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?

That's because it's the woman's body, bumbley and she has every right to make that decision. It isn't going to have any effect whatsoever on the man's health, nutrition, general wellbeing, mental health. So yes, we have the right to decide.

Oh, and we are all just 'bundles of cells' actually. We may be thinking and reasoning beings, but we're made up from 'bundles of cells'.

Enormouse, you are entitled to your opinion. I said at the start that I didn't expect you to agree with me. You were in no way forced to engage with me when you know what my opinions are. I don't know what advice you were given - only you know that.

"I am not a vessel for carrying children as you and this government seem to think"

Again, I don't think that. Saying it lots doesn't make it true.

Presumably you knew the laws when you moved to NI? If I wanted abortion to be available in the same way it was in England then I wouldn't choose to live in Ireland/NI. Plenty of people have said that they wouldn't live here for that very reason.

biro, sorry dear but it's a really crap analogy. I don't think an embryo in a fridge is more important than a live child. Where have I ever suggested that it is? That embryo is more than likely going to be destroyed anyway. It has no potential to live unless it's actually going to be implanted into a woman. How can I make this clearer for you because you seem to be struggling to let go. If I save the child, the child lives, if I save the embryos I have a bunch of embryos - they're not going to grow into children by themselves you know.

Hang on, hang on. So all the women in NI/ROI of childbearing age need to move to England so they can access a free, safe and legal abortion?
It's my fault for living here, near the support of my Dps family, going to university here.

Fucking hell, you hear these words you speak right?

"Presumably you knew the laws when you moved to NI? If I wanted abortion to be available in the same way it was in England then I wouldn't choose to live in Ireland/NI."

So basically if you don't like it, stuff it, you shouldn't have come to live here? Charming. I presume I (as a native Irish resident) should also just leave my job, home, friends, and family if I don't want to "suck it up", rather than (as I have been doing all my adult life) protesting for the laws the change.

Apart from completely ignoring all the other ENTIRELY VALID REASONS why someone might end up living somewhere, it also assumes that the laws as they stand on this island are some kind of immutable truth/WILL OF THE PEOPLE and are never, ever, going to change. Which is frankly ridiculous.

Hold on a minute bumbley, I've lived in NI all my life, I'm in my 40s - are you seriously suggesting that in order to receive the same legal rights as a woman in another part of the UK that I should move?

You're aware that NI women are British citizens and pay taxes towards the nhs? Yet they can't access free abortions on the nhs.

"Fucking hell, you hear these words you speak right?"

I was wondering that myself. The level of smugness involved is mind-boggling.

Kid, abortions at 24 weeks happen for health reasons because, currently, that's all that is legal at that stage. Previous posters have mentioned that some women do request abortions at later stages but are denied them because they don't meet the legal requirement so to suggest that they would never happen is a bit naive.

Newborns are also unable to make decisions and articulate thoughts but the mother doesn't get to chose to end their life then so that doesn't really make sense as the reason for why she gets to choose.

That's it, drag the discussion back towards late term abortion.

One of smallest practical issues on abortion since NO mainstream political party is even discussing raising the termination limit. But it does allow for the most dramatic comparisons and emotive language.

No one has explained to me yet why make exception due to rape? Can I have an answer now please!

She gets to choose what happens to her body. Once a child is born, she doesn't get to choose what happens to the child's body if that involves harm in any way. The operative part of the sentence is child born.
Stop playing stupid semantics. Try to have a reasoned and logical argument.

As for abortions after 24 weeks, where is your evidence. You're frequently asked for evidence on these threads and yet you never provide it.
What percentage of abortions over 24 weeks were for reasons other than disability. None. Now, you will say that's because it's the law. But strangely there are no women accessing back street abortions at this point, so there is in fact no demand for them. And even if there were, what business is it of yours?

"they're not going to grow into children by themselves you know."

Indeed, and I think you've just (inadvertently) made one of the points that many others were trying to make. The embryo is entirely dependent on a womb to become a self-distinct person. That womb belongs to an independent individual, who has the right to decide not to be an incubator for something that cannot survive outside her womb.

Sabrina "Come off it bumbley - the men aren't pregnant, so no, they do not get a say. And yes, that is fair. Men can casually have sex with 100 different women, with no worries about it impacting on their body, or their health. They can (and do) walk away from parenthood. "

As I said, you can argue that it has to/should be that way (As poeple have done) but you can not suggest that it is fair or equal. I wouldn't try to argue that it's fair or equal that a man can try to walk away from it.

Enormouse, no, they don't need to do anything but presumably you know the laws so why expect something different when you yourself want an abortion? I wouldn't move to Saudi Arabia and expect to be able to do the same things that I can do here even though their laws are different.

"Previous posters have mentioned that some women do request abortions at later stages but are denied them because they don't meet the legal requirement so to suggest that they would never happen is a bit naive."

There's a heartbreaking document I read relatively recently, think it was from BPAS, giving examples of women who have terminations close to the legal limit. They included a very young teenager who had concealed her pregnancy from both herself and her parents, a raging alcoholic with an extremely chaotic lifestyle who had been drinking heavily and had no idea how far along she was, a woman who had just discovered her abusive partner who had persuaded her to continue with an unwanted pregnancy earlier on was also sexually abusing her older children, a pregnancy with serious complications that while not actually incompatible with life would have meant very limited quality of life and massive medical intervention. Etc. etc.

Some of those women turned out to be slightly over the 24 week limit, didn't meet whatever criteria, and were refused - but yeah, those are the women having late abortions. Not flibbertigibbets who "just fancy not being pregnant any more" and march in "demanding it".

And, as I said before, there are no legal time limits on abortion in Canada and their rates of late-term abortion are (I think) lower than the UK.

Here you go dawn. It's a bpas briefing on late term abortions.

www.bpas.org/js/filemanager/files/bpas_press_briefing_late_abortion.pdf hope you can access it. Actual figures on how many late term abortions were carried out by bpas within a certain time period.

What do you want me to say about illegal abortion Kid? I don't agree with it either. Lots of things are illegal and they still happen - does that mean we should legalise them?

I'm a govt policy official and I assure you that 'in practice, would this make the situation better or worse?' is a hugely important consideration in law-making. The majority of people don't approve of either recreational drug-taking or prostitution; the fact that there is continuing intense debate about legalisation of both is because of conflicting evidence about whether it would make matters better or worse. Certainly, I am revolted by prostitution but if there was good evidence that it legalisation would actually make women safer and happier then I would vote for that.

With abortion, this is really important because - all round the world and throughout history - women die when they are denied access to legal abortion. In the UK, we are shielded from that reality because women do have access to legal abortion and something like 1 in 3 will have one during their lifetime. Even in NI and the RoI, women are having abortions at pretty much the standard European rate (can't remember the stats but will look them up) - having legal abortion available over the border means that Irish society can pretend it is an abortion-free society when it actually just exports the mucky stuff.

So this really is critical: in Ireland, abortion laws are not stopping women having abortions. They are just making it more difficult, expensive, time-consuming and traumatic for them to do so. If abortion was illegal, maternal morbidity and mortality would leap. We know all that. So bumbley, what is your rationale for doing that? It's not good enough to say simply that it should be illegal as a demonstration of society's distaste - I can assure you that if you were the policy official responsible for drawing up that legislation, you wouldn't get past the first bend in the road.

(Imagines bumbly peering hopefully at the sky for the point she keeps missing)

An embryo in a Petri dish has the same potential to result in a person as one in the womb - it may or may not result in a live birth. I cannot see how the lliklihood of that outcome changes the position from a moral perspective.

TBH I don't believe that you are missing the point at all ; you just refuse to engage with it-

And again bumbley what should I do - move ? It would never had occurred to me when I was starting out in my 20s - buying a house, getting married, thinking of kids etc that almost 20 years later, I would still be denied the same rights as other women in the UK.

Enormouse, I think that's the document I read, or a similar one for another year. As I said, it's heartbreaking.

Cross post leedy.

bumbley so you're just going to keep reiterating it's my fault for moving here? Fine. There's really no point engaging with you any further.

"As I said, you can argue that it has to/should be that way (As poeple have done) but you can not suggest that it is fair..."

Funny, thought I just did say that. yes I did. So it seems I can suggest it, after all.

"...or equal"

In no way is it equal - women carry and give birth. Men don't. The men get off lightly.

It's awful leedy . The teens that go into denial and keep their pregnancies hidden and the women that are scanned as being over the limit. It's truly harrowing.

OK if this is accurate it suggests Ireland does have a lower abortion rate than E&W, but within European norms:

"Since 1980, over 150,000 women have travelled from Ireland for abortion. Approximately 12 women a day leave Ireland for abortions. Unknown numbers of women in Ireland purchase abortion pills online. In 2009 customs seized 1200 abortion pills which may only be the tip of the iceberg in relation to the volume of abortion pills being bought by women in Ireland. Abortion is the most common gynaecological procedure an Irish woman is likely to have. It is variously estimated that between one in 10 and one in 15 Irish women of reproductive age have had an abortion. An Irish woman is more likely to have had an abortion than appendectomy or tonsillectomy. - See more at: www.abortionrightscampaign.ie/facts/#sthash.l8pdXkzv.dpuf"

I'd forgotten, of course, that being able to buy abortifacients online makes it very hard to know the real rate.

It is a sad document. But even taking that figure, it's only 384 women over a year. Not a big number, is it.

In many cases providing better education and abortion services that are less intimidating and that invite less disapprobation would be beneficial.

I hate the rape references.
Even if you are raped... Etc.
Rape should have nothing to do with it. If you don't want to be pregnant you don't want to be pregnant and you shouldn't have to justify it with some purity test that it's okay not to want to be pregnant as long as you didn't consent to sex. It's your body regardless of how you became pregnant.