Bid in Lords to overturn move to decriminalise abortion for women

I think it should be lowered to 12, as it is in many European countries. But it MUST remain legal

I never said, it was happening here, there and everywhere; but I do think I know more about what goes on in my family, than you do!

I agree it shouldn't be decriminalised up until birth. I can see what you mean about women being tied to life but in a sense I'm not sure how key that is to whether this should be legal. The main reason imo it should not be is that a full term baby is VERY different from a foetus who can't live outside the mother's womb independently.

The consultant said she would have performed an abortion Mon or Tues if she had seen the bloodwork from Sun. The spontaneous miscarriage didn’t happen until Weds. What you are saying doesn’t tally with the enquiry results.

To add to this and address your last point more clearly, the 70 cases investigated by police as an illegal abortion are still not all late term pregnancies being investigated so it's important to still not conflate all women who were subject to this treatment with those who tried to intentionally abort a healthy late term pregnancy.

Just because she can obtain them by deceiving a medical professional about her term doesn't equate to the law allowing elective termination of viable healthy pregnancies. They're not the same and using the latter wording is being disingenuous about the purpose of the law change.

I don't believe that I've read that anywhere. Is that perhaps a bit of a straw man argument
I haven't created that argument, this is the argument being repeated by any reports of this law change describing it as a sickening change that will allow woman to terminate health babies with the intention of scaremongering people that this will be common so they can exaggerate and misrepresent the purpose of this law change so they can attack it more easily. If someone's first argument against decriminalisation is that abortion is immoral and using the extreme rare example of late term illegal abortions, that's a straw man they're creating, and you've only quoted me responding to the idea they're presenting that this would be or is common place and called that a strawman which is...odd

"Where is this happening?"

There have only been a couple of examples of this happening so late (I believe the latest was at about 34 weeks).

"This law change certainly doesn't allow that"

You are mistaken, it does. The proposed new law says:

[208] For the purposes of the law related to abortion, including sections 58 and 59 of the Offences Against the Person Act 1861 and the Infant Life (Preservation) Act 1929, no offence is committed by a woman acting in relation to her own pregnancy.

So, if a woman takes abortion pills after 24 weeks then she no longer commits an offence.

As you rightly point out, very few abortions indeed happen after 24 weeks (0.1% I think) and these are for specific reasons related to the health of the child or mother.

"...the idea that health viable babies are being terminated left right and centre is a bogeyman"

I don't believe that I've read that anywhere. Is that perhaps a bit of a straw man argument? I think I read somewhere that there had been around 70 cases over the last ten years where the police had investigated someone for procuring an illegal abortion. So, that's about 6 or 7 per year on average.

In fact, @Mmmchocolatebuttons please point me to one post of mine where I have even insulted anyone, devalued their experience, or even told people that they have to agree with me?

On this thread I said that I welcome my ideas being robustly challenged and that I thought we should be able to discuss this without insulting one another. I think that I even said that to you when you called people who disagreed with you ‘thick’.

I understand that you think you are morally superior, but the way in which you have acted towards me shows that you are wrong. Your righteousness is blinding you to the fact that it is okay for people to have different opinions than you.

Even though you and I disagree, if you spoke about pregnancy loss I would treat you with the kindness and compassion that you would obviously deserve. In your desperation to scores points against me you have not afford me the same.

Ok let's follow your logic through if sex were so particular to these parents logically why would they wait until 24 weeks to find out th sex only to abort a viable foetus and start again conceiving? If it's so unrealistic to assume women would do this in high numbers why aren't they already? Do you believe it's solely the risk of prosecution and once that's gone many women will start aborting late term? I never said not a single woman would as clearly we have already discussed the rare cases, but they're a tiny minority where many organisations and experts agree criminal prosecution isn't necessarily in the public interest as it's likely to be a vulnerable women where other involvement is needed.

The contradiction and cognitive dissonance is heavy on one side for sure and it isn't those supporting decriminalisation.

It is unrealistic to assume that no woman would ever choose to terminate a pregnancy at or near full term, just as it would be unrealistic to assume that infanticide never occurs. They will now be able to do so free from the risk of prosecution.

If relevance to this forum, there is also evidence of sex-selective abortion in certain demographics in the UK. Indeed in some areas the fetal sex may not be disclosed until after the legal abortion limit.

Given this, it is plausible that there could be more cases in which healthy babies, particularly girls who are at the stage to be viable outside the womb, are terminated.

Whilst it's illegal for a UK doctors to supply such a pill, it is easy to lie about dates. Also any drug there is demand for you can get on the black market, often shipped from abroad.

If she was so early that it was just a clump of cells, then there would have been zero risk of prosecution. Like, you can have an abortion performed for whatever reason at that gestation. So your question here makes no sense.

This is just blatantly untrue so you're arguing about something you know nothing about. It's legal when the necessary permissions and paperwork to comply with the law have been done. Not doing so would have made it an illegal abortion with the risk of prosecution which is why I'll ask you for probably the fifth or so time now who would benefit from that? if you genuinely think that abortions at a certain time are just "legal" with no reason required why are you arguing this when you know nothing? Yes you can seek an abortion for any reason at an early stage and two medical professionals will usually grant it but that doesn't mean that they're not having to get two doctors to sign off a reason why they're allowing it to make it legal and let me tell you there isn't a box that says "women's choice". If the pregnancy is unwanted the doctor would usually record it would be of permanent damage to the mothers mental health, because legally it's not actually enough that she just doesn't want to continue and they only have the options of:

the continuance of the pregnancy would involve risk to the life of the pregnant woman greater than if the pregnancy were terminated;

the termination is necessary to prevent grave permanent injury to the physical or mental health of the pregnant woman;

the pregnancy has NOT exceeded its 24th week and that the continuance of the pregnancy would involve risk, greater than if the pregnancy were terminated, of injury to the physical or mental health of the pregnant woman;

the pregnancy has NOT exceeded its 24th week and that the continuance of the pregnancy

would involve risk, greater than if the pregnancy were terminated, of injury to the physical or mental health of any existing child(ren) of the family of the pregnant woman;

there is a substantial risk that if the child were born it would suffer from such physical or mental abnormalities as to be seriously handicapped.

So please tell me which of the above caveat for them to perform an otherwise legal procedure in law is for any reason before 24 weeks.

Where did I say this? (Nowhere). It just would have jailed people like her, which would be rare, but not zero.
Here is where you said that:
This doesn’t seem quite right to me, as it would decriminalize infanticide, as there is essentially no difference between a newborn and a full-term infant, neither need their mother to survive.

We don’t currently allow mothers to kill their newborns, but it’s not impossible to think this could creep back in the West—exposing unwanted infants was common practice throughout history and people thought nothing of it.

Given your complete lack of knowledge of the actual law and your refusal to answer the simple question of who it serves in the majority of cases and in particular my friend, this is getting boring as you're not even defending your contradictory beliefs.

Jeez! Some people really don't like others having a different opinion on abortion laws; or even suggesting that most people do believe that there do need to be laws. Then crying to the gallery when their contradictory positions and cognitive dissonance are questioned.

Again you seem wildly ignorant, this was not a foetus she was so early pregnant it was literally some cells in her uterus, it didn't complicate her surgeon. But here you are again when you finally choose to engage in a woman's experience doubting it while still refusing to answer in who's benefit was a risk of prosecution?**

If she was so early that it was just a clump of cells, then there would have been zero risk of prosecution. Like, you can have an abortion performed for whatever reason at that gestation. So your question here makes no sense.

It's actually extremely insulting given many women who are mothers have abortions that you actually believe it's likely that these women would all descend into commuting infanticide

Where did I say this? (Nowhere). It just would have jailed people like her, which would be rare, but not zero.

Just not between them and a woman to decide on their healthcare eh? Then their medical decision isn't enough, it'll need a legal sign off. Make it make sense

Ummm … it still is a decision made by a doctor and a patient, along with another doctor. That’s not changed at all. What has changed is you can obtain abortion pills by lying and then induce a miscarriage/stillbirth and face no prosecution

She didn't say that, I think in your rush to defend yourself for being rude to @Batties because you disagree you're either confusing her with a other poster or misrepresenting her quote about her pregnancy losses and yet she didn't take issue with PPs comment (as it was implied no one who has experienced pregnancy or baby loss would). Given she made her experience of loss clear very early on to you it's not fair to misrepresent her on another thread as someone who doesn't know what being pregnant or experiencing loss is like.

I didn’t say that. Can you tell me the time of the post you are referring to because we all have different settings and I don’t have a second page of this thread.

However, talking about things in a general sense, which is what has happened on this thread, is entirely different to posts about one specific person.

@Batties On the second page of this thread you agree with a poster who said that miscarriages "don't count as deaths".

I'm sure that was quite upsetting for some posters, who have also suffered miscarriages, to read too.

I'm so sorry 💐

Huh? What am I saying isn't a problem? Cos I'm absolutely saying that the law dictating when a woman can have am abortion is a problem, I'm just saying that swathes of abortion aborting their late term viable babies is a real world problem.

I genuinely hope nobody else ever has multiple pregnancy losses and then, simply for having a different point of view from another poster, has to read “Has this person ever seen a 20 week scan? Or felt a baby kicking in the womb?”

If it's not a problem, which is what you claim, then why do we need to change the law? Many things are there doesn't mean they should be legal.

Again where is this happening though? A few rare cases is not the rule, whereas the previous law was investigating women ending early pregnancy where the majority had no case to answer. Aand again only 1% of abortions occur after 24 weeks and these are for medical reasons. Do you actually think this always change is going to cause a wave of women to abort their health viable late term pregnancies and that the law was the only thing holding them back? Don't be silly. People use the same argument to justify banning a portion full stop, because it's harder to paint the majority of abortions as immoral so you can to leap to an extreme example that doesn't represent thr majority.

Nope, not what I intended at all. I've already apologised twice for some posters being offensive 🤷‍♀️

I didn't "run off to a different section of MN to tell you what a terrible person you are". I just wanted to see the poll results for something you said wasn't an unusual viewpoint. I think it's at about 87% YANBU so many more people agree with you, than I expected 🤷‍♀️

All just common women's experiences though so irrelevant to you

Again, misread me, never said their experience was irrelevant, only that those cases do not apply to the UK. Because they don’t.

Except as already explained to you it did apply to a part of the UK, which you're just ignoring.

Its just hard to believe a surgeon prepared for a hysterectomy is going to be prepared for the extra complication of a fetus on that very appointment with no further examination, paperwork or procedural guidelines, if not the government then the hospital itself.

Again you seem wildly ignorant, this was not a foetus she was so early pregnant it was literally some cells in her uterus, it didn't complicate her surgeon. But here you are again when you finally choose to engage in a woman's experience doubting it while still refusing to answer in who's benefit was a risk of prosecution?

In Carla Foster’s case, what is the difference? Just a few weeks?
Back to rinsing your one extreme example so you can scaremonger because you can't engage on the majority of abortions being early term and justify a correlation between those and infanticide. It's actually extremely insulting given many women who are mothers have abortions that you actually believe it's likely that these women would all descend into commuting infanticide? Again say what you want about being a woman, you clearly think every little of our sex class.

Yeah that could be a concern. I tend to trust medical professionals in their decisions tho YMMV

Just not between them and a woman to decide on their healthcare eh? Then their medical decision isn't enough, it'll need a legal sign off. Make it make sense.

Have a baby die in utero and see how you feel after that