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AIBU?

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Original poster

To hope we look back on this in horror?

674 replies

Fanfeckintastic · 03/02/2015 23:31

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?

OP posts:
Staywithme · 04/02/2015 20:24

I'm an extremist

puffin is it just me that hears that said in a tone off "I'm Spartacus"?

NeverFinishWhatYouStarted · 04/02/2015 20:24

God didn't make my DCs, DH and I did.

Did you know that, as a woman, you're born with your lifetime's supply of eggs? About 5/6 conceptions don't give rise to a live birth? The earliest surviving premature baby was born at 21 weeks gestation. So, as far as I'm concerned, life begins when the baby is viable outside the mother's body. Anything that depends exclusively on me to survive exists entirely at my discretion.

PuffinsAreFictitious · 04/02/2015 20:26

Staywithme... probably not Grin

AskBasil · 04/02/2015 20:28

I always wonder if those people who blithely declare that women can just hand their babies over for adoption ever watched all those TV documentaries interviewing women who did just that in the days before legal abortion and welfare benefits for single mothers.

Women in their sixties, seventies, eighties and nineties sitting their telling about how they wondered throughout the years, what had become of their children. Old women weeping because the pain of having had to hand over their baby was still there over half a century later.

I don't know how anyone could watch that and then sit there and calmly declare that adoption is such a neat solution. Perhaps those people have never seen the programmes. Or perhaps women's pain simply doesn't mean anything to them.

ghostyslovesheep · 04/02/2015 20:28

oh I am totally an extremist Grin and proud

Icimoi · 04/02/2015 20:28

SoonToBe, I'm taking it from your reference to the fact that the unborn baby exists and disagreement with the mini pill and the coil that in your view ending a pregnancy even within a day of possible conception is wrong because the baby is a baby from the moment of perception.

Genuinely interested: what is your stance on miscarriage? Because surely if we recognise a foetus as a legal entity entitled to life from the moment of conception, surely that means we should have an inquest every time a mother has a miscarriage. And if there is any suggestion that it has happened due to a failure of medical care, the medical authorities should be prosecuted for manslaughter. And the same should apply to the mother if she is deemed to have done or failed to do anything which caused it.

Staywithme · 04/02/2015 20:29

Staywithme... probably not

Grin
AskBasil · 04/02/2015 20:31

Oh god icimoi that's already happening in some places isn't it - women being jailed for having miscarriages. Sad

queeneileen · 04/02/2015 20:32

I believe in God and I'm pro-choice.

Your body, your cells, your decision, and I'm not about to be the one to judge.

John 8:7 - let he who is without sin cast the first stone.....

LeSaor · 04/02/2015 20:33

Legal personhood begins at birth in almost every nation on earth so I fail to see the point.

Besides, in Hosea 13:16, in the book of our merciful and benevolent God, he started that he's going to rip open the wombs of pregnant women. God isn't even pro life so I feel comfortable paying my tributes to him through abortion. It's what he would have wanted.

ghostyslovesheep · 04/02/2015 20:33

I'm dusting off my bingo card:

adoption
23 weeks
rape
disability
using abortion as contraception
baby
killing babies
shouldn't have sex unless

did I miss any?

ThereIsACarInTheKitchen · 04/02/2015 20:35

I clicked on this thread having no clue what it was about and I really wish I hadn't read it as some of these responses have really pissed me off.

I had an abortion fairly recently and it fucking annoys me that so many people would want to take that decision away from me. It pisses me off that there are honestly people out there who would be okay to force me to go through pregnancy and childbirth no matter what distress and trauma going through these things would cause me just so I can hand the baby over to someone else.

I have heard people say that even aborting a pregnancy that was the result of rape is wrong and that women should "think of it as something good coming out of it" and other such crap. I think these people need their fucking heads examined.

George Carlin summed my thoughts up on this perfectly. These people aren't pro life, they're anti women.

tobysmum77 · 04/02/2015 20:36

yanbu op.

I can't get my head round the idea that's it's a good idea for unwanted babies to be born, in any circumstances really.

PuffinsAreFictitious · 04/02/2015 20:37

Keep your dabber handy ghosty there'll be more and denser misogyny along soon, I have no doubt.

ThereIsACarInTheKitchen · 04/02/2015 20:37

I have just been on plenty of threads where the extremists will shout me down for my 'extreme' opinion

Good. It should be shot down.

bumbleymummy · 04/02/2015 20:39

SoonToBe Six, I know, I doubt it too.

"It is not extreme to believe that women should have the same human rights as men."

Men don't have abortions. This is a terrible argument to try to make in favour of abortion. It doesn't make any sense.

Duchess, the 'to term' argument is because some people (it would appear that Blistory is one of them) think that to be pro-choice you need to support a woman's choice to terminate her pregnancy right up to term (early induction isn't an acceptable alternative - the foetus must die). If you don't support this then you shouldn't call yourself pro-choice, you are a supporter of forced birth and are a misogynist. Yes, seriously, people have said such things on other threads.

WonderingWillow, I think teh implantation of a foetus is an interesting idea and I wouldn't say it is completely implausible either.

Wondering, pregnancy does not begin until implantation so the MAP and the coil are technically not terminating pregnancy. Other people do have different views on this obviously. Personally, I wouldn't use the coil because I've heard people talking about feeling bits of them hanging out and it always made me feel a bit queasy.

LaSaor, I find it strange that abortion is being deemed 'civilised'. My opinions are not based on religion by the way. There are quite a few atheist pro-life people around. I agree with quite a few of your points about religion.

"the "fact" is that a zygote exists". It is a zygote just after the egg has been fertilised for about two weeks. Then it becomes and embryo and a foetus. It's not a 'bundle of cells' for very long. Unless you think all humans are merely bundles of cells of course?

Hermione, human foetuses are human too.

Icimoi - it depends on when you think 'life' has started. I, personally, disagree with termination of pregnancy. Pregnancy begins with implantation. As Lasaor has pointed out, the majority of fertilized eggs don't actually implant anyway.

ThereIsACarInTheKitchen · 04/02/2015 20:41

Pregnancy begins with implantation.

No it doesn't. Stop talking crap.

Wherediparkmybroom · 04/02/2015 20:41

Carinthekitchen.... They are also pissing me off and I'm married to a man from Southern Ireland, how dare they judge any woman for doing as she thinks best for herself and her family.

bumbleymummy · 04/02/2015 20:41

" Forced birthers hate women, simple as that."

Can we add this one to the Bingo card? "If you don't agree with my extremist opinion then you are a Misogynist!"

Dawndonnaagain · 04/02/2015 20:44

Kitty sorry for your loss. Flowers

I'm also sorry for the fact that there are people on here that think you should not have had the choices you had and that you should have carried to term.
Flowers

Blistory · 04/02/2015 20:51

(it would appear that Blistory is one of them)

Let me clear that up for you then. If it is extreme to believe that a woman has the right to determine whether she continues a pregnancy at any point during that pregnancy, then yes, I'm an extremist.

Would I like to see a pregnancy terminated without the foetus being terminated ? Yes, but I live in the real world. The real world where women are not recognised as equal human beings, the real world where women and their children are abandoned, beaten, abused. The real world where pregnancy results in women losing their jobs, their homes, their lives.

You are free to believe that terminating a pregnancy is wrong but what gives you or anyone the right to prevent another woman from having the final say about what happens within her own body ?

specialsubject · 04/02/2015 20:52

I also await the anti-abortionist (for others, everyone can make that choice for themselves) who is prepared to take on unwanted/sick/disabled children. Or who is prepared to take on the children of a woman who dies because of a pregnancy that she was not allowed to abort. It does happen.

bumbleymummy · 04/02/2015 20:52

Icimoi - why is the solution to pregnancies that result from rape making abortion available? Surely the solution to rape should be

Abortions for rape account for less than 1% of abortions btw. So if people are objecting to mentioning late stage abortions because they are rare then we really should rule out abortion because of rape as well.

AskBasil "Old women weeping because the pain of having had to hand over their baby was still there"

the significant words there are having had to - ie they were forced to give the babies up for adoption. They didn't choose to.

tobysmum77 · 04/02/2015 20:52

yes kitty sorry for your loss, my post was in relation to non medical situations Sad

AskBasil · 04/02/2015 20:53

"It is not extreme to believe that women should have the same human rights as men."

Men don't have abortions. This is a terrible argument to try to make in favour of abortion. It doesn't make any sense.

Yes it does, it makes lots of sense. If men did have abortions, it would be a sacrament in one or other of their patriarchal religions. The very reason men don't have them, is why it's a basic human right that is constantly under attack. Because human rights don't include women's rights.