Irish abortion bill going to final vote in lower house...
 

The last in a series of votes on allowing limited abortion in the Irish Republic is expected in the lower house of the Irish parliament later.

The bill allows for a termination when three doctors unanimously agree that a woman is at risk of taking her life.

Anti-abortion activists say the measure could lead to more widespread abortion

Others argue the bill is too limited as it does not allow for terminations in cases of rape or incest, or when there is a foetal abnormality.

Nor does it allow for termination when the foetus cannot survive outside the womb

Anti-abortion campaigners say that the Protection of Life During Pregnancy Bill will allow the intentional killing of the unborn for the first time in the Irish Republic

For them, in a largely Catholic country, it is not just a religious but a human rights issue as they believe that in any pregnancy the mother and foetus have equal rights to life.

Members of parliament (TDs) who support access to abortion say the bill ignores the fact that, on average, 11 women leave the country every day for an abortion in Britain

Since a Supreme Court ruling in 1992, known as the X case, abortion has been constitutionally available where a woman's life, as distinct from her health, is at risk from the continued pregnancy.

X was a suicidal 14-year-old schoolgirl who had been raped by a neighbour and was initially prevented from leaving the country for an abortion in Britain.

Since then the credible threat of suicide is, constitutionally, regarded as grounds for a termination.

But in the intervening years, until now, no government has introduced legislation to give doctors legal certainty on when an abortion can be carried out.

And that uncertainty provided part of the context for the Savita Halappanavar case.

She was a 31-year-old Indian dentist who was admitted to hospital in Galway in October 2012 while miscarrying

She died a week later from an infection brought on by septicaemia and the e-coli virus.

Her request for an abortion was turned down.

Her inquest heard that she could not get a termination at the time because her life was not in danger but, by the time her life was at risk, an abortion would have been too late to save her.

Her inquest also heard there were systems failures in her health care

The Fine Gael-Labour coalition government says its proposed legislation will bring the law and constitution into line.

In a vote last week, the government had an overwhelming 138 to 24 vote majority.

It is expected to have another very comfortable majority later but it may not be quite as large.

Last week, four Fine Gael TDs defied the party whip and voted against the bill.

They were immediately expelled from the parliamentary party.

There is considerable media interest over whether the junior minister with responsibility for European affairs, Lucinda Creighton, will join them.

An anti-abortion supporter, she has put down a number of amendments that the coalition seems set to reject.

In her contribution last week she alienated many in Fine Gael by mentioning "group think" on the issue and many of her colleagues believe she will have no option but to vote against the measure and lose her ministerial job.

Once the bill completes its passage in the lower house, the Dáil, it will go to the upper house, the Seanad.

Thirty-five thousand people marched through the streets of Dublin last weekend to protest against the measure but the controversial bill is still set to become law by the end of this month

I think it's really backwards that abortion isn't allowed in Ireland. Hopefully with the passing of this bill (if it even gets through - I wouldn't be surprised if it didn't) further changes will be introduced so that Irish women have the right to get an abortion if they want to... It's just mad.

Backward Country.......Backward Religion

There is currently an 11yr old girl in Chile who was raped repeatedly by her mothers partner, currently unable to have an abortion.

Religion is a ******.

Excuse me? No need to be so rude.

Yes.........that didn't come across the way I intended... I meant backward in their way of dealing with religion and religious issues...

No offence to Irish people intended (I am myself half Irish on my mothers side)

The church really doesn't control the country like it used to, infact if it was put to a referendum now I'd be pretty confident that it would be passed easily enough, the problem is our politicians are useless, they get nothing done

It may be mad but the extreme system we have at the other end of the spectrum is also mad.....we need to find a far better balance than the nightmare we have where 1 million innocent babies are aborted every 6 years in the UK

Nature aborts more babies than anything/one else. I suggest you look to regulate nature/dog before you worry about the choices women make individually about their own reproductive systems.

utter nonsense.

How so, Dr. Truth?

1 million babies aborted in 6 years is way too high a number, you don't care I do. we need to find ways to bring the figure down. you don't care so why even waste my time discussing it?

It's not that I don't care, but the only solution to the problem as you see it, is to force women to carry unwanted pregnancies to term. I don't think that is fair or humane.

..is that an accurate figure truth..where is that statistic..?..

youre lying now

Tell me what you think I'm lying about.

yes its actually more than 1 million and that's just in England and wales , its a phenomenally high number... .heres the figures from 2011 and 2010 Ill get the rest later....In 2011, 189,931 abortions were performed in England and Wales compared to 189,574 in 2010, a rise of 0.2% and and 7.7% more than in 2001, which saw 176,364 procedures performed

everything in your previous sentence was lie

It wasn't. You need to explain why you think that's the case.

Do those figures include medically advised terminations due to birth defects etc?

...I don't know the statistics, one site I looked at said 7.6 million since abortion was made legal 45 years ago which although is much lower, I still found it quite shocking...personally as a mother, I don't think I would ever have an abortion but I don't think it should be illegal either because all that will do is force women to risk their own lives by seeking illegal abortions..a women isn't just a carrier of a child, there may be lots of reasons why it wouldn't be good for her to have the child..maybe in an ideal world then those babies would be born and allowed to be brought up by some of the many families that can't have a child by natural birth, but that's never going to happen because it's not fair or reasonable to try to force a woman to go through 9 months of pregnancy with a child that could have been conceived in any kind of traumatic way or that she is unable to cope with emotionally and maybe sometimes even physically...what would you think 'a balance' would be..?...

Imagine being raped and being forced to carry that child to term... and then either you raise it yourself, every day you are living with the product of your worst nightmare; or you give the child up for adoption... what happens when that child gets older and they want to know why they don't have a dad, or they're adopted? I can't even imagine how gut wrenching it would feel to know that you were the product of a crime and that your mother either couldn't face up to keeping you in her life/your mother had to be reminded of what happened to her every single day. And none of that would be your fault because you didn't rape your mum, you didn't somehow cause your dad to rape your mum, you were just the result of a horrific experience. Shouldn't children have the right to know that they were the result of a loving relationship? Knowing that they were planned, or at least welcomed even if it wasn't planned? I'm not saying every woman who is raped who carries a child to term hates her child; in fact I'm fairly certain the child would be the one positive thing you would focus on - but the child still has the knowledge that they were the result of a rape. Or should the mother never tell the child and be forced to keep it to herself?

I mean I just think it's impossible to say that every conception should be carried to term regardless of the circumstances. Contraceptives fail, crimes happen, miscarriages unfortunately occur, sometimes people make bad judgment calls, sometimes couples get pregnant to save their relationship and it falls apart anyway, some people have children they will never love and can't wait to get back to looking out for themselves rather than a child...

I certainly don't remember being in my mother's womb. That's not to say I wasn't a sentient being with my own fingers, toes and tiny little brain developing inside of her, but up until that point (or a couple of weeks before it) when doctors say it's no longer viable to have an abortion, I think it's different. They are medical professionals, they know what they're talking about. And above all - why on earth should a law be able to dictate what happens to a person's body? Who is anyone else to decide what you can and can't do with your body? Some people, for a great number of reasons, may not be ready at that moment in their life to have that particular foetus turn into a baby and they're certainly not ready to stop making their own life about themselves. Why would a bystander want to see a child be brought into the world by someone who doesn't want to have that child? To me, that's cruelty...

as I say we need a better balance....the irish example is absurd, but the UK situation with 1 million+ abortions every 6 years is absurd and tragic too.
Far more safeguards need to be in place, far more advice, support systems etc to parents....more babies survive now at 24 weeks than ever before....alas the number who abort due to rape is tiny, the number who abort for health reasons is also small, the vast majority it seems are choices...which is tragic....why do these parents / mothers feel they have no option but to terminate the babies life, when no ones life is at risk and no rape has occurred? then many live to regret it the rest of their lives and the poor baby has no life to regret....our rates are some of the highest in the world...its sad and we need to see politicians and people discuss it without the sexism feminist card being thrown about.....after all of those 1 million babies killed over 500,000 are female

too much value placed on the sanctity of life... the world's too overpopulated as it is. Let mums abuse their wombs if they want to. Nobody else's decision.

is this a suicide note?