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Comment by Geekette | Hacker News Reader

Very interesting news! I wouldn't have expected Ireland to be on this forefront. When I got to the paragraph below, I also couldn't help wondering which nation that was:

"His comments follow a leaked report from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, appearing to call for a worldwide decriminalisation on 19 October. The report was reportedly withdrawn after at least one nation put pressure on the international body to bury the findings of Dr Monica Beg, chief of the HIV/AIDs section of the UNODC in Vienna."

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Curious as to why you "wouldn't have expected Ireland to be on this forefront".

Not trying to sound accusatory - just genuinely curious on the perception.

From an outsider perspective, I viewed Ireland as somewhat socially conservative. "Somewhat" meaning that while a significant proportion of the population has liberal/progressive views, I felt that segment was less than majority, therefore unable to swing the vote on issues like this.

Stuff like this (2014) http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/17/ireland-woman-f...

Without doubt an issue that needs reform (which I believe is coming - there's a lot of campaigning around it).

Would be surprised if many people outside the country knew about this problem though. Of course, its possible I'm wrong which is the reason I asked in the first place.

This is a test as to whether we can downvote a post that we've replied to. Nothing in this post is relevant to the discussion at hand, and no criticism of DanBC's point is implied by my downvote. He volunteered for this experiment.

Yeah, we're not any more progressive on that front at all.

There's plenty of pro-choice activism here, but sadly, I believe Ireland still a long way from a civilised, non-hypocritical policy on abortion.

I would love to be proven wrong about that.

They still criminalize abortion over there. I definitely had the perception it was a highly religious and conservative country.

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