I've decided to share my experience as I am going through it right now. I am sharing it mainly as a reaction to the 'jury' idea and the 'sexual practice responsibility' posts but also because it gives examples of how women's choices do not happen in a vacuum, well before the point of conception.
I have just turned 40. I have three children including a 2 year old. I considered myself 'done'. All pregnancies were planned and carefully thought out. I have recently discovered I am pregnant, but too far along to do anything about it.
Before that my husband was booked in for a vasectomy. As females, any form of temporary contraception (aside from condoms) is down to us. The medical profession has ensured that we are required to fill our bodies with hormones that change our moods, alter our weight, increase our risk of cancer, reduce our bone density or make our periods irregular if we wish to protect ourselves from pregnancy. The onus is largely on us.
If we opt out of this and our men take responsibility and this fails, the government punishes us by ensuring the morning after pill is prohibitively expensive so as not to 'encourage us' to use it as a form of contraception. I was astounded to be asked for something like £25 to access emergency contraception the following day and as I didn't have it on me I decided to return a couple of days later. As it happens I came on my period. So that was a relief then.
Except it wasn't.
I went to my doctors to discuss my 'heavy period'. I was booked in for a scan as it had continued for several weeks. Government cuts ensured this scan was canceled due to 'understaffing' and rescheduled.
When the medication I was taking in the meantime did not reduce the bleeding and my belly started 'showing' I took a pregnancy test. It was positive. Had I not taken the test I would have waited for my revised scan date I would have discovered my pregnancy at around 25 weeks when. As It happens I found out at 17 weeks.
I would not choose abortion at this stage, I saw the fully formed baby and felt her kick. It's too late. Yes, I chose to make love to my husband. Should I be 'punished' for being irresponsible as he, not me, chose the contraception method that failed? Should I be forced to sit in front of a 'jury' and discuss the intimate details of my sexual activity that night? Feel the shame of telling strangers that I couldn't get twenty five quid together for a couple of days? Explain to random people in a room how I mistook a subchorionic haematoma for a period as I burn with shame?
Had I found out sooner I would have aborted. Should I have waited for the 'jury' to decide meaning that for me, personally, every week that passed would mean the decision would be increasingly difficult?
It was my decision to have sex. It was not my decision that emergency contraception should be made expensive to punish us silly wimmins for daring to have sex. It is not my choice that most contraception has shitty side effects. It was not my decision to cut NHS funding so I was forced to wait to find out for my scan.
It is not my decision that only women who are raped are deemed to be 'deserving' of tax credits for a fourth child and that support will not be available for my family now. It is not my choice that women who have as many children as me and claim financial support will be judged 'should have kept her legs shut the scrounger' or, when I go back to work full time instead I will be judged in terms of 'why have a baby just to palm it off onto someone else to raise it'.
My husband will not face any of these criticisms. They will be my cross to bear, whatever I decide. Who will suffer because I am having this baby? My children who will either now suffer financially or emotionally because I am never around since I will have to increase my hours to full time and with so many children I won't be able to sit with each of them and give the time they need from me when I get in from work.
The points I am trying to make are: a decision about whether or not to keep a baby has far wider reaching implications than the fetus or mothers rights. The ability to make decisions over our bodies are influenced by government policy. Females are judged every, damn step of the way. Having autonomy over our bodies in the event of a pregnancy is the last decision that is ours and ours alone. The thought of having to face more moral judgment about our choice from people who may or may not fully understand the wider societal influences that have led to that point is utterly abhorrent and humiliating. There is so much that needs to be considered, not just the fetus and the baby, but other children in the family and people's attitudes to the welfare state and women's place in the workforce.
You can't have pro-life advocates, for example, who are massively against the welfare state.
I am sorry if this is a bit long or a bit deep but there is so much to consider and so many forces working against pregnant women that it can ONLY be her who makes a decision as it will be her who has to face it all. My husband is lovely and supportive but his life, his job and attitudes toward him will remain the same. My life, my career choices, my children and societies attitudes toward me will all change. Nobody but me can fully understand the impact of that.