Abortion decriminalisation - how the far right will use it?

I despair a little reading some of these posts.

Do women really think so little of their fellow women that they imagine there will suddenly be loads of women casually lying to get abortion pills and aborting at at a late stage?

Even if that baby is 34 weeks?

You keep saying they are not happening but they have happened. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-65581850.amp
This woman took abortion pills when her baby was between 32 and 34 weeks, the labour took hours. Anyone who has had a pre term baby would be really sad for this baby who might have survived if she had called an ambulance. It would have suffered as well.

This woman sold her living, sentient child. I think her seeking a late term medical abortion so she could sell a non-living child’s body parts would have probably been the “better”, for want of another word, outcome.

I believe the only reason a woman needs to have an abortion is that she doesn’t want to be pregnant. My view doesn’t change because she specifically doesn’t want to be pregnant with a boy or a girl, or pregnant with a disabled baby, or pregnant with a baby whose father is a particular man, or pregnant because she wants to go on Love Island, or whatever.

@Zebedee999 it worries me because I’m a woman who wants access to abortion. It worries me because as the law is, abortions are available, but nobody is forced to have an abortion (excluding medical). Whereas if the pro lifers used this as ammunition and got their way, then women wouldn’t have the access they currently have to abortion. Do you see how having abortion as an option doesn’t force pro lifers (or anyone) to have an abortion but taking it away, forces pregnancy on millions of women?

On balance, I think that if a baby is otherwise going to be born to parents who so desperately don’t want it to be of a particular sex that they would consider a near-term abortion, it’s probably best for the child they don’t have that baby in the first place.

Though I don’t think it’s a particularly pressing argument anymore anyway, now that antenatal testing has advanced so much. Parents can find out the sex of their baby from well before 24 weeks already and abort if it’s the “wrong” one.

Oh yeah @Slothtoes i know, it’s just there’s an immediate emotional response to statements like ‘35 week abortions’, even when they’re not happening (it’s still a 24 week limit).

I mean if you cannot tell the difference between a woman exhibiting autonomy over her womb (in a late abortion scenario) or smothering a baby that is independent of its mothers body, I don’t know what to say.

But once again this will be a tiny minority of cases which a woman will have good
reason for.

I mean if you cannot tell the difference between a woman exhibiting autonomy over her womb (in a late abortion scenario) or smothering a baby that is independent of its mothers body, I don’t know what to say.

But once again this will be a tiny minority of cases which a woman will have good
reason for.

I don’t think things will swing to the right on this, but I do think if people believe it removes protections from women and children because of being given abortion pills by phone that it will produce an anti government backlash. The first time there is a case in the papers of a woman using pills at say 35 weeks to abort a viable healthy foetus there will be uproar in the papers. It will happen. There are always rare cases of things that are listed as “it will never happen”. Support for mothers should mean this can’t be done without an in person interviews-I think this could be done in a pharmacy.

@Zebedee999 it worries me because I’m a woman who wants access to abortion. It worries me because as the law is, abortions are available, but nobody is forced to have an abortion (excluding medical). Whereas if the pro lifers used this as ammunition and got their way, then women wouldn’t have the access they currently have to abortion. Do you see how having abortion as an option doesn’t force pro lifers (or anyone) to have an abortion but taking it away, forces pregnancy on millions of women?

I am actually not convinced that this is a far right issue. I think most people are horrified by the thought of a late term abortion and the government has basically now made it seem like there is no legal distinction between an early abortion of a fetus and and the abortion of a late-term fully formed baby. I think it may make people question the morality of the whole issue to be honest. If the government is really suggesting that aborting a baby of 35 weeks is not a criminal act (however unlikely this scenario actually is) then surely we have to question the whole moral basis. How on earth can it be justified that to abort a late term baby is not a crime but if it was born and then smothered to death, it would be a crime. I think it’s asking people to bend their minds just a bit too far, to be honest.

In that case it's anecdotal and really a bit irresponsible.

Perfectly worded and its horrifying and shocking that anyone sees anything any differently.

Termination is a serious procedure and needs to be undertaken in a medical setting for the exact reasons discussed.

I cant even buy more than 2 packets of fucking paracetamol at once but someone can have a fraudulent phone call and order pills to kill a viable baby, potentially under coercion of partner or under a moment of madness / desperation which if they had actually been seen by a HCP they could have received the help and support they need.

His personal, professional experience over many years.

So you believe a very minute few should be the reason to keep investigating women going through one of the most harrowing things a woman can go through?

'oh, sorry, I know your baby just died, but I have to arrest you, because there is a minute chance that XYZ down the road might kill her baby for organs'

30 million women deserve protection.

I'd like to know where he gets those statistics from, and what the extent of those investigations are. I suspect that in the vast majority of cases if there is no evidence beyond the fact of a late miscarriage or stillbirth nothing happens beyond a few questions to clinicians, and the woman never even gets to know about the investigation.

YABVU. It’s not the far right who will go to town on this - it’ll be the general public being 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.