AIBU to think throwing a mum-of-four in prison for having an abortion is never the answer?

[therescoffeeinthatnebula]

Spotted this on Twitter and haven't seen it already being discussed.

Apparently, a woman is being sentenced today for having an abortion over the limit during lockdown. I don't know of the circumstances (can't find anything other than the Sunday Times article), only that she already had four children and claims she didn't know exactly how far along she was.

I think most of us would agree making medical appointments during lockdown was bloody difficult and that it's even harder to attend any appointment if you have children, given you're not normally allowed to take them with you.

Whatever the truth, I'm appalled to see a woman potentially thrown in prison for trying to seek an abortion during lockdown, especially when you look at how violence against women is treated. I'd have thought referring her for mandatory counselling would be more of an appropriate outcome than prison because finding out you aborted what could have been a viable baby has got to mess with anyone's head.

It's all very sad - she should have been able to access proper services earlier - but prison, to me, should never have been on the table as a consequence.

I didn't actually realise that abortion in this country was blanket illegal and that our rights to seek abortions up to the limit are actually exceptions to that law rather than a piece of legislation that stands on its own.

I do donate to these charities

Where did you read this, please?

Flinging money at charities doesnt really involve actual effort

Where do you get the idea that we are operating under laws from 1861?

I have volunteered for them as well

@Kiwano - she was charged under the Offences Against the Person Act 1861

@eggsbenedict23 which ones and how much?

Tell me, do you think a child who has been abandoned by a mother forced to carry it feels better or worse than the child who may or may not have lost a theoretical sibling to an abortion? Which scenario has the greater impact?

And why the presumption that existence is always better? Do you have any idea what proportion of the world's population live on abject poverty and misery?

Are you being deliberately obtuse?

Preventing someone from taking their chosen course of action is of course forcing them into another. Your flat-footed tap dancing around this fact neither changes nor distracts from it.

Thankfully, what other women choose to do has fuck all to do with you. Feel free to be sad about it though 🤷🏻‍♀️

The abortion debate blows my mind sometimes. People hear the A word and clutch their ‘women’s rights’ pearls.

She was between 32-34 weeks pregnant what she did was barbaric!! I’m sat in a hospital ward currently with complications meaning my baby will probably arrive at 34 weeks and has similar survival stats to a full term baby.

That woman is seriously messed up in the head. Don’t want a baby? Don’t have sex, get a safe legal abortion as soon as humanly possible or give it up for adoption.

search history:

’how do you get an abortion without going to the doctor’ - you don’t, with good reason.

’how to you lose a baby at 6 months’ - you don’t, for good reason!

The concept of a corpse having more rights than a woman is patently ridiculous!

Oh god, a sidewalk protestor 😂

You've made a straw pro-choicer there.

I don't struggle at all with women being different from men. In fact, that recognition is at the heart of my "as early as possible, as late as necessary, on-demand, and free of charge" stance on abortion. Because it is the woman whose body is altered by the pregnancy. It is the woman who will labour to give birth. So it should be the woman, not the state, who decides whether she stays pregnant.

Decreeing that a pregnant woman should have less right to bodily autonomy than a corpse is not how to address the poor status of women within society. Far from it, giving any woman less bodily autonomy than a corpse undermines the right to bodily autonomy of all women. If an unborn baby can use my body against my will for fourteen weeks in the third trimester, it undermines the argument that a rapist shouldn't be allowed to use my body against my will for fourteen minutes during a rape.

You need to look up what a succubus is, because an unborn baby does not resemble a succubus in any way.

Apparently the baby was viable. The pills sent her into labour and the baby died shortly after birth because of the pills. She clearly lied deliberately to get the pills, but I don't see how throwing her in prison helps.

*Yes. "Forced to give birth". Pregnancy is a natural bodily reaction to fetus fertilisation. Are you forced to breath or digest food?

Still a life at 8 weeks. I think there's a heartbeat at week 5/6?*

No woman should be forced to give birth. And a heartbeat is not a sign of viable life, regular brain activity is.

She had three children, and she did know this was not legal. She had to certify that she was less than 10 weeks pregnant to get the medication, and there is no way that she believed that to be true.

1000 times this !

@notokaywiththetropes thats a disgusting thing to say.

There's a bit more to it than just deciding if its in the public interest or not

@user9630721458
Point 14 of judicial comments, maybe I'm reading it wrong.

@therescoffeeinthatnebula , you say “The lack of scan is key.”
Where is the evidence that she asked for a scan? She was over 7 months pregnant and aborted the baby. The prison sentence is justified

All of which suggests she needed help. The debate as far as I can see it is whether a prison sentence is fair or not. I don't think it is personally.

Jesus Christ, has some kind of alert gone off on a handmaidens hard of comprehension anti-woman pro lifers mailing list?

Perhaps we should help the poor and not kill them.

It looks that way, doesn’t it? This thread is absolutely sickening.

All of this.

I am not a person who is against abortion within the present law and time limits but, if this woman was 32 weeks pregnant, the action she took killed a baby who could have survived independently had it been born at that stage.
There has been a lot of conjecture on here about her possible circumstances and there's a lot we don't know but it seems she was aware of how long the pregnancy had gone on. I don't think that's okay. By that stage it isn't just her own body, there are two individuals involved.
The judge will have had court reports etc. to aid his decision.