Pregnant Irish teenager fights for her right to have abortion in Britain

Source: london evening standard

A pregnant Irish teenager whose baby is expected to die shortly after birth will stage a High Court challenge today against efforts to stop her travelling to Britain for an abortion.

The 17-year-old, who is four months' pregnant with a foetus she now knows cannot survive, is fighting moves by Ireland's Health Service Executive (HSE) to have gardai prevent the girl leaving the state for a termination.

The teenager, who can only be identified as Miss D, is from the Leinster region and has been in the care of the HSE since March.

She was told last week that her unborn baby suffers from the brain condition anencephaly, meaning a major portion of the brain, skull and scalp is missing, and the baby will live a maximum of three days after it is born.


Read more: http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-23394895-details/Pregnant+Irish+teenager+fights+for+her+right+to+have+abortion+in+Britain/article.do

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The war against women in Ireland is just as hot as in supposedly undemocratic parts of the world.

than they do in modern times in the same country.

about birth control and women's reproductive rights, Irish style. He came from a large family, the oldest of eight brothers and sisters. After his mother had his youngest sister, she told her husband that she wanted no more children, so he had to move into another bedroom because there would be no sex in the marriage thereafter.

If a husband then chose to have sex outside the marriage, she was expected to look the other way as long as he was discreet and didn't embarass her or the family. A very strange outcome of this arrangement that I witnessed with an Irish couple that we knew, was the wife making friends with her husband's girl friends to the point of having lunch and going shopping with them.

In the case of unwed mothers, they either took a holiday abroad (to get an abortion) or were shipped to another city to one of the now infamous Magdalene laundries to give up their babies for adoption at birth.

I believe this is what the Christian right wants to bring to us here in America.

statutes barring a pregnant woman (esp. one who is younger than 18 years) living in an anti-abortion state from traveling to a state that legally permits the procedure, or if you as an adult chaperone a pregnant adolescent crossing the state borders, it will be jail time for the patient, the chaperone, or both.

With the Dem sell out on Alito, it's already fait accompli- the Court's just waiting for the right facts.

And it won't just be abortion that Southern and lower Midwestern states restrict and outlaw- it'll be birth control methods, too.

Witness the crop of "Birth Control is Harmful" billboards that have sprung up around Tulsa in recent months:
http://www.twoheadedblog.com/?p=532

when men bleed monthly they can have opinions and make laws. until then, keep your male noses out of women's business.

Women who bleed monthly don't get to make laws about this either. Period. (No pun intended.) Everybody keep your noses out of women's personal business.

genetic waste. It doesn't matter that nature failed to spontaneously abort or that there is a lack of a "soul". They still think it is immoral.

Coming soon to a U.S. state near you.

:mad:

snip
A barrister for the Attorney General told the High Court on Tuesday that the HSE has no legal power to direct the gardai to restrain a person who is subject of an interim care order; that the gardai do not have the legal power to restrain someone simply because they are the subject of an interim order; and that the District Court order placing her in care does not restrain a person from travelling anywhere.

and
snip
It is simply unheard of anywhere else in the world that an unborn is a legal entity.
"But under the Irish Constitution, even in the circumstances of anencephaly, a foetus - which has no identity outside of the womb - is the focus, not the young woman.
"No woman should have to endure the trauma of carrying to full term a child who will not live more than a few hours.

That's what US citizens face if the laws are repealed

That is being generous. I am originally from the "great" state of Bama. The DAY Roe is overturned, Bama will begin oppressing the rights of it's female population.

I don't think we have 6 years, I think this fight is imminent!:grr:

I thought we were the most backward nation in the Western world when it came to women's rights but I guess not. As has been said before though, keep it in mind if the religious wrong gets it's way regarding abortions this same scenario will be playing out here soon enough.

because things are progressing there. The Church has been pushed back on issues like birth control and divorce. The Magdalene Laundries are no more. Unwed mothers now can keep their children without a heavy burden of shame, passing them off as a married sister's offspring or even a much younger brother or sister.

Thirty years ago, it was still a hellhole for women. They've made astonishing progress.

Here in the US, though, the churches are slowly pushing the female half of the population back into slavery and shame.

very tough women. I recommend reading Iris women writers of fiction. you say 'what do novels have to do with anything?' novels have to do with everything.

As a child there was a home for unwed mothers nearby, plenty of those in the south. Some were as young as 12 and when I look back on it I'm sure the baby's father was the girl's father or other relative. The shame of having a baby "out of wedlock" was devastating because of the taboo attached to it; Sinner, fallen woman, loose morals, hussy, slantern, easy. All those adjectives and then some.

first novel written by a woman, published in Ireland

then start reading novels up the yrs. until today's Irish women writers of novels

(this does NOT include romance novels)

but they still have strong control over politics. Condoms used to have to be smuggled in from the UK. The church is not as strict re divorce anymore, but the process is unbelievable - one year of not living in the 'marital home', applying for judicial separation, then four years more of judicial separation before a legal divorce is granted.

Just a lump of meat with arms and legs!

I want to hit somebody. :argh:

;-)

Of course the religious nuts want her to have a baby without a brain -- they want to add to their own ranks. ;-)

countries for abortions since it became legal in those places and no one has stopped them or made an issue of it. Why now? Of course, you have to blame the Catholic church for this state of affairs I believe.

Another Freeper wrote that his wife had an emergency D & C because the fetus had DIED in utero. A couple of them blasted him for that. As he said, his wife was carrying a CORPSE and if it was not removed, she would die of toxicity. He said to one, "You cannot abort a CORPSE."

Can you imagine not only the ignorance of biology on the part of these people, but their total lack of compassion? This is where so called religion can fuel warped minds. And you want them to show compassion in this case where the fetus is still "alive"?

or the very real risks she'd have to undertake to carry and deliver that at term?

Another example of the cult of the fetus. Living women be damned.

fetal toxicity syndrome whatever that is unless the termination is carried out asap.

Goodness, just imagine the emotional trauma of this -- carrying a fetus you know will be delivered, with much pain and risk on your part, only to die a painful death shortly after delivery...

And then, there are are, as you say, real physical risks here.

This is exactly the sort of situation that those railing against "partial birth abortions" refuse to see. They imagine it a form of birth control for lazy women who simply can't be bothered to get around to an early abortion (or worse, who had the temerity to have sex -- consensual or not -- in the first place!). This is why the mother's HEALTH, not just life must be protected, and medical decisions must be made with the advice of medical experts, not fetus cultists.

The baby has no real potential for life or consciousness; and the mother is being put in danger. Usually people who are anti-abortion make exceptions for such situations. I don't know why such an issue is being made here, and the attempt made to prevent her from travelling. Sigh...

The issue in this case is can a Minor travel abroad when she is pregnant AND when she had made it clear she would get an Abortion NOT permitted in Ireland? The real issue will the Irish Supreme Court Expand the right of women to travel to get an abortion to include women who are minors?

Worlds Abortion Laws:
http://www.reproductiverights.org/pub_fac_abortion_laws.html

Irish Abortion Laws:
http://www.thesite.org/sexandrelationships/safersex/unplannedpregnancy/abortioninireland
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion_in_Ireland

Another article on this subject (more details on Irish Abortion law):
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article1744495.ece

It's one of those points where there's agreement between strict Catholics and people like Ian Paisley:

Read the full links - I can't summarise them in 4 paragraphs. It looks like some of it is just arse-covering - about whether courts of the HSE say she can go to Britain, or if it just happens - or about who would pay her fare and the medical costs. But mixed in with that are people saying it's about foetus' rights.