Does Mumsnet really support illegal abortions?

[saturnvista]

Just that, really. Read it on my facebook feed. Surely not?

"Does Mumsnet really support illegal abortions?"

Why on earth not? "Illegal" in some fundamentalist religious state doesn't mean it is inherently wrong.

It is illegal for women to drive in Saudi Arabia. Would you not say it is perfectly fine for them to drive a car in the UK? It is illegal for women to wear a bikini and sunbathe anywhere near men in Iran. Would you not say it is perfectly fine for Iranian women to put a bikini on and go to a beach in the UK?

I support it, everyone should have the right to make decisions over their own body.

I think it's a bloody good charity that mn has chosen.

Why on earth not? "Illegal" in some fundamentalist religious state doesn't mean it is inherently wrong.

Absolutely spot on.

Wow. Fastest invocation of Godwin's Law ever. I'm not really sure you can compare a country not offering abortion as a result of several democratic referenda to change that law the same as Nazi Germany.

I fully support the campaign to repeal the 8th in Ireland which is archaic and ridiculous. The human rights angle just seems incredibly OTT in relation to travelling to get an abortion. The human rights angle of actual import in this debate arises from women not getting adequate treatment and being put in life threatening situations because of legal hamstringing as a result of this law. The human rights angle is about healthcare and the status of women in pregnancy where their personhood is not legally respected.

Travelling for an abortion when you already have to pay for healthcare and when that costs you probably fifty quid more? Wrong, yes. Inconvenient and unkind and lacking in compassion and unnecessary and unfair and unjust. Yes, yes, yes. A human rights abuse? No.

"Illegal" in some fundamentalist religious state doesn't mean it is inherently wrong.

I agree with this. It is inhumane in the extreme to force someone to go through with an unwanted pregnancy simply because a moral code born in a Middle Eastern desert over 2000 years ago by a tribe struggling for survival has enshrined women's primary role as "breeder" in its rules.

In addition to being a strong supporter of Irish women's rights to come to the UK to have legal and safe abortions here I'm also supportive of the woman in the thread the other week who sends medical abortion medication to women where it's not yet legal. Morally she's completely in the right, even if legally she's not.

Isn't 'MN supports illegal abortion' just a complicated situation encapsulated in a smear?

"Isn't 'MN supports illegal abortion' just a complicated situation encapsulated in a smear?"

Well, isn't the thing it's commenting on, a mixture of over-simplification, assumptions and smears in itself?

A democracy's decision on a very difficult ethical problem. Women who can actually exercise choice in several different ways. A law that is just not applied in the way this charity or the newly (weirdly) partisan Amnesty "we know what's best for Ireland" UK imply even vaguely, at all.

Even the assumption that in a place called "mumsnet" everyone is in favour of abortion, and if you read people's comments, the assumption that the ones who aren't can be characterized in a simplistic way. I think we are all in favour of women getting safe medical treatment, but there is a lot of "presentation" of the matter as resolved, and of Ireland as some sort of European Iran, going on from British charities regarding the abortion DEBATE in a DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC that is Ireland.

We have made some strides in recent years, but the fact of the matter is that there is an incredibly rotten conservative Catholic core to the Irish political system. Education in particular is absolutely riddled with Opus Dei members from the boghole of nowhere (the requirement for fluent Irish will do that) but it's all through the system. Change on matters that the RCC does not approve of is way more difficult than it needs to be.

Anyway - nobody under 31 (a large proportion of those directly affected) has had a vote on the issue - the last referendum was in 2002, when we voted against tightening the laws further. The 8th amendment was passed in 1983 after a vicious campaign and some serious shenanigans from the RCC (including wheeling in senile nursing home patients to vote). I want to exercise my democratic right to nuke the 8th from orbit, and I'd appreciate if the next government would give a chance to do that. It is on the list from the Constitutional Convention anyway.

My concern is that abortion is a medical procedure. Whether or not women have a right to it, here are problems with offering any kind of medical care that is not 'legal' in the sense that it's not regulated and given within a context of follow-up medical care. That would be my concern if the charity in question is sending medication in the post that it is, in fact, illegal to consume in the country it's being sent to. I don't know the details so don't know if this is happening. I understand there is a sense in which the Ireland's laws are driving women who choose to have an abortion to do it this way.

saturnvista Mumsnet giving week is supporting the Abortion Support Network. ASN help women travel from the ROI/NI to the mainland UK to access private abortion. This is legal. They do not send medication to women, that is done by another organisation called Women on Web, and by individual activists.

From experience and as far as I can remember, the main adverse side effects of the commonly used medications (which are also used to treat missed miscarriages) that would need medical attention are heavy bleeding/haemorrhage and incomplete miscarriage. The form I had to sign stated that if either of those occurred I'd be taken to theatre for a D&C. If someone was to receive the medication in the post ad have either of those side effects and needed medical attention they could present at hospital with a "miscarriage" and receive treatment for that as the symptoms and potential treatments are the same.

This is a New York Times article about the charity that posts women abortion pills:

www.nytimes.com/2014/08/31/magazine/the-dawn-of-the-post-clinic-abortion.html?_r=0

They do it for women all over the world. They are real doctors and have been doing this for a long time. The pills are well-sourced and not "dodgy".

But this is a course of action only for the most desperate of women.

And it is illegal.

Under the new legislation an Irish woman who takes these pills could be sentenced to up to 14 years in prison (although, in practice, such a conviction is not likely - the authorities only want to seize the pills, they have no interest in prosecuting women who use them for now. It would be a political firestorm).

T?here s poster on here, AbortionFairyGodmother? I think, not 100% but something like that who makes no bones at all about the fact that she supplies abortion drugs by post.

There was a thread the other day regarding her name, and it became a discussion about her services, since then the 'MN supports illegal abortions' stuff seems to be doing the rounds on fb and I think in the press, pretty sure that's where it stems from.

This thread.

Belfast, today. Heaven knows what will happen here today, it's a small step. It's not enough, but a small step is better than nothing for the minute.

Hopefully something positive will come from it, TFMR at the very minimum would be good to see.

Well yes ggglllll [comfised]

It's a complicated situation.

Posting on fb as if there is a definable MN consensus with a pithy headline is just stupid,

Comfised = just had wine.

No abortions should be illegal or unsafe in the first place.

I support a woman's bodily autonomy as am absolute fundamental human right until the baby is a seperate being.

Think it's fantastic of women to send other women the abortion pill. Bloody brilliant.

I'm a supporter of choice. If you don't want an abortion, it's your choice not to have one. If you do want an abortion, or need an abortion seeing as want and need are not always mutually exclusive, then that should also be your choice to have one. It should be a private matter, between a woman and a medical professional, free from state involvement.

"I think we are all in favour of women getting safe medical treatment, but there is a lot of "presentation" of the matter as resolved, and of Ireland as some sort of European Iran, going on from British charities regarding the abortion DEBATE in a DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC that is Ireland."

This, exactly. I've been trying to say this in far too many threads like this over the last few months and finding it hard to say I'm sufficiently few words to make sense. This sums it up.

I would venture to suggest that anyone who holds the two viewpoints simultaneously that (a) women have a right to safe medical treatment and (b) abortion should be illegal is ignoring history and precedent. Anywhere that abortion is illegal causes health problems for women.

If it wasn't for "British charities" such as ASN a lot of Irish women simply wouldn't be able to access much needed healthcare. I don't know if the implication is that they and amnesty are interfering with us in Ireland, but I for one am very grateful that they are.

While I support choice absolutely I am concerned about women being sent an abortion pill by post. This is purely because women cannot always know what they are getting when buying over the Internet. ...or even not buying.
If the person doing the sending is from a bona fida charity or medical organisation it's different as they will be getting their supplies from a quality controlled resource.
Abortion needs to be legalised wherever it's needed....and that is everywhere.

And... this charity changes the law, how? The major health complications in Ireland arise from major issues with incredibly poor wording of a constitutional amendment which puts all pregnant women at huge risk, not because some women need fifty quid or two hundred and fifty quid to get the boat or the plane to end a pregnancy.

I would venture that anyone who thinks that ASN are the answer to the problem of abortion being illegal in Ireland is being incredibly naive.