Disability/abortion debate in UK

[Bretontops]

www.itv.com/news/meridian/2022-11-04/teenager-with-downs-syndrome-meets-rishi-sunak-over-abortion-laws

This cause went to the High Court and was rejected, so why is Rishi meeting with her?

I’m getting irritated with this ‘pressure group’ who basically want to ensure more babies with disabilities are born by stealth, by taking choice away from women. I’m also dubious about how many of these disabled people are truly advocating for themselves and how many have been ‘encouraged’ to do so by pro life parents.

In some cases the parents had the screening but slipped through the net - so they didn’t make an active decision to parent a disabled child, but now expect others to do so, to affirm their circumstances presumably?

Prepared to be told AIBU, but I feel we should be able to discuss it as it’s potentially our rights they want to restrict.

I personally am 100% pro choice but I see no reason why he shouldn't meet with her. At the end of the day the prime minister is a public servant and needs to listen to and serve the entire public so part of that is bound to be listening to concerns people may have regardless of topic. If they only meet with and speak with one section of the general public then to me that would be problematic in itself?

Not when it comes to abortion rights that only impact one section of the general public. What is worrying is that he has also appointed a prominent pro-life MP who wants to be the voice of the unborn to Women's minister.

That poor woman has been groomed into believing that women who have abortions for medical reasons would wish that she herself hadnt been born. Theyve made her take it personally. Its cruel to her and its not even true.

Either a foetus is a full human and so has rights or it is not and therefore does not.

That's incredibly binary and overly simplistic.

Perhaps they have rights when they are viable outside the womb, or any other number of interpretations.

A foetus may have rights, maybe be considered ‘alive’ and may be considered important - it the woman’s rights, life and importance trumps that of the foetus. Every. Single. Time.

Precisely. I have first hand experience of a disabled child who will require round the clock, life long care, supervision and never have any sort of independence. Sedated to keep them on a level. They are not worthless but there is a cost both financially and mentally to their parents. Millie isn’t representative of every child brown with DS. Many have other Co-morbidities which make their lives far more complex and challenging.

I feel very uncomfortable about full term abortion but strongly believe this should be a discussion between a doctor(s) and their patients.

It's another way that pressure groups want to put the fetus above the mental health of the mother or parents. I don't think this will ever be resolved because women are very much of lower importance to these people.

Foetuses do not have rights. Human rights begin at birth. That's why most of the claims in the Judicial Review were rejected and why they were only given leave to appeal on their claim that the different time limit indirectly discriminates against disabled people who have already been born.

Granting human rights (i.e. personhood) to foetuses is a slippery slope which never turns out well for women.

You can still have laws governing how foetuses are treated, just as we have laws about how embryos and human gametes must be treated in research labs and IVF clinics.

I’m so sorry for your experience. Thank you for sharing that. It’s so important. This is not a choice - it’s the lesser of two evils.

@Georgieporgie29 He really is! He's got the world's biggest smile, and a riot of red curls, and very flamboyant taste in trainers, loves sequins, mexican food, and cinnamon buns. He's passionate about 80s music, the Wiggles, Yolanda Brown, Andy and the band and Fireman Sam.

He also doesn't sleep more than an hour at a stretch, has no sense of danger or safety, and can be incredibly violent and aggressive - he kicks, he bites, he pulls hair with enough force to tear your scalp. He smashes everything he lays hands on, puts everything in his mouth, and bolts the minute he's not physically restrained. He's been in and out of hospital all his life and I've had to give him CPR leading to my having severe PTSD.

Children and adults with SEN can do all the amazing things and have all the amazing qualities in my first paragraph. BUT everything in the second paragraph can be completely soul destroying and nobody should be forced to choose it.

💐❤️ much love to you. I can only imagine how difficult life is for all of you. You sound like an absolutely amazing parent.

Surrogacy involves a woman consenting to carrying a baby for another person or couple. Just because the people she is carrying the baby don’t have to go through the hardships of pregnancy, doesn’t mean they are not involved or impacted. If a surrogate is told that the baby she is carrying for someone else will not survive she and the person and people she is carrying for are still impacted.

The more I read about these campaign groups using very highly functional, well supported 'poster child' DS people to front their campaigns, the more angry I get.

The ladies I've seen involved absolutely do not have the mental capacity to understand the complexity of the debate - they are fed lies, and set up to feel as if the world wants them to not exist.
I think it is truly sick that their parents have encouraged and supported this - they should be advising and protecting their kids from such organisations and such exploitation!

@LydiaBennetsUglyBonnet surrogacy involves a woman making decisions about the contents of her uterus, just as with termination. Either that's ok and she should be allowed to do so with no questions asked, or it isn't and conditions and limitations may be applied to provide wider societal protections.

You can still have laws governing how foetuses are treated

What do you think the basic laws should be?

Incidentally a v late term foetus would be termed a baby if outside the womb. Literally a layer of muscle and a birth process between the two.
Why should they have no rights to life inside the womb but a right to life outside it.

I completely agree @WiddlinDiddlin. I find this abhorrent.

Until there is way more help available for the parents of disabled children then no one has the right to judge a women for aborting a baby with disabilities. Unless these people are willing to help fund, or give care, for all the less advantaged families then this is not a fight they should win.

@LemonDrop22 I think New Zealand's law sounds sensible.

The implications of granting foetuses personhood and human rights are well set out in this guardian article:

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jul/04/marshae-jones-alabama-fetal-rights-alarmed

A woman was convicted of manslaughter because she got into a fight and was shot, she survived but her unborn child didn't.

Instead of being offered health interventions and support, pregnant women with drug or alcohol problems are convicted of chemical endangerment of their unborn children.

Women are closely monitored throughout pregnancy and drug tested without their knowledge. If they test positive for any substance they are reported to the police.

Theoretically, women could be prosecuted for perfectly legal activities such as drinking a glass of wine or playing sport.

Women who have a miscarriage or a stillbirth are placed under suspicion and if it can be shown that something they did contributed to the loss of the pregnancy they can be convicted of manslaughter.

Granting personhood and human rights to foetuses would also mean that unborn children could be made wards of court, with all that implies for the rights and freedom of the women in whose bodies they reside.

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11648578/

Thats all before we get to abortion rights. You could be extremely pro-life and still think the above situations are terrible for women and should be avoided.

But obviously granting foetuses personhood and human rights would also have a massive impact on a woman's right to end a pregnancy at any stage.

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v40/n10/sally-rooney/an-irish-problem

It would also allow men the right to advocate on behalf of their unborn child and to seek an injunction to prevent the mother from having an abortion.

www.womenslinkworldwide.org/en/gender-justice-observatory/court-rulings-database/paton-v-british-pregnancy-advisory-service-trustees-and-another-1978-qb-276

What lies are they being "fed"? They have been told that it is legal to have a late abortion if someone has down's syndrome (as they do) but not if they don't. That's true and I can see that it would probably be quite upsetting to feel that their lives aren't valued as much as non-disabled people. I personally think that late abortions are either okay (regardless of disability) or they aren't. The only exception should be if the child would clearly have a very poor quality of life if born.

Growing up my neighbours had a disabled child, it's not something that could have been picked up before birth in that case but I did see how difficult it made life for them. The child is now an adult but will always need parents or siblings to help them out at least a little (the eldest sibling already does quite a bit to help and will probably become responsible for sibling when the parents are no longer around). This mad me feel that if I had a choice, if I knew my child was likely to be disabled, I probably would abort. Sorry if that offends anyone, but it's something that affects the whole family not just the child in question and parents. Parents should have the choice.

Whilst I personally disagree with aborting for 'frivolous' reasons such as wanting a different sex, I actually would rather it be legal to do so to give women more autonomy over their own bodies

That DS is the only reason - it isn't.

That they are wholly representative of the lives that would not exist if someone chooses to abort - they are not, they are the extreme end of a scale, the other end of that scale they are not likely to be shown, let alone imagine!

That the world wants rid of disabled people - I don't believe thats true, I think some people think that but some people think abhorrent things about any group you care to name.

They're pushed to make it personal and keep it personal - I could do the same, we all could - if our mothers had decided to abort, we would not be here.

It isn't a useful argument for the whole population though is it - because not every disabled child will be exactly like them, not even every child with Down Syndrome will be like them.

There are so many variables, but both these ladies show no awareness of them - that some people are much more severely disabled, some peoples parents are far less able or totally unable to care for them, that some people desperately need support they will never get...

I'd love to interview either of them, properly and ask them how they think a child who has no parents at all and lives in the state care system feels? Or how their parents might feel if they were in their 60's or 70's with little money and no external support. Or how they might feel if they knew they were going to have a baby that would live a short, painful life and might kill them on the way out.

But that would be cruel and unethical.

@ElizabethBest you sound like a great parent, and a lovely son. Your story is the one we should be hearing, and the one Rishi Sunak should be hearing. It’s real, raw, loving and honest. I could write similar about my DS. I am coping and DS is thriving, but partly because I no longer work and have a lot of skills to help me. Other parents I know are not able to cope, I also see schools and institutions not coping and the kids are not thriving. It’s this reality that needs to be bought to the highest level.

I'd love to interview either of them, properly and ask them how they think a child who has no parents at all and lives in the state care system feels? Or how their parents might feel if they were in their 60's or 70's with little money and no external support. Or how they might feel if they knew they were going to have a baby that would live a short, painful life and might kill them on the way out.

Maybe they would say that non disabled children are also sometimes brought up in care with no parents or have parent in their 60s or 70s but it is still not legal for those children to be aborted late in pregnancy so why is it okay if they have DS? It is different if the baby would only live a short painful life but otherwise, I think late abortions are either okay (regardless of disability) or they aren't.

They are told that people like them are aborted.

So they think all people with DS are the same as them, they are not told about the people who are incontinent, without speech, violent, deaf and blind.

They are told babies are aborted for a cleft lip.

They are probably told all the rubbish I was told at school / VI form (RC schools).