Nigel Farage on abortions- slippery slope?

[Ph2028]

Following the speech, Farage was also asked about his view on abortion limits. He replied that he was pro-choice but that it was "utterly ludicrous" for abortion to be allowed up to 24 weeks, when a hospital would "move heaven and earth" to help a baby born at 22 weeks survive.

Aibu to think it may be a slippery slope to reducing the number of weeks until it is effectively banned...

Anyway it's a bit of a non issue on Nigel's part given nearly 94% of reported abortions happen before two and a half months of pregnancy.so very few abortions happen at 24 weeks.

Now i remember why I requested a tubal ligation when I was pregnant with first baby as I didn't want anymore in any circumstances. It was predictably denied so dh got a vasectomy instead.

Nigel Farage (and anyone else calling for a reduction in the limit) clearly hasn't bothered to think about this properly or find out more about the typical circumstances for a 23 week abortion (which is exceptionally rare)

It's 24 weeks because some really awful genetic or development abnormalities won't be detected until fairly close to that deadline, and giving the parents enough time to process the news and to work out how to balance the amount of suffering and pain if they continue the pregnancy vs if they don't, means that they may be right up against the deadline when the procedure happens. This doesn't happen often but when it does the parents need compassion and support not legalistic barriers.

No one undergoes a 23 week abortion lightly. It isn’t like a 6 week abortion. They induce labour and giving birth to a dead foetus is a grim experience.

In other cases it might be because of difficulty accessing pregnancy tests or abortion services earlier, or mental health or social circumstances causing the woman to hide or be in denial about the pregnancy.

If the limit is reduced, net pain and suffering will increase unless there is first:

• significant investment in making early abortion easie to access
• massively improved CAMHS and other support services for young people so that we don't get young women so vulnerable and unsupported that they are in denial or attempting to hide their pregnancies until they become too noticeable.
• medical advances to make testing for major life-limiting (or incompatible with life at all) abnormalities detected more accurately earlier on during pregnancies.
• sufficient advances in feminism that all women feel empowered to know for certain whether or not motherhood at this point is the right decision, and have no shame or hangups or ignorance around their body so that they know what's going on, are incontrol of their fertility and have no doubt about being aware of and knowing what to do about an unwanted pregnancy if it happens.

Any reduction in limits without first establishing all these would be pure misogyny.

If all these measures were properly instituted, late abortions would become so vanishingly rare that no legal changes would be required and it would be a waste of government time to change the law.

This is a ridiculous take on adoption. You're saying that there are no happy adopted children? Do all adopted wish they had been aborted?

And also forced birthers think adoption is a sort of golden bullet. Not the very complex issue that it is.

I have never heard anyone boasting happily about aborting a wanted baby who they knew would be born with severe health conditions. That’s a completely different and very sad situation. I am sorry to hear what you have been through, and was not talking about you.

No. But it is not a simple solution.

I'm curious as to necessary in your opinion. Necessary for whom? Do you think you ought to be able to abort a full term fetus just because you have a panic about parenthood or your other half ditches you?? What about a newborn baby should we be able to drown them at birth if they come out with undiagnosed downs syndrome???

I think there's definitely a need for women's rights but I think post 20 weeks is abhorrent.

To be honest, I have never heard anyone “boasting” about having an abortion under any circumstances.

Probably when you said the cut off should be foetal heart beat detection, which is before the majority of women even find out they’re pregnant.

No, we don’t have the death penalty because it’s barbaric to permit the state to kill someone and not befitting for civilised society.
In Canada they allow abortion to term. Why are no Canadian women aborting healthy fetuses at 39 weeks? Plus doctors do have autonomy and can refuse to perform it.

I think if you reread it the poster is saying that adoption is not a simple solution, nor a very practical one. Nothing about the happiness of the child in that situation.

I strongly suspect a government led by Farage would have no interest in providing help for all the expenses involved in bringing up the seriously disabled children who would no longer be aborted if he had his way.

Frankly, the whole thing of Farage getting involved in encouraging people to have more children gives me the ick anyway. It has strong echoes of a mindset that thinks that the priorities for women should be Kinder, Kuche, Kirche, and that our job is to produce and bring up lots of good Aryan children.

Under any circumstances?

You cannot pick and choose who you are talking to when you say discussing an abortion “is not classy”.

The forced birthers don’t seem to care about children either, it isn’t uncommon to find them moaning that children born to parents who can’t afford them or don’t want them require state support.

farage wants to privatise the nhs doesn’t he?
how on earth is that compatible with lowering the abortion limit

Its not compatible. But he doesn't care. It's got fuck all to do with anyone's wellbeing.

It’s a realistic take on adoption and what would be involved for a woman who goes through with a pregnancy that she doesn’t want. You can’t keep adoptions secret. There are of course happy adopted children. I was talking more about the impact on the woman - it would be a lifelong trauma that she can’t escape and the idea that that is better than an abortion is ridiculous.

The straw (wo)man in this sort of discussion is the one who cheerily looks to abort a full term healthy foetus for no reason whatsoever. Who ARE these women? Seriously, have you ever in your life met anyone who would do that? How many women do you think would do that if the pesky law didn’t stop them?

Would you also prevent, say, a child who has been raped and who didn't know she was pregnant from getting an abortion after 14 weeks?

99% of abortions are carried out before 20 weeks . The abortions carried out after this point are generally done under ground E (fetal abnormality, people aren’t choosing to have late abortions they are having them because their fetus has defects.

Of course people can choose to have a child with disabilities.

I actually found the degree of questioning around having checks for Down’s syndrome during pregnancy a bit much. I refused them all, I didn’t care if my children had Down’s syndrome or not.

I’ve also heard of many cases where women have aborted healthy, wanted babies based on medical information which has been proven afterwards to be incorrect, and they are rightly taking legal action against. Lots of advice around ifs, buts and maybes incorrectly influences women to abort, which needs addressing as it is wrong and harmful to those families.

There is arguably now far too much early scanning, over-analysis and fear-mongering throughout perfectly viable pregnancies, which terrifies women unnecessarily.

Once a pregnancy reaches 24 weeks, as brutal as it sounds, at this point, it is killing a baby. At 24 weeks a foetus is fully formed, it feels pain. If it was born prematurely, it would have a good chance of living.

Imo there should have to be reasons beyond the argument that it's a woman's body and entirely her choice, even if she's 9 months pregnant!

Of course there should remain exemptions for severe foetal abnormality and hand in hand with a reduction in time, should be better maternity care inc earlier testing - no woman should be waiting until 20+ weeks for an abnormality scan!

The limit for abortion obviously used to be 28 weeks. It would seem logical from what folk are saying that the 24 weeks is already the slope and that we should therefore be campaigning for a return to the 28 week limit. From this POV if you want to maintain a 24 week limit (rather than return to 28 weeks), you are part of the problem.

Again, Farage is following a script. If you look at everything he says through the prism of American politics and culture wars, it will make sense. Big US pharma has wanted access to the UK market for a long time. The NHS is a strong regulating force and an obstacle for them.

Is the trauma of having a baby and giving it up for adoption worse than the trauma of terminating a pregnancy of a healthy baby? Neither option is going to leave no mental scars