To be frustrated that it's impossible to have a discussion on abortion ethics....

[coconuttella]

On one side there's those who believe an embryo has fully human rights from conception, and on the other those who believe the foetus has no rights at all until birth.

Both sides seem to put forward their position forcefully and dogmatically as though they're stating the obvious, and anyone who thinks the ethics surrounding it may be a more complex is shouted down, especially by some on the pro-chioice side who seem to view anyone who doesn't agree with their stance as a misogynistic slave of the patriarchy.

Personally, I'm not in either camp and find the ethical questions complex, with this being brought home the other evening when I was reading that Incas didn't regard babies and toddler as having human status until the age of 3-4 (where they had a ceremony to mark this rite of passage) and no longer totally dependent on their mothers and past the most perilous time wrt child mortality. It made me question again my thoughts on when we should a human should acquire rights, and frustrated me that any discussion on this immediately degenerates into a slanging match.

The panel should include a mother who has had one, a couple who can't conceive, a doctor, a nurse and maybe some sort of mental health expert?

This is the stupidest fucking thing I have ever read.

I am a mother who has one, I am also infertile - when married went through 4 years of gruelling fertility treatment.

If i got pregnant accidentally now (and it would be an accident, I use contraception) I wouldn't hesitate to get an abortion. Wouldn't even need to consider it.

I have 100% no issue if someone wants to be pro-life with respect to themselves, I have 100% every issue if someone wants to force their beliefs onto someone else.

OK, thanks for clarifying, Elendon. Can you expand on that?

This isn't the feminist I was talking about, Lairy, but it talks about the same idea - that pro-choicers who talk about abortion in terms of a "necessary evil" or a societal regret are wrong:

We hear what Pollitt calls a “permit but deplore” attitude from high-profile pro-choice politicians: Sarah Erdreich, in Generation Roe: Inside the Future of the Pro-Choice Movement, cites Hillary Clinton’s characterization of abortion as a “sad, even tragic choice” and John Kerry’s hope that it be “the rarest thing in the world.” It’s not altogether surprising to hear politicians hedging, but even the most ardent pro-choice activists often express reservations about the very thing they work to defend. Cristina Page, an advocate who has dedicated her career to abortion rights and authored How the Pro-Choice Movement Saved America, called abortion “something we don’t want to have happen at the frequency that it is, or even at all.”

www.damemagazine.com/2014/10/09/what-happened-%E2%80%9Cabortion-demand-without-apology%E2%80%9D

Neither of my views expressed need expansion, clarification or justification. Perfectly self explanatory.

I think everyone on this thread also thinks of it as a "necessary evil" rather than a positive boon / trip to the dentist

i don't think this either. Necessary, yes, evil, no. It just is.

And you have mischaricterised and/or misunderstood the point of the article you quote. We can think unwanted pregnancies are a bad thing without signing up to the trope that it is tragic and difficult and heartrending, which for many is just appeasement to the pro-lifers. We are meant to pretend we think it is terrible so we don't see cold hearted about it.
Well guess what, many of us won't do that, because we know that its none of our business how women feel about having an abortion. Our only interest is ensuring that she can make that choice alone.

I've seen something here which I haven't seen before: some posters say (if I understood right) that they're pro life and wouldn't have an abortion except for medical reasons. Did I misunderstand something? Isn't the exception for medical reasons a pro-choice position?

Cards, that's because there isn't anyone on this thread who holds an absolute 'pro-life' position. There are a posters onthread who hold the absolute 'pro-choice' position but everyone else is somewhere in the middle of those two positions. Being fully pro-choice means abortion on demand, for any reason whatsoever. (But it doesn't hold true to say that any deviation from this is 'pro-life'.)

Pro life is not an accurate term, which would be anti-choice.

Only person I ever read about who liked unwanted pregnancies was Mengele, who wanted to experiment on pregnant women and did not particularly care about whether those pregnant women wanted to be pregnant.
(Read this in an article about the brave gynecologist who was ordered to tell Mengele about all pregnant women and instead performed abortions on them so he'd have no one to do his horrid experiments on.)

At best abortions cause mild to severe physical discomfort to the woman who has them, so I am quite confident you will never find a pro-choice feminist who thinks unwanted pregnancies are a good thing and that there should be more of them so that there can be more abortions.

Perhaps you misunderstood something. That seems most likely.

And you have mischaricterised and/or misunderstood the point of the article you quote. We can think unwanted pregnancies are a bad thing without signing up to the trope that it is tragic and difficult and heartrending, which for many is just appeasement to the pro-lifers. We are meant to pretend we think it is terrible so we don't see cold hearted about it.

I haven't mischaracterized or misunderstood it - I said that it wasn't exactly what I was looking for but talked about the same idea - that, yes, abortion should not be talked about as a "necessary evil" or in terms of regret. I completely understand the trope and why people would not want to sign up to it - but I also know that there are people who think as I describe: that unwanted pregnancies / TOP genuinely are not a source of regret.

Elendon, I am not trying to attack you - I want to understand your position (partly because I wonder if you hold the views I am trying to describe to Lairy).

You are not using accurate words then.
Of course pro-choice people think there should be less unwanted pregnancies to begin with: this is the obvious and logical position. I do not believe that you will find a single pro-choicer who disagrees with this.
But that does not mean we all have to agree that abortion is terribly sad, or wrong, or a source of regret or angst. Of course it might be, for any individual, but that is not our business, it is hers. Abortion is not a societal regret, it is a sociatal necessity, proper access to it is one of the hallmarks of a civilised society.

Perhaps you misunderstood something. That seems most likely.

That's very patronizing, isn't it, Vestal? It's equally likely, isn't it, that you just haven't encountered this viewpoint?

I can say - hand on heart - that I know people who think that Jeremy Corbyn is a Zionist establishment stooge. Takes all sorts, doesn't it?

Re pro-life/pro-choice/anti-abortion/pro-abortion - I try to use the terms that the people holding the views use but I agree that all of them have an element of propaganda to them!

I've not thought for a moment your were trying to attack me. Your views are your views. Mine are mine.

Why you would want something that doesn't require further clarification, to be further clarified is your problem. It certainly isn't mine.

Of course pro-choice people think there should be less unwanted pregnancies to begin with: this is the obvious and logical position. I do not believe that you will find a single pro-choicer who disagrees with this.

It is the obvious and logical position, but I think that sometimes people say things they don't truly believe, as a form of debate or propaganda. So - I have met people (not hundreds, but some) who think like this. Most people I have met do not hold either a pure pro-life or pro-choice position but would broadly go along with the current legislation.

Abortion is not a societal regret, it is a sociatal necessity, proper access to it is one of the hallmarks of a civilised society.

This comes a little closer to the position I describe (although I appreciate your point about wishing there weren't unwanted pregnancies). I think a more commonly held view is that abortion is both a societal necessity and a societal regret.

I've not thought for a moment your were trying to attack me. Your views are your views. Mine are mine. Why you would want something that doesn't require further clarification, to be further clarified is your problem. It certainly isn't mine.

OK. But I thought we were trying to have a debate here.

I'm discussing my views on a thread where many contribute not debating with a single person. If you wish to debate, go ahead - I suggest you do this with a real live person though.

I think you should probably stop trying to tell us what everyone else thinks, because a) you're not doing a very good job of it and b) you can't speak for anyone else, only yourself.
You don't know how most people on any side think, and you should stop telling us all that you do.

@KatherinaMinola, that's because anyone who was fully pro-life would be completely ripped to shreds on here. (Thankfully, there have been no trolls spouting hate, which does happen on these threads. No comments deleted, which is very unusual.)

I will share my story now. I haven't had an abortion, but when I was 13 I had a baby born alive which then died. My DSis remembers it being buried. I had been through years of abuse from being very young, the first incident I remember took place when I was 6 years old.)

I had no idea I was pregnant, and the whole memory was repressed, though I had what I always thought was a nightmare of a baby that died. I'm now infertile, whether that's as a result of what happened we'll never know as I was in my 30s by the time this came to light.

It's horrific think that girls like me are forced to carry the baby to term. If my pregnancy had come to light earlier and I'd had a termination it would have been better for me, most probably. Who knows?

What I want to say is that talking flippantly about the issues is painful for some of us. It's highly personal

I didn't mean to post that right then. I would just like to add that it's because of past pain that the indifference of some women on the thread is hard to deal with sometimes. I'm glad for you it wasn't like my experience though. I wouldn't wish it on anyone.

But that's why your idea of a panel is so awful, mowgeli. Do you really think women would automatically share their experiences of rape so that they were excused from the panel? The reality is they would have an illegal abortion or just have to keep their baby. So cruel.

I think you should probably stop trying to tell us what everyone else thinks, because a) you're not doing a very good job of it and b) you can't speak for anyone else, only yourself. You don't know how most people on any side think, and you should stop telling us all that you do.

Was that to me, Lairy? Earlier I was not trying to speak for Elendon or anyone else - I must have missed her posts. I was trying to sum up what the thrust of the debate had been so far.

I have been going to various feminist and ethical discussion groups for nearly 30 years now, so I have heard various sides of the debate and (as I've said) my own views have clarified/shifted as a result. There are many, many views held on this subject, some of which we will agree with more than others.

I am finding that some people on this thread do just seem to want to shut down debate, which is a pity (and illustrates what the OP outlined).

Mittens, I'm very sorry for your experience - I don't think any of us wish to upset anyone by talking flippantly about this subject.

Mittens

I am one of the posters who has pushed the point that for many women there is no angst or heartache etc, purely because I think it's unfair to always have to caveat making the choice to terminate with 'but it was a difficult choice' etc.

In no way did I mean to cause upset to individuals, but I posted those things because I believe that the only way the subject can be properly debated is with no emotion etc - unfortunately that's not a straightforward thing to do because we're all coloured by our own, personal experiences.

Your story is awful, and I'm sorry that you had to go through what you did xx

I used the word 'sad' to describe unwanted pregnancy and abortion. I thought carefully about which word to use, because I didn't want to say 'tragic' or 'disaster' because I know so many people don't see it as that. However, I think 'sad' is fair, because unwanted pregnancy followed by abortion is something no-one would actively choose as a chain of events.
The term 'necessary evil' has caused lots of comment. I think some abortion is necessary. Evil clearly is a word with lots of negative connotations, so I probably wouldn't use it because of that...but people often use it, simply as a term that is widely used in society, for all kinds of things we have to do which we wish we didn't, so not necessarily to make a moral judgement. There isn't an equivalent, less emotive phrase that trips off the tongue...I guess I see some abortion as a necessary but sad.....this is recognition of the fact that the person needs to have it but would prefer to be in a position to be needing an abortion. I think this is reasonable because no one would choose deliberately to be having an abortion.

Regarding whether anyone else is entitled to have a view about abortion apart from the individual woman themselves, well I think they do, society does have a view and government takes a position too. That is because many people (including loads on this thread) are not happy with abortion being freely available to all women at any point in pregnancy right up until birth. We generally decide our views on this in a theoretical, macro sense, thinking about women and foetus' in general, perhaps influenced by the stories of individuals we have heard - some of them on here.
Of course every abortion is a personal experience and one woman deciding about her body and her foetus. I guess that when people have formed a macro view of the issue, that individual falls within it, although the View point of individuals within society is not necessarily based on her personally.
I think I am entitled to believe that foetus's in later pregnancy (and I'm unsure of exactly when that is) require protection. I think women should have to approach and discuss with medical professionals about this and not just decide for themselves. I think that there should be cases where they are told it is too late and they can't have that abortion. And effectively that is the position of government and legislation at the moment. Women don't always get to choose and that applies to us as a group but also as individuals if we find ourselves in the late stages of a Pregnancy we don't want to continue. I find the idea that I am not allowed to have the view that late pregnancy should not be allowed to go to abortion in certain cases and that only the woman who finds herself in that position has a right to have a view on it. We don't exist purely as individuals, but as part of society and within the values and legislation of that society, whether we like it or not. At the moment, much of society isn't pro-choice for pregnancy right up until 40 weeks of pregnancy and the legislation isn't.

But you are not engaging in an ethical discussion. You are simply thrusting your viewpoint and attributing it to everyone else who has engaged in this discussion.

An ethical discussion is listening and engaging in what people have to say about the issue and then giving your viewpoint. What you don't do during the discussion is summarise wrongly and attribute thoughts onto those engaged in the discussion as a summary that clearly are not the thoughts of everyone. Some maybe. But not all.

My thoughts about you Katherina is that after 30 years discussing this you really need to listen and engage. And perhaps understand what an ethical discussion actually means. Before you put your foot in it

What you don't do during the discussion is summarise wrongly and attribute thoughts onto those engaged in the discussion as a summary that clearly are not the thoughts of everyone.

Elendon, it's completely valid to try to sum up a discussion halfway through - "it seems that most of us think x but not y". And then people can chip in (as you did) and say "Err, not me actually - I think x and y but not z" - and then everyone else can say "that's interesting, I hadn't even thought of z". And that - I promise you - is all I was trying to do.

I seem to be under attack here but I'm not sure why - as I've repeatedly said, I don't really have a strong or fixed view and I'm certainly not trying to push any particular agenda.

I joined this discussion because you always learn something (I have) and it's interesting to hear other people's viewpoints and perhaps change your mind on some things.

I think I'm going to leave this thread now, because it's taken a rather peculiar turn. I have found it interesting to read the more considered posts and appreciate the time people have taken to formulate them.

@FaithHopeCharityDesperation, thank you. It's the problem with a forum like this, posters come with their own baggage. And as I said, objectively I wouldn't wish a horrific experience on any woman so it's good to know it's straightforward for some.

For me, it was the lack of choice in any of what I went through. My baby being buried secretly, behind my back, is probably the worst thing about it. Having an abortion earlier in the pregnancy wouldn't have been nearly so bad, I should think.

If anything, the panel idea from **mowgeli was harder to take. Rape victims would be exempt apparently, but she has never addressed how they're going to know who has been raped?? Is it going to be asked on a questionnaire or something?

I am finding that some people on this thread do just seem to want to shut down debate, which is a pity (and illustrates what the OP outlined).

I think the accusation of people wanting to 'shut down debate' is often thrown around these days when what the accuser really means is 'you're refusing to discuss this in a manner which I find acceptable'. Acceptable generally being: you must not respond in an emotional manner, you must give the appearance of considering all viewpoints, you must maintain a certain level of politeness.

And that's probably excellent advice for debating something like 'should diesel cars be banned', but not when the issue in question concerns the competence/status/rights of the people debating.

I appreciate that the whole 'can't we discuss this calmly, politely and rationally' approach is probably well-meant, but it's actually patronising and overbearing to think self-appointed referees should manage the debate like this, praising people for their measured contributions whilst gently chastising others for their lack of restraint - again, in a discussion which directly and significantly affects our own rights.

I also think it's a huge mistake to cast a veneer of moderation over extreme views, where no such moderation has been expressed. If someone on here says outright that a jury should decide on access to abortion, I'd wait until they absolutely clearly retracted that suggestion (and some retrospective rewriting of their views doesn't count as a retraction) before accusing others of hounding them. If someone takes an extreme position, I don't see why we should focus on how bad or excluded it makes them feel when people express revulsion and disagreement in the strongest terms, or applaud them for changing their position when they haven't really changed at all.

Was that to me, Lairy? Earlier I was not trying to speak for Elendon or anyone else - I must have missed her posts. I was trying to sum up what the thrust of the debate had been so far

You have repeatedly said "most people think X" and "lots of people think Y" and "everyone on this thread thinks this" and you have got it wrong over and over. Just STOP talking for other people, its offensive.