That many people believe they are pro choice but are not

[winterstail]

My understanding of pro choice is that you support a woman's right to terminate a pregnancy.

Many people claim to be pro choice but then express shock at the reason a woman chooses to terminate.

This isn't pro choice then, is it?

And also, it does take a real arrogance to hold a position that 90%+ don’t (only a small fraction of people believe in unfettered choice to term) and state that position is surely as obvious believing the sky is blue.

The implication is that you believe that the 90+% who don’t share your position are bordering on the insane in their inability or refusal to accept something you see as so blatant.

Surely no-one things it's ok for a woman to have an abortion if the baby is developed enough to survive outside the womb for example (again, excluding medical reasons)?

You better believe it! Because they believe choice trumps everything, absolutely everything. There is no other consideration because it’s so blindly obvious apparently... To hold a different view is either insanity or misogyny!

@Wind nobody has made any assertions with the attitude you’re implying.

My belief is that the issue is simple. That isn’t arrogance anymore than YOUR belief that it’s complex is arrogance. For me the choice is the absolute. The choice of the sentient, legally recognised person to have full body autonomy.

It’s all a question of semantics for the original question. I don’t believe you can be fully pro-choice is caveats are imposed. That’s reducing the choice.

Jacques

That’s exactly what Doug has done, in saying the pro-choice position is such a “simple and obvious fact” that it’s akin to believing the sky is blue.

Surely no-one things it's ok for a woman to have an abortion if the baby is developed enough to survive outside the womb for example (again, excluding medical reasons)?

Thinking something should not be illegal is not the same as thinking it "OK" of course.

Anyway, full pro-choice is probably an easier position to defend overall, as you personally impose no morality.

Otherwise you just have people imposing different limits based on their own sense of when it becomes wrong. Whether that is viability, sentience, conception, whatever point crosses their own moral line. And you get into the whole "why is your moral judment on when it becomes wrong more valid that mine" thing

JAPAB I guess my feeling is that, up to a certain point, I don't know if that's a person or not, so it's up to the woman to make that decision and the government doesn't have a right to intervene but if she's 30 weeks pregnant and the baby could survive, that's clearly a person? It didn't occur to me that people thought about it like that, I guess I need to do some more research. I don't really see any difference between a baby born at 7 months and a 7-month-along unborn baby but I know some people consider it to be a case of whether the baby is attached to the mother so I suppose it should be the mother's choice in that way. Plus, what PPs have said about late-term abortions being exceedingly rare is true.
I still think being pro-choice up to a certain number of weeks still counts as pro-choice though, sorry.

I'm fully pro-choice because for me it's the only position that feels intellectually honest and consistent. That's because it's either that or take the view that after a certain arbitrary point in gestation (that no-one will be able to agree on) a sentient legal person with capacity entirely loses the right to control their own body. They become merely incubators at the behest of the state. Personally I can't get past that.

Unless you're going to lock a woman up who has expressed a strong and clear wish to no longer be pregnant at, say, 28 weeks, there is a risk that she will probably find another, unsafe, way to no longer be pregnant. I wonder what those women do now if there are no medical reasons?

It's because of the hard-line position that abortion should be legal right up to full-term that I fear there will be a No vote in the referendum :( Never mind that it won't happen, it's the fear that it will...

Also, it's much easier to sell the positive message of 'protecting' than to sell the opposite.

It really pisses me off that this completely unnecessary virtue-signalling was ever written into the constitution, part of the 'keep women barefoot and pregnant' view.

I'll admit to finding it a bit puzzling that pro choice seems to include women in good financial positions, good health and steady relationships who willingly conceive, are expecting a healthy baby as far as they know, and then just "change their minds." I suppose I do agree with them having the choice of having an abortion but it's not a choice I would ever make or will probably ever really understand. I sort of feel they should have put more thought into whether to get pregnant in the first place (and I am definitely talking about those who chose to get pregnant, or at least to take the chance, not cases of contraceptive failure).

Surely no-one things it's ok for a woman to have an abortion if the baby is developed enough to survive outside the womb for example (again, excluding medical reasons)?

Many of us do.

I'll admit to finding it a bit puzzling that pro choice seems to include women in good financial positions, good health and steady relationships who willingly conceive, are expecting a healthy baby as far as they know, and then just "change their minds

I’d be confused by that too, but the problem is that if you start tightening the rules then it’s a slippery slope to prohibiting them altogether.

Perhaps it is easier to call yourself pro-choice when that choice is limited by law

@DougFargo do you not see that you're just as hard-line and extreme as the 'life begins the second the sperm hits the egg' lot? Most people - IMO - fall somewhere in the middle of those extremes.

Am I? Is hard line "individual choice for all" just as extreme as "no choice for anyone"?

Can you really not see how completely different those two positions are? My stance means nobody is forced to do or not do anything at all, theres means the human rights of millions of women are severely curtailed, causing mass suffering.
Pretty sure there are some massive differences in the two "extremes" if you think about it for more than 10 seconds.

Somewhat depends on if you're considering the baby or the woman. I think most pro choice people consider both

I think most leave it to the women concerned to decide whether its a baby in the first place, to be honest.

Do they? I guess that's where the problems arise regarding gestations

Not really, its all just obfuscation to score points. Nobody is looking to change the rules in the UK, so its all moot, and we're not looking at anything so sensible in Ireland, so still moot.

I don't agree it's obfuscation nor do I think anyone is trying to score points.

If someone believes a 12 week fetus is a baby then they will consider abortion differently to someone who thinks it's just a collection of cells entirely incapable of independent life.

Of course it is and they are. They always trot out that shite, "well what about abortion at 41 weeks then, huh?" Thats point scoring obfuscation that has zero to do with the actual issues.

Well if you want abortion at any gestation then you do need to consider late term abortions of healthy fetuses/ babies. I admit it's a very unlikely scenario but if it's legal then it's certainly possible.

I'm fully pro choice, no woman should be forced to carry on a pregnancy she doesn't want. I also think that the process of getting an abortion should be made simpler & quicker. I also think that if a woman asks to be sterilized because she never wants or doesn't want more children at any age she should be able to, the same for men. The age where you were almost expected to meet someone, get married then have children is long gone, more people want other things in life than having a family & there is nothing wrong with that.

I'm aCatholic. I'm pro choice. I might make a different choice to another woman but I have no right to insist she chooses as I would. And I defend her right to choose as suits her circumstances.

Well if you want abortion at any gestation then you do need to consider late term abortions of healthy fetuses/ babies. I admit it's a very unlikely scenario but if it's legal then it's certainly possible

I don't have to consider it, thats the point. The only person who would have to consider the abortion, at any stage, would be the woman involved and her medical professionals. If there were no restrictions, that is, because I believe woman can self regulate and don't need to be controlled by outside forces.

I believe woman can self regulate and don't need to be controlled by outside forces.

What a pile of shit. Some women can’t. Some women are in prison. Some women are abusers. Some women have personality disorders. Some women murder people. Some women are just plain nasty.

The argument that no woman would knowingly do this undermines your point anyway. If that is true then the law preventing it would affect nobody apart from those who would do it if the fetus was healthy.

There are laws which stop me stabbing people. I would never stab somebody but that doesn’t mean that the law shouldn’t exist to protect people from a small minority who would.

Honestly, these deluded people who think that women are some sort of perfect noble group who should be exempt from normal laws and authority because of their universal perfection have an awful lot more than they’d like to think with the sort of idiots who believed in white supremacy in the 19th century and used that supposed natural superiority to justify all sorts of abuses.