Change to decriminalise abortion law

I was concerned by how little debate there was around this change: it was framed as a solution to help women wrongly investigated for miscarriage focusing just on the stories of these women to create sympathy. And described as pro choice even though it goes further than many would argue is acceptable. The media had nothing I saw on what the reality of aborting a 24 week old plus foetus (i.e. essentially a baby) or debates from ethicists.

Taking the former, there are surely ways to change investigation guidelines without decriminalising abortion attempts after 24 week.

You can get all sorts of drugs on the dark web, and these are extremely hard to track who sent them. Some desperate women will take them now because they won't fear prosecution and will risk their mental and physical health - i.e. once they realise they have killed a baby or through effects of an unsupervised very late abortion. Others will not care and just want to get rid of an unwanted child.

That's not to mention that there's no real difference between a foetus a day before it is born and a day after. If you think it is completely unacceptable for a certain neonatal nurse to kill premature babies of that age how can it be effectively permitted inside the womb?

Yes I'm aware it is still a "crime" but if there is no prosecution allowed that's not much of a deterrent. As I say, it is very hard to track down where some drugs are from (as well as dubious age old "home remedies") and I guess this change won't be monitored either so we won't know how often this is happening.

How is that supposed to work in practice? Who performs the abortion or are you thinking of this as induced labour? Are you imagining that the baby is born dead or alive? If the baby is born alive, but with health problems, who is responsible for care?

Leaving aside whether a foetus has rights, how are you factoring in the rights of all the other people involved?

You talk constantly of 'forced birth', 'the government forcing a woman to use their body to sustain another' without any sense that you are talking of two people here, not one. Doubtless you support 'bodily autonomy' in the erroneous and arrogant belief that we should never be forced to do something with our body we do not wish to do. But we many times must do something with our body we may not choose - have a cervical smear, an operation, deal with the invasion of cancer etc. go to work. We do not have bodily autonomy and having it - the libertarian dream - can lead to a society with no thought for others, no moral compass of what is right or wrong. An unpleasant place to live where people do as they wish and to Hell with everyone else.
As for the situation you speak of you are thinking only of the woman - but a viable child has a moral right to protection, even though it is not a legal entity. Killing a viable, near full-term baby by expelling it is morally indefensible. Not wanting to be pregnant any more is no justification for such an act.
We are not islands and actions have consequences - the consequences of supporting your idea of bodily autonomy of the woman is trauma and probably long term nightmares.
Have you any children?
NB In many countries (though not the UK) you can be prosecuted for not saving a life which could have/might have been saved.

Why would a woman, having escaped an abusive relationship, 'abort' a pregnancy at 38 weeks. This means killing a viable child - how can she do this without medical help? And she can have no medical help because any HCP would be committing a crime. Why not wait the few weeks to birth and then have the child adopted if the child is unwanted? Makes more sense than going through labour unsupported and having to cope with a dead, full-term baby, or a living one that may die quickly or that she may be so disordered as to kill (which is infanticide, a crime).

. It is the availability of this method of abortion that needs looking at, not decriminalising late abortion by the mother.
Does anyone know why parliament rejected an amendment to this?

I agree with 'as early as possible'. I also understand that some feminists have always advocated abortion up to the point of birth. I don't agree with 'as late as needed' any more except in the case of medical emergencies, imminent death of the mother, and malformation incompatible with life. This amendment was a bad idea and will bring into question our whole carefully balanced abortion law.

The methods used in the few cases that have come to light - over the phone abortion pills. It is the availability of this method of abortion that needs looking at, not decriminalising late abortion by the mother.

Kathleen Stock is right on this issue. If a woman presents as over 24 weeks she will not be offered an abortion. But she can lie on the telephone and get pills to do it and thus suffer a stillbirth in her own bedroom without medical back-up. And such law changes as this tend to increase the thing they decriminalise. Look to see more late-term abortions and women in a critical condition because of them. This is not in the least a feminist win - it's a win for those who wish to divorce us from our bodies and the consequences of living in a society.

Before we had pills through the post a miscarriage was just that. I have had three - never, ever were police involved at any stage.

No-one but extremists support abortion for any reason including 'I changed my mind' up to the point of birth. So, yes, after 24 weeks - the point of viability - we do not allow abortion for any but extreme and sad medical reasons (death of the baby, malformation incompatible with life, that the mother is seriously ill/in need of treatment that would harm the baby/likely to die if the pregnancy continues). There are no other good reasons for late terminations - which I said earlier. Not wanting to be pregnant any more is not a good reason.

I don't know why these thread always descend into these exchanges. If a woman at 38 weeks pregnant misleads BPAS into prescribing her tablets via telemedicine, it will be an exceedingly harmful outcome for her, because she will go into unmedicated labour at home and likely give birth to a dead or dying baby. There is no way to paint that as empowering for her, unless you have the emotional intelligence of a concussed wombat. If a woman simply doesn't want to be pregnant any more at 38 weeks, the choices are induced labour of a living baby, a dead baby or a caesarean section.

In the notorious case of the woman who took tablets at 34 weeks, she called an ambulance during labour. It was cited in court as evidence that her search history showed she thought she was 28 weeks pregnant. After giving birth, she searched for what a 28 week old premature baby should have looked like and she told the court that she had nightmares and flashbacks about seeing her baby's dead face. Which is unsurprising, really.

For those of us who have enough emotional intelligence to realise that concluding a pregnancy by slowly and painfully expelling a dead or dying neonate from one's body would be a horrific experience, induced labour of a living neonate in a maternity ward or a caesarean is the way to go. Don't attempt to glorify induced stillbirth please.

There are women out there like Carla Foster who are clueless enough to do it, and then they'd have to live with the psychological trauma they'd been you-go-girled into.

To make that decision at e.g. 37 weeks is inadmissable. We have others to consider than ourselves, we are not islands unconnected with others. Why would one want to end a pregnancy within a few weeks of the birth - even if one doesn't wish to be pregnant any more? Just because a woman no longer wishes to be pregnant does not mean she has the right to abort a viable child past 24 weeks of gestation.
I agree with Kathleen Stock, this is an anti-feminist provision treating women and children as commodities and children as things which can be disposed of at will.

The only scenario I can imagine a woman choosing abortion at 38 weeks would be on escape from an extremely abusive relationship.

Then I cannot see how we can come to any consensus. Such brutality is anathema to me.

It is still against the law. It hasn’t been legalised.

Do I think a woman changing her mind at 38 weeks gestation is a good reason for an abortion? Yes.

So, a woman is 38 weeks pregnant and she decides that she wants to abort her child who will likely be born in two weeks time.

She then telephones some one like BPAS and states on the telephone that she is just eight weeks pregnant and wants an abortion.

BPAS then sends out abortion pills by post without ever seeing her in person.

I don't know what effect they will have on a 38 week foetus but these pills certainly ended the life of a 34 week foetus.

Do you think that a woman changing her mind at 38 weeks is a "good reason"?

Whatever you choose to call it is irrelevant. Taking the life of a viable baby who would otherwise have lived should be against the law.

Abortion is not infanticide. Infanticide can only take place on an already born infant.

Yes there is. Abortion.

Imo, completely different.
Pregnancy is unique.
If a child is aborted when it is viable, how is that different from killing the child when it is born?
Unless you also believe that infanticide should be decriminalised?

There is no other situation in life when it is acceptable to take a life.

There is no other situation in life where a person would be forced to use their own body to sustain the life of another.
If the government assumed control of your body and forced you to donate an organ to save the life of another person, that would likely be a human rights violation, but by your logic that would be acceptable.