From yesterday’s Dail order paper.
John writes:
“[Independent TD] Mattie McGrath attempts to make fatal foetal abnormalities go away by ignoring them.”
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Everything. As It Happens.
From yesterday’s Dail order paper.
John writes:
“[Independent TD] Mattie McGrath attempts to make fatal foetal abnormalities go away by ignoring them.”
….Mattie as lucid in writing as he is in speech…
Mattie McGrath is well past his sell by date.
A pox on his house and a pox on the houses of all those needy disabled unborn persons! I
it’s difficult to disentangle that ‘sentence’ (I use the term loosely), but is Mattie proposing to make use of the phrase ‘incompatible with life’ illegal? I didn’t know we were legislating against language now, can anyone submit proposals for this?
He’s been brushing up on his Orwell.
It’s wrong, imho, to try to legislate for the use of words like this! Surely the solution is to work with medical organisation to try to encourage the use of any insensitive language. e.g. like how people have “life-limiting illnesses” rather than are “terminally ill”.
discourage!
This isn’t about being sensitive though. Mattie wants alter language so that doctors are forced to give parents of a baby being born with nothing but a brainstem and/or a short painful life of struggle false hope.
Because he considers forcing families to go through a full nine months of a pregnancy they know is going to be DOA better than abortion.
The trouble is that sometimes the language used is too soft to give families realistic expectations. One of the cruellest things the anti choice movement has been doing in response to the campaign by tfmr is giving false hope by claiming that many families who get this diagnosis end up having “several happy years” with their child rather than the reality in which they have a late term, riskier, miscarriage. Medical reality is often harsh and unforgiving, while medical language doesn’t have to be that way it does have to communicate the reality of the situation to those concerned.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t0lhZjUfblA&w=560&h=315%5D
So if an expectant mother has a scan they have to say, all is ok even when not? bloody hell.
Perhaps the medics and the women that this affects should be the people to be involved with this. Not some inarticulate clown.
I think he just wants a less harsh form of words used. I believe he’s been approached by a group of parents who are driving this. McGrath just agreed to help. I agree – it’s medics who should be looking at how they might use more sensitive language (or not, maybe).
It’s a group of parents being goaded on by youth defence and PLC.
Maybe the parents don’t see it that way?
And to be frank I find those people that see honour in forcing their struggling baby through a short painful existence to be disgusting.
Youth defence can bandy about the term “compatible with love” all they want , it doesn’t change the fact they’re torturing dying babies for political points.
The other side of that torturing dying babies coin as reported by the BBC last week:
A newborn baby, who lived for less than two hours, became Britain’s youngest-ever organ donor last year. His kidneys were used to save an adult’s life in Leeds. His parents, Mike Houlston and Jess Evans, from Cardiff, said they want people to know his story and see his face, saying: “We are so proud of him”.
Ms Evans was carrying twins when she was told – 12 weeks into her pregnancy – that one was fatally ill. Teddy had anencephaly, a rare and lethal abnormality which prevents the brain and skull from developing. Babies with the condition either die in the womb, are stillborn or live for just seconds, minutes or hours after birth. Though doctors offered the couple the option of an abortion, Ms Evans said: “We thought that even if we had a moment with him, or 10 minutes, or an hour, that time was the most precious thing that we would ever experience.”
I was struck by the bravery of the parents when I saw this story and it left me a lot of food for thought. I mention it here, not to support YD or the pro-life side in any way but purely to provide food for thought for others. For me, one of the main points is that they had the choice and chose to go through with the pregnancy. I don’t think I’d have been able to make the same choice.
It was an extremely brave choice, but the point is, it was their choice. I worry that, rather than admiring them for their personal bravery we use their story to suggest that other people should not be able to make a different choice.
What Jane said, every word.
Yup, spot on Jane. I agree with the anti choicers in their demands for a perinatal hospice service but once it’s provided you can bet they’ll be pointing at it asking why there’s a need for anything else. It’s all about choice and pro-choice people suppose family described above as much as we do anyone who makes a different choice.
*support, not suppose
wow. a stellar example of “if we don’t talk about it, it doesn’t exist” thinking. what an insensitive idiot.
Mattie is our local idiot here in South Tipp. Never fails to say something crazy stupid at any and every possible opportunity.
Its depressing that he will probably be in a race to top the poll with Lowry in the next election.
Btw, no point trying to dissect what was actually said, you can read it as “blah, blah, blah, killing unborn babies, blah, blah, blah, abortion is bad, blah, blah”.
Yeah, no point trying to understand anything Keith. Mugs game.
With this guy, I entirely agree with you newsjustin.
in fairness, mattie’s proposal is unreadable and illegible. it actually reads as blah blah blah unborn babies blah blah blah
Four attempts to read this and I still havent a clue what it means :-(
I’m so glad others are struggling with it, I thought I’d been drugged or something.
Is Ultach around, is the Irish version any clearer?
Would love to type that Irish segment into Google translator and see the whirlwind of nonsense that plops out the other end.
The term “incompatible with life” is used by doctors to describe certain conditions which mean babies (normally followed by outside the womb), and sometimes children/adults could not survive will not survive.
For some reason or other the TD wants to stop doctors using this phrase when discussing babies with birth defects. So doctors would have to find another way of saying that X syndrome will mean the baby would die in, or shortly after, birth.
Thanks for clearing that up!
In truth, the language the doctors can use doesn’t really make any difference. Whether you use the term “incompatable with life” or a term like “your baby will be a hero organ donor within hours of birth” it’s basically the same news to the parents. Trying to find a different way to say it doesn’t solve anything – the parents will still get the worst possible news at a very vulnerable time and will still have to make a decision that will break their hearts whatever they choose.
“Compatible with death” doesn’t seem to cut it either.
It’s also a term used by emergency services personnel to describe injuries that the patient can’t have survived (eg. decapitation) over *open, unecrypted* radio channels.
But yeah Mattie, I’m sure the family want to hear their dad’s head came clean off in the car crash, that’s a really good idea to ban that phrase…
Seriously, we’re now at the stage where we need minimum standards for TDs before they can stand for office, beyond “my daddy fixed the road”. This nonsense has got to stop.
I can confirm that the Irish version is, if anything, even more unintelligible than the English.
Go raibh maith agat!
‘Cause the players gonna play, play, play, play, play
And the haters gonna hate, hate, hate, hate, hate
Baby, I’m just gonna shake, shake, shake, shake, shake
I shake it off, I shake it off
Mattie really is a clown, like he thinks people forget he was in Fianna Fail.
Check out his protégé. (Now Mayor of Clonmel, Tipperary thanks to this smash hit)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJXgoHfBFf0
hmmm…Seems like he really hasn’t a clue of what’s the difference between a child having a congenital disability and having no chance of survival.
Maybe we should test TDs on what the important terms in a bill actually mean before they’re allowed to vote on it.
+1 to your first point