Jailing a mother of three - WTF

What natural consequence?

What are you talking about?

@GrinAndVomit - I have made no proposals at all. I'm simply pointing out a natural consequence. On the whole I think UK law as it stands is pretty sensible.

But the law states that women cannot terminate their own pregnancy after 24 weeks unless approved by a doctor and for very specific and medically necessary reasons.

So there’s a grey area here, where the rights of a foetus are considered.

It seems to me that you are the one proposing change. Do you think this law should be changed and women should be able to abort, no questions asked, until birth?

With Sodium valproate, I think doctors will often refuse to prescribe to women of child bearing age, unless they are on contraception.

So the "bodily autonomy" of the woman to make her own medical choices is being undermined, to protect a potential fetus.

Not heavy drinking, which is done probably because you have an alcohol problem.

But deliberate poisoning with something like Sodium valproate could qualify. I don't know if it's actually that reliable as a poison, but we can ignore that.

Imagine it's taken not for any medical reason, but purely to poison the fetus.

I don't understand the point you're making. Are you talking about thalidomide? Foetal alcohol syndrome? Sodium valproate?

So if you can find something that will deliberately make your baby disabled, and it's a legal substance to possess, that's all OK for the mother to deliberately poison her fetus?

@Mustardseed86 - I am obviously being unclear. I have no idea whether anybody is actively proposing to remove rights from women. I am merely pointing out that giving rights to a foetus necessarily removes them from the woman carrying the foetus if they are held to override her rights to personal and bodily autonomy.

@Britinme which rights that women currently have is anyone proposing to remove though? Surely there needs to be a change for it to constitute removal.

Obv. if you're arguing for a change to rights or the law then fair enough but seems an odd way to phrase it!

Rights not triggers! God help us if they arm foetuses

The suggestion of giving triggers to a fortis necessarily removes rights from the woman carrying it.

What current rights are we proposing to remove on this thread?

Haven't we seen enough rights removed from women in various places without actively removing even more?

This is a very important point.

We cannot afford rights to the fœtus. It puts the life of women at risk.

I think such a crime should be prosecuted both as a crime against the mother and as a crime against the rights of the fetus.

Foetuses don't have rights. We cannot go down the route of foetuses having rights, every country I can think of which does afford rights to foetuses ends up removing rights from women, whether as a bug or a feature. There are several examples on the thread of women who have been prosecuted, had medical treatment they didn't want, have been denied treatment they did want/need and even died because the law explicitly or implicitly gave rights to the foetus. Like it or not, rights for foetuses = less rights for women.

Take drugs which legal but harmful to the fœtus I should say, obviously we criminalise illegal drug taking, not because of it being harmful to unborn babies however.

“And if it's the mother herself doing it, no I don't think she has a right to perpetrate such evil, just because it's "her body". And yes I would think it should be a criminal act.”

We do not criminalise women who smoke, take drugs, don’t eat an optimal diet etc To do so would be to take rights away from all women during pregnancy and genuinely reduce us to vessels.

I have known of a case where a woman was habitually consuming a poisonous/toxic substance during pregnancy, it was a pregnancy related psychological condition, she was sectioned until the birth, not for the harm she was doing to her baby but for the harm that she was doing to herself.

In UK law poisoning a pregnant woman would be prosecuted as a crime against the woman. The fœtus has no rights as a separate person.

In looking after the mother’s health, wellbeing and best interests the best interests of the fœtus are usually covered too, because their best interests are not truly separate. Mother and baby form a dyad. What is objectively good for the mother is good for the baby. If the mother is safe, well nourished, supported, content, relaxed all of that is going to be good for the baby too.

In the UK the combination of the rights being with the woman and not the foetus and the abortion laws we have create a reasonable balance.

We cannot accord rights to the foetus because a woman must be free to eat, drink, do whatever she is legally allowed to do, she is emphatically not a mere vessel under UK law
Completely agree

We cannot accord rights to the foetus because a woman must be free to eat, drink, do whatever she is legally allowed to do, she is emphatically not a mere vessel under UK law.

It's an extreme hypothetical that hopefully no one would do, but imagine either the mother or someone else deliberately poisoning the fetus with the intention not to kill it, but to harm the development.

So the child grows up disabled as a result.

Now if it's someone other than the mother doing this, without her consent, it's already going to be illegal presumably as you have to drug the mother. But the mother may not be directly physically harmed from it.

I think such a crime should be prosecuted both as a crime against the mother and as a crime against the rights of the fetus.

And if it's the mother herself doing it, no I don't think she has a right to perpetrate such evil, just because it's "her body". And yes I would think it should be a criminal act.

I agree with @PomegranateOfPersephone 's post above but I don't know how that addresses the issue of whether the woman's actions should have resulted in criminal proceedings. Yes those proceedings address the moral issue but I can't see that society benefited from them, the woman herself didn't and certainly the existing children didn't. I can also say that the woman will not find a kindly or friendly response from her fellow inmates. I did voluntary work in a prison for a few years and anybody harming a child (which is how a lot of people would see it, whether the child was born or unborn) got harsh treatment.

This.

Our current laws are finely balanced, they need to be to reflect the complexities of this situation which is one of the major reasons why I really don’t want to see any changes to the existing law on abortion in the UK.

The foetus has no rights, the born baby does and this is as it should be and this means that when the mother’s life is at risk saving her is the priority as it should be.

However we have restrictions on abortion to reflect the moral issues and facts presented by previous posters, viability from 24 weeks, potential for feeling pain or suffering of the foetus, natural feeling among probably the majority of women that later in pregnancy there is a “baby” inside, a precious human life, the need for society to value life.

We cannot accord rights to the foetus because a woman must be free to eat, drink, do whatever she is legally allowed to do, she is emphatically not a mere vessel under UK law. She is just not permitted to terminate the pregnancy after 24 weeks if the foetus is healthy and viable.

She has ample opportunity to terminate it prior to that. She could also have accessed free contraception including emergency contraception. I would like to say that she could choose not to have a man ejaculate into her but sadly we know that too many women still don’t always have that choice.

I would like to add that saving a woman’s life in the case of an ectopic pregnancy is not considered abortion in the UK and not covered by abortion laws, UK health professionals would simply act quickly to save the mother’s life. As they should, there is no viable pregnancy there anyway. An advantage of not having these laws tied to a heartbeat.

Equally I have known of a woman discovered to be seriously ill in pregnancy, past 24 weeks, not yet 30 weeks. She needed treatment to begin, the baby was delivered early and sent to NICU to facilitate this. The mother’s life was prioritised, everything possible done for the baby.

A final point for consideration, there have been parts of the UK in the past where no one would disclose to parents the sex of the foetus before 24 weeks because of wanting to avoid parents choosing to abort if the fœtus was female. This is also caring about women and girls. Abortion for any reason up to term includes abortion of the foetus because it is female.

To open up these laws risks something far worse replacing them, if they were opened as others have said we might suddenly find we have a much bigger anti abortion (from conception) movement than we imagined especially because as other posters have pointed out few people are likely to be comfortable with abortion of a healthy viable foetus up to term. Also because as others have said money might well pour in from the US and other places.

Knee jerk reactions to rare cases make bad law.

The current laws work well for most women most of the time.

That should have read critically injured or ill and her life cannot be saved...

Surely when weighing up rights it matters not just who is most important but who has most at stake? If the mother is critically injured or I'll send her life cannot be saved without losing the baby, the mother's life comes first - and rightly so in my opinion. So the unborn baby isn't afforded the same rights as a baby that's been born, in recognition of its dependence on the mother.

But when the mother's rights are just about wanting her nonpregnant body back a few weeks earlier, or saving her relationship - and the unborn baby's life is at stake, I think their respective rights weigh rather differently. And the law rightly recognises that.

Lily was female.

I understand it would have been viable, and I'm certainly not supporting what she did. What she did was wrong as well as illegal.

But I do see a difference between a foetus and a born baby, despite the fact that the foetus could have survived. I think we have to have that distinction, or we risk going down the route of some other parts of the world, where the foetus/potentially viable baby ends up prioritised over the woman. I stand for the actual woman's rights to always supersede the potential baby's rights, if there is a conflict.

Legally, the baby was not entitled to live, late abortion being illegal isn't the same as a foetus having a right to live after a certain gestation. Foetuses don't have the same rights as existing people and I think that's correct.