To really want to say something to these abortion protestors?

[Crocodileclip]

Firstly, I know I will probably never say anything as I appreciate that the protestors have the right to protest but it really pisses me off.

A small group of people have been protesting outside the Marie Stoppes clinic in Belfast since it opened in 2012. They stand outside the door on the days it is open holding anti abortion posters and trying to gather signatures for a petition. I pass them on my way to get to the station at home time and every time it annoys me. I can't imagine how offputting they would be if you were young and scared and just wanting some advice. Lots of pics of aborted foetuses etc. I find it intimidating enough myself and I am just walking past. I actually put my head down and walk quicker so that nobody asks me to sign the petition.

I'm currently pregnant with my second and am lucky never to have been in a position where abortion was an option but am of the opinion that there are situations in which it may be the best option available.

The clinic itself operates within NI law so only offers abortions up to 9 weeks and as far as I know is the only such clinic in Northern Ireland. I think I would be ok with the protestors doing their stuff elsewhere in the city centre it is the fact that it is just outside the only entrance to the clinc that makes me irrationally angry. Does this happen at other Marie Stoppes clinics elsewhere in the UK?

Bumbleymummy has reiterated several times now that she thinks women lose autonomy over their bodies when they become pregnant, and the blastocyst/zygote/foetus then takes precedence.

I don't think she is going to change her mind. I've seen her in action on too many mind-numbing threads.

I don't know what the answer is in places where abortion is illegal. I don't know how women fight to change the status quo. I wish I did, but I don't. Luckily, as this thread does show, some people do change their minds, usually due to a bit of life experience, the development of empathy and a bit of wisdom.

All of us are dealt a totally random hand in terms of where in the world the stork ends up delivering us. It feels awfully selfish to think it, but for my part, I am just thankful that I live in a country that believes, all things considered, the right to bodily autonomy is important enough to be enshrined in law.

Bumbleymummy has reiterated several times now that she thinks women lose autonomy over their bodies when they become pregnant, and the blastocyst/zygote/foetus then takes precedence

Yet, if I understand correctly, she wouldn't support a ban on pregnant women eating certain foods, or drinking certain drinks, or smoking, or whatever. Nor would she enforce the right to life over the right to bodily autonomy in any other situation (as far as I can tell).

And so it is the inconsistency that is interesting. It's an inconsistency that is ignored yet propagated over and over again in this debate. I have never once seen a reasonable argument (and by that, I don't mean "reasonable to me", I mean "logical and coherent") for why pregnancy is exempt from the normal rules surrounding bodily autonomy. It all seems to boil down to "But...but...the babies", which is, of course, no (formal) argument at all.

I don't know what the answer is in places where abortion is illegal

Time. Globalisation. Exposure to other ways of life.

BM, I am not going to go over the point again that the uterus has not been donated during any pregnancy because it has been explained numerous times by various posters.

To everyone else, my opinion at the moment (and I could be swayed) is that abortion law is correct as it is. That means that I do not support abortion for social/psychological reasons in late pregnancy.

As another poster has said, analogies are imperfect. In real life, there is no common situation similar to pregnancy. The beliefs we hold about bodily autonomy in such situations end up applying only to pregnant women. The vast and overwhelming majority of women would never choose abortion due to social circumstances or psychological distress no matter howdire the situation, and i am not convinced it is in a woman's best psychological interest to go through with it, unless somebody has research on this? That is very different to other reasons for late abortions for medical reasons and earlier abortions for a range of reasons, which many women do choose and research shows benefit women and children.

I think bodily autonomy is a hugely important principle in pregnancy and childbirth, but like any principle it isn'tabsolute. I don't think different groups want or require the exact same rights to get equality. We can give people more of one right and less of another to end up with equality as an outcome.

I think as a society we can reduce women's bodily autonomy in late pregnancy ( while still respecting the principle in other pregnancy scenarios) and compensate for that by giving pregnant women and new mothers greater rights to housing, medical care, benefits, employment flexibility etc than non pregnant people receive. I think that would be more likely to acheive equality of outcome thsn permitting late abortion due to dire social circumstance, a right useless to pretty much all pregnant women in such circumstances, who would not want to abort an eight month okd foetus due to their personal, emotional, rational and ethical feelings about pregnancy.

Sorry, in my third paragraph i mean late abortion for social reasons, not abortions for social reasons at any stage in pregnancy.

twofingers exactly what I was trying to put across. There has not been a single example of post birth support so what other conclusion can you draw?

It seems to me (more assumptions ) that the pro-lifers have a film running in their heads where once the mother has been forced to give birth it cuts to the words "..and they all lived happily ever after. The end."

"you can keep saying that the organ analogy is flawed.."

It is flawed in the way you are using it i.e. that being pregnant is the process of donating your organ and therefore you have the right to stop the donation midway. In actual fact, the process of getting pregnant would be equivalent to the process of donating the organ. I explained this much earlier in the thread.

"her uterus is 'donated' to use your term"

It is not my term. I did not come up with this organ donation analogy - that is what people on this thread are trying to compare it to.

"I asked our local group about this and was told it was 'not within the remit of our charitable work'."

Why would it be? It's like asking the RSPCC why they aren't doing more to help animals. There are different charities for different things. You don't know what other charities the pro-life supporters are also supporters of.

"But you are saying women don't and shouldn't have autonomy.."

No, I have said that in the same as someone loses their bodily autonomy when they have donated an organ, they have lost their bodily autonomy when they have 'donated' their uterus.

Right to life meaning right not to be killed.

"Presumably for you that 'right' begins the minute an egg is fertilised?"

I haven't said that but I know that is the opinion of many pro-lifers.

Magical, see my first para in this post for a further explanation of why it is flawed. You are leaning towards the idea that the process of organ donation is similar to being pregnant because this suits the 'I can't be forced to donate an organ' argument when actually, the process of an organ being donated is equivalent to getting pregnant. Yes, analogies have flaws, quite often in relation to how realistic they are e.g. the plane analogy, but there is no point in trying to use them if you have to twist things around in order to make them support your argument.

"it makes a hell of a difference if you deliberately kill someone (with this being your objective) or accept (the possibility of) their death" Yes, similar to the actively killing someone vs letting them die argument that I mentioned above. Right to life is right not to be killed, not right not to die.

Maid, as I said, you wouldn't have bodily autonomy without right to life.

"You don't want to spell out that the risk to the mother of death is not enough to terminate the pregnancy."

I just did."where two lives are threatened and only one life can be saved doctors are obliged to save that life"

As I said earlier, pro-choice is also poorly named because, in most cases, people who call themselves pro-chice actually put conditions on the situations that they consider it ok for the woman to make a choice. e.g. the gestational age of the foetus. As for pro-life being pro-control, pro-choicers are arguing for a woman's right to control the life of a foetus.

"Except for ectopic pregnancy, where active termination of the other life is exactly what the medics do."

Depends on when you think life begins.

"I don't think she is going to change her mind. " I don't think any of you will change your mind either. Bit of a waste of time really!

"some people do change their minds" Yes, not always in the pro-choice direction either and very rarely on a MN thread!

"She wouldn't support a ban on pregnant women eating certain foods, or drinking certain drinks, or smoking, or whatever."

Certain foods and drinking, no, because while some studies show an increased risk of them causing complications, the evidence isn't always clear cut. eg the peanut thing irt food. Although there was a recent study that did show an increased risk of premature birth with even minimal alcohol consumption (1-2 units per week iirc) so it will be interesting to see what that leads too. I would love to see a ban on smoking. Can't stand it - health risk to everyone.

"Nor would she enforce the right to life over the right to bodily autonomy in any other situation (as far as I can tell)."

Where have you gotten that from?

"why pregnancy is exempt from the normal rules surrounding bodily autonomy."

I've tried explaining it several time sto you but you don't agree. It's hard to hear something that you don't want to hear.

"It all seems to boil down to "But...but...the babies""

That hasn't come up once on this thread. How disingenuous of you.

I think that time will bring a reduction in the time limit for abortion. This is what the majority want. Sorry real pro-choicers - you're on losing ground.

almond, I've explained many times(including on my last post) why it doesn't make sense for you to apply it in the way that you are but you just don;t want to see it.

"research shows benefit women and children" except for the foetuses who were terminated of course.

"There has not been a single example of post birth support so what other conclusion can you draw?" Have you looked for one? Here you go

Life charity First result on google. Really easy to find - some of you just prefer to make unjustified assumptions and stick to them.

BM, this isn't a question of all opinions carrying a similar weight. Using a part of a person's body while it is still part of them for a particular purpose is not a donation of that body part. It simply does not exist in the sphere of organ donation. That is not the medical meaning of the word. There is no example of any kind of donation where the donor permanently retains the donated body part while it is similtaneously used to support the life of somebody else.

If you want to use words to mean something entirely different to what they mean in medicine, ethics or indeed any other sphere of life, that is your prerogative and there is nothing I can do to change that, nor do I feel any responsibility to. But there is no problem of strain or slippage of the term 'donated organ' or 'donation.' It isn't a contested term that people generally debate and disagree over the meaning of. It is simply a term you are using in an entirely different way to everyone else and every credible medical source. So while you may have an incredibly valid point and have the right answers, nobody is ever going to know one way or the other because you are using language in such a way that it can only be understood by you.

BM my comment related to the fact that you hadn't up til now provided an example as part of your argument.

"this isn't a question of all opinions carrying a similar weight" You think your opinion is more important than mine?

"Using a part of a person's body while it is still part of them for a particular purpose is not a donation of that body part.There is no example of any kind of donation where the donor permanently retains the donated body part while it is similtaneously used to support the life of somebody else."

So then why are people trying to say that being pregnant is like donating their uterus?

"If you want to use words to mean something entirely different to what they mean in medicine, ethics or indeed any other sphere of life, that is your prerogative"

I'm not. See above explanations and try to understand what I'm saying. It actually does make perfect sense if you open your mind to the possibility that your use of the analogy is incorrect.

wow mustbetimefortea - can you backpedal any faster?

Not b

Not backpedalling BM. You were just struggling to understand my post and I was explaining it to you.

Sure must No struggling here.

Still liking the pigeon analogy best.

I think that it is impossible to know what your opinion is BM, because your use of language is incomprehensible. As such, I don't think can carry any weight at all, and indeed hasn't done on this thread. I will speculate that you think people are dismissing you simply on the basis of you being prolife. I think that is not the case as similar discussions have been had on FWR where people have discussed limitations on abortion without getting the kind of response you are getting.

in answer to your other question, I think the reason some other people have compared the process of organ donation to pregnancy is because they are trying to make a formal analogy between two issues that are rather dissimilar to make the point that both are connected to bodily autonomy. They are not obliged to defend finer points between the two situations because they never claimed the two were closely related. You, and solely you, then tried to make organ donation into a relational analogy and claimed it was in detail similar to a completed aorgan donation. Other people, including me, then argued against it by making relational analogies to either a. the process of bone marrow donation or b. the process of blood donation.

I know that a relational analogy to such processes is correct because they are very well known and used in ethics classes. One of the best known analogies in medical ethics, when discussing abortion, is the case of the violinist who required a constant blood transfusion. So 'my' analogy is not my analogy at all. I didn't invent it. It is a well known, published analogy used in ethics classes in universities and elsewhere.

That's ok raven, everyone can find the level they are comfortable at.

almond, incomprehensible am I? So strange that you are able to answer my posts then. Sorry that you can't see the logic in my explanation of the organ donation analogy - it's a frequently pointed out flaw in that analogy. So I'm not the only one who sees it. Yes, I'm aware of the violinist analogy.

What Almond actually wrote:

BM, this isn't a question of all opinions carrying a similar weight. Using a part of a person's body while it is still part of them for a particular purpose is not a donation of that body part. It simply does not exist in the sphere of organ donation. That is not the medical meaning of the word. There is no example of any kind of donation where the donor permanently retains the donated body part while it is similtaneously used to support the life of somebody else.

(ie. this isn't a matter of opinion... the fact is that there are no comparable 'donations' where the donor retains and gives away... etc...)

How BM chose to misconstrue this and respond:

"this isn't a question of all opinions carrying a similar weight" You think your opinion is more important than mine?

You have lost all credibility as far as I'm concerned, BM.

I can answer your posts to say they aren't making your point clear and why that is, but ultimately I am an ordinary person with ordinary abilities and can't disentangle your perspective from what you're saying. In fact, that's all anyone on here can do. If your analogy has been made by a philosopher and does indeed follow logic, then you could link to it on a basic philosophy site and people could then read it and attempt to understand what ever your point is.

Otherwise the most positive conclusion that I can come to is you are some kind of intellectual giant who is so far advanced from everyone else's thinking that they have created some entirely novel independent perspective and the rest of the world will one day catch up with you.

That's certainly one interpretation of BM's use of this forum, almondcake.

It is flawed in the way you are using it i.e. that being pregnant is the process of donating your organ and therefore you have the right to stop the donation midway. In actual fact, the process of getting pregnant would be equivalent to the process of donating the organ

I think I see the problem, I've italicised it. You've claimed that your opinion is somehow fact and provided no justification for it. We are all busy trying to produce logical arguments and comparisons to support our thoughts, whereas you feel somehow empowered to declare what is 'fact' without any justification.

Any thoughts on my direct blood transfusion analogy?

Any excuse two fingers.

"the fact is that there are no comparable 'donations' where the donor retains and gives away." you're prepared to accept this as a fact too? So you're not supporting the organ donation analogy anymore either?

almond, sorry, I can't claim it to be my own. A bit of googling should clear it up for you if you find my explanations too hard to follow.

Maid,
"You've claimed that your opinion is somehow fact and provided no justification for it."
See my post to almond above.

"Any thoughts on my direct blood transfusion analogy?

Yes, I replied to it further upthread.

I think that time will bring a reduction in the time limit for abortion. This is what the majority want. Sorry real pro-choicers - you're on losing ground.

Another gem.