Monday, October 13, 2008
“the right to have access to safe and legal abortion..”
Mick’s note on the Brit Blog Round Up, and the use there of a quote, from the comments zone here, on Hazel Blears’ discomforture on Hearts and Minds last week..
“Anyone who saw Hazel Blears’ discomfiture when asked about her voting intentions on Hearts and Minds can see the problem facing many Labour MPs, especially women like Blears, Harman, Hewitt etc. who made their names as women’s rights activists and are now being asked to say they believe a woman’s right to choose is a fundamental right for women in Scotland, England and Wales but not NI. Some will abstain and that may lose us the vote, but it is a free vote and many will vote with their consciences despite what Gordon brown is saying to them.”
.. reminded me that I posted the full interview on YouTube [Part 1 and Part 2]. That “discomforture” is worth highlighting.
It’s a discomforture which might suggest the briefest of victories ahead with the first amendment to the Embryology Bill being passed, only to be curtailed by the second. Thereby allowing Labour MPs to claim a clear conscience on the issue whilst placing any decision on the “right to have access to safe and legal abortion” back in the hands of our local legislators administrators.. where it’s been stagnating for some time..
Pete Baker @ 12:45 PM
I was amused at how she kept repeating I am a UK MP. I think she meant to say British as opposed to UK, otherwise she was undermining her own argument.
Posted by on Oct 13, 2008 @ 01:15 PMIt’s perfectly consistent with British Labour’s hands-off approach to Northern Ireland, but given she was sitting in a studio in Belfast she presumably didn’t want to say ‘I don’t give a shit about you lot’. So we’ll have to rely on the SDLP’s votes, then :)
Posted by on Oct 13, 2008 @ 01:43 PMFunny how all our MPs happily voted to limit access to abortion for women in England, Scotland and Wales to twelve weeks, but are now claiming it’s unfair for MPs from the rest of the UK to vote to change the (appalling) situation here…
Posted by on Oct 13, 2008 @ 01:52 PMVote “Kill the babies!!” should be the slogan. or is that putting it in too uncomfortable terms?
Lets make it a ‘rights’ thing and then whoever is asking for the rights can claim to be discriminated against, thereby creating a ‘wrong’ that must be righted by giving them what they want. then use words like abort and foetus instead of disturbing words like kill and baby.
How could anyone argue against a woman who just wanted the right to abort a foetus? awwww....Posted by on Oct 13, 2008 @ 03:17 PMThe way she kept referring to the UK it was obvious that she didn’t really think that Northern Ireland was really a part of it!!
Posted by on Oct 13, 2008 @ 04:00 PM...then use words like kill and baby, instead of accurate words like abort and foetus.
Posted by on Oct 13, 2008 @ 06:33 PMAlso,
Edmund burke and his speech to the electors of Bristol:
Parliament is not a congress of ambassadors from different and hostile interests; which interests each must maintain, as an agent and advocate, against other agents and advocates; but parliament is a deliberative assembly of one nation, with one interest, that of the whole; where, not local purposes, not local prejudices, ought to guide, but the general good, resulting from the general reason of the whole. You choose a member indeed; but when you have chosen him, he is not member of Bristol, but he is a member of parliament. If the local constituent should have an interest, or should form an hasty opinion, evidently opposite to the real good of the rest of the community, the member for that place ought to be as far, as any other, from any endeavour to give it effect.
Posted by on Oct 13, 2008 @ 06:40 PM“abort and foetus”
“kill and baby”
Abort is not accurate re: willfull child destuction or deliberate causation of miscarriage. Abort can mean Spontaneous abortion, accidental abortion, indirecta abortion etc etc.
Kill on the other hand is quite clear and correct.
Foetus means young one (greek)
Hmmmm..... Young what in this case.....Human?
What is a young human often called? ah yes , a BABY!Jackpot.
Posted by on Oct 14, 2008 @ 12:02 AMjust give the women the choice !!!
Posted by on Oct 14, 2008 @ 12:18 AM“just give the women the choice !!!”
any one who gives me the “choice” to kill my baby might find I am not prepaerd to break sections of the Offences against the Person Act involving Illegal Abortion but I might be tempted to break those involving murder! Or at least GBH.
Posted by on Oct 14, 2008 @ 12:30 AM<i>just give the women the choice !!!
Posted by NP on Oct 14, 2008 @ 01:18 AM<>
As a liberal (rather than a pseudo liberal) I say give the weakest and most defenceless in society the choice (ie the foetuses).
Posted by on Oct 14, 2008 @ 12:47 AM“the right to have access to safe and legal mutilation of little babies”. ??!!!
Posted by on Oct 14, 2008 @ 01:29 AMMy God...something other than the reality of the Great Flood that many the Prods and Catholics seem to agree on.
Still its great to see them fighting to stop legal abortion morally polluting our wee bit of Ireland....while we pack our wives and daughters off to England to get it done quietly there.
Is it such a noisy process we don’t want our consciences disturbed?
Posted by on Oct 14, 2008 @ 06:21 AMCynic,
There are people also going to Thailand to abuse children, on your rational we should legalise the abuse of children then?
If people breaking the law or going to other countries to avail of a more lax system meant that there should be no law in the first place there wouldnt be many criminal statutes left.
Posted by on Oct 14, 2008 @ 07:31 AMA fetus, or an embryo, or a fertilised egg is not a child. All these things are only POTENTIAL people. It takes more than being born to make an embryo a baby. It’s a pity that such archaic, hysterical rhetoric has been allowed to flourish unchallenged here for so long. Good luck to the pro-choice campaign.
Posted by on Oct 14, 2008 @ 09:32 AMsave the trees
kill the children
Posted by on Oct 14, 2008 @ 10:20 AMis it sensible?
Posted by on Oct 14, 2008 @ 10:20 AM“It takes more than being born to make an embryo a baby.”
Em, can you explain this statement? I assume it’s a joke.
Posted by on Oct 14, 2008 @ 10:30 AMwhile we pack our wives and daughters off to England to get it done quietly there
The well to do don’t have to do that, Cynic. They just go and see their friend the surgeon and have themselves a comfortable D&C;.
Posted by on Oct 14, 2008 @ 11:41 AMDanny Boy,
“POTENTIAL people”
Ahh yes, that well know medical phenomenon.
“archaic, hysterical rhetoric”
Other wise known as the “fall back position of the lunatic left”.Reality sucks dosen’t it Danny Boy? Cant keep being a New Egotist when things like babies get in the way.
Your statement is not only senseless but its terrilbe metaphisics, and worse biology.
I cant remember whan I was in hospital with my babies (in utero) any Consultant saying “your potential person is doing well, look there are his arms and legs and his wee face, what a lovely potential person yo have there!”
Wise up.
Posted by on Oct 14, 2008 @ 01:04 PMEllen,
Surely the abortion issue cuts well across left/right divisions, especially here. There are plenty of left-wing people opposed to abortion, and plenty of right-wing people in favour of it. In the UK, there is no significant opposition from the political right, unlike the US. The opposition is mainly religious.
Posted by on Oct 14, 2008 @ 01:21 PMGaribaldy,
I agree. It is not a right /left argument. Personally I treat with suspicion both of these political wings and speak as a Catholic.
I used the term “luntic left” because I suspect that someone who levels the particular accusation of “archaic, hysterical rhetoric” might fall into that camp. I accept it might have been “sweeping”.
However I am aware that in this country especially, many people are against abortion, whatever their politics.
Posted by on Oct 14, 2008 @ 01:37 PM“POTENTIAL people”
Ah yes and so reminiscent of that fine policy upheld by US courts in the 19th century that asserted a black slave was only, what was it again, one eighth human?
Funny how we sit back in smug self congratulation at how enlightened we are today about such things and judge the men of the past by our modern standards. I wonder how well our society will be judged in future centuries when we applaud silly women who throw themselves to their deaths to protest the poor treatment of veal calves but who believe it is a fundamental human right to stick a fork in the brain of a baby already half way out of the birth canal, or worse leaving it to die in a surgical tray having been born alive (ask Barack Obama, he seems quite keen on this).
My wife is currently pregnant, try telling her that the living being inside her womb is not a human baby and you might need some reconstructive dental surgery.
Posted by on Oct 14, 2008 @ 02:11 PMNo-one should be forced to be pregnant. I, like many other people, including most of the medical profession, do not think a fetus is a living human person. Regardless of whether you think they are or not, there is no other circumstance in which the law requires a person to relinquish control over their own body in order to make someone else live - even in cases where organ donation is a human being’s only hope of survival, nobody is legally required to submit to invasive and dangerous procedures to share part of their body with them. Pregnancy and childbirth is a hell of a lot more invasive than most surgical donations I can think of. The fact that women are legally required to submit to it against their will here says more about how little we value women’s humanity than how much we value that of fertilised eggs.
Posted by on Oct 14, 2008 @ 02:49 PM“It takes more than being born to make an embryo a baby.”
A press agent helps in Malibu
Posted by on Oct 14, 2008 @ 04:52 PM
