To be shocked by how blasé alot of MNers are about abortion

[Nothanksloveimfine]

Yes its healthcare, yes free and safe abortion is completely necessary because the alternative doesn't bare thinking about, yes everybody has a right to choose what's best for them and yes I am pro choice (whilst being explicitly pro life with regards to my own pregnancies)

With all that said and done, I am quite alarmed at how a sizable % of MNers are so blase about abortions. Whenever a poster is talking about being pregnant with an unplanned baby and in a less than perfect situation, I see alot of posters urging her to just have a termination like its a routine stroll through the park.

I've just read a heartbreaking article which is being discussed at the minute and some of the replies on that thread are so cold. It made me cry and I'm wondering how the hell people can read that and not be impacted by it, completely steamrolling over the tragic loss of life by saying things like "that's a rare case" abortion is a good thing bla bla bla.

Does anybody else share my view or am I the odd one out?

It's like people are so determined to bang the "right to abort" drum, they have no regard for the babies whatsoever.

Abortion can be totally necessary but it's also pretty sad IMO.

You can care about the mother without being so cold and dismissive of the baby they were carrying.

Caring about the babies doesn't mean I hate women, I am one.

Yes I've name changed because I don't expect this will go down well here.

[quote TalkingCat]@Silverswirl It's not down to them to scorn a woman who wants an abortion if they think it's not 'justified' in their eyes. No one has the right to judge a woman and block her access to an abortion.[/quote]
That is totally YOUR opinion.
I believe that when a heart starts beating there is life and that life has rights.
No woman or man has the right to kill that life. So the judging goes both ways. You judge me and I judge you. And that’s is as it should be in a country with free speech.

I’d say that saying it’s no different to a mole, tumour or parasite is emotive. It’s minimising what it is and what it has the potential to be.

For you it may be, and that’s entirely relevant when it comes to your own pregnancies. However, no one is obliged to pretend that how you view a fetus and it’s a potential has any bearing on them. I’ve said that an abortion was akin to mole removal for me in regards to emotional impact. ‘Akin to’ is not the same as ‘the fetus is a mole’, we’re all aware they’re different things.

Its not minimising. It can’t be minimising when there is no established ‘size’ of abortion in the first place.

14:47NotthesameNotok

Very old research links.

No woman or man has the right to kill that life. So the judging goes both ways. You judge me and I judge you. And that’s is as it should be in a country with free speech.

*shouldn’t have the right to kill that life, you mean, because we absolutely do have the right to have an abortion,

I don’t care if anyone judges me, they’re more than welcome to if that’s what they want to do. Knock yourself out and all that, it means nothing to me 🤷🏻‍♀️ What I have a problem with is someone thinking their opinions over my body should be more important than mine.

I wonder if this is at the heart of the dehumanising, biological labelling of a human at its various stages of conception - to deflect that argument with talk about the embryos, foetuses and cells.

It's easier to talk about terminating a bunch of cells than a human at an early stage of development.

@Silverswirl Life isn't based on a heartbeat. And anyway actually the heart isn't actual functional until the third trimester. There is no 'heartbeat' as such. And if someone else's life relies on YOUR life for sustenance, it IS your right to terminate that life, because NO ONE has the right to live or exist at the expense of someone else. NO ONE! The woman's right and her life is the only life in question here. You cannot demand a kidney from someone because they're a match and you need to to survive. You cannot force people to donate blood. You can't even remove organs from a corpse unless you have prior consent. To say a woman must exist to keep someone else alive, to give women less rights than a CORPSE.

NO ONE has the right to life at another human's expense. NO ONE.

@Nothanksloveimfine

To add on to my last post, I absolutely believe that there are women who would terminate based on strangers on the Internet telling her she would be mad / stupid not to.

Women in early pregnancy are emotionally vulnerable, take into consideration that not all have a solid support network offline one could very easily end up having a termination they later regret because the strangers comments got to their head.

I'm glad that in the end I made the right choice for me, and I'm glad that the people on here who are at peace with their terminations are indeed at peace with them - because how horrible it must be to have a termination you later regret, because a bunch of strangers tell you it's for the best.

Nobody should be trying to sway anybody in favour of abortion, especially if they're not going to support that person before during and after the fact.

If you think that makes me pro life then I don't know what to tell you.

But on that basis, couldn’t the same emotionally vulnerable women end up carrying a child to full term because of the advice of strangers on the internet? Surely that is far more damaging. As traumatic as regretting an abortion may be, you can try for another baby - if you regret not having an abortion, you can’t send the child back.

You’ve obsessively used the phrase ‘a bunch of strangers’ throughout your posts. What do you think Mumsnet IS? A professional counselling service? A specially selected panel of leading medical and mental health professionals? Or could it be - drumroll please - a bunch of bloody strangers?!

I can’t see how to make this any simpler for you.

@Silverswirl Know who does have an actual heartbeat?

Have a guess?

The WOMAN.

Yabu amongst other things

It's easier to talk about terminating a bunch of cells than a human at an early stage of development.

Feel free to call it whatever suits you, it really doesn’t change anything. Fetus, clump of cells, baby…what you call it doesn’t change the fact women always have and always will have abortions, and a large number of those of us that have had them are quite comfortable, even happy, with that fact.

@Bellyups

I’m pro choice, but that thread you are referring to made me sad - the blasé responses from posters. What happened (and has happened more than once) is appalling. That baby was a fully viable human being who died an awful death due to basic scans not being carried out. I was appalled at some of the responses on that thread

i was not aware the baby actually lived having been born with disablities by the abortion pill , i just assumed it had caused a late abortion , so i apologise for my comment upthread about this particular previous thread .

‘Foetus" is just a Latin word that allows us to dehumanise a person.

Not really. I highly doubt anyone is under the impression they’re aborting a mouse fetus.

I don’t know why it’s so difficult to comprehend that someone doesn’t have to be ignorant or delusional if they don’t share the same opinion as you. It’s rather lacking in imagination.

"I respect women's right to choose what's best for them, I am pro choice in all other cases except my own. My issue isn't women having abortions, it's the way they're actively encouraged to by strangers on the Internet who'll forget about them by lunch time.

I think it's cold."

In my view it is colder to place a bunch of cells that cannot have a sentient thought ahead of a woman in distress at her pregnancy. I haven't seen the other thread so can't comment on that but I expect that people are centering the woman.

@Silverswirl

I believe that when a heart starts beating there is life and that life has rights.
No woman or man has the right to kill that life

A brain dead person has a heart beat. They are not a life anymore though. There's no coming back from it. And their next of kin and sometimes doctors have every right to kill/pull the plug on that person.

Do you disagree with that too?

It's odd how we can be perfectly sure what is and is not a woman but there is all this subjectivity around a developing child.

The definitions seem to vary from 'it's a baby at any stage of it was a baby to you' to 'it's just a foetus/clump of cells at any stage if it's just a foetus/clump of cells to you'. That's subjectivity gone mad to the point of gaslighting.

Biologically after the age of viability, and we can be as semantic as we like, this is a definitely a baby because it doesn't change as an entity according to its location. That's all hocus pocus. It's very definitely not a clump of cells and definitely a baby. baby would have rights and survive in a different location. Just a matter of getting to that different location where it will be viewed differently. We don't do forced motherhood but obviously we can't get a baby out without the woman in question going through some kind of process. So 'forced' delivery of some kind is baked into the process.

I realise women need to be promoted and supported and some things are too painful to think about so different words are used. But when we start to believe in our own euphemisms we all go down the rabbit hole.

I think others have already said this, but plenty of women do just view it as a minor procedure that is similar in response to having any other minor medical procedure. That's a valid point of view, and it doesn't make them cold, or conversely emotive, for expressing it that way.

I think it’s quite obvious that women that are not as affected by it are colder. They’re more detached and less caring in my experience.

@Incapacitated

It's odd how we can be perfectly sure what is and is not a woman but there is all this subjectivity around a developing child.

The definitions seem to vary from 'it's a baby at any stage of it was a baby to you' to 'it's just a foetus/clump of cells at any stage if it's just a foetus/clump of cells to you'. That's subjectivity gone mad to the point of gaslighting.

Biologically after the age of viability, and we can be as semantic as we like, this is a definitely a baby because it doesn't change as an entity according to its location. That's all hocus pocus. It's very definitely not a clump of cells and definitely a baby. baby would have rights and survive in a different location. Just a matter of getting to that different location where it will be viewed differently. We don't do forced motherhood but obviously we can't get a baby out without the woman in question going through some kind of process. So 'forced' delivery of some kind is baked into the process.

I realise women need to be promoted and supported and some things are too painful to think about so different words are used. But when we start to believe in our own euphemisms we all go down the rabbit hole.

when we start to believe in our own euphemisms we all go down the rabbit hole. Very well said.

@Silverswirl

I'm glad you don't make the laws.

[quote ldontWanna]@Silverswirl

I believe that when a heart starts beating there is life and that life has rights.
No woman or man has the right to kill that life

A brain dead person has a heart beat. They are not a life anymore though. There's no coming back from it. And their next of kin and sometimes doctors have every right to kill/pull the plug on that person.

Do you disagree with that too?[/quote]
A fetus is a life. It has all the life processes. We ascribe different value to that life depending on our own views. But it's still a life.

A brain dead person is not going to recover their functionality whereas a fetus is continually growing.

Genuinely don't get why people try and argue a fetus isn't a life- it is. And that doesn't impact abortion. It's still ok to terminate even though it is a life.

It definitely is a life, and that’s exactly why it’s being terminated..

Biologically after the age of viability, and we can be as semantic as we like, this is a definitely a baby because it doesn't change as an entity according to its location. That's all hocus pocus. It's very definitely not a clump of cells and definitely a baby. baby would have rights and survive in a different location.

Okay, and that means what then? Because it’s the relevance of this that’s subjective. Those things are all true, in fact no one said the entity was any different dependent on what you call it. What people have said is that the emotional weight of abortion is going to be different for every person. For some it’s a great weight, for others it isn’t a weight at all. For you there might be a correct way to perceive it, an inherent value of a fetus, but that is certainly not true for everyone, and it’s unreasonable for you to expect it to be.

@DesidaCrick

"I respect women's right to choose what's best for them, I am pro choice in all other cases except my own. My issue isn't women having abortions, it's the way they're actively encouraged to by strangers on the Internet who'll forget about them by lunch time.

I think it's cold."

In my view it is colder to place a bunch of cells that cannot have a sentient thought ahead of a woman in distress at her pregnancy. I haven't seen the other thread so can't comment on that but I expect that people are centering the woman.

The term "bunch of cells" doesn't in any way distinguish the unborn baby from any other person. An adult can equally be defined as a bunch of cells.

So what you actually mean is, that you're pro choice if you judge the woman to have a "good enough" reason according to your moral compass.
Fuck that right off.

23:44Nothanksloveimfine
I feel the same way you do. I find the ease with which some people suggest an OP should have an abortion to be pretty blasé. To me every abortion is sad BUT what I find even sadder is the life some babies are born to endure, there is so much casual neglect and abuse out there that I have sadly come to the conclusion that sometimes abortion is the better option. It's not a choice I would ever make but I wouldn't want to suggest it's not within another woman's rights to have one