Revisiting the repeal referendum & treatment of “unmarried mothers” when we lived under a regime of state & Catholic institutional nexus.

[Roc.]

This thread is to address false imputation of intent systematically targeted on this forum at those who were sympathetic to “repeal” in general.

I'm going to set out the real position, not the position that zealots insist is the position of their opponents.

While these zealots no doubt don't like to read anything that upsets their dogma, I might suggest they read this post to learn about why they were defeated so finally, in a landslide.

Hint, it's not what you say it is.

Incapable of debate

Even eight years on from the original referendum, it's striking that there is no actual debate or exchange of views.

Both viewpoints remain incompatible.

For instance we still hear this faction insist that their opponents “revel in the killing of babies”, and that any woman disagreeing with them are "witches" etc.

That's actually the best argument you morons can muster - the only defense you can raise, in effect.

Fucking laughable.

Implications of the deliberate misrepresentations of the so called "pro-life" faction.

First, at least on this board, you are not in truth a "pro-life" faction.

More on that later, suffice to say briefly - that we were born to live not merely to exist.

But for now, what lesson can we take away from this forum, and the fact that forum members hardly raise any other argument save that those who voted for "repeal" did so from a motive of:

"... killing babies for “fun, profit, spite and spiritual growth...” etc.

What spiritual sustenance do you draw from repeating to each other that your fellow Irish men and women who voted to "repeal", then “celebrated”, “ad danced a jig”, because now they would be able to kill babies with impunity?

Why do you need to constantly invent these type of imaginary moral battles where you draw imaginary lines that place yourselves high up on such a moral pedestal, from which you proceed to proclaim your own "heroicism" on the behalf of helpless babies, and your moral superiority?

Is there a parallel perhaps with how you hold related racist, conspiracist and antisemitic ideas? For instance here is a post from just yesterday that illustrates this parallel. Consider for a while the implications of that image this moron posted up.

Why did you lose in a landslide?

So let me endeavour to explain to you why a piece of legislation invented by the government of Charlie Haughey and the Irish Catholic Church hierarchy that girded this government, was repealed, and how that helped to close a shameful chapter in the life of this country.

Uncertainties regarding life in the womb

First though, we might as well get clear certain views about the central issue of life in the womb, and where there are differences.

This core difference is that you chaps are possessed of an overwhelming certainty about it.

Whereas people like myself acknowledge uncertainties about it.

In other words I cannot say when life begins. - I cannot say for instance if it is right at the very moment of conception. - Or when the egg is implanted into the uterus. - Or is it the blastocyst stage (a cluster of 60–80 cells)?

Or even if we could agree it was so, then, why do we not intervene “to save countless lives” during the first 3 to 4 weeks when risk of loss is highest?

Why don’t we say go on life saving missions to circumvent the natural developmental hurdles or chromosomal abnormalities if we are absolutely certain that this is a full living human being we are talking about?

You see.

Or looking hard back again over at you guys on here - if you consider your sperm is half of a living human being then what are so many of you doing by jizzing it out over your keyboards daily?

So the difference between us is that I live with uncertainty.

Congenital incapacity to deal with uncertainty

But it appears many of these 700k odd souls in this country who voted not to repeal the Haughey era legislation are unable to countenance uncertainty, you insist on certainty.

You have what I have often referred to as a "black and white" mentality (that I also suspect lies at the root of white versus black type racism, and other types of racism).

Whereas the fact is that if someone holds that there is uncertainty about the beginning of life in the womb - that entails the consequent view about how to treat that uncertainty.

So how do you deal with uncertainty?

Do you treat it by investing some supreme authority in some council of priests, or government like FFG - whose remit it is to issue dictats that effectively turn these uncertainties into certainties?

But does wisdom really reside in a council? Or does it reside in sovereign individuals?

What dynamic results from the holding of inappropriate certainty?

For instance if we look over at @Diarmuid's thread again that exhibits such a vileness and spuriousness - are the vilifications, attacks, derogatory and blithe attitudes towards women on display, conspiracist mindset, and so on, directly related?

The exhibition of derogatory and blithe attitudes towards women

On that thread, we can indeed hear echoes (though no doubt raised in viciousness) of the attitudes that prevailed in the era that this referendum sought to close the door on. This short poem captures those common attitudes succinctly.

On a night like this I remember the child
who came with fifteen summers to her name,
and she lay down alone at my feet
without midwife or doctor or friend to hold her hand
and she pushed her secret out into the night,
far from the town tucked up in little scandals,
bargains struck, words broken, prayers, promises,
and though she cried out to me in extremis
I did not move,
I didn’t lift a finger to help her,
I didn’t intercede with heaven,
nor whisper the charmed word in God’s ear.

The above evokes the kind of sentiments that too often lived in the souls of Irishmen and women in the era when women were more often than not thrown out of their family house if they got pregnant and largely left to fend for themselves.

The role of the nuns in the totalitarian FF-catholic regime nexus

Well of course the nuns would take them in, these “fallen women”.

They would disappear them into these hellish places that they ran.

Places like the hell in that Bon Secours home to take just one instance - where we found out they had an extraordinary number of these babies and children die horrible deaths every year at the home.

Over 800 in total, as we saw more often than not due to malnutrition and treatable diseases.

So is it not striking that once these babies were born that concern for their existence took a nosedive?

Evidenced not only by the manner of existence that was imposed on them after birth, but also by what is revealed of the mindset through their practice of putting multiple infants into single coffins, if even a coffin, and not the sewage system and its rats, etc.

While in the towns surrounding these places the righteous Catholic citizens effectively washed their hands of what was going on behind these gates in their town.

It wasn’t their existence or destiny at issue, so why should they care.

But is this what you call a Christian attitude?

And in truth the same attitude is pervasive on this forum today.

“… Love and violence, properly speaking, are polar opposites. Love lets the other be, but with affection and concern. Violence attempts to constrain the other's freedom, to force her to act in the way they desire, but with ultimate lack of concern, with indifference to the other's own existence or destiny...".

The Overseers

So overlooking all this horror, supervising it, including the attitudes of these citizens, was the aforementioned patriarchal, cold, uncaring church, the judgments and pronouncements of whose bishops and priests was considered “wisdom”.

In cahoots with the aforementioned successive Fianna Fáil government, in 1983 when the desperate amendment was added, to ensure the continuance of the effective criminalisation of these women, under the stewardship of Charlie Haughey.

And we were told that in their wisdom our society should subsume individual choice in such personal matters - that rather the collective such as it was, knew better.

As a direct result, we have in our history now countless personal tragedies engendered by this idea of the superior wisdom of this collective. And what we are specifically talking about here wasn't the only instance of it, was it.

For shame

Noting that the overriding characteristic of these countless personal tragedies was that they were hidden away.

For shame. For respectability. For the protection of the institution of the Irish Catholic Church.

And as part of that these women were looked down on, in a way to protect the society from the knowledge of what they were effectively party to.

As I touched on above, we see the same thing on this board in the derogatory and blithe attitudes towards women, typically served up with a large measure of venom.

(post continues below)

 

[Roc.]

(continued from above)

An attempt to address a terrible system.

So in the era of the ensuing Zeitgeist, our current era - we witnessed an attempt to address this history, including by repealing the Haughey era legislation, and introducing legislation that set out a framework for abortions to be performed legally in the country.

The core idea was that the "judge and jury" over the uncertainties involved would no longer be the collective, who had no skin in the game of course, and in addition, as we touched on above, could not be said to possess a superior wisdom. But rather the individual woman herself would assume this role, under the proviso that the counsel of an Irish-registered doctor should be encompassed.

That was the essence of the idea.

The decision

Regrettably, there are some people who seem to believe that life is a matter of choosing between certainties (as we touched on, it may be congenital).

In addition, that usually seems to entail a consequent degree of unalterable belief in their view of these "certainties" that their simple minds have framed (usually under outside direction, another phenomenon worthy of its own thread).

But the characteristic of this belief is that the state of belief stultifies their curiosity, their capacity to seek out further knowledge, to explore the nuances, to acknowledge anything whatsoever that might possibly undermine their belief.

However it is the very act of the holding of doubt and uncertainty that drives any intellect forward. Once belief comes there is no further movement.

So as I said, it was the holding of uncertainty that made me personally unable to vote in this referendum (aside from the behaviour of both sides in the debate, acknowledging the so called pro-life" was worse).

However if I had been forced to vote, I would undoubtedly have chosen the "repeal" side. - If you want to genuinely understand this, well just read this post again. And I am sure I was far from the only one who thought this way.

 

[Diarmuid]

1.When does the baby get a heartbeat and when does it have brainwaves? Just asking, respectfully.

2.Do you accept that the legislation allows a doctor to perform an abortion on a woman without her consent?

 

[Roc.]

My post was long enough.

To cover the "debate" tactics so called pro-life crusaders utilise is outside the remit of this post.

There are endless upon endless rabbit holes there to go down, which allows you to divert the discussion. E.g.

Heart cells beating in a Petri dish offer new hope to heart patients

Ingenious solution to heart cell research brings cure for incurable condition closer

www.theguardian.com

You can keep those rabbit holes and talking points for your own thread.

What is the essence of what I am saying in my post? Have you any answer to it?

 

[Roc.]

Or here it is again, for those slow on the uptake.

In essence, the challenge for readers of this thread, particularly those who to their shame went along with what was going on in the other thread, is to truthfully represent the views of those who disagree with you.

'You can do this in your own language, using your own idioms, or whatever, but it should be a truthful representation of my views. Even if you express these views in another type of language.

Are you following?

If I can acknowledge it as a truthful representation, then we will be getting somewhere. We can begin to discuss the issues.

So who's up.

 

[Diarmuid]

Ok, deanfaidh me iarracht. You want me to truthfully represent your views? Surely you are the best person to do that, if you are capable of being truthful.

You think the taxpayer should pay for women to hire a doctor kill their babies for any reason whatsoever up to three months? This reason can include the fact that the baby has a Negro or Jewish father or is female or for spiritual reasons connected to the woman's practice of silly ol'satanism.

 

[Roc.]

You're a sheer idiot, @Diarmuid. One with a distinctly sly and nasty streak. You more rarely than anyone on here have anything of value to say. That's your truthful representation of what I think, of my opinion? No, that is what you need to tell yourself that I think. As your vicious lying thread exhibits well. How about you try again, see if you can do better. Actually save it, you're an irredeemable racist, antisemitic, conspiracist minded idiot (it is another topic whether that may be directly connected to your spuriously labelled "pro-life" views).

 

[Just Think]

This thread is to address false imputation of intent systematically targeted on this forum at those who were sympathetic to “repeal” in general.

I'm going to set out the real position, not the position that zealots insist is the position of their opponents.

While these zealots no doubt don't like to read anything that upsets their dogma, I might suggest they read this post to learn about why they were defeated so finally, in a landslide.

Hint, it's not what you say it is.

Incapable of debate

Even eight years on from the original referendum, it's striking that there is no actual debate or exchange of views.

Both viewpoints remain incompatible.

For instance we still hear this faction insist that their opponents “revel in the killing of babies”, and that any woman disagreeing with them are "witches" etc.

That's actually the best argument you morons can muster - the only defense you can raise, in effect.

Fucking laughable.

Implications of the deliberate misrepresentations of the so called "pro-life" faction.

First, at least on this board, you are not in truth a "pro-life" faction.

More on that later, suffice to say briefly - that we were born to live not merely to exist.

But for now, what lesson can we take away from this forum, and the fact that forum members hardly raise any other argument save that those who voted for "repeal" did so from a motive of:

"... killing babies for “fun, profit, spite and spiritual growth...” etc.

What spiritual sustenance do you draw from repeating to each other that your fellow Irish men and women who voted to "repeal", then “celebrated”, “ad danced a jig”, because now they would be able to kill babies with impunity?

Why do you need to constantly invent these type of imaginary moral battles where you draw imaginary lines that place yourselves high up on such a moral pedestal, from which you proceed to proclaim your own "heroicism" on the behalf of helpless babies, and your moral superiority?

Is there a parallel perhaps with how you hold related racist, conspiracist and antisemitic ideas? For instance here is a post from just yesterday that illustrates this parallel. Consider for a while the implications of that image this moron posted up.

Why did you lose in a landslide?

So let me endeavour to explain to you why a piece of legislation invented by the government of Charlie Haughey and the Irish Catholic Church hierarchy that girded this government, was repealed, and how that helped to close a shameful chapter in the life of this country.

Uncertainties regarding life in the womb

First though, we might as well get clear certain views about the central issue of life in the womb, and where there are differences.

This core difference is that you chaps are possessed of an overwhelming certainty about it.

Whereas people like myself acknowledge uncertainties about it.

In other words I cannot say when life begins. - I cannot say for instance if it is right at the very moment of conception. - Or when the egg is implanted into the uterus. - Or is it the blastocyst stage (a cluster of 60–80 cells)?

Or even if we could agree it was so, then, why do we not intervene “to save countless lives” during the first 3 to 4 weeks when risk of loss is highest?

Why don’t we say go on life saving missions to circumvent the natural developmental hurdles or chromosomal abnormalities if we are absolutely certain that this is a full living human being we are talking about?

You see.

Or looking hard back again over at you guys on here - if you consider your sperm is half of a living human being then what are so many of you doing by jizzing it out over your keyboards daily?

So the difference between us is that I live with uncertainty.

Congenital incapacity to deal with uncertainty

But it appears many of these 700k odd souls in this country who voted not to repeal the Haughey era legislation are unable to countenance uncertainty, you insist on certainty.

You have what I have often referred to as a "black and white" mentality (that I also suspect lies at the root of white versus black type racism, and other types of racism).

Whereas the fact is that if someone holds that there is uncertainty about the beginning of life in the womb - that entails the consequent view about how to treat that uncertainty.

So how do you deal with uncertainty?

Do you treat it by investing some supreme authority in some council of priests, or government like FFG - whose remit it is to issue dictats that effectively turn these uncertainties into certainties?

But does wisdom really reside in a council? Or does it reside in sovereign individuals?

What dynamic results from the holding of inappropriate certainty?

For instance if we look over at @Diarmuid's thread again that exhibits such a vileness and spuriousness - are the vilifications, attacks, derogatory and blithe attitudes towards women on display, conspiracist mindset, and so on, directly related?

The exhibition of derogatory and blithe attitudes towards women

On that thread, we can indeed hear echoes (though no doubt raised in viciousness) of the attitudes that prevailed in the era that this referendum sought to close the door on. This short poem captures those common attitudes succinctly.

On a night like this I remember the child
who came with fifteen summers to her name,
and she lay down alone at my feet
without midwife or doctor or friend to hold her hand
and she pushed her secret out into the night,
far from the town tucked up in little scandals,
bargains struck, words broken, prayers, promises,
and though she cried out to me in extremis
I did not move,
I didn’t lift a finger to help her,
I didn’t intercede with heaven,
nor whisper the charmed word in God’s ear.

The above evokes the kind of sentiments that too often lived in the souls of Irishmen and women in the era when women were more often than not thrown out of their family house if they got pregnant and largely left to fend for themselves.

The role of the nuns in the totalitarian FF-catholic regime nexus

Well of course the nuns would take them in, these “fallen women”.

They would disappear them into these hellish places that they ran.

Places like the hell in that Bon Secours home to take just one instance - where we found out they had an extraordinary number of these babies and children die horrible deaths every year at the home.

Over 800 in total, as we saw more often than not due to malnutrition and treatable diseases.

So is it not striking that once these babies were born that concern for their existence took a nosedive?

Evidenced not only by the manner of existence that was imposed on them after birth, but also by what is revealed of the mindset through their practice of putting multiple infants into single coffins, if even a coffin, and not the sewage system and its rats, etc.

While in the towns surrounding these places the righteous Catholic citizens effectively washed their hands of what was going on behind these gates in their town.

It wasn’t their existence or destiny at issue, so why should they care.

But is this what you call a Christian attitude?

And in truth the same attitude is pervasive on this forum today.

“… Love and violence, properly speaking, are polar opposites. Love lets the other be, but with affection and concern. Violence attempts to constrain the other's freedom, to force her to act in the way they desire, but with ultimate lack of concern, with indifference to the other's own existence or destiny...".

The Overseers

So overlooking all this horror, supervising it, including the attitudes of these citizens, was the aforementioned patriarchal, cold, uncaring church, the judgments and pronouncements of whose bishops and priests was considered “wisdom”.

In cahoots with the aforementioned successive Fianna Fáil government, in 1983 when the desperate amendment was added, to ensure the continuance of the effective criminalisation of these women, under the stewardship of Charlie Haughey.

And we were told that in their wisdom our society should subsume individual choice in such personal matters - that rather the collective such as it was, knew better.

As a direct result, we have in our history now countless personal tragedies engendered by this idea of the superior wisdom of this collective. And what we are specifically talking about here wasn't the only instance of it, was it.

For shame

Noting that the overriding characteristic of these countless personal tragedies was that they were hidden away.

For shame. For respectability. For the protection of the institution of the Irish Catholic Church.

And as part of that these women were looked down on, in a way to protect the society from the knowledge of what they were effectively party to.

As I touched on above, we see the same thing on this board in the derogatory and blithe attitudes towards women, typically served up with a large measure of venom.

(post continues below)

So, what drugs are you and your boyfriend haven on today?

 

[Roc.]

Imagine we have a poster on here who chooses as his handle the motivational phrase he repeats to himself to try and achieve something he is incapable of. Like a poor Downes syndrome child enthusiastically berating himself to carry out a complex astrophysics calculation in front of him. Just like poor @Just Think who has clearly never had an independent think in his whole sorry existence.

 

[Diarmuid]

Imagine we have a poster on here who chooses as his handle the motivational phrase he repeats to himself to try and achieve something he is incapable of. Like a poor Downes syndrome child enthusiastically berating himself to carry out a complex astrophysics calculation in front of him. Just like poor @Just Think who has clearly never had an independent think in his whole sorry existence.

Please stay on topic, bro. This is supposed to be about repeal and unmarried mothers.

 

[Roc.]

Let's try again:

Or here it is again, for those slow on the uptake.

In essence, the challenge for readers of this thread, particularly those who to their shame went along with what was going on in the other thread, is to truthfully represent the views of those who disagree with you.

'You can do this in your own language, using your own idioms, or whatever, but it should be a truthful representation of my views. Even if you express these views in another type of language.

Are you following?

If I can acknowledge it as a truthful representation, then we will be getting somewhere. We can begin to discuss the issues.

So who's up.

 

[The Equalizer]

In essence, the challenge for readers of this thread, is to truthfully represent the views of those who disagree with you.

You first

 

[Roc.]

You first

I can acknowledge that you wish to save babies. I think we can agree on that. Of course there are many points of disagreement remaining, but I think we can start from that one thing that we can agree on.

 

[The Equalizer]

I can acknowledge that you wish to save babies. I think we can agree on that. Of course there are many points of disagreement remaining, but I think we can start from that one thing that we can agree on.

I'm not sure that I would put it that way, or, would you describe being against murder as wanting to save people?

And really, I find this thread quite startling.. You're issuing a challenge to others to truthfully represent your view.. the same others whose views you dismiss at the drop of a hat with an ist, ism or phobe. Along with your trope of them being essentially bovine, unable to think for themselves, led astray by pied pipers etc.

I think you're doing two things in this thread (which I haven't really read out of lack of interest and it's poorly communicated) and that's displaying a high level of narcissism and a low level of self-awareness.