To think that people like anti-abortionist Kristan Hawkins are the enemy of women and feminism everywhere

[Purplefoxes]

Maybe extreme but..I was just reading this BBC article (link below) on Kristan Hawkins and it made my blood boil as I am pro choice. She is the woman from the US organisation Students for Life of America and has been instrumental in over turning Roe v Wade. She is now on the back of this 'success' campaigning for total abortion ban across America . The overturning of Roe V Wade is a decision which will likely result in the death or debilitation of many pregnant women who either cannot access much needed abortions for health reasons or try to access back street illegal abortions or could even commit suicide as a result. Not to mention there could be many unwanted children dumped into the care system or brought up in abusive environments. I just cannot fathom why anyone, let alone a woman would do this. I'm sure if it was one of her kids who was pregnant and needed a medical abortion to save their life she'd change her tune! How blinkered does a person have to be to not think of the impact of banning abortion on both women and children! And how has such medieval policy been allowed to happen in modern day America..could this happen in the UK?! Are we losing our rights as women? When did the life of a fetus become more important than the life of its mother?

BBC article

I find her chilling. So much easier to empathise with the idea of an innocent baby than the messy reality of a dependent foetus born to be an unwanted child. Actually, many of these babies would be wanted were there better support but I don’t see these same voices looking to provide child care, to invest in maternity leave, to find struggling single mothers and families.

The problem with the pro-life “opinion” is that it seeks to restrict what other people can do with their bodies. It is not a “neutral” opinion at all.

I wouldn’t terminate a pregnancy. I had a baby in circumstances where most women would choose to terminate. But that’s the point - I chose to continue the pregnancy, I had a choice. The fact that I think (who could be certain) that I would never choose termination doesn’t mean that choice isn’t there, and valuable. If pro-life only meant you wouldn’t get an abortion yourself it wouldn’t be at all controversial- but the pro-life movement seeks to control other women’s bodies which is abhorrent.

And calling someone incur🙄ious, the height on intellectual debate.

@AnorLondo no children are killed by abortion?! Mate, please 🤣
It is possible to be pro choice without being THIS deluded. Of course abortion kills children, that's the whole point of having them. What you have in your belly is a human being at some or other stage of development that left alone would come out of you as a fully formed baby, not some biological occurrence in a state of arrested development waiting for your permission to become a person.

You could argue that you'd prioritise the life of the mother for whatever reason, and you might even be right in some cases. You could acknowledge that's a horrible sacrifice, that abortion is the lesser of two evils, that sometimes it's just what needs to be done. I wouldn't agree with you on 99% of those cases probably, but I'd be really ashamed and saddened if I happen to think you are right on that 1% that's left.

It's people who treat abortion in such a flippant way that's pushing the pro life movement to the extreme. When women who genuinely need medical care due to a miscarriage or horrible cases of abuse aren't able to get it, it will be the abortion on demand crowd's fault.

That is only true is you don't think the death of a baby (or fetus as you and others put it) counts as injury and devastation which obviously this woman (and others) do. Abortion numbers have gone up from c. 20k per annum when it was first legalised to over 200k per annum now. It is perfectly legitimate to find that to be tragic.

I know. What is it with the left wanting to kill babies and being so proud of it. More emphasis should be put on contraception and education rather than it just being so easy to go and get an abortion. I think women should have autonomy over their own bodies, but as soon as there is another human life in the mix why should it be so easy for them to end it?

And what about the lives women lived before abortion was legalised @cantab94 ? Can’t you see that they were tragic?

Genuinely, I don’t care what you call it. Call it baby, fetus, Nigel, whatever…it’s irrelevant. What name you choose doesn’t change the fact that women have been having abortions for as long as they’ve been giving birth.

And no, I don’t. Even if you did however, those babies are still dying regardless of the legality of abortion, but when it’s criminalized there’s a high chance that women having abortions are at least being injured, if not outright killed as well.

Hence why it’s ludicrous that the position is called ‘pro life’ when what you seem to be aiming for is a two for the price of one deal.

This woman opposes certain contraception including the pill. She doesn't want babies to be protected she wants women to suffer.

Blah blah …plenty of people who want to adopt newborns…

i suspect you are not a birth parent, adoptee or adoptive parent because generally people from within this triangle do not offer this as an easy solution. I cover two of the categories and am horrified by the American market for newborns. It is sickening as are the economic, legal and religious factors that support it.

Because it’s entirely her business? Because it’s far safer for women to have ready access to legal abortion than it is to access the black market alternative?

Take your pick.

You suspect wrong. I have 4 children, the last was an unplanned pregnancy at age 48, big shock and very stressful. Don't really know what you mean about market for new borns but we're not in America (though appreciate this woman is).

@AffIt
Trigger warning

Absolutely awful. Heartbreaking and true cruelty to those women but these are the harsh realities of anti-abortion law.

The woman forced to naturally birth her partially formed fetus without medical care and then haemorrhaging, the woman forced to carry to term her baby who was missing their skull, a 'birth' where compassion had gone out the window and then watching the child die suffering. No parent could ever wish for that knowing there was an alternative. The institutional racism on both cases... all of it is abhorrent. Yet to add further insult to injury the anti-abortionists crowd funding to silence their stories because it doesn't suit their rhetoric. Disgraceful.

And you were free to make the choices you wanted to make. Feel free to extend the same courtesy to others.

Whether people want newborns or not is also an irrelevance. Women with unwanted pregnancies aren’t obliged to provide them.

No, obviously alot more babies are dying since abortion was legalised the number has gone up and up each year. I didn't say I would criminalise although think this woman would, I would like to offer state support including financial to women who are struggling with pregnancy as I have also done.

That's what you're looking at creating here if you ban abortion though, isn't it? Notice how you didn't reply to my point about opening thousands of children up to slavery and CSA at the hands of their adoptive parents. Or is that OK because they're not a baby at that stage so it doesn't quite pull at the heartstrings as much as a 'baby dying' (read: a 6 week fetus completely unaware of its own existence going to a better fate than this sorry world.)

I read the article this morning too.

Firstly, that woman is an absolute cunt and I comes as no surprise that she has no friends.
Secondly, I had an abortion and not only am I so utterly glad I did but I feel ZERO shame as it probably saved my life.
I could have died if I’d carried on my (unplanned but using contraception) pregnancy. Not to mention that if I’d kept him and I survived, he more than likely would have been severely disabled. Everyone has a different, very personal reason for terminating a pregnancy. It could be a situation like mine, or simply that a baby doesn’t fit in to your current situation (which we also felt, hence using contraception).

Whatever the reason, it is very much ok to have an abortion if that’s the choice you make ❤️

I disagree. As an adopted person I see it as a very fair solution to an unfortunate situation. Well I can hardly say I'm so sorry I wasn't aborted can I? And I live today because someone 45 years ago believed I was a human and went through a difficult time to give me a chance. That's a lot to be grateful for.

I haven't read the article so can't comment but reading other PPs, any view that is so extreme that it is unwilling to even listen to an alternative is dangerous in my opinion. It goes both ways.

Unsurprisingly, considering that 1, the population has gone up and as such the abortion rates will also rise, and 2, we have actual records now. When abortion was criminalized, it wasn’t, shockingly enough, recorded for the benefits of national statistics.

The cold hard facts are that nearly half of all abortions worldwide are in countries where it is illegal. Illegal abortion is a leading cause of maternal injury and death worldwide. Oh, and a fun one for you: abortion rates are actually lower in countries where it is legal.

https://www.guttmacher.org/fact-sheet/induced-abortion-worldwide

But tell me, I’m curious, what’s an acceptable number of dead and injured women to you?

Genuinely, I don’t care what you call it. Call it baby, fetus, Nigel, whatever…it’s irrelevant. What name you choose doesn’t change the fact that women have been having abortions for as long as they’ve been giving birth

Agreed.

I'm never surprised by men trying to control women's bodies, but I am always surprised when other women do it too.

Another reason why it’s hard to take the anti choice position seriously is because you can show them hard proof that anti choice laws don’t actually achieve their stated aims and in fact result in far more harm than pro choice ones, but they’re invariably so committed to their cognitive dissonance that they’ll straight up ignore it and reach for a distraction technique such as the baby or fetus argument.

I'm sorry, in what way is recognising that a foetus is not a baby deluded? And if women can't get medical care for miscarriages or abuse how that will be the fault of people who are pro-choice?

It might be a horrible sacrifice for some people, not for others.

Only fake ones. I can’t even read the article. When I think of how bloody hard second wave feminists worked to improve women’s rights and some sanctimonious ignoramus comes along and undoes it all it makes my blood boil.

I read that article this morning. What I cannot understand is why pro-lifers are also anti-contraception? Surely preventing a pregnancy, rather than aborting it, would be preferable? But they don't believe in taking the pill? Is it that they believe women should do nothing but churn out babies from the moment of their first period until the menopause?

I had to have misoprostol when I found out at just over 10 weeks that our baby had no heartbeat. Miscarrying, in agony, at home, during the pandemic was bad enough. But if I'd had to wait to miscarry naturally (assuming that ever happened), with the risks of infection, doesn't bear thinking about.

That makes no sense whatsoever, on the one hand you correctly say illegal abortion is not recorded ( and my point was since legalisation so wasn't including that) on the other you maintain rate is higher in countries where its illegal (link doesn't work) - well how would you know that if its not recorded?