To ask those of you who are pro life?

[Anonynony]

How do you feel about friends who have had abortions? Can you maintain friendships with people who have had an abortion and no regrets?

One of my friends has stunned me, talking about another friend of ours who had considered an abortion and my friend said I'm so glad she didn't because I wouldn't have been able to stay friends with her
I'm really surprised, I'm extremely pro choice and vocal about it but this doesn't bother my friend.
But what my friend doesn't know is that I also had an abortion and although I have no regrets I feel a bit strange around my friend now?

My best friend had an abortion before I knew her. 100% didn't change my opinion of her. It was 15 years ago and these things happen. No one else's business but hers.

If I had an abortion and someone didn't want to be friends with me because of it I would be of the 'fuck 'em' attitude.

indeed Baby

22honey - interesting that you have used the words vile and cold hearted. Forcing a woman to continue a pregnancy against her wishes is vile, cold hearted, cruel, inhumane and torturous.

A lot of people make moral judgements around women's pregnancies, without even realising it imo. As I've said before, I've had spontaneous abortions from 6 weeks up to 21 weeks. This is a parenting site and miscarriage is treated with reverence here, but, you know, 25% of pregnancies abort naturally. I don't see anything wrong in doing what nature is fairly likely to do anyway. The hormonal & emotional disruption is the same - it's tempting to put all the agony of a late abortion down to the choice, but in fact it's a biological reaction.

It's interesting that nobody else was that upset about my miscarriages: I wasn't in particularly good relationships, had a great career & very busy social life ... all common reasons to choose abortion. But people (medics included) universally acted as though things had turned out for the best under the circumstances. I know for certain that many of those people would viciously judge a woman who chose abortion under identical circumstances. Weird.

Good point the body...
But regardless of logic, my own personal stance is it just doesn't seem intrinsically ethical or moral to abort a baby who could survive out of the womb. That is my feeling. You are right , of course, that if the law was to change in regards to this I may deplete from the idea that a woman's uterus is hers, and her choice.

It is a tough one.

I know there are very few women who decide they don't want to give birth to their baby once in the 3rd trimester but to say that you are purely pro-choice, that you support a woman's right to end the life of her fetus at any point until it's head is out of the vagina is to say that a woman who decides she doesn't fancy having a baby at 37 weeks pregnant has the right to end the life of her baby.

You could argue that babies who are breastfed are still nurished by their mother, my ds didn't have anything other than breastmilk until 6 months, sure if I decided I didn't want to breastfeed him he could have a bottle but maybe I should have had the right to end his life because he was at that time reliant on my body.

At what point do you think a woman looses the rights over her own body? I don't think a woman should ever loose the right to her own body but I don't think women should have the option to choose to end the life of their fetus on the right to end their pregnancy. A 23 week old fetus has a chance of survival, I believe the baby has a right to try to survive outside the womb.

Thebaby, but nowhere did I say a woman should be forced to continue any pregnancy. I would not agree with taking the choice away, I still think privately to abort for such mundane reasons as finances is cold hearted and vile, I am not the only one either. Of course they should have that choice, everyone should have choice, you have to accept in life some people will judge your choices.

I wonder if the same people advocating an abortion of a full term baby (please explain the reasoning behind this, when the baby could be born alive? why would it be better to kill it first?) and desecrating those who might privately judge this negatively, judge women for smoking or drinking alcohol during a pregnancy they plan on going through with. I bet many of them do. Theres a very two sided, hypocritical stance on this I find, where people will agree to killing a baby at any stage of pregnancy because its 'her body her choice' yet will hang, draw and quarter any woman who carries on with her 'freedom to choose' to smoke and drink during pregnancy, which more often than not doesn't harm a baby in the slightest.

fiscal please see my link earlier, the sizeable majority of the late abortions you have read about are made up by the pro life lobbyists.

I am pro choice. I seriously considered an abortion when I was pg with DS - and went to the hospital for a consultation - but was much further along than I realised which made it an impossibility. I was lucky though and it all worked out ok in the end. I do still wonder though how different my life might have been if a termination had been an option.

My lovely friend however did have a late abortion but only due to inefficiencies at her local hospital. She presented early enough but it took forever to arrange. Her then partner was a violent coke addict and alcoholic and she was a DV victim. It was her wake up call that she had to get away from him as she knew he would hurt the baby in one of his rages. She has never really fully recovered from that experience even though she has gone on to have a child subsequently and has built a happy life. Nearly 20 years on she says she still gets flashbacks to delivering her dead son.

And although I say I am pro choice I am conflicted and the arguments go round in my head. I cannot agree that a woman has the right to say at any point in her pregnancy - particularly the later stages - that she wants a termination unless there are very, very significant medical issues that would threaten the life of mother or baby. Maybe this is more to do with DS spending time in SCBU alongside babies aged 23 weeks plus. I just cannot get my head round an abortion being performed at 39 weeks.

22honey - I apologise, I picked your post up incorrectly.

I agree garlic that miscarriage and abortions should be treated in the same way.

Like I have said on a recent thread after many losses of much wanted pregnancies I can understand how abortions may even be harder to deal with emotionally. With miscarriages you are given the 'relief' that is wasn't your choice and it was meant to be and something was probably not quite right with the fetus
Emotionally these two things are very alike IMO. And women should be given equal support at the loss of a
Pregnancy. However, saying that, I would find it hard to support someone who used abortion as contraception.

When I found out I was pregnant in February, after TTC for 9 months and 3 MMCs I was strangely devastated.
I strangely wanted an abortion, and I have never said this
In RL as I think people would treat me differently. The reason for these feelings was because I was so scared that I was going to lose the baby anyway and I wanted to make that decision mine, have control over it. I was convinced this baby wasn't going to be ok and I thought long and hard about abortion and later went for emotional support which helped me, now 13 weeks pregnant But the emotional
Feelings a woman goes through are difficult to understand and easy to judge, no one knows how that woman is feeling or what has led her to feel this way. If I had aborted my baby I would have had a completely different reaction and support from friends and the doctors in comparison to if I had lost my baby. And both would have been equally as difficult. And I would have needed the same level of support.

.

When a baby is born it is a human being and has rights.

When a foetus is in utero, it is not a human being and the rights of the woman carrying it supercede it.

Not sure why this is a difficult concept to understand.

And I'm not sure why there is all this hand-wringing focus on late term (13-24 week) abortion - when they account for the tiny minority of terminations and are overwhelmingly carried out for conditions incompatible with independent life.

I'm pro-choice (although ironically abortion is not something I could choose myself) but have a few anti-abortion friends as well as friends who have had abortions, we all get along fine as its not something that comes into conversation or affects our daily lives.

I admit though I have very low opinions of a family members who abuses her right to abortion by using it as birth control.

I was brought up as a catholic I am not sure I could ever have an abortion that said I have never been in a position that I have ever had to consider it I would never judge anyone for it late abortion and abortion as birth control for no good reason leaves me cold

Yes I can. It depends on circumstances of course and attitude to it. Very very few women treat abortion as a firm of birth control. It is virtually always a difficult and heartbreaking decision. And because of that we must show compassion and not judge. It's a difficult enough thing without the added weight of judgemental friends.

I can see where your coming from jimjams ds2 is autistic and has a chromosomal disorder thought to have caused it ironically I refused the nuchal fold scan both times as it would have made no difference to me I have since found out it may have shown some soft markers for his condition tbh I am glad I did refuse the scan because I would never be without him of course everyone's different .

Tonde, its not a difficult concept to understand, but if your point was factually correct it would be legal to have an abortion for any reason up until birth, which is what some people are advocating. Why is this not allowed unless for medical reasons then, if throughout the pregnancy the rights of the woman come before the rights of the foetus?

And again, if you take such a stance, I sincerely hope you never judge any woman who smokes, drinks alcohol, takes antidepressants, drinks lots of coffee, eats loads of junk food blah blah blah anything else that apparently ups 'risk of harm to the foetus' during pregnancy, as as you say its her body and her choice and that always comes before the unborn baby.

yes baby, but as has been pointed out to you before, there are very few women who would commit infanticide but that doesn't mean that we should base laws around the idea that most people won't do something.

I think it's a pretty weak argument to support something because you don't think anyone will actually do it. If we all thought like that - judged people by our own moral compass then why would anyone think that we need laws at all?

sorry- that should have been thebody not baby.

22 Nobody is advocating abortion of any sort. However, they are saying it is a woman's right to choose. Right up until whichever point. There is a difference.
And no, I don't judge smokers/those on antidepressants etc. I do comprehend that almost all abortions after 24 weeks are for reasons not compatible with independent life.

I guess my views will seem mixed up but they make sense to me.

For myself I would never have an abortion. I would even carry a very ill baby to term as I would feel it is right for them to have whatever even very short life they can. It's tied up with my work with very disabled people. A life is a life to me and is valuable without exception.

As a Dr I don't and have never got involved in abortions ie I exercise my right to conscientiously object.

As a friend I have supported someone through a termination including going to the clinic. They knew my views and I had tried to talk them out of it a bit but I would never lay aside my love and care for a friend over a political or moral view. I also think that is the Christian thing to do.

As a policy I believe that abortion should be legal because it makes it safer and I support another woman's right to make a different choice to me.

So to the OP I am 'pro-choice' but it has not changed my feelings about friends who have had abortions at all.

Dawn, They are supporting the idea of a woman's right to choose abortion to term. Therefore they are advocating it.

Abortions are only legal after 24 weeks for the following reasons:

-if it is necessary to save the woman's life
-to prevent grave permanent injury to the physical or mental health of the pregnant woman
-if there is substantial risk that if the child were born, s/he would have physical or mental abnormalities and be seriously handicapped

Oh bumbly, what a surprise you're here. Sorry love, same as the others posters, not engaging.

22 I can't see where someone has said that they judge a pregnant woman for smoking/drinking/taking antidepressants...what has this got to do with being pro choice/anti abortion?

mamadoc, can I ask you what your views are on the abortion limit? There was a recent survey that shows that around 66% of doctors felt that the limit should be reduced.