pro-life feminism- an oxymoron?

and don't you think those tiny amount of women can think for themselves? Thats the problem here.Could you eprsonally look those women in the eye and say, "well you might want or need an abortion but I have decided you are not allowed"?

SGB, leaving aside how often it might actually happen for the moment (we can both agree it would be extremely rare), is there a point at which you personally would draw the line and say that abortion should not be legally permissible at X stage of gestation? Or would you personally be prepared to support termination and destruction of a foetus at absolutely any point prior to birth?

Well that's possible SGB, but given that I've already said I support abortion on demand up to 12 weeks and that the state of the law after 24 weeks would only ever affect a tiny number of women then it seems unlikely that that's my position.

I would never say that the life of a foetus trumps the life of a woman, only the more loony Catholics would say that. I would absolutely advocate abortion up to term in case of risk to maternal life (over and above normal pregnancy and childbirth).
But I'd say that there comes a time when the whole life of a foetus trumps three months in the life of a woman, and her preferences over what happens to her body during that time.

Perhaps because she thnks that women are at heart stupid and selfish and don't know their place. And that if patriarchal controls on abortion are relaxed, then women will immediately wait till they are 38 weeks pregnant then, silly capricious bitches, will suddenly decide they want to terminate the pregnancy, laughing gaily at how scatterbrained they are for not having thought of it until now.
I am reminded of a briliantly nasty joke I once heard: 'I really want to have an abortion, but my boyfriend and I haven't been able to conceive yet.'

DP, why do you think that the life of a foetus trumps the life of a woman?

I'm saying that there comes a point, very late on, when the life of the foetus trumps the extraordinary inconvenience to the woman of bearing it through the last trimester and giving live birth at term (rather than giving birth to a large terminated foetus).
It's a huge deal either way, no doubt about it, but the fact that the number of women affected is tiny means that it's a massively less important source of oppression than (say) the Irish laws (rights-based thinkers will presumably disagree again).

I think a lot could be done here by being pro-contraception and pro-sex education.

My daughter's school prospectus mentions addressing the "problems of puberty" so I think there's generally a long way to go !
( I've challenged them on their wording here )

It's a very feminist issue isn't it ?

Everyone would prefer contraception to abortion. But so little is done to facilitate this, especially for young women.

I think the church's teaching (especially RC ?) has been far from helpful too.

Oh I'm used to people looking at me funny.

I think that in all cases, women's lives should trump those of foetuses.

Because if they don't, then we are reducing women to vessels, wombs, just baby-carriers.

We just cannot concede that, that idea is one of the building blocks of patriarchy. It is a political necessity to insist that we are fully human and have the right to dictate what happens to our bodies and that if we don't want a baby in our womb, then it must come out.

I know that sounds brutal and utilitarian, but in a decent society where motherhood were truly valued, no sane woman would frivolously rip a baby from her womb anyway, so all the theoretical debate along the lines of - "do you think women at 40 weeks should be allowed to abort?" is a bit angels on pinheads IMO.

HerBeX, of course the fact that I'm mainstream doesn't mean I'm right, or that you're wrong - it is quite literally a question of what value you put on a foetus's interests and no-one can ever prove what the right answer is to that. I was pointing out that I'm in the majority just because if you enter a conversation dominated by rights-based arguments from a utilitarian perspective then people tend to look at you funny.

xpost. Well if its only a potential person it hasn't been alive.

If you restrict access to abortion you are at some point giving the foetus precedence over the woman. You are saying to woman that she can't have a termination because you think its not ok and the foetus is more important, at whatever theoretical point you have determined.

I can't reconcile that with a feminist perspective. Its patriarchal, its telling women you know better than them. It doesn't matter that you aren't a man.

DilysPrice, I agree with you. I said earlier that I do not think that abortion should be allowed in absolutely any circumstances i.e. it should not be illegal but it is right that there are some circumstances in which it is not permitted. I was asked to elaborate (though the discussion has moved in since then). I have a question of my own instead.

Dittany explains her view that a foetus is only a potential person, not an actual one. HerBex believes that, for anyone other than the pregnant woman to have any kind of say is unacceptable control by the state over women's bodies. A woman who wants to terminate her pregnancy wants the "potential person" she is carrying to be no longer alive. What I'd like to hear from those who think that to support any limits on abortion is to be anti-feminist is this.

At what stage does it cease to be acceptable for the "potential person" to be removed from the womb and made to be no longer alive? (I'm trying to avoid unnecessarily inflammatory language).

I also think that changing your whole life, is so much more than very severe inconvenience.

And call me old fashioned, but I do think that every child should be a wanted child. If possible.

Yes but a perfectly mainstream position by definition, isn't a feminist one.

Because feminism isn't mainstream. It's marginalised and considered berserk by the mainstream.

I do think that feminism would be quite a small group if you restricted it to those who believed in abortion on demand up to term.

Believing on its restriction to cases of threat to the woman's life or severe foetal abnormality beyond the (say) 24 week stage is not a feminist position insofar as it is not motivated by feminism. It I'd motivated by the reasoning that a foetus of that age has interests which weigh in the equation - not equal to those of an actual human being, but potentially sufficient to outweigh very severe inconvenience (to put it mildly) to a human being in a very few very rare cases.
Perfectly mainstream position I'd say, and not incompatible with feminism any more than vegetarianism is - it's just a question of whether you give the interests of the foetus a non-zero weighting. Of course I'm coming at this from a utilitarian rather than a rights-based perspective,

Lucky yours does. Mine doesn't. Recent EU court found that even though technically in Ireland you can get an abortion if there is a real threat to your life, in practice you cannot, for any reason at all. Even if you are dying.

So no, I don't think your much of a feminist if you think the state should control womens access to abortion, not least because it implies women can not regulate themselves.

In other words, even our state accepts that a woman's life, is more important than that of a foetus.

Except if it's not...

Well I personally think that if you are happy for the state to control a woman's body, when it doesn't control a man's, then that is not a feminist position.

Doesn't mean you can't be a feminist, but I struggle to see how allowing the state to decide whether a woman bears a child or not, instead of her, can possibly be described as feminist. Feminists can hold positions which aren't feminist, I'm sure most of us do on some issues.

I'm not in favour of abortions btw - I think in general they are a Bad Thing and would like to live in a society where they weren't a social and economic necessity. But while patriarchy survives, they are, and even if patriarchy didn't exist, they would sometimes be an emotional and/ or psychological necessity.

You are allowed to have an abortion over 30 weeks btw, if there are health problems with the foetus. (Not sure waht the position is if there are health problems for the woman.)

Some of the language on here suggests that anyone who supports the current state of the UK law - under which a woman would not be allowed termination of a healthy 30 week foetus - is not a feminist. Is that the general consensus? Because I do broadly support UK law as it stands (though I'd make it simple abortion on demand before 12 weeks) and I'm damned if I'm handing in my feminist badge.

In a world where even 'protected' sex is not guaranteed to not result in pregnancy, abortion must be allowed.

To be anti-abortion is to be anti-feminist, IMO.

Feminism should also support every measure to allow women to not get pregnant in the first place unless they wish - education, availability of the best contraception, the confidence to say 'no', men being responsible too, but even with all of these things in place there will still be unwanted pregnancies and women should be able to choose to terminate these if they wish.

I think you can support the right for women to have an abortion but hold the view that you personally would never have one. Thats the whole issue really, giving women the choice

Did anyone hear the R4 program about young male attitudes to sex? OMFG, apparently one category girls get put into is a 'sharing' category, if she'll fuck she'll get shared and recommended, but then there's wifey...means not shared and so on....shocking and vile.