To be saddened that anyone would want to take away a woman’s right to safe abortion?

[Balayagequeen]

It makes me sad and angry that there are so many people who believe that a woman’s right to a termination is up for debate/political football.

It’s always privileged men too.

No woman should be forced to continue with a pregnancy that she doesn’t want.

An abortion is a very safe, simple procedure, it’s a personal and private choice, it’s discreet, no one is ramming it down anyone else’s throat or trying to persuade others to do it. The vast majority of the time is done very early on in the pregnancy. Evidence shows that there are no long term negative physical or mental effects on the woman.

As someone who works for children’s services, there are already far too many children in the care system and they can end up deeply traumatised, and having poor outcomes in life, adoptions often don’t work out and even when they do can be extremely traumatic for both the mother and child. That is not to take away from all of the wonderful adoptive parents and foster carers, but please let’s not romanticise it.

Most adoptions are because the birth parents are unable to care for the child, not because the mother willingly gave the baby up. Therefore to force a woman to give birth would potentially be the worse option for the woman, the child and any existing siblings. It isn’t a fairytale ending where a woman willingly gives up her baby to a loving couple to live happily ever after.

There are babies conceived in poverty, domestic abuse, rape, teenage pregnancies, older age pregnancies. These women should not be forced to give birth, it is not the better option for anyone.

If abortion was ever restricted in the western world then I have no doubt that it would result in unsafe illegal abortions, risking the woman’s life.

Women take all the risk with pregnancy and childbirth. They take an enormous toll on a woman body, her mental health, her life outcomes. We are not living in the dark ages, women deserve the choice.

What right does any privileged male who has probably never experienced any of these things and has probably done very little child rearing, who can never conceive or give birth, have to try to restrict a women’s access to abortion?

Are they themselves going to care for the babies born? Or will they expect that someone else will do it?

I wouldn't hold your breath if I were you. I'm always amazed by the number of men - many of whom feature in threads on these boards - who berate their wives and partners for conceiving an accidental pregnancy, but seldom think that it's up to them to ensure that such an event won't happen again. What's even more amazing is how many women seem quite happy to let such men carry on unchecked and bend over backwards to make excuses for their feckless selfishness and their cowardice when faced with a small amount of pain and/or inconvenience.

Why don't you kick off the discussion since it was your idea?

People are murdered every day and it doesn't affect you. Doesn't make it right though does it?

As long as its early term and you know you were incapable of being a fit mother then yeah its probably for the best.

Or we can leave women to make their own decisions when it comes to their bodies. It can be left between herself and her medical professionals.

Thank you for your reply and being polite about it. When discussing this topic in the past on here I admit I've slipped to making catty insults and rightly been told off for MNHQ. I focus on the case of where the act is consensual because that's the vast majority of cases.

I think both lives are valuable. I believe as a society if someone is born we should strive to give them the best quality of life. We should help women who have unexpected pregnancies and we should help their children.

We should also strive to reform the care system and give children in care a good life. Morally to me I think as a society we should never tell someone "maybe it's better off if they weren't alive". I think we should strive to alleviate suffering for humans instead of alleviating humans to experience suffering.

I think maybe we should provide financial support for poor families as well?

R.e. the 2A no one wants children to die in school shooting. Kirk probably would have advocated arming teachers (like some schools do in Texas) to defend their students.

I think it's a similar argument that people will die in car accidents yet we still have cars and drive and have roads. People will drink alcohol and have all sorts of health issues from it. Yet we don't ban it (prohibition didn't work in the USA).

I believe the starting point of a gun ban in the USA wouldn't work as the base level demand is too high. It'd just be the criminal underground that have it

You can say something similar about abortions too.

Making abortion illegal would just push it underground, abortions would still happen. They would just be less safe.

And If we ban abortions, they too will be pushed underground and still done, just not safely.

Is it defined in law? So yes legislation. Obviously

I believe it’s because you said it would be hard to legislate because rape has grey areas.

It doesn’t

Murder affects us all. Not least because it’s in the public interest to lock up murderers so that we aren’t next

No member of the public will ever become the fetus of a woman, so it’s not a public interest. Or a personal one

The catty insults can be very tempting and I may or may not be guilty of that myself 👀 I’d actually much rather have a grow up conversation!

believe as a society if someone is born we should strive to give them the best quality of life. We should help women who have unexpected pregnancies and we should help their children.

I agree those born should be cared for above all. I also agree pregnant women need support - I just think that HAS to be in the form of abortions now and again. What’s so great about being born that everything else is risked?

Id love more support for women, but not at the expense of denying them bodily autonomy. Thats the opposite of providing support. And sitting down to come up with better ways to support them is a great start. It would reduce abortions, which is what all of us want. But in order to keep women safe and supported, we must regain their right to that in conjunction with better support

I also agree we shouldn’t ever tell someone they’re better off dead. But we SHOULD listen to women who don’t want to progress their pregnancy so they or their baby can avoid an awful life. Fetuses don’t understand the words “it’s better you don’t live” and can’t hear you anyway so they wouldn’t be affected.

No, she's dead right. The dumber ones slip up and reveal it with comments like "just keep your legs closed," "stop having sex" and "stop being irresponsible about sex." They are disgusted by female sexuality.
Even making exceptions for rape reveals that it's actually about punishing women for engaging in consensual sex. If it was really about the "baby," then a "baby" conceived by rape is just as "innocent" as one conceived through consensual sex. So why don't they care about that "murder?" If they did genuinely think it is murder and that murder is inherently wrong, they would make no exceptions.
That's a cold, hard, logical conclusion, it has nothing to do with being emotional.

More entertaining nonsense from the peanut gallery. Yay!

So you do think the ‘pointless legislation’ should be lifted to allow late term abortions for the ‘0’ women that want them?

You are wrong, by the way. Late term abortions are very rare in countries that allow them, but they are by no means non-existent.

I didn’t say that? I said she matters more

Who matters more than who? We are comparing 2 hypothetical women having abortions at different gestations.

I can't take comments that clueless seriously enough to give them a serious answer. Who actually doesn't know that contraception is not foolproof? I admire your patience. I've been debating them for decades and my patience with such drivel has run out.

Oo. ‘You’re wrong’. It’s certainly a compelling argument, but I think I’ll stick with peer reviewed research thanks.

Whoever is right, I think that everyone can probably agree that the situation can't continue the way it is. Women are no longer prepared to struggle on and be blamed for it. And it's no good for society having half raised kids out there. So what alternative does the pro lifers suggest? Out of interest.

As a single mum of 15 years myself, I know the reality well, I developed a disability due to the situation and it affected my kid too. Growing up, they were highly focused on whether there would be electricity when they came home from school or whether we would have to look for someone to borrow it off again. Wondering if that meant we had no money for dinner and it was cereal again. Just to know, the courts awarded maintenance but had no interest in following it up when he decided not to pay it at all. That and the reality of hearing the other kids happily chat about the cinema or holidays and nightmares about whether their abusive dad would appear at our house again, whether the police would need to be called, whether the police would actually do anything this time and if we would be ok. And snide comments from my parents generation and older teachers made directly to both of us. And you know what, I struggled every day too and that matters, moms and women matter!

I did my best and worked part time. The separation couldn't be predicted in advance, was my ex's doing. But society was happy for me to pay the price. I'm mid 40's now at the end of it and have a disability. And I know my experience wasn't unique. There are lots of women out there like me.

If pro lifers can find an alternative to these realities, im all ears because one thing I do know, is that women aren't prepared to put up and shut up anymore!!

I'm in Canada. They are allowed here. There is no law on abortion whatsoever, there are only medical regulations. For the safety of the mother, the regulations are that late term abortions (after 23 weeks) are confined to health emergencies.
It's working fine here, which is why there is no need for any abortion law.

I don’t agree. But having established that we don’t agree, but yet both agree that being raped shouldn’t be a precursor to getting an a abortion, what have you gained by diving down that rabbit hole and arguing about an entirely erroneous point?

Ah yes. Another one casually revealing disgust with female sexuality, wanting to use abortion to punish women for non-procreative sex. It's inevitable that you folks show what your real motivation is, it happens in every abortion debate. Do you really not see what this says about you, the internalized misogyny in the desire to be punitive to "slutty" women? You call them "irresponsible" because using the terms "sluts" or "slags" would be too revealing, but it means exactly the same thing- women who have sex just for pleasure and don't feel the need to be very careful about it.
Why should women be forced to "take the consequences" of sex? What possible reasoning besides a desire to be punitive is there?
You don't advocate that men should be forced to take the consequences of sex, do you.

I already said that babies born earlier than 24 weeks don’t change anything in medical terms of viability. That’s really not how it works. It’s like saying someone reaching 43 weeks of pregnancy should change how long we tell women they’ll be pregnant for

Please do try to explain what the fuck you are taking about here, if you can.

You said you were concerned that lowering the abortion stage will affect people looking for TMR. Given current laws allow potential termination up to full term, there’s nothing to be concerned about unless you want to change that law too.

You are very naive. Sadly there are plenty of documented cases of women who, due to delayed anomaly scans and further testing required wind up being pushed over the 24 week mark before they can access their TMR. The law still allows the TMR to take place, but it adds a further layer of complexity and potential delay to a situation that is already hideous to begin with.

And yet you think you can decide a certain section of women are monsters and baby killers based on YOUR view. Smacks of arrogance TBH

I imagine it’s aligned with many people’s views tbh. I don’t know why it bothers you given you are convinced that such women don’t exist.. but yes, I don’t think someone that wants to electively abort their foetus at 38 weeks gestation is a whole lot better than one who murders a baby 1 week post birth.

Excellent response.

That’s interesting. I had a quick search and it seems that while abortion is legal at all stages in Canada, it is not actually accessible past 23 weeks (except in extreme circumstances) so I’m thinking it all basically amounts to the same thing?