Pro-choice, anti-choice and misinformation!

So tomorrow I (and a hoopload of others) will be Marching for Choice! I'm also Marching for Democracy. It's been twenty years since the X-case, Twenty years and three referendums that supported a woman's right to a termination in the case of her life being at risk or in the case that the baby was incompatible with life, twenty years, three referendum and twelve women a day who must go abroad to seek an abortion. Three referendum that successive governments in their cowardice refused to legislate for. It is an infringement on the rights of the woman and an infringement on democracy. Three times this issue has gone to the polls and three times the government in power has refused to listen to the voice of the people.

Twenty years and more of woman shaming

I want to state here and now that I have NO problem with people who are against abortion. Zero! Zilch! That is your opinion and your choice to make. However I have a HUGE problem with the amount of misinformation that floods out from the 'pro-life side'. I state 'pro-life' in commas because it infers that anyone on the pro-choice side is pro-death or anti-life. That's not true. Some of the main proponents of the 'pro-life' side seem to think that every pro-choice person wants every pregnant woman to have an abortion. There have even been encounters which go to the tune of:

Pro-life: What if your mother had been pro-choice?

Pro-choice: She is, she chose to have me.

But that's a minor point. Some of the gravest misinformation was on our streets recently by Youth Defence. The infamous billboards and leaflets claiming that there was always a better option. 

SOMETIMES THERE'S NOT

Questions were asked of these claims. What if it's a case of rape? Like the X-Case, what if it's a case of rape of a 12 year old girl?

'Pro-Life's answer is that the girl should carry to term no matter what and if she really doesn't want the baby, to put him/her up for adoption. Whatever about a woman's right to choose, no child should ever be forced to give birth. Let me give you some statistics on this: pregnancy is a risky business anyway but girls under the age of 15 are FIVE times more likely to die in pregnancy than women in their twenties. Babies are 60% more likely to die if their mother is under 18. 

Source: http://www.who.int/pmnch/media/news/2012/20120626_stc_teen_pregnancy_report/en/index.html.

Not to mention external effects such as the girl having to take a year out of her education, societal implications and the speculation and gossip that would inevitably follow such a situation.

The other accusations of some 'pro-life' groups that abortion is the tearing out of a fully formed foetus kicking and screaming from a mother's womb. Youth Defence posters are full of this. Most of their posters consist of either almost fully formed foetuses or miscarriages NOT abortions. A zygote and a blastocyst are less than 2.5 inches. Find yourself a ruler and measure it. Another stunt by 'pro-life' groups is that they want to film abortions happening to put others off. Abortions that occur in the first nine weeks (as most abortions do) would make for pretty boring filming. 

An abortion before nine weeks consists of a
woman taking a tablet and having a heavy period.

Most Irish women are not in the nine-week mark due to arranging time off work and travel etc.

This is what an abortion after 9 weeks looks like.

Late term abortions are few and far between. In countries like the UK it's not possible to have a late term abortion unless the mother's life is at risk or the baby is not viable. But it is possible. And women that need them can get them. Unlike the women of Ireland whose country has turned it's back on them and decided to sweep them under the carpet. Women who have a late term abortion only do so under dire circumstances and we certainly owe them and all other women more than shame.

Which brings me to my last point. A lot of 'pro-life' groups are about the shaming of women. Not trusting a woman to make her own decisions over her own body. And it hearkens back to a time not so long ago when girls or women who find themselves pregnant out of wedlock were 'sent to care for a sick relative' or even worse sent to a Magdalene Laundry.

It's 2012 Ireland - we owe those 12 women a day, those 5,000 women a year, those 100,000 women since the X-Case more dignity than to be swept under the carpet like a dirty secret of the state.

Join us tomorrow at the Spire at 2pm and March for Choice!

Blasphemy Law - I promise I'm not just late to the party

Cast your minds back to January 2010 when Dermot Ahern brought us back to the Middle Ages with the introduction of a new blasphemy law which gave the Gardaí the power to seize blasphemous material from the home or any other premises used by a person convicted of blasphemy. It also came with a hefty €25,000 fine. Ahern said he had three options: to abandon the old bill; to hold a single-issue referendum to remove the constitutional reference to blasphemy; or to update the references in the 1961 Defamation Act. Opting for reform, he said he had removed the seven-year jail sentence from the old legislation - how generous of him! Just the year previously Ireland  had voted at the UN against an attempt by Islamic states to make ‘defamation of religion’ a crime. And yet the Minister for Justice sought to revive this anachronistic medieval crime in modern Ireland. The proposed law flew in the face of a recommendation by the Law Reform Commission which said that there was no place for such an offence in a society which respects freedom of speech.

Speak no evil!

So where are we now?
As far as I know no one has, as yet, been convicted of the crime of blasphemy in Ireland. Which comes as somewhat of a surprise to me as we Irish are generally quite blasphemous by nature even on a day-to-day basis. I mean if the government wanted to whip up money for the Troika, the fines taken from any open pub on any Friday night should set us up to pay back a good chunk of the money (better shut up or they might take that idea on board!). Outside of Ireland it has had huge ramifications. Our introduction of the blasphemy law led to Islamic states such as Indonesia and Pakistan praising us, using us as an example and a defence for their own backward laws. Unlike Ireland, Indonesia and Pakistan have not been so slow out of the traps to bring down the full force of their might on people they deem guilty of blasphemy.

Alexander Aan is an Indonesian atheist and former Muslim. He was imprisoned this year for posting comments and images to Facebook that were judged to be "disseminating information aimed at inciting religious hatred or hostility" by the Muaro Sijunjung district court. The sentence sparked national debate and caused Amnesty International to designate him a prisoner of conscience. The sentence sparked debate over here. Senator Ivana Bacik and Senator Jillian van Turnhout have both asked the Irish Government to support Alexander Aan, with Ivana Bacik going as far as to say the law needed to be repealed. Bacik saying in a Seanad debate "We need to examine our blasphemy law because it is clearly having a repressive effect in Indonesia, Pakistan and other countries. I know the matter will be reviewed as part of the constitutional convention, but I believe the law should be repealed. Perhaps progress can be made more quickly in this regard." It is worth mentioning that in countries such as Pakistan members of government have been murdered for speaking out against their Blasphemy laws.

Ireland is having a repressive effect. Even more callous than the imprisonment of Alexander Aan in Indonesia was the imprisonment of a fourteen year old girl with Down's Syndrome in Pakistan. She was arrested after a mob (always the voice of reason) accused her of burning pages from the Koran. It has since emerged that an Islamic mullah has been accused of deliberately framing the girl by planting burnt Islamic texts. The mullah Hafiz Mohammed Khalid Chishti insisted it was the only way to get rid of Christians in the area. Speaking to Western newspapers Chishti said he is not sorry that Christians have not left the area in the aftermath of the girl's arrest.
The girl in question has since been release on a $10,500 bail fee under the condition that she turn up in court for her trial. The girl, and remember here she is of diminished mental capacity, had to be taken from the prison in an armoured vehicle and whisked to a waiting helicopter while covered with a sheet to protect her identity in order to protect her from outside mobs. Amnesty International are hoping that the girl will be granted asylum in another country to ensure she need not be brought to trial in Pakistan. If  she is brought to trial and found guilty, Pakistan can go as far as condemning an intellectually disabled teenager to death for a crime she was most likely framed for, and even if she wasn't, could not have had the capacity to understand the consequences of her actions.

So here we are. No one in our country has been convicted of blasphemy, and believe me Atheism Ireland have tried. No one is going to arrest us for watching Father Ted and no one will arrest you if you feel like using a copy of the Koran to start your barbecue of an evening. However Dermot Ahern can not have been so blind sided as to not even imagine the consequence of his actions. As long as our country, the pimple on the arse of Europe, continues with the charade of this archaic law other people in the world will suffer. Dermot Ahern has blood on his hands. The blood of people who stand up for the value of free speech and the blood of  innocent children who are framed by manipulative entities. And before anyone asks what would Jesus do? Christ himself was condemned to death for blasphemy. Me? I believe more in Robert Green Ingersoll's words that “This crime called blasphemy was invented by priests for the purpose of defending doctrines not able to take care of themselves”


As an aside on the case of the girl in Pakistan, a British newspaper published a photo of the girl as she was being brought to safety. I can't even describe how disgusted I am that a Western publication would compromise the safety of this girl any further.

Royal nudity and indignant death

It struck me as odd this morning that the British newspapers have decided not to publish photos of the naked Prince Harry in an LA hotel as he played strip billiards, especially as those photos are widely available on the net. We have reporters laying the blame at the door of the Leveson Inquiry and astounded by the censorship of the press with regard to photos can only be described as a royal cockup (pun intended). I'm not getting into the ins and outs (ha) of the Harry photos, primarily because I don't really care for all things royal and secondly I don't really see what the fuss is all about. Young man gets drunk and naked in a hotel room and fails to ensure that those he's naked with doesn't have a camera, woop de doo, non story. I'm not saying that the photos should or shouldn't be published, but it seems strange to see the British media pandering so obviously to Royal whim.

What this was contrasted with this morning is that the British media apparently have no problem with publishing photos of the late Tony Nicklinson as the undertakers took him away yesterday. This is the same press that when the news broke of Nicklinson's death yesterday were quick to speculate causes and if someone had indeed given him his wish of euthanasia.

For those of you who don't know Tony Nicklinson brought a case to the High Court last week asking for a right to die, and lost. He was left with locked in syndrome after suffering a stroke in 2005. What was once a vibrant, active and energetic man was left paralysed and speechless, able only to communicate through blinking his eyes. Nicklinson asked the court to grant immunity from prosecution for murder for a doctor who would give him a fatal dose of painkillers to end his life in Britain. Upon losing his case he accused the court of leaving him to a "dull, miserable, demeaning, undignified and intolerable" life. Nicklinson went on hunger strike and refused medical treatment after the court's decision last week. He developed pneumonia over the weekend and died from the resulting complications. Nicklinson believed he had an undignified life and sought legal help to ensure that he did not have an undignified death.

Alas his fight was in vain. Nicklinson's family watched as he refused food and medical treatment. They accepted his death and were saddened yet relieved that their Dad and husband no longer had to suffer. And then along came the paparazzi. At a time when privacy is a necessity the press were in wait. Quick to cast aspersions on the manner of his death and like vultures quick to swoop in to get photos of his dead body. The press that refuses to show photos of the party prince have no problem with adding insult to injury to a man that only wanted to die in peace and without pain.
What does it say about the reader that their press thinks that photos of a young, naked prince in his prime aren't fit for public consumption but the body of a battered and broken man at his most vulnerable is?

Annnnddddd.....we're back!

Thank-you
Okay I realise it's been almost a year since I started blogging again and I realise that I've been a particularly shite blogger. Mea culpa. Let's hope you can all let me off the hook because it has been a particularly trying year from February until recently and I'm only now getting myself back to normality. This is going to be a short piece because I am not normally prone to bouts of sentimentality but I would like to thank each and everyone one of you for being there for me over the past 6 or 7 months. Times of trouble are when your true friends really step up to the plate and I've been overwhelmed by the support I've been given, I could never thank you all enough.

Now resume being being jerks :)

Will have a new blog post up tomorrow and it'll be a really long one! And from here on blogging will be at least once a week.

The Fawlty Towers Dining Experience

No, no we didn't go to a restaurant with exceptionally bad service, it was actually an interactive show based on Fawlty Towers. We are ushered into the bar where Basil, Sybil and Manuel are serving in their own inimitable style before being called in for our meal. Our table draws attention first with Basil attempting to open a wine bottle with some help from Manuel:

Very Appetising

Which culminates in Basil falling in to the lap of himself. Wine poured and soup served two guests discover that 'chef' has dropped his false teeth into their bowls. And after much consternation Sybil wonders why she hired Manuel. Manuel insists that he is not 'hire' and once again decides to use himself to demonstrate.

"See - he higher!"

 Sybil at this point loses the rag and yells "Sit Down" at which point himself is without a chair.

My new husband

Soup finished, bowls taken away and order briefly restored before the main course. Until Manuel finding Sybil and Basil have left the room decides to do a bit of showing off and once again picks on our table.  As he uses an unfortunate lady as a ladder he climbs on our table to pretend to be a matador

I should add he did later attempt to fix the lady's hair with a fork!

Basil: "Manuel, what in hell do you think you're doing?!!"

We have a brief and complicated explanation of what we should do in the event of a fire, and because we can't leave through the same exit our table is resigned to digging a tunnel, while the table beside us must jump through the window. Since some tables were unsure of what they were meant to be doing Basil turns to himself and asks him what his profession is:
"Ah a programmer, a logistical mind of reason. Alright everybody in the event of a fire: follow him!"

This culminates in Basil raising the alarm for the drill at which point himself has to leg it out of the room while the rest of us are unsure whether to follow or not. I don't have any photos of him as I was too busy laughing. And so ends the first half of the performance.

The second half is a run through of old favourites from the series with audience interaction. Among the final scenes Manuel looking for his 'Siberian hamster' emerges from under a table with a ladies knickers. In the heel of the hunt Basil winds up wearing the knickers on his head and the grand finale is the infamous goose-step across the room

The show was fantastic, the actors have all the mannerisms and intonations down to a T, and if you ever get the opportunity then go see it - but not with a very tall man who attracts attention.

A tribute to Nana

Apologies again for the lax blogging. My Nana's sudden illness sent the whole family and I into a bit of turmoil.
I'm still finding it hard to believe that she's gone. Less than a year ago she was at my wedding and two days later was dancing around the floor at her 80th Birthday Party. She was a woman that was so full of life and so vibrant that it was difficult to see her suffer and in a way her death was a relief as had she lived she would have been ill and bedridden. That's something she most certainly would not have wanted.
Nana was unlike most other grandmothers. She refused to go grey and continued dying her hair until the very last. She wouldn't be seen outside the front door without her hair curled, her nails painted red, her make up on, dressed to the nines and wearing a "bit of bling". She could be told anything and not judge. Nothing fazed her - she took us and our problems are we were and helped as best she could.
She had a tough life, she endured domestic abuse, had seven children, survived a daughter's death, survived cancer, survived her husbands alzheimers and death and yet remained an eternal optimist.
She loved getting out of the house, going shopping or going to markets and she would do anything for a bargain. She loved to laugh and go on nights out, and it was often difficult to get her to go home after. She loved weekends away. She loved music, primarily country although she was partial to a bit of Dire Straits! She harangued DJ's on local radios to play songs she liked and was known on a first name basis everywhere she went. She was great fun - slagging was often fast and furious and she was never out done in a battle of wits. She was generous - if you so much as complimented a necklace it was yours there and then. And arguments over who would pay a bill almost resulted in Mrs. Doyle like fights. She collected nick-nacks particularly ones that made noise, her house was a menagerie of singing, dancing animals.
Nothing came above family. Children, grandchildren and great grandchildren - she loved them all among her last words were that she loved everyone equally. She was willing to do anything for family. Her walls were testament to that love. Every free wall space was adorned with family photos, and a mirror of Rod Stewart that she bought but no one wanted, she felt bad for him and so he took his place on the wall too :)
She was the grand matriarch of a huge family and she is and will be sorely missed.

The Ol' celebrity obituary

Yes, yes I know the blogging has been very lax these days so let's jump back in with a celebrity obituary. No, not that singer one Whitney what's her name, she's going to be lauded all over the place. In fact Sky News seem to have no other news apart from Whitney Houston's death this morning.

No let's have a look at David Kelly, poor David has had the unfortunate timing to pass away on the same weekend as Whitney so no one seems to have noticed.Granted David died at the grand old age of eighty two so it appears that his death isn't as tragic. However we have still lost a great actor and comic genius. And we have a lost a man who used his talents to the full rather than wasting them! One of the first times I saw Kelly on television was as the inept builder O'Reilly on Fawlty Towers

Don't hire this man to build a wall!

                                                                                
As a child (and now) I was always a fan of Fawlty Towers, to the delight of my Dad who had viewing partner and much to the chagrin of my mother who's not a huge fan of slapstick comedy - we outvoted her every time Fawlty came on! In fact Kelly himself once said "I've been 52-53 years on stage, and yet Fawlty Towers, those full 9 minutes, make me recognized anywhere in the world."

David Kelly managed to light up the screen regardless of what roll he played and regardless of whether that screen was big or small.Throughout the likes of Strumpet City, Fawlty Towers, Into The West, Waking Ned, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Stardust he seemed to effortlessly fill his screen character’s with a lovable, empathetic charm – and that charm seemed to have stemmed from the fact he was a genuinely likeable man. Who can forget his Grandpa Joe dance of delight, or the naked motorbike ride in Waking Ned? For a man who's screen career has spanned so long it is slightly disappointing that's reduced to a paragraph in most newspapers today.

Any excuse for a picture of Johnny Depp

David Kelly has left behind a wonderful legacy. How proud his family must be of a man who has enriched our culture and our tradition of producing amazing actors and story tellers. He will be sadly missed. A great man has departed from us, but with so many entertaining moments left behind he will always be remembered.

Would ye like a Rasher with that

 

I'll leave the last words to him with his acceptance speech for the Lifetime Achievement award at the IFTA's a couple of years ago:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DLiUXyBwnD4