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AN AMENDMENT TO have the criminalisation of abortion removed from the Protection of Life During Pregnancy Bill 2013 has been defeated in the Dáil tonight. The final vote saw the amendment lose 13 votes to 110.
The amendment was sponsored by independent TDs Joan Collins and Clare Daly. Speaking in the Dáil this evening, Daly called the proposed 14-year-sentence in the bill for a woman procuring an illegal abortion or for a person assisting a woman to do so was “ludicrous”.
“You are maintaining a chilling effect that is not indicative of a modern society, it is indicative of a hypocrisy,” she said.
She also said women are “exposing themselves to not being protected in terms of aftercare” because hospitals won’t ask them questions about pills they may have taken or procured over the internet.
Colm Keaveney, who is expected to vote against the bill in its entirety, said the idea of a 14-year sentence “hanging over a woman in a distressed or vulnerable situation is appalling”.
Fianna Fáil TD Billy Kelleher also expressed his opposition to the sentence:
I don’t think that the sanction of 14 years will deter a 14-year-old girl who is pregnant from procuring tablets over the internet. What it could deter is her from accessing medical care if there are complications.
Lucinda Creighton, who voted against the government on an amendment earlier today, instantly lost the Fine Gale party whip, had put forward her own amendment seeking a reduction in the sentence to just five years. She said it was an “extremely harsh sentence for somebody who we would imagine being in a very difficult and delicate situation”.
Responding to criticisms, Health Minister James Reilly said that currently a woman can be persecuted and sentenced to life and that this does not crease a new offence and it simply “brings the penalty for this offence in line with current parameters”.
He also said that it will be up to the DPP, using their discretion to refer a case and “if it does go to court, there is the discretion and the wisdom of the courts themselves”.
In the final vote, a large proportion of the opposition abstained.
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God help the people of Iran, they brought down the Shah for a Religious leader and hopefully now the table will turn in favour for them. As the Shah said that having Mullahs in power would turn Iran back 1,500 year’s and he was right.
@Mick McGuinness: It is only the weak who seek to control minds through fear, controlling women out of fear of the body God gave them. What weakness is in their logic to impose upon a woman the impression of an inferior being, who gave birth to the man, without who, they (Men) would not exist.
@Mick McGuinness: the shah did a good job of that himself. What a disposable puppet of London and Washington.
This is horrific. Can’t believe this sort of thing still happens in parts of the world. Morality police????? Awful!!!!!!
@Anna Carr: happens in China too for everyone
@Billybutcher: :(
@Anna Carr: reminds me of Holy Catholic Ireland and the network of institutions that they ran right up to the 1990s
@Paul Jude Redmond: Ah stop. Nobody was killed here for not wearing a head scarf
@DK: Try getting pregnant without being married. Then you would know a fate far worse than being killed.
Religion whats that all about . Fables and made up stories.Cant we be honest with ourselfes, we live we die gods are make believe. Live be as happy as possible, the world would be a better place without these imagined gods.
@Boots1220: everyone has a religion – what’s yours ? Veganism, anti-Israel, Man Utd…. Christianity is actually a good religion at its core
@Virgil: i’d nail them all to the cross
@Virgil: oblivion, nothingness, works for me!
Poverty and RELIGION go hand in hand in 3rd world.
@Michael Heery: don’t we know it. Regarding headwear, if my mother had gone to mass without wearing a headscarf she would have become the local pariah
@alan: Not mandatory, to wear a Scarf in our Mother’s Day, not beaten to death, or arrested.
@ÓDuibhír Abú: Perhaps not but branded as a “hussey”? Most definitely. Up to the 1960s and early-mid 70s, Irish society and Catholicism were the greatest enemies of women who didn’t toe the line eg. by covering their heads, albeit loosely, in church.
Only since 1983, imagine.. Iran should be leading the Middle East forward, not in a western way but in a Persian way.
No reason why the average Iranian is not wealthy and educated like once maybe they were, before 1983 perhaps
All religion is evil all about control the masses believe in your own God and be a good person and that’s it
Jeez the bots are out in force here tonight.
For it is culture boss man
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