MPs vote to decriminalise abortion

[AirborneElephant]

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

@hamstersarse If you don't want an abortion, you don't have one.

Or do you just want to take away bodily autonomy?

Yikes

I'm not sure if you are winding me up, but ok, that is more grave than I actually thought

It's good to know though.

I do think a woman is worth more than a fetus

I’m not winding you up I’m 100% pro choice in every instance. A women’s rights trump a fetus’s which is why abortion is legal

Why?

Because it’s her body

Who has a responsibility for the foetus in any woman's body? Is there anyone?

This actually doesn't make sense:

Why do you think women are more valuable than a foetus?

Because it is her body

That doesn't equate any measure of value - yes, she has a body, but why is that body more valuable than a foetus?

A woman has a right to decide they don’t want to be ‘responsible’ for a pregnancy and abort- a legal option one which also says women can make that choice

why is that body more valuable than a foetus?

because its a living human who doesn’t want to host a fetus

I would never agree that there should be no abortion, I am more 'safe, legal and rare' and the rare part is the most appealing to me.

I find a casualness to it these days that is pretty repulsive.

There would be no foetus without a woman's body, so she decides.

Her body, her choice

And you would like to see women criminalised for making a different choice to you?

i don’t really care what you find repulsive I care that women have a choice over their bodies- so yeah I really couldn’t care less what anyone else thinks as long as it doesn’t impact on safe legal termination of pregnancy

I think it's obvious you don't care - and you have a single focus point of view with no sight outside of it to what the repercusions are elsewhere

Yes I do - I’ve been spat on my nuns, almost run over by a certain Lib Dem MP and physically assaulted by pro life activists while trying to support rape crisis service users into clinics for STI screening - so yep I’m happy with my view and no amount of ‘morality’ or whataboutism will impact it at all

My two penneth worth: abortion is complicated because it confuses a few normally separate issues:

1.Should any human being be compelled to use their body to sustain the life of another?

2.How do we measure quality of life and who gets to make those decisions? (Essentially, when we give/withhold medical treatment, end of life care and euthanasia)

IMO debates over when life begins just obfuscate the issue. My uncle Fred is undeniably alive, but most people would agree that I should not be compelled to donate my bone marrow to him, even if I do appear to be his only viable match. Obviously it would be very nice if I did and, under some situations, it could be argued I have a moral imperative to do so - but this would be a matter of personal conscience and not law. Even if we up the stakes a bit and say Fred is my son rather than my uncle, it is still difficult to imagine a world in which I am legally compelled to donate to him.

So my personal opinion on (1) is that there is rarely ever a situation where one human should be legally compelled to use their body to support the life of another human. In theory this means I support ending a pregnancy at any time up until birth.

I think the logic for this is quite simple when taking about medical abortions because the harm to the baby is indirect: the woman's body simply stops providing any support and the baby is either no longer able to survive independently or, in the case of induction, potentially able to exist independently of the women anyway (with possible medical support). I suppose this is a bit like if I get matched to donate some bone marrow to Fred, but decide not to go through with it.

This nice clean logic gets muddied when I think about surgical abortions. IMO we are now into the difficult world of quality of life and euthanasia. I think doctors are probably best placed to evaluate this on a case by case basis. However, in all cases, where the there is a conflict between the life of the women and baby (pre-eclampsia for example), the host should take precedence.

TLDR: it's a bloody complicated issue, but we should approach it from the assumption that no human being should be compelled to use their body to sustain the life of another human being.

Can you try not to be an idiot. It is simply not the case that prioritising the life of a living person over the prospective life of a foetus is narcissism. Our entire medical and legal systems recognise and prioritise the life of the woman over the foetus. There is nothing narcissistic about this.

I am pro choice but not sure this is the right decision. Under current legislation, abortions are still legal at any point (inc past 24 weeks) if:

”the pregnancy poses a potential risk to your life, the pregnancy would cause very serious risks to your health, or there is high chance that the baby would be born with a serious disability, or be unable to survive after it is born”. (RCOG)

Therefore no one is saying under current law that a woman must give birth to a child with severe disabilities if they don’t want to, or put their own life at risk. However I think total decriminalisation of ending the pregnancy after 24 weeks for any reason at all will lead to a small number of high profile cases causing public outrage, and then used to make abortion laws stricter than they are currently.

It could also lead to grey areas, eg if a woman ends her baby’s life during childbirth (eg whilst baby is crowning, so not born yet) is this a legal alternative to killing a baby after birth? What if someone does this multiple times, is that ok? There could be a few rare cases like this which are then used as ammunition to make abortion laws even stricter again.

I don't think insane hypotheticals with no basis in reality are a sound basis on which to make decisions about laws.

But some women do end their baby’s life after giving birth.

Would a new law mean they could do this legally during childbirth? The baby can be accessible but not born yet for some time during labour.

@hamstersarse "with an evolutionary lens" as you put it the vast majority of premature babies would have died. Even now, many babies born at 34 weeks will still need intervention. If foetal survival and a desire to prevent women aborting for reasons of disability is so important to you, maybe get off Mumsnet and start campaigning for improved disability support so that fewer people feel that the hurdles of dealing with a profoundly disabled child are so insurmountable that they take the "morally bankrupt" (your words not mine) choice to abort.

How? By what mechanism are you envisaging this happening?

I don't understand all the comments about full term abortions. Surely these just don't happen - I can't see that any medical staff would give the necessary treatment to abort a 39 week old foetus!

I can see that medical staff might sometimes induce a mother to give birth a bit early when the baby is going to be stillborn or die very soon after birth - there's no use prolonging the agony. But that is not abortion in any sense of the word.

One other thing to consider is that if a mother does lose a full term baby shortly before it would have been born, this change to the law means she won't be accused of doing anything to kill it like happens in some other countries when women lose babies or miscarry.

This is my view too. Why do people want to control what someone else does with their own body (the same applies to assisted dying). If you don't like the idea of abortion or assisted dying, fine. Don't do it. But how does it remotely affect you if I have an abortion or decide I don't want to hold out until the bitter end with a horrible illness?