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'Some parents have to open the coffin every two hours to put in ice-packs so remains stay cool'

How many more girls are our government prepared to abuse while they delay a referendum on the Eighth Amendment, asks Gerry Edwards.

FOR THE SECOND time in just one year the United Nations Human Rights Committee has ruled that Ireland subjected a woman to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment by denying her access to abortion services.

On Monday the United Nations Human Rights Committee issued a ruling against Ireland following a complaint made by Siobhán Whelan. She had received a diagnosis of a fatal foetal anomaly during a pregnancy in 2010 and made the very difficult decision that bringing her pregnancy to an end, sooner rather than later, was what was best for her and her family.

However, by refusing her access to abortion services and forcing her to travel to the UK for medical assistance, Ireland violated her rights to privacy, discriminated against her on the basis of her gender, and subjected her to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, in contravention of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

Humiliated again by our government

The Committee have again told Ireland that we must take whatever steps are necessary to prevent others from being subjected to the same human rights violations, and must compensate Siobhán Whelan for the harm done to her.

Yet again the people of Ireland have been humiliated by our own government. We have known for a long time that the denial of abortion services to women facing these types of crises is a breach of human rights.

In June of last year this same Committee reached the same damning conclusions in the case of Amanda Mellett. The Irish State was to have responded with details of how they were going to prevent these breaches from occurring within 180 days (6 months) of that finding. Their response was that they had established the Citizen’s Assembly to discuss the matter and make recommendations to them.

Vague promises about a referendum

TFMR Ireland went on record at the time to say that the Oireachtas Committee should work in parallel with the Citizen’s Assembly, so that when the recommendations were made they would be as well briefed as the volunteer citizens. This would have left them with no excuses for delay.

Instead, the government saw the Citizen’s Assembly as a “time out” and simply sat back, not only ignoring their responsibilities as legislators, but also ignoring all of the women and families who wish to have continuity of medical care within our own borders.

A further 190 days have elapsed since Ireland’s first 180 days expired (on 6th December 2016) and the Oireachtas have not even finalised the makeup of the Committee to discuss the recommendations of the Citizen’s Assembly. The best we have are vague expressions that it might be possible to have some form of referendum next year.

In the meantime, we know that an average of three families every week travel to Liverpool Women’s Hospital to receive the care they need following devastating diagnoses. This is just one medical facility to which Irish women travel – there are others.

Forced to remain pregnant

This doesn’t take account of all those women who wish to end their pregnancies early but for a variety of reasons are unable to travel, and they are forced to remain pregnant against their wills, waiting for their babies to die inside them.

Every single one of these women wished to receive the care they needed in their own hospital, with their own doctors, with the support of their families and wider communities. They wanted to go back to their own beds, not to budget hotels, airports or ferry ports. Many of these women end up having to travel back to the UK to attend cremation services and then travel back again to collect the cremated remains of their babies, knowing they will be stopped at airport security to explain their little package.

Others have the cremated remains delivered home by courier at enormous expense (£900 was most recent figure we heard). Some parents bring the remains back to Ireland for burial, and this can involve having to open the coffin every two hours to put in ice-packs so that their baby’s remains are kept cool.

Repeal the 8th

Why is it that bereaved mothers like Siobhán Whelan, and Amanda Mellett before her, have to be the brave ones? The founders of the main political parties in Ireland would turn in their graves to see the cowardly hand-wringing that we have witnessed over recent years.

We are calling upon Leo Varadkar, as our new Taoiseach, to step up and demonstrate a determination that Ireland’s Constitution and laws will be changed to ensure that human rights are upheld. He needs to reflect in our laws the true nature of the people of Ireland as a compassionate, empathetic and supportive society.

How many more women and girls are he and his government prepared to abuse while they continuously seek to delay doing what is necessary – giving the people of Ireland their referendum to repeal the 8th.

Gerry Edwards is Chairperson of TFMR Ireland.

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50 Comments
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    Mute Patrick Presley
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    Oct 26th 2023, 8:49 AM

    Enough punishment has been administered for the moment.

    186
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    Mute Donal Ronan
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    Oct 26th 2023, 9:08 AM

    Oops! Less profit for our robber banks, seeing as this is where they make most of their profits, lodging our deposits with the ECB.
    Just another way of socialising their profits at European taxpayers expense.

    97
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    Mute did you every wonder
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    Oct 26th 2023, 1:55 PM

    @Donal Ronan: But we have a regulator, apparently, that keeps prices in check !. Works great for energy and food prices !. Tax payers money at work.

    23
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    Mute larry smith
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    Oct 26th 2023, 9:03 AM

    A bank is being robbed by two gunmen . Everything went smoothly , quickly and quietly ,however before exiting the bank one gunman says to the other what kind of robbery is this if know one is injured or killed “you’re right kill that woman over there “says the other gunman ,
    What’s your name he asks the cashier the woman feebly replied Sophia,
    I can’t kill her as my wife is call Sophia,ok kill the man beside her ,hey fella what’s your name ,,Billy says the man but everyone calls me Sophia .

    108
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    Mute Liam Foy
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    Oct 26th 2023, 11:01 AM

    In what do we believe a bunch of very wealthy individuals in the ECB hiking interest rates, how well expert with experience are they. Lagarde is no expert but she leads the charge. Inflation has got much worse and still the EU has no idea how to contain it like the Japanese at their 3%. But their we go punishing decision for the average family is put off into some future date.

    37
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    Mute Roy Kenneally
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    Oct 26th 2023, 1:39 PM

    @Liam Foy: Inflation isn’t worse. It was 8.6% in Sept 2022 and 5% in Sept 2023, ie. slowing down. It means the price of things are still going up, but not as quickly.

    13
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    Mute Paddy C
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    Oct 26th 2023, 1:48 PM

    Lagarde said when she was here ‘she feels our pain’ doubt that somehow on her salary, pushing people into arrears and possibly homeless great work alright.

    34
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    Mute Timo
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    Oct 26th 2023, 12:08 PM

    And lucky to get 1.5% on a 5 year deposit account.
    What a joke

    28
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    Mute Pato
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    Oct 26th 2023, 9:39 AM

    Have the idiots in the ECB finally recognised what everyone else knew all along, that hiking rates the way they did would eventually cause inflation rather than cure i

    78
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    Mute Monetpenny
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    Oct 26th 2023, 12:33 PM

    @Pato: no. They didn’t get it during & in the aftermath of the 2007-2008 financial crash either. It is written in a widely read economics textbook somewhere that to control inflation (no matter what the cause or type of inflation) you must (‘MUST’ I tell ya) increase interest rates. So they do it.
    If inflation is ‘imported’ or is caused by government lockdowns & subsequent spending to stimulate an economy the government sedated or wars or foreign government policies that affect energy supply & costs it doesn’t matter.
    We don’t stop those wars. We don’t reverse government policy & increase energy supply.
    We increase interest rates.

    22
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    Mute Mick Duvanny
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    Oct 26th 2023, 1:41 PM

    @Monetpenny: See Turkey for what happens when you reduce interest rates during high inflation

    13
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    Mute Eddie Garvey
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    Oct 26th 2023, 3:36 PM

    They printed so much money to keep the economies booming, which had the effect of devaluing our money and our wages, which caused inflation to strike, then they massively increased interest rates to stop people spending the money they added to the system. They are literally making it up as they go along to ensure the wealthy stay wealthy

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    Mute World Taekwondo Association Master Sheamus
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    Oct 26th 2023, 11:02 AM

    About Time, Seriously

    16
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    Mute Des Leavy
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    Oct 26th 2023, 10:51 AM

    Comments Closed

    16
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    Mute Jonathan Hanlon
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    Oct 26th 2023, 1:35 PM

    Please start dropping

    14
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    Mute Alan Fitzgerald
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    Oct 26th 2023, 2:45 PM

    Surely a huge chunk of inflation is down to energy price increases and interest rates increases will have little to no effect on these. Government tax and excise increases also fuels the fire and again interest rates won’t effect these.

    9
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    Mute R Incognito
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    Oct 26th 2023, 2:32 PM

    My fixed rate @ 2.6% is ending in November. Should I re-fix @ 4.15% ( lowest fixed rate available to me ) or stay on a variable @ 4.50% and wait and see if things improve ? I don’t know what to do :-(

    7
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    Mute Paddy C
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    Oct 28th 2023, 9:25 AM

    @R Incognito: very hard one to answer,Im on tracker and my mortgage is up through the roof now for not fixing it and I was also advised to fix it unless I was sure I could keep up with rising payments but if I fix tracker is gone and too long left to go,the only thing I would say is if you could fix it short term at least you wouldnt be after commiting to it too much,a long fixed rate is a nightmare if rates drop, we were on fixed years ago of 5.4 and crash came and rates dropped and losing a fortune had to pay 4,600 to break out of it for the mortgage to drop 400 a month so my advice is if it’s variable try short term fixed especially now that they’re pausing increases

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    Mute
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    Oct 26th 2023, 2:07 PM

    Increasing interest rates to combat this inflation is very close to being useless. Majority of the inflation is a result of the increase in oil prices and from the war in Ukraine affecting supply of various commodities including grain. A serious question for ECB, how does increasing interest rates change oil prices or increase supply of commodities. Wouldn’t it more effective having more constructive negotiation with the Saudis and other oil producers. Also putting a ceiling on the price of basic goods, bread, eggs, pasta, etc. Increasing interest rates was always a possibility of causing recession, plus more unnecessary pain for the less well off.

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    Mute John Moore
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    Oct 26th 2023, 3:43 PM

    Rising interest rates is the only tool that the ECB have to combat inflation. But it can only do so much unless you really want to jack up rates and cause a pretty bad recession. But ECB technocrats act as though tinkering with rates contains all of the answers. It’s mostly for show to look as though they are doing something. About half of the price rises are through companies profiteering. Banks are not passing on nearly enough of the windfall through deposit rates. Whatever way the consumer turns they lose.

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    Mute
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    Oct 26th 2023, 11:00 AM

    I have many money

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    Mute Michael Burke
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    Oct 26th 2023, 1:57 PM

    And few brains cells.

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