To assume if you are anti-abortion, you are...

[Hamandcheesebaguette]

...pro a full, complete and comprehensive government benefits system to fund mothers for at least the first 5 years of her child's life?

I'll tell my story, it's not particularly interesting or traumatic, but had I not had access to a safe abortion at 6 weeks then I honest to god don't know how i would have not have ended up homeless or starving.

When I was 21, I met a man. Same age as me. I was working in an airport, leaving for work at 2.45am and usually not getting home until after 4pm. My take home pay was around £980 per month. After rent in my 1 bedroom flat in the cheapest (and also not particularly pleasant) area in my expensive city, council tax, topped up my gas and electricity meters and phone bill (I didn't even have a TV!) I had £35 left to eat and pay for buses to work for the rest of the month. After only knowing this man for 6 weeks, I found out I was pregnant. I was on the pill, maybe it failed, maybe I had missed a couple, I don't know.

Should I have had that baby... how in the hell would I have been able to provide anything for it on that wage? Oh wait, I wouldn't have had a wage at all bevause I wouldn't have had anybody to care for my baby whilst I was working full time and leaving for work in the middle of the night.

So I assume, if you are anti abortion, and I had had that baby, you also agree I should have been entitled to a reasonable council property (not covered in damp or mould or other H&S issues), my rent paid, my council tax paid, plus money provided for gas, electricity, food etc. Plus some furniture (as I always rented fully furnished and didn't have any furniture of my own at 21), a TV, broadband (or maybe I should have sat in with my baby with absolutely nothing except the walls to stare at...)

Plus possible full training paid for by the government when I could have gone back to work once this baby reached school age, as I wouldn't have been a very attractive job applicant by this point.

AIBU to assume this is tour stance if you insist I should have been forced to have been a mother when I didn't want to be one, couldn't afford to be one?

Hamandcheesebaguette

Presumably they think you should have done your best to take responsibility for your choices. With respect, you were 21, not a child.

At 36 I was told by a GP I didn’t need to bother with contraception as I have unexplained infertility.

How seriously irresponsible?!

Again, yes I agree. But do they also think I should have been entitled to some form of government assistance, various options which have been discussed previously in the thread or woukd I then have been an evil benefit scrounger popping out babies to steal hard working people's money bevause I couldn't keep my legs closed?

I support the current English law on abortion including the right to abort disabled babies right up to 9 months gestation.

i didn't get pregnant at that state as I was a virgin which is another choice people can make although I accept it has never been a very popular choice with many men and women! I graduated a tee total virgin in fact. I am not sure if I would abort a child of my own but I think women and girls should have the autonomy to take their own decisions in these matters. it is definitely choosing between the life of the unborn child however and the woman's choice. All of us who have been pregnant know there is something in there. Now we might make pragmatic decisions about whether it is life at 12 weeks, 26 weeks or even 40 weeks and that might depend on if the baby is disabled as current English law recognises as a difference in terms of abortion rights, but women should be allowed to decide.

On the no sex we are British issue - in fact teenagers wisely are having much less sex these days, lives are on line and our teenage pregnancy rates are massively reduced. Good for them. Wise teenagers.

Hamandcheesebaguette

I imagine they vary. But why do you think government assistance is an entitlement, exactly? I think it is better than the alternative, obviously, but I can't see why you feel entitled to it because you made choices that led to you being pregnant.

Because, specific to my situation (Because I can't tell anybody else's story).. I don't see what the alternative is!

Hamandcheesebaguette

The alternative is that you would have struggled. That doesn't mean you are entitled to help. I am perfectly happy for you to have help (I support a robust welfare state for the sake of children, people who are ill etc.,) but the fact that you don't see an alternative doesn't make help a right, does it?

These people are pro birth, not pro life, they don't care as long as the baby is born.
They don't care if the baby will live a life of pea in, the mum dies, the mum or baby is disabled for life etc.

If I got pregnant I would have to have an abortion or the disability that I work so hard to stop taking over my body would be allowed to take over my body leaving me in a wheelchair in pain I couldn't take strong enough pain killers for, leaving my disabled son with out his carer and my 3 young children with a single mum struggling to care for them.

My feelings of being pro choice have nothing to do with how society can or can’t support women and children

I don’t think those that are anti abortion their beliefs have anything to do with how society can ir can’t support women and children

Mine belief is down to believing women should have full autonomy and from my understanding those against abortion is mainly from a belief that a fetus has as much rights to life as the women who is pregnant

That argument isn’t going to change if the women and baby would be left fearing their life and hungry

If you are discussing those who claim to be pro choice but have a list of when abortion is acceptable then that is different they are not pro life and neither are they pro choice and to me the most hypocritical

Yabu.

People who are pro-life aren't obliged to defend to the nth degree their reason for those feelings, any more you should be required to list and defend the reasons you chose to have an abortion.

And no, they're not required to believe you should be fully supported with all that you said either 🙄 You don't get to make black and white 'well if you believe X you MUST believe Y' demands of other people.

If abortion were made illegal you would find yourself in the same position as the fathers people post about who decide they don't want a child after the pregnancy is discovered - where the message is clearly tough luck mate, crack on, you still need to be responsible for this child.

Ham:

Also, there is something quite dangerous lurking in your argument here.

You say, if you are not allowed an abortion, the only alternative is for the State to fully pay the costs of raising your child. Therefore, you think the State is responsible for ensuring there are no children born who aren't well provided for.

The corollary might be: the State has no intention of paying for the costs of raising your child, but you can have an abortion. Take this point of view far enough, and what you actually have is a state of affairs where the government can force you to have an abortion, because what's the alternative?

Surely the rights and the responsibilities lie primarily with you, the person whose body we are talking about?

People who are pro-life aren't obliged to defend to the nth degree their reason for those feelings, any more you should be required to list and defend the reasons you chose to have an abortion

Of course they’re not. BUT they also shouldn’t extrapolate those feelings out to ascribe them to others.

People who are pro-choice don’t do that. Being pro-choice doesn’t personally affect someone who is pro-life. Because safe, legal abortion is available doesn’t mean you have to have one. Whereas if you’re pro-life you’re basically saying you should be able to decide what other women do with their body. That to me is indefensible.

This always called to me

Agree with all that Pengwyyn has posted 👍🏻

The important point in relation to provision for children is that if women are not to be allowed to legally abort their pregnancies, there are suddenly going to be a lot of children who need to be provided for. Because making abortion illegal doesn't prevent unwanted pregnancies. Actually it doesn't even prevent abortion either, but what it especially doesn't do is stop women from being pregnant when they feel they need not to be.

It's fine to disagree with OP that the state should be providing X and Y for any woman having a child. But when shit comes to shite we would actually need to come up with some plan to deal with all these unwanted children, some of whom simply will not have mothers in a position to provide for them even with what the state does offer. Adoption in all these cases, as we have already established, is wishful thinking. Supply does not meet what demand would be.

Forced birthers can of course say this is nothing to do with me, take responsibility (as if having an abortion isn't taking responsibility) I don't have to offer an alternative solution just because I think this is immoral. And that's true, they don't.

However, if anyone who wants to stop abortion doesn't have any idea about how the consequences of that should be addressed, really all they're doing is intellectual wanking at best. At worst, denial of what would actually happen. Institutions again, most likely. It's not like we do much of a fucking job looking after kids whose parents don't or can't keep them even now, is it? And those of us who have actually thought about what would happen if abortion were stopped are more than entitled to call forced birthers out on this failure to think.

The important point in relation to provision for children is that if women are not to be allowed to legally abort their pregnancies, there are suddenly going to be a lot of children who need to be provided for.

But is the opposite true? If women are allowed abortion, does that not remove the moral obligation to provide for children whose mothers decided not to abort?

Now, I don't think that, but then I don't think the moral obligation on the State to provide is absolute in the first place. However, you can see how that argument might be made.

No, it doesn't, and nor do I think it's a sufficiently realistic prospect to require serious discussion. If people want to have a theoretical discussion about it for the fun of the philosophical argument, fair play and have at it. But that's all it is.

Abortion is illegal where I live.
The prolifers campaigning are mainly older males.
Abortion is available to those able to pay for travel and private abortions
There is no after care or councilling.

Those who can't find ££££ are stuck with babies they can't afford and rely on the state to provide.

There is no requirement for the males to dip into their pockets.

Abortion is a choice for the rich only.

But why? If I disagree with abortion for moral reasons, I disagree with it. That doesn't mean I assume responsibility for the OP's child. She chose to have sex

Its not about disagreeing, its about if you want to make it illegal

I can well believe it greentulips. We know that financial status made a big difference to Irish women's abortion access and experience. Poorer women having to wait longer while they got the money together, take out loans, go into work bleeding after they'd taken the medication. The referendum was a class issue as much as anything else, notwithstanding that wealthier women suffered too. Savita would have been well paid.

PaulDacreRimsGeese

Well, all these discussions are at least partly philosophical but there is a strong practical component too. Some States don't provide anything. Some don't allow abortion. Some force abortion. These things can't be shoved under the umbrella of too unlikely/abstract to require serious discussion.

MiggeldyHiggins

That's semantics. Some people disagree with abortion and, as part of their disagreement, want to have laws against it. I don't think their argument overrides the bodily autonomy of the individual, but I think they have every right to that opinion in a democracy.

Its not semantics and you clearly don't understand the question here. OP explained that there was no way that she could have continued her pregnancy and had a baby, she could not afford to do so. So if someone is anti abortion to the point that they think OP should not have been able to have one, then surely that person must agree that they have a responsibility to fund her to provide for that baby. Otherwise they are hypocrites who are not pro life but only pro birth.

And sex only for procreation purposes is such a stupid and unrealistic suggestion that it doesn't deserve any engagement at all.

This is the exact teaching of the Catholic Church, which is why they oppose any form of birth control. That teaching has horrific consequences in Africa where women who have husbands who visit prostitutes have no way of protecting themselves from HIV. Because they're not allowed to refuse to have sex with their husbands.

And yes, I should think the vast majority of anti-abortionists would say that you should only have sex if you're in a committed relationship. But a lot of them don't practise what they preach.

It's also very simplistic to say 'have the baby and put it up for adoption'. That's something that doesn't happen in this day and age, women are expected to bring up their own children. (My adopted nephew was a relinquished baby, but only because his birth mum didn't realise that she was pregnant until she was past the legal limit for a termination.)

Also, the care system wouldn't cope, it's breaking at the seams as it is. There are already far too many children waiting to be adopted.

Adoption is also not a panacea, it's a hard road and a large number of children are badly damaged. I'm speaking as someone who has 2 adopted DDs, one of whom has Attachment Disorder and SPD. If there were far more families needing help, how are they going to get it? It's already hard to come by as it is.

Yes, I can certainly also understand the argument that the baby is a person and to murder it is far worse a consequence than women giving up babies for adoption at birth (and we all know what a massive shortage there is of new borns to adopt in the UK so it is not as if most of these babies would be destitute - many would go to middle class infertile married couples who are desperate to adopt a new baby)