To think men have no right to stand outside abortion clinics and do this.

[QuestioningStuff]

Posted before about my pregnancy. I am having a termination today. This is not a decision I've made lightly.

I've arrived at the clinic and there is a middle aged man and his young teen son standing outside with camp chairs and flasks. Putting up awful pictures and signs. Trying to hand out leaflets.

I think women who do this are also scum but how on earth could a man think he has any right to do this? Turn up at a place where women are at their most scared and vulnerable and try to bully them?

It's really really upset me. I hate them so much right now.

I want to go and tell them exactly what I think of them but don't think that would be helpful at this time.

How can pro-abortionists, with a straight face, in any way describe themselves as "pro-life" when they actively support the "right" to deny a life? If you're killing a heartbeat, you're not pro-life, let's get that straight.

1. People aren't pro-abortion. They are pro the availability of safe, legal abortion.

1. If your definition of human life is a heartbeat, scientists have managed to have heart cells beating in a petri dish. Just saying like.

1. So is termination ok pre heartbeat? Is that your definition of life.

1. Human kind has pretty comprehensively shown itself not to give a fuck about a life far greater than a heart cell. You pretty much have to, to live our western lives without a daily breakdown. So in the scope of things, I'm not really sure you're picking the big picture.

IrishDad Have you never heard the good advice When you're in a hole, stop digging or are you just ignoring it?

Andrew, I know 90% of this forum is pro-abortion and if that's their opinion, that's their opinion. I'm never going to convince them that they're wrong, they're never going to convince me that I'm wrong. I'm happy to leave it at that and walk away, but I do take extreme exception at their claiming to be "pro-life", when they actively support the denial of a chance at life for tens of thousands of children each year.

Well I take exception to people saying they are "pro life" when what they are saying is that they are "pro in utero life".

If you insist on calling "pro choice" people "pro abortion", I am sure you will be perfectly happy for me to refer to you and your fellows as "forced birthers"

Irishdad, even if you are anti abortion, surely you can see that the choice isn't between abortion and no abortion, it's a choice between safe abortion and illegal abortion. But abortion is here to stay. Women have aborted their babies for thousands of years, and always will.

I had an aunt (now dead hence I'm telling this story) who had an illegal abortion in the mid 60s, a couple of years before it was legalised, when she was 17. She got an infection at the time, thought nothing much of it and recovered.

She went on to marry her boyfriend, and became quite a successful businesswoman. He became a pilot. They planned to have 4 kids, but the illegal abortion and subsequent infection had rendered her infertile.

So "pro life" and the lack of safe abortion cost the lives of the 4 children they would have had, who would have had a great life with loving and quite wealthy parents.

Having said that, I still support your right to protest, but I think you and your ilk are living in cloud cuckoo land.

If someone considers that abortion is murder or killing or whatever, then it logically follows that they have to consider a miscarriage as manslaughter. Or perhaps suicide? And if someone has a still birth, what's that? Murder, manslaughter, suicide, or other?

Or does the concept of "life" only come into it when you want to judge a woman for making a decision about her own body? (and when a bunch of cells are attached to her, unable to survive outside of that environment - then that IS her body).

Anyway, protesting outside clinics is harassment. It's absolutely awful, and should be banned. Peaceful protest is fine, but not when it is intended to intimidate and guilt trip women in an extremely vulnerable position. They can protest elsewhere.

It's like a bunch of people being anti divorce extremists, and protesting outside domestic abuse shelters, to try and encourage wifey to "try for the family".

Likewise, I thought people had the right to privacy for medical procedures? Not to be stared at and judged by a bunch of self righteous cunts as they walk in the door.

IrishDad I know 90% of this forum is pro-abortion and if that's their opinion, that's their opinion. I'm never going to convince them that they're wrong, they're never going to convince me that I'm wrong. I'm happy to leave it at that and walk away, but I do take extreme exception at their claiming to be "pro-life", when they actively support the denial of a chance at life for tens of thousands of children each year.

That's because you are a man who wants to control women, who is choosing to spend their time posting on a forum dominated by women's interests.

I find it rather telling that you write constantly in the first person - what makes you so important that whether or not you, as an individual, convinces people, or whether you, as one individual, are convinced. You aren't so important in the grand scheme of things. Neither is your interpretation of things that important either. Whereas the welfare of women making choices, and having choices in their lives, is, on a global scale, far more important. And those choices that women make enables them to plan ahead for viable futures, and to take part in the economy and social world that we live in. Which is in turn of much more value for any children that they might have, particularly when compared to your own, very small, personal views.

IrishDad - given you are so pro life, I assume that you would be OK with a programme of forced donation. So all of your details would go on a database with or without your consent, and then one day you might get a phone call saying 'right Mr IrishDad, you are a match for a patient, you need to come in and donate one of your kidneys in order to save a life. Whether or not you want to do this is entirely irrelevant, the most important thing is that we save a life (in this particular case, the life of someone who has already had experience of life, who has a family, who is well aware of the meaning of death and understands that they are very close to death and is terrified) here'.

Would you say, 'OK brill, after all, life must be preserved at any cost'.

Or.would you say 'er excuse me, I think I will be the one to decide what happens to my body and what medical procedures I undergo'.

When you are anti abortion, as you are, you are basically saying that women should be forced to undergo procedures completely against their will. That they are not humans with feelings and autonomy, but merely vessels or incubators, whose sole purpose is to preserve 'life' no matter what.

when they actively support the denial of a chance at life for tens of thousands of children each year.
I support the woman's chance of a life, safely, clinically. I do not support making a woman carry a child that is not compatible with life for 20 weeks. I do not support men taking that decision, I do not support Irishdads making that decision, or judging. As I said, you may plant the seed, but you don't grow it. You can't walk away at the denial of life, but you expect women to bow to you enforcing your view upon them, because that's what making abortion illegal does, it gives you power, power over another being, power you do not have the right to wield. How dare you suggest for one second that you have the right to tell me what to do. How dare you suggest that women are put at risk, day in, day out for your beliefs. How dare you think that you have the right to suggest a woman who has been raped, or forced to become pregnant doesn't have the option of termination. How dare you suggest that any woman, no matter the circumstances doesn't have the right to a termination and that your right is in any way greater than hers.

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/southamerica/paraguay/11694009/11-year-old-Paraguay-girl-denied-abortion-after-rape-to-be-induced.html

Hope this link works. Not even the forced birthers could say this is right

For the umpteenth time, a embryo/foetus in utero isn't a 'child' according to the legal and medical statues of the UK at this current time.

I can call my 8 year old an 'adult' if I like, but that doesn't mean that she is one.

No-one can stop me calling my 8 year old an adult but, factually, according to the laws and scientific frameworks of the UK she most clearly is not.

No-one is trying to force/coerce or persuade women who don't want an abortion to have one, are they? If you believe that life starts at conception then fine, don't have an abortion.

Please do leave it at that and walk away irishdad.

If you 'take exception' to people who support a women's choices over her reproduction calling themselves 'pro life' then don't use this term. Use pro-choice instead. That's the term most people who don't try to impose their choices on other use.

Umm, actually I think they would Lucybabs.

Their stance is usually that it's more important to save the life of the foetus than the mother in these circumstances.

I know Christina They would of course say they want to save the life of the young girl AND the feotus, completely ignoring that the young girl was raped, could die and she's only 11 ffs

Not even the forced birthers could say this is right

Actually, I have seen the argument on here that the value of the foetuses life should not depend on how it was conceived or who its father is. So I guess they would agree with making that 11 year old give birth, and just giving her the right 'support'.

I wonder if IrishDad would like to comment on that link?

I don't think Maria said they helped trafficked women. But even if they did it wouldn't be wrong. They believe in helping anyone who needs it.

Fizzy, it certainly wouldn't be wrong to help trafficked women, but given that the likelihood is that they are pregnant because they have been forced into prostitution and effectively raped, would it really help them to dissuade them from abortion?

They do help immigrants who aren't illegible for benefits & slip through the cracks AFAIK

Immigrants who aren't eligible for benefits can only be illegal immigrants. The problem with helping them throughout their pregnancy and beyond is that, if the charity does this, it would be aiding and abetting illegality.

Good grief - www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/centralamericaandthecaribbean/elsalvador/11412928/El-Salvadors-Las-17-the-women-jailed-for-30-years-for-losing-their-babies-by-miscarriage.html

They do have a right to protest, of course.

There's a trend on MN at the moment to call people trolls for having a different viewpoint. It's very annoying.

I disagree with Irishdad but he isn't a troll. A troll is someone who says "I'm glad you've got cancer" or "I hope your mum dies". That's a troll, not someone who holds a different view on abortion.

I got reported as a troll by some loon on the benefits cut thread for just having a different viewpoint to the socialists. Fortunately, MNHQ must've told them to do one as no action was taken.

They do have a right to protest, of course.
Well, we've been there and done this several times over on this thread, but it's worth repeating: they have a right to protest, but not to harass. Their protests should be directed at law makers, not vulnerable women accessing a legal medical service.

*Because they're pro the life that matters, the woman's.

Unlike your crowd.

HTH.*

Ahem

Well, we've been there and done this several times over on this thread, but it's worth repeating: they have a right to protest, but not to harass. Their protests should be directed at law makers, not vulnerable women accessing a legal medical service.

It's also worth repeating that handing out leaflets and standing around with posters does not constitute harassment in legal terms. They have the right to target leaflets at people seeking abortion, many of whom are not vulnerable.

In the same way you have the right to stand outside a lab and target employees working on animal experimentation. The fact that your leaflets might upset them if they are vulnerable doesn't detract from your rights.

TTWK. Yes, you've said that repeatedly. I do not agree. IMO any unwanted attention can rightly be construed as harassment - if not legally, then morally.

I have seen these 'protestors' ad nauseum, as Abort 67 are based in my home county and am very familiar with the way they operate. Their intention is to intimidate and their l leader, Andrew Stephenson, appears to relish the attention his activities bring him.

Believe me, I am all for freedom of speech and the right to protest, but I think your insistence that it's okay to get in the faces of women outside an abortion clinic is extremely misguided. I don't, of course, expect you to agree.

(Total aside: I actually agree with TTWK on terminology - Irishdad may be offensive, harassing, all manner of other things, but he's not technically "trolling" unless he's actually trying to wind you up for lolz. Yer typical troll may not even care that much, or at all, about the topic they're trolling on, they just want to get an outraged/upset reaction, and if "I want Hitler's babies" gets one, that's what they post. Why yes, I have been on the internet for waaaaay too long.)