New Secular Parents Group

One of the hard things about bring up your children with no religion or leaving them to figure it out for themselves as they got older, is that it can leave them with out a sense of community which other children may experience.

Also due to how our communities are still often arranged around parish lines it can happen that children don’t meet and get to know other children who have no religion. Getting to be be around other kids for whom this is the norm is a good thing. It means they know they are not alone or that weird and there are other families like theirs who don’t go to church, temple, mosque or meeting hall.

My own kids have no religion, they both currently self ID as agnostic. They were the first children ever enrolled in their school with no stated religion. Back then over 10 years ago there were no Educate Together schools close enough to make it an option. There are still too few Educate Together schools but it’s changing, but there are still challenges esp as such children move into secondary school.

It is great to see more parents working for change and supporting each other.
One of these initiatives is the Secular Parents Group. They are aiming to connect families, so parents can share with each other and run events were kids can meet other kids like them.

Their first event is coming up shortly.

 

Survivors of symphysiotomy exception bill accepted.

It was almost a decade a go that the then Minister for Health Mr Micheal Martin promised there would be a review of the procedure of Symphysiotomy in Irish hospitals.

Last night saw a bill accepted by the Dáil, which removes the time limit for those women who were abused and left suffering for the rest of their lives so that they can now seek out redress. Many women didn’t know what had happened to them, it was their first child. They were failed by the hospitals and often their own GP over the years who didn’t treat them properly or explain what was done to them.

This was done to over a 1,000 women and about 200 remain still. Why was it done?
Contraception was not legal here until 1984, and there is a limit to the number of C sections a woman may have, so to get around that symphysiotomy was used.

Contraception was banned as Ireland was considered a Catholic country.
Again catholic dogma resulted in substandard of care of women in Irish Maternity hospitals leaving them in agony.

Why did women put up with it? Because they were told to, often the term to offer up your suffering would be used when it came to ‘women’s issues’ and ‘The Curse’. To this day Irish women are hesitant to talk about OB/Gyn issues and reproductive issues, this needs to change, we need to be better informed and to share our stories.

The Survivors of symphysiotomy, did not give informed consent, they were not told which procedure and why and the repercussions of it. I am glad the bill has been accepted and more people know of what happened, when I first wrote about symphysiotomy 3 years ago most people had no idea what it was, hopefully now we are aware we will try and make sure that women living here in Ireland never suffer such abuses again at the hands of health care professionals.

 

Nevada Lawmaker Receives Death Threats After Talking About Her Abortion

pNevada, which has one of the highest rates of unintended teen pregnancy in the nation, is considering updating its abstinence-only education policy to require more comprehensive sexual health instruction in public schools. This week, in a debate over that proposed legislation, Nevada Assemblywomen Lucy Flores (D) testified in favor of the bill, sharing her own story about the consequences of inadequate sex ed — all of her sisters became teenage mothers, and Flores herself decided to have an abortion when she became pregnant at 16.[...]/p

via Nevada Lawmaker Receives Death Threats After Talking About Her Abortion.

There has been a lot of press interest on the topic of abortion in Ireland and journalists of many types wanting to speak to Irish women who have had an abortion, they seem surprised when we don’t come forward to talk to them.

I don’t find it surprising at all, due to the shaming and the stigma and people know your business. I know it’s important but it’s still so very hard to do.

When a woman is brave enough like Lucy Flores gets treated in such a vile manner it makes it even harder.

 

Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

This appeared in my social media feeds over the last week, I’ve tried to track down who’s work it is, as it is a wonderful piece. If you know, do let me know.

It succinctly makes the point about single mother’s which I mentioned in my piece about The Snapper and Ireland’s attitudes to “unmarried mothers” and unplanned pregnancy..

 

1BillionRising 14 of February

Ever want a Dance lesson from Debbie Allen (dance teacher in Fame) ?
It’s your lucky day, want to preform that dance with a group of people?
Well you have 6 days to get ready.

1billionrising is happening on the 14 of February.

Globally 1 in 3 women will be raped or beaten in her life time, that is 1 billion women.

ONE BILLION WOMEN VIOLATED IS AN ATROCITY

ONE BILLION WOMEN DANCING IS A REVOLUTION

On V-Day’s 15th Anniversary, 14 February 2013, we are inviting ONE BILLION women and those who love them to WALK OUT, DANCE, RISE UP, and DEMAND an end to this violence. ONE BILLION RISING will move the earth, activating women and men across every country. V-Day wants the world to see our collective strength, our numbers, our solidarity across borders.

What does ONE BILLION look like? On 14 February 2013, it will look like a REVOLUTION.

ONE BILLION RISING IS:

A global strike
An invitation to dance
A call to men and women to refuse to participate in the status quo until rape and rape culture ends
An act of solidarity, demonstrating to women the commonality of their struggles and their power in numbers
A refusal to accept violence against women and girls as a given
A new time and a new way of being

Events are happening all over the world, there are many happening here in Ireland,
join an event near you or use the tool kit to start up your own.

And the video of the song which is being used

“If I can’t dance – I don’t want to be part of your revolution.” Emma Goldman

 

Another XCase Date, 21 years on and still no legislation.

http://www.thejournal.ie/twenty-years-on-a-timeline-of-the-x-case-347359-Feb2012/

6 February 1992: X and her parents traveled to England and arrangements were made for an abortion to take place in London. On the same date, the Attorney General obtained an interim injunction stopping the teenager and her parents from leaving the country or arranging the termination of the pregnancy. Once they were informed of the injunction the family returned to Ireland.

The AG’s order was based on Article 40.3.3 of the Constitution, more specifically on the 1983 amendment that puts the right of the unborn child’s right to life on an equal footing of the mother’s right to life.

Whelen has since said that he had no choice but to seek the injunction as he had a duty to uphold the Constitution. He told an RTÉ documentary that his problem was “stark” after being contacted by the DPP.

This weeks has been filled so far with the abuses of women and children by the state and the church, be it children in industrial schools, children abused by priests, children put up for adoption who can not never find out their parent’s names, women put into laundries and used as slave labour or women driven abroad to have children and to have them adopted.

We have had 90 year of being our own country and honestly it seems to be little more then a litany of abusing and ignoring those who need compassion and care.

We still have people who are being mistreated in asylum holding places, old people’s homes, children’s care homes, and those in care due to disabilities.

In all my born days, despite the struggles watching the Dáil proceedings today, for the first time I find myself wanting to live in a different country.

 

Irish abortion providers…

I was reading this, this morning and those 3 words jumped out at me. I am pretty certain I have never seen those 3 words in that configuration before. Here is where they came from and the context.

http://m.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/dec/20/on-abortion-we-need-spirit-of-67

When, this week, you read a headline saying, Ireland to legalise abortion; or see a statement from the Catholic church saying “Irish abortion reform is a ‘licence to kill innocent babies’”, you should treat it with great scepticism. For a start, nobody has suggested changing the law, nobody’s legalising anything, and innocent babies have more to fear, as ever, from the Catholic church, than from any Irish abortion providers.

Nobody has suggested, even out of respect for the recently killed Savita Halappanavar, the slightest modification in the law, so that an abortion might be permitted in a case where the mother would probably die without it, and the foetus would probably die regardless. There are no new ideas, and no concessions to anybody – all that’s been mooted is the codification of a supreme court ruling, so that the abortion provision they do have is no longer just precedent, it’s actually enshrined in law.

The rest of the the piece written by https://twitter.com/zoesqwilliams explains the legal and historical back drop to the legal situation on abortion. If you like the writers of Jezebel need to brush up on the facts, please do take the time to read the rest of it.

So this morning with my coffee I find myself wondering what Irish abortion providers would look like, ok so say with a wave of a magic wand we have legislation, even the most conservative legislation along the lines with which the majority of people agree. That is abortion to protect the life and health of women including cases of rape/incest and terminations for fatal fetal complication. What happens next?

Well medical policies and procedures would have to be introduced along with guidelines and best practices and insurance policies amended as well, which is a massive amount of paper work.

Currently even with all the Drs we train in this country none of them are trained to carry the procedures needed.
This point gets made time and time again by Drs for choice and Medical Students for Choice. So even when such legislation is passed there will be a long waiting time before a woman would get the timely treatment she needed and most likely will end up with the HSE paying for her to travel and have the procedure in the UK. Like they had to do in the case of Miss D.

So would we see private clinics being set up as Irish abortion providers?

This may cause a whole new get of issues. Part of the Ruling by the EU court of Human Rights in the ABC cases was that MS C right to privacy was breached and with Ireland being such a small place I would worry that such places would be heavily picketed as the anti choice lobbists have been known to picket family planning clinics here and take pictures of people going into them. It will still be that those who can afford to go privately will have more choice and privacy and may still choose to leave the country.

Irish abortion providers, I would prefer if they were just part of the general OB/GYM services in this country, but even these services suffer from the policies and practices which have them as an add on service and not part of holistic health care for women.

Even when we have less restriction on abortion in this country there will be still so much work to be done on ensuring women and transmen have the health care they need.

 

Dear Leo, your never getting a preference from me.

http://www.irishexaminer.com/ireland/kfkfidqlgbau/rss2/

Varadkar opposed to abortion for rape victims

By Mary Regan, Political Reporter

Monday, May 03, 2010

ALLOWING rape victims to terminate their pregnancies could lead to “abortion on demand” according to controversial Fine Gael TD, Leo Varadkar.

The front-bench spokes-person on enterprise also said he “went easier” on Tánaiste Mary Coughlan in the Dáil “because she is a woman” in an effort to dismiss claims that he had been sexist towards her.

The conservative TD and medical doctor said he would “not be in favour of abortion” and, although he is not religious, he would “accept a lot of Catholic social thinking”.

In 1992, the Supreme Court ruled in the X case that a woman had a right to an abortion if there was “a real and substantial risk” to her life. Mr Varadkar said: “The only thing that would be a grey area is if there’s a genuine threat or risk to the life of the mother.”

But he said he wouldn’t be in favour of legalising abortions for victims of rape: “I wouldn’t be in favour of it in that case, and, you know, first of all, it isn’t the child’s fault that they’re the child of rape.”

“How would that work practically? Would someone have to prove that they’ve been raped? I think where that’s been brought in in countries it has more or less led to abortion on demand,” he said in an interview with the Sunday Independent magazine. “You can say the same thing about disabled children. You know, some people would make that argument in favour of abortion. It’s not their fault they’re disabled. I wouldn’t be in favour of it in those circumstances either.”

It’s estimated that around 5,000 women travel from Ireland to Britain for abortions every year, but Mr Varadkar said there was no double standards on the issue. “People travel overseas to do things overseas that aren’t legal in Ireland all the time. You know, are we going to stop people going to Las Vegas? Are we going to stop people going to Amsterdam? There are things that are illegal in Ireland and we don’t prevent people from travelling overseas to avail of them.”

The 31-year-old said it was “very unfair” that he was accused of sexism in the Dáil because of the way he attacked Ms Coughlan when she was Minister for Enterprise.

“If anything I went easier on her because she was a woman,” he said. “She’s accused everyone of sexism. Nobody that I know would ever say that I’m sexist. Most people would accept it was the last line of defence for Mary Coughlan.”

 

Pro life tatics haven’t changed from 1983.

Those who opposed the 8th amendment were accused of being pro abortion and running a campaign for abortion when they were questioning the flawed nature of the 8th amendment.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eighth_Amendment_of_the_Constitution_of_Ireland

The 8th Amendment introduced the following clause into Article 40.3 of the Constitution:

3° The State acknowledges the right to life of the unborn and, with due regard to the equal right to life of the mother, guarantees in its laws to respect, and, as far as practicable, by its laws to defend and vindicate that right.

 

Do we need to appeal the 8th amendment?

The reason we are in this mess is 29 years ago when there was pressure to legalise contraception (yes you heard me legalise contraception which happened in 1984) there was a fear as Irish law is case law and precedents that a high court could make a ruling and allow for access to abortion, an Irish Roe V Wade. So we ended up with a bad amendment which even back then legal minds point out could in face result in what it was touted not do to. By constitutional Lawyer Mary Robinson and even in the Dáil by Alan Shatter who is now our Minster for Justice.

So do we need to appeal the 8 amendment and do a better job?
When it was passed Mary Robinson stated that it could lead to putting the lives of women at risk as she was on the side which opposed the amendment.

Constitutional lawyers William Binchy (Pro-Life Amendment Campaign) and Mary Robinson (Anti-Amendment Campaign) debate the legal implications of the result of the referendum on the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution on a Today Tonight Referendum Results special, 8 September 1983.

She pointed out that the term ‘unborn’ was not a legal term and that there would be test cases against the amendment as it was ambiguous. She was right, and women have been paying the price for the last 29 years and it’s time we repealed the 8th amendment.