Royal College of Midwives backs abolition of abortion law that could see women terminate unborn child at any point

[ThatsMyStapler]

Surely the majority of people needing/wanting a medical abortion do so for very good reasons, and also as quickly as is possible.

Royal College of Midwives backs abolition of abortion law that could see women terminate unborn child at any point

Telegraph Link

he Royal College of Midwives (RCM) is facing criticism after calling for abortion to be decriminalised, without consulting its members on the issue.
The union, which represents almost 30,000 midwives and health workers, has said it gives its “full support” to the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS), the UK’s biggest abortion provider, in its campaign for abortion to be removed from criminal law.
Prof Cathy Warwick, chief executive of the RCM, is also chairman of the board of trustees of BPAS.
It is currently against the law for women to terminate a foetus after 24 weeks unless there is a medical reason to do so, while abortions earlier in a pregnancy are only legal if two doctors agree to it.
But the RCM is backing calls for the legal limits to be scrapped and abortion to instead be regulated in the same way as other medical procedures, at the discretion of doctors.

There is a petition to stop this, and they say;

"Your campaign is severely out of touch with what women actually think and want. A ComRes poll in March 2014 found that 88% of women favoured a total and explicit ban on sex-selective abortion, whilst another in October that year registered a similar figure of 85%. The March poll also found 92% of women agreeing that a woman requesting an abortion should always be seen in person by a qualified doctor. Whilst in 2006, a Guardian / MORI poll found that 47% of women wanted a reduction in the upper time limit, a 2012 Angus Reid poll found this number had increased to 59% of women."

How nice for you. Luckily you are in the minority and abortion is a legal right that any woman in the UK can choose to exercise.

Buffy, see Future's post.

"In that case any woman of child bearing age should be treated like a factory production line, just in case, they have a second potentially viable life because women and doctors can't be trusted to make decisions on a case by case basis. They should have second class care instead of individualised care."

Are we allowed to dismiss posts like these as pro-choice rhetoric?

Not really. They have other uses, as in pointing out some equally tiresome rhetoric from the pro-life side of the debate!

I would have been with anyone who suggested that any "I just don't think it is right" post could be shredded.

There are many different views on this issue, I respect other points of view. With regard to the time limit there are many different opinions as to what is an appropriate time limit

Are we allowed to dismiss posts like these as pro-choice rhetoric?

Only if we also dismiss the NHS charter than enshrines equal treatment based on gender.

I agree with the first and last, but the second is a bit muddy. A viable foetus doesn't need your body to survive.

There isn't an easy answer here.

RedTooth, men can't get pregnant and give birth.

No they can't. How observant of you to notice that.

However the NHS charter still says that we should be treated equally to men.

The law in this country also says that unborn child does not have any rights.

I suggest if you do not think women should have individual care that you challenge both of these.

Rather than focusing on changing abortion law, we should be focusing on improving mental health care and domestic violence support, particularly for pregnant women.
Current legislation already allows for later termination where the mother's life is at risk or if the baby wouldn't survive anyway.
And while changing the law might help some victims of domestic abuse it will likely hinder others as an abusive man is just as likely to force a woman to have a late abortion she doesn't want as to continue with a pregnancy she'd rather end.
I'm not in favour of criminalising vulnerable women at all, but l guess legislation protects people (unborn babies included) too.

Women already are treated as a production line in certain countries. Constantly treated as being pre-pregnant, so that, if they make any choice, even without knowing they were pregnant they can be imprisoned for the effects that choice has on any future choice. Even if the effects are nil.

It would probably be best for the RCM to concentrate on bringing the whole of the UK into the 21st century first so that we don't have parts of it where women have no viable choice and are forced to give birth. Although decriminalising women would do the same thing so there's no downsides at all to it.

Although fetuses do not have legal rights, there have been several high profile cases recently where people men have been convicted for child destruction - causing the death of a viable fetus when attacking the mother in order to cause the death of the baby

Yes because that's an assault on the woman's body isn't it?

RedTooth, I just thought I would point it out as it seems to be something you've overlooked. It's not as if men are being allowed to have abortions and women aren't.

"Rather than focusing on changing abortion law, we should be focusing on improving mental health care and domestic violence support, particularly for pregnant women. "

Good point ColdTatty

(No expert)
No i think it is a separate charge so you get charged with both gbh and child destruction. Its v hard to get a conviction as you have to prove the baby would otherwise have been viable so late stage pregnancy only and otherwise healthy
The cases are pretty horrific. There was one last year i think

If I'm thinking of the same cases as bombardier then the child destruction charges were on top of the assault / attempted murder charges brought for the offences against the mother, and they were able to be brought because the foetus was viable (24 weeks plus) so I guess that means the unborn child had its own rights in addition to the mother's rights.

It's a separate charge of child destruction that recognises the foetus, not just the mother, as a victim of the crime.

I think there's something very sad about a world in which a doctor would probably be prepared to inject a baby with a lethal injection (with no ethical issues) - a baby who might only be in ICU for a night or two - but would not be prepared to induce the same baby's birth on ethical grounds. That, to me, a is a fucked up world right there.

I do actually have intimate understanding of what mental health issues are like, of what domestic violence can be like, and of the abysmal services provided to women in this position. I feel very deeply about them, although that has not been the focus of my emotion on this thread. However I also feel deeply about the baby in this picture and I don't think responsibilities vanish because we're having a hard time. I have lived with a woman who was suicidal as a result of domestic violence and rape and another who was suicidal and hospitalised during her unplanned pregnancy but is so thankful that she and her baby came through it together. I know exactly what it looks like to be on suicide watch. I know how quickly it can happen and how quickly it can go. I have also suffered personally because of the lack of mental health support for women. That is the real conversation we need to be having - how many women having late-term abortions would find the support they need to cope with a potentially dire fall-out? How many women are desperate to end their pregnancy because they simply lack the support that would have enabled them to make a different choice?

When I say 'why can't a woman put up with the pregnancy for a few more weeks?' and 'what's so stressful that could justify ending the baby's life?' I do, contrary to appearances, know what I'm asking. I accept that in some situations it's too big an ask. However, I think those situations are few and far between, and the law already provides for them.

I trust women as much as I trust men. Quite a lot, but as individuals we all need to be bound by collective rules made fairly and ethically. I don't think the women in this country are superior to those in China or India, where abortion on grounds of gender has distorted the population demographic. I don't think we can leave decisions that have huge implications for our society as well as the life of one woman to one woman and her doctor.

At the end of the day, we're talking about killing a child. There needs to be a heck of a good reason to do that. I deeply believe that killing or endangering a child is a bigger deal than a temporary curtailing of bodily autonomy - but if there is no possibility of carrying to term, we should be giving that child a chance by inducing early. In the long run, it won't help the woman involved to know that her baby died. To remove the baby from her immediate situation is as much as she can expect, I think. She has no right to decide if it lives or dies.

To the poster who said that no adoptive parents would be available for a relinquished child - you're wrong. There is a waiting list for newborn babies (though I'm strongly against a woman giving up her child if there's any way to keep them together).

As someone who has had an abortion (6 weeks) and strongly regretted it despite going through 2 doctors etc, I agree with early poster Kate and would worry that late abortion is going to have massive mental health implications on women. For anyone thinking it is a necessary evil to allow abortion up to 40 weeks, I'd do some reading up on how they perform that sort of abortion.

It's ridiculous that abortion is illegal in some parts of the world, especially our neighbours in NI but letting it happen beyond 24 weeks for me is a bad idea. And I agree that the mental health of any medical staff having to perform late stage abortions (in 3rd trimester) should be considered.

Giving women more choice over better contraceptives would be a good starting point. Large numbers of unwanted pregnancies are due to women being concerned about side effects of the pill, allergic to condoms, cannot have any hormonal contraceptives etc - and perhaps if we focussed on improving contraception we would avoid all this genuine trauma.

I do actually have intimate understanding of what mental health issues are like

No you don't. Otherwise you wouldn't use the appalling language of blame that you do.

I did have a thought when I went walking earlier.

It's about women aborting foetuses late in the pregnancy due to mental health problems

I apologise if this is upsetting to anyone!

Someone mentioned a couple of pages back that a woman with serious mental health problems that is getting worse with pregnancy should be allowed to terminate for her own mental health. Even if it's 35 weeks plus. Someone objected and the argument back "was what should we do? Confine them and sedate them until birth?"

Anyways when I was walking I was thinking. Could a woman with mental health problems actually be mentally sound enough to be approved for a late term abortion? Doctors already administer medication without the patients consent when they are institutionalised because they are not of sound mind enough to consent. Could we in theory say that women can not make the decision to terminate late in pregnancy due to mental health issues because they are not sound of mind?

Does that make sense? It did in my head
Again sorry is this upsets anyone.

"Anyways when I was walking I was thinking. Could a woman with mental health problems actually be mentally sound enough to be approved for a late term abortion?"

I've actually wondered this myself NeedA. It does make sense IMO and is definitely a question worth asking.

So, Goneto

Can you tell me how much a woman should have per annum to keep this precious baby, shall we put the starting salary at £20,000 and tax everyone to maintain these children. And foster care is precisely that amount, starting, dependent on how many children they have.

Having a child incurs costs. The tax payer should fund it if they feel so virtuous.

Elendon, that sounds very much like you're putting a price on a child's life. Surely not?

But we do put a price on a child's life. All the time. We factor in the price of everything we do in life. How many times have we heard if you can't afford children then why have them?

This is not about the price factors though it's about decriminalisation of women who choose to have an abortion, a medical procedure.

Keeping a premature baby alive costs the NHS a lot of money. Tax payers money. Thankfully we live in a society that supports this.