To think late-term abortion rules may need tightening up?

[FestiveNut]

Should people be able to abort healthy fetuses in a low risk pregnancy past 20 weeks gestation?

I read a very sad story concerning this earlier. I considered myself pro-choice in all circumstances but this thread has caused me to question that.

Should the threshold be lowered?

Im preparing myself to get linched but I agree the abortion threshold should be much lower. I think it should be restricted to the first trimester unless there are serious complications. I just think aborting a 20 week old, perfectly formed foetus is wrong and should only be done in emergency situations.

I haven’t RTFT but as far as I’m concerned it’s pretty simple

Not your uterus, not your business

If you don’t agree with late term abortion then that’s fine, don’t have one but no one has the right to decide for me

I carried my rapists baby to term.
I was desperate for a termination but the stigma of late termination came over through other people, midwives and the like. Was unable to disclose how I came to be pregnant, all I felt was a gut wrenching internal scream and desperation.
I prayed the baby would be born stillborn. I stood on a bridge to jump off but feared it would die and I would live and people would hate me for it. I had visions of giving birth then the midwife finding me dead so I could finally have relief.
I would wake screaming in the middle of the night.
When I got to term I would stay up cleaning, anything, just to stave off labour. I saw a poster of birthing positions at a midwife appointment and vomited at the thought of getting it out.
I couldn't explain why so I kept begging for a C Section and nobody would give me one. In the end they said yes but it took days and days of begging them.
During the birth I dissociated the whole time. It was only just before the child was born that I heard a baby cry of a woman in the recovery bay. That was the first time I thought oh I'm having a baby. I'd only fantasised that it would die, I'd miscarry or die.
I feel someone handed me a baby. I waited for the feelings to come but they didn't. My feelings and personality have been cut off. I now have a 3 year old who I do love but wish I'd never had.
I think my life would have been different if I'd had an abortion, even a late one. I would have recovered from rape and abuse. Now I live it every day, see reminders of it every day. I said to myself I will put the baby in care if I can't cope but you just can't do that, people think bad of you. I said when it gets to 2 I will if it's no easier.
At 3 it's no easier. I keep thinking 'when' it will be easier but it won't, I am stuck with this horror forever, my successful and funny self has disappeared.
The child is well looked after, and loved but in a different way to the others.
I have flashbacks of morning sickness and phantom kicking.
I am permanently detached from the world.
I will never heal.
I was so desperate during that pregnancy that I was sterilised 3 months after and absolutely ran into theatre, because I would never, ever, ever have something growing inside me against my will again. Ever.
In the postnatal ward I heard happy couples, 24 hours post c section and felt so unsafe I went to leave the hospital. They gave me a private room.
I was under the perinatal team for a year. I had psychosis from late pregnancy to the baby being 1 (and over). I went back to work when it was 2 months old.
Life would be better had someone supported me to have a late termination. But I didn't, and have a lovely child. But my life is ruined and I will never view my own body in the same way ever again. I want my reproductive parts and breasts surgically removed but they won't and said it was a psychotic wish.
Being pregnant is hell, 9 months of living hell and I wished I were dead every day of the pregnancy.

Yellowgreen

That’s absolutely tragic. I’m so sorry

You just don't know why these late terminations happen but you need to trust women to make the decisions for themselves

Some people on this thread need to climb down out of their Ivory towers (and take their heads out of their arses).

I am a well educated woman (ex-HCP) with access to private medical care

I have some serious gyne issues; and am considered to be infertile as in I have maybe one natural cycle a year. In the case of the very unlikely happening I could easily be well along before it got picked up.

I also have gastro issues so feeling sick in the morning (afternoon, evening, middle of the night) is nothing new.

Add to this a chronic condition where some of the drugs I need to take are teratogenic. (Which is why we still use protection, but any contraception can fail).

If I could find myself in that kind of situation where do you think a poorly educated sexually abused teenager could turn?

Or a woman being abused and stalked by her ex and knows he will do the same to the child?

Woman been forced to service punters without protection (pimps get more money) and kept locked up all day?

A Woman who comes from a culture where sons are prized, she already has 2 daughters and if this child is a girl she’ll be send back to the ‘home’ country to visit family and never be seen again. She knows this as that’s what happened to her SIL. (As it happens this woman escaped but is still living in hiding 10 years later. Her father has told family he will kill her himself for bringing shame on the family.) This will leave her daughters at the hands of her family which means FMG and forced marriage.

Or the Woman who has left her husband because he’s been found to be downloading images of CSA, but SS have said he’s still entitled to access as there’s no clear evidence of him touching the children…

There are a lot of women living horrible horrible lives out there.

Sometimes an abortion is the kindest thing. And sometimes it will take longer than 12 weeks to sort this out.

Imagine being thankful for the subjugation of women. How odd.

Exactly! Blessed be the fruit and all.

Yellowgreen

A lot of people are fixated on how the embryo/fetus looks as their threshold of when it would/would not be acceptable to have a termination - a 12 week old fetus is not ‘fully formed’ - if it was it would be capable of life outside the uterus and it isn’t. The current threshold is set by health care professionals with a lot of knowledge about fetal viability, it’s not arbitrary. It’s fine as is.

With the anomaly scan at 20 weeks, I think it makes sense that the limit be a few weeks after that to allow for a woman to make a choice to continue. I think there are ways to help support women getting abortions earlier and to help those from communities that are often pressured to do sex-based abortions without 'tightening'/adding more restrictions.

Maybe it's because I'm from the States which is well known for tightening the rules and attempts to bring in and repeated striking down of 'fetus protection' and 'personhood' laws, the state I spent most of my childhood in is among those currently trying to entirely ban it once again as part of trying to get Roe vs Wade overturned, but I have little issue with how things are done in the UK (though I do hope full decriminalization will finish going through). It may not be nice or pleasant and I can see why many wouldn't want to do so, but I think it faces the reality that an abortion at 22 weeks, with all its risks, is significantly less risky for the woman than going to term and giving birth. Those given what for many is the worst news are likely to be those that face the more risks going forward and those women's continued consent to those elevated risks should be included in any laws.

Where I come from, abortion is pretty inaccessible (often expensive and fewer and fewer providers give it due to increasing red tape and violence on staff and women) and unacceptable socially (shunning is a big issue for women) -- and adopting a child out of a marriage is pretty much the same, for those who think that's automatically an option for those who can't abort, please remember married women who already have kids do make up a significant percentage of those who get abortions, and obviously they can't adopt a child out on their own - and rapists can sue for parental rights in many US states even without being married to their victims so consider if you'd want to hand over a child to your rapist.

I've known my mother had wanted one with me but couldn't get one about as long as I can recall. She coped with that with a shit ton of drugs, for years. I was one of those unwanted, neglected, abused, suicidal kids who could not understand the pro-life rhetoric around that these lives matter when their actions seemed to scream that either my life solely didn't or that I deserved this, that I had to be born and be broken for their ideological pure box.

So, I'm not thankful for that strict system. There is absolutely nothing I will ever do that will make up what my mother was forced to go through and there is nothing she or those who forced her can do to make up what was done to me. It's not nice and I can see the argument that some types of procedures should be banned when alternatives are available (though the early induction methods many seem to prefer used to be an option in more US states until anti-abortionists decided to push against it), but as much as people like to act like that's the most barbaric thing ever and how much fetuses matter, what little is done for those women who can't access abortions and those of us who have to live being the "well, too bad" babies who grow up to stop being the poor little mites shows they don't give a flying fuck about being humane at all, they're happy being barbaric as long as it's to people not in their neat good life circumstances box. I can only thank the universe that what I had to do as a teen to survive when no one could enforce parental responsibility on my parents too old and ugly for any pro-liferes to think I matter didn't result in having to go through those hoops myself because I know none of them would have given me any of the forgiveness or prayers they told me I should give for my parents.

Yellowgreen I wish there was something I could say apart from I’m so so sorry and wish that you find some peace eventually x

Yellowgreen I can only imagine how hard that was to write, thank you for sharing your experience. It's so sad you and other women are still going through this and I hope care that will help is available for you soon.

Yellowgreen I hope you are still getting help. You sound like you very much need it.

Stories like yellowgreen's and fuzzy's should make it clear to the antis on here what the cost of restricting abortion is to the women involved.

And bumbleymummy yes, in your scenario an innocent healthy baby dies and that is dreadful - but I would rather that than that a woman who may very well already have other children who need her should die. That's a harsh choice to make, but there it is.

An alternative argument is ''don't remove rights you don't need from people who do.''
Or "Don't be so arrogant to assume your personal opinion should force another woman to bring another life into the world".
Or "don't believe your moral high horse is more important than the life of a woman and her potential child"
Or "Don't use euphemisms such as pro life when what you actually mean is anti-choice and anti-women having bodily autonomy"
Or "don't be a knob".

Pointy things - why does the woman die if she doesn’t have an abortion at 39 weeks?

@pointythings It does not, and I am choosing not to explain why out of respect for the women.

I'm certainly not for rights being removed but I am also against them being extended..what we have in the UK is a pretty decent compromise for a very difficult question. That makes me neither pro life or pro choice I suppose. Pro choice to term for any reason is as extreme and unpalatable to me as pro life.

Yellowgreen one step in front of the other gets you where you need to be, just keep going you can do this. (dont read the rest of my rant xx)

what the fuck is wrong with people, you dont want an abortion, well dont fucking have one, READ WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENS!!!! you are pro-birth, not bloody pro-life, where are you when forced mothers have to deal with half what Yellowgreen has written, are you insane?
No-one but no-one should have to go through what Yellowgreen did

Because she has been forced to carry the baby to term, develops complications in labour and dies. The 39 weeks is a red herring here - MamaDane thinks this selfsame woman should not have the choice to abort beyond 12 weeks. She feels no woman should be allowed to abort beyond 12 weeks, so a lot more women than the vanishingly rare scenario of a woman who changes her mind for no reason at 39 weeks. She thinks that what happened to yellowgreen is a-ok. I have zero respect for people like that.

May I just point out to the HCP with the health problems and anyone else who wouldn’t know they are pregnant for several months, you can butvthese things called pregnancy testing kits for £1 in pound shops and do a test every month. The poster with the 3 year old child conceived from rape, the morning after pill and consulting a doctor. Etc., etc. The women from the cultures that don’t want girls, go to a refuge. Honestly, it’s like feminism never happened.

@pointythings I did not say "no woman" in fact I said if there was a medical reason, like cancer, or something wrong with the fetus, then I do think it's the right choice.

@user1457017537 how disgustingly ignorant you are .

Another case of failing parity of esteem. Priorising physical health consequences over mental health. If that late term abortion avoids severe mental health problems and distress for the women and potentially a child in the future, regardless of the viability of the foetus, then that right must remain. Adoption is not the wonderful perfect option that people like to think it is, it is filled with attachment flaws and prolonged stress for the woman.