On the 1.oo news today, Minister for Health Mary Harney noted that Sinn Féin are the only party who fully supports the nurses and therefore, if they want their demands met, they and their families should vote for us. Cheers for that Mary, the cheque's in the post.
On another matter, I was relieved to hear that the judge in the Miss D case has shown humanity and compassion - and pulled this country back from the brink of international ridicule - by deciding that the State has no power to prevent a 17-year-old travelling to Britain for an abortion. I'm sure the politicians are relieved too, thinking the issue will die down now. It's important that the growing pro-choice movement doesn't let that happen.
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5 comments:
It's important that the abortion/murder issue is settled once and for all.
Ireland should have a blanket ban
Ireland does have a blanket ban, Chris. And it hasn't settled anything at all - as has been repeatedly demonstrated, by the X, C, and D cases and by the 6000+ women who travel abroad every year.
Chris would have fitted well in with Willie Frazer's FAIR people outside Stormont yesterday with their screams of murder! murder! murder!
I find it ridiculous that any republican could be anti-choice on the basis that "abortion = murder", unless that person happened to be a pacifist and against the armed struggle, and maybe even secretly in the Peace People.
Ciarán
To compare me with Frazer is out of order, the people he "represents" aka the Glenanne Gang planted the bomb in Kays Tavern in Dundalk which almost killed me father.
I am anything but a pacifist but as far as I am concerned abortion is murder.
That is my belied and a belief held by many within Sinn Féin.
Abortion is a very divisive issue for Irish political parties, Sinn Féin is no different.
That being said as Dawn Doyle outlined in the recent 6 counties election we do not support abortion.
Our position is very much in line with the X case.
I have no doubt that if the issue was put to the Irish people, yes or no, the answer would be no.
I am not anti-choice, I am pro-life.
Your attempt to question my republicanism over this issue is pathetic!!
I'd never dispute your Republicanism Chris. And it's not necessary for everyone to agree on every issue one way or the other. But even a blanket ban of the sort you propose would not work. There are far too many grey areas as demonstrated recently. And then again, would you Chris approve of the state holding Miss D in custody until she had given birth because that appears to be the logic of your position. If though, we take your position as read, aren't the implications of that stance that women who have abortions should be imprisoned, that those who conduct them (a moot point on this island) whould be imprisoned and so forth. And while if put to the Irish people about abortion, yes or no, you're right, it would be no, the moment we introduce other issues, i.e. the circumstances of the pregnance (incest/rape so on), the nature of the pregnancy (viability of the foetus) the support will begin to drop away. And those issues can't be ducked in any referendum since it was by proposing just such supposedly watertight questions that has us where we are today.
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