MPs vote to decriminalise abortion

[AirborneElephant]

AIBU to be thrilled! Sorry if there’s already a thread, couldn’t see one.

At the moment, yes. This amendment will change that.

I don't know what this means in reality. How do you quantify bodily autonomy? Is this not a subjective thing?

It's weird to find myself on the other side of the debate as I've always been pro choice but, I don't think there's ever, ever a reason or excuse to terminate a child once it is at a viable age to survive outside the body (assuming it has a chance of survival). That is absolutely, murder. And women who take matters into their own hands after that point (assuming no severe mental illness) absolutely belong in jail.

If the child can live it should be removed and allowed that chance. We should support access to cesarians or pils to bring on labour for women who don't wish to carry to term.

I don't think many women are genuinely aborting that late but my worry is this is all a ploy to have women's rights to abortion completely stripped when the American right wing nuts start getting more control here.

Er, no? Subjective in what way?

It's very simple to me.

A woman's body is her own
She is not an incubator
She is more important than a foetus
She is the priority
She is capable of making choices about her body

Thrilled? Seems an odd word to choose.

That is horrendous - is the woman interviewed by police? Would she be arrested depending on her reaction ie not screaming and crying but quietly numb and hurting only inside?
I would have hoped (or am I living in cloud cuckoo land) that the discussions around this in parliament should have involved improvement to contraceptive , domestic abuse and mental health services.

To be fair, I don't think it ever was likely, due to the fact that the prosecuting authorities need strong evidence and the mere fact of a miscarriage or still birth is never going to be enough on its own. The cases where there have been prosecutions have been ones where there has been direct evidence that the woman did in fact to something to bring the pregnancy to an end.

Of course, a woman’s body is her own, and her autonomy is deeply important. But, abortion involves not just the woman’s body, but a second human life. It can be argued that from the moment of conception, the foetus is a distinct organism with its own DNA, heartbeat, and trajectory toward birth. So the decision to abort isn’t just about one body — it involves ending another human life. You may not agree that it is a human life, but that is really where the heart of this debate lies - i.e. it is subjective.

That is also not to say that women are 'incubators' — but then it is also true that pregnancy is a deeply meaningful and biologically thing and in many other circumstances society prioritises protecting the vulnerable - it is not unheard of to look after vulnerability and this is the ultimate of those scenarios!

In my view, it’s about balancing rights — the woman’s and the unborn child’s — our biology as women is not straightforward - it is very hard to argue that we can just say we come first, always - there are (unfortunately!) other considerations literally because of our biology - that is the burden of being female.

Exactly. Until yesterday when it was decriminalised.

It is impossible to tell if a pregnancy ends because of taking some pills or because it is a spontaneous event.

Chile does not allow abortion, there are many women serving 20+ years because they could not prove they didn't obtain an abortion.

As someone who considered an early abortion I have to say, it’s not at all easy to find a provider! I was offered little to no support. So I imagine a late term abortion is super hard to actually obtain. There will be a valid medical/ psychological reason for those few.

I'm generally very pro-choice but there are aspects of this that worry me. There will almost inevitably be a case where, for instance, a woman takes something to procure an abortion that doesn't succeed so that the child is born live but disabled, possibly severely so. Do the woman's rights triumph over the foetus's to the extent of, say, subjecting the baby to a life of pain? What if a woman procured her own abortion, gave birth to a live child, and simply left it to die? In that situation she obviously would be prosecuted, but it may not have occurred to her that a live baby was even a possibility.

Chile's law is irrelevant. In the UK, the prosecution has to prove the facts beyond reasonable doubt, it is not for the woman to prove that she didn't get an abortion.

It is when the foetus could be almost full term! An undercover, late-term abortion might only account for 0.001% of terminated pregnancies, but someone who knowingly aborts a third trimester baby via the "I'm only 6 weeks pregnant, can I have the pill please" route absolutely should be put to trial.

My opinion is specifically about pregnancies after the 24 weeks, which is a viable gestational age. Pre-24 weeks, although technically was still criminal, is legal and therefore isn't really affected by the bill. I know the vast majority of terminations are before the 12th week. However, how can anyone honestly think "yes, this is great for womenkind". What kind of message are we sending to our children's generation? This liberal you-do-you outlook needs to end.

What happened to 'safeguarding is everyone's concern'?

No, police investigations do not happen routinely for late miscarriages or stillbirths.

No buts. A woman's body is her own and her autonomy is deeply important. That's it.

It involves a potential life. A foetus. That isn't subjective, that's scientific and also supported by human right laws. A foetus doesn't have the same rights as a newborn baby and for good reason.

I don't think it's very hard to argue at all. Of course we can say that we come first and that we matter more than a foetus. We do.

What else would you expect from a government that hates the disabled. Not only are they taking away their benefits now they are going to be able to put pressure on Mothers to abort potentially disabled babies. It is a disgrace.

YABVU. The general public will be outraged.

I’m a left wing pro choice feminist and I’m appalled at what parliament has done. There’ll be a huge backlash which will undermine the abortion rights we do have- and killing a baby past 24 weeks is killing a baby. It’s unacceptable.

Why do none of you know what the root cause of this is? Abortion pills by post being kept after Covid, without needing an in person appointment to assess length of gestation. The late term investigations by police directly correlate to when Labour MPs voted to keep abortion pills by post - it’s their screw up. Before 2020 late term abortions and investigations didn’t happen.

Now, a woman could call up BPAS at 30 weeks, pretend she’s only 8 weeks, take mifepristone and kill a near full term baby. But now there’s nothing that can be done about it and no mechanism for the state to even record that it’s happening.

Absolute bloody clowns.

YABVU. The general public will be outraged.

I’m a left wing pro choice feminist and I’m appalled at what parliament has done. There’ll be a huge backlash which will undermine the abortion rights we do have- and killing a baby past 24 weeks is killing a baby. It’s unacceptable.

Why do none of you know what the root cause of this is? Abortion pills by post being kept after Covid, without needing an in person appointment to assess length of gestation. The late term investigations by police directly correlate to when Labour MPs voted to keep abortion pills by post - it’s their screw up. Before 2020 late term abortions and investigations didn’t happen.

Now, a woman could call up BPAS at 30 weeks, pretend she’s only 8 weeks, take mifepristone and kill a near full term baby. But now there’s nothing that can be done about it and no mechanism for the state to even record that it’s happening.

Absolute bloody clowns.

Completely agree 👏🏼

Scans should be made mandatory before the abortion pill is prescribed, in order to prevent these accidental late-term abortions. There should be an option to have a screen up, so women can't see the images (plus it should be on mute), but it's easy to prevent it.

Black market pills will always be available, but on the whole, it's easy to prevent:
a) Women aborting babies further along, either knowingly or not
b) Criminal investigations, because a late miscarriages or stillbirths are natural. It'll be like pre-Covid times.

This bill is a step in the wrong direction.

@AirborneElephant I wasn't talking about Nicola Packer, actually. Her case is complicated. There was another case, where the mother had a stillbirth at around 32 weeks, and had googled "how to conceal a pregnancy" and something along the lines of "can you abort after 28 weeks".

Utterly nauseating. Under this bill she would be fine, and filed under "her body her choice". Give me a break. How is that not infanticide?

Already this morning Julia Hartley-Brewer and Tom Harwood have proclaimed their outrage about this, and I suspect far-right agitators won't be bar behind.

The MPs who pushed this extreme law have really misjudged mainstream public opinion, and it will be to the detriment of women's rights in general as this is now a culture war issue.

I am also uncomfortable with this idea that women are all delicate little beings incapable of being responsible for crimes. It harkens back to the 19th century when women were seen as too stupid to have rights.

If I understand it correctly, there is no change to the law on abortion services. The grounds under which anyone can intervene to cause a later abortion stay the same.

A woman is unlikely to be able to inject herself to stop the foetal heart. And of course a woman who does something to her own body that causes an early birth is still not allowed to kill the child if it is born alive.

I can see that there might be increased risks from coercive partners, but on balance I'm in favour.

I also feel that a lot of the rhetoric from 'pro choice' supporters of this is very similar to the approach of the far right to issues like immigration and the far left on trans issues.

They take an ultra-maximalist single-issue position (e.g. 'trans women are women in all circumstances,') and that any one who doesn't agree is a bigot.

It had the opposite effect on trans issues and it will be the same with abortion.