MPs vote to decriminalise abortion

But is that really fair if a woman legally ends her pregnancy at 41 weeks, whereas another faces charges for ending hers at 37 weeks because she was in labour, when neither baby was physically born yet?

i think making abortion legal without reason past 24 weeks just makes matters more complex and in the long run will play into the hands of those wanting to make legislation stricter than it is currently.

I can see a strong possibility of some women aborting healthy late-term fetuses because something’s changed in their relationship with the father. They’re 31 weeks and they’ve just discovered he’s having an affair, or has got some other woman pregnant, or he’s been arrested or done something heinous. They want to be able to cut all ties and make a clean break and so they abort a child who can feel pain and could live outside the womb.

I can also see the potential for vulnerable girls and women, who want to give birth, enduring weeks upon weeks of parents and/or partners bullying them and trying to coerce them into having abortions - then finally getting to the point, after 28 or 31 or 33 weeks, where they feel they can’t take it anymore and will do anything to make the bullying stop.

It is unusual but not unknown for people to illegally induce late term abortions: eg
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/12/appeal-jail-term-woman-aborted-baby-40-weeks
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jun/12/woman-in-uk-jailed-for-28-months-over-taking-abortion-pills-after-legal-time-limit

Ultimately this amendment accepts that there will no longer be criminal liability in cases like this, not because we think this conduct is ok (it's not, it's still illegal) but essentially because innocent women may be pursued with criminal charges after miscarriages, and because women (whether or not after acting illegally) may be deterred by the threat of prosecution from seeking medical assistance.

I personally support decriminalisation, but I do think it's right to acknowledge there is a trade off.

As I said on another thread, I am concerned that there has been insufficient work on the impact of the pills by post scheme on illegal abortions. Personally I would end this scheme and require all women to have a medical examination prior to the abortion. This would surely dramatically cut the risk of late term abortions, and also be a good thing for women.

That could be prevented by making labour the limit.

So if I’m understanding, if she was able to arrange an abortion at 40 weeks that would be legal. But if she attempted to carry out an abortion once childbirth had started, she could be prosecuted even if the baby wasn’t actually born? What if the mother said she didn’t realise she was in labour and was just carrying out her legal right to an abortion past 24 weeks without needing a reason?

My personal opinion is that abortion past 24 weeks should still only be due to health risks for the mother or child. Even if prosecutions aren’t sought in most cases, I think making it legal could set a confusing precedent and result in a backlash in the future where anti abortion groups try to stop all abortions past 24 weeks (including medical need) which would be wrong.

A woman in this scenario wouldn’t be granted an abortion just coz. If she induced her own labour her baby would be born alive and then the crime would be murder. If a woman in that scenario doesn’t want her baby then she’d need to give birth regardless.

But if this meant you could now legally end a baby’s life during childbirth solely to avoid prosecution, would that be ok?

If the intent was there it would certainly be doable. Would it matter to you how it was done?

Personally I think abortions past the 24 week limit should still only be carried out for serious health risks for the mother or unborn child. If for example, you find out about a pregnancy at 37 weeks (healthy mother & child) then I don’t think it should be completely legal to abort the child even if the mother is able to do so. Whilst I would sympathise, by that stage the baby can be delivered and placed for adoption instead if that’s what the mother wishes.

Ending a baby's life after giving birth is already illegal. Someone who does that isn't going to care very much about the law.

This is my view too. Why do people want to control what someone else does with their own body (the same applies to assisted dying). If you don't like the idea of abortion or assisted dying, fine. Don't do it. But how does it remotely affect you if I have an abortion or decide I don't want to hold out until the bitter end with a horrible illness?

I don't understand all the comments about full term abortions. Surely these just don't happen - I can't see that any medical staff would give the necessary treatment to abort a 39 week old foetus!

I can see that medical staff might sometimes induce a mother to give birth a bit early when the baby is going to be stillborn or die very soon after birth - there's no use prolonging the agony. But that is not abortion in any sense of the word.

One other thing to consider is that if a mother does lose a full term baby shortly before it would have been born, this change to the law means she won't be accused of doing anything to kill it like happens in some other countries when women lose babies or miscarry.

How? By what mechanism are you envisaging this happening?

@hamstersarse "with an evolutionary lens" as you put it the vast majority of premature babies would have died. Even now, many babies born at 34 weeks will still need intervention. If foetal survival and a desire to prevent women aborting for reasons of disability is so important to you, maybe get off Mumsnet and start campaigning for improved disability support so that fewer people feel that the hurdles of dealing with a profoundly disabled child are so insurmountable that they take the "morally bankrupt" (your words not mine) choice to abort.

But some women do end their baby’s life after giving birth.

Would a new law mean they could do this legally during childbirth? The baby can be accessible but not born yet for some time during labour.

I don't think insane hypotheticals with no basis in reality are a sound basis on which to make decisions about laws.

I am pro choice but not sure this is the right decision. Under current legislation, abortions are still legal at any point (inc past 24 weeks) if:

”the pregnancy poses a potential risk to your life, the pregnancy would cause very serious risks to your health, or there is high chance that the baby would be born with a serious disability, or be unable to survive after it is born”. (RCOG)

Therefore no one is saying under current law that a woman must give birth to a child with severe disabilities if they don’t want to, or put their own life at risk. However I think total decriminalisation of ending the pregnancy after 24 weeks for any reason at all will lead to a small number of high profile cases causing public outrage, and then used to make abortion laws stricter than they are currently.

It could also lead to grey areas, eg if a woman ends her baby’s life during childbirth (eg whilst baby is crowning, so not born yet) is this a legal alternative to killing a baby after birth? What if someone does this multiple times, is that ok? There could be a few rare cases like this which are then used as ammunition to make abortion laws even stricter again.

Can you try not to be an idiot. It is simply not the case that prioritising the life of a living person over the prospective life of a foetus is narcissism. Our entire medical and legal systems recognise and prioritise the life of the woman over the foetus. There is nothing narcissistic about this.

My two penneth worth: abortion is complicated because it confuses a few normally separate issues:

1.Should any human being be compelled to use their body to sustain the life of another?

2.How do we measure quality of life and who gets to make those decisions? (Essentially, when we give/withhold medical treatment, end of life care and euthanasia)

IMO debates over when life begins just obfuscate the issue. My uncle Fred is undeniably alive, but most people would agree that I should not be compelled to donate my bone marrow to him, even if I do appear to be his only viable match. Obviously it would be very nice if I did and, under some situations, it could be argued I have a moral imperative to do so - but this would be a matter of personal conscience and not law. Even if we up the stakes a bit and say Fred is my son rather than my uncle, it is still difficult to imagine a world in which I am legally compelled to donate to him.

So my personal opinion on (1) is that there is rarely ever a situation where one human should be legally compelled to use their body to support the life of another human. In theory this means I support ending a pregnancy at any time up until birth.

I think the logic for this is quite simple when taking about medical abortions because the harm to the baby is indirect: the woman's body simply stops providing any support and the baby is either no longer able to survive independently or, in the case of induction, potentially able to exist independently of the women anyway (with possible medical support). I suppose this is a bit like if I get matched to donate some bone marrow to Fred, but decide not to go through with it.

This nice clean logic gets muddied when I think about surgical abortions. IMO we are now into the difficult world of quality of life and euthanasia. I think doctors are probably best placed to evaluate this on a case by case basis. However, in all cases, where the there is a conflict between the life of the women and baby (pre-eclampsia for example), the host should take precedence.

TLDR: it's a bloody complicated issue, but we should approach it from the assumption that no human being should be compelled to use their body to sustain the life of another human being.

Yes I do - I’ve been spat on my nuns, almost run over by a certain Lib Dem MP and physically assaulted by pro life activists while trying to support rape crisis service users into clinics for STI screening - so yep I’m happy with my view and no amount of ‘morality’ or whataboutism will impact it at all

I think it's obvious you don't care - and you have a single focus point of view with no sight outside of it to what the repercusions are elsewhere

i don’t really care what you find repulsive I care that women have a choice over their bodies- so yeah I really couldn’t care less what anyone else thinks as long as it doesn’t impact on safe legal termination of pregnancy

And you would like to see women criminalised for making a different choice to you?

There would be no foetus without a woman's body, so she decides.

Her body, her choice

I would never agree that there should be no abortion, I am more 'safe, legal and rare' and the rare part is the most appealing to me.

I find a casualness to it these days that is pretty repulsive.

why is that body more valuable than a foetus?

because its a living human who doesn’t want to host a fetus