Thread by @sineadredmond

THREAD: For anyone out there concerned about the No campaign’s current push to convince the electorate that the proposed legislation for abortion, should the referendum pass, will allow for abortion access up to 6 months:

It’s categorically untrue.

#TogetherForYes #together4yes

(I’m attaching links below where you can examine the legislation in detail for yourself if you want.) They are basing this claim on UK legislation and practice. This will not be the legislation or practice here.

UK law, for starters, requires that if you are in need of an abortion you should fit specific legal criteria laid out in 1964. One of those criteria is that of risk to your health; in UK law this means that if two medical doctors agree that the pregnancy you are carrying

would pose a greater risk to your health by continuing it than ending it, you should be allowed to access abortion care. This is a very low evidentiary bar, and in fact applies to every pregnancy anyone has ever carried.

(Statistically speaking, it’s 14 times safer for you if you’re pregnant to terminate a pregnancy early than continue it to term.) This means in practice and in effect, it is an on request system for women with medical providers, up to 24 weeks.

(And still, 92% of all abortions there take place before 12 weeks.)

The democratic process of the Citizens’ Assembly followed by the Joint Oireachtas Committee came to the recommendation that anyone in need of an abortion who seeks medical support from their doctor should not have to prove that they fit a series of legally prescribed criteria;

rather that it would be, like all other medical care, up to the medically qualified person in the room to support the medical need.

They came to this conclusion because, primarily, they believed it would be impossible to safely and compassionately care for those who had been raped and were subsequently pregnant by requiring them to legally prove that.

The drafted legislation says that this will be the case up to 12 weeks’ gestation, so in a reasonably similar manner so far as abortion care takes place in the UK. After that point, abortion care will ONLY be provided where there is a ‘real and substantial’ risk

to the pregnant woman’s health AND the risk can only be averted by ending the pregnancy. All other avenues of treatment must have been tried already. Two doctors must certify this ‘real and substantial risk’ and one of those doctors must be an obstetrician.

There is proposed provision in law for severe criminal penalties to doctors who provide abortions in Ireland outside of this strictly regulated proposed system, as well as the sanctions they would face from the medical board.

This system would be in place up until the point of ‘viability’, so a week term limit will not be cited in place in this legislation, to allow for the possibility of foetal survival rates at earlier points in pregnancy than we could now imagine.

After the point of viability where a threat to your health from pregnancy exists, the foetus will be delivered and receive every possible medical support, as happens now with every premature baby capable of survival.

You are entitled to your own vote and you are entitled to disagree with me. However that vote and that disagreement shouldn’t be based on being lied to and misled by those who would genuinely rather choose that all women and families, regardless of the risk to their health,

their lives, or whether their pregnancies will survive, remain suffering and in pain and in danger needing abortion care here, than see people supported safely in making their own decisions

drive.google.com/file/d/1WxtQC9…

aboutthe8th.com