Can I be pro-choice, but still really dislike some reasons and timing?

I assume that was a rhetorical question?

I am nothing, if not rhetorical

Doctrine, in that case, I don't know what should be done about the woman who was from 30 weeks pregnant. Her particular case goes into similar grounds of the issues that abortion doctors carrying out abortions on anti-abortion protestors face.

The woman is having an abortion at 30 weeks to avoid her family finding out she is pregnant as she is going to Asia for an arranged marriage. As a doctor, you would then have to ask if there are serious physical health risks to carrying out a very late abortion on a woman who is very likely to have very poor after care as she is in a social situation where she would have to keep the termination a secret.

Similarly the situation with anti-abortion women in the US having a greater risk of abortion complications because they don't follow after care recommendations because of their psychological state surrounding the abortion and lack of peer group support. Some doctors think holding anti-abortion views is a contraindication to abortion being in a woman's best physical or psychological interests.

So while I wouldn't say that woman in that case shouldn't be allowed an abortion, I also don't think it is clear whether carrying out an or abortion or not doing so is in her best interests or which would be physically safer.

almond, on WU's link there are women of 25 and 30 week gestation.

basgetti I agree. There were a few who's stories really got to me. A couple had been given completely misleading advice from their GP, or had been told wrong dates.

None of those women were asking for late abortions for frivolous reasons, even the ones past the legal gestation. I don't understand why the forced birthers seek to discount all women as being stupid vacuous fools who just randomly want to kill their giggling ickle babies.

That link that TheWanderingUterus provided has just strengthened my views on this. The thought of those women being turned away and losing their right to bodily autonomy because they presented at a few days over 24 weeks horrifies me. I can't agree that making any judgements on reasons for abortion is in any way compatible with feminism, because that leads to a situation where women are deemed 'worthy' or not. Abortion on demand without explanation or apology is the only scenario I support.

Also..... the real maternal woman who might cry, or, I'd love to have a baby but can't because of x is irrelevant. Stopping other women from being able to have safe legal abortions doesn't stop women crying or give another person a better chance of conceiving. To think otherwise has overtones of magical thinking to it.

We do know there are women pressurised into having very late abortions for social reasons. There are plenty of reports of people have late abortions of girls because the other option in rural areas in certain countries is that the person delivering the foetus at term will then kill it after the birth. I am certainly not going to say those women are better off not having the abortion.

If there are examples of women who have basic human rights but think it is in their best interests to have an abortion at 35 weeks, then give an actual real life example.

Yes, we do restrict rights and then replace them with other rights to resolve unequal situations. We do it all the time for many groups of people.

And I am not advocating taking away the right to social abortion at a very late stage. We do not have it in the UK or similar countries, and I do not think that it is necessary for somebody to argue in favour of gaining that right in order to consider themselves a feminist, unless somebody is actually going to provide evidence of actual real life women who need such a change in the law.

I believe that a woman's bodily autonomy trumps any other consideration. Abortion should be available to women for whatever reason up until term. The reasonableness or callousness of a woman's choices in this situation are for her to deal with, not for anyone else to judge or condemn.

I don't have to like another woman's reasons for doing anything. My censure is immaterial. I will defend a woman's right to have complete control over her body at all times. Society has no remit to decide arbitrary dates and times during which a woman has no rights over her own body.

The whole JC thing sits badly with me, not because of anything she is doing, but for how she is being abused by people who should really know better. She has been discriminated against for being pregnant, and, like a lot of women who fear financial problems because they happen to be pregnant, is seeking to remove the problem.

To answer the OP, you can't really count yourself as a feminist and deny women's bodily authority for periods of her life, you can however feel as uncomfortable as you like with other people's choices. You just can't censure them for them.

I agree, the pictures of her holding her bump make me feel especially uncomfortable, but its her body and she has the right to do what she wants.

I would hate to live somewhere that forces a women to continue with a pg they dont want or like one of the women on the thread forced to continue with a pg where her baby will die after birth.

I think jc is probably in the minority though, changing her mind about the pg at 18 weeks.

But nor are those issues dealt with by taking away the right to abortion at a late stage. You don't remove one right in order to replace it with others. You put other conditions in place, yes, but you don't remove the one causing an individual a problem and thus denying that to somebody else for whom it isn't a problem and is in fact actually needed.

And I don't quite know how you know there are women pressurised into abortions at 35 weeks but are adamant that there haven't yet been women who make a free choice to have one then.

I don't think anyone's fighting for the right to terminate on demand at term. It's a theoretical stance rather than one actively being pursued, is it not ?

If there are active attempts to diminish the poor laws that we currently have in the UK, then that's a different matter and I think it would become an issue that feminists would consider fighting for and even then, I doubt it would be about fighting for the right to terminate at term, it would be about recognising the rights of women to have autonomy over their bodies, a side effect of which would be that termination at term would become a possibility. That doesn't mean it would become a reality.

And I didn't say they were being overridden. I simply said that I was concerned with their rights, not the rights of a group of women who nobody has provided any real life example of actually existing. And the rights of women who would be mentally traumatised by being put under social conditions so terrible that they ended up having an abortion at 35 weeks of a foetus they previously wanted to carry to term are dealt with by fighting for rights for housing, benefits, maternity and employment protection for pregnant women. They are not dealt with by fighting for abortion on demand to term for social reasons.

But a 'real normal maternal woman who might cry' has the right not to have an abortion at 35 weeks so her rights over her own body are not in any way being overridden by any woman who might choose to abort at 35 weeks in the future.

I don't believe in any absolute moral principles, and I'm not going to fight for them.

If there are examples of where women with other basic human rights in place has wanted the right to abort a foetus at 35 weeks for social reasons, and felt strongly it was in her best interests to do so, then I would change my mind. But in the absence of any such case, I see no reason to defend a right that no woman in that situation has wanted to exercise. I do think that the rights of 'real normal maternal women who might cry' are more important than the rights of women who are at this point entirely fictional and hypothetical.

'That doesn't mean women should have basic human rights denied to them so that men don't have to feel bad about not being able to bear children.'

The feelings of men and the fact they get pregnant is entirely irrelevant to my point.

Bodily autonomy doesn't have ifs or buts. There's no balance necessary. Either you're a human being and you control your own body and have the right to deny your body to others no matter the consequences for them or you're not. There's no "well REAL normal MATERNAL women might CRY so it should be illegal"

It's true that women are different to men. That doesn't mean women should have basic human rights denied to them so that men don't have to feel bad about not being able to bear children. The rights pregnant women and mothers need don't need balancing out with lack of bodily autonomy.

Imagine proposing that men don't really need bodily autonomy, it sounds ridiculous.

I don't have an intellectual conflict about late term abortions. For me, feminism (and every other movement for equal rights) is about collectively gaining equality of outcome for women, not the defence of any other particular principle. That doesn't involve giving everyone exactly the same rights as each other.

I am not, for example, going to fight for the right for people who are entirely blind to become fighter pilots. In principle this means they do not have equal employment opportunities people who can see, but in reality fighting for such a right would give blind people a right they neither want nor need. It is better to recognise that blind people will not be able to carry out certain jobs, and make sure that the law in terms of reasonable adjustments and benefits for people with disabilities in employment are suitable and adhered to. This creates a sort of compensating situation that allows us to work towards equality of outcome. Not recognising the different wants and needs of disabled people by giving them identical rights rather than contextually beneficial rights would be damaging.

I believe the same for abortion. There may be some circumstances where a woman who previously wanted a baby so continued a pregnancy has a huge change in her social situation, making continuation of the pregnancy highly undesirable for her. But few, if any women, put in that situation would want an abortion for non-medical reasons at 35 weeks. To defend equality of bodily autonomy in that situation is to give most women in that situation a useless right. It would encourage callous behaviour where people can say, well woman X should have an abortion at 35 weeks to avoid that situation so we don't have to do anything about changing the situation.

It is far better for the law to recognise that the vast and overwhelming majority of women would not want to abort at 35 weeks for social reasons, and would be mentally traumatised by doing so. As a consequence, the law limits their bodily autonomy. Women in late pregnancy should then be compensated through contextually beneficial rights by having greater rights to workplace protection, maternity leave, benefits and housing than other people. We are then working towards equality of outcome by not having equality in the principle of bodily autonomy but by giving pregnant women greater rights elsewhere to compensate.

The important point in looking at those factors is that they are all about the wellbeing of women, and balancing the rights given and taken from them, without bringing in the rights of the foetus as some sort of reason for simply disregarding women's rights. The problem with the abortion debate is that it seems to be all about saying women can't have various rights because children are more important, with no regard for women's equality or how to address it at all.

I am not saying that bodily autonomy isn't important and should be disregarded in a cavalier way. But I think there are some rare situations where equality is more likely to be achieved through other means, and there is no reason to defend the principle of bodily autonomy in every single context.

With regard to the woman in question and 16 weeks, I don't know enough about her situation to comment. Presumably the person who does know and has to ethically agree it is in her best interests is her doctor. I suppose it is rather like benefits where we accept that by setting up a benefits system, there will be a few people who will use it in ways we do not like, but it is so important to the wellbeing of the massive number of people who don't misuse it and really need it that we must keep on supporting it and seeing it as a great social good.

Ranging - not raging. Although.........

I agree.

It's fine for women to support feminism and feminist principles but not to be feminists. We seem to have viewed that as a negative and tried to convert everyone to the feminism movement with a resulting backlash.

Women can't be feminists until they recognise their own internalised sexism, IMO. By trying to encourage them to identify as feminists, we avoid calling the sexism what it is and encourage them to retain these beliefs instead of supporting them to disregard them or at least recognise them for what they are.

I haven't found an easy way to point out when women hold sexist beliefs and to be honest, it took a lot of self reflection and having my arse kicked before I recognised it in myself. Putting it into practice in the workplace and genuinely committing to those ideas instead of just paying them lip service has been really really difficult and I still don't think I always see my own sexism.

At least on FWR, I can share those ideas and get help from people genuinely committed to feminist principles but look what happens elsewhere on here if you try to explore a feminist angle.

I don't mind the raging differences in opinions on here on feminism but I just can't support this Feminism Lite which seems to go on elsewhere on MN

It is very different telling women they are not feminists, to encouraging those who don't understand feminism to identify as feminists. The former is policing. The latter is a dumbing down. For example, saying to women do you think you should be allowed to vote and work? If you do then you are a feminist.

I agree blistory. The idea that it matters if someone calls themselves a feminist, while not having the slightest idea of what feminism means, makes no sense at all to me.

Well, it's a easy way for the media to demonise feminism, isn't it. The headline of 'feminists support baby killing' is much more attention grabbing than 'feminists support the rights of women'.

The problem is that the negativity means that we're in danger of watering down the fundamental concepts of feminism in order to stay mainstream and to not scare women away from feminism.

I do think we need to move away from the touchy feely crap that pats women on the head and says that as long as you think you're a feminist then you are. Because it feeds the media to have women identifying as feminists when they are not and giving out completely anti women sentiments.

Cunty - It is smoke and mirrors. It is meant to distract from the fundamentals and the realities.