Abortion decriminalisation - how the far right will use it?

[Movingdream]

I think the parliament made the right decision yesterday to decriminalise abortion. This means women won’t be investigated for late miscarriages and stillbirths, which must just feel like one trauma after another.

The 24 week limit remains in place and you would still only see doctors performing later abortions due to medical issues. As people on here know, the vast majority of abortions take place before 12 weeks and the few that don’t, normally are performed due to a medical issue for mother or baby. After 24 weeks, a woman would have to self induce an abortion for non medical reasons as doctors wouldn’t perform it, which would pretty much be labour, how would a woman even do this?

But ‘the UK has legalised abortion up until birth’ is the soundbite I keep seeing from the fundamentalist right wing types. This isn’t true. It worries me though because they’ll run with it and I’m concerned things swing the other way.

Should we get rid of laws that protect children from child abuse by their mother? Because the vast majority of women are not running around abusing their children and it’s genuinely awful and scary when they are wrongly investigated by social services.

Well, Carla Foster and Nicola Packer, to name two. Carla was 34 weeks pregnant by another man when she got back together with her ex and decided it suited her better to terminate. Nicola claimed she didn't know how far she was, but had an extensive internet seach history about the effects of taking an abortion pill in the third trimester.

All of the prosecutions that you have been reading about in the last few years have been women who have taken a pill to induce late term abortion. It's certainly not a once every 20 years event.

<quote> After 24 weeks, a woman would have to self induce an abortion for non medical reasons as doctors wouldn’t perform it, which would pretty much be labour, how would a woman even do this? </quote>

Wouldn't the way a woman would do this be by accessing abortion medicines remotely, either by having a remote consultation where she lied about her status, or by accessing the drugs at an earlier stage in pregnancy but taking them at a later stage?

I don't suggest that there is likely to be an epidemic of this, but I do feel that there is a very easy route for a woman to induce or attempt to induce a later abortion if she chooses.

This woman sold her living, sentient child. I think her seeking a late term medical abortion so she could sell a non-living child’s body parts would have probably been the “better”, for want of another word, outcome.

I believe the only reason a woman needs to have an abortion is that she doesn’t want to be pregnant. My view doesn’t change because she specifically doesn’t want to be pregnant with a boy or a girl, or pregnant with a disabled baby, or pregnant with a baby whose father is a particular man, or pregnant because she wants to go on Love Island, or whatever.

Yes 100%. Abortion pills should not be posted out based on no medical examinations!
People can and do get dates wrong, a TV scan can roughly confirm how far along the pregnancy was.

OP if there’s one thing I have noticed about the ‘pro life’ (anti women’s choice) side of this debate is that they can’t get enough supporters on side through the weight of their own sheer moral disapproval. (which is anyone’s right to feel, of course- inflicting your moral disapproval on to others is a different matter), so the ‘pro-life’/anti-choice campaigners stoop to scaremongering, misrepresentation or outright lies about what happens. But the common thread is that they don’t trust women.

You can’t change that unless their tactics veer off outside the law, but you can get on with campaigning for what you yourself believe in decently, truthfully and respectfully of women’s actual experiences. Which is why this is the absolute right outcome in Parliament for women’s rights.

Can you give an example where similar medication can be ordered in the same way?

This makes sense as to why we’re here with this.

Exactly. The fact that the mother in such a case can't be prosecuted won't stop such cases being publicised, and indeed the right wing press will use the immunity from prosecution as something else to whip up their readers' fury. Cue a right wing government coming in to claim a mandate for seriously restricting abortion rights.

What pieces of work those two are.

So you believe a very minute few should be the reason to keep investigating women going through one of the most harrowing things a woman can go through?

'oh, sorry, I know your baby just died, but I have to arrest you, because there is a minute chance that XYZ down the road might kill her baby for organs'

30 million women deserve protection.

And both should be criminal acts. Just like how murder is worse that GBH, but GBH is still a crime too.

I really don’t know how to feel about this. It’s such a difficult one.

I support a woman’s right to decide to no longer be pregnant at any stage in her pregnancy. Of course, in the earlier stages it’s cut and dry - the fetus couldn’t survive and so would be terminated.
I think a woman who is 35 weeks plus should be able to choose to not be pregnant but I can’t get my head around killing the baby before hand at that stage. I can honestly see both sides of the argument. I don’t agree with the “all women are virtuous” argument because we know that’s not true.

I would also worry that the pills by post scheme would be cancelled which isn’t a good thing, either.

The case of the women who lied about how far along they were to access abortion pills was harrowing. I don’t believe they should have gone to prison for it though.

Let’s just clarify on what this legal change actually does. It brings England and Wales in line with Northern Ireland’s existing law.

Tonia Antoniazzi’s amendment to the Crime and Policing Bill removes women from the Offences Against the Person Act of 1861 and the Infant Life Preservation Act of 1929, specifically regarding their own pregnancies.Thereby bringing England and Wales into line with Northern Ireland. It stops vulnerable women in England and Wales being dragged through years-long investigation, charged with criminal offences and getting custodial sentences for ending their own pregnancy, which is likely to devastate their lives and their children’s lives and their work life and their wider family. This bringing into line will hopefully encourage and support professional concern and support for women who are in these dire situations, not calling the police on them as potential criminals while they’re still in need of medical care.

In the U.K., it remains illegal to sell your baby’s body parts. Indeed, it remains so where this woman was prosecuted for selling a live child, in South Africa. Nothing has changed.

People are entitled to their own opinions just as you are... why is that such a worry to you? And why label people who have a different view to you? Put your case simply and clearly and argue it as you see fit, getting all het up and insulting those with a different view is just childish.

Perfectly worded and its horrifying and shocking that anyone sees anything any differently.

Termination is a serious procedure and needs to be undertaken in a medical setting for the exact reasons discussed.

I cant even buy more than 2 packets of fucking paracetamol at once but someone can have a fraudulent phone call and order pills to kill a viable baby, potentially under coercion of partner or under a moment of madness / desperation which if they had actually been seen by a HCP they could have received the help and support they need.

Yes. Criminal law is made so that the minute few are caught. It's harrowing for any parent to be accused of harming, or even killing, their child, but it's nonsensical to say that actions that should clearly be crimes will therefore not be investigated. We can't have a functioning criminal justice system with that attitude.

This is put really well.

So if you phone up and say you're 8 weeks, there are no checks, that you're actually 8 weeks?

Demonstrates HeadbandUnited point that not all women are gentle and virtuous: as much as any human.

And the govt appears to have just removed the protection for tiny babies, from those few who meet that point. I'm not sure why. The resulting perils don't appear to be worth the gains.

His personal, professional experience over many years.

Well a really simple way to prevent this is ensure all terminations are undertaken in a medical setting with a full audit trail.
Not basically condone a wild west environment.

In that case it's anecdotal and really a bit irresponsible.

Yes there’s no guardrails, it’s just access to medication that I assume shouldn’t be accessed at that term.

Agree with you