Jailing a mother of three - WTF

Nearly all relinquished children spend some time in the care system, this is more likely if the child has additional needs which this pregnancy was at risk of due to the previous child's difficulties and the woman's age. Adoption is not a panacea and not for the faint hearted.

I absolutely agree with this and fear that this is exactly what's going to happen if both sides don't stay on the current middle ground.

Agreeing with abortion up until birth (outside of medical reasons) is as much an extreme view as allowing no abortion at all. I think more people would agree to lower the time limits than extend them if it came down to it.

I think the UK has it about right and it shouldn't be touched at all.

I suspect that she thought that the pills would give "really heavy period" type discharge that would chew threw a lot of sanitary towels. It sounds really unlikely, but then I've met women who couldn't find the cervix on a diagram.

Self-abortion should not be a crime.

The public interest in criminalising theft is people not stealing things that belong to someone else.

Can the State really claim that the public interest is served by preventing self-abortion?

We used to criminalise suicide. We stopped because we recognised that it wasn't in the public interest and was counterproductive. It stopped people who were injured after making the attempt from getting treatment. It stopped survivors from disclosing the attempt to counsellors.

Self-abortion looks just like a miscarriage or still-birth. So going to get help for a genuine medical problem could get a woman reported to the police. That's not OK.

As early as possible as late as necessary, there's your line.

I wonder how she was planning to dispose of the body of the baby after she had induced preterm labour, if she wanted to keep it secret she would have needed a plan for this. It doesn’t bear thinking about.

What I'm saying is, it is not as easy as some posters may think, to just have the baby and give it up for adoption. And this woman was clearly extremely keen that the people around her not know she was pregnant, which made having the baby and giving it up seem impossible to her.

I agree I do assume this woman wasn't thinking straight, for whatever reason or combination of reasons. I just don't think a woman who had had 3 babies previously would think abortion pills at 34 weeks pregnant was a solution which would a) work and b) be possible to keep secret, if she was capable at the time of clear decision-making.

Excellent point.

If you make women choose between allowing abortions right up until full gestation and no abortions at all, you’re unwittingly going to lose a lot of support for the pro-choice stance.

If you want to bring USA type abortion wars to the UK where 2 fanatical sides battle for only their absolute position either way: Do it.

But I don't think it's likely to have good outcomes for UK women.

I think potential crimes should be investigated, yes.

Again, many people are suspected of crimes and it turns out they were innocent.

Should we therefore stop investing all crimes?

So, the public interest and who else gets hurt by criminalising self-abortion is important.

Is investigating a schoolgirl for a year after her genuine stillbirth in her interest or the public interest? Because I just found out (I live under a rock) that that happened in this country two years ago.

I think that it harms women and girls and is not in the public interest to have a woman who still-births (still-bears?) or miscarries investigated as a criminal suspect. It harms women's and girls' faith in their health care teams if they worry that the HCPs might make a police report. It harms women's health if the woman doesn't go for miscarriage or still-birth care because she fears arrest. It harms women's mental health to be accused of killing the baby that they very likely wanted. And it puts women at risk of wrongful conviction because how do you prove that it wasn't an illegal abortion?

I am of the view that the State's putative interest in the life of the baby is less important than protecting women and girls from the State's unfounded accusations of criminality. If some women abuse that, that's on them.

This baby was a few weeks away from being an existing child.

The assumption from social care professionals seems to be that no woman would actually want to do this, therefore she must be mentally unwell,

is this not the exact same assumption you’re making about this woman?

Thanks IwantToRetire

I spotted something in the info for that march and went off to check it.

That thing I said was happening in the US, with women investigated for miscarriages? It's happening in the UK. To school girls. https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/why-women-in-uk-face-criminal-charges-for-abortion_uk_62d5689ee4b0116f21be6fe1

If the price of protecting innocent women from unwarranted criminal investigation after miscarriage or stillbirth is a few women abusing abortion pills without punishment, then so be it. If believing that makes me the devil or a monster, then I'll wear those slurs like a badge of honour.

Investigated. For a year. During her GCSEs. After a stillbirth. She was a child FFS.

Have you tried relinquishing a baby in the UK? As a PP noted upthread, it is surprisingly difficult. The assumption from social care professionals seems to be that no woman would actually want to do this, therefore she must be mentally unwell, being coerced etc. Let alone how it would even be possible in the first lockdown, plus of course the exP she was back living with would have found out then, which she clearly went to extreme lengths to avoid.

Adoption or care is the least worst option for children who are already here and can't safely stay in their birth family. This very sad case is not equivalent to euthanasia of existing children.

I wasn't suggesting you are a liar.
I 100% believe you.

This is true for absolutely every crime though, isn’t it?

Most people don’t commit murder, so should that be taken out of criminal law?

Most people don’t burgle, should we get Friday of those laws too?

Safeguarding policies and laws are in place for outliers in our society just like this.

So the evidence is that women in the last 60 years are making good decisions about their pregnancies.

Yes, they are. Women can be trusted to make good abortion decisions. This one woman was an exception that happens single-digits per year at most, and if she'd been in Northern Ireland, she wouldn't have even been arrested because self-abortion is not a crime over there.

I trust women not to abuse late abortions, even if we remove the time limit.

I trust women.

Sorry if this has already been post but for anyone in London (there may be local actions in other cities)

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/time-to-act-tickets-646932551677

But adoption IS better. Being putting into care IS better.

If it wasn’t, we’d euthanise children instead of putting them up for adoption or into care.

And yes, I am ashamed that it took me having the "that was rape" realisation and seeing sick women coming from Ireland and realising that I could have needed that rape carve-out if he'd pulled my Mirena out or it had failed for me to realise that all women need safe legal abortion.

The ASN standing order is, in part, penance for my earlier ignorance.

Absolutely this!

Additionally we do not need US style polarisation on this issue, we have a system which works for most women most of the time and to which only a minority object currently. I don’t want to see either extreme gaining power here and as you say twinkly the well funded US “pro-life” lobby have already started trying to rock the boat here. Thankfully they have not yet gained much momentum.

It's one thing to call me stupid, extremist, or even the devil.

It's quite another to insinuate that I'm a liar.

I detected that written sarcasm.

Hear hear.

Gosh.
I believe you.

Because life is more complex than you allow.

To the contrary. Life is incredibly complicated and neither I nor the State know what a woman is facing. So it should not be for me or the State to tell her if her circumstances justify an abortion. We should remove legal obstacles so that she can make that judgement for herself.

I imagine your 'not even in the case of rape' phase was only possible because you wouldn't or couldn't look with empathy at the reality of a person in that situation. Now you either can't or won't acknowledge the humanity of a full-term child.

It's not about empathy or feelings. At that time, I was lexically prioritising the baby's life over the woman's bodily sovereignty. If you allow a rape carve-out, you have to ask how the baby somehow magically matters less if the woman was raped than if she wasn't. At that time in my life, I was waking up to having been in an abusive relationship in which the only reason why I wasn't pregnant through rape was a Mirena. I was waking up to the idea of women having rights, like the right to say no to sex and to unwanted things in general. Realising that women have the right to say "I don't want to be pregnant any more" kind of followed on from that.

The 'lost future' comment is not an argument per se.

It came across as the "you could have aborted the next Mozart" that, even when I was on the anti-choice side, I rolled my eyes at.