MPs vote to decriminalise abortion

When has abortion ever not been political?

If this is your feeling then campaign for children with life limiting diagnoses like trisomy 13 and trisomy 18 to receive life saving care because most get palliative care at most. My son was barely treated as a human anymore by doctors when we got his diagnosis.
And it's them who push termination on lots of parents who wrongly call the condition incompatible with life.

@Hoooray

You're referring to polling by abortion campaign groups. Neutral polling shows that only 8% of people want the current laws loosened.

The new clause will not change any law regarding the provision of abortion services within a healthcare setting, including but not limited to the time limit, telemedicine, the grounds for abortion, or the requirement for two doctors' approval.

It was backed by all the main abortion providers, as well as 180 MPs from across the Commons and 50 organisations including the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG).

I also think it sets a dangerous precedent to politicise abortion in this way.

Totally agree with this and your other pp @hamstersarse

the woman matters more.

Yes

This is not an extreme law, and polling indicates that a majority of the public are in favour of decriminalising abortion.

24+ weeks is a viable life - so in your opinion, the woman matters more.

That's your view, and I disagree

I also feel that a lot of the rhetoric from 'pro choice' supporters of this is very similar to the approach of the far right to issues like immigration and the far left on trans issues.

They take an ultra-maximalist single-issue position (e.g. 'trans women are women in all circumstances,') and that any one who doesn't agree is a bigot.

It had the opposite effect on trans issues and it will be the same with abortion.

If I understand it correctly, there is no change to the law on abortion services. The grounds under which anyone can intervene to cause a later abortion stay the same.

A woman is unlikely to be able to inject herself to stop the foetal heart. And of course a woman who does something to her own body that causes an early birth is still not allowed to kill the child if it is born alive.

I can see that there might be increased risks from coercive partners, but on balance I'm in favour.

Already this morning Julia Hartley-Brewer and Tom Harwood have proclaimed their outrage about this, and I suspect far-right agitators won't be bar behind.

The MPs who pushed this extreme law have really misjudged mainstream public opinion, and it will be to the detriment of women's rights in general as this is now a culture war issue.

I am also uncomfortable with this idea that women are all delicate little beings incapable of being responsible for crimes. It harkens back to the 19th century when women were seen as too stupid to have rights.

@AirborneElephant I wasn't talking about Nicola Packer, actually. Her case is complicated. There was another case, where the mother had a stillbirth at around 32 weeks, and had googled "how to conceal a pregnancy" and something along the lines of "can you abort after 28 weeks".

Utterly nauseating. Under this bill she would be fine, and filed under "her body her choice". Give me a break. How is that not infanticide?

Scans should be made mandatory before the abortion pill is prescribed, in order to prevent these accidental late-term abortions. There should be an option to have a screen up, so women can't see the images (plus it should be on mute), but it's easy to prevent it.

Black market pills will always be available, but on the whole, it's easy to prevent:
a) Women aborting babies further along, either knowingly or not
b) Criminal investigations, because a late miscarriages or stillbirths are natural. It'll be like pre-Covid times.

This bill is a step in the wrong direction.

Completely agree 👏🏼

YABVU. The general public will be outraged.

I’m a left wing pro choice feminist and I’m appalled at what parliament has done. There’ll be a huge backlash which will undermine the abortion rights we do have- and killing a baby past 24 weeks is killing a baby. It’s unacceptable.

Why do none of you know what the root cause of this is? Abortion pills by post being kept after Covid, without needing an in person appointment to assess length of gestation. The late term investigations by police directly correlate to when Labour MPs voted to keep abortion pills by post - it’s their screw up. Before 2020 late term abortions and investigations didn’t happen.

Now, a woman could call up BPAS at 30 weeks, pretend she’s only 8 weeks, take mifepristone and kill a near full term baby. But now there’s nothing that can be done about it and no mechanism for the state to even record that it’s happening.

Absolute bloody clowns.

YABVU. The general public will be outraged.

I’m a left wing pro choice feminist and I’m appalled at what parliament has done. There’ll be a huge backlash which will undermine the abortion rights we do have- and killing a baby past 24 weeks is killing a baby. It’s unacceptable.

Why do none of you know what the root cause of this is? Abortion pills by post being kept after Covid, without needing an in person appointment to assess length of gestation. The late term investigations by police directly correlate to when Labour MPs voted to keep abortion pills by post - it’s their screw up. Before 2020 late term abortions and investigations didn’t happen.

Now, a woman could call up BPAS at 30 weeks, pretend she’s only 8 weeks, take mifepristone and kill a near full term baby. But now there’s nothing that can be done about it and no mechanism for the state to even record that it’s happening.

Absolute bloody clowns.

What else would you expect from a government that hates the disabled. Not only are they taking away their benefits now they are going to be able to put pressure on Mothers to abort potentially disabled babies. It is a disgrace.

No buts. A woman's body is her own and her autonomy is deeply important. That's it.

It involves a potential life. A foetus. That isn't subjective, that's scientific and also supported by human right laws. A foetus doesn't have the same rights as a newborn baby and for good reason.

I don't think it's very hard to argue at all. Of course we can say that we come first and that we matter more than a foetus. We do.

No, police investigations do not happen routinely for late miscarriages or stillbirths.

It is when the foetus could be almost full term! An undercover, late-term abortion might only account for 0.001% of terminated pregnancies, but someone who knowingly aborts a third trimester baby via the "I'm only 6 weeks pregnant, can I have the pill please" route absolutely should be put to trial.

My opinion is specifically about pregnancies after the 24 weeks, which is a viable gestational age. Pre-24 weeks, although technically was still criminal, is legal and therefore isn't really affected by the bill. I know the vast majority of terminations are before the 12th week. However, how can anyone honestly think "yes, this is great for womenkind". What kind of message are we sending to our children's generation? This liberal you-do-you outlook needs to end.

What happened to 'safeguarding is everyone's concern'?

Chile's law is irrelevant. In the UK, the prosecution has to prove the facts beyond reasonable doubt, it is not for the woman to prove that she didn't get an abortion.

I'm generally very pro-choice but there are aspects of this that worry me. There will almost inevitably be a case where, for instance, a woman takes something to procure an abortion that doesn't succeed so that the child is born live but disabled, possibly severely so. Do the woman's rights triumph over the foetus's to the extent of, say, subjecting the baby to a life of pain? What if a woman procured her own abortion, gave birth to a live child, and simply left it to die? In that situation she obviously would be prosecuted, but it may not have occurred to her that a live baby was even a possibility.

As someone who considered an early abortion I have to say, it’s not at all easy to find a provider! I was offered little to no support. So I imagine a late term abortion is super hard to actually obtain. There will be a valid medical/ psychological reason for those few.

Exactly. Until yesterday when it was decriminalised.

It is impossible to tell if a pregnancy ends because of taking some pills or because it is a spontaneous event.

Chile does not allow abortion, there are many women serving 20+ years because they could not prove they didn't obtain an abortion.