to think older teens should be made to watch what an abortion is in PHSE. (sorry possibly triggering)

[StraightLineOfResignation]

I know this may be controversial but I have thought this for some time.
Abortion is legal in this country but still straight forward , informative talks about it are clouded by morality and judgement and at the end of the day, sometimes people need to have one in tragic circumstances i.e people who are made critically ill by pregnancy.
And are often as well as already scared and sad, i don't think most people make this decision lightly, are woefully underprepared which i'm sure must only add to emotional trauma.
and of course there are too many potential uninterested fathers who just utter 'get rid of it' at the hearing of potentially being a father, so disgustingly flippantly like throwing a crisp packet in the bin, I do think if they especially had seen a medical video of the procedure, well i think the number of people who just thrown that term around would be significantly less, if they had actually seen that image with their own eyes , and would be less detached from the idea and process.
I'm talking older teens , like 16+ here , not 11 year olds.
my mum and i have always though this, i would find it traumatising and pretty shocking, but compared to people who feel shame, go backstreet putting themselves at risk and people who go through with pregnancies they did not want/need. Surely a bit of discomfort is better then that being a legacy of another generation.

well thats not a good enough reason saggy, wanting to live in willful ignorance, there was a time when people did that about sex and pregnancy remember, did more harm than good remember...

Y ? I had an extra one .... OP can have it .

Y OP , Y ?

Yest I have RTFT and think YABU It's a horrible idea I wouldn't want to watch such a film and I'm in my 60s.

Maybe I should have got them to film my last hip replacement operation in case they get arthritis?

Okay, I see what you mean a bit more now.

I know I would have sat watching something like that at 16 thinking "huh! That will not happen to me." I think, rather than focusing on abortions, the sensible thing is to educate everybody - boys as well - on the reality of parenthood: the costs, the low points, the high points. When I was deciding whether or not to keep my baby I searched Mumsnet and other parenting forums a lot and that led me to my decision (eventually.) I came to realise it was a big job and too big for me at that time.

The problem with this idea is that it is literally someone going into a small room and out again (for a surgical) - you just couldn't see anything. Tablets, less so - although of course I haven't had them and so wouldn't know.

It isn't a pleasant experience but being honest the conveyor belt sense of it all is far worse - the actual procedure is so straightforward as to barely even be worth mentioning. Since mine had been a wanted baby it was incredibly hard but even so I have had no psychological trauma and I just feel sad that we split and that my first ever experience of pregnancy was so awful. I pray I will meet a good 'un and go on to have children in a loving relationship. x

Have you any idea of what is taught in schools? its a lot different to when you was a teenager.

We got this when I was at school (non-Catholic school). SPUC film in Assembly.

As a result, none of us ever had an unwanted pregnancy. In fact, I don't think we even had sex. There was no rape back then, no abuse, no unwanted babies.

Oh no, wait - that didn't happen. In fact, the only good part of it was that it pushed me a little further down the road to feminism.

OP, what do you think showing this video would achieve?

OP I think you did refer to putting people off. In your OP you mention that watching an filmed abortion would make teens "less detached". Later you imagine that had you seen such things you would find them "traumatising" and "shocking". Later you minimise the frankly unpleasant and baffling proposal as a "bit of discomfort" but worth enduring.

That all sounds like putting people off.

well thats not a good enough reason saggy, wanting to live in willful ignorance, there was a time when people did that about sex and pregnancy remember, did more harm than good remember...

It is NOT your place to decide that!

OP I do agree that teenagers should be informed of the choices available to them but I do think what you are suggesting isn't something that should fall within an educational environment.

I think that comes under a more medical base, there is no need for it to be so in depth in school and is only necessary to know for individuals who find themselves in that situation. SE should highlight the basics about abortion but I do think it needs to be stressed that in that situation medical advise is what they need.

I'm split between thinking you have poorly worded your OP as it does come across as inflammatory or that there is an ulterior motive to you thinking this should be shown.

You are bang out of order in your reply to Saggy, OP. Bang out of order .

Who the fuck are you to say that isn't a good enough reason??
I and many others have to make the choice of life and death over our children. The guilt of even having to be in that position is crushing. If someone has to make that decision, WHO THE FUCK gets to dictate that they MUST know exactly what happens.
Do YOU know exactly what happens when you terminate? in every scenario? Because I do, and it doesn't help.

Every day, the average man throws away several million perfectly healthy sperms. Every month, millions of women throw away millions of perfectly healthy eggs.

Nobody is up in arms about this mass disposal of potential babies so what's so intrinsically special about a sperm-egg combination at an early stage of development?

This pretty much sums up my view on abortion. I couldn't feel any worse about an early term abortion than I do a missed period & an egg unrealized. Sorry.

Seriously? You must be out of your mind.
I went to a Catholic school and was forced to watch a very graphic abortion video by our weirdo beardo RE teacher - am sure he made us watch it just to make us squirm (just like he used to ask us if we were on our periods). It traumatised me BUT it did not then and does not now make me change my mind that abortion is an individual choice - if anything it closed my mind to this mans very vocal pro-life stance, I felt he had used underhand tactics in trying to prove to us that his view was the only one.
I haven't RTFT so if I've missed something I apologise.

So you think that showing such a video would influence, not a girl's view on termination, but her views on casual sex ? Are you saying that if they realised the consequences of their actions then they may reconsider sex in the first place ?

Have you been around a teenage boy being a dick ? Do you think when a young girl is under pressure by him that she has any power in that situation ? Even if she did stop and think, do you really think that most young girls would voice it. ?

You'd be as well showing a film of live birth - that would be more effective and might just put the boys off too.

I suspect that educating both girls and boys better about sex, the consequences, emotional and physical, giving girls a voice to say no, giving boys the realisation that they are not entitled to sex, that it doesn't make them a man, would all go a longer way than some pointless video designed to scare them.

We had to watch a 'silent scream' abortion video in year 7 which was 1984. I thought the propaganda was disgusting at the time.
A woman from SPUC came to mass yesterday and compared a woman having a termination to hitler and the holocaust.
Shock tactics don't work. Education does , especially about contraception.

Not just for moral reasons but I am very squeamish and so is my dd (although she is only 9 now) and i would hate to be forced to watch a video of any operations. I don't think this is right at all.
of course people should be informed about this issue but I think talking sensitively about it is much better.

What is this 'silent scream' video?

I was told that the foetus doesn't feel any pain until well into the second trimester?

Is silent scream the one that includes a song from the foetus's perspective about how it doesn't want to die?

In which case, I was also shown it at school and it didn't put me off sex or abortion - it put me off religion.

For those that want to see it - 'the silent scream'

Oh and OP for the record that was a reply to your last post about what you think they need to be informed about. I.e aftercare etc. I do not think under any circumstances anyone needs to see footage of the procedure unless they come to that conclusion to do so by themselves.

What you are suggested in your original OP is bizarre and quite frankly ridiculous.

It's a medically inaccurate piece of Catholic propaganda showing a late-term abortion which is very unrepresentative of the vast majority of terminations, rainy. It is designed to be as emotive as possible, and to be shown to young teenage girls in an attempt to hammer home a religious anti-choice message, cloaked in the guise of relevant sex education in some schools.

Much like what the OP seems to be suggesting, really.

' By their words so shall you know them..'

And your words OP? 'well thats not a good enough reason ' - in a nutshell that's your pov isn't it? That a good enough reason must given for TOP? This thread is anti-abortion bullshit from you isn't it? I have reported it and I hope it will be removed.

This is a horrible and inconsiderate thread. Unfortunately, no matter how many videos you could have seen, sometimes shit happens, and you have an abortion.

How does knowing EXACTLY what happens help anyone, ever?!

rainy - as I understand it the nervous system and brain connections aren't developed enough until 24-26 weeks for a foetus to feel "pain", however it is still debatable at that point whether they have to consciousness to experience nerve stimulation as pain.