to think they would feel differently if they had children?

[Violetbeauregardesgum]

Just reflecting that the three most vehemently pro-abortion, abortion on demand up till 40 weeks women I know are all child free. Was talking to one the other day and was taken aback by how uncompromising she was. The 32 week old baby that the woman was imprisoned for aborting was not a baby, all women have the right to end a pregnancy at any point.

I am pro choice but think the 24 week cut off is about right. AIBU to think they would feel differently if they had gone through a pregnancy to term themselves?

Thing is this isn’t actually going to happen. It’s very unusual to not know you are pregnant until you are giving birth & it’s very unusual that you’d opt to abort at term for any reason. The chances of them happening together seem so remote and even if it happened the chances you’d figure out what was going on and be able to get all the necessary paperwork sorted so you couldn’t sue the hospital afterwards for letting you have the injection could well mean it would be too late. It’s not that unusual to turn up at hospital too late in the process to get an epidural for example

Viability.

What difference does birth do though? Actually? Same child, same age, just outside of the skin

People said ‘somebody waiting around for months before deciding to have an abortion at 30+ weeks’ would never happen. Lots of things aren’t going to happen, until they do.

I know it's not going to happen, because it's illegal to terminate a pregnancy after 24 weeks without a medical reason, and I can't see that changing.

I'm just trying to test the limits of @SouthLondonMum22's belief that this should be legal.

It's a freakishly rare phenonemen [sp] - eg 58 yr old woman admitted via A&E with swollen abdomen and severe pain more likely to be diagnosed with intestinal obstruction than labour

In practice there is virtually no difference between the viability of a foetus at 23+6 weeks and one at 24 weeks. And given that due dates are mostly calculated by the date of the woman's last period and not changed unless the measurements in the 12 week scan are significantly out, in most cases there is absolutely no way of knowing whether a woman is 23+6 weeks pregnant or 24 weeks pregnant.

What viability means is that statistically, a baby born at what is, to the best of our knowledge, 24 weeks, has around a 60% chance of survival. Babies born earlier can and do survive, and babies born later can and do die.

But hardly anyone would agree to do it. I’m really struggling to understand to what end legalising abortion at any time for any reason would do, if it was unenforceable? What’s the point? If you give women the right to late abortion, you have to be able to provide the service. It’s pointless otherwise. So in a way this entire argument is moot.

And if you make a woman's legal right to have an abortion at any point in her pregnancy conditional on her being able to find a doctor prepared to do it, you may get women - probably suffering from severe mental health problems - dithering over whether to have an abortion at 22, 23, 24, 25 weeks, and then going absolutely frantic at 30 weeks as she scrambles around desperately trying to find a doctor willing to perform a late abortion, when she assumed she would be able to because she has a legal right to it. What a mess that would be. In many ways I think it's kinder to focus women's minds by saying, "24 weeks is your absolute limit so you need to make your mind up well in advance of that to ensure that you can get an appointment in time if that is what you decide you want to do."

True viability its more like 22 weeks these days.
The survival stats at this gestation vary by source between 2% (bpas), 28% (Stanford children's hospital) and 10% (Tommy's). The difference is probably whether it's all babies, all babies born alive, only those whose parents opt for treatment, whether it excludes early induction for a TFMR where the babies will only be given palliative care. The world

By 24w you've got a 60-70% charge of survival (and half of those babies still have either no disabilities or only mild ones).

A 23+6 baby and a 24 week one week have a few percentage points advantage but there's nothing magical about 24w.

21+1 is the current record btw. This was quite recently though so I'm not sure of the long term effects

Incorrect. The dates don’t change unless “measurements are significantly out” they chance if the measurements are out whatsoever. Even if that means updated the due date by 1 or 2 days.

You’ve got to draw a line somewhere, as with everything. so as others have said above, they’d draw theirs at 40 weeks/right up until birth. And I was curious as to what difference, in their eyes, birth actually made. As I was and am genuinely curious to hear their views on that. Because to me (personally) that means you’d be ok with killing a a baby as soon as it’s born.

I've always been told they don't adjust your due date unless the measurements are more than a week out. There are tons of posts on here by women who believe there is a not insignificant discrepancy between their official due date and their actual due date based on when they ovulate, which can become an issue when the doctor is saying the woman is at 42 weeks and needs to be induced but she believes she's only 41 weeks.

Not that I'm speaking from personal experience as I had fertility treatment and know exactly when both of mine were conceived to the day.

A woman wanting to have her baby adopted has her life, family set up etc scrutinised, because in the UK it is not usual for a woman to want to relinquish a baby. Many women lead chaotic lives and have no wish to come onto anyone's radar. Many women, as PP have said, have experienced DV and definitely wouldn't want the father to have any opportunity to take the baby or even know it exists, that is not possible if she wants to relinquish as the father and other family members would be told about the baby and offered to care for it. It really isn't as simple as 'just give birth and give it up for adoption' as several posters seem to think.

Regarding the due date issue, does anyone know what they do when a woman doesn't discover she is pregnant until fairly late on and has no idea when she conceived? I'm thinking of women with irregular cycles or who bleed during early pregnancy and mistake it for a period, for example.

An ultrasound in the first trimester will give fairly accurate measurements but once the woman is well into the second trimester it's far less useful for determining whether she is, say, 22 or 23 weeks pregnant. If she doesn't know when she conceived and they can only make a best guess as to how far along she is, are they also just guessing when the cut off point is?

I support the law as it is, and would consider myself pro choice.
For those arguing that giving a child up is the obvious alternative to an abortion I would respectfully suggest they don't have first hand experience of the care system in this country. There is no guarantee that a child will be adopted if it is given up to the care system. Whilst as a last resort I understand it can be unavoidable, I can't imagine choosing to have a child to put into a system that will fail them. The quality of life of children in the care system is not good. They are let down at pretty much every turn. That's not to say that no child can be given up and subsequently have a wonderful life. But it is not a given. And a child with a disability is far less likely to be adopted than one without.

Abortion isn't murder though.

Many women lead chaotic lives and have no wish to come onto anyone's radar. Many women, as PP have said, have experienced DV and definitely wouldn't want the father to have any opportunity to take the baby or even know it exists

Thank you @nothingcomestonothing

I'm not sure about the chaotic lives but because that's a pretty good reason for SS to be involved.

But as someone who has had abusive family members and an abusive father of my child, that makes sense. You would be pushed into that role because you wouldn't want them to have your child. I've had to go through that process and it's very worrying.

I don't support abortion til term for social reasons, but it gives a different perspective.

I didn't say it was (although morally I struggle to see a clear difference between murdering a newborn baby and terminating a healthy pregnancy at 39 weeks, as some people on here are advocating.

I'm saying that "this terrible thing wouldn't happen all that often even if we did legalise it" isn't an argument for legalising it.

This.

It's an awful tragedy, obviously, and this girl has been failed by the system at every turn.

But it's not an argument for legalising the termination of a healthy full term pregnancy.

She wasn't a "girl". She was in her 30s. She had been having sex with two different men, then moved in with another one and tried to hide the pregnancy from him. She'd known for months she was pregnant. She had been googling "how to abort a baby at 30 weeks" etc multiple times so while she may not have known the exact gestation, she knew exactly what she was doing then lied to BPAS pretending she was 7 weeks pregnant. And having had three children already, she knew that this was a fully formed baby she was killing.

The other recent case of the teenager who murdered her newborn by pinching his nose, stuffing cotton wool in his mouth and stamping on his head then dumped him in a bingbag on her front doorstep and went to bed is equally reprehensible. Even at 15, somebody capable of that does belong in prison, yes.

There comes a point where we have to stop making excuses for people.

Women of course deserve healthcare and choices and we have a lot of those in the UK. But deliberately killing a fully formed baby that is capable of living outside of your body is something most people will find horrifying, whether it happens to have been born yet or not. In my view, the current law seems about right because it is set at the level where newborns have a decent shot at survival if born at that gestation, and has exemptions for health issues later on. It seems a reasonable balance.

I find some of the views I've read here quite horrifying: just as horrifying as those of the pro-lifers actually because both are so extreme. All rights exist in the context of trying to strike a reasonable balance with sometimes conflicting rights of others, and responsibilities. They do not exist in isolation.

A woman wanting to have her baby adopted has her life, family set up etc scrutinised, because in the UK it is not usual for a woman to want to relinquish a baby. Many women lead chaotic lives and have no wish to come onto anyone's radar. Many women, as PP have said, have experienced DV and definitely wouldn't want the father to have any opportunity to take the baby or even know it exists, that is not possible if she wants to relinquish as the father and other family members would be told about the baby and offered to care for it. It really isn't as simple as 'just give birth and give it up for adoption' as several posters seem to think.

This is a reason to change adoption procedures, make social services functional and put proper support in place for women in abusive relationships to leave and ensure much harsher sentences are given to the offenders and contact between violent and abusive men and their children is no longer allowed and even promoted. It isn't a reason for legalising abortions of perfectly health babies just before birth.

No women can't decide for ourselves. If that were true, Carla Foster wouldn't have been sent to prison.

👏

The true pro choice crowd are as mental as the people who call for things like prison sentences for abortion at any point in my eyes. I think the UK law for abortion is pretty good all things considered.

Of course you're allowed an opinion.

But having an opinion doesn't entitle you to enforce it on others who don't share it imo.

If you give women the right to late abortion, you have to be able to provide the service.

Lots of things are legal but not actually provided. Vasectomies are legal, but the nhs where I live no longer funds them (probably slightly increasing the number of abortions they have to fund, and definitely increasing the amount of female contraceptives they fund).
I suspect if it was legalised, NHS treatment guidelines would prevent it anyway.

Of course you're allowed an opinion.

But having an opinion doesn't entitle you to enforce it on others who don't share it imo.

The very purpose of having laws of any kind is to force opinions on others who do not share them. Like those who might see nothing wrong with burgling your house, or selling untested medications, or raping people. They are required to prevent egregious actions from people in whose opinion those actions may be perfectly fine. In more nuanced situations where opinions are more divided laws are still required so that society can function and there is a coherent framework of rules that balances the rights, responsibilities and opinions of different people.

So yes, other people's "opinions" are forced on you in every aspect of life through the legal framework so that humans can live in relative harmony in a safe environment (by historical standards). Your line of argument entails that all law should be abolished because it is an infringement on personal rights to do whatever in your opinion is ok is rather foolish and is essentially demanding anarchy. I think you might change your mind rather quickly if you lived in such a society.