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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

To be relieved with the House of Lords decision?

205 replies

InASubmarine · 19/03/2026 13:47

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!

OP posts:
Belinda5000 · 23/03/2026 01:08

A woman should always have the right to pick know matter what country she is in , in this world. Know one knows what is going on in her life , and we all know it has to be one of the hardest decisions a woman can make.
I'd never judge anyone for the decision they made either.

CassandraCan · 23/03/2026 01:10

TakeTheCuntingQuichePatricia · 19/03/2026 22:01

What about when the foetus wont be healthy? What about when the woman, who is legally still a child, is pregnant because a male relative has been raping her for years?

100%. But also what about those in poverty and can’t feed another child, and monsters who end up abusing an unwanted child?

MrsTerryPratchett · 23/03/2026 01:52

Hemsfa · 22/03/2026 12:55

The BMJ piece (May 2025) is not peer-reviewed research—it’s a news summary of a single advocacy report from the Gender Equity Policy Institute (GEPI), a pro-abortion group.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.

“Pre-Dobbs ban states already had a higher rate [of maternal mortality]”.

Two things. One, banning abortion in states with higher than normal maternal mortality is a perfect sign that health and humans aren’t the point. If health and human beings being well and cared for was the point, they’d deal with that.

Second, in a state where someone is rural, Black and has pre-existing health issues (you mentioned obesity) knowing her increased, racialised risk of death has been inflicted on her, you’d still deny her the decision to avoid life threatening healthcare systems. You know she is at risk, because of her race and sex, but rather than putting all your energy into free healthcare, you believe it’s correct to criminalise her choices.

Which is how, as always, we know it’s about punishing women, not about healthy, happy women and children.

Across the world the places with free, accessible, legal abortion have fewer of them. Places where it is criminalised in all cases, have many more. They are just expensive, dangerous and illegal.

mellongoose · 23/03/2026 03:21

Forgive me as I have NRTFT but we are not the USA nor do we want to be. I abhor extreme views on either side.

Quite simply, our abortion laws were not broken and did not need to change. In almost all circumstances, a woman will know if a termination is required before 24 weeks. Believe me. I have direct experience and lost a very much wanted daughter.

As always, cases that fall through the cracks are down to lack of proper care or continuity of care. This needs to be invested in. I disagree with the Lords’ decision.

LarsenBiceshelf · 25/03/2026 15:53

mellongoose · 23/03/2026 03:21

Forgive me as I have NRTFT but we are not the USA nor do we want to be. I abhor extreme views on either side.

Quite simply, our abortion laws were not broken and did not need to change. In almost all circumstances, a woman will know if a termination is required before 24 weeks. Believe me. I have direct experience and lost a very much wanted daughter.

As always, cases that fall through the cracks are down to lack of proper care or continuity of care. This needs to be invested in. I disagree with the Lords’ decision.

Not always - some women continue to bleed in early pregnancy so may misinterpret how many weeks gone they are. Others may have a mental health crisis or may be trapped in an abusive relationship where they were made to become pregnant. Giving such women sympathy and help rather than arresting and prosecuting them is a much better way to run a society. And we are talking about a handful of women each year here.

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