@Ken Hayden: mentioned = suggested

@Jim Kenny: you really don’t understand the abortion issue.

@Jim Kenny: if you are so ‘sickened’ by what goes on in a surgical abortion,then why do you want to keep the 8th ? The facts have shown that the majority(70%) of Irish women go to the UK before the 10th week—where instead of having a medical abortion they choose to have a surgical one.And the reason for this is that they have to come home to family or due to lack of money ..

@Francis Mc Carthy: Francis you talk about how the majority, 70%, of abortion cases happen before week ten. Yet the pro choice sides only talk about the minuscule number cases of ‘fatal Foetal abnormalities’ or rape cases (based on Uk percentages) as a reason for justifying it.

For me it boils down to whether you consider the pregnancy a ‘clump of cells’ or a growing human. If you go down the dehumanizing road then you can see an abortion as a viable option however if you see it as a baby or a developing human then I fail to see how you can cause it’s death.

There is no middle ground in this, to think there is one is a foolish endeavor. A life is ended every single time an abortion is carried out.

That’s what abortion is, death.

It’s amazing to think that people are willing to end the life of a little human being without ANY reason up to 12 weeks if referendum passes, not cause of mothers life is in danger or any reason at all)

Here is what a 12 week old pre born human is like – from motherandbaby.co.uk:

Your 12-week scan can take place any time between 11 and 13 weeks. It’s amazing to think that at this point, your baby is fully formed. So you can see all his organs, muscles, limbs and bones are in place, and the sex organs are well developed.

And people want to end his/her existence?

@Jesus Christ: Jesus Christ, not you again.

@Greg Kelly: Fully formed so the baby will survive if born at 12 weeks? Keep to facts not dramatic or hysterical ideas

@Celtic_Horizon: I never said it would survive, but it is still formed – not a “clump of cells”

@Jim Kenny: I have watched stuff showing various medical procedures, including abortion. The only ones that freaked me out to the point of stopping viewing were laser eye surgery and cataract removal.. And all the stuff made me feel nauseus. Those were just the worst for me, because they involved the eye.

@eric nelligan: And wat do you do if the Foetus is already dead. Is abortion than a viable option?

@eric nelligan: Jim was on about the surgical abortion and i replied to that with some actual facts.

I’m glad that it boils down to that for you.That is your opinion and you’re entitled to it.For me,it boils down to the woman and her right to protect her from something that can cause her severe trauma or death to a woman. You don’t get to force a woman to take this risk, and I think it’s perfectly acceptable that she can removed that non sentient and non viable human embryo from her body..

@Greg Kelly: we’re all a clump of cells,Greggers.

But the woman has the right to not give the use of her organs to sustain another ‘human’s’ “life” .You do know this,yes ?

God this is going to a long few months. This is an individuals health issue and not a moral/religious one. Life is messy and can be ugly. A one size solution will not fit all eventualities. The current system does not work, proven by the 1000s heading to England every year.

I for one have the humanity not to dictate what i consider the best for others in their unique circumstances.

I can only hope that Ireland will be finally liberated from the moral crusaders who have done so much damage for 100s if years.

@Pounamustone: all you mention was horrific,.
Face the reality that it is you and your ilk who make women suffer as a result of abortion, by pionting out that it is a soloution by your logic.
. A pernamemt soloution to a temporary problem.
The pressure from pro choice abortion apoligists
Is what causes a lot of women to have abortion.
. Nowadays you just turn your backs on them by sending them for abortion.
Support love and sympathy would go a long way for these ladies, as it would for anybody in crisis,besides condemation and an appionment at the local gas chamber ie the abortion clinic.
I . A bit naieve of me to except sympathy for these women from abortion cheerleaders

@Jim Kenny: ffs, as a society we don’t even look after the already born, but let’s go with the infantile ‘support and love’ solution.

Just look at how well the infirm elderly are getting with the ‘support and love’ solution.

@Jim Kenny: There is no pressure from the pro choice group. The clue is in the “pro choice” bit. Women have the choice to keep their child or terminate the pregnancy and deserve our love and support in equal measure for whatever path they choose. The pressure comes when there is no choice as you seem to be advocating.

@Jim Kenny: Any links to your abortion fetish videos that you’d like to share?

@Jim Kenny: Pro choice is about not judging a woman on her decisions REGARDLESS of their choice. You’re not naieve just a hypocrite you talk about love and support once it’s on you’re terms.

@Jim Kenny: it is easy for for you to say that abortion is wrong but you have to see it from another points of view there are many many women who do need to get them on medical grounds I had a son five months ago and there was serious complications he was dead for over 8 minutes and I still don’t know how he’s going to turn out because of the lack of oxygen going to his brain I was also told one hour later me and him would’ve been dead And I was also told it if I was to get pregnant again there would a huge chance of me not surviving nor will the baby and I will leave two children without a mother so if I was to be pregnant again I would get abortion because I can’t leave my other two children without a mother that’s not fair either like if I was to get pregnant again that fetus will not be conscious would not have known the world where is my two kids whole world will be lost I think the right decision would be abortion and there are many women in similar situations and there is also the fact of severe abnormalities where the child will have no Quality of life and all they will feel is pain and rejection and they will be in and out of hospital they will not be able to be kids now I think that is a sense of cruelty bringing a child into the world knowing his or her pain what part of that is right

@Greg Kelly: No you said fully formed implying it would survive hence your saying nothing more than dramatic hysterical nonsense

@Jim Kenny: If you don’t like abortion then don’t have one and STFU.

Either STFU and keep your nose out of women’s bodies or get your God to come down here and tell us he doesn’t like it person.

Your Holy book means nothing to rational people.

@Malachi: What morals are you talking about exactly?

@Martin Ryan: What morals?

The conflict between the life of the foetus and the bodily autonomy of the woman is a moral dilemma if ever there’s been one.

@Malachi: The Nazis found a way to de-humanize their victims using language from natural selection which allowed for the notion of sub-human or ‘anthropomorphous’ as it was called in academic circles. It was a massive act of self-deception by the German nation where millions died.

Maybe society for the first time in history looks at this with eyes wide open instead of trying to force it into one section of the community as gender rights. There is nothing inspiring about the loss of life so if people want to diminish the life of a developing baby then it also diminishes the life of the mother where it is a matter of lifestyle choices.

The referendum will be about lifestyle choices before 12 weeks and medical necessities after 12 weeks and that will be the first time Irish people lost their championing of the weak and the underdog. So much for the secular utopia.

@Gerald Kelleher: life style choices??? Easy to know what you think of women and suitable punishment is to make them have a baby they don’t want or can’t afford or mentally just can’t cope with. Over half the women who make the very hard decision to abort already have children and are in a relationship and have made that choice with their partner, who are you to get involved with that? Your choice is to condemn them to your choice and then carry on with your life style and not give them a second thought.

@Martin Ryan: you raise a good issue about it not being up or debate, but on the flip side.
In a republic people should be granted certain inalienable rights, such as the right to life. These rights should not be put up to the powerful majority to vote away from an unpowerful minority. For example it’s wrong for us to vote on the right to kill anyone from Sligo.

@Deborah Behan: There isn’t the slightest hint of gender involved, it is a question of self-deception and playing on words on the part of those who accept it as a pro-life/pro-choice issue. I don’t have a dilemma, moral or otherwise, because all life, with a capital L, is an spiritual/inspirational thing and so to see it diminished for crude agendas is dismaying.

I see so many clowns try to make it a Catholic issue but the last referendum put that to bed as people voted for the truly positive affirmation that there is someone for everyone. This is different, there is no positive affirmation and those use words other than a developing baby will get their knickers in a twist when challenged on their pretense, maybe it will fool some but others of compassion and heart won’t be swayed.

I know where you are coming from but this isn’t a woman’s issue, at least when properly understood.The constitution is not meant to carry the weight of such a question but I suppose in a secular society the judiciary is everything.

@Malachi: Where is the dilemma either the mother gives birth or she has an abortion like i said before its the parents choice and ultimately the womans it should not be anyone elses concern.

@Martin Ryan:
Even the doctor who will kill it or prescribe the medication to kill it?

Or the taxpayer that may fund the killing? Or fund the training and employment of the medical staff involved? Or society at large that allows the mass killing to happen in its midst?

I’m all for taxpayer funded birthing farms and enforced pregnancy testing to ensure no sharletons slip through the net over to England.

@Fran Lonergan: Well its not “A Killing” its a surgical procedure that removes a foetus would it be better to let the woman have the child and
maybe be brought up in poverty or worse. The people involved in abortions know exactly what they are doing and these people will most likely have paid their own training.What happened in Tuam, and in some of the industrial schools is far more concerning to me.

@Martin Ryan:

Before the “surgical procedure” is the foetus living? And what is its state following the procedure?

Yes, being brought up in poverty is better than being killed. There is always the possibility of escaping poverty, death cannot be escaped, once your dead your dead.

@Fran Lonergan: The foetus is wholly reliant on its host for life. A woman shouldn’t be reduced to the status of a container. You’d be the first to object if your status in society was nothing more than a sperm dispenser.

@DaisyChainsaw:

That was hardly the point Daisy, the question was about if it is a killing or not. Is the subject of an abortion killed?

If a woman doesn’t want to be a “container” she knows how to avoid that.

@Ismise Máire: if you scroll up through yesterdays articles it’s right there.

@Ismise Máire: there is an article on trump telling the pro lifers what they want to hear yesterday, is that the one you are referring to? Bit early in the morning for you Máire?

@Malachi: Malachi won.Ahh well.

@Ismise Máire: As the posts above tell you Máire, the March for Life was covered along with Trumps address. It was courageous of him to be so forthright, because it quite literally puts his life in danger. Up until now his blustering on issues such as immigration and fake news, and his incessant tweeting, have been an annoyance and a distraction that have been at times entertaining, but the improvement in the economy, the stock markets and employment levels have counteracted the negativity. Rolling back Roe v Wade and defunding Planned Parenthood is on a totally different level, and the opaque organisations that are happy to shovel cash to Amnesty and God knows who else here for the abortion campaign, won’t think twice about taking Trump down whatever way they can.

@Ismise Máire: Trump the adulterer? Trump who wanted his daughter Tiffany by his then mistress aborted?

Why do so called “prolife”admire a man who is the human embodiment of fetid excrement? You believe any old creep who says they’re anti choice when previous actions say otherwise.

@Jackie Carvill Caruana: wrong article, doh, and I was just warming up.

@James O’Nolan: excellent piece of work and really highlights the moral dilemma. The fanatics on both sides of the divide should digest this before hopping up on their soap boxes.

@Sean @114: Carl Sagan was an empirical frontpiece that projected calm authority but behind his views were pseudo-scientific voodoo and bluffing. He became a poster boy at a time when technology was exploding and movies like Star Wars were emerging and that is fair enough but when it comes to the issue of astronomy, he related the fiction that mathematical theorists had some insight denied the wider population. Technology is still exploding in our era while theorists have turn the celestial arena into a meaningless junkyard. A situation drawn from human experience that Oscar Wilde captured in ‘ The Picture of Dorian Gray’ !.

@Gerald Kelleher: Absolute nonsense. Carl Sagan was a scientist and promoted reasoned and factual debate. He wrote books against pseudo-science such as The Demon-Haunted World. You should read it. Your statement proves you know very little about the guy. The essay is very balanced, there’s no reason to feel threatened by it.

@James O’Nolan: He promoted the same modelling junk that has driven the world demented lately with ‘climate change’. I find that the greatest single obstruction to informed judgments is the inability to take a more expansive historical view so many readers don’t rise about the creationists as they have received a manufactured history that suits the theorists and their modeling agendas. Things like relativity are based on wordplays, exploiting the absolute/relative language of Newton without actually knowing what he was doing with those terms so the empirical Priesthood have managed to convince people of their superior understanding which they then use to diminish things like spirituality via the failings of denominational Christianity. Sagan projected the empirical side very well but get down to the technical details and then the cracks start to appear.

@Gerald Kelleher: Utter, utter nonsense as usual Gerald. Your so great for dismissing and insulting great minds yet you can never offer a coherent alternative. When you have attempted to, it’s a mixed bag of opinions, misinterpretations, & entire arguments based solely on your opinion that everyone else is wrong, a fool, mislead, deceiving or a dullard. You’ll use your typical buzz words like agenda, modelling, empirical, jargon, royal societys, etc etc oh and Brexit usually gets a mention also…and never, not once a coherent well written sentence or two to state definitively what you are trying to express without going into ‘romantic’ deluded arguments using words like ‘enjoyable’ ‘amusing ‘ ‘fun to’ etc when ever having to use accepted theory’s or laws to make some nonsensical point.

@Derek: They weren’t great minds even if promoters like Sagan wound wonderfully hyped narratives around them, they could get away with the scam until recently when it becomes possible to match the texts of the original astronomers who proposed a moving Earth with images and time lapse.

This is the wrong article to get into these things but ultimately the use of wordplays and pseudo-authority damaged astronomy for centuries by voodoo merchants called theorists. Sagan cast language about humanity journeying into space but the theorists think human space travel is a waste of time and would much prefer to remain in their university cubicles chanting meaningless voodoo at the wider world.

@Sean @114:

If we can answer a couple of simple questions truthfully there is no dilemma.

Is the foetus (or term of choice) a human life?
Does human life have intrinsic value?

@Gerald Kelleher: Ah shut up, every bleeding article you have to bring up “original astronomers who proposed a moving Earth” your inability to see that to expand and further our knowledge and understanding we had to look beyond our own viewpoint and also take into consideration observation from other than on earth but one of third person, like sidereal etc. The same events are described but from different perspectives which allowed us to progress in mathematics which you are apparently allergic to. Models are the bases for laws and equations we have built a modern world on. Your stubbornness in not recognising this is entirely on you, and your issue alone. Now get off the computer and Internet and get back into your hovel with your holy book and backwards pontificating.

@Fran Lonergan: When a woman’s organ rejects the embryo naturally,you lot have no issue whatsoever.But when it’s her ‘brain’ that is the organ that is rejecting it.Ye go batsh!t crazy.

@Derek: People are not fools but they are unfamiliar with a pseudo-authority passing itself off as spokesmen for higher reasoning by using voodoo and bluffing. That is about to change.

I already see the referendum issue going down the same road as ‘climate change’ as people don’t want to be bothered , if the viewing statistics for these articles are accurate then it already has reduced to the dismal pro-life/pro-choice level and a gender issue .

The only reason that human space travel wasn’t built on after the Apollo project was that NASA became top heavy with theorists who don’t want human space travel but would rather entertain themselves in their own fantasy bubble. That too is about to change as humanity get to understand their own solar system neighbourhood using time lapse and imaging. Not everyone is an empirical redneck of echo chamber for theorists .

@Francis Mc Carthy:

What a silly argument, comparing a natural occurrence like a miscarriage or heart attack to an act of killing as the result of reasoned decision.

@Fran Lonergan: what heart attack,Fran? I’m talking about when the majority of terminations are carried out..hard to give an ‘embryo’ a hearty attack…lols

@James O’Nolan: thank you for sharing that. Excellent

@Francis Mc Carthy:

“When a woman’s organ rejects the embryo naturally,”

Where is the mention of abortion there, are you not referring to a natural event, i.e. miscarriage?

@Fran Lonergan: it’s called a spontaneous abortion…OMG!

@Gerald Kelleher: So you’re a fundamentalist Christian ?

@Gerald Kelleher: Are you a Young Earth Creationist Christian ?

@Fran Lonergan: I’d apply the same logic to prohibition on any matter where a significant demand exists. Is it not better for the state to instead take control of a issue, correctly regulate it and ensure safety procedures and practices are adhered to or simply continue to keep their head in the sand, see unnecessary waste of tax payers money going towards enforcement, legal costs, police time and and allowing unsafe unregulated practices to continue which may harm citizens?
Would you be prefer to see new massive prisons built to house the 3000+ women annually charged with murder which is what they face under current laws when they make the decision to travel abroad for the procedure and return home to no after medical support or counselling? Which option makes the most sense?

@Derek:

And how far would you take that philosophy?

It would appear from the level of child abuse that there is a significant demand for that activity. How would you regulate that?

@Fran Lonergan: Nice hook, but when such abuse as you describe it, harms, not only physically but mentally for a persons entire life causing untold emotional trauma and trust issued, etc it’s never acceptable and well, down right evil. As I mentioned already to decriminalise something the state would have to guarantee safety for its citizens and generally everyone in the country so no, child abuse strawman won’t fly. Good analogy though.

@Derek:

But you posit the idea that if something is happening anyway that is sufficient to remove legal sanction.

So you shift your ground because it is unsustainable.