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?

I've been there with termination for medical reasons. Worst decision and month of my life. No matter what, my longed for baby wouldn't survive.

It was hell. Nobody, nobody makes that decision lightly.

Every woman has the right to choose. End of.

My major issue is simply this. My lost baby couldn't be christened. It was too early, apparently.

Yet the church apparently considers a feotus a person from conception?

The hypocrisy here is staggering. Either it's a person who can be christened, or it isn't. Make your mind up and stick to a story.

MissMarple

That's just terrible, I'm sorry that happened to you. I agree, you either agree it is a person or it isn't, you can't choose to suit your argument.

missmarple I'd never thought about it like that, but that's another shocking double standard

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

I agree that there are some pro lifers who fall into this category but also many who have great care and sympathy for the women involved. Having an abortion is a dreadful thing for a woman to have to go through. The pregnancy is at least 50% the responsiblity of a male who gets off scot free. All women who have this choice to make should be treated with empathy both before their decision and after no matter what decision they make. My experience of pro lifers in my catholic church is not of people with no empathy but of people who profoundly believe that the child's life begins at the point of conception and therefore is a human life from that point. Of course we should provide for the child and mother as a state. As a pp said, though, the two sides will never agree but don't assume all pro lifers are like the right wing religious nut jobs we see on our TV screens.

I think we should talk about adoption as it's always suggested as an alternative to abortion.
How would that go?

For me, living in a small town with a 4yrold, I'd have had to tell Dd something, not sure what I'd have done with her during social work interviews and such.
The people I wasn't friends with, but know, like in my local shops and such, asking about the baby, possibly in front of Dd.

Then who looks after Dd who now knows I'm pg and giving birth.
Do I just hand over the baby, are there not more interviews?
Dd is asking where Mummy is.

The baby has gone, Dd is still asking, as are everyone in my small town, and talking about me behind my back.
This will of course get back to Dd.

Will anyone think I've done a great thing not having an abortion, and having the baby adopted instead?

Mum, mum, where is the baby, where is my brother/sister, where did they go, I want to see them □

What prolifers seem to ignore is that you can't ban abortion. You can only ban safe, legal abortion in hospitals. When I was born, abortion was illegal in the UK, and doctors and mothers could be imprisoned for performing or having one. Women died of septic back street abortions.
When I was a young doctor, I remember having to anaesthetise a seriously ill woman with septicaemia for an evacuation of retained products after she had self aborted with a knitting needle . That was after it became legal, but the stigma persisted, and as she was unmarried, she was too ashamed to go to her doctor and ask for one. She'd put her fetus in the dustbin - the police found it on the local rubbish dump. I will never forget her distress.
Is that really what prolifers want to go back to? Because I don't.

@vampirethriller My heart is crying for you. So glad your life has improved

I wouldn't describe myself as 'pro-life', as that term tends to be used by people with views at the rather extreme end of the spectrum. However, I do feel that abortion should generally only be employed either early in a pregnancy, or later on only in grave situations e.g. seriously ill mother, severe foetal abnormality, cases of rape, child abuse etc.

It really does upset me that many women are effectively driven to abort their babies for financial or social reasons, and therefore I would absolutely support the provision of increased monetary benefits (and other forms of support, if necessary/appropriate) for women who find themselves pregnant in difficult circumstances.

Op I don't understand your point either.

Should you have chosen to have your baby, you would have had access to the benefit system, which would have paid your rent, bills and other living costs.

You would also have been able to study at university, with a full bursary, as it would be given based on your income (nil if you are on benefits), rather than your parents, if you had been a parent.

You chose to have an abortion, but I don't think you can say it is anything to do with the lack of a benefit system in this country.

hibble

No I agree with you, but 1. If abortion was banned, could the system cope with the inevitable increase in claims of those benefits and 2. Do pro-lifers believe that the benefits should be in place and stay in place or are they also anti "benefit scroungers" after too much channel 5

I don't support abortion, and I do think it is murder. I know it's not a popular opinion but that is what I believe

The fact that you think this is a relevant response to the OP's question serves to highlight the clear correlation between intelligence and views on abortion.

And as for the benefits system - that's going really well too, isn't it. Those food banks are just an extra luxury, I suppose

Sorry but this nonsense drives me fucking apeshit.

We do not have mothers and babies living on the streets. We do not. There are some countries in the world where there is no adequate welfare state at all and people in desperate need have to hope a charity will come to their rescue.

No, our benefits system is not perfect but it largely does it's job. We have no fucking idea how lucky we are. To suggest women have to have abortions otherwise they'd be homeless and starving is absolute crap.

could the system cope with the inevitable increase in claims of those benefits

You fail to mention schooling medication dentist etc which should be include in those figures

The reality is that the increase in benefits claims would be a very small percentage of the overall bill, as the majority of benefits are not claimed by those of working age (which mother would be).

Benefits and abortion are completely separate issues, I don't think conflating them in this way is helpful.

Either that or you should have kept your legs closed. hmm

That was my choice. I, personally, an anti abortion. I could never have one. So i didn't have sex unless I was in a position where I could bring up a baby, alone.

Other women, their bodies their choice.

You can't murder something that isn't alive, @GreyGardens88

Blackteadrinker77 thank you

What fucking planet are people on with the alternatives of the benefits system or adoption?

I was a young lone parent with a baby that was very much planned as a couple, but circumstances changed and I was on income support, and later tax credit top ups. I'm lucky that I got myself out of it, an opportunity that isn't open to all. I can't imagine how much tougher that would have been if I'd wanted an abortion and couldn't have one.

Unless you've lone parented on a very low income for years, you haven't got any right to tell people it's an alternative choice to abortion.

Although as someone has mentioned lone parent benefits it clearly isn't the uk they are referring to, we don't have them.

As for adoption as a suggestion, that's warped. A woman has the right to choose to give up a baby for adoption, but nobody else has the right to suggest it to them. You don't switch on/off your feelings for your born child based on your circumstances, either you want it or you don't. And I'd seriously question the parenting instinct of anyone who thinks giving a baby away for adoption is so easy it is a valid alternative to abortion.

Luckily we're past the time when society dictated poor/ single pregnant women were simply breeders for childless couples.

Abortion should be performed no later than four weeks, if you can't decide by then wether you want a baby or not, you shouldn't be having it anyway. Baby's have been born breathing after abortions and thrown in buckets, this is absolutely true, because you're able to have an abortion so late, so when a baby is born breathing, it should be called murder not abortion. In this day and age there's no reason to get pregnant with all the contraception in offer, some women use abortion as contraception which is totally unacceptable.

Should men also not have sexy until they are in a position to bring up a child?

Or will the poor love’s testicles explode?

YABU OP.

The issue is that for many years, women in Ireland (and previously here in the UK) were forced to keep reproducing against their will. They got married, they had no access to contraception, there was no rape within marriage and they had child after child, no matter that those children were born into absolute poverty in many cases, at a time when health care cost money and ultimately those women's life expectancy was extremely low.

No woman should live like that. Just basically there to be serviced by a man when he wants, producing children that a man has somewhere along the way decreed must be born no matter what. That the life of that unborn child is more important than the life of the mother - no matter that the children already in existence need her more. No matter that the children already here will suffer more because of an extra mouth to feed or end up in a care system because mum dies.

It's all about women having autonomy over their bodies. About having the right to say No to husbands, to any man. About having the right to access free contraception, free safe healthcare and having the right to choose what happens to her body.

I agree with the Op. If some committee of men decide that all children must be carried to term, no matter the circumstances, then things should be put in place to support the child. Because effectively you are forcing a woman to go through pregnancy, childbirth and the disruption to her life she didn't want.

ismyusernamerubbish ... erm. Lots and lots (most?) Women aren't even aware they are pregnant at 4 weeks!!

Being anti-abortion is misogyny. Yep, that's my opinion.

Ah it's different for men smileeachday you are so silly, it's normal for men to enjoy sex but women should only do so to procreate or they are just not nice

I am about the 4 week limit mentioned above - no one knows they are pregnant till then

IsmyUsernameRubbish With all due respect, you are talking absolute crap. Not all contraception is fail proof. My friend has five children. Only the first was planned. She has been on the pill, implant and used condoms. The last pregnancy she had the mirena coil which resulted in an eptopic pregnancy and she was lucky she didn't die. She loves all her children but the sad thing is that her and her husband are both in their 20's and have been refused sterilisation. She has been told she is hyper fertile. (no shit) They take a risk every time they have sex and no one should live like that. If she ever chose to terminate a pregnancy she'd have my full support. Another child to care for would be too much for a family already under huge pressure.