Abortion decriminalisation ‘undermines feminism’ - Kathleen Stock

I respected Doc Stock specifically for how balanced and measured she was in Material Girls, sometimes even a bit too measured. But in this she isn't. Decriminalising this kind of late abortion is about harm reduction and it should be evidenced based. Maybe there hasn't been enough debate, and maybe this is the wrong bill, but want to see evidence that those things are true. Not just labelling it anti-feminist.

And if some women are stupid or selfish or coerced into doing this then I'd like to see evidence that criminalising them - which apparently has increasingly been happening - actually puts any of these women off, compared to the danger that they will become increasingly afraid to seek medical help if things go wrong and (as pp have said) to the trauma of a criminal investigation into a late miscarriage or stillbirth.

This is a complex balance of different factors and rights. Saying that other women who see things differently from her have been "slowly boiled in a vat of hyperliberal feminism and progressive technocracy like overheating frogs, until they can’t tell which way is up" is really shite. It's the kind of overheated rhetoric I'd expect from the worst of the US rightwing anti-abortion activists and not from a thoughtful UK academic. But then Twitter does seem to have that effect on people.

Badly done, Dr Stock. Badly done.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/abortion-bill-vote-decriminalise-bpas-law-uk-b2771407.html

@bigvig I agree with you there are other reasons other than ethical/moral objections that this is a horrible change. I’m pretty sure it’s not actually all that safe to do this at home at such a late stage of pregnancy, plus potentially very emotionally traumatic compared to a surgical procedure or supervised medical termination in hospital which is what would actually be recommended medically, where potentially an initially alive premature baby would be delivered at home. In the case I referred to above the mother ended up critically ill and had to have a hysterectomy ultimately, I presume due to uncontrolled bleeding. I worry people won’t understand this.

I’m also shocked it was passed. As you say it seems a fairly extreme position which MPs seem to have waved through as being pro women’s rights and absolutely I think they assumed all pro-choices and feminists would be 100 percent in support of the change. I read a statement from Keir Starmer which was very much “of course we must support women’s rights” kind of thing @myplace It seems like there was some public polling with wildly varying results reported. But it was all very last minute. As a GP and someone who is generally pro-life I had no idea this was even on the cards imminently (I’d been vaguely aware there had been some chat about possibly making some changes for a while in the background following these handful of cases since the pandemic).

When has this happened in the UK?

I’m not surprised….she is wrong obviously.

how can’t he personhood of a foetus trump the personhood of the person growing it. This is distilling female personhood down to reproduction and maintaining that at women’s detriment.

yuck. Women’s value isnt rooted it what she does with her womb.

@FeralWoman yes I can see many people would agree with you on that and legally this is the position in the UK currently, though in practice the whole idea of a time limit before needing to have a very valid reason such as the mother’s life being threatened by the pregnancy continuing means that in practice there is some sort of balancing of competing potential rights here between the mother and the foetus. I don’t personally agree with this position, and I think it’s a lot harder to argue after 24 weeks when there is a reasonable chance of survival after birth with modern medical care, and certainly after about 28 weeks when the majority of premature babies would be expected to survive. But yes I think she is unreasonable here not to acknowledge that foetal personhood is not a thing legally in the UK whatever her own feelings on the matter.

I agree with Kathleen Stock. This change will make pro-choicers (like me) look crazy. It is so extreme I can't believe it has passed. The uninformed majority will begin to think that all feminists and pro-choicers agree with this completely immoral law.

In essence any women can abort their own foetus or baby at any stage of the pregnancy and not face any charges. Yes only small numbers will do this. With the prevalence of abortion pills online this will be easier than many think to do.

Some vulnerable women may also be coerced into this. Some who want to avoid the embarrassment of going to a doctor could now terminate without any support at all. For so many reasons this is a terrible change.

Not true. Admittedly a very very few cases. However they do exist. And should be investigated.

I think it’s fair to object to how quickly it happened. Perhaps more resistance was expected, which would have given the opportunity to explore the issues more thoroughly.

Access to abortion hasn’t changed, as PPs have said.

It wouldn’t surprise me if an alternative crime was identified to prosecute women who have deliberately behaved horribly.

However the position of a pregnant woman is very special and specific. She is awash with hormones. The personhood of the baby is entirely dependent on her. Harming the baby is more like an act of self harm, imo.
More akin to ‘suicide, when the balance of their mind is disturbed’ as the phrase used to be.

I’m actually on the pro life end of the spectrum but recognise I can only make that choice for me, not for other women. Simply because I cannot make a call about what someone else’s body is to go through.

There is no scenario where we can choose what happens to someone else’s body. We can’t make irresponsible adults use birth control, let alone sterilise them. We can’t make all men be circumcised, or all women have pierced ears.

Babies at late term have unambiguous interests of their own. They are not just narcissistic extensions of mother. They are not parasites or invaders. They are human beings. They are dependent human beings and is weird to see feminists who talk about value of care and dependence become psychopathically detached about the value of the life of a dependent, viable baby because the mother doesn't want it. It sounds dementedly callous to try to deny the interests of babies in this sort of issue by defining them out of existence, or just ignoring the fact they do exist at all.

I disagree with KS. Until the foetus is born it doesn’t have rights or interests. It’s not a human being until it’s born. Foetal personhood means that the woman becomes an incubation vessel and loses her rights over her own body because the foetus’ rights and interests have to be considered too. The living, breathing woman’s interests and rights should always be the most important, and the only ones that should be considered. Foetal personhood is a slippery slope that leads to brain dead women being kept on life support to incubate a foetus to viability.

I think it’s important to say that stillbirths aren’t routinely investigated for evidence of deliberate abortion, however where medical staff have enough suspicion to report it to police as a possibility (which is a fairly high threshold generally as it’s certainly not the reason the majority of stillbirths occur and nobody wants to deliberately put a grieving woman through more stress without very good cause) then it would be. For example in the case I quoted above suspicions were raised because her story didn’t really add up plus she actually outright told medical staff what she had done so I can see at that point they had no choice really but to report a suspected and confessed crime to police. I have to say I do feel sorry for her, she was clearly very troubled and is clearly very remorseful. At the same time I still think she shouldn’t have done it personally.

This legislation is NOT about more late term abortions! That is not what has changed at all.

It really wasn’t. This has been in preparation and worked on for years. Yes, the final vote was a short one, because the debate and exploration and review has already happened.
The actual experts in reproductive health are in favour. We shouldn’t be prosecuting/investigating women who have lost children under laws that are from the mid-19th century.

I can’t disagree with what she’s said in the longer X thread that Iwanttoretire has posted above. I agree that there should have been a proper and more meaningful review and debate around this rather than it being dealt with so quickly and I do think that having a time limit on abortions is the morally right thing except for medically necessary reasons. I know that view is unpopular and I’ll get called an anti feminist but there are two humans involved and there comes a point where their competing rights have to be balanced.

I also think that it could be an issue for wider feminism because I am not sure that the general public opinion would be supportive of more later term abortions so if there’s a perception that feminists have been pushing for that (even if that’s not true and feminists aren’t one universal group with the same views) that could create wider resistance or dislike to feminist causes more generally. That’s just my speculation re public opinion of course because they didn’t consult or poll about it.

@Ohthatsabitshit I don’t believe the plan is to prevent any scrutiny at all, in that I’m pretty sure most if not all late miscarriages or stillbirths at this age and stage of pregnancy would be automatically examined (I guess unless a woman volunteers to medical staff that she deliberately aborted using pills?). Most women who have had a late miscarriage or stillbirth are desperate for answers as to why it happened and whether there is a way to stop it happening again, so I think from a medical point of view it would still be looked into.

However unlike some previous cases such as the one above, the difference is that if abortion medication was found to be the cause of death of the baby then nobody would be reporting it to police anymore as not prosecutable anyway. And certainly no woman aborting by themselves at home with pills would be facing court appearances or jail time (in the case above she was initially sentenced to spend a minimum of 14 months in jail from memory, though in the event she was released after about a month following an appeal where she received a suspended sentence instead). I guess in the circumstances @JumpingPumpkin alludes to, if the woman said she’d no idea how the abortion medication came to be there ie suspected she had been deliberately given it by a controlling man etc, then that would still be a crime so would be reported?! At least bodily assault of the woman or something. Though honestly am not sure of the technicalities. And if it was more of a coercion thing then I guess it’s the coercive control that’s the crime but now basically relies on women self-reporting this.

It is not a good thing. Deliberate killing of a near to term baby is not acceptable. Unless under medical supervision due to serious health risks. These cases should be investigated. So will the providers of these pills now be prosecuted if they are misused.

www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/12/appeal-jail-term-woman-aborted-baby-40-weeks

Apparently some women do.

For those who supported the law change, I don’t know whether the argument would be that this was a miscarriage of justice, or that this happens so rarely that the protection of women like Nicola Packer takes priority.

However I think it is important to at least acknowledge a case like this.

I dont know how plausible the scenario is. As I posted up thread, two US states, one with similar laws to the UK and one with no restrictions, and it’s the similar to the UK state that has more late term abortions. Nevertheless I see the possibility of that sort of use. Or even of lying in order to get pills at 22 weeks instead of surgical. Especially given how difficult it can be to get timely care in the UK at the moment.

The decriminalisation applies only to the woman herself who seeks a termination that may turn out to be outside the current rules. The actual rules haven't changed, so someone who enacts or facilitates an abortion that doesn't fit the rules is still committing a crime. The decriminalisation means that a woman who suffers the tragedy of a stillbirth will not be investigated as a potential criminal in case she did something that caused her baby to die. This is a good thing.

I absolutely disagree with the policy change but her arguments are plain bonkers. It's horrific that a full term baby can now be killed by the mother by misuse of the abortion pills and no prosecution.

I must admit I do wonder what the knock on effects of this will be. The combination of controlling men, knowing the sex of the baby, access to abortion medication to use at home and no risk of prosecution for the woman could lead to some pretty unpleasant outcomes.

There does seem to be a bit of a “it never happens” alongside “this change was needed” being argued which doesn’t quite make sense to me. Happy to have this clarified as to why this rule change was needed.

@TooSquaretobehip I agree it’s not the norm (and it was illegal in the U.K. after 24 weeks, with certain very specific exception eg if the mother’s life is seriously in danger if the pregnancy continues, but what this change means is that women having abortions or suspected abortions at home using hormone pills after 24 weeks will no longer be prosecuted or so I understand it).

But it’s literally a thing that has happened since the pills were available by post at home without going in person to a clinic for them (started during the pandemic). That’s basically exactly why this whole amendment has happened. A handful of cases only yes, and I agree most women would not want to consider it, but it has happened. This is a really long summary of the details of probably the most infamous case in the UK, where the woman lied about how far along she was to get the abortion polls posted out to her during the early stages of the pandemic (she was thought to be about 8 weeks pregnant from the information she gave whereas a post mortem of the baby that was then delivered stillborn shortly after she took them, was estimated to be 32-34 weeks, and by her own admission she was definitely known to be more than 28 weeks pregnant at the time.

https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/20231018-R-v-FOSTER-final-approved-1.pdf

I don’t think I fully understand the thinking behind this proposed change at all. Is it to see what the appetite for reproductive control is? How does it protect anyone to introduce it? Surely if you remove scrutiny of how an unborn child came(foetus? Please excuse terminology I’m not trying to offend) to die you open the door to coercion?

I do agree with her on one point which is that this feels like legislation through the back door. Not helped by the fact there were two amendments on the table and the speaker chose the one that would pass more easily. Do we know what public opinion is on this? Has any polling been done at the very least?

Again, no woman waits and goes through all that to get an abortion at 24+ weeks. It's not an issue that exists.