A question for the pro-life members of MN

[SemperIdem]

The biggest argument always boils down to “taking a life away, acting like God”.

So - how does IVF sit with you? Are you anti it, because it is “acting like God”. Are you for it because acting like God to create a life is somehow fine whereas taking one away is not?

Do you understand that many IVF pregnancies are high risk and may ultimately require medical management aka abortions?

I’m firmly pro science and think access to both abortions and IVF is a wonderful thing, for avoidance of doubt.

One never sees protests outside fertility clinics and I wondered why.

Abortions at that gestation are really only done for serious disability incompatible with life. Nobody suddenly decides they want an abortion of a heathy foetus at 40 weeks.

Yes, you can. Of course you can. It doesn't happen in practice, but its entirely possible.

I know of an abortion at 32 weeks. It wouldn't be any different

I heard a question asked on TikTok for any prolifers/pro forcedbirthers:-

If you are fleeing a burning building and as you leave you see a 5 year old child on one side of the room and a box with 1000 embryos on the other side. You don't have time to collect both.

Your choices are
A) grab the child
B) grab the 1000 embryos
C) take too long to decide/try and get both, die trying.

Where does abortion at 40 weeks happen? Really?

What a stupid question.

I also prefer consistent pro-lifers, much as I disagree with them. I always prefer people with integrity to their beliefs, who understand the implications of them and stand by that.

To pro choices it's a no brainer. But it's a hypothetical situation to see what the Pro Lifers would say.

To them, it's save one life or save 1000 lives.

Anyone who says that they oppose abortion apart from in a rape situation is effectively saying I only care about how and the means a woman got pregnant

Nothing anyone can say will persuade me that controlling women's access to abortion is not about controlling women's bodies.

I'm not sure but I think Chag might be making the same point and being misunderstood.

If you think life begins at conception and therefore abortion is murder but you think that woman who conceive through non consensual sex should be able to terminate the pregnancy then I think you are lying about the reasons for your anti choice position. Either a foetus is a life or its not you can't have it both ways.

I think the aggressively anti choicers only pretend to think abortion in rape or incest cases is tolerable because to say anything else would reveal to the world what uncaring bastards they really are.

The child. I am not religious.
It seems to be the assumption on this thread that those who don't fully support abortion do so for religious reasons.

I think if you were that staunchly pro-life you would either not have IVF or not create any embryos that were not implanted.

I think with the pro-life brigade they want to preserve life at any cost so would be very much for all of the above interventions.

See for example the current court case regarding Archie Battersbee and the involvement of the Christian Legal Centre.

When/where has this ever actually happened?

I can think of a few situations where this would happen, for a healthy fetus. Found out very late, relationship breakdown etc.

If it's never happened, who cares if non-medical late abortions are banned.

For the record, support current UK law. Find the straw man arguments on both sides rather grating. It can't simultaneously be necessary to have abortions til birth made legal and also never occur.

I am fine with IVF.
I am OK with very early abortions.
I don't agree with late term abortions unless the pregnancy is not safe for the mother or the baby would be very disabled/unlikely to survive.
I think the fetuses life has more and more value than older it is.

To pro choices it's a no brainer. But it's a hypothetical situation to see what the Pro Lifers would say.
To what end?
These hypothetical situations never advance the debate or make anyone change their minds.

I know that this is because it's in the news but I do wonder at the sudden number of people starting threads on this. It's not a topic that is up for discussion as to whether people should access abortions. Is this another disingenuous post to try and make this suddenly up for discussion and a dividing issue where it wasn't one before?

"According to law, a termination can be carried out under proper medical supervision at any stage up to the full term of the pregnancy, if there is significant risk of severe disability or foetal death." From the guardian, but there are other sources.

Pro-choice surely includes wanting the ability to do it up to this stage for any reason? If not, why can't women choose to? Or at which point do you want women to be forced to give birth as it is said in the emotive anti pro life posts.

(I am pro choice ish... I believe there should be limits, but realise that makes me hypocritical really)

I can understand why you’d be conflicted re the ‘babyhood’ of pregnancy, given your beliefs. I have ‘planned’ children and have had an early termination as a result of a contraception failure when I was in my late teens. I’ve always been pro-choice but was still conflicted when it came to a choice FOR ME. However, I don’t regret my own choice and I don’t feel that a tiny clump of cells that cannot survive independently outside of the woman carrying it or as you put it, ‘tiny person who needs lots of support’ trumps the feelings of needs of the living, breathing, sentient pregnant woman. Her health (mental, physical), her needs (social, financial, educational), her wants MUST come first. She is the priority.

Is it not the case then that surgical terminations are performed at 40 weeks? I would have thought this was one of the least controversial types from a moral perspective.

A woman is told her foetus has zero chance of surviving birth. Rather than give birth she opts for surgical termination.

I consider myself neither pro-life nor pro-choice, but I think of abortion as a loss of life and that the life of the unborn baby has some weight in the ethical decision-making process.

This is not the same thing as saying "I think the life of the unborn baby should be weighted above all other considerations". In fact, I think in the vast majority of real-world cases, other considerations do have more weight.

I'm not religious but as @LadyAnnabelsTapestries put it, for me this issue is about "respecting the value as opposed to the disposability of human life". I used to identify as pro-choice, but struggled with the growing pressure I felt to not simply let other women decide, but to deny that there was any harm involved at all, to agree that it was "basic healthcare, just like getting a mole removed", to swear fealty to "any time, for any reason" the same way other people were asking me to declare that trans women are women

God doesn't come into it for me.

Request for further reading recommendations:

I've come to a position which I tentatively call "decriminalisation" in my head. @PetraBP's summary of UK abortion law in the Overton window thread helped to crystallise this for me.

That is: there is a loss, there is something painful, something sad, something degrading, something tragic about an abortion, particularly after the first trimester. This is an instinctive feeling that is very hard to deny for many people.

But that's separate from the policy response of decriminalising abortion to enable safe access, preventing clinicians from getting sued for helping during miscarriages, etc. And this is separate from the judgment of the woman who has ended up in a situation where this is her best choice available.

The parallel emerging in my mind is that of prostitution. I find it awful and degrading based on the same instinctive feeling, and I wish I lived in a society where absolutely none existed, and I feel horrible for women caught up in the sex trade. I favour the decriminalisation of selling sex as a policy response, but I want to be able to acknowledge prostitution as a stain on society without being called "whorephobic" and I'm very glad that there is a space in radical feminism which confidently makes this position and holds that space, instead of leaving my only options as "cheer on onlyfans" or "throw whores in prison".

If anyone knows of any writing/thinking along those lines for abortion, please let me know.

Your perspective is that held by most people, in my experience.

OP, you have missed the point that ivf is creating a life, which is something people can already choose to do within the law. Abortion is taking a life, which is against any moral or legal law and I’d assume that any religious objection is more about ending a life than ‘playing God’. Doctors play God every day with life saving treatments or life enhancing treatments so it’s not two sides of the same coin at all.

Personally I reluctantly believe that abortion should be allowed, but the time limit should be lowered, there should be mandatory counselling beforehand, women should actually meet the two doctors that are prescribing their medication and it should be guaranteed that women will receive their counselling and abortion within a week of requesting it.

I don’t agree with IVF because the world already has too many people in it and medical time and investment is better spent preserving and enhancing life that already exists.

I'm a don't really know person. I support the choice but if we're aborting foetuses are we wasting money and effort on trying to save premature babies. If not when's the cut off. As I understand it many premature babies will have greater problems depending on when they were born so with very premature babies should we simply let them pass.

I do believe that doctors should be free to not be involved. I remember watching a program on young doctors training where a young trainee attended a late abortion as she felt it was important to understand it, afterwards she was in tears

I don't care much about IVF, my only reservation there is I don't support it for single or same sex couples. Just live within your life style.

Pro-choice surely includes wanting the ability to do it up to this stage for any reason? If not, why can't women choose to? Or at which point do you want women to be forced to give birth as it is said in the emotive anti pro life posts.

For me the pro choice position means minding my own business and allowing women a long with qualified medical staff to make healthcare decisions without every Tom, Dick and Harry thinking they have a right to hold an opinion on a confidential matter.

The way some people write about this you'd think huge numbers of women were demanding abortions at 39 weeks because they'd had a change of heart.

Maybe because the commandment is “thou shalt not kill”…
The commandment may be relevant to abortion if you belong to a particular branch of Christianity, yet many Christians are actually pro-Choice. And a number of branches of the Jewish religion interpret various religious writings as putting the life and the well-being of the pregnant woman first at all times, this also appears to be in line with what many rabbis and Jewish people during the time of Christ also believed. It’s quite possible that he would also have supported this view. A minority Christian right or Christian evangelical interpretation of the Bible is just one among many. Many other Christians, many of those who practice related religions and those of us who do not practice any form of religion do not hold these beliefs or do not seek to impose them on others. Why should we all be held to ransom by the tiny proportion of people who are anti-abortion? As the shift in abortion laws in Ireland, a Catholic country, recently demonstrated most reasonable people support the need for abortion rights.

As for the tiny number of late abortions, those who oppose them should get back to us when they, or someone they love, are suddenly diagnosed with cancer and have to choose between continuing a pregnancy that will likely end in disaster anyway and urgent treatment to stop their cancer spreading making their own death unavoidable.

And those who wonder why the OP is “lumping” together IVF, miscarriages where the foetus is retained and not spontaneously expelled, with ectopic pregnancy. The OP’s not the one doing that it’s the Christian right, anti-abortion, anti-choice, forced birthers, who’ve done that. If you don’t know, or don’t remember what that kind of thinking, has resulted in, then look up Savita Halappanavar or read about Maria Prudente’s experiences in Malta. As for the medical exceptions noted in various anti-abortion states in America, the problem with that is that too many doctors, as with Savita’s case in Ireland, are worried that their diagnosis and treatment may be challenged. So, in countries where abortion is banned or severely restricted, they don't intervene or often hesitate to intervene, as a result women suffer – or as in Savita’s case die.