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Sunday 27 May 2018

Ireland's 8th Amendment Referendum: What It Means And Why It Matters

Defaced Pro-Choice poster
Source: Daily Express
Yesterday, my native Ireland held a referendum to repeal the 8th Amendment, which put the unborn on an equal* footing with their mothers. The Repeal side won, paving the way for legislation to make abortion available under certain conditions. Tonight I'm going to talk about the aspects of this issue that I'm most concerned about — and I won't be pulling my punches.

The 8th Amendment to the Irish constitution states:

“The state acknowledges the right to life of the unborn and, with due regard to the equal right to life of the mother, guarantees in its laws to respect, and, as far as practicable, by its laws to defend and vindicate that right.”

Therein lies the rub: this doesn't actually work in practice. It's the fact that you end up having to choose between the personal autonomy of the mother or the life (for as long as it lasts) of the unborn. Inequality is baked in: either the mother becomes a prisoner because she's having the wrong kind of pregnancy or the unborn child is killed in the womb because it's either a massive inconvenience or it's actively endangering the mother's life. Power is either in the hands of the mother or the hands of the state on behalf of the foetus and the state has more power than the mother ever will. The debate pits the mother against her own child and either brands her a murderess for wanting to choose what she deems best for herself and her family or upholds her right to make that choice.

I am going to examine the arguments for the pro and anti abortion factions and explain my rationale for my own stance. Full disclosure: I'm a Bible-believing Christian. This has not been easy for me. If we're going to talk about abortion it's reasonable to talk about what we are aborting, isn't it? You can't debate anything without hearing arguments from each side, so I'm going to start from the pro-life side I used to promote. *Warning*: no punches being pulled here.

The case for No: Is it "just a foetus" — or a 5cm baby?


The Catholic News Agency has an article on refuting pro-choice arguments that includes this advice:

...the basic argument is that the unborn child is not a human being, from the moment of fertilization. The response should always contain scientifically accurate facts about the generic biology of every member of the species homo sapiens. It should then apply those facts to the unborn child. The primary focus of your answer is to restore a very real human face to that baby.

...the core of the entire pro-abortion argument rests upon dehumanizing the baby.

Fetal facts


  • the heart begins to beat at 18 to 21 days after fertilization
  • there are brain waves at six weeks
  • at eight weeks all body systems are present, including little fingers and toes!
  • most abortions take place between the eighth and eleventh week of the pregnancy — about six weeks after the baby's heart has started to beat
  • the baby is genetically unique at fertilization

...at the moment of fertilization two separate cells form one new life, genetically distinct in every way from every other human being on earth. The color of our eyes, the shape of our hands, even where we put on weight and when we will go bald was programmed into that one tiny cell that we all began our lives as.

This is where the "abortion is murder" angle comes from. Let's take a look at abortion methods in use in the UK right now.

Medical (pills, etc.)


There is a range of options available for ending pregnancy, even at late stages, without having surgery.

  • The abortion pill consists of two medicines. The first medicine, mifepristone, ends the pregnancy. It works by blocking the hormone progesterone, so the lining of the uterus breaks down. The second medicine, misoprostol, makes the womb contract, causing cramping, bleeding, and a miscarriage.
  • This method can be used up to 24 weeks of pregnancy
  • What to expect depends on whether the pregnancy is less than or more than 10 weeks' gestation.
  • You "pass the pregnancy remains" at home (or wherever); then flush them down the loo or put them in the bin
  • The option to burn or bury the remains is available
  • Methotrexate, which is used to treat arthritis, is also used for abortion.
  • The morning after pill works by preventing or delaying ovulation. It acts on the lining of the womb to prevent a fertilised egg from implanting (sticking to the lining of the womb). Since the fertilised egg can't stick, it is expelled from the womb.
  • Intra-uterine devices are made of copper, which alters the cervical mucus, making it difficult for sperm to reach an egg and survive. It can also stop a fertilised egg from being able to implant itself. These can be fitted up to five days after unprotected sex.

Surgical abortion


There are two types of surgical abortion:

Vacuum aspiration can be done with local anaesthetic, sedation or general anaesthetic:
Dilatation and Evacuation – between 15 and 24 weeks of pregnancy.
  • Carried out under general anaesthetic.
  • The pregnancy is removed using narrow forceps through the neck of the womb (cervix).
  • You will need cervical preparation on the day of surgery or possibly the day before.

Late stage techniques


Some women can't end their pregnancies early for various reasons; perhaps they're not aware that they're pregnant or that there's a problem with the pregnancy until after it's considered viable. These are the methods available to end them.

Poisoning


A concentrated salt solution or urea is injected into the amniotic fluid. This technique is used after 16 weeks. It is no longer common in many Western countries because of its dangers to the mother. The pregnancy ends in about an hour, then, after 24 hours, the mother goes into labour and delivers a stillborn child. Prostaglandin causes contractions to force a premature birth. Some people have been known to survive these, e.g. American singer Gianna Jessen.

Partial birth abortion, or 'intact dilation and extraction'.


The body of the foetus is pulled into the vagina, then the contents of the skull are sucked out, after which the intact foetus is removed from the woman's body.

Hysterotomy


Basically the same as a caesarian, but the umbilical cord is cut while the late-stage foetus is still in utero since it's usually alive at this point.

Abortion survivors


The point of abortion is to ensure the termination of the pregnancy. From a practitioner point of view it looks like this:

I have carefully sieved through aspirate to identify the tiny translucent jelly-fish-like gestation sac at five weeks. I have painstakingly removed a foetus part by part at 23 weeks and watched the ultrasound image of the uterus shrink back to size. - Being an abortion doctor has taught me a lot about life, by Anonymous for The Guardian

Yes indeed, they check what comes out to ensure that all the bits are there and there are none left inside the mother as this might result in sepsis, etc. Yes, it's yuck, but we have to face the facts on both sides if we're going to debate effectively. That means acknowledging inconvenient truths, including this one: as oxymoronic as it sounds, surviving abortion is a thing. In fact, due to the number of people who have survived attempts to abort them, methods keep changing to ensure a clean kill, as it were. I've been hearing stories of babies born alive and left to die since I was a child; they often made it into the papers. The stories typically look like this:

Botched abortions mean that scores of babies are being born alive and left to die, an official report has revealed. A total of 66 infants survived NHS termination attempts in one year alone, it emerged. Rather than dying at birth as was intended, they were able to breathe unaided. About half were alive for an hour, while one survived ten hours.- 66 babies in a year left to die after NHS abortions that go wrong, by staff reporter for the Evening Standard

Basically, during poisonings or induced expulsion the premature baby comes out fully formed and occasionally crying (per the story that continues to haunt me from childhood. He (or she) was left on a table to die). Medical staff are expected to do nothing to help even though, not far away, everything is being done to help a wanted child. If it's out and alive, it's born, people. Isn't neglecting it basically infanticide? US Congress seems to think so: the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act 2017 is in the works and waiting to go to the Senate. However, Democrat representative Jerrold Nadler had this to say:

"Let me say at the outset of this debate, very clearly: It has always been the law that health care providers cannot deliberately harm newborn infants, and that they must exercise reasonable care in their treatment of such infants. The bill’s implication that providers who perform abortions routinely act in a callous or criminal manner that would result in an infant’s death, or that a provider who performs an abortion somehow cannot be trusted to take adequate measures to save a living baby’s life, is insulting and untrue." - Rep Nadler on the Born Alive Abortion Survivor Protection Act: “A Cynical Ploy to Appease Anti-Choice Protestors in Washington Today”

Yeah... about that... the experiences of nurses in hospitals where abortions are performed differs from the Congressman's. If Prostaglandin or salt poisoning abortions don't work, the babies born thereafter are typically left to die unless a kindly nurse takes pity on them and brings them to an incubator. Needless to say, abortion being considered a routine medical procedure leads to situations like this:

Ashley Glass claims when son Dylan was born at 23 weeks' gestation she was forced to watch in horror for four minutes as he fought for breath without medical assistance before passing away. - Mum watched as her premature baby was 'left to die by doctors' because he arrived before abortion limit, by Tui Benjamin for The Mirror

I get that intervention might not have helped Dylan but you don't know till you try. It doesn't help that practice tends to vary from trust to trust and that underfunding the NHS has led to a lack of highly-trained staff. I've included this story because, at 23 weeks, Dylan was "a foetus" in the eyes of the law, not "an unborn child." The hospital staff apparently didn't think that trying to save him was worth the effort. Perhaps they're right but I feel bad for his mother, who is in a lot of pain over this.

Okay, that was painful to research (do your own if you disagree with me), but as I said earlier there are two sides to the abortion story and I'm going to tell the other side now.

The case for Yes: My body, my choice


I started out as pro-life because that's how I saw it; nobody has the right to end a person's life because they find it inconvenient to have a baby at this moment in time, kind of thing. Having read stories of raped women who kept the baby I was skeptical that rape was a rationale for abortion. As for life or health of the mother, I'd have restricted abortion to the outer limit of "If there's no other way." Even then, stories of heroic, selfless mothers who insisted on continuing pregnancies at the risk of their own lives proliferated in the media (they still do). Mothers denied themselves treatment for cancer or spent months in hospital suffering placental abruption in order to deliver their children alive. Mothers continued with doomed pregnancies because they wanted to see them through to the end. Basically, I believed that if you had any kind of maternal instinct, love for your baby would make you put him (or her) first and worry about your own life or health later. If you had an abortion it was because you had no regard for the life inside you and considered your children commodities — like pets at best or possessions at worst, lacking intrinsic value and owing you their lives because you decided you wanted them, your thumb going up or down like a Roman at the gladiatorial games depending on how you felt about continuing the pregnancy. Heck, I even talked a rape victim out of having an elective abortion once (her distress caused a miscarriage) and was proud of that for years. I believed all that for years, then my attitude changed. This is why.

Life or health of the mother


The first crack in my belief system was an encounter with a friend from church who had suffered an ectopic pregnancy and had an abortion. It was either that or suffer a rupture and possibly die of it. I was appalled that she'd had an abortion, but even more appalled that she had needed it in order to survive. I realised at that point that if she had selflessly left it till the last possible minute all she would have done is prolong her own and her foetus's suffering. Getting it over with was for the best.

I used to frequent Google Plus when I had my web design business; the logo you see in my blog title is the "Eye for design" based on my initials. I didn't have the heart to give it up when my business folded so I still use it today. Anyway, I used to follow tech types so I could learn from them, network with them, and hopefully gain some business. During the days of the SOPA campaign I got into activism and during this befriended some liberal types. One of them shared this story with me (*warning*: profanity):

You know, I've really had enough.

Right now, my brother-in-law's wife is swollen up like she was 7 months pregnant--but she's less than 4.  The fetus is septic and if her amniotic sac breaks she could get toxic shock and die.

Fortunately, though, the life-loving voters of Michigan have decided that if the baby has a heartbeat, it's an elective surgery and she has to wait 48 hours (48 hours of being painfully, dangerously sick, mind you) for the chance to pay $8000 to abort a "child" which is nothing more than a lump of gangrene with a heartbeat at this point.

This is respect for life?

This is valuing life?

This is Christian?

No.  This is none of those things.  What this is is horseshit, misogyny, and abuse of power.  Fuck you, red states.  Fuck you, Republican Party.  Fuck you "moral" "majority."  I have had enough.  If that makes me a liberal, so be it.  I'm a fucking liberal.  I'd rather be that than pretend to have any respect for this. - Gary Walker post on Google Plus

Following on from Sheila's story, this had a big impact on me. This is the kind of thing Savita Halappanavar suffered from. Here's the pro-life take on it:

Whilst the hospital had failed to spot the infection, they had noted that an inevitable miscarriage was taking place. Savita, understandably, was very distressed, and wished for her ordeal to be over, as opposed to the interminable wait for nature to take its course and allegedly requested an abortion on the Tuesday morning, following the ultrasound to determine the baby’s progress.

Upon admission to hospital on the Sunday night, it was noted that no cervix could be felt, hence Savita was fully dilated and hence the premature delivery of the baby was imminent, which would mean that the baby would not survive. Later on, her membranes ruptured, meaning that the protective sac of fluid surrounding the baby completely drained, a situation which would likely result in the death of the baby and spontaneous natural delivery.

...Mother and baby have an equal right to life, whilst a baby must never be directly killed in order to save the life of a mother (and I cannot envisage a single situation where that would be necessary), a mother may receive treatment such as in the case of an ectopic pregnancy or a cancer diagnosis, which may put the life of her unborn baby at risk, or may end a baby’s life as an indirect consequence.

...Abortion won’t cure sepsis or aid its diagnosis. - Savita, Sepsis and Statistics, by Caroline Farrow for The Catechesis of Caroline

Three things stand out there: 1) inevitable miscarriage, 2) nature taking its course, and 3) treatment that puts a foetus at risk is fine, just don't have an abortion. Look again at Gary Walker's post. That's what sepsis looks like. Here's a sufferer's take:



Pay careful attention to this tweet:



"Just let nature take its course." Where was the action to at least try to save them? Meanwhile, their mother was at risk but nature taking its course was deemed more important than her comfort and wellbeing.



Yes indeed, she was obliged to remain pregnant for no medical reason other than to comply with religious sentiments. That is all. It gets worse:



















This, dear friends, is what it's like to have a crisis pregnancy in a country where religious and sentimental notions trump the life and health of the mother. The doctors could not act until the mother showed signs of illness and left her pregnant even though there was no chance that the babies would survive. The lines, "My boy lying against my womb wall drying out for weeks and alongside a rotting placenta for 7 days" will haunt me for longer than the stories of the premature babies gasping for breath, left to die because they weren't wanted because there was no chance of this pregnancy resulting in a live birth. She was left to suffer because she wasn't ill enough to require intervention. It's the sheer, uncaring cruelty of the "pro-life" side that ultimately turned me against them. Heck, I didn't even need the "How I Lost Faith in the “Pro-Life” Movement" screed by Libby Anne for Love, Joy, Feminism on Patheos to change my mind, that was just the icing on the metanoia'd cake.

Anti-choice types are hypocrites


Honestly, you'd have thought that people who are pro-life would do everything in their power to provide a strong safety net to increase the options of pregnant women to make it more feasible to continue a pregnancy they find inconvenient for social or financial reasons. You'd think they'd be all over welfare provision and that they'd campaign hard for pre-natal care, workplace rights to prevent employers for sacking or otherwise discriminating against women for falling pregnant, and for arrested and incarcerated women to receive care while in custody. And you would definitely think that anyone who was pro-life would ensure that comprehensive sex education and contraception were provided to reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies from happening in the first place, but you would be wrong. Very, very wrong.

Trust the government to enforce abortion laws but not to provide welfare


Americans' innate distrust of "government," which magically vanishes at the mention of the word "military," results in arguments like this:

Imagine this scenario to illustrate the difference. While walking near a river one morning, you see someone dangling a newborn infant off a bridge. Obeying your natural impulse to preserve life, you shout “No! Stop!” only to be met with this reply: “It is hypocritical for you to tell me it’s wrong to throw this baby off the bridge unless you commit to take care of her until she is a legal adult.” In an act of moral desperation, you accede, but while carrying the baby back to safety you begin to wonder about the dangler’s reasoning: Does saving a life rationally entail being committed to taking responsibility for that life’s ongoing welfare? - Why Pro-Lifers Aren’t Hypocritical For Opposing A Welfare State, by Matthew Petrusek for The Federalist

This argument has more straw than a stud farm. There's a hell of a difference between paying into a tax-funded welfare program and taking the bridge baby home with you. It is his job to stop a woman having an abortion, after which the care of the child is her responsibility; it's not his job to provide for the baby.

Where was the outrage?


That time the pro-life sheriff's staff did nothing for a pregnant woman in labour:

A lawyer for Shadé Swayzer has filed a notice of claim against the Milwaukee County Sheriff's Office, alleging that jail staff are responsible for the death of Swayzer's child. The 30-year-old woman, who was almost nine months pregnant, is seeking $8.5 million in damages.

 Swayzer's lawyer, Jason Jankowski, wrote in the notice of claim that Swayzer told a corrections officer her water broke and she was going into labor, but the officer laughed and ignored her. Swayzer said she told the officer that she was going into labor around midnight, gave birth at about 4 a.m., and finally received attention from officers at 6 a.m. Her child was pronounced dead later that day, although it's unclear at what time. -  Baby died after staff ignored labor, inmate says, by Jacob Carpenter for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Look again at the sheriff's tweet:



He and his supporters are on-message but not one of these good people has mentioned Shadé Swayze's baby. They're not going to. That unique individual doesn't matter to them. Isn't neglecting a pregnant woman and her baby horrific enough to stir the conscience? Then there's the matter of Britain's benefit cap, which is aimed at the Wayne and Waynetta Slobbs in our midst:

The Tory Government expect mums will have abortions to avoid the two-child cap for tax credits, a Scottish charity claimed yesterday.

Engender’s executive director Emma Ritch hit out as charities told MSPs they want the cap – and the associated “rape clause” – to be abolished.

Engender, Scottish Women’s Aid and Rape Crisis Scotland have written to Department for Work and Pensions minister Damian Green raising a series of questions about the brutal policy, including how many pregnancies he expects to be terminated as a result. - Anger that mums 'expected to have abortions' to avoid two-child benefits cap, by David Clegg for the Daily Record

Aneurin Bevan, founder of the NHS, described Tories as vermin. After reading this bile-filled rant I can see why:
Sixty bishops have turned their mitres into begging bowls on behalf of the would-be parents of Great Britain. They have reattached the Abrahamic umbilical cord with the Jewish Board of Deputies and the Muslim Council of Britain in a letter published in The Times urging the government to re-think its benefits cap on two children.

...Seriously, the biggest moral problem with the bishops’ letter is that it ties the blessing of children to the beneficence of the state. It implies that killing babies is justified on grounds of poverty, unemployment or inability to afford additional children. It shifts responsibility for the future away from the individual to the state by special pleading on behalf of parents who had more children when they thought they could afford them but may now have fallen on hard times.

The real issue is not limiting benefits to two children but the problem of welfare per se. Is it fair for taxpayers, whether they are single, have no children, or out of prudence restricted the number of children they’d like have, deferred for this reason having them until too late, or who do not have children or who have chosen not to have children to be subsidising people who exercise no such self-restraint and who have no such moral imperative? - Bishops, blackmail and the child benefit cap, by Jules Gomes for The Conservative Woman

Katie Hopkins, is that you? Notice that crack about killing babies. We're to have them but they won't help us feed them and the later spiel about people being poor because they're too damn lazy to work ignores the phenomenon of the working poor. This is why I will never, never, never vote Tory. They are evil incarnate.

Whose body is it anyway?


One argument I frequently make to the anti-choice brigade is that women who seek abortions are not all feckless whores getting rid of inconvenient people. Then someone tweets this:



This is the kind of thing that would have had me sagely nodding back in the day, secure in the knowledge that abortion is murder, etc., but read on:



Once you decide to enact a law that decides what a woman can or can't do with her own body you've decided that her body is not her own; she is stripped of her personhood and reduced to a regulated item.


This is why Irish women are celebrating tonight — that ended yesterday with the Yes vote to repeal the 8th Amendment. The anti-choice brigade had pulled out all the stops, even pretending that "Love both" means that both are loved. This is not true; as I've already proved, they put the foetus first and the mother is an afterthought, even if her life is in danger or is significantly impaired. It's precisely the casual unthinking cruelty of the "pro-life" movement that turned so many people against them. From the insistence on letting nature take its course instead of doing what's best for the mother to forcing pregnancies to term before ripping the child away from the mother so they weren't reunited for decades to telling the most atrocious lies to advance their agenda they have dug their own grave with the Irish public, who have had enough of them. People flew in from overseas to vote in the referendum — mostly for the Yes side. Ultimately, it was the stories of those who had suffered at the hands of the so-called pro-lifers that turned the tide against the 8th Amendment. That's what turned me against it. Needless to say, they haven't learned a damn thing and hope to turn the clock back at some point.

Conclusion


I don't like abortion. I wish they never happened, but I can also see that banning them causes unnecessary suffering for both mother and child in cases where her life is endangered. When that's not the case, she's reduced to a talking incubator by the "love both" brigade, who have little interest in her welfare and are all over the foetus until after it is born, when they lose interest. Ultimately, the success of the Repeal side was not about letting rampant hoochies use abortion as a contraceptive but about ending the suffering of women in crisis pregnancies by allowing them to access the help they need at home. If you really love both, in my opinion, you don't let either of them suffer if you can help it. For that reason I am glad that the Yes side won.


*In theory. In practice, the approach was basically "foetus first," which resulted in preventable suffering and death from sepsis, etc.
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