Active discussions

Meet the Other Phone. A phone that grows with your child.

Meet the Other Phone.
A phone that grows with your child.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

Talk
AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

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

431 replies

Hamandcheesebaguette · 26/05/2018 20:24

...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?

OP posts:
reallybadidea · 26/05/2018 20:40

Haha committee relationships would never get round to making the decision to have a baby Grin

Windmyonlyfriend · 26/05/2018 20:41

Op, you said you didn't want a baby, but you had sex so there is always a risk of pregnancy.

Ahhhh yes, the complete and total abstinence from sex unless for procreational purposes argument. That ones a good one too.

cresentmooned · 26/05/2018 20:41

I was very against abortion.... until I was pregnant myself with a planned baby. I was very very ill with hyperemesis and I just wanted it to end. I kept my baby and I am so happy that I had enough support around me to get me through it. But I remember how I felt and although it isn’t the same as a young Mother, or someone who has been raped etc. I realised then that it is not up to me to tell someone else what decision they should make, they should have a choice. You don’t have to be “pro abortion”, just understand that women should have the right to make a decision regarding their own bodies.

Original poster
Hamandcheesebaguette · 26/05/2018 20:41

So can somebody suggest what I should have done in that situation if I had kept the baby.

OP posts:
AHedgehogCanNeverBeBuggered · 26/05/2018 20:42

My mum did exactly what @GrayGardens88 suggests - she and my dad gave my oldest sister up for adoption as they were aged 20/21 and still at university and could not have coped with a child. A decade later they went on to have me and my siblings once married and in stable employment.

My adopted sister had a wonderful, happy upbringing with loving parents who would otherwise have been unable to have a child. My parents could live with themselves.

NextInLine · 26/05/2018 20:42

These 'pro-lifers' are only bothered when it's a fetus. They seem to forget about the actual baby at the end and the life of the woman forced into carrying it.
Women should be free to make their own choices about their own bodies.

Sprinklesinmyelbow · 26/05/2018 20:43

I was very against abortion.... until I was pregnant myself with a planned baby. I was very very ill with hyperemesis and I just wanted it to end.

I’m sorry to be really, really rude crescentmooned but this really sums up why i struggle to respect the opinions of those who are pro life/ anti abortion. I just think you must be hugely lacking in emotional intelligence not to be able to imagine how these things must feel without needing to go through them.

Pengggwn · 26/05/2018 20:44

Hamandcheesebaguette

I am confused, OP. As much as I am pro-choice, because I don't believe anyone can tell me that something has the right to live in my body, you seem to be taking things a step further and suggesting that other people need to be responsible for decisions you made. Obviously you would have been in a difficult situation if you had had to have the baby; nobody is denying that. But you chose to have sex, you said above that you might have been careless with your pill - the responsibility was yours. Why does anyone else have to make suggestions about what you should have done?

Mummypigisalwaysright · 26/05/2018 20:44

I am pro-choice. That means if a woman wants to have an abortion I will fully support her decision. That also means that if a woman wants to keep her baby, I support our government in assisting as much a possible. Financially, emotionally, physically. Every way that counts.

Instad of fighting in pro-choice/pro-life camps, we should all be fighting for a world where abortion IS NOT NEEDED. Where there is no rape, no sexual abuse, adequate access to education and contraception accross the world and enough financial, emotional and physical support for women who do have children. It sounds idealistic, it definitely is, but that is what I believe we could achieve. Hopefully one day.

So yes OP I agree. I would have supported that. We need more support for women and less judgement.

AHedgehogCanNeverBeBuggered · 26/05/2018 20:44

I'm pro-choice but anti-abortion if that makes sense. It's no-one's business but that of the woman who is pregnant - although I think it's usually morally wrong I'd always want it to be a safe and legal option for all women.

tillytoodles1 · 26/05/2018 20:44

I would never have an abortion, but I'm pro choice. It's not up to me, It's not my baby.

TooManyPaws · 26/05/2018 20:45

They are not pro-life but pro-birth. What did all those "pro-life" nuns and priests do once those babies were born? They abused, starved them, threw their bodies in septic tanks, denied them a funeral, sold them for adoption, and lied about them (a friend who was born in Bessborough never knew he was living only a few miles from his birth mother in London till after her death; he was severely affected by his treatment as a child.), while using the mother's as slave labour for decades if not their lives. They have no morals and no moral estanding.

"I do not believe that just because you're opposed to abortion, that that makes you pro-life. In fact, I think in many cases, your morality is deeply lacking if all you want is a child born but not a child fed, not a child educated, not a child housed. And why would I think that you don't? Because you don't want any tax money to go there. That's not pro-life. That's pro-birth. We need a much broader conversation on what the morality of pro-life is."
Sister Joan Chittister, US Roman Catholic Benedictine nun.

AntiqueSinger · 26/05/2018 20:46

I would be very pro all that you mentioned. I am actually not rabidly anti-abortion, I see it as a sort of necessary evil - but I do think there are far far too many. So I am very pro to any solution that helps a woman not make that choice, and if that means reconfiguring society so that women are not shamed or held back by having children, (have a range of options available to them, temporary fostering, adoption, live in support etc) and treating life with more respect, as well as the amazing ability of women to carry, and give birth to life, then I'm all for it.

freezerfoodyum · 26/05/2018 20:46

My parents could live with themselves

Plenty of us who had abortions can also live with ourselves.

WittyJack · 26/05/2018 20:47

Penggwyn - I think the OP is saying that those who are anti-abortion should also support support for the baby once born - to illustrate just some of the actual practical implications of having a child.

She's not saying that everyone who has a baby should receive those benefits.

BananaToffo · 26/05/2018 20:48

I don't understand your point, OP.

We do have a comprehensive benefits system supporting lone parents with babies and young children. You seem to be suggesting that we don't.

If you had chosen to continue with your pregnancy, you'd have had access to all that. There are also loans/grants/bursaries available for lone parents to continue their education.

If you want to debate with people who are pro-life then why pick on a non-issue like this? Seems like you want a shouting match.

NakedBrainStrollingInManhatten · 26/05/2018 20:48

@Sprinklesinmyelbow couldn't agree more.

I think a lot of pro-life people must live a very privileged existence where they have never been in/ could conceive of a situation desperate enough to warrant an abortion.

I don't think anybody ever really wants an abortion, people don't go about their lives trying to have an unwanted pregnancy. Abortion is a service that is there to help people out of a terrible situation, not something people are happy about needing.

Unwanted pregnancy happens, and don't forget people don't always consent to sex or to unprotected sex, contraception fails, situations change so that even waiting until you're married to have sex won't always mean you're in the position to care for a child.

No legal abortions doesn't mean no one will need abortions, it just means people will be seriously injured or die seeking to terminate a pregnancy.

I'd like to hear how "prolife" people can justify caring about the life of a (not always viable for life outside of the womb) feotus over the life of the woman carrying it?

Nquartz · 26/05/2018 20:48

Instad of fighting in pro-choice/pro-life camps, we should all be fighting for a world where abortion IS NOT NEEDED. Where there is no rape, no sexual abuse, adequate access to education and contraception accross the world and enough financial, emotional and physical support for women who do have children

Too bloody right

Pengggwn · 26/05/2018 20:49

WittyJack

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.

Disclaimer: I'm pro choice.

Original poster
Hamandcheesebaguette · 26/05/2018 20:50

@pengwwn, just bevause I thought it would be an interesting topic of discussion. I don't need you to tell me what I should have done, I decided for myself at the time and do not regret my decision in the slightest.

And I don't expect everyone else to be responsible should I have had the child. That's one of the many, many reasons why I chose abortion but the simple fact is, many women find themselves in similar or worse positions so what should happen if they were forced to have the child because abortion is "wrong"? Because I could see any way of it working back then.

OP posts:
Pengggwn · 26/05/2018 20:51

Hamandcheesebaguette

Woah, OP - you asked. I answered.

Peggysusane · 26/05/2018 20:51

**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.

Wouldn't you have been on maternity leave,therefore receiving maternity pay. Or if not getting full benefits after having the baby?

Flyingpompom · 26/05/2018 20:52

OP, you have addressed me with an answer to something I did not say, please read back. I am pro-choice, as I clearly stated.

JacquesHammer · 26/05/2018 20:52

Supposed “pro-life” people aren’t. They’re “pro-birth”.

They don’t actually give a shit what happens to the mother - who they believe is nothing but an incubator - and the baby once it’s been delivered.

vampirethriller · 26/05/2018 20:53

My abortion was because I was being kept in a room and made to have sex with whoever paid the man who was keeping me there. He threatened to kill me if I didn't abort. (can't tell my mother any of that either, of course)
If I had kept it he'd have killed us both. As it was, without a baby I could get away from him and survive and I'm now 17 weeks pregnant and very grateful. I did the right thing.