Posted on 05/09/2007 8:00:08 AM PDT by fight_truth_decay
An Irish teenager who has fought an ongoing battle to come to Britain for an abortion has been granted permission to travel by the High Court in Dublin.
The unnamed 17-year-old, known only as "Miss D" who is four months' pregnant, had previously been denied the right to leave the country by Ireland's Health Service Executive, which had the girl in its care.
The authorities pledged to call the police and stop the teenager from undergoing the operation, so the girl went to the High Court in the hope of being granted permission to travel.
The unborn child has a condition meaning a major part of the brain, scalp and skull is missing and is only expected to survive for a few days after birth.
Opening the case, Eoghan Fitzsimons SC, for Miss D, told the court that it seems "to be most inhumane" to expect her to carry her baby full term.
Mr Fitzsimons told the court that if Miss D was not in the care of the HSE and her parents supported her decision for abortion, there was nothing to stop her travelling.
Not being perfect is one thing. This infant doesn't have a complete skull. That's where the brain is, you know.
This isn't about a shallow goal of perfection at all.
It IS what I was taught in the day, I cannot say that it is still considered true as I am not still active and counseling. When I did do counseling we did have statistics to verify it. That would be about 15-20 years ago.
An abortion is not “taking off of life support.” it involves active killing, like injecting poison into an IV tube.
The distinction is more slippery than it seems. If the method used was to induce the woman to deliver right now, at 4 months, that would be "removal of life support" - the uterus.
No, this isn’t about perfection. It’s about letting a mother deal with the grief of a terminal child naturally instead of having a “procedure” and then pretending nothing ever happened.
A woman is much better off having given life to the terminal, to hold and comfort her baby than she is to clinicly dispose of it.
Me too.
Thanks!
That might be so in some cases, but certainly not all cases.
He was pretty eloquent about it and I see he is still on the thread defending his position.
dave is both principled and eloquent, in defense of life.
How does that lead to the opposite case? You're using the same logic that Planned Parenthood does in saying that banning partial-birth abortion leads to banning miscarriage or some such claptrap.
No, Christopher Reeve was not as good as dead, because he still had his brain, and therefore his mind, and the ability to perceive and understand the world around him.
Through some ineffable mystery, electrical impulses in our higher brain turn into our consciousness, and our sense of self and our personhood. When there are no such electrical impulses, our bodies are basically twitching bags of meat. That's why organ donation was legalized, so that it's permissible for a dead body with a beating heart and air-filled lungs to be cut apart in order to save the lives of other people.
Are you psychic in purporting to know that she will pretend nothing ever happened?
So you use a different kind of poison, one that hurts the woman less than the fetus but does her no good physically. Intent matters. You aim to kill. This is hardly different from exposing a new born infant.
Describe to me a case where it is not better to love a helpless terminal baby.
And don’t just consider the short term, these types of decisions haunt enough women today that churches have to have special programs to console them, years after they make these easy decisions.
"Just have this little procedure and all will be made right."
Beyond the obvious problem with her travel I think it’s odd that she needs permission. I went back and forth there with VERY little scrutiny. Buy a ticket, get on the boat, ta-da you’re there!
The girl is 13 and the whole situation is freaking her out, let alone giving birth to a baby missing most of its skull that dies within a few days of birth.
I don’t think that’s a good situation for the girl.
So instead you propose that the government should force her to mourn her brain-dead child for the remaining 5 months or so of her pregnancy and however long after birth the child might live, assuming the 50/50 odds of simply dying before birth are overcome?
There is nothing in this situation that can be made “right” - through an unfortunate curl of cells a person that might have been never came to be. It’s sad, but it happens sometimes.
There’s no “allure” to be found anywhere.
>>So instead you propose that the government should force her to mourn her brain-dead child for the remaining 5 months or so of her pregnancy and however long after birth the child might live, assuming the 50/50 odds of simply dying before birth are overcome?<<
She will mourn her child forever whether she kills him/her immediately or carries to term.
The girl is 17, but her age is mmaterial. There is no benefit to her in prematurely killing her unborn infant. None. Whatever is going to “freak her out” about the situation is not going to be allieviated by her adding on the guilt of being impatient in waiting for her child to die.
I thought you asked me for a situation where comforting the terminal infant wouldn’t be a good thing. That’s what I did. I gave you an example.
Removal from life support is effectively 'killing', and some would argue 'actively killing' because someone makes a decision knowing that death will result. Yet there is a very big difference between 'killing' and murder.
Hasn't it been common practice to shoot or kill severely injured and suffering animals? Is that murder? Is the phrase 'Choose Life' really intended as 'Choose Human Life'?
'Thou shalt not murder' is very different from 'thou shall not kill'. This tragic case seems like a valid time for 'mercy killing'.
When done morally, ending life is called killing, when done immorally, ending life is called murder - at least that seems to be the distinction God makes.
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