to have been shocked by US anti-abortion feature on Newsnight

[wimblehorse]

This was a few days ago but haven't had chance to post sooner.

The feature was about how far to the right the republican presidential candidates have been pushing on the abortion debate and showed a group in Ohio who are lobbying for abortion law there to be (further) restricted so that once a fetal heartbeat has been detected through compulsory vaginal probe ultra-sound - which can be after 5-6 weeks - then a termination cannot be carried out.

A huge number of women would not even know they were pregnant at 5-6 weeks, and even those who found out straight away it doesn't give much time to be able to arrange a termination, especially as so many clinics/hospitals have been forced to close.

Already in that state, women seeking terminations are forced to have vaginal ultrasound probes and hear/see the heartbeat before having a termination.

The group who were lobbying claimed that detection of the heartbeat was a fundamental sign of life and therefore terminating a pregnancy after this had been detected was "wrong". However it's just a sign of current medical technology. There are many people alive today who have had periods of no detectable heartbeat and have been resuscitated - brain death is what is considered the fundamental sign of life and they had no medical link between detection of ultra-sound heartbeat to development of brain function - awareness/pain etc - in a fetus.

It's an arbitrary measure that is trying to make it almost impossible to seek a safe, legal termination and I really hope that it doesn't make further headway.

Rant over.

WIBU to have been shocked?

I go to a church where most members believe abortion is murder, my DH is one of them. In my experience which is somewhat limited, no abortion is what a woman 'wants' but abortion happens because we don't live in a perfect world and anyone who stands in judgment of another woman who has had an abortion has more to answer to God for than the woman who has the abortion in the first place.

No God I know of wants any sadness, grief or pain to be part of any person on this planet. My DH and others are so far stuck up their own asses that they don't realise that anti-abortion laws are just passing the pain on. That is all.

Ah yes, the religious abortions

Ah yes, the double standard religious folk that always take the easy path, just what I was thinking about when I stood with my (now DH) in front of 200 church members and had my illegitimate pregnancy announced to be forgiven by all. Morals, my arse

why do you continue to go to this church? Other churches are available.

Because I would rather practice what I preach than be a hypocrite- I have tried other churches and they preach one thing and then shag the ministers wife in the vestry!

I also don't tell you about how much they have cared for me and my children. How they have dropped money through the door when we've had no food. When the pastor and his wife have spent nearly two years counselling me and my DH through hell. And because I have faith and I don't bail out at the first sign of trouble, life has been soo hard because I chose to keep my DS but I have never regretted learning the hard way and being a mum x

I should add, the people that preach about abortion and are 'pro-life' but aren't willing to do anything to help those who would keep a child if they were supported emotionally and were financially stable aren't worth taking any notice of. I think the only tragedy that surrounds abortion are the ones that take place because people are too petrified of what the future holds to do anything else (as they walk past the shouting 'pro-life' protesters on the way into the clinic)

beautifulwho just out of curiosity - did your now DH also have to be forgiven? I do hope so.

I'm glad you had the support from your church, but I can't help wishing that you could have had the support without all the judginess - after all it's ultimately your God who will judge you, not your fellow man.

Having read your post I am now also more glad than ever that I am an atheist...

Caring for you because you made decision they approved of is one thing, beautiful, would they have looked after you if you'd had an abortion or come out or something that your particular church doesn't approve of? Or would they have just made you publicly ask for forgiveness?

pointythings what God does and what people do are two different things unfortunately.

And I don't think I could have stayed if I had had an abortion, it's too much of a stigma to even comprehend how anyone would cope with fallout afterwards.

Did make me realise how the churches attitude to such things pushes the issues underground though x

It's too much of a stigma for you and since you feel it has been the right thing for you that is fine.

But none of us have the right to make those decisions for another person.
This does not mean that I support abortion right up until the moment of birth where there is no pressing medical need - if the woman's life is in danger then sorry, her life comes first. Always. - I don't. I do think abortion should be legal. I think Barack Obama said it well - abortion should be safe, legal and rare. It saddens me how these extreme anti-choice campaigners always focus on making it illegal when it woudl be far better to expend energy on making it rare - but that would mean accepting that it is OK for women to have non-procreative sex outside marriage. They can't do that, and I suspect they would probably like to make that illegal too.

The agenda of the extreme religious right in the US is terrifying.

I agree with all that you've said pointythings but the UK isn't far behind.

Agreed, beautifulwho . Nadine Dorries doesn't help . Actually if things keep on like this I can see myself becoming a front-line campaigner, with all the risks that entails, because I have daughters who need protection from this kind of thing...

Crickey, beautiful I have to say I really don't like the sound of your church. It seems controlling in a bad way, and not much into unconditional love.

I think the test that should be put to all anti-choicers, perhaps, is this:

Imagine that scientists have found a way to safely extract a foetus from one woman's womb and implant it into your womb, where it would grow and be born as normal (if you are man, they would kindly create an artificial womb inside you! So you don't get off the hook).

You are told that "woman X" (who you don't know) has become pregnant, but intends to have an abortion.

You can save the foetus, if you agree to have it implanted into you and carry it to term - pregnancy and labour, with all the normal risks. (After it's born, you are free to try to have the baby adopted if you so wish, or keep it, but without any support beyond what any other mother would receive).

If you refuse, the foetus will be aborted.

If you can say, hand on heart, that you would always agree, unconditionally and WITHOUT any consideration of:

• The timing
• Your age (so you could be a teenager, or high-risk older mother, at the time)
• Your financial, housing or marital status, or current life situation
• Whether you would lose your job as a result
• The effects on your existing children
• Whether the foetus is likely to have physical and/or mental disabilities, be stillborn, or die young
• Your health, or possible pregnancy- or labour-related conditions you might have or have previously experienced
• Possible stigma or loss of status (especially if you are unmarried or strongly religious, for example)
• Whether you've already done this before
• Fear of childbirth
• Or anything else really...

then congratulations - you are clearly truly committed in your beliefs, and can feel entitled to judge the scared teenager rape victim contraception failure struggling mother moment of madness mother of life limited foetus DV victim slut asking for an abortion. Now please form a queue for my special implantation procedure...

Any hesitations though, and maybe you should be questioning your position...

Bloody good question, inigo.

If the instinct is to say 'but I don't want children now so I wouldn't allow myself to get into that situation', then I imagine that there are rape victims out there who thought the same thing.

Yes exactly, or the ones that were using contraception but it didn't work, or the naive kids who just hadn't been given any sensible sex education, or the ones who weren't exactly raped but heavily pressured into it, or where he promised to wear a condom but lied.... Nobody of childbearing age should ever think it can't happen to them.

To the "pro-life at all costs brigade"

You can go ahead and adopt the HIV + child with feotal alcohol syndrome and attachment disorder today. You will of course be willing to finance all theraputic, health & educational interventions yourself. You won't mind if this child costs you your own kids college funds, your career & your husband. Neither will you mind being called foul names in the street as the child selected will be of a different ethnicity to your existing children, your husband & your narrow-minded congregation.

There are incredible souls out there that do sacrifice their lives for other people's children (Mother Teresa being a prominent example). These amazing individuals don't tend to be found in the average fundamentalist far-right congregation though

A little compassion and also a reminder that where ever abortion is outlawed legally, sheer desperation means backstreet practioners flourish. Women bleeding to death in back alleys isn't the answer.

Yes i would give birth and have it adopted

Have you had children, oopsi?

yes 4 DC

noble that's irrelevant. I haven't had children (actually DH and I can't) and I still understand that forced pregnancy and birth is wrong. Please don't assume that people who don't are all childless.

Yes i would give birth and have it adopted

Yes because severely disabled children are so easy to place.

Those of you who are anti abortion, are you going to stop a pregnant woman from: -

drinking?
taking drugs?
taking drugs for medical reasons such as chemo that will cause severe disabilities if the cchild is carried to term.
Not eating a balanced diet?
Smoking?
Throwing themselves downstairs in an attempt to induce miscarriage?

Bochead: excellent though your posts generally are, Mother Theresa is a bad example, she was a self-promoting con-artist who only helped those who bought into her particular brand of superstition and she actively campagined against both contraception and abortion.

Inigo: Brilliant. I did once suggest something similar to an antichoice man, along the grounds that when the technology existed to extract the embryo from a woman and implant it into an artifical womb in a man then a man would be entitled to object his child being aborted if he wanted to grow it and bear it in his own body.

Sunny, I wasn't making that assumption at all. Many men are pro choice for example, and they'll never bear children. I was asking because a few people on this thread became more convinced that abortion should be an option once they'd experienced pregnancy and childbirth.

I'm surprised that oopsi would enter into it knowing they wouldn't keep the child. I couldn't, it was bloody awful and I've only done it once so didn't have any children to look after at the time.

Interesting, so you would give birth but absolve yourself of all responsibility for the child the minute it was born oopsi?

Hardly a compassionate response, rather one of life at all costs then you're on your own kiddo. It strikes me you're not interested in children at all, rather you seem to want to punish women for getting pregnant.