Should pregnant women be allowed total control over their bodies? Where do the unborn child's rights come into it?

I've never used contraceptives actually. I don't want to invade my body or take pills. Why should I? I haven't read the Guardian article but I don't think women should take the pill if they don't have to and don't want to and mess around with their natural state and hormones.

Of course we own our bodies in the UK although not in many countries and there is no likelihood of stopping women's right to abort children but my simple gloss on that is that the foetus is half the father's and if there becomes a technical means to extract it and he have sole responsibility for it then I wouldn't be against that. I don't see why men can have a child forced on them but women can't - so if can remove it and have another woman bear it then that's fair

Totally agree with you Threelittlepebbles. It is related, it all ties in with the idea that our bodies do not fully belong to us.

The fact that the question can even be asked, shows how far feminism needs to go.

Xenia, I think oooh whatshername, Firestone (? Shulamith? My computer won't let me google, long story), talks about women not being free till the technology exists for foetuses to be incubated successfully outside the body.

There are a few cases in the US at the moment, and it's really interesting (where interesting = terrifying) to watch the insidious way in which reproductive rights are being whittled away. A woman who refused to consent to doctor-ordered bedrest (because she was a single mother to two or three young children, and needed to keep working to feed them) was prosecuted and ordered to bedrest, and then refused the option of seeking a second medical opinion. Another woman was prosecuted for refusing a caesarian. Women have been incarcerated for taking Class A drugs while pregnant, despite the fact that neither the taking of the drugs nor being pregnant are crimes punishable by imprisonment.

Bumperlicious, I agree with you that there's a moral imperative to consider the needs of the foetus, and I think there's a moral imperative to at least honour some of the father's concerns (although that's a slippery slope too - men are more likely to be abusive when their partners are pregnant. In fact, being pregnant is the primary risk factor for being killed by your partner).

But I agree with the majority, you have to trust women entirely, even if you don't agree with each one, or treat them as incubators. I trust women.

In the UK you do have that control. You can even refuse intervention in childbirth. In one case during labour they applied for a court order to force something on the woman and she won. I remember 11 years ago being very comforted by that legal position when I gave birth to twins at 40 weeks.

The only change I would make to the law in due course is that if it became technically possible to extract a foetus from a pregnant woman and implant it in another woman or grow it outside then I would give the father the right to effect that as long as the mother were allowed if she chose to disclaim all obligation to support the child and the father undertook not to use state funds to support it.

Bumperlicious I'm really enjoying this thread and learning a lot, I'm glad you started it.

The Guardian article is flabbergasting.

I had no idea that these things were going on in "the land of the free".

I thought that profiles of anti-choice proponents showed that they generally support capital punishment? Ironically.

Missus84, despite being in Abortion Rights, I disagree with that. I have certainly heard abortion being described as a profoundly male approach to life, and I disagree with that too. Plenty of pro-life people, who include a lot of women, IMO are genuinely and passionately committed to the rights of the individual. I'd hate to misrepresent their arguments just because I disagree.

"I'll probably get hammered for being too extreme here, but this thinking amongst men (and it is men leading on this) comes from the fact that those men think of foetuses as male and they don't want women having control over a male at any stage of his life, even during gestation. "

I don't think anti-choice/pro-life argument really extends to the foetus at all, it's about controlling women's bodies.

My God am I reading that right?

A 17-year-old girl, legally still a child herself, paid someone to beat her up in the hope of ending her pregnancy?

Sometimes I really know why I'm a member of Abortion Rights. (Sometimes, I have to say, I'm not sure at all why I am).

Exactly what I was thinking. it's the taliban.
I can see my home country adopting those laws really really quickly....
Forget that they are about 100 years behind on all the equality ones....

That Guardian article made my jaw drop, cannot believe that they are actual federal guidelines. Scary stuff, just seems to me to be another way of trying to control women and our every move.

Whilst most of us would try to live as healthily as possible whilst pregnant, I passionately believe that women should retain autonomy over their bodies. In law the foetus has no rights, and I believe this shouldn't change.

At uni we had a big debate when looking at some cases that deal with these issues, such as whether forcing a competant woman to have a caesarean against her will constitutes a battery against her (the courts said it did) and one particularly pro life woman was adamant that a foetus should have rights as a separate being. I had chilling visions of women being corralled into prisons as soon as they are pregnant, so we can be scrutinised and watched so that we do not do anything that could possibly harm the foetus, reucing us to nothing more than incubators that doctors could do whatever they liked to if they deemed it to be in the interests of the foetus.

Interesting debate.

Ultimately women have to have total control over their bodies. once a foetus develops rights, the woman's rights over her body will start to be eroded. Very very dangerous. A foetus is not a person. A woman is.

However, the sight of heavily pregnant women smoking and getting drunk thoroughly depresses me. As does the thought of babies who are born addicted.

If a woman has decided to go ahead with a pregnancy one would hope that she would have the best interests of her baby at heart. Sadly this is not the case, but I think the only way to improve matters is by tackling the root causes such as poverty, deprivation, lack of education etc rather than laying down laws as to what a woman can or can't do

Wow! That guardian article is so scary. I'm glad I don't live there!

I nearly rammed a can of coke up a colleagues arse when he commented "should you really be drinking that" when I was 8 months pregnant.

My body, my choice.

(Bumperliouzzz don't mean that I object to you using it, think was great debate.)

Agree with dittany - it's the word allow that pisses me off.

Was at kiddy farm with heavily pg friend lately and told "you're not allowed to go near the sheep and lambs". "Not advised" I said, advised.

Bumperliouzzz, I agree that you shouldn't have to feel like you have come up with the perfect formulation at the start of a debate, definitely. I didn't mean my comment about the "unborn child/baby" to be taken as biting your head off- I just thought it was worth raising because it has slipped into just common (and unthinking) usage. We definitely need to be able to think and discuss without being afraid we've got it "wrong".