why there seems to be a correlation between this and poverty/educational underachievement.
On another note, immediately when anyone compares anything to the Nazis (often the same people who carelessly use phrases like “ethnic cleansing” with no regard to the circumstances where the term was first coined) I switch off, as that person has kindly informed me that they aren’t mature or informed enough to make an intelligent contribution.
Posted by on Oct 24, 2007 @ 09:33 AM
