Has anyone else noticed that Mumsnet seems to be becoming more regressive on women’s rights?

[CurlewKate]

There are a lot of threads, on big issues and small, that seem to indicate a drift in that direction. Women shouldn’t be police officers. Marriage is wonderful. Changing your name on marriage is a good idea… And, most significantly, many conversational, this happened to me type pro life threads. Do we need to be even more vigilant, in the face of America’s lurch to the Right and the rise of Reform in this country?

Yes, Spain is one that does this.

'Abortions can legally be carried out within the first 24 weeks of pregnancy in England, Scotland and Wales. While medical abortions can only be conducted up to 10 weeks into pregnancy, surgical abortions can be performed up to 23 weeks and six days into a pregnancy.
Terminations can only be performed after the 24-week-cut off point in a highly limited number of contexts – such as when the mother’s life is at risk or the child will have a severe disability.'

@GreenGully - I am very well aware of the actual law, being a lawyer. The definition of severe disability having to be signed off by a doctor is why I object to the limit being lowered to 22 weeks. Nobody wants or needs that extra anxiety after an anomaly scanned performed around the 20 week mark, often up to 21 weeks, giving a very very short window for TFMR without formal doctor sign off.
What about a less severe disability that a family does not wish to pursue a pregnancy for? What about a disability due to a genetic abnormality that takes days to discover but with uncertain outcomes because it so rare?
The point is we need to avoid the medical profession and therefore, the patriarchy signing off on what constitutes a “severe disability”.

The law is all about definitions. It is bad enough having a late term abortion for medical reasons. There should be a window where parents especially women have the free choice after the usual anomaly scan without the added anxiety of whether the doctors are going to sign off if it is severe enough!

'Being financially dependent on a man'. I think this is where the idealism causes problems. Would you say it is not feminist to take maternity leave? Shouldn't women be having children at all unless they have a hefty maternity package? Should women return to work the day after giving birth?

@TaborlinTheGreatyeah I was thinking more about real life tbh !!

Yes.

It's not like women are going "hey, I'm enjoying spending my money, but you know what would be great? If I had to beg someone else to give it to me"

They're saying "hey, I want to spend more time with my children / not have to send them to daycare as infants, and it seems that if I scale back from work I'll be able to achieve that more easily, which has the consequence that I'll be dependent on a man..."

I don't think the current setup which assumes that because women have the right to be financially 50/50 that they therefore have the responsibility to do so is overall beneficial to women; I've written before about the way the separate tax/pension/ISA etc system makes it very hard to (inexpensively/easily) create a financial setup that mirrors the practical reality that women often do step back in their earnings over a lifetime, and plan as a family not an individual. Which leaves women screwed when they have to beg to get access to pensions, accounts etc.

I'm not saying let's abolish women's right to have bank accounts - but idealistically assuming an ideological target of 50/50 doesn't make it reality when the cause of the inequality is biology.

I think basically, it's the "regressive" language I object to. Legislation and cultural attitudes should be a shuffle back and forth as we try things, see what happens, tweak it a bit, realise we overshot, fix a loophole we didn't notice in the first iteration, etc.

This is all I think is happening, e.g. women rebelling against how the sexual revolution made men expect sex on the first date, or divorce has ended up being much more widely accessed than before, or men are expecting years of cohabitation with no commitment etc.

If you viewed all that as "progress" you see it as an irreversible ratchet and leave yourself inflexible to adapt to the new scenario. Shouting about how it's actually "Peter Thiel's minions" making women want to stop hormonal BC is just ignoring the new set of issues. Femtech cos wouldn't be able to sell if there wasn't a market.

There's no need to use that kind of patronising tone. I made a balanced comment, hardly 'shouting'. I do strongly distrust Peter Thiel, and am suspicious of his motives. I said I suspected the TikTok controversy over it was 'partly manufactured' but also that I 'somewhat agree'.

In my previous comment I said that I myself understood v well the issues w the Pill, and that I wouldn't recommend it...What I object to is Thiel's advocacy of NFP w that app he flogs. There's a time & place for it, & I get the natural method is nicer, but as I said, I still think condoms, coils & the most reliable, holding off PIV at least somewhat, is better.

Thanks for the mention of femtech, this article seems v interesting. Notably they are advocating better condoms as well as NFP methods.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/oct/08/the-huge-disadvantage-women-behind-femtech-phenomenon-face

Sorry @AliasGrace47 that was a jerkish comment from me. Throwaway moment of frustration, I'm sorry!

I like and have used NFP methods (alongside condoms) for both TTC and TTA but I agree with you that some of the app-based ones are a bit too reliant on date timings and having a regular cycle, and I think the push to say "you need x, y, z expensive technology to know your own body" is a bit eye-rolly.

(But I don't think those are feminist complaints against the concept of using non-hormonal BC as such, whereas I've seen a lot of articles like "the alarmist conservative influencers using disinformation scare tactics to get women off BC!" or whatever which I really object to)

'Nobody wants or needs that extra anxiety after an anomaly scanned performed around the 20 week mark, often up to 21 weeks, giving a very very short window for TFMR without formal doctor sign off.' I really don't see how requiring a sign off for TFMR or TOPFA would cause any more anxiety than usual. Unless you are suggesting sadistic doctors won't sign off which is absurd.

'What about a less severe disability that a family does not wish to pursue a pregnancy for? What about a disability due to a genetic abnormality that takes days to discover but with uncertain outcomes because it so rare?' These would come under grounds E & G. I thought you knew the law?

Legislation could be introduced to allow for an abortion up to 24 weeks without a sign off if an anomaly is discovered at the 20 week scan to allow that extra time.

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/abortion-statistics-for-england-and-wales-2022/abortion-statistics-england-and-wales-2022

There is no point over complicating the law when it works perfectly well as is. Abortions above 20 weeks have remained constant percentage wise over years. This is just more attention seeking and jumping on the bandwagon by Nigel Farage. And people who cannot engage with the data fall for this nonsense.

'There is no point over complicating the law when it works perfectly well as is.' Said every person ever who stood in the way of legislative reform.

How 'perfectly well' the current law is working is up for debate, when we now have medical/technological advancements that have improved the chances of a 22 week old foetus surviving. Babies born at 22 weeks 'can now survive' - BBC News

Laws are ever evolving to reflect these types of changes. Odd that a lawyer would palm off these legitimate concerns as 'attention seeking and jumping on the bandwagon.'

@GreenGully - between 1-2% of all abortions only in the 10 years before 2022 were abortions after 20 weeks. 0.1% of all abortions after 24 weeks. Within that 1-2% how many exactly are for anomalies after a 20 week scan? I reckon the large majority! Please counter with exact figures how many abortions there were for women who did it just because they fancied an abortion after 22 weeks and are casual about abortion and left it that late.
You are literally arguing about stressing out a whole lot of women with an extra hurdle after a horrible and usually shocking anomaly scan. You are not arguing to save any babies.
100% Old Nige is jumping on the bandwagon.

@GreenGully - if you were arguing rationally and medically, then at least come up with evidence to move the anomaly scan for all women to 18 weeks reliably! Then you might actually have an argument. And prove the NHS has the resources to do it for all women closer to that window and in any event before 20 weeks, so that there is a window to decide.

“In 2022, 80% of abortions were performed in approved independent sector clinics under NHS contract compared with 77% in 2021. Similarly to 2021, this makes a total of 98% of abortions funded by the NHS in 2022 (99% in 2021). The remaining 2% were privately funded. (See table 3a(i) and figure 11.)
The proportion performed in the independent sector under NHS contract has increased almost every year since this information was first collected in 1981, while the proportions of NHS hospital and private abortions has fallen over this period.”

The NHS has to delegate the vast majority of abortions carried out physically already!

@Araminta1003Thank you for your posts on this thread. So clear and concise.

You must be on a different mumsnet to me because I havent seen any of this.

I’d like to see stats on a 22 week foetus surviving and having a good quality of life thereafter @GreenGully. If there is any such data, it will be very limited.

Whatever the process is for discovering your baby has an anomaly at 26, 28, 30 weeks etc should ALSO be as kind as possible, and efficient, etc, no? My first baby ended up being fine, but we had enhanced monitoring after the 20 week scan due to uncertain results. In a different world perhaps that enhanced monitoring would have shown that it was a problem after all, at say, the scan at 28 weeks.

I don't see why that situation is materially different from discovering it at a 20 week scan, aside from the fact that the 20 week scan is a routine one - and it feels really, really off to me to make a moral judgement on the "weighting" of a baby's life vs the mother's based on an administrative/technical decision about scanning schedules rather than on development of the baby.

@Araminta1003 I am not disputing the stats or the fact that abortion after 22 weeks gestation is rare. This is all true of course.

'Please counter with exact figures how many abortions there were for women who did it just because they fancied an abortion after 22 weeks and are casual about abortion and left it that late.' This information isn't available probably due to it's sensitivity but also because the Grounds for termination can be applied differently in each case.

For example data from 2021, England and Wales, shows a total of 214,869 abortions.
2,686 of these were at 20+ weeks.
565 cases after 22 weeks were under Ground E: '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:
The Act also permits abortion to be performed in an emergency if a doctor is of the opinion formed in good faith that termination is immediately necessary.'

755 cases after 22 weeks were under Ground C: 'the pregnancy has not exceeded its 24th week and 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'

That leaves 1,548 seemingly unaccounted for?

'You are literally arguing about stressing out a whole lot of women with an extra hurdle after a horrible and usually shocking anomaly scan.' I have covered this already. I don't accept a Dr sign off as being any extra stress in the event of an anomaly.

'You are not arguing to save any babies.' I am arguing about whether it is ethical to abort a healthy baby at 22 or 23 weeks! I don't believe it is and I think the law should reflect that.

Around 3 in 10 of babies born at 22 weeks survive. Of survivors 1 in 3 will have no disability. This isn't the argument though.

The argument is about whether it should be legal to abort a healthy baby at 22 - 23 weeks of gestation.

I really have noticed these threads yes, it’s a trolling campaign. It could easily be the death of mumsnet, there’s so much of it. It’s fairly easy to spot its trolls.

“Impact of this amendment on women’s care
If passed this amendment will have a devastating impact on abortion care provided to women across the country. Later gestation abortions are very rare. In the latest complete annual government statistics for abortions in England and Wales (2021)2 only 1% (2686) of abortions took place after 20 weeks’ gestation. Overall, roughly 1500 women a year access care at 22 and 23 weeks.
The majority of abortions performed at later gestation are for fetal anomaly. Serious fetal anomalies that proceed to abortion at later gestation are often first detected via ultrasound scans performed between 18 to 21 weeks’ gestation. However they may be performed up to 23 weeks’ gestation if there are difficulties with diagnosis and the scan needs to be repeated. Following this, diagnostic tests to confirm a diagnosis, such as amniocentesis, can take over three weeks to give a reliable result, and it can be even longer with newer technologies such as exome sequencing. Furthermore, specialist scans such as cardiac scans or MRI scans for fetal brain anomalies may be required to provide a diagnosis and prognosis.
To add to this, tests can fail to give definitive results or may need to be repeated. This means that were the gestation limit reduced to 22 weeks a woman will have passed the abortion time limit before she has even received a diagnosis and will result in her having no time to come to terms with the diagnosis or to consider her options. This could lead to a woman who is told of a possible significant fetal anomaly from a scan potentially feeling forced to proceed with an abortion before she has all of the available information.
While an abortion on the grounds of fetal anomaly may still appear to be available at this point, as practitioners we know that the moment the broader time limit passes, the willingness of doctors to certify an abortion as meeting these stringent grounds decreases significantly. The reality is that what counts under ground E is open to interpretation and the removal of Grounds C and D at 22-24 weeks will force women to make a decision on terminating the pregnancy before the diagnostic pathway has been completed.”

https://www.rcog.org.uk/news/specialists-in-fetal-medicine-concerns-over-amendments-to-alter-abortion-limits/

And
“Women and girls who access abortion care at 22-24 weeks’ gestation
Women who need an abortion overwhelmingly access care at the early stages in their pregnancy. 90% of abortions occur before 10 weeks, and those who do present at 22-24 weeks, who are not having an abortion due to fetal anomaly, are frequently very vulnerable. If their ability to access safe abortion care up to 24 weeks is removed, this can have a lasting detrimental impact and may even be life-threatening.

Research by one provider3 found, in line with our own experiences, that the most common reasons other than fetal anomaly for needing an abortion at later gestations were:

• Domestic abuse, particularly abuse which has worsened during pregnancy;
• Health problems of the woman herself, both mental and physical;
• A change in circumstances during pregnancy such as the loss of a partner or a serious illness diagnosis for an existing child;
• Late detection of pregnancy, often as a result of health conditions or hormonal contraception;
• Young women under the age of 18 who may have not realised they were pregnant or concealed it through fear.

Reducing the abortion time limit from 24 weeks to 22 weeks will target these especially vulnerable women and girls, forcing them to continue with a pregnancy that they do not want, which can have a detrimental and lasting impact on their health, safety, and wellbeing. No one would want to underestimate the difficulty in making a decision to end a pregnancy at such a late stage. However, forcing someone to continue an unplanned or unwanted pregnancy in these circumstances may put their life at risk.”

Loads of men here now

'This means that were the gestation limit reduced to 22 weeks a woman will have passed the abortion time limit before she has even received a diagnosis and will result in her having no time to come to terms with the diagnosis or to consider her options.' Except it doesn't result in no time to consider options because the time frames do not apply in the case of TFMR or TOPFA.

'While an abortion on the grounds of fetal anomaly may still appear to be available at this point, as practitioners we know that the moment the broader time limit passes, the willingness of doctors to certify an abortion as meeting these stringent grounds decreases significantly.' I'm sure that may be the case with things as they currently stand, because that would be abortion at 25+ weeks gestation.