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.

I am ashamed of my ignorance as I had no idea women were being / could be investigated for late miscarriages or stillbirths.

That’s horrifying.

@Zebedee999 it worries me because I’m a woman who wants access to abortion. It worries me because as the law is, abortions are available, but nobody is forced to have an abortion (excluding medical). Whereas if the pro lifers used this as ammunition and got their way, then women wouldn’t have the access they currently have to abortion. Do you see how having abortion as an option doesn’t force pro lifers (or anyone) to have an abortion but taking it away, forces pregnancy on millions of women?

I mean that women could feel forced into an abortion if the pregnancy was a danger to their life, not that a medical professional would literally ever force an abortion btw!

I mean if you cannot tell the difference between a woman exhibiting autonomy over her womb (in a late abortion scenario) or smothering a baby that is independent of its mothers body, I don’t know what to say.

But once again this will be a tiny minority of cases which a woman will have good
reason for.

I think your worrying is taking us to a backward country, which the UK is not.

I hope you are right @Dangermoo

There was uproar over the case of Carla Foster, who received a prison sentence for using abortion pills at between 32-34 weeks. The uproar was not against Foster but against her prison sentence. The sentence was suspended on appeal.

If that happened now, there would be no uproar because there would be no court case and so nothing to report and rightly so.

We don't always agree, but a brilliant post 👏

Do you think there should be no controls on access to the medication? As currently seems to be the case.

You keep saying they are not happening but they have happened. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-65581850.amp
This woman took abortion pills when her baby was between 32 and 34 weeks, the labour took hours. Anyone who has had a pre term baby would be really sad for this baby who might have survived if she had called an ambulance. It would have suffered as well.

I really agree with this. A baby needs so much more than just being born. A healthy, sane mother who will give the baby love and is capable of taking care of it is crucial.

This won’t happen imo but there may be concern over access and I don’t think the public would be blasé about cases. It could put the debate back in the spotlight when it’s been largely left alone until telephone access due to Covid.

Even if that baby is 34 weeks?

Exactly. A viable baby suffered and died all because she wanted to get away with cheating on her partner.

Sorry I meant they don’t happen in the sense you can’t go to a clinic or doctors and get pills or surgery over 24 weeks unless medically required

Yes. Because to me, that’s what being pro-choice means. It doesn’t mean I like the reasoning or the choice of the woman who made it, nor that I’d make that choice for myself, but I believe that it should be there. And beyond being pro-choice, I don’t believe the world needs more unwanted children. I don’t believe unwanted children fare very well in life. I don’t believe that the apocryphal woman who might choose late termination because she wants to go on a reality TV show is likely to parent her unwanted child well if forced to have it. I don’t believe it’s to anybody’s benefit that we force a life of being unwanted, and all the repercussions of that, onto a child, purely because of some arbitrary point in gestation, nor for some vague idea of what morality is. I think it’s far less moral to insist that unwanted babies are born to women who don’t want them.

In reality, if we fully legalised abortion to term, there would be a significant amount of debate about what we do with near-term foetuses whose mothers want to end their pregnancies, and it would very likely end up being live induction of birth and adoption. But we aren’t legalising abortion to term; we’re simply removing a criminal penalty.

I despair a little reading some of these posts.

Do women really think so little of their fellow women that they imagine there will suddenly be loads of women casually lying to get abortion pills and aborting at at a late stage?

What was missing is a big campaign on how many women are getting under investigation each year for ‘illegal abortion’, are arrested whilst in hospital, have their (living) children taken away and out in foster care for what is actually a miscarriage.
The impact in those children, the fact mothers then struggle to get their children back etc…..

When you know the reality - that those arrests were usually done following ‘tip offs’ with all that’s coming with it - then you realise how much that was needed.

No-one has said there will be loads of such cases. Clearly there are some though as recent court cases have shown. We have laws about lots of things which don’t happen often, don’t we?

In both cases, the woman exhibiting her autonomy involves the taking of a viable life. So what is the difference?

I feel the only way to square this circle is to have abortions after physical examinations only, and maybe even have the medicines to be taken under medical supervision. No abortion medicines prescribed at remote appointments. I would love to know the reasoning why the amendment to this effect did not pass. The law as it now stands does not strike the right balance between protecting women from the risk of prosecution if they suffer a miscarriage, and between protecting the rights of viable unborn babies, in my opinion.

Most mothers aren't running around killing their newborns either that doesn't mean it doesn't happen.
Newborn's can also die of sids and innocent parents are investigated causing distress etc.

The exact same arguments apply to one out the womb already

We only have the system now due to Covid, presumably when the medication went through processes there were more considered ways to access.

ETA agree generally btw

The law in this case was not fit for purpose and for some reason, over the past couple of years, was being used to hound women. Prior to the last couple of years there had only been 3 convictions under it since 1861.

Decriminalisation brings England and Wales into line with other parts of the UK (NI), Ireland, France, Canada, Australia, New Zealand.

@EasternStandard yes, I am also concerned that given how this is a recent innovation there have not really been any studies of how common it is to misuse abortion medicine accessed online. There are a lot of comments on here saying that illegal post-24 week abortions are super rare, which I am sure they must have been pre-telemedicine. But prosecutions for late term abortions have apparently spiked recently and it seems possible that this is because of an increase in abuse of these medicines. If so, there needs to be something in place to mitigate that. It doesn't have to be the criminal law but I would like to see some safeguard or even just some evidence that this issue has been considered. Just assuming that no women ever are going to misuse remotely prescribed abortion drugs, with no data to back this up seems crazy to me. Hopefully the House of Lords will raise this point and send it back to the Commons.