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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

To wonder why MN is so left wing/liberal?

654 replies

cdvegan2023 · 06/12/2017 16:41

MN hates Brexit, the tories, pink toys, violent video games... you get the idea. But in real life most women don't mind buying gender specific toys/clothes and the election/brexit female vote was about 50/50. So what makes this place 90% lefty/lib when general society is either split or completely reversed? Confused

OP posts:
Missymoo100 · 08/12/2017 23:02

"So you are anti abortion. Or, to be more realistic, pro forced birth"

No, believing the time limit should be reduced is not pro forced birth.

Abortion allowed for personal choice upto 24 week when a baby is capable of surving outside the womb is imo wrong.

Pro forced birth, anti choice, etc... all terms just to make people who believe the unborn has any value look like the bad people. It's just emotive language like me calling your views pro- death, pro-killing the unborn.

DJBaggySmalls · 08/12/2017 23:07

Actual pro life people are concerned about vulnerable people when they are any age.

Missymoo100 · 08/12/2017 23:10

Djbaggysmalls- I don't understand what you mean by that

Jakeyboy1 · 08/12/2017 23:26

Wow you go away for 24 hours and a thread derails spectacularly!

Missymoo100 · 09/12/2017 00:32

Yes it has derailed .. but bringing it back into focus.. I do believe abortion is more left wing. Right wing support family and marriage whereas the left love to trash these foundations of society. They would rather focus on creating angry groups who can compete in the oppression wars, they like touting the virtues of abortion.
As for the right paying for these would be children, well the right stand for free markets which has improved living standards and created wealth. I'd rather have that and the freedom that comes with it than socialism.

nolongersurprised · 09/12/2017 03:25

Right wing support family and marriage whereas the left love to trash these foundations of society

Oh dear.

ZaraW · 09/12/2017 05:57

MissyMoo Jacob Rees Mogg would be so proud of you.....

Anatidae · 09/12/2017 06:53

You don't think it's a hugely lucrative industry that a lot of people are making money from

This is simply not true. It’s a real Cinderella service in the uk. In the USA the hurdles they have jump through are enormous - no one makes money from abortion.

Downs by the way varies hugely in severity - it’s one of the syndromes that shows significant mosaicism (not all cells have he extra chromosome sometimes.) people with downs can be very functional, or so severely affected they die within days of birth. Allowing abortion for downs doesn’t mean that people who are here and have downs aren’t loved, wanted and valuable - that’s an illogical argument.
He problem with restricting abortion is that the people who want it also don’t seem to care much about babies once they are born. So their pro life stance looks like a method of punishing and controlling women rather than a genuine love of life. Someone who genuinely loved life would be ensuring children’s services, adult services were absolutely top notch and providing a society where all were cared for. Which the left has a better record for than the right, and the liberal parties have a better record for than the conservative.

The views of Mogg are abhorrent. He has six kids but he’s never changed a nappy? Deadbeat dad basically. Useless. Believes women should be serving him in the kitchen and the bedroom, and frankly, that’s not an attitude that belongs in the 20tg century, never mind the 21st.

Vitalogy · 09/12/2017 07:14

He has six kids but he’s never changed a nappy. I think Nanny does the nappy changing.

BertrandRussell · 09/12/2017 07:32

Rees- Mogg is utterly odious, but Ithink the nappy thing is a distraction - i imagine his wife hasn't changed any nappies either.

makeourfuture · 09/12/2017 08:15

right stand for free markets which has improved living standards and created wealth

It is about ideology. All of this.

Free markets, and especially lately neo liberalism, have pulled billions out of a life of subsistence. But the dangers of uncontrolled and unfettered capitalism are real. Smith states this plainly, but people skim over that part.

The quintessential problem is knowing when to slow down. When is enough, enough? When is boom a bubble? And what happens when, during the slow periods, the trickle down is turned off?

And especially here and in the US, what if inequality, the division between rich and poor increases?

Trollingwithmyhomies · 09/12/2017 08:42

As early as possible, as late as necessary.

Nobody is forcing anyone to get an abortion who doesn’t want one, or feel they need to have one. It’s not always easy to find a sympathetic doctor in Britain which can add to stress and delay for women and their families- two doctors make the legal choice for women who come to them seeking an abortion. Hmm.

The choice is still legally not for the woman to make herself, even though these days the physical risks of having an abortion are much lower (at early stages) - and never more risky than labour and birth even right up to the legal 24 wk time limit.
And pregnancy, labour and birth doesn’t seem to require two doctors’ approval to be legal. there are very high risks to mental health and wellbeing and huge damage to personal autonomy and sex equality in being forced to continue with a pregnancy you don’t want. I’ll leave aside the potential ramifications for the resulting child because from my experience in discussion most pro life people aren’t very interested in what happens to them as long as they get to be born.

I can only guess that despite the horror of forced motherhood those who want to deny emergency contraception or abortion see forced motherhood as some kind of appropriate punishment of women for having sex. Hmm (but that would be odd because the men who had the same sex.. no punishment needed.)

Parliamentarians still don’t trust women to legally make up their mind about their own body and decide if or when they have a baby or have more children.

Claims of a lucrative abortion ‘industry’ in Britain are not right - the NHS and two major British charities provide almost all abortions to women in the UK. Marie Stopes and BPAS.

That’s not an ‘industry’ unless providing any kind of healthcare eg the NHS is ‘industrial’? which is an unusual way to describe it.

The vast majority of these two charities’ abortion, contraception, and male and female sterilisation caseload is paid for by the NHS at tariff cost. Anyone who thinks the NHS makes a ‘lucrative’ profit from providing its own services under tariff could have a look at the current funding crises in public accounts which would show the radical opposite (unfortunately for all of us who rely on the NHS). Marie Stopes or BPAS accounts are also published on the charity commission website so freely available.

There simply isn’t the market share or demand from paying customers in Britain for a private provider to come in and make a vast profit margin providing abortion here, because the service free at the point of care is already no frills (no luxuries to undercut), but at least safe.

Oddly enough, exploitatively high-priced ‘profiteer’-type private provision tends to happen where abortion is legally restricted and/or not publicly funded. Of course these services tend to be provided by people who are less well qualified, trained, developed, invested in. So they tend not to provide up to date care or emotional support, thereby dramatically reducing safety for patients, because of the stigma around being an abortion provider or around getting an abortion. They may be working at the legal margins so not be inspected or insured for what they are doing leading to all kinds of scope for bad practice or abuse. Lovely job, anti-choicers!

The private caseload in the NHS and of the British charities tends to mostly from better-resourced women and girls who have travelled from Ireland or Northern Ireland, or other European countries with more restrictive laws.

Providing 10 or 12 weeks on demand coupled with only limited public funding as some European countries do, is not helpful to all girls and women especially the least resourced or vulnerable. This group might not recognise they are pregnant early enough or for whatever financial, social, geographical reason might not have the wherewithal to get the abortion they need within the time frame given.

thankfully in the UK our Parliaments have been in the majority relatively humane (since 1967 at least) and if they are not actively seeking to support women’s choice on abortion, they are at least pragmatic.

So they accept that society needs accessible, safe and legal abortion. Otherwise individuals and society have to pay the personal and wider social cost of not making abortion and contraception available to those who need it.

Westminster Parliamentarians could do much better by women though and it is a scandal and a national source of shame that any woman in Northern Ireland has to pay to travel to Britain for an abortion.

Then either pay for her care privately, or have to lie and give a fake address to get an NHS- funded abortion. Imagine the stress, cost and risks to your privacy of having to do all that.

Westminster should act on that and should also decriminalise abortion in the whole UK in line with what the medical professional groups are saying.

XmasMaus · 09/12/2017 09:18

Most abortions do actually take place early in the UK - 80% take place before the 10 week mark. Apparently this varies from the US where they often take place much later because women find it difficult to arrange an abortion - that's a triumph for the anti-abortion movement!

10% take place after 13 weeks, and the late term surgical abortions that get brought up as horror stories represent about 1% of abortions and are nearly always due to horrific foetal abnormalities. No one is aborting a viable Downs infant at 20 weeks because they decide they can't be bothered. At that stage it's pretty much always indicative of something going terribly wrong and it's normally intensely traumatic for the woman - the stories you read are stories of devastated families who are nearly always losing much loved babies because they just couldn't survive outside the womb.

Personally, I think if you're anti-abortion the best thing you can do is campaign for a decent safety net which enables women to become single mothers without stigma and with the right financial support, better maternity and paternity leave, and sort out child support. That would be much much more effective. But right wing anti-abortion types never seem keen on that for some reason.

specialsubject · 09/12/2017 09:48

Indeed - the extreme interest of anti abortionists ceases at birth. Then the baby becomes the useless child of a feckless mother and they are their own.

Read also the story of Nathan Pearce, born prematurely at 23 weeks. Long before his death at five, his mother bravely said she would have made a different choice regarding his life support.

Crackednips · 09/12/2017 11:42

On the subject of socially illiberal views May I introduce you to --

Naz Shah who on Twitter, told those raped and tortured Rotherham girls to "shut their mouths for the good of diversity."?

www.rotherhamadvertiser.co.uk/news/view,mp-naz-shah-should-resign-after-sharing-tweet-telling-sex-abuse-victims-to-keep-their-mouths-shut_23593.htm

Or Emma Dent Coad, who racially abused Shaun Bailey for daring to be a Tory
and invited extreme violence ( lynching) to be shown to anyone daring to identify as a Tory. Nice. !!

www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/emma-dent-coad-shaun-bailey-token-ghetto-boy-labour-mp-black-london-assembly-tory-conservative-a8053521.html

Saddiq Kahn who merrily attends sex segregated events, shares platforms with Islamist terrorists and fought to get the world renown islamofascist - antisemite, Lois Farrakhan in to the country.

www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/jul/15/sadiq-khans-version-of-77-meeting-is-at-odds-with-our-recollection

Or Mr Corbyn himself who fully and publicly supported the Provisional IRA whilst they were slaughtering his fellow MP's and torturing their opponents with power drills.
And calls Hamas and Hezbollah, who have genocidal charters to kill all Jews, "his friends"??

Not Conservatives though, so I doubt they'll count

BertrandRussell · 09/12/2017 12:09

They do count. And I agree with you on Naz Shah. The others? Opinion, opinion, opinion. And, in the case of Corbyn, misinformation.

PerkingFaintly · 09/12/2017 12:10

Or Emma Dent Coad, who racially abused Shaun Bailey for daring to be a Tory and invited extreme violence ( lynching) to be shown to anyone daring to identify as a Tory. Nice. !!

You're on a freedom of speech thread saying it's OK for people to say whatever they like, true or untrue, and other people should come along and correct them, aren't you, CrackedNips.

Does that explain your post above?

Because I see nothing about Coad suggesting violence against anyone, never mind lynching.

And she didn't abuse Bailey for daring to be a Tory. She complained about the way he was presenting himself and the area.

From your own link:
Emma Dent Coad, who was elected as MP for Kensington in June's general election, claimed that London Assembly member Shaun Bailey "stigmatised" the area he had grown up in by calling it a "ghetto" when he was campaigning to be elected as MP for Hammersmith.
...
Ms Dent Coad told BBC Radio London she was quoting an Afro-Carribbean constituent in the piece and "criticising the narrative" that Mr Bailey used about himself. She said: "The point I was making is how he was presenting himself, some people found it quite distasteful.^

"He was presenting himself as somebody who came from a certain background and that that was his main pitch rather than representing everybody." Pressed on the issue, Ms Dent Coad added: "If he feels offended by it, of course I apologise, of course I do."

Now I think she's right to have apologised, not least because Bailey says he didn't describe the area as a ghetto. But that doesn't make your post any more accurate.

PerkingFaintly · 09/12/2017 12:14

And I agree with Bertrand about Naz Shah.

But CrackedNips, if you're serious in what you say about absolute freedom of speech, what is it exactly that you're complaining about in Luis Farrakhan coming to the UK?

Genuine question.

(I'm very torn on freedom of speech, and don't take the same extreme position as you seem to.)

BertrandRussell · 09/12/2017 12:19

"Or Emma Dent Coad, who racially abused Shaun Bailey for daring to be a Tory and invited extreme violence ( lynching) to be shown to anyone daring to identify as a Tory. Nice. !!"

Have you got a link to this, by the way? The one you provided doesn't mention this.

derxa · 09/12/2017 12:27

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emma_Dent_Coad
How anyone can defend this hypocrite is beyond me.

PerkingFaintly · 09/12/2017 12:29

(And apologies if I've mischaracterised your position on freedom of speech, CrackedNips. But I've seen you post a lot on it over time, and that's what I've understood your position to be. Feel free to correct, obvs.)

PerkingFaintly · 09/12/2017 12:36

If she's so awful you'll have no difficulty finding ACCURATE criticisms of her, derxa, rather than anyone needing to invent or misconstrue anything.

derxa · 09/12/2017 12:45

www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/emma-dent-coad-theresa-mays-looks_uk_5a1bd3bbe4b06494807555f8
Is this how a serious politician conducts herself?

makeourfuture · 09/12/2017 12:53

People say stupid things sometimes. People say awful things sometimes. Sometimes these things should be limited.

Tories however act on their purile urges to cleanse. Tories pass laws and lobby to further drive inequality. Tories cut budgets for ideological reasons, leading directly to tens of thousands of deaths. They organise and plan these things.

BertrandRussell · 09/12/2017 12:56

Why's is she a hypocrite?

And yes, I think that tweet was unacceptable and she should have withdrawn it and apologized.