Disability And Abortion: The Hardest Choice CHANNEL 4

[Wouldloveanother]

www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-11155443/DOMINIC-LAWSON-Doctors-stop-pushing-mothers-aborting-disabled-babies.html

I’m planning on watching this in the next few days, but I’m getting increasingly concerned about the amount of anti-choice activity going on under the guise of ‘disability equality’.

I just don't believe in clairvoyance or that anyone can actually predict what all women will do. I don't think that's a solid basis for policy making.

Because smothering children is illegal

Ffs

So is abortion after 24 weeks except in a very specific set of circumstances! Yet people on here are arguing to change that law.

Yes that’s exactly what it’s about and therefore relevant.

Because one exists inside the body of someone else, and the other is a biologically independent entity.

What a fetus is or isn’t in itself (conscious, alive, stage of development etc), is not the deciding factor for everyone. The deciding factor is the woman, and her wishes in regards to her own body.

Because one exists inside the body of someone else, and the other is a biologically independent entity.

Thats certainly a good reason for keeping smothering infants illegal!

Sure. It’s also a good reason to support abortion to term, on demand.

The ultimate question is whether anyone should have the right to deliberately end an individual human life.
A foetus, from conception is:
Individual - individuated genes, unique, therefore not a part of the mother's own body
Human-2 human parents, member of the homo sapiens sapientis species
Life-alive-how do we know? because we can kill it

I have a couple of disabilities that could lead to abortion. I think it should be legal to term. My parents are worried about my future and so am I. As you can see I am in some ways very articulate and successful. However I’m not really independent.

Some people with my disability have severe physical issues and additional needs lifelong. It has to be the potential mother’s choice of that risk with current circumstances including Amy other children.

is that uncomfortable? Very. Do I wish I’d been aborted? - on balance yes if my parents could then have a child without disability. I’d never have been born so. I’m sure that child could have brought any of the joy I may have over to he year without starting out disabled.

Personhood is not conferring until birth, a fetus is not a person until then which is why abortion is not murder in the eyes of the law and even causing someone to los

Try again...

Personhood is not conferring until birth, a fetus is not a person until then which is why abortion is not murder in the eyes of the law and even causing someone to lose a pregnancy, for example due to violence such as happened with Beth Newman and Alison Bolton, they would face charges of grievous bodily harm to the woman but would not be charged with murder of the unborn child.

Interestingly, for those who use religious arguments about abortion, the Bible itself makes a similar distinction. In 'Exodus', it is stated that people, whose violence causes a woman to miscarry, must pay a fine; while murder merits a death sentence.

Its ok for Dominic Lawson to spout about disability rights, he was and is in a position to get the very best medical care and specialist education for his daughter. Most people are not in this position, also most disabilities need massive health and hospital input, the way things are going the health service wont be able to provide tthis

I fundamentally believe that no woman should have to give over her body for the benefit of another person or a person-in-waiting. Nobody has the right to borrow my kidney function to keep someone else alive, even if it’s at no harm to myself. Neither should I have to gestate a feotus if I don’t want to (EVEN if you think at counts as a baby).

BUT... surely that doesn’t mean that you should administer heart-beat ending drugs to that woman who is borrowing my kidney function, or that feotus?

Of course it’s massively rubbish to have newborn babies enter in the care system (even if that system was hugely improved!) and it’s not what anyone would actually want. But worse than no life at all? Are we really saying that our “care” system is so grim that it would be better to have no existence at all?

well yes, pretty sure I covered that. Yes, they should. I say ‘I believe’ but of course we do have that right in specific circumstances.

I’ve never claimed a fetus is part of a woman’s body. It is however reliant on a woman’s body in order to develop, and a woman is well within her rights to deny said use of her body (at least within a legal timeframe, although I am very much in favour of extending it throughout pregnancy).

Our care system really is that bad yes.

you think children wants to grow up in foster care till they are 18 when it’s then bye. No real family no belonging. Knowing they can always just be shoved into a different house if the foster parents decide to? Living in care is horrible for children.

I have a question for those that would ban abortion for disability.... Have you thought it through to the end? Because of forced birthers getting their way in the states there is a poor woman right now who is being forced to carry to term her pregnancy of a child which has no skull. Because the law won't let abortion on the grounds of disability she is carrying a child that will suffer and die shortly after birth. How is that better? Like really explain how it is better to bring a child into the world knowing that they will suffer? There are thousand of disabled children all over the world needing to be adopted have any of you forced birthers adopted them?? Will you? Why not?

It just seems to me that's it's very easy to forced women to do what you want them too, whilst never dealing with the consequences yourself.

Totally agree @startrek90

Any adoptive parent could tell you that you don't get through the screening process without kissing goodbye to the idea that you are likely to finish the process with a 'healthy baby'. Most babies available for adoption have already had a very difficult life in utero and may well be forever changed even from birth. So there is a different mindset about adopting to begin with.

I do not feel there is intrinsically a significant difference in a doctor plunging a lethal needle into a baby in the later stages of pregnancy, and that lethal injection being delivered to a newly born child. They're in a different location. Either it was abhorrent before and still is, or it wasn't. There are countless instances of live babies being left to die following failed abortions, suggesting that service providers don't get this great difference either. For a woman, there is no material difference in giving birth (unless there is some great consolation in having the child cut up first which I don't believe for a moment). There is something insane about it being terribly wrong to leave a child to die that only moments earlier it was ethically acceptable to kill. Life is not fair or painless and that's no way to make it fair. Some women seem determined to ensure that no matter what happens it's our job as women to make sure we're never left in an unpleasant situation no matter what arguments have to be made to achieve it. I think there are times when you win one battle and lose a different one in the process - it is the case that aborting most babies with DS will make it harder for some women to go against the grain and access support as the parent of a child with DS. That is the case and has played out elsewhere. These realities are coming down the line and they do matter, as well as other considerations. Perhaps we would ultimately decide that nothing turns on it but we still should be alert to all the implications and not hide behind the idea that this is a morally neutral act or allow ourselves to assume that aborting for disability will have no impact on service provision. There are policy makers who would love it to be not the done thing to have a child with disabilities. Where does that leave mothers of children with disabilities.

Reading these thread I'm not entirely sure that many posters here would make the latter illegal for disabled children if they had the choice. It really does come across that way. It makes me wonder where we'll be in twenty years.

Women's choices shouldn't be conflated with disablism. The issues should be separated out and levelled up. This lazy pivot from 'it's a woman's choice to do what she wants with her body' to 'she should get an extra choice if the child has disabilities' is ethically untenable, even if just as an argument. They're different issues.

There are countless instances of live babies being left to die following failed abortions

Bullshit.

The fetal heartbeat is monitored to ensure it has stopped before the induction/section begins.

There are countless instances of live babies being left to die following failed abortions, suggesting that service providers don't get this great difference either.

No, there aren't. There may be a few occasions where this has happened as a result of mistakes about the dates of pregnancy, but vanishingly rare. Where did you get this idea about 'countless instances' from?

Of the 272 babies aborted post-24wks in 2021, their mother has made the decision to end the pregnancy for medical reasons. Given that no action was taken to end the pregnancy prior to that and that they're all on medical grounds, its a fair assumption that they were all wanted pregnancies and that it hasn't been an easy decision for these women to make but they are acting in what they consider to be the best interests of everyone involved. The safety net of post-24wk abortion on medical grounds exists because its needed, even if our care system was perfect and had no negative effects on development outcomes it would still have to be an option - forced adoption is just as abhorrent as forced parenthood.

If the law said that post-24wks your only option was to keep the baby or put the baby up for adoption, no abortion allowed then three potential outcomes would occur.

1. Women would be pressured by society/friends/family into keeping and raising a disabled child whose needs they are unable/ill-equipped to provide. Everyone in that scenario suffers, especially the child.

1. The number of disabled children in the care system increases. Some of these children will be too severely disabled to be fostered let alone adopted as they will never leave hospital or a professional care setting. There are not enough potential adopters to take on the current children in care never mind increasing the numbers and many of those potential adopters will be in the same position as rhe birth parents - unable to meet the needs of a disabled child.

1. Women will seek unsafe means to end the pregnancy and the number of backstreet abortions will increase along with maternal death rates. There is no way to ban abortions, only safe abortions.

The only other one to add is that there would be more abortions at 24 weeks. Instead of seeing if surgery to repair a spinal cord could potentially work for your baby, or whether your DS baby had heart defects or other additional issues, parents would be so conscious of the hard time limit that they would be much more likely to abort and there would be increased medical pressure to do so.

I do not feel there is intrinsically a significant difference in a doctor plunging a lethal needle into a baby in the later stages of pregnancy, and that lethal injection being delivered to a newly born child. They're in a different location. Either it was abhorrent before and still is, or it wasn't.

Women's bodies are not 'a location', they are our bodies. Women are people with full legal rights, including human rights, including bodily autonomy.

Foetuses are not legal persons. They do not share human rights until after they are born. That is the significant difference.

Giving human rights to foetuses always ends very very badly for women, even those not seeking an abortion. It's not even necessary for making your strong pro-life arguments. In the UK it's illegal to abort a foetus past 24 weeks except in certain very strict circumstances yet no foetus has legal personhood or human rights in the UK.

There are countless instances of live babies being left to die following failed abortions, suggesting that service providers don't get this great difference either.

Citation please.

For a woman, there is no material difference in giving birth (unless there is some great consolation in having the child cut up first which I don't believe for a moment).

This is really nasty and dehumanising. Please bear in mind that there are women on this thread who have had to make harrowing decisions about much wanted pregnancies.

That's as far as I got with your post. I found it too disgusting to read to the end.

it is the case that aborting most babies with DS will make it harder for some women to go against the grain and access support as the parent of a child with DS. That is the case and has played out elsewhere.

So it is up to women to have disabled children they don’t want, so as to better serve the interests of the women with disabled children they do want?

interesting concept, but no. Women have their own agency when it comes to decisions they make over their own bodies and their own lives. They’re not merely useful pawns best utilised to achieve X goal. Lovely sentiment though: “fuck what you want and what is best for the life you already have, we need numbers. Get under the fucking bus”

And no, babies aren’t routinely left to die after late term abortions. At least not in this country. Furthermore, the fact that you can’t comprehend a material difference between giving birth and abortion, doesn’t mean that there isn’t one, and it doesn’t mean that any individual woman should not have full choice when it comes to what is being done to her body.

Location is no minor consideration when said ‘location’ is someone else’s body.