Maybe I am odd, but I don’t see why there are so many big battles over abortion in US politics.
Like the recent issue with Lorreta Lynch was tied up with abortion.
Also I also don’t see why so many women seem to have abortion as their #1 issue they fight for . I think there are many other issues more important. (I’m a guy)
I just wonder how this is treated in Europe for example.
Google abortion Ireland
It’s a hugely contentious issue in both Ireland and Northern Ireland. In the former it’s only available if the life of the mother is in danger, and in the latter - part of the UK but with a a different legal position on this - it’s only available if there is a serious risk to the wellbeing of the mother.
The rest of the UK also has restrictions regarding the mother’s health, but I think it’s fair to say that these are nowadays interpreted pretty loosely. Guess where Irish women with an unwanted pregnancy go for a termination?
Like what?
Having control over your body and health issues and your whole damn future is why it’s important. (I’m a guy too)
I guess I don’t want to debate abortion here since that is for a different area of the site.
Do people in Ireland attach abortion related laws to unrelated topics such as what just happened in the Lynch case?
I’m a guy too, and I’d not accept a situation where I don’t have agency over my own body.
Or Mexico.
ETA:
Most of Latin America, actually.
Here in NC we had a motorcycle safety bill in the legislature that was loaded up with abortion stuff. I guess they thought they could get people to vote for it without reading the bill.
I’m in Ireland. Yes, it’s a huge big deal here. It would be a MUCH bigger deal except that England, where abortion is legal, is a quick plane or boat journey away, so we’re able to just offload the problem onto someone else and pretend it isn’t happening lalalalaIcan’thearyou.
Abortion is now available here if the mother will die without it. That became law LAST YEAR. Two and a half years ago, a miscarrying woman died because the doctors refused to terminate the pregnancy (the baby had no chance of survival, but the heartbeat was still there), and by the time the baby’s heartbeat stopped, the mother was in sepsis and couldn’t be saved. That was the catalyst for the change in the law. There’s currently huge debate over whether abortion should be made legal if the foetus has a condition that would make it unable to survive outside the womb.
This is a big deal to women because, until last year, my right to live was conditional while my brother’s was absolute. My right to health care - even in a situation where my long-term health is at risk - is still conditional, while my brother’s is absolute. Most of all, it is a big deal because, while my brother has always had absolute sovereignty over his own body, for eighteen months of my life the government had sovereignty over mine.
Let’s assume that, if a child of yours (whom you’d never met) had an illness that could only be cured by nine months of constant blood transfusion from the father, the government had a right to hook you up to the child and force you to stay hooked up to it for nine months. There would definitely be discomfort - probably weeks or months of nausea, some pain here and there, weight gain; maybe constant migraines or haemorrhoids or carpal tunnel syndrome; possibly pelvic dysfunction, possibly temporary diabetes, possibly liver dysfunction; and many more. You wouldn’t be able to have a drink or take many normal over-the-counter meds for the duration. When the transfusion hookup was removed, there would be hours of very severe pain, possible major surgery, a noticeable risk of permanent damage to your body, and a small but nonzero risk of death. Probably most fathers would choose to do it. But we’re talking about you having no choice. None. The government would force this on you; your wishes, about your own body, would have absolutely no standing.
Would that seem like a big deal to you?
In much of Latin America abortion isn’t that contentious of an issue, because the pro life side has supermajority support so there isn’t all that much controversial.
Mexico is of course very different because of their 20th century history of hardcore secularism stemming from the revolution.
Women aren’t really much more pro choice than men. possibly two percentage points if you just look at the most recent data, but that’s easily attributable to partisan loyalty.
I guess it’s not a surprise the 2 places mentioned so far , Mexico and Ireland , have a very large percentage of Catholics.
Actually the US has more liberal abortion laws than most of Europe.
To answer the second question more concisely: what many women fight for isn’t the right to abortion. It’s the right to sovereignty over their own bodies. Even women who would never have abortions want to own their bodies, rather than having the government own them.
That’s more important to many people than, say, equal pay (important though that is). It’s hard for you to picture because your government has never tried to claim sovereignty over your body, which is why I put in the hypothetical to try and get you to imagine what it’s like.
It’s not much of a political issue in Canada. The Supreme Court struck down the criminal restrictions on abortion in 1988. The federal government tried twice to get new laws passed, without success ( the second one passed the Commons on a semi-free vote but was defeated in the unelected Senate on a tie vote). Since then, no federal government has tried to enact any new law.
The debate now is largely an issue of access to abortion under our publicly funded health care system.
Do Northern Irishwomen getting abortions in Great Britain have access to the NHS; I’m pretty sure Republic of Irishwomen don’t.
Nope.
Oh totally. Abortion is regularly raised as an issue whenever there’s an EU Treaty to be voted on, for example. This led to a protocol being attached to the Maastricht Treaty in 1992 stating that Ireland’s constitutional protection of “the right to life of the unborn” would be unaffected by anything in EU law. Another one was added to the Lisbon Treaty after it was initially defeated in an Irish referendum in 2008 (even though there was no actual evidence that abortion was a significant factor in its defeat).
We don’t have the situation here where anti-abortion amendments are tacked on to wholly unrelated bills in Parliament, but there’s no real reason to when the law already prohibits abortion in virtually all circumstances.
One minor pedantic note on eclectic wench’s post, the law didn’t change with the Protection of Life During Pregnancy Act - abortion was legal before then when the woman’s life was at risk, thanks to the actual wording of the constitutional clause (which also refers to “the right to life of the mother”). It just hadn’t been legislated for, and thus doctors had no real guidelines as to how to determine when that threshold had been reached. Unfortunately, the guidelines are still fairly muddled after the Act.
With abortion on demand legal here (and free) the main argument is over the age of the foetus. 24 weeks is the current limit, but many people would like to see that reduces as the advancement in premature baby care advances to the point where a 24 weeker might be viable.
The introduction of the ‘morning-after’ pill may be having an effect. Somme argue that this pill is just an early abortion.
In Norway: Over abortion in general, no, not anymore/currently. Over abortion-related issues, yes indeed.
Our current government is a minority coalition of conservatives, supported by two small centrist parties, one of which is the Christian People’s party. They bought that support by introducing a right for general practitioners to refuse to give referals for abortion. A meaningless conscientious fig leaf for pro-“life” GPs, and a problem for women in rural areas with few doctors.
Protests were massive, the conservatives had to walk around defending specifics they were against a few months before the election, as documented by their own words, and in the end, it came to next to nothing, or even stricter rules on the obligations of GPs to assist women wanting an abortion.
A meaningless form “request for termination of pregnancy” that didn’t actually do anything anymore was eliminated so pro-“life” doctors didn’t have to “sign off on abortions”, but being a government paid GP still requires informing women about the state of the pregnancy, and what options are available, including abortion.
There are also discussion about various forms of fetal diagnostic methods and the influence on abortion choices, but the current rule of abortion whenever the carrier wishes to terminate the pregnancy before week 12 stands firm.