To hope we look back on this in horror?

[Fanfeckintastic]

I'm in Ireland and recently watched a documentary about Irish women going to England for abortions because it's illegal over here. I was saying to DP that hopefully one day we'll be able to look back on this with the same horror we do at the fact interracial couples were once not allowed to marry, homophobia etc but he doesn't think it's comparable because interracial marriages and homosexuality etc involves consenting adults. In my opinion abortion involves a consenting adult, that's it.

I'm not saying they're the exact same thing but am I unreasonable to hope that one day we'll look back at the fact it was illegal in my country to have a choice about what we do with our own uterus?

if the law in England was less abused.
The law in England is not abused, were it so there would be court cases. There aren't. Abused is your opinion, not a fact.

YYYY FuckOffGroundhog

It's totally inconsistent.

You either believe it's wrong to kill an embryo or a feotus or you don't

It can't be wrong if you haven't been raped but fine if you have been.

If anything, it reveals an even more barbaric attitude to women because it acknowledges that forced pregnancy and birth is a punishment for sexual behaviour. It's grotesque.

Well,if we are educating our children that sex is a recreational activity and as long as they are consenting and enthusiastic it is okay, heaven help us all. Are you at least in agreement that it should be taught as an ADULT activity? Or is that an old fashioned idea too. Bearing in mind here that we are acknowledging that any sexual activity can result in a pregnancy for which the boy/male could be financially responsible for for the next 18 years should the girl/woman choose to keep the baby.....could we not at least be encouraging our kids to not engage in sexual activity unless they have some sort of commitment to the person they are having sex with.
When I get onto threads like this I feel like I am about 100 years old trying to converse with teenagers. Am I the only person who thinks our society has become a bit messed up about sex?
FWIW, I agree that sex is not just for procreation and definately can be for enjoyment(within a committed relationship!) and I also agree that there is a huge amount of education needed about it needing to be consensual. Easy access to porn has much to answer for and is producing a very warped generation which schools also need to educate.

foetuses that are subsequently disposed of/not needed

Do you realise that these foetuses are actually blastocysts - a ball of about 200 cells measuring about .1mm across. They aren't by any stretch of the imagination a foetus.

The term "foetus" is usually used after the 9th week after fertilization.

I am 56 years old, and without wishing to be rude (I'm not, honestly) but actually I honestly think it's your attitude (and those with similar views) that have messed society up with regard to sex. I think if we weren't so damned coy and childish about it, we'd have a far healthier attitude toward it. People are going to experiment, whether you like it or not.
Perhaps you should take a look at teenage pregnancy rates etc. Paper after paper has clearly demonstrated that in homes where sex is talked about openly and honestly, the children consistently lose their virginity at a later age, experiment less, and are not prone to unplanned pregnancies. In houses where it is either not talked about at all, or in hushed tones only to be considered when married etc, there is a higher rate of teen pregnancy and a lower age of loss of virginity.

Oh, I do believe in a legal age of consent and agree with you about pornograhpy.

I should add you're perfectly entitled to feel squeamish about disposing of blastocysts I felt that way myself when agreeing to let mine be used for research but lets not scare people with imagines of fully formed foetuses being thrown away. You'd struggle to see a blastocyst with the naked eye (if your eyesight is as bad as mine)

dawn I think I love you a little bit.

vdb you also seem to be missing the fact that a large number of the women seeking abortions already have children and are in stable relationships.

within a committed relationship!

I don't know how old you are though I suspect you aren't 100 vdb but I'm 50 and even I think you sound 100 when you say sex should only be enjoyed within a committed relationship. Why?

Of course I would only advise sex as an adult activity it would be illegal (and immoral) to suggest otherwise. But it is legal for 16 year olds and I wouldn't consider them to be terribly adult. Quite agree with pornography and teaching contraception and also empowering girls (and boys) to say no to sex when they don't feel ready.

And your idea that we could tkae all the unwanted babies from the people who don;t want them and give them out to those who do does rather hark back to the 1950's.

You don;t mention the children either. Have you personally had to explain to a child why their classmates are asking "why did your real mum give you away?" and how to deal with it at age 6? Because I have and it's not pretty.

And yes as you suspected, wanting to foster/adopt but not being able to cuts no ice with me, if I had a fiver for every person that said that to me I'd have enough for a nice holiday.

When your children have left home and you have a fostered or adopted child in residence in your spare room then you can come back and tell me how what we really need is more children like them.

The 'rape exemption' argument on termination gives me the absolute rage.

What you are saying is that, if you 'innocently' got pregnant, it's ok. If you were a total whore who dared to have sex (whether that is with your husband or a one night stand) you deserve all that is coming to you.

There is no logic to it whatsoever unless you are inherently judging women.

I suspect what it also demonstrates is that, deep down, many people recognise the need for safe legal abortion. They see that continuing a pregnancy in those circumstances is a living torture for a woman. They just can't make the empathetic leap to understand that the same can be true of other unplanned pregnancies.

"If people do have unprotected sex,the morning after pill is a way of preventing pregnancy that I do not have a problem with as it will prevent a pregnancy occurring but will not affect a foetus. "

Do you understand how the morning after pill works VDB? Because whilst what you say is technically correct (because there is no foetus at that point, just a bundle of cells). I utterly fail to understand people who accept the MAP, but not early termination?

vdbfamily it's a fact that the countries with the lowest rates of teenage pregnancies and abortions are those ones with the most progressive sex education programs.

Sex is not something we should whisper about and hide kids away from. It's a perfectly natural part of life that young people need to be educated about, not misguidedly protected from.

If you believe that abortion is wrong because the foetus is a person with rights, the exemption for rape makes absolutely no sense.

And how exactly are you planning on women proving that they were raped?

Your real argument though, when you get down to it, is that you don't trust other women to decide for themselves. You think you know better, that you are in a better place to decide what is right for them.

The notion that teaching people that sex is not a recreational activity doesn't sit well with me at all - it suggests that it's a duty, something you do to procreate and that alone. So sex cannot be enjoyed by people - it is their duty to do it only when needed, and then, of course, the woman's duty to carry the baby for nine months and give birth to it.

My sex education at school was virtually non-existant (and this was in the late 2000s). We were basically told not to do it - no advice on contraception, abortions etc - just told not to have sex. Similar advice for drugs, drink and smoking, really. Little wonder that there's so many teenage pregnancies that have come out of that school.

There will always be daft couples who miss a Pill/forget a condom, or get drunk and go for it and regret it in the morning, or think "We've gotten away with it before, what the heck", and married couples who have a contraception failure, and women who are raped, and women who have a one-night stand and the father is nowhere to be seen. And there will be happily married couples expecting a much-wanted baby, where unfortunately either the baby has severe disabilities, or the mother is unwell. And there will be cases where it is just bad luck, a couple or a woman isn't ready for a baby yet, simple as that.

There will always be some women and couples who will feel able to go through with the pregnancy, and give birth, and take care of a baby. And there will always be some who won't. Some for whom it would be a great inconvenience, others for whom it could be the difference between life and death; good mental health and serious depression/PTSD, living and feeling that the only way out is suicide. And that is why it is imperative that we always, always, always make it possible and easily accessible for a woman to terminate a pregnancy.

I live in NI and wanted a sterilisation, I was refused, a copper coil being fitted was the only choice for many complicated health reasons apart from abstinence, I had to wait 8 months as our local FP Clinic refuse to fit them so I had to go to hospital to have it fitted. My GP was enraged at the whole situation and he and I'm well aware another pregnancy would kill me and leave my husband with a child with significantly severe disabilities but my life is obviously worth less.

Its the only thing in this shithole of a country that the Fundamentalist Protestants and Catholic Church agree on.

Obviously all the anti-abortion posters on here think I should just keep my legs closed instead of having a loving a fulfilling relationship with my husband of 15 years? Women will always be second class citizens when their access to health care is being denied.

hte idea that sex should not be a recreational activity sits very closely to the idea that women should not enjoy sex, which is the viewpoint of many a rape apologist.

Even the Church of England (no idea about other denominations) recognises that sex is a recreational activity. Hence why they are happy to marry people in their seventies and bless all aspects of their relationship.

Not that I'm religious, and a I realise they limit it to marriage. But, you know, just pointing out that even they recognise the recreational aspect.

Vbd was it you having sex for enjoyment and not doing your duty in keeping in your legs crossed that caused you to have too many children than you have space for? And mean you can't help needy children.
Was your desire and obviously lazy attitude towards contraception the cause of this?
Maybe you could teach all the teens having abortions about self control on contraception by leading be example instead of acting like them.

And vbd the other side of kew's conversation is no fun, the one where you explain why your children have a sibling you gave away. Then they live with that too and you all live with what happens when and if that first child makes contact. And who knows if that us a conversation that goes well.

Adoption has poor outcomes for birth mothers, adoptees have their own problems, unwanted children who tip parents into emotional or financial chaos suffer greatly and how lovely that your initial reservations about pregnancy worked out ok. The women who seek terminations are overwhelmingly happy to have done so, abortion worked out well for them too.

I work with unwanted children, I look at my children and how they live and it is so easy to see why the children I work with are never likely to thrive as well as my kids.

I would still be unlikely to have an abortion but I have taken friends for their terminations. Actually I don't get the it's ok for rape victims either, that means it's ok for women in trauma - well my friends were in places so profoundly damaging g and difficult when they terminated. Oh wait the rape exemption isn't about how the women feel us it, it is a judgement on how the others deserve what they got...

Irish society's attitude towards sex in the 50s/60s etc was that intercourse was only to be endured by women undertaken within marriage, and that any sort of 'recreational' sex, particularly outside of marriage was a Very Bad Thing.

That attitude did wonders to minimise unwanted pregnancies didn't it? Oh wait...........

I've just finished watching the bbc three program. I think the most shocking thing was the poor asylum seeker who was raped who begged for an abortion, she was suicidal. By the time they decided to ok her termination, she was too far gone. So at 6 months she had a c section. So she had to endure that, her baby was then in a neonatal unit fighting for its life.
Whatever your beliefs that's not right for anyone.

What is the bbc 3 programme called please.