Abortion plight should shame us all? Really?

[gettafa]

It is a very personal issue of course and not something openly chatted about at the barbecue or in the pub or round the er, watercooler blah blah.  I only knew of one woman that had an abortion, and that was many years ago in a student houseshare. 

Well, one in three or thereabouts it is. 

[woolley]

So now there is a phone number to book your legal abortion in the Isle of Man, but you still have to go to the UK to get it.

So now it's amended again: http://calmiom.org/2019/05/24/update-to-the-iom-abortion-services-story/?fbclid=IwAR3QH0J7VwJHEn8bdolwyInovY5c-LXyzwYyVCmMR0fPHCyKKwQ6lRBvZb0

Edited May 24, 2019 by woolley

[Roger Mexico]

There's a fairy extraordinary interview with Allinson from Manx Radio, which is odd, not because of what is said (he clears up a lot of the confusion), but because it is him giving the information.  The DHSC has a Minister, Departmental Members, managers by the score, including an acting CEO, PR people - how come one of them isn't doing this rather than a non-DHSC MHK?  How come there aren't leaflet explaining the new system, press releases, social media?

He says that the Department has had a lot on its plate recently (to put it mildly) but that doesn't really excuse the complete lack of information.  They've known the exact date since February and had the chance to decide what it was anyway.   The only action that they have taken recently is to issue a Press Release about the exclusion zone[1], but that's really a separate issue and it shouldn't be left to individuals and campaigning organisations such as CALM to provide the information.

 

[1]  Which spends some of its time trying to take credit for the work of other people (notably Allinson) and also claims Access zones apply to National Health Service hospitals in the UK and elsewhere and serve patients and providers of abortion services well., while in fact they haven't yet been formalised in law there and  and the English Government has refused to and rely on individual Councils (such as Ealing) to set them up and defend them in Court.  Even when the Island is a pioneer in doing something they clearly need to pretend that they are only following other people.

[WTF]

did you miss the L out of fairly on purpose   RM ?

[Roger Mexico]

4 hours ago, MrPB said:

Can’t see how this exclusion zone is going to keep any of the nurses safe in such a small community where everyone knows everyone else though. Those anti abortion idiots were out in Regent Street again. They won’t give up so easily. 

It's not really aimed at protecting the nurses or doctors from the religious fanatics - there are already laws against attacking other people and the banner-wavers don't want to suffer the consequences of breaking them.  What the exclusion zones are for is to stop the anti-abortionists protesting outside the place being used and so they won't harass the women who want to have an abortion.  Something that has been increasingly happening in the UK.

Reading through the stuff that the anti-abortionists produce to work themselves up, you get the impression that they actually object more to the fact they're not allowed to bully vulnerable women than they do to the actual abortions.

[Roger Mexico]

4 hours ago, WTF said:

did you miss the L out of fairly on purpose   RM ?

Don't be ridiculous.  I couldn't afford the £26,000 to house them.

[Rog]

I can well understand some people finding the deliberate aborting of what could or would result in the birth of a baby being horiffic. I can also understand why those who believe that there is a god and the bible is kosher (oops!) contrary to the direction of their religion.

However for a woman or young girl in a situation where ending a pregnancy has to be the best way forward for them they really should not have a bunch of howling horrors be they male or female inflicting even more problems to them.

I've heard and seen what these incredibly cruel people do over here with their accusations of murder and sick making pictures and I'm pretty certain that they're all tarred with the same brush.

The ranting by people such as the loathsome Jules Gomes is obscene.  Maybe even worse are those who hang on their every word.

Dr. Allinson is an MHK who has done more for the ordinary people on the island than probably the rest have for years. To read this man being slated in comments on the IOMToday sight is disgraceful. For the need to protect people having to do what they really don't want to have to be doing is disgusting.

When so called "pro-choice" people howl and scream abuse at pregnant women for being "breeders" then that might be the time that the rotten creatures against whom a cordon sanitare  has had to be created could have their actions justified.

Edited May 26, 2019 by Rog

[the stinking enigma]

This geezer seems to know his stuff.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/25/world/europe/pope-abortion-sick-fetus.html

[the stinking enigma]

I predict Howard will call a hitman crisis within the next 2 weeks and we'll be back to square minus one

[Rog]

11 minutes ago, the stinking enigma said:

This geezer seems to know his stuff.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/25/world/europe/pope-abortion-sick-fetus.html

That is a matter of opinion. It is not one that I share.

[Uhtred]

12 hours ago, Roger Mexico said:

It's not really aimed at protecting the nurses or doctors from the religious fanatics - there are already laws against attacking other people and the banner-wavers don't want to suffer the consequences of breaking them.  What the exclusion zones are for is to stop the anti-abortionists protesting outside the place being used and so they won't harass the women who want to have an abortion.  Something that has been increasingly happening in the UK.

Reading through the stuff that the anti-abortionists produce to work themselves up, you get the impression that they actually object more to the fact they're not allowed to bully vulnerable women than they do to the actual abortions.

Absolutely correct. These anti-abortionist are the worst type of repressive fascists. I’ve witnessed the ones in Regent Street. Odious. 

[Roger Mexico]

2 hours ago, MrPB said:

But I would imagine it would be quite easy to work out who the medical staff performing the operations would be. How do they propose securing their safety (outside of work hours)  with these idiots about? 

I don't really think there will be much danger.  There haven't been the same sort of attacks on abortion staff in the UK (where they've had abortion clinics for 50 years) that we have seen in the US, so it's unlikely we would see something similar here.  The religious fanatics love to paint themselves as martyrs, but they don't seem to want to do anything that would inconvenience themselves in any way.  Their suffering mainly consists in their frustration at not being able to bully the vulnerable. 

In any case I suspect that identification will be harder here because those staff involved won't be dealing mainly with abortions - it won't be a dedicated clinic.  There were 80 abortions carried out in England and Wales for women resident in the Isle of Man in 2017 (see Tab 12a).  This is probably an underestimate - women with English connections may be giving an address there instead and some will have been ordering stuff over the internet.  But even if it was 3 times that[1] that's not going to be even one a day and staff and facilities will be mainly being used for other obstetric and gynaecological issues. 

 

[1]  In the UK in 2017 there was an "age-standardised abortion rate of 16.7 per 1,000 resident women aged 15-44", which applied to the total number of women age 15-44 in the 2016 Manx Census of 14,405, would give you around 240.  I suspect it actually wouldn't be that high for various demographic and economic reasons.

[Andy Onchan]

I wonder how many surgeons at Nobles are actually prepared or indeed trained to carry out the act of aborting a foetus, other than for saving the life of the mother?

[Rog]

26 minutes ago, Andy Onchan said:

I wonder how many surgeons at Nobles are actually prepared or indeed trained to carry out the act of aborting a foetus, other than for saving the life of the mother?

Abortion need not be an invasive surgical procedure.  Usually it isn't.  Indeed so called lunch hour abortions are commonplace over here.

When push comes to shove (oops!) abortion is rapidly becoming just another form of birth control which is precisely what should be the case.

[Roger Mexico]

6 minutes ago, Andy Onchan said:

I wonder how many surgeons at Nobles are actually prepared or indeed trained to carry out the act of aborting a foetus, other than for saving the life of the mother?

In the interview with Allinson he makes it clear that medical abortions (effectively where the woman takes pills to induce a miscarriage) will be carried out on the Island but that some surgical abortions may have to be carried out off-Island (though now paid for by the NHS).  Medical abortions, which obviously don't need the use of a surgeon, made up 66% of all terminations in 2017 - rapidly growing figure and I suspect that it will be much higher on the Island.  This will be partly because we are starting 'fresh' and so more likely to pick the newer technology, but also because the system in Island where women don't need to be referred to the services by a doctor will mean that it's a faster process and abortions that take place earlier are more likely to be medical.

There were already a small number of abortions being carried out (surgically) on the Island under the old Act.  The DHSC won't reveal the exact figures but it was probably around 5 a year.  So the technology and people are already there to do it.  These would have been fairly late abortions where the foetus was severely damaged in some way and arguably should have actually been carried out off-Island in a more specialist centre due to their low frequency.