In looking forward to free-access abortions clinics on the high street soon

[MadameDefarge]

in order to deal with all those pesky third child pregnancies conceived to extort more money from the tax payer by feckless benefit scroungers?

Come on Dave, have the courage of your convictions...accidents happen as we all know, so we need a change to abortion legislation to allow free access to abortions.

Of course another option is to perform sterilisation on benefit claimants. Or perhaps demand an abstinence pledge for claimants?

Hm. Lots of policy review needed to bring other services into line with this plan.

It depends whether you think people have a right to have as many children as they wish regardless of whether they need financial help from the state to have these children or not. If you do then you won't want any suggestion of child benefits being stopped at all. Which the point about your thread, I guess.

If you think women will have abortions because they won't get financial help for that child, then I would say that a) abortions are available on the NHS currently and still will be so it's a non issue and b) rather than spend any money on walk-in abortion clinics as you propose, that money would be better spent on say, an advertising campaign spelling out and putting into detail the financial implications of having that third/fourth/fifth child, and advising about contraception.

I would like to think that if this legislation was in place she would have stopped producing offspring at no. 2 as she would have known that she would not be remunerated by the state for any more.

I agree with the ideal of the welfare state and have no objections at all to my taxes supporting those in need, but a line has to be drawn somewhere and this is not an unreasonable start (in my opinion).

And with regard to abortion, why would the rate increase so drastically? Am I to assume that ALL people claiming benefits are too stupid to use contraception? I'm 100% certain this is not the case.

indeed harder, and change the legal criteria which we only pay lip service to you. Honesty and transparency. If society generally believes a woman has a right to choose (as evidenced by the nominal nature of the two doctor rule) then we need to have the courage of our convictions and make it really on demand.

There will be more terminations as a result of this legislation. Sad for parents who would rather keep their babies, but I personally have no problem with terminations, and neither does actual practice.

Seems a bit hypocritical of a govt that espouses the family as the central block of stability in society to force this on some families, but heigh ho! suppose it shows their sense of ethics is a movable feast when it comes to welfare.

Thanks madamdefarge. Not sure how I feel about this, seems fair in theory. A friend of mine who's a sahm has just discovered she's pregnant with her 4th after a contraception failure. Her dh earns just over the threshold for child benefit, she almost went through with an abortion as a fourth child will be difficult financially.
Even as a single parent on a fraction of their income I can see how it's deemed unfair by middle earners who receive nothing when they add to their family. They simply have to make their current income go further by cutting back.
There's no need for a third or fourth child to live in poverty if their parents spend their income responsibly. One extra mouth to feed doesn't cost that much more.

A huge percentage if pregnancies are accidental - contraceptive failure rates are much higher than packets claim due to imperfect use. But even with perfect use the best are only 98% effective.

You can only not afford children, if you have certain lifestyle / aspirations etc and want to do things with your children. We are stopping at 2 kids, as I hope to be able to teach my children to ski, to go to the Caribbean etc. if I didn't want to do anything with them and was prepared to live on minimums we could afford more. I guess, if you are already on minimums then more children enhance what could be a limited life. Just a thought...

The present system is based to make sure that what you want initially IS what you want when it comes down to it. The 2 Drs system means that every woman receives a basic form of counselling to try to ensure they are doing what they want and not what they are told they want and can be signposted to other services post op.

At least that was my experience when I was in that hellish situation. At every stage the talking I had with the healthcare staff was totally impartial but for me confirmed my decision was correct. They also made sure that my contraception knowledge was correct.

In my case I found I was pregnant 3 days after walking out of a marriage to someone who, well, wasn't the kindest person to be married to. If I had gone back I probably wouldn't be here today as my mental health was in a pretty bad way by the time I plucked up courage to leave.

Any delay that was caused was kept to an absolute minimum and I was very grateful to everyone who helped me and will always remember how well they treated me when I was at my most vulnerable. And this system made me also be grateful that there was the 2 Drs agreeing to my request as I felt in my own mind that the safety net had helped my mental state.

And all this was thanks to the nhs.

bowlers, we have had campaigns and initiatives on contraception for the last 40 years...

What part of accidental pregnancy due to contraceptive failure did you not get in my previous posts? Or did you not read them?

Are you familiar with the actual requirements for a woman to access abortion in this country? or did you not read those posts either?

Yabvvu, it will hopefully make people more responsible for their actions

I think counselling should still be part of the service. I had a termination and didn't even see the second doctor. But had good counselling.

Its just a legal hoop that has outlived its usefulness (twas originally a sop those who thought only acute suffering on the part of a pregnant suffering could be a reason to agree to terminate the pregnancy. we have moved on a good deal thank god).

Yes, it will make children responsible for their parents' actions. And their parents' employers' actions. Etc.

It would actually be interesting to see how many families actually continue to add to their family when on benefits. I suspect its very very few, and this is merely a way of gaining political capital with some sectors of the electorate.

But I can't seem to find any data on this. Shame, as it would be foolish to base legislation on anecdotal prejudice rather than hard facts, and surely no responsible govt would do that?

fos, I'm glad you had that experience. Despite getting great counselling I did have to wait until 13 weeks. that was nine weeks of pure hell for me, I can tell you, over two months.

Very condescending, OP.

I haven't had an abortion so can't comment personally, but my understanding is that it is perfectly possible and normal to be able to have an abortion on the NHS in this country.

I haven't noticed a high profile advertising campaign about contraception recently.

If someone becomes accidentally pregnant, which does happen, then they will have a choice to keep the baby.

What about rape victims? What about marital rape & abusive men who like to keep women pregnant & poor? What if you were ttc and lost your job? What, then, if you were in the middle of IVF and lost your job? What if you're a practising Catholic?

I don't believe the government has any intention of carrying this through. Then again - "it would be foolish to base legislation on anecdotal prejudice rather than hard facts, and surely no responsible govt would do that?" - Ours has a stunning record of doing exactly that.

well bowler, perhaps you don't frequent your local doctors, or have exposure to NHS trusts campaigns regarding teen pregnancy and out reach work d one in the community.

Give over bowler, you are avoiding engaging with my points re the legal criteria. But I guess you just don't really know. And looks like you don't want to hear either. Shame.

Yes they could choose to keep the baby, but it might well be at great cost the family as a whole, who will be (if living on benefits) barely scraping by as it is.

Indeed Garlic.

Sometimes I think this govt floats these things to gauge how much opposition will be mustered against them with other policies they really want to push through in the future.

That sucks for you Madame, you should never have had to wait that length of time. I had a termination about 15 years ago, as I had found out so early (as soon as I missed my period) I was in within 2 weeks for a medical termination (with the pills); I had assumed that this was the same everywhere.

I still do believe that this policy is a good one though and don't see that abortion rates will increase; most 'accidental' pregnancies are not due to contraception failure but due to not using it properly or at all.

And to reiterate my point of view, which is not in the least condescending it is this -

If you create public policy that means a section of society will be forced to consider, and in many instances, undertake a certain course of action, you need to make taking that course of action as easy as possible and legislate accordingly. NOT rely upon a slack interpretation of the existing legislation.

OP - I don't feel that strongly about this issue, I suppose.

I'm not medical. I haven't had an abortion (although supported my best friend through hers), so no, I probably don't know enough about the legal criteria. Maybe the legalities would change if this is bought in to make the process easier.

In general though, I think people should be encouraged to only have the number of children they can afford.

Just an aside on the economics: If it costs about £250,000 to bring up a child from pregnancy to say age 21 and I expected to lose my job say in the next 12 months (it's looking very possible unfortunately), I wouldn't think about taking out a loan of half a million in the next five years for something which I could never resell. It would be madness.

Also, I had a look at a little precis of the book "10 Billlion". We really don't need to keep producing lots of children. The world and England is overcrowded. We really do live on a small island and are heading for environmental disaster. It's probably irreversible now anyway.

I don't know what the way is; if someone had the answer they would be a genius, but the Tories have a cheek making benefits a big issue. It is a drop in the ocean compered to all that unpaid tax that big businesses evade. They have been in power (Tories, not big business, although it might seem more like the latter) now for what, getting on for three years. Why are they still talking about collecting tax from these organisations, rather than acting upon their words? Get that sorted and maybe then we can look at welfare.

It is perfectly easy to get a termination OP. I didn't find it difficult at all.

It's actually very easy not to get pregnant. Don't have sex. Or if you do, use two forms of contraception. Easy. I did it for years because I really, really didn't want to have a baby at that time.

I don't believe in accidents when it comes to pregnancy. Either having a baby is an absolute no-no, in which case you protect yourself fully, or it's more of a "ooh I'd rather not" in which case you play fast and loose.

What's needed is sex education for vulnerable teens.

yes parvati, but the law required that two doctors agreed you would suffer great mental/and or physical distress if the pregnancy were to continue. As it stands, its a bit of a rubber stamp process, so it appears to be on demand. But it is not. the existing legislation would allow for drs to pull up the drawbridge if they so wished, or public opinion turned and drs were being targeted etc etc.

You do not have an automatic right to terminate a pregnancy in this country.

So apart from current practice making a mockery of the legislation, it introduces a whole layer of admin and cost to the process.

Go to GP. Get referral to hospital. Get appt. Get two doctors signatures. get termination date dependent on their waiting lists and local demand.

or go to say BPAS, go through same process.

Or go private and go through same process.

It would be so much simpler and more honest and cheaper to just have a GP referral for the procedure with counselling attached. Or have your GP prescribe the abortion pill if appropriate with follow up care provided by practice nurse.