Abortion limits lowered part 2

[CosmicCanary]

I messed up the last one.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/3458517-To-think-late-term-abortion-rules-may-need-tightening-up

The limits should not be lowered in my view.
I am pro choice to the point where it is the womans choice as long as her body is required.

Fuck this, I'm hiding this now. Nobody should be advocating termination of a healthy baby at term. Absolutely repulsive.

I am sorry that women having rights to their body is upsetting.
Truth is late terminations are very rare even rarer are choice late terminations simply because it is so traumatic and most women would not do it. However pro choice means always their choice.

Women's services obviously 🙄

Women's rights what about babies rights?

Ooh, next someone argues that in law babies have no rights... I feel like this discussion is somewhat circular.

Sorry, foetuses, not babies.

Women's rights what about babies rights?
They do not come before the womans.
Her body her choice is very simple.

Then someone argues that there's no real difference between a foetus at term and a newborn other than location.

Festive it maybe circular but if you are pro choice then the mother comes before the baby.

But at 37 weeks the woman has to give birth anyway

No, she doesn't.

Do you really think a termination at term would be less traumatizing

Well yes, for some women. The alternative is motherhood which, for women in abusive relationships or women who have been raped, can involve considerably more trauma than a late termination. That should be their choice.

The reason that abortion on demand, to term, for any reason or none is extreme, is that it is placing sole emphasis on the woman and none on the foetus. In the same way that pro-lifers place all the emphasis on the foetus rather than the woman.

It is a tricky balancing act, but if a 36 week gestation baby is viable, and there are no medical issues in either the mother or the foetus, then once viability is reached, then surely the foetus has to be considered in addition to the woman. It is no longer a "potential life", it is an actual life, that will most likely live if born, without requiring medical intervention to do so.

The first medical ethic is "do no harm". So to terminate a foetus at this point would be actively harming a viable life. I cannot see many medics being willing to do so for non medical reasons. It isn't about saving the mother's life, or being "kinder" to the foetus by ending a life which will be painful or medically difficult to live with. So how can the foetus be terminated when to do so would go against medical ethics?

In addition, at this point, the woman would have to birth the child anyway. So the termination isn't preventing her from having to do so.

I understand that women may find it hugely difficult to give up a child for adoption. But does this mean her feelings warrant the foetus being terminated at say 38 weeks instead? I don't think so.

One of the basic principles in our society is that we do not kill. To terminate a healthy 38 week old foetus in a healthy woman seems to cross this line. And the willingness to cross this line, and prioritise a woman's feelings over another's life, is what makes the position extreme. There is no other situation in society where we actively end a human life due to someone else's feelings. That is what abortion on demand, to term, for any non-medical reason, is advocating should be a woman's right.

I do wonder if some women's experience of the world clouds their judgement. Yes, aborting a heathy foetus for a healthy mother with no issues at 38 weeks seems barbaric. I agree. Because I have a nice, easy, healthy life.

But bumping into a 40 year old pimp, who had prostituted my 16 year old client, bought her drugs during pregnancy, raped her, beat her up... and she knew that he'd now seen her pregnant and now could continue to harass her with paternity crap. That puts a really different spin on things.

She had the baby BTW. Another reason I trust women. Because even when things are dreadful, most of them step up.

@MrsTerryPratcett who had the baby the women in the link? She had no flipping choice!

I belive it up to a the women it her body, her choice. Life often changes and presets new challenges.
But i wouldn't change the laws to be thurther than 24 weeks, mainly as my eldest DS was born at 24 weeks and is know a 18 year old!! So my view on that dose come as more personal

Didnt one of the victims of a grooming gang recently appear in the press because as far a ss are concerned her rapist who is in jail should see their child?

You can see why late term abortions are the only option for some women.

@CosmicCanary she didn't want an abortion and her son is now 18.

CosmicCanaryshe didn't want an abortion and her son is now 18.

I never said she did.

I was using it as an example why some would choose an abortion at any stage. The prospect of being tied to your rapist for 18 years a least is not a good one.

@Neweternal I was talking about the woman in my PP. not the woman in the link.

Either way, no forced birth. I believe in very good sex education, free and quick contraception and easy and quick access to abortion. As early as possible, as late as necessary.

MsTerryPratchett, I agree that in the majority of cases women can be trusted and will step up. But what about the very few cases where women and men can't be tristed?

Where an abusive man forces his partner to have a late term abortion as a "punishment", after the woman has bonded with the baby?

Where the woman is evil and aborts the viable child for shits and giggles, because she enjoys ending a life? And will do so repeatedly for the kick it gives her, becoming a strain on the health service in the process? (I know this sounds unlikely but both my old colleagues and I have met several through our work, and I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't met one myself.) You could argue that such women shouldn't be mothers, and I agree. But let the baby be removed at birth, pending adoption, like this lady's baby was.

Surely the law has to be such that it protects against such outlying factors. E.G. most women do not commit sexual offences, but a small number do, so the law has to cover those exceptions.

My grandmother gave birth to my father before there was legal abortion in this country. She had tried various ways to end the pregnancy herself, none of which worked but which left her physically scarred (she ran a bath so hot in desperation to end the pregnancy that she suffered third degree burns). As a result of the pregnancy she was forced into a marriage that she didn’t want (and which swiftly broke down, my grandfather becoming violent due to his unwillingness to have a child). She then had a nervous breakdown. She spent the rest of her life (more than 70 years) severely mentally ill and in and out of institutions. Meanwhile, my father was put into care and passed around the system, until he was eventually claimed by his maternal grandparents, who could barely afford to feed and clothe the kids they already had, and whose daughter was now institutionalised after a suicide attempt. Eventually she became well enough to get pregnant again by a new partner. She had another nervous breakdown after the birth of this child. She was eventually adopted after several years in care, as her grandparents were already bringing up one grandchild. My grandfather, after leaving my grandmother, became an alcoholic, apparently as a reaction to what had happened, and went on to serve a prison sentence for beating his second wife in front of their young daughters. So my father was abandoned by his parents, brought up in poverty and then had a nervous breakdown himself at 40 after his first child (me!) was born and it triggered in him all of the feelings of loss and abandonment that he had suffered as a child.

So, just to recap, because there was no abortion in 1945 the lives of all of these people were irretrevably scarred or changed for the worse:

• my grandmother
• my grandfather
• my dad
• my grandfathers five daughters
• my grandfathers second wife
• my grandmothers second child
• my great- grandparents
• me and my sister
• my mum

Fifteen versions of suffering, fifteen lives made worse, because there was no abortion. And my grandmother at the centre of it all, literally self harming and trying to overdose herself due to her mental health issues until her dying day, never able to find happiness.

For all of those lives that can and will be ruined by an unwanted child, I believe in abortion for any reason, as late as necessary whatever the circumstances.

Reggie

my old colleagues and I have met several through our work

I've worked with really ill and disturbed women for decades and I've never met one. Plenty of women having multiple drug and alcohol impacted babies over and over again. Many women having children they don't parent. But never a single woman having late abortions for fun. And the statistics on late abortion would imply there are a tiny tiny number. And you've met several...

www.thesun.co.uk/archives/news/883082/mum-jailed-for-performing-diy-abortion-at-32-weeks-using-pills-bought-over-the-internet/

This us the one I was thinking of

CosmicCanary, I utterly agree with you on this:

"I was using it as an example why some would choose an abortion at any stage. The prospect of being tied to your rapist for 18 years a least is not a good one."

But then the law could be changed regarding such awful men being allowed to have access to the woman and her child.

I appreciate there will be situations where a woman sees late term abortion as preferable to having the child, for social reasons but this could be the case even if they would ideally like to keep their child.

So it makes sense to change the laws and circumstances which make women feel they have no choice. This doesn't have to be by providing the option to terminate a healthy, viable foetus near term. And if so few women would take this option, as PP have maintained, then even more reason to change the barriers to keeping the baby that currently exist.