Matthew on 4/6/2009 at 19:14
Quote Posted by DDL
Yeah, but it's like the ugly retarded child in the basement. Everyone knows it's part of the UK, but everyone tries hard to forget it even exists.
Thanks so very much.
Starrfall on 4/6/2009 at 19:35
Quote Posted by Matthew
In Northern Ireland the situation is still covered by the Offences Against the Person Act 1861
In that case I still haven't seen a
modern western law that punishes the woman. ;) (Plus, the age on that one combined with the ridiculous penalty makes me mentally sort it out into the "laws that don't mean anything real" pile; kinda like the US laws that say a woman can't drive a car unless there is a man walking in front of said car waving a flag.)
It'd be interesting to see if NI keeps a penalty for the mother if they ever get around to revamping the law, and if so what that penalty would be. (My prediction would be that they drop the penalty entirely but I'm not really up on the intricacies of the NI psyche.)
Starrfall on 4/6/2009 at 19:52
I meant more if they redid it from scratch, rather than being given an option to preserve the status quo (which as far as I can tell politicians will do almost every damn time if you let them.) Keeping something archaic that's already on the books takes less political will than rewriting something archaic in the same archaic way.
I only skimmed those but the focus seems to be on abortion itself, not on the penalties so my inclination is still to say that your dudes wouldn't penalize the woman (or at the very least that they'd remove the life sentence) if they were forced to re-write the thing entirely, although it looks like they'd still keep it illegal.
edit: you've also got weirder issues because of your health insurance system though, and I don't really have any clue how uptight people get about that sort of thing
Matthew on 4/6/2009 at 19:57
Never underestimate the buttfuck insanity of a Northern Irish politician. Living here is nearly evidence of what would happen if Rush Limbaugh was made President.
Starrfall on 4/6/2009 at 20:05
Oh my god I am so sorry.
We should do a swap where non-crazy northern irish come here, and we send our crazy fundies actually wait no it's probably not a good idea to inject southern baptists who like guns into that situation.
Matthew on 4/6/2009 at 20:13
Hey, they can get along with all of the guys here who still have their guns. Or wipe each other out, it's all good.
Matthew on 4/6/2009 at 20:17
Quote Posted by Starrfall
edit: you've also got weirder issues because of your health insurance system though, and I don't really have any clue how uptight people get about that sort of thing
Health insurance? Generally people just grumble a bit about NHS waiting times, or go private and grumble about cost.
Namdrol on 4/6/2009 at 20:48
Gerry Anderson, who does the best radio show ever, which is on Radio Ulster 10-30am to 12.00 (Ulster's NI for the non UK guys),
Said the way he explains NI to people who've never been there, is that when there was all the debate about the 3 languages (Irish, English and Ulster Scots)
a guy rang up the radio show to argue that English was the only language for the North, and if it was good enough for Jesus it was good enough for him.
Matthew on 4/6/2009 at 20:53
Practically inventing the name 'Stroke City' was genius of him, too.
