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."

Buffy, you keep revisiting the organ donation analogy but there really is no equivalent comparison to pregnancy that we can make for men.

I don't think this is about thinking women are 'owned' etc. Women are different to men. Men never have to consider the consequences that their actions on their bodies may have on another life/potential life (depending on your definition.) It is the existence of this other life/potential life that is what causes people to react to decisions a woman may make, not the fact that it happens to be a woman carrying it.

This issue evokes many views, and many people have strong options at both ends of the spectrum. We are all entitled to our views which does not mean that we have the right to insult or goad others, however debate and the statement of views is different.

I believe that the issue is not merely the concern of the pregnant women, just as I believe a how a child of 2 or 3 is treated is not merely a concern for the family. I take the view that society should protect the foetus , I acknowledge that not everyone thinks this way, however the date at which terminations are permitted is the issue. The nearer that this approaches the time when a birth becomes viable the more a termination in my view becomes unacceptable. I do not believe mental health issues of the mother should have bearing on this date. A termination is a termination regardless of the mental health of the mother, in fact such an act could have very negative effect.

given that most pro-lifers are in favour of termination at any stage if a woman is in severe danger

And what about the danger of women dying in childbirth, not because she was denied chemotherapy or something, just because of common childbirth complications? This is a very real danger. Not so long ago, more women died in childbirth than men died in war! And you don't know if it will happen before the birth has taken place!

Your claim that you only want to "even it out" is ridiculous. Either you force a woman to donate her body to a fetus, with all the consequences that implies, or you don't. You force her, her blood is on your hands.

Your claimed being in favour of termination if a woman's life is proven to be in danger is perhaps 5% compassion for a woman, but I am not sure it even counts, considering that women also die from attempts to terminate unwanted pregnancies at home exactly because of anti-choicers.

Also, not all anti-choicers share your stance. And apparently, the governments of whole countries are completely in favour of not only killing women by childbirth, but also forcing eight year old girls to give birth to their own half-siblings after their fathers raped them, and similar atrocities.

Where do you draw the line? Is an eight year old girl allowed to have an abortion? Is she allowed if the child is from rape? Or only if it is from incest, too? Is she allowed if her life is in danger?

@SolidGoldBrass: Exactly. A woman having an abortion does not affect others at all. And yet, if a man rapes a woman, there will be endless arguing over whether he really, really deserves to go to jail (at least with date rape, which most rapes are), but if a woman terminates her pregnancy, that may well have resulted from rape ... then she is punished. So, it is more legal for a man to impregnate a woman against her will than it is for a woman to undo that crime. That's horrible.

I don't find it a useful comparison as an organ can't live without a host (or maybe it could, in a sort of organ incubator??) but an unborn baby of x weeks maturity most certainly can.

VestalVirgin, it's late term abortion being discussed here. At that stage, the woman will still have to 'give birth' with all the risks that involves. Late term abortions aren't exactly risk-free procedures.

"It's about the person who needs the transplant"

I am trying to understand! really I am.

Late term abortion? It's vile.

I would like the time limit reduced to 20 weeks or so. Tough shit.

In this basis I'm not sure I agree with decriminalisation either.

Buffy, you keep revisiting the organ donation analogy but there really is no equivalent comparison to pregnancy that we can make for men.

How convenient for men, isn't it?

I fail to see how it is not equivalent. The only difference is that you would have to actively DO something to save a child's life by forcing a man to donate his organs, while you can just sit there and do nothing (except opposing abortion, that is) to force a woman to give birth.

I am sure there is a great ethics essay somewhere on why people feel it is worse to harm someone by doing something as opposed to harming someone by inaction. But I do not think the difference is all that great. Not if you are actually doing something to harm women, namely opposing safe abortions and punishing those women who survive their unsafe, abortions.

Men never have to consider the consequences that their actions on their bodies may have on another life/potential life (depending on your definition.)

So, you don't think men should consider the consequences whenever they stick their dicks into a woman's body?

Women don't get pregnant by air pollination, you know? For every abortion that takes place because pregnancy is not wanted, there is a man who put his dick into a woman knowing full well she didn't want to be pregnant. Do his actions have no consequences for the life of the unwanted fetus?

Your arguing is nonsensical. Of course everyone feels entitled to make decisions over women's bodies because we are women. Being able to get pregnant and being oppressed as a woman is one and the same. Patriarchy would not exist if there weren't two sexes.

And the laws on abortions would be very different, I am sure, if everyone was a hermaphrodite.

VestalVirgin, it's late term abortion being discussed here. At that stage, the woman will still have to 'give birth' with all the risks that involves. Late term abortions aren't exactly risk-free procedures.

Your point? It is not your place to make another person's medical decisions for them. If the choice is between two similarly dangerous things, it is still the person facing the risk whose choice it is.

Also, if late term abortions are so, so very terrible (which I do not doubt they are), then why do you think they need to be illegal so those stupid women don't get them nilly willy?

I have mentioned earlier that I am aware of the risk that a woman could be coerced to have an abortion, late term or not, and think there needs to be precautions so that cannot ever happen.

I trust that no one would choose late term abortion without a damn good reason.

I guess it's the whole active/passive thing. You can choose not to donate an organ but you couldn't go and shoot the person who needed the transplant.

No need for histrionics Virgin, we are (mostly) not living in a world where women are refused access to an abortion. In fact they have it in most of the UK for much longer than many other places. So while it might be nice to stitch up this thorny ethical issue with the image of a woman bleeding to death, its manipulative and dishonest to try. That's not the spectre you're dodging here. For the vast majority of women who have six months to access a free abortion, that outcome has already been avoided.

As for the risks of childbirth, have you researched what goes into a late-term abortion? Risk free it is not.

buffy you seem like an intelligent person and I'm genuinely mystified that you're so hung up on a corpse and an organ donor. A baby is not an organ. Rules made hundreds of years ago have nothing to do with that. You're also cherry picking your arguments, flitting between organ donation (as if your baby is a kidney) and woman-as-vessels (if this was relevant we'd be more likely to protect women from forced abortions).

And less of the forced birthers digs if you please. Unless you want to be insulted in kind - no one's calling you baby killers, for instance.

Nice twisting there VistalVirgin.

The whole 'if men could have babies the law would be different' argument seems silly to me. It's your opinion that would be the case. It would require people to change their opinion on the value of life/potential life which I don't think is built in to the sex of the person carrying it at all.

My argument is not nonsensical. You just don't agree with it. If you want to blame 'The Patriarchy' for everything then you go ahead and do so. I'll disagree with you on that.

My point is that you can't argue that a late term abortion is less risky than 'childbirth complications' as you presented up thread.

I believe Buffy has explained several times that the fetus is not being equated to the organ, but to the recipient of the donated organ. Is the repeated misunderstanding of this wilful?

jailed for life for killing unborn baby

I just dont really think the comparison makes any sense. I really dont understand it. So the fetus is a person you could choose to save by giving a blood donation to? But instead you choose to inject it with something that will kill it?

It's not wilful, I do promise.

I've read back a way, having trouble with these pesky pages and I can't just scroll back or ctrl find all of buffy's posts easily.

"Shooting someone and refusing to consent to organ donation has the same effect, if they die as a result."

Except in one case you're actively killing them and in the other they could potentially survive (eg if another donor is found). In this case, it turns out that the baby doesn't need the donor anyway - they can survive without the 'donated organ' - that's why it doesn't really work as an analogy.

Yes, I look forward to it

This is why the legal/ethical rule has to be that life begins at birth. Because to view it (or legislate for it) being any other way removes rights from the woman and makes her a container for a foetus rather than a person.
The theoretical possibility (given than no one has ever, ever, EVER been able to produce a documented case of this happening) of a woman choosing to abort a healthy foetus from her own equally healthy body at 36 weeks or whatever is simply not a big deal. It doesn't matter, because it's only going to happen in such a tiny, tiny number of cases.
Whereas the number of real women who die because they are denied access to abortion, even when the foetus is unviable, that matters. There are lots more of them. Some die from trying to self-abort. Many die because the pregnancy kills them, or a known complication of the pregnancy kills them, because labour and birth are more dangerous for women than early abortion anyway. Because the more people mess up the issue with misogyny, sentimental bullshit and a mindset which basically is rooted in the idea that women are sluts who shouldn't have sex without suffering for it, and who can't be trusted not to make wicked 'selfish' choices (ie ones which put their own interests first), the more women will die. Needlessly.

"The theoretical possibility (given than no one has ever, ever, EVER been able to produce a documented case of this happening) of a woman choosing to abort a healthy foetus from her own equally healthy body at 36 weeks or whatever"

Where would this documented case be seeing as abortion of a healthy foetus from a healthy body is currently ILLEGAL?

This thread is discussing changes that could result in late term abortions and you still haven't explained why you insist that a woman has to abort rather than induce at that stage to have bodily autonomy.

People's ideas about the value of life/potential life are not rooted in misogyny and it has nothing to do with thinking that women are 'sluts'.