To be relieved with the House of Lords decision?

[InASubmarine]

I have just seen on the news that the House of Lords have approved the bid to decriminalise abortion. I am so relieved. I can’t believe in a supposed modern society women are still subject to Victorian laws on their own body.

i wish they had gone one step further and enshrined a woman’s legal right to an abortion to help add protections if Nigel and his gang of loons get in and try to pull what they did in America.

But overall I see this as such a win for women everywhere and a welcome change that will remove fear from lots of lives!

Aibu to feel this way? It’s a scary world as a woman at the moment!

So would all of the embryos in freezers in ivf clinics, why don’t you start paying for women to adopt those or adopt and birth some yourself rather than trying to force other women to do a physically and embarking traumatic pregnancy and birth

Ah, so you've stumbled upon the reason exactly why men rape their victims, control their reproductive health and enforce/coerce pregnancy upon them against their wishes. She'll just have to love it anyway, so she's stuck. She'll have to stay in contact because it's his right. She won't be able to move away, go on holiday, do anything without having to defer to her abuser. She won't be able to choose to surrender the child for adoption. She can't consent to non emergency treatment if he disagrees, she can't even choose the name without him being able to have a say. She will never be free of him whilst he owns part of her.

Is it a comfortable place to be occupying the same mindspace as a rapist and domestic abuser?

Ironic that you complain about being "shut down" when that is really the entire basis of the anti-choice belief - shutting down and disregarding the one person whose opinion actually matters when it comes to being pregnant and giving birth.

Y'know, the actual woman involved.

Anti-choicers are just the ultimate virtue signallers. They don't give a shit about the women or indeed the unborn children.

They just want to feel warm and fuzzy about themselves and feel like they are potecting something, when actually they are doing the opposite. Thousands of women die each year because of anti-choicers and that makes me fucking furious because there is no reason for it, none at all.

@hedgheog you're not shut down. You're here, posting your opinion, aren't you? Your posts have not been deleted.

You are being challenged. You are being disagreed with. Handle it.

Back during the slavery debate abolitionists were often told "if you don't like slavery, don't own a slave. Mind your own business"

Rape is disgusting and horrific but the studies show they make up around 1% of total abortions. So you can't base the entire whole argument around that.

Are you saying in the case a woman is assaulted even if she declares and says the father is abusive and assaulted her she can't even give the child up for adoption?

He's the father. He absolutely can get parental responsibility awarded to him and prevent an adoption.

I'm not making an entire argument around that. My post was in response to the poster who mentioned that in rape cases, forcing the woman to carry her rapist's baby ties her to him and all that trauma for almost two decades. Why do you think that is acceptable?

Then there are abusive relationships, where the same thing applies.

Then there are pregnancies which are doomed with no chance of a healthy baby being born.

But most importantly of all, no woman should have to go through everything that pregnancy and birth do to a woman if she does not want to. There is no moral argument to say that she should, unless your contention is that the unborn baby is more important than a living woman. The health risks of pregnancy and birth are an order of magnitude greater than those of an early stage abortion. By forcing a woman to carry to term, you are forcing her to risk birth trauma including permanent physical damage, and mental ill health up to and including postpartum psychosis - all for a pregnancy she does not want. That is cruel and immoral.

I fully accept that an abortion is a choice between two lives - but one of those is heare, living, breathing, often connected to other people including other children. The other is not - yet.

Lastly, banning abortion kills women. It's happening right now in the US. If you want to sign up to that, that speaks to character.

Don't like abortion? Don't have one. But you do not have the right to make that decision for anyone but yourself.

Exactly, especially if the rape happened in an established relationship as he is far more likely to find out that she is pregnant even if she leaves him (and most sexual assaults are committed by men known to their victim).

So without the option of termination that leaves the choice of either keeping the baby and having her attacker have life long control over her or giving him the child.....a man she knows to be abusive. There is literally no way that it could end well for her. None at all.

She can refuse to care for the child, but if the father says he'll have it, the authorities have to let him have the child because he's the child's father. The child has to undergo some suffering or certain belief of suffering (eg where previous children have had to be removed from the parent and there's evidence nothing has changed about the parent's current situation and ability to care for a child) before a court can order the removal of a child at birth from either of its parents. So whilst a woman who's been assaulted can give up the child, she'd often be doing so knowing the child was going to be given to her abuser to "raise" (or more likely, abuse). Anyone with a shred of compassion wouldn't do that. So yeh, she's effectively stuck with her abusers child. She can't decide that he's not allowed the child and it's to be adopted by strangers, she doesn't have that choice or that power. The point at which a child is removed from an inadequate parent means a lot of suffering has to happen first. You can't just say "my ex has been arrested and convicted for battering me, he's a sex offender, so don't give him our baby", it doesn't work like that.

And he would be able to claim child maintenance, too. Complete with knowing whether she's receiving benefits, whether she has a subsequent child, etc, etc.

So what your saying that if a women gets pregnant with a much wanted pregnancy, the has a spontaneous miscarriage. We should not offer her life saving treatment?

Bearing in mind she may already be a mother or go on to have more healthy children. She should just die because she tried to have a child. That's like say we should withhold c-sections because it's not the best birth experience for the baby, but hay who cares if the child dies before birth or the mother during childbirth. Are we trying to relive medieval times here?

There's also the fact that 'don't have sex' doesn't really work in a marriage where no (more) children are wanted but where one partner doesn't want to access permanent contraception. Men often refuse to get a vasectomy, in case they want more children with a new partner. Women can't get permanent sterilisation because medical professionals think 'the little woman might change her mind'.

The anti abortion brigade have their fantasies of adorable babies who live happily ever after because they've been saved from abortion. The reality is very differeent.

Some babies, growing up unwanted and unloved, actively neglected and abused would probably prefer to never have been born. I know someone who took their own life in their twenties after a life like that.

But sure......termination of pregnancy is always wrong......

Woman can tell the court about abuse/assault?

Maybe a case of change what happens regarding who gets to parents, vs end the child's life.

Pregnancy from rape is rare—less than 1% of all abortions. No pro-lifer wants a woman retraumatised. But abortion does not erase the rapist or the trauma. Multiple studies show women who abort after rape often suffer higher rates of PTSD, depression, substance abuse, and suicidal ideation than those who carry to term.

Many who give birth report eventual healing, bonding, and even choosing adoption so the child has a loving home—breaking the rapist's control.

Legally, the rapist has zero rights to the child in every US/UK jurisdiction. Forcing a woman to stay tied? That's on the justice system failing to prosecute rapists, not the innocent child. Adoption severs all ties permanently.

Every pro-life law has a life-of-the-mother exception. Miscarriage management, ectopic pregnancies, and true medical emergencies are not banned.

Biology says the unborn is a distinct human being with unique DNA, heartbeat by week 6, brain waves by week 8. We don't kill born disabled toddlers or elderly parents because caring for them is hard.

CDC's latest 2024 data: US maternal mortality rate is 17.9 deaths per 100,000 live births—down from 18.6 in 2023 (649 deaths total). It has declined post-Dobbs, not risen. Official CDC and independent analyses show no causal link to bans—pre-existing disparities, obesity, and past COVID effects explain trends.

Every pro-life law has a life-of-the-mother exception. Miscarriage management, ectopic pregnancies, and true medical emergencies are not banned.

Does it? Then why are women in the US dying when their pregnancies are nonviable because clinicians are too afraid to provide medical care that might be seen as an abortion?

^https://www.bmj.com/content/389/bmj.r879^

The article above contradicts your rosy picture of maternal mortality and abortion bans. That took me 30 seconds to find. Yes, overall mortality is down - but in states with ban, it has risen.

Legally, the rapist has zero rights to the child in every US/UK jurisdiction. Forcing a woman to stay tied? That's on the justice system failing to prosecute rapists, not the innocent child. Adoption severs all ties permanently.

^https://prismreports.org/2022/03/22/in-multiple-states-rapists-can-sue-their-victims-for-parental-custody/^

So not true.

Multiple studies show women who abort after rape often suffer higher rates of PTSD, depression, substance abuse, and suicidal ideation than those who carry to term.

Let's have some links to substantiate this.

Oh your views are making me feel sick. You re a nasty person

Every pro-life law has a life-of-the-mother exception. Miscarriage management, ectopic pregnancies, and true medical emergencies are not banned.

that wasn’t in practise the case in Ireland before they mercifully changed their law.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Savita_Halappanavar

And Nevaeh Crain, who was denied management of a late miscarriage/stillbirth and died in hospital of sepsis while haemorrhaging black blood from her mouth

'Sorry that you say you've been raped by your husband/boyfriend/stepfather/ teacher/random man. There's no evidence of that, is there? It's just you saying it and even if it were to be taken forward to prosecution, that's going to be well over two years. You're pregnant? Oh, so you're making this up to get an abortion, then? That'll help his defence. Anyhow, don't worry, whilst you're waiting, look on the bright side - you'll feel much better about what you think happened once you've got a lovely baby out of it. Oh, and as he's such a great guy, he's not abandoning you for wanting to kill his much wanted child, he's so dedicated to this child you have callously changed your mind about bearing for him, he's applied to court for custody/preventing you from moving/having it adopted'.

The BMJ piece (May 2025) is not peer-reviewed research—it’s a news summary of a single advocacy report from the Gender Equity Policy Institute (GEPI), a pro-abortion group. It cherry-picks 2022–2023 CDC data for a 21% drop in “accessible” states while implying a rise in ban states (citing Texas’s early 56% jump). That’s misleading and debunked by the full official record.

JAMA Network Open / PMC analysis (2025): States with abortion bans saw no significant change in maternal morbidity rates post-Dobbs. Permissive states actually saw an increase of 4.8 per 10,000 births (p<0.001). Ban states had stable or better outcomes on congenital anomalies and morbidity.

University of Colorado / JAMA (2024): Monthly maternal deaths were stable post-Dobbs (August 2022–January 2023). The apparent 12-month sum decline was entirely due to the COVID spike exiting the data—not bans. No evidence of a ban-driven wave.

Every pro-life law has explicit life-of-the-mother exceptions plus clear allowances for miscarriage management, ectopic pregnancies, and sepsis. Tragic delays in a handful of cases (often highlighted by activist outlets) are failures of hospital protocols or clinician hesitation—not the statutes themselves. Pre-Dobbs ban states already had higher baselines due to rural access, obesity, and racial disparities. The data prove bans did not cause a unique surge.

The 2022 Prism article is outdated. Since then, laws have changed dramatically:

National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL, current as of 2025): 49 states + DC now address parental rights of sexual assault perpetrators.

32 states explicitly allow termination of the rapist’s parental rights on a “clear and convincing evidence” standard—no criminal conviction required in most.

The federal Rape Survivor Child Custody Act incentivises exactly these reforms. Many states strengthened or passed these laws post-Dobbs. Adoption (the pro-life alternative) severs all legal ties permanently anyway.

Even if one preventable maternal death occurred due to clinical hesitation (and we should fix protocols with clearer guidelines), it does not justify the deliberate killing of nearly one million innocent unborn children annually. Your sources are activist spin or outdated.

Tragic delays in a handful of cases (often highlighted by activist outlets) are failures of hospital protocols or clinician hesitation—not the statutes themselves.

If the statutes weren't there, you wouldn't get clinician hesitation. Read up on Savita Halappanavar. BTW your focus needs to be wider than just the US.

^And have another article on maternal mortality: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12352390/^

I'd appreciate it if you posted links; makes it easier to track down the source material.

Even if one preventable maternal death occurred due to clinical hesitation (and we should fix protocols with clearer guidelines), it does not justify the deliberate killing of nearly one million innocent unborn children annually.

That is just your opinion, because your view is that as long as the babies are born, all will be just peachy. The reality is very different. You are also refusing to consider the issues I set out in a previous post where I addressed the 'just don't have sex then' argument.

I get it, you're anti abortion. We aren't going to agree. But for me, that means you are anti-woman.

I'm still waiting on evidence for your contention that raped women who keep their babies do better. Links, please.

I also have a health condition where I a doctor would of probably had me stay in bed for nine months because of it.
My life could of been in danger.
Does my life not count?
Belinda