Northern Irish protestors don’t want no life-saving abortions

Northern Ireland has some of the toughest restrictions on abortion rights around, with women only being allowed to terminate if doctors certify that their pregnancies pose a serious threat to their lives or their physical or mental health. (Rape victims apparently need not apply. And perish the thought of a woman deciding to abort her pregnancy out of some silly ideal about family planning or bodily autonomy or whatnot.)

To provide for the few women who are eligible under Northern Irish law, the Marie Stopes clinic, the first private establishment of its kind in the region, opened its doors just today, offering services limited to non-surgical procedures that can only be performed during the first nine weeks of gestation, long before many women even realize they’re pregnant in the first place. Nonetheless, it’s a much-needed recourse for those desperate women whose pregnancies threaten to leave them permanently injured or even dead.

And that, apparently, is still too much to ask, according to some people:

Up to 40 people are protesting outside the first private clinic to offer abortions to women in Northern Ireland.

[…]

The protesters at the clinic are from a range of religious denominations and are holding up placards with images of aborted foetuses.

An anti-abortion group has called for the clinic to be shut down […]

Just so we’re perfectly clear: There is no “abortion on demand” (as much as I detest that misleading phrasing) going on at this clinic, nor can there be. Its sole purpose for existing is literally to save the lives of women who are medically unable to endure the rest of their pregnancy.

And these protestors want it closed down anyway.

Once again, folks: “Pro-lifers” are absolutely nothing of the sort. They don’t give a damn about the woman’s life, or even the child’s life; doing so would mean being in support of the medical procedure they rail against despite the fact that it demonstrably saves countless lives every year. Their opposition is an entirely emotional reaction driven by mindless dogma and untethered by any concern for the health or well-being of the grown women who actually have to suffer through medically injurious pregnancies. Their chosen moniker is horseshit; they are anti-abortionists and anti-choicers, and nothing more.

(via @BreakingNewsUK)