McDonald says Sinn Féin abstained in abortion bill vote because it was a DUP stunt
Sinn Féin abstained from a vote on the Severe Fetal Impairment Abortion (Amendment) Bill last night. By Lauren Boland Tuesday 16 Mar 2021, 4:24 PM Mar 16th 2021, 1:04 PM 32,516 Views 31 Comments
Image: PA
Updated Mar 16th 2021, 4:24 PM
SINN FÉIN LEADER Mary Lou McDonald has said her party abstained on a bill passed in the Northern Ireland Assembly seeking to tighten the limits on terminating a pregnancy because it was a “stunt” by unionists to obstruct abortion services.
A doctor’s organisation has said it was “deeply saddened” the Severe Fetal Impairment Abortion (Amendment) Bill that would remove non-fatal fetal impairment as a grounds for an abortion, had been passed.
Karen Osborne’s debut science fiction novel,
Architects of Memory, came out in September last year. The pandemic has done a number on my ability to recall detail, so only impressions remain: I enjoyed it, I remember, even if it had a few too many sudden revelations, betrayals, and double-/triple-crosses for me to entirely follow.
Engines of Oblivion is a direct sequel to
Architects of Memory, albeit from a different point of view.
[Spoilers for
Where
Architects of Memory hewed close to the perspective of Ashlan Jackson, dying of an incurable illness that it transpired was turning her into a weapon that many of the corporate polities that rule over the human-occupied galaxy would do nearly anything to possess,
I’ll tell you one thing about contemporary American high-school or high-school adjacent stories: I find the social dynamics baffling. Even the healthiest ones seen to have a solid underlay of oneupmanship and bullying predation, and in general, they seem pervaded by an air of casual, normalised cruelty that for all the awkwardness and social isolation of my own school years strikes me as alien. There’s something vicious about the American high-school story, and it’s present in far too many portrayals for there not to be a core of truth behind it.
The Scapegracers is Hannah Abigail Clarke’s debut novel. It shares the background of casual cruelty of most American high-school stories, although its focus is on sudden, unanticipated friendship and the brutality, loyalty, kindness, cruelty, cleverness, and power of adolescent girls than on school
Sleeps With Monsters: The Scapegracers by Hannah Abigail Clarke tor.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from tor.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Julia Ember’s
Ruinsong isn’t quite the novel I thought it’d be. The cover copy gave me to expect more court intrigue, but that may be a function of having read far more non-YA than YA novels and
Ruinsong is very much a YA novel in the mode of
find your inner moral strength and overthrow tyranny while falling in love. This is an excellent mode when well-done, and
Ruinsong does it rather well indeed.
As an aside: I do understand, from a marketing and category-labelling perspective, why cover copy uses such phrases as “LGBTQ+ romantic fantasy” and while I suppose it is possible to be or have been all of L, G, B, and T during one’s life but I have this terrible tendency to break out into unhelpful laughter when “LGBTQ+” is immediately paired with “two women.” (Or “two men,” for that matter.) I feel like we’re