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“Pro-life” Laws: Totally Fucked.

Jill


This seems relevant.

In Brazil, poor women are routinely maimed and even killed by illegal abortion. But that’s cool with the “pro-life” Catholic church, so long as women have to be held “responsible” for their misbehavior by dying. And that goes for contracting HIV, too. No, really:

“We cannot agree with condoms because they turn life into a life without responsibility,” Cardinal Geraldo Majella, head of the National Bishops Council, said just before this year’s Carnival celebrations, when the government gave out condoms.

Archbishop Angelo Amato last week called gay marriage evil, abortions terrorism, and their clinics slaughterhouses.

Abstinence or death, bitches.

And then there’s Ireland, where a 17-year-old girl is pregnant with a fetus that has such severe brain abnormalities that it will not live for more than a few days after birth (if even that long) — and instead of allowing her to go to Britian for an abortion, the Irish government refused to let her leave the country. So she may be forced to give birth to a baby with a large part of its brain missing, that will probably not live for more than a few hours. But she may have a chance at terminating the pregnancy if she can convince medical experts that she’s going to kill herself:

Ireland’s constitution was altered by national referendum in 1983 to give unborn children equal rights to life as mothers. In 1992, a teenager aged 14, who became pregnant through being raped, was refused permission to travel abroad in order to get an abortion. The case eventually went to the supreme court in Ireland where, because she was considered to be at risk of suicide, the decision was finally made to allow her to leave the republic for the operation. Since 1992, four governments have refused to introduce legislation confirming the supreme court’s judgment, and instead tried to get public support for a more restricted move. During 2002, a constitutional amendment which was designed to remove the threat of suicide as legal grounds for an abortion was narrowly defeated in a national referendum.

Totally, thoroughly fucked. I can’t think of a nicer way to put it. I’ll just point out, for the one millionth time, that this is the face of the “pro-life” movement, and this is what it looks like when “pro-life” policies are the rule of law. And once again, I’m really appreciating this “Assholes” tag.

32 thoughts on “Pro-life” Laws: Totally Fucked.

  1. i don’t think pro-choice folks do themselves any favors when they justify abortions with claims that the potential child could be “unhealthy” or “unfit” in some way. there are many mothers who have chosen to have, raise, and love “damaged” children.

    i think pregnant women have all sorts of reasons to choose abortion and it should be left at that – an affirmation that a woman has a choice to make decisions about her body.

  2. I don’t know, Jonk. I agree with you completely on general principles, but I think in a country like Ireland where the abortion ban is literally written into the constitution, and where it takes a dramatic case involving a girl in state custody to even get people to pay attention because everybody else can just go to the country next door, pro-choicers ought to take every toehold we/they can get.

    I also think that the fact that there is literally no advantage to anybody in forcing Miss D. to carry to term (that old standby of “but someone could adopt the baby!” doesn’t work here no matter how imaginative you are) does make the injustice of her situation all the more blindingly obvious, even to the oblivious or indecisive. There’s nothing here to get in the way of a clear, brutal view of Patriarchy In Action, which seems like it could have the potential to make the right people uncomfortable.

  3. Actually, the courts haven’t done any such thing: it looks likely that they’ll do the opposite. The problem is the civil servants who have here in care are afraid to let her travel in case they break the law. It’s possible that the current version of the constitution might allow for abortion in those circumstances, but the government has avoided actually legislating within the rules that exist because it’s guaranteed to be controversial.

    It’ll be another ten years before we can get rid of the constitutional ban here … we need to get to a situation where enough people can be persuaded to go out and “vote for abortion” against the fanatical “pro-life” crowd rather than sitting at home and watching TV. That’s going to take a while. There’s no pressure because flying to the UK for an abortion is easy so the middle classes don’t have a problem.

  4. Agree with utsusemi. If just one abortion case has to be made publically visible, this is an incredibly sympathetic one. I really respect her for not pretending to be suicidal; and it highlights how the law makes everyone a hypocrite.
    It is weird how the abortion debate, when it’s abstract, focuses on ludicrously unsympathetic situations: “well, what if she’s eight months pregnant and just changed her mind? does she have a right to an abortion THEN? huh? huh?” But it’s a bit harder for anyone who opposes the rights of this girl not to know they’re being a giant asshole.

  5. A number of Irish politicians have spoken out in favour of Miss D, and she has some public support support two – though I have no idea where the majority stands in either case. So there’s some hope that this case will provoke a change. But there’s also a chance that the anti-choicers will sieze on its extremity to paint it as too unique to be a factor in the usual laws.

    Jonk: What you say might be the case generally, but in this one, the baby won’t just be unhealthy – it’ll have no chance of survival beyond a few days – it’s dead whatever happens.

  6. i don’t think pro-choice folks do themselves any favors when they justify abortions with claims that the potential child could be “unhealthy” or “unfit” in some way. there are many mothers who have chosen to have, raise, and love “damaged” children.

    Jonk, this isn’t about “unhealthy” or “unfit” children. This is about a child that cannot live for more than three days because it has anencephaly. It is going to die either before birth or immediately after. It’s not an option for her to raise this child.

  7. Actually, the courts haven’t done any such thing: it looks likely that they’ll do the opposite.

    Ah, misread. I’ll fix it.

  8. don’t think pro-choice folks do themselves any favors when they justify abortions with claims that the potential child could be “unhealthy” or “unfit” in some way. there are many mothers who have chosen to have, raise, and love “damaged” children.

    From my perspective, I don’t think disability activists do themselves any favors when they equate ‘the brain-dead’ or ‘the likely-to-immediately-die’ with ‘the disabled’.

    We saw the same thing in the Terri Schaivo debacle, and it’s intellectually dishonest. There are degrees. There are differences.

  9. BAD JOKE FOLLOWS:

    Once upon a time on Alitalia airlines a young good-looking Italian fellow was seated next to Cardinal on a trip to Rome. They young man was flirting with a flight attention and she was obviously pleased by his attentions.

    At some point His Eminence began to chide the young man on his behavior. Whereupon he turned to the Cardinal and said “No playa da game, no maka da rules.”

    I am constantly amazed by the blaming behavior of the Right. “Well you chose to have sex!” As if every act of lovemaking was a well thought out rational occurence by both parties.

    People that don’t drive cars shouldn’t be allowed to design them nor should the passionless lecture people with natural libidos.

  12. Pingback: The undeniable consequences of anti-choice governance « Notes from Evil Bender
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  14. Christ almighty, Colman, this is getting madder and madder. Did you know there’s going to be a demonstration outside the GPO to support Miss D’s case at 12 noon on Saturday? Doubtless the anti-choice nutjobs will be out in force, like these two charmers who were quoted in today’s Irish Times:

    Dr Berry Kiely, of the Pro-Life Campaign, said the view that abortion was the “compassionate solution” in this case was mistaken. “The minor at the centre of the case is entitled to be made fully aware of the possible consequences of going through with an abortion,” she said.

    Youth Defence spokesman Eoghan de Faoite said he found it “quite appalling that a child’s life would be ended in such a violent way simply because that child might not live long after he or she is born”.

    Because going through a pregnancy that will inevitably end with a dead baby couldn’t possibly be as traumatic as an abortion.

    The Guardian piece is a bit inaccurate and late, though – five women have had abortions arranged by the HSE, not three, and the government said yesterday afternoon that they would not prevent her leaving the country. It’s probably better to read Irish news reports on this issue.

    From today’s Irish Times:

    AG tells court girl has right to travel for abortion

    Mary Carolan, Dr Muiris Houston and Carl O’Brien

    The State does not have any power to stop a teenage girl travelling to the UK for an abortion, the High Court was told yesterday by counsel for the Attorney General.

    The 17-year-old, who is four months pregnant, is challenging the Health Service Executive’s (HSE) decision to prevent her from terminating her pregnancy abroad.

    The teenager, who can only be identified as “Miss D” and is from the Leinster region, has been in the care of the HSE since February of this year. She was told last week that her baby was suffering from anencephaly, a condition where a major part of the brain is missing. The newborn baby will not survive outside the womb for more than a few days.

    Mr Justice Liam McKechnie yesterday granted the girl leave to bring a legal action to prevent the HSE restraining her leaving the country for an abortion. The case is being rushed through the courts and it will be heard in full tomorrow.

    The girl says she was told by the HSE that it contacted gardaí to request that she should not be permitted to leave the State unless she was suicidal.

    However, Donal O’Donnell SC, for the State, said the Attorney General’s position was that the HSE had no legal power to direct the Garda to restrain a person who was the subject of an interim care order.

    Furthermore, the Garda did not have legal power to restrain the girl simply because she was the subject of a care order, while the HSE order did not restrain a person from travelling anywhere.

    Gerry Durcan SC, for the HSE, said it was anxious to take whatever course of action best secured the girl’s welfare, having regard to legal restraints where a child is subject to a care order.

    The HSE also wished to have the teenager assessed by a psychiatrist, counsel added.

    Gerard Hogan SC, for Miss D, said his client was deeply distressed and could not live through the pregnancy knowing her baby would die, but he stressed she was not suicidal.

    Abortion is illegal in Ireland, except where there is a real and substantial risk to the life, as distinct from the health, of the mother. This includes a risk arising from the threat of suicide.

    In her affidavit, the girl said her family circumstances had been strained because her mother was an alcoholic. Her father had never sought any involvement with her. Her boyfriend had agreed to bring the proceedings on her behalf as she is a minor.

    Meanwhile, The Irish Times has learned that the HSE has funded the cost of an abortion in the UK for a woman whose baby had serious congenital abnormalities that were incompatible with life outside the womb.

    It is understood approximately six other abortions for women in similar circumstances have been funded by the HSE in the last year.

    The woman, who was four months pregnant, was referred by a gynaecologist here to a colleague in Britain using an E112 form. This is an EU procedure whereby a patient’s consultant states that the person has a particular diagnosis and needs a specific procedure or treatment not available in the person’s own country. The HSE then assesses the application and decides whether to fund the treatment or not.

    It is understood that the woman, who is in her mid- to late 20s, travelled to Liverpool and had her pregnancy terminated. She has returned home and is said to be well.

    A GP who was involved in the woman’s care said: “Having immediate first-hand experience of the patient . . . I think there is a contradiction between the current case, where the HSE is attempting to prevent a 17-year-old travelling, and its approach in the case I was involved with, where the HSE funded a patient to have an abortion.”

    A spokesman for the HSE said it did not comment in individual cases.
    © 2007 The Irish Times

    http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/frontpage/2007/0502/1178025807370.html

  15. I don’t know much about Ireland, but in much of Latin America including Brazil part of the problem with lobbying to legalize abortion is that the Church is divided between conservatives who believe women should be punished for sex and leftist clergy who support human rights and have worked against discrimination and in support of the poor. In most other battles, the liberation theologists and other leftist priests side against conservative policies, but for some reason much of the leftist Church in Latin America still doesn’t support abortion which creates the illusion of a united Church and makes it easier for Catholic conservatives to claim a mandate to speak on the issue. Also, because the leftist Church publicized the atrocities that many dictatorships in the region committed, there isn’t the kind of rejection of the Church that happened in Spain after Franco where people blamed the Church for supporting him. So I guess the question is how do we change this situation?

  16. Jill, you would’ve made a good Nazi, Adolf would’ve been proud of you!

    Abortion is an affront to the creative nature of God, it negates God as Creator.

    Abortion denies the power of God to right a wrong, to show forth His glory, it negates God as redeemer.

    Abortion makes that which is good, the birth of human life, into that which is evil, the death of human life, and then calls it good, the very definition of blasphemy.

    Abortion negates the resurrection power of God as it takes flesh that is alive in it’s earthly abode (the womb) and kills it, while God takes that flesh which is dead in it’s earthly abode (the grave) and desires to make it alive.

    Abortion’s desire is to take that which was composed from the chaotic array of elemental molecules into a symphony of life infused with an eternal soul, and turn it back to the entropy of randomness, chaos, nothingness, uselessness, decay, death.

    Abortion is against all that is hopeful, all that requires faith for success; for it’s solution; annihilation, it’s goal; death, it’s dream; breaking God’s heart, it’s vision, satan’s ultimate power. Abortion is a counterfeit, for the clawprints of satan are everywhere to be found in its performance.

    Abortion disguises hate as love, bondage as freedom, choice as maturity, sin as righteousness, political correctness as wisdom.
    Abortion pits men against women, mothers against their children, fathers against God.

    Yes, Abortion is satan’s feeble attempt at killing God himself, for Abortion is a metaphor for satan; it is his coat of arms, his family crest, his logo, his brand, it belongs to him……for he laughs at its willing proponents as they craft their own self-destruction, mantled in self-deception.”

  17. Jill, you would’ve made a good Nazi, Adolf would’ve been proud of you!

    Funny, because Nazis forced “good” white Christian women to carry pregnancies to term. Doesn’t sound a whole lot like me.

    And you already kicked this schtick over at Pandagon, where Amanda figured out that you’re Shoelimpy. So kindly fuck off.

  19. To the idiot calling itself meaganG —

    Abortion is against all that is hopeful, all that requires faith for success;

    Read this account, and see just how much hope and faith that woman had. Faith and hope isn’t always enough. God doesn’t always answer prayers. And sometimes abortion is necessary for the greater good of a woman and her family.

    And BTW, God gave us free will. Get it? FREE WILL! You may decide not to get an abortion. But you have no right to declare that your exercise of free will should override our exercise of the same.

  20. The D case is – or ought to be – a clear-cut case of the Health Services Executive over-stepping its authority by directing the Gardaí to prevent the seventeen-year-old in question from leaving the country.

    That doesn’t make the law in question any less fucking stupid. I wasn’t aware until this case started that the 1983 constitutional amendment equated the ‘life’ of the fetus and the life of the mother. (Idiotic to say the thing has ‘life’ before it starts to move, anyway.) It is abso-fucking-lutely wrong to have not even a health exemption: but as long as the middle class can travel to England and the working and poorer classes bear the worst of the problem, it’s not going to change.

    Abortions aren’t performed in this country even when the ‘life of the mother’ exemption is in use. Leaving aside the lack of trained personel – no doctor on the register of medical practitioners of Ireland can perform an abortion, or their colleagues will have them struck off and banned from performing medicine in the country. Ever.

    Which always struck me as all kinds of fucked up.

  22. Do the Irish folks among us know if American anti-choicers are getting involved in the Irish abortion debates? It just seems like something they would do: several American Irish organizations are militantly anti-abortion (you have to pledge to be opposed to abortion in order to get into the ladies’ auxiliary of the Ancient Order of Hibernians, for instance, which has always struck me as a tad bizarre), and my sense is that a fair number of Irish-Americans are invested in the idea of Ireland as a pure, holy land unsullied by American secularism and materialism and whatnot. They can’t be very happy with current trends in Irish culture. I’m curious whether they’re sending fat checks to SPUC or whatever the local anti-abortion group is these days. And if so, I’d be curious about whether that will completely backfire.

  24. Sally:

    I rather suspect it. Although one would probably find it hard to prove, Youth Defence seems suspiciously well-funded for an organisation getting all its funding domestically.

    But. I am *this* much away from being a tinfoil-hat-wearing conspiracy-theorist, these days.
    So. 🙂

  25. Dr Berry Kiely, of the Pro-Life Campaign, said the view that abortion was the “compassionate solution” in this case was mistaken. “The minor at the centre of the case is entitled to be made fully aware of the possible consequences of going through with an abortion,” she said.

    Youth Defence spokesman Eoghan de Faoite said he found it “quite appalling that a child’s life would be ended in such a violent way simply because that child might not live long after he or she is born”.

    I don’t think I can actually describe how much comments like this piss me off. I heard a lot of similar comments when I went through EIFWAIL (elective induction for fetuses with anamolies incompatable with life) and it never ceases to amaze me. This child IS going to die. Period, end of story, no hope of survival, no life with a disability, is going to die. As someone who carried a child who wasn’t going to survive for a few weeks, the whole time knowing he wasn’t going to, I know what a horrible, awful, all consuming thing it is. You see your belly, you’re reminded your child is going to die. Your fetus kicks, you’re reminded your child is going to die. Some random person asks you your due date, you’re reminded your child is going to die. It is without a doubt the hardest thing I have ever endured and I cannot believe that anyone thinks forcing someone else to go through that is acceptable. She is 4 and half months pregnant with a fetus that does not have a brain, and therefore cannot feel pain, even if fetuses could at that point. If she chose to carry the pregnancy to term, that is her right, but she has decided that this is what works best for her and for the child she is carrying. Sometimes there are no good answers, you just get to choose shitty or less shitty. I was told I was a murderer, that I had chosen death for my son, and the fact of the matter was that it simply wasn’t true. Death was chosen for me, I simply made the choice of when based on my love for my child and my own sanity. Anyone that would force this girl to stay pregnant despite her desire to end her pregnancy is a monster.

  26. In Brazil, poor women are routinely maimed and even killed by illegal abortion. But that’s cool with the “pro-life” Catholic church, so long as women have to be held “responsible” for their misbehavior by dying.

    No lie. I once read a polemic by some priest or bishop or whatever the fuck he was, claiming that a “girl” who died of an illegal abortion deserves no more sympathy than a “girl” who blew herself up making a bomb.

  27. Oh, and I have found the comments about needing the know the consequences beforehand amusing. In a situation like this, where the child cannot survive, all options suck, in the general scheme of things. However, for me, ending the pregnancy early was the best thing I could have done. It was horrible, and it was hard, but it beat living every day with a child inside me who was going to die by a huge margin. I got to hold him, I got to say good bye and I got to move on with my life. Not to say get over it, because I don’t think I’ll ever “get over it”, but it allowed me to move forward, to focus on healing and to regain a semblence of a normal life. It allowed me to take time to grieve and then to decide I was ready to be pregnant again. My 10 month old son, who is the light of my life, would not be here if I hadn’t made the choice to let his brother go.

  28. Bitter Scribe, my mother said a very similar thing to me one day. “Yeah it’s unfortunate that girls die in back alley abortions, but you know, no one told them to do that. They could’ve just had the baby, you know”. I wanted to puke.

  29. In most other battles, the liberation theologists and other leftist priests side against conservative policies, but for some reason much of the leftist Church in Latin America still doesn’t support abortion which creates the illusion of a united Church and makes it easier for Catholic conservatives to claim a mandate to speak on the issue.

    Perhaps because it’s an issue of ‘women’s rights’, which many people, whether they realise it or not, prioritise somewhere below ‘human rights’. I think it’s quite possible for someone with otherwise fairly progressive politics to have a bit of a blind spot about this. Also perhaps there is a more aggressive anti-abortion movement within the church than there is relating to most other controversial issues, which makes it more difficult for liberal-minded Catholics to speak publicly against it. Particularly if they are priests or others ina position of authority, who would no doubt be targeted and possibly lose their position. Not that I think there’s any excuse, but possibly these are some reasons.

  30. The point about the 1983 amendment was that it decided the unborn was a “person” with rights. Thus it can have a lawyer and it has an equal right to life with its mother.

    The American anti-choice crowd are almost certainly funding Irish organisations in the same way Americans funded terrorists to blow up citizens of their dear ally the UK. There’s been evidence of “Christians” funding various things over here.

    Imagine the freak-out if left-wing organisations in the US were being secretly funded by European money?

  31. Question: what about the EU? I’m incredibly ignorant about this, but isn’t there some sort of human rights standard that a country has to meet before being part of it? And isn’t Ireland part of it?

    And shouldn’t this be a human rights issue? Seriously, FORBIDDEN THE GIRL TO TRAVEL?!? Romania and El Salvador, here we come…

  32. Lanoire:

    Denying access to abortion in cases such as this is not (yet) considered a human rights violation.

    And it’s not as bad as it seems: the HSE has, apparently, no authority to do what it did. Which is apparently what the court case is about.

    I can’t fathom it, myself.

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