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Original poster

If you are pro choice...

356 replies

Doubledoubledenim · 30/05/2019 19:31

Name changed for this

I really want to ask some questions for anyone happy to answer about feelings on abortion. I don’t feel like its an approachable subject I can talk about IRL as everyone I know is venomously pro choice and if I start to put forward a view which isn’t the same as theirs they get really quite aggressive and defensive.

So, if you are pro choice does that include late term abortions or would you feel differently about one at 6 weeks to one at 24 weeks? Also a lot of people say it’s the woman’s body so her choice - would that reason still stand for later abortions or would you think it would need to be a serious medical reason for baby/mum to justify this? Or does pro choice mean pro choice for you meaning any reason and any time within the legal limit is ok.

I hope I’ve worded this in a completely inoffensive way as I really don’t want to upset anyone it might affect.

OP posts:
AylesburyDuck · 31/05/2019 15:29

I am pro-choice and like many others, think as early as possible, as late as necessary,
for whatever reason. I had a termination 27 years ago, and it has had a significant impact on me. It wasn't a decision I took lightly, but my partner at the time and I were in no position to raise a child, and our pregnancy was as a result of a contraceptive failure.

I now have a 3 yr old DD, but there's not a day that goes by that I don't think about my termination and what might have been, but I remain pro-choice.

Whitefishy · 31/05/2019 15:34

Llweji it’s not the same thing as you can’t compare a terminal illness with a wanted pregnancy. An unwanted pregnancy yes, absolutely comparable, and you might be looking for ways out.

vdbfamily · 31/05/2019 16:00

For those who keep mentioning the men, this is one of the things that really winds me up on MN. Totally double standards. When a man comes on and argues that a woman tricked him into a pregnancy which she intends to keep and he does not want, he will without fail be told by the majority of MN that if he does not want the responsibility of a child he should not have sex, and having had sex he must now face the consequences. And yet, here we are....someone tries to suggest that women not ready for a baby should maybe not have sex, and that is not acceptable to say, or realistic to achieve. Many many unwanted pregnancies are due to lack of birth control. Failed birth control and tape are not high up in the stats, it is generally people being careless,unprepared,carried away in the moment. This should not be happening and the easier abortion is to access, and the more babies are reduced to blobs of jelly, the less likely people are to be responsible.

Bluestitch · 31/05/2019 16:12

vdb Both sexes have to deal with consequences if pregnancy occurs, it's just that the consequences are different due to biology. A man has no legal say in whether the woman goes ahead with the pregnancy, and has an obligation to pay child support if she does because once a child is born it has the right to be supported. A woman either has to go through an abortion, or continue through pregnancy and childbirth. Both these options have risks and abortion is not a reset button.

Where is the double standard? The stakes are completely different for both sexes so not remotely comparable.

JacquesHammer · 31/05/2019 16:21

vdbfamily

There’s no double standard, it’s biology.

A man has ONE choice to decide if he wants to be a father. If he risks unprotected sex, or indeed has protected sex he accepts it’s not 100% and a pregnancy could occur.

A woman has more than one choice whether she wants to be pregnant.

vdbfamily · 31/05/2019 16:22

The double standard is, if it is okay to say to men ' if you don't want a baby, don't have sex' but not ok to say that to a woman. If men and women both took equal responsibility there would be no abortions and surely everyone has to agree that reducing number of abortions has to be a goal for us all.

vdbfamily · 31/05/2019 16:24

Jacques, but in the countries where abortion is illegal, women too only have one choice so it is dictated by law, not biology.

nevernotstruggling · 31/05/2019 16:25

As early as possible, as late as necessary, for every woman, for any reason.

Bluestitch · 31/05/2019 16:28

Men don't have to be parents though do they. They can walk away, it happens all the time. They are supposed to pay child support which is a contribution to the child they have created. That's all that can be enforced and even that doesn't happen often enough. The point made is that when they ejaculate that's the last decision they get to make. So yes if they absolutely don't want to have a child or pay support then avoid sex. Or accept the consequences, like women do when they either have to undergo an abortion or have a baby.

nevernotstruggling · 31/05/2019 16:28

@TrashPanda your 14.14 post I agree with every word

WorriedaboutKin · 31/05/2019 16:28

Extremely pro choice, for whatever reason. Even if a woman is using it as a form of regular birth control (I personally don't believe there are many at all who would do so but it's still better than having an unwanted baby in the world)

JacquesHammer · 31/05/2019 16:29

Jacques, but in the countries where abortion is illegal, women too only have one choice so it is dictated by law, not biology

I’m in England ergo the point....where the law states the woman has another option.

Bluestitch · 31/05/2019 16:30

Jacques, but in the countries where abortion is illegal, women too only have one choice so it is dictated by law, not biology.

And as we've seen even from links on this thread that making abortion illegal doesn't stop abortion, only safe abortion. It's women ingesting poison, or using knitting needles or killing themselves. That's dictated by biology. Men aren't doing that are they!

JacquesHammer · 31/05/2019 16:33

And as we've seen even from links on this thread that making abortion illegal doesn't stop abortion, only safe abortion. It's women ingesting poison, or using knitting needles or killing themselves. That's dictated by biology. Men aren't doing that are they

Very good point.

TrashPanda · 31/05/2019 16:40

Thank you @nevernotstruggling I feel quite strongly about this as I've seen the effects on a child of not being wanted and it was sad for the child.

I also struggle with the 'within legal limits' argument as legal limits can be changed very easily. As some US states are showing right now, any legal safety net can be swept away very quickly leaving women with a stark choice. You will never stop abortion happening, so limiting access to safe abortion will cause a rise in unsafe abortion or abandoned and unwanted children. I can't see how that 'pro-life' position actually makes lives better.

Lweji · 31/05/2019 16:41

Llweji it’s not the same thing as you can’t compare a terminal illness with a wanted pregnancy. An unwanted pregnancy yes, absolutely comparable, and you might be looking for ways out.

Surely, what those pps were saying was that they wouldn't want the pregnancy.

Deathgrip · 31/05/2019 16:51

When a man comes on and argues that a woman tricked him into a pregnancy which she intends to keep and he does not want, he will without fail be told by the majority of MN that if he does not want the responsibility of a child he should not have sex, and having had sex he must now face the consequences.

That’s a completely different scenario, however. Men have a solitary opportunity to prevent pregnancy - when they have sex. They can avoid it by ejaculating anwhere other than in / near a vagina, or mostly avoid it by using a condom.

If a man doesn’t want to get a woman pregnant, he can simply not ejaculate directly into her vagina.

Women don’t have control over whether a sexual partner ejaculates inside her vagina. So women would need to completely abstain from penetrative sex to avoid pregnancy. Men would not.

And you’re wrong anyway - there was a post just like that recently, and anyone who suggested the man should have taken some responsibility for where he put his semen was roundly flamed.

Happyspud · 31/05/2019 17:02

I would argue that a woman who gets to 22 weeks and then decides to abort for whatever non medical reason was not the right person to be a mother at that time. So although I know I would never find myself making that exact decision, and find the thought of it distressing (where I don’t find early terminations distressing at all), I can’t say at the same time I think it was the wrong thing. By its very nature it was the right thing.

So this is why every choice is a valid choice for the individual.

Breathlessness · 31/05/2019 17:07

www.amnesty.org/en/what-we-do/sexual-and-reproductive-rights/abortion-facts/

The WHO estimates 22 million unsafe abortions take place each year. Restricting legal access to abortion doesn’t stop abortions. It increases the number of women risking their lives by undergoing backstreet abortions and being too afraid to go to seek proper medical care if there are complications afterwards.

As for the advocates of ‘only if the mother’s life is at risk, please look at this

www.amnesty.ie/amnesty-presents-powerful-first-hand-testimony-showing-eighth-amendment-harms-pregnant-womens-health/# A woman in Ireland told that she couldn’t have an abortion because the threat to her life from pregnancy wasn’t immediate enough.

““I was told I could go to the UK for a termination but I would have to refer myself to the clinics. But going to the UK became impossible for me. My doctors were not legally able to consult with the doctors in the UK if I was having a termination, and the doctors over there said my health conditions were too complex and risky without the full support of my teams in Ireland. I needed medical support to physically travel. My options were to go to the UK on my own, lie about my health and risk my life, or continue the pregnancy in Ireland with all that meant.

“I have two boys, who lost their father two years ago,” she said. “If I could have safely continued with the pregnancy, then I wanted to, but I needed to protect the children I already had who’d been through so much. They had seen me in and out of hospital for years, and they knew what was happening. They asked me outright, ‘are you going to die?’ I told them I had to do everything the doctors said and it would be okay, but it got to the point where I had to prepare them for the worst. I had to prepare for it myself. I went into labour believing I was going to die.”

This was Ireland. This decade.

TastingTheRainbow · 31/05/2019 17:41

@dramaramallama I’m sorry that you were in this sad situation and it sounds like your baby had no chance of survival and so the process was different then it would be normally.

I stand by calling failing to perform feticide in a late term abortion horrendously bad practice. Do you honestly believe that women who have made the difficult and heartbreaking decision to have a late termination should accept the avoidable risk that the baby may be born alive and then be forced to watch their baby slowly die ISN’T horrendously bad practice?

National guidance exists for a reason and being shocked that a hospital is blatantly ignoring the expert, research based guidelines does not mean I lack compassion.

I also don’t care if I win an argument on the internet, it makes no difference to me at all. What I do care about is women being given the right to decide what happens to their body and not giving the pro-life / forced pregnancy people false information to further beat such women with.

YourSarcasmIsDripping · 31/05/2019 18:04

I only knew I was pregnant because I'm a paranoid tester. I have PCOS so I can even go a couple of years without a period(DD had to be dated at a scan since my last period before getting pregnant with her was 18 months before). I was already 10 weeks when i found out .

I'm on the implant not and still test periodically just in case. I do not want another baby but I do want a sex life. Because there's still a failure rate I test every couple of months. I can't afford (mentally or physically) to be caught out and for it to be too late and forced to have a baby.

Mrsmisery · 31/05/2019 23:56

100% pro choice. Can you imagine the
life of a child forced upon someone? There are hundreds of children in care in every county/state/country already.

Pro choice arguments always seem as though the option is termination or a fluffy unicorn life. And in almost as if 'having an abortion' is on pro choice womens' bucket lists. I don't believe anyone ever really wants to have an abortion. It's surely a worst case scenario, and sad all round, on whatever grounds.

EnthusiasmIsDisturbed · 01/06/2019 08:50

When a man comes on and argues that a woman tricked him into a pregnancy which she intends to keep and he does not want, he will without fail be told by the majority of MN that if he does not want the responsibility of a child he should not have sex, and having had sex he must now face the consequences

But a female (and I write female as girls can become pregnant too many do through being raped) will always have to face consequences when she finds out she is pregnant. Thankfully in this country if she chooses to have a termination she can do so safely

And when a baby is born of course both parents should take responsibility because it’s about that child not about choices the parents have made

Hugtheduggee · 01/06/2019 14:47

If we are taking the principle that no one else gets to decide what happens with someone else's body, then a woman can terminate the pregnancy, as in labour be induced/c section, but why does she have the right to interfere with someone else's body (the baby's) to ensure it doesn't live. That's not her body, and if medicine can save the baby, then great.all she surely gets to decide is whether she remains pregnant or not. And if the issue isn't pregnancy but is parenthood, why don't we hold men to the same standards? I mean for them, once conceived they have no choice - the choice is made at the time of having sex...

Personally though I'm in favour of a much, much lower limit save for where the baby has serious health conditions, will die at birth, mum is seriously ill etc.

And its all very well to say that no one should decide for anyone else, but thats what we do as society all the time. Shall we make whether to keep slaves also up to the individual? Shall we give parents free reign on beating their children? If something is wrong then usually we don't leave it up to an individual, and if someone is prp life, then that's a pretty big indication that st they think abortion is wrong.