Immigrant
saying she was suicidal was refused termination at eight weeks before court
made her have the baby at 25 weeks
The Guardian, Henry McDonald, Ireland correspondent, Sunday 17 August 2014
 |
| Pro-choice supporters during a demonstration in Dublin in July 2013. Photograph: Peter Muhly/AFP/Getty Images |
A young
woman has been legally forced to give birth by caesarean section after being
denied an abortion in Ireland, in a case experts say exposes flaws in recent
reform meant to allow limited terminations.
The woman,
who is an immigrant and cannot be named for legal reasons, was refused an
abortion even though at eight weeks she demanded a termination, claiming she
was suicidal.
After she
then threatened a hunger strike to protest the decision, local health
authorities obtained a court order to deliver the baby prematurely – at around
25 weeks according to some reports – to ensure its safety. The infant has been
placed in care.
The case is
the first proper test of the 2013 Protection of Life During Pregnancy Act,
which allows for limited abortions in Irish hospitals. The law provides for
cases where the woman's life would be in danger if she goes full term, or in
cases where she is suicidal in such instances as rape and incest. Critics say
that in this instance the law has proved of no practical value to the woman
concerned.
The case also
highlights medical guidelines given to Irish doctors, which pro-choice organisations said would seriously obstruct suicidal women seeking abortions.
The guidelines mean that women seeking an abortion could need approval from up
to seven experts.
Pro-choice
campaigners want to know if the woman concerned was offered the option of an
abortion in the UK.
Máiréad
Enright, a lecturer on human rights law at the University of Kent and a member
of the Irish-based Lawyers for Choice, said: "A woman might be able to
obtain an abortion in the UK after 24 weeks, on limited grounds, including to
save her life or to prevent grave permanent injury to her physical or mental
health.
"In
many cases, as we already know too well, the right to travel is meaningless to
the wide variety of very vulnerable women unable to access it. However, it is
likely that reports like this one, of this case, may discourage women from
making applications under the act at all."
Enright
said thousands of women in Ireland who are foreign nationals as well as those
from the Irish Travelling community are now at risk of being refused abortions
in the Republic's hospitals or the alternative of a termination in Britain.
She said:
"It has been reported that this woman did not have a great command of
English or was fully aware of her rights under Irish law. Was she offered any
alternatives by the medical team examining her? Was she told she could travel
to England although this was more complicated by the fact that she would have
needed a special visa to leave the state for Britain?
"This
judgment puts a whole lot of vulnerable women in Ireland, like the thousands of
migrants and women from traditionally underprivileged communities like the
Travellers, at even greater risk.
"Women
in these communities are often denied access to their rights including the
right to travel or are given very little information about their rights."
Lawyers For
Choice has made a submission to the United Nations Commission on the Status of
Women on what it sees as major flaws in the new abortion legislation.
The legal
document notes that "in those limited circumstances in which abortion is
permitted, it is state doctors and not women who are gatekeepers to abortion.
In all other circumstances state law effectively reinforces an array of social
and economic burdens to punish women who seek to terminate their
pregnancies."
If the UN
committee accepts the lawyers' arguments it will be the second time this year
that it has sharply criticised the near blanket ban on abortion in the Irish
state. The UN's Human Rights Commission described the process of putting a
suicidal pregnant woman through a panel of up to seven doctors as
"additional mental torture".
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Question: Dear Kryon, thank you for the many communications you have given. They have been enlightening in many ways. I hope this is not a rude question, but it is a subject that I have not seen addressed in the collection of Questions and Answers. I want to know: What is the morality of stopping someone's new life in the physical plane, by abortion? And what is the karma to the person who helps to accomplish an abortion? I think it will depend on when a Human life begins. When life begins is a moment that is very important to those who oppose abortion and those who say it is allowable.
Do you have a decisive response to guide those who receive your words?
Answer: [from Lee Carroll] We have tried to "paint" Kryon into a corner on this many times, since it really is an important issue in our society. Kryon says this: "Human life actually begins when the intent of the entities involved in the planning session is to create it." It's not a biological answer, and it won't please either side.
This places it far before any kind of biological morality decision. Kryon has said that there is no judgement in the choice of Humans... including this one. When it occurs, there is also no horrible karmic payback. But there IS energy created that affects everyone around the event. Sometimes these lives come and go to create lessons for those involved, then these terminated lives return almost immediately, often within the next pregnancy (sometimes changing gender). If there is no next pregnancy, often it's in a very close family group.
God is not in a vacuum concerning these things, and often they are set-ups, and are executed with the agreement of all parties in advance. This is far different than our society wishes to believe. They want to paint a black and white answer to when life occurs, and set rules on what you can and cannot do with it. Instead, Kryon's answer gives honor and validity to the fact that you are not here by accident, and the things that take place in your lives are not random. Not to mention the fact that your free choice is the free choice of God (since you are a piece of God).
So we leave the biological cultural decisions for those who wish to make them, but we have heard the spiritual answers many times... that these things are far more than they appear, and are all part of our spiritual setups, and they are honored.
So we leave the biological cultural decisions for those who wish to make them, but we have heard the spiritual answers many times... that these things are far more than they appear, and are all part of our spiritual setups, and they are honored.
"Recalibration of Knowledge" – Jan 14, 2012 (Kryon channelled by Lee Carroll) - (Subjects: Channelling, God-Creator, Benevolent Design, New Energy, Shift of Human Consciousness, (Old) Souls, Reincarnation, Gaia, Old Energies (Africa,Terrorists, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Venezuela ... ), Weather, Rejuvenation, Akash, Nicolas Tesla / Einstein, Cold Fusion, Magnetics, Lemuria, Atomic Structure (Electrons, Particles, Polarity, Self Balancing, Magnetism, Higgs Boson), Entanglement, "Life is necessary for a Universe to exist and not the other way around", DNA, Humans (Baby getting ready, First Breath, Stem Cells, Embryonic Stem Cells, Rejuvenation), Global Unity, ... etc.) - (Text Version)
"... I want to define life for you - not biological life, but spiritual life. So for all those intellectuals, just hold on, for many won't like this. Spiritual life, as measured by Spirit, is when a Human has free choice. When is that? It's when they take their first breath. Not in utero. There will be those who will say, "That's wrong, that's wrong. The soul in the woman's body is alive!" Just wait. I'm talking about spiritually. That which Spirit sees, and it's when you come from the other side of the veil and take your first breath.
A child with the mother has no free choice. That child is linked to the choice of the mother until it is born. It is, indeed, a soul in preparation for free choice, and there are many attributes that are spiritual that we have discussed before about how that soul reacts. But now I'm discussing life with polarity [duality], free choice.
But let's discuss that "child inside" for a moment, for there is a process I want you to know about. I want to talk about 240 days into the pregnancy. At about that time, the child has perfect DNA. It hasn't taken its first breath. The DNA hasn't measured the energy of the planet yet, since it is contained. Did you realize that? Inside the womb is a perfect child. The child's DNA has all the attributes of the Akash and also the parent, but it's different in a way you have not been told. The DNA is 100% as designed.
The quantum instructions within the DNA are all talking to the biology of the child,, getting ready for the first breath. ..."
"THE THREE WINDS" – Feb 23-24, 2013 (Kryon Channelling by Lee Carroll) (Subjects: Humanity, Home - other side of the veil, Wind of Birth - Birth, Wind of Existence - Life, Wind of Transition - Death)
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