Women’s rights violated in northern and southern Ireland

This video from the USA says about itself:

30 November 2015

There has been a historic ruling in Northern Ireland regarding the country’s ban on abortion. A judge decided that denying women access to abortion is a violation of their human rights. Ana Kasparian (The Point) and John Iadarola (Think Tank) hosts of The Young Turks discuss.

Read more here.

From daily The Morning Star in Britain:

Dublin ‘must act’ on Northern Ireland abortion ruling

Tuesday 1st December 2015

Belfast High Court says ban violates human rights convention

by Our Foreign Desk

THE Dublin government was put on notice yesterday after a Belfast High Court ruled that the almost outright ban on abortion in Northern Ireland violates human rights.

Mr Justice Mark Horne’s landmark judgement could lead to a relaxation of the strict laws prohibiting women accessing terminations in cases of rape, incest or where there is a diagnosis of fatal foetal abnormality, and will have major implications for the 26 counties.

Amnesty International Ireland executive director Colm O’Gorman said the Belfast High Court ruling was not something solely for the Stormont executive to act on.

“The Irish government is now on notice that it too is violating the European Convention on Human Rights,” he said.

Britain’s 1967 Abortion Act does not extend to Northern Ireland, so terminating a pregnancy remains illegal there except in very limited circumstances where the life or mental health of the mother is in danger.

Anyone who performs an illegal abortion could be jailed for life.

Judge Horner said that the failure to provide exceptions to the law in certain limited circumstances breached a woman’s right to privacy.

In cases of fatal foetal abnormality (FFA), he concluded that the mother’s inability to access an abortion was a “gross interference with her personal autonomy.”

He said: “In the case of an FFA there is no life to protect. When the foetus leaves the womb, it cannot survive independently. It is doomed. There is no life to protect.

“Therefore, even on a light-touch review, it can be said to a considerable degree of confidence that it is not proportionate to refuse to provide an exception to the criminal sanctions imposed on the impugned provisions.”

The court also heard that the near-blanket ban, reinforced with criminal sanctions, placed a disproportionate burden on victims of sexual crime.

“She has to face all the dangers and problems, emotional or otherwise, of carrying a foetus for which she bears no moral responsibility and is merely a receptacle to carry the child of a rapist and/or a person who has committed incest, or both,” the judge declared.

This video from the USA says about itself:

14 November 2012

“The debate over legalizing abortion in Ireland flared Wednesday after the government confirmed a miscarrying woman suffering from blood poisoning was refused a quick termination of her pregnancy and died in an Irish hospital.

Prime Minister Enda Kenny said he was awaiting findings from three investigations into the death of Savita Halappanavar, an Indian living in Galway since 2008 who was 17 weeks along in her pregnancy. The 31-year-old’s case highlights the bizarre legal limbo in which pregnant women facing severe health problems in predominantly Catholic Ireland can find themselves.

Ireland’s constitution officially bans abortion, but a 1992 Supreme Court ruling found it should be legalized for situations when the woman’s life is at risk from continuing the pregnancy. Five governments since have refused to pass a law resolving the confusion, leaving Irish hospitals reluctant to terminate pregnancies except in the most obviously life-threatening circumstances.”

Cenk Uygur and Ana Kasparian discuss the story of Savita Halappanavar, who died after the Catholic hospital refused her repeated requests for an abortion. Are the strict abortion rules and imposed religious morality upheld by the hospital really viable in today’s age? Where did the idea of this form of “morality” and religion over human life and suffering even originate, and why do people follow it? Cenk Uygur has an answer.