AIBU to think a foetus is alive before birth?

[Mmmchocolatebuttons]

I had a discussion with someone, who believes that a foetus is not alive, until the point they are born. They also asserted that this was not an uncommon view. I have a hard time believing this so I'm putting it to the AIBU poll.

To be clear, I'm pro choice, but I do believe that, for example, a 30 week foetus is factually, scientifically considered to be alive.

Surely, even if you're pro-choice all the way up until birth, you accept that the foetus is alive?

YABU = A foetus is not alive, until birth.
YANBU = A foetus is alive in the womb.

I would support that, as long as it was fully covered by the NHS. You collect your contraception and it comes with a kit for testing each month - sorted.

Absolutely. Plus free ones available in public toilets/supermarket/pub toilets.

It's better for everyone if unwanted pregnancies are detected early.

Exactly. Nobody who us pro choice is pro abortion. But the solution isn't to ban abortion, because that has been proven not to work. Want to reduce the number of abortions? Then you'll have to:

• provide excellent sex education, starting young, that parents can't opt out of
• provide affordable housing and childcare
• incentivise flexible working by giving employers tax breaks for employing women with children
• robustly pursue non resident parents, usually fathers, who do not pay for their children
• let women of childbearing age choose sterilisation if they ask for it

But none of these things are supported by the majority of anti abortion folk.

I'm more on the pro life than pro choice side overall - I support a reduced time limit of 12 weeks (or 16, weeks) like most of Europe, no limits ones ones necessary to save mums life/serious health issues or because of serious fetal illness/abnormality, when i see it as more euthanasia.

However I agree wholeheartedly with all your bullet points, as do most people that I know who have similar views to me. The anti abortion + anti birth control punishing women whilst letting me get away with it is a very American view. I'm of the view that watertight contraception and education will reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies, which should be a priority on both 'sides'. Ideally no one would become pregnant unless they wanted to. First trimester abortion is IMO necessary as an option even though I find it personally very sad/upsetting as a concept. We need to ensure that women have full access to early and free testing so if they seek abortion it can be done when the fetus is as little developed as possible, to minimise any suffering.

Don't assume we are all right wing nut jobs.

More productive though, rather than being drawn into the extremes on either side that they have in America, is to consider the issue a settled compromise in the UK and instead both sides put money into helping reduce unwanted pregnancies in the first place.

I agree with you for the most part, except that for me choice is the most important thing. I have two kids, relatively easy pregnancy and birth both times, and I still wouldn't want to force that on a woman who doesn't want it. And until we have a health service that can see all women in a timely manner without fail, we should not move the limit. Having it below viability is a nonsense anyway.

But with solid prevention and with proper support for women who would like to keep the pregnancy, that debate would be much less necessary.

I do however feel strongly that it is not in anyone's best interest to keep abortion a criminal offence.

The point of this discussion is the decriminalisation of abortion to term for non-medical reasons. It is not an argument to say very few people commit a crime so we should decriminalise it. Very few people murder other people - do you think we should decriminalise that too on that basis? What do you think would happen to that number if we did?

The point of this thread was whether fetuses are alive because it was argued that they weren't alive at all until birth. Discussions about whether being alive confers rights and the extent of that are secondary issues on this thread.

I acknowledged very early on that foetuses are alive. But that is not relevant to the discussion about decriminalisation. Unless of course you think that all abortion is murder.

I think that's a bit of a disingenuous example. While it's obviously rarer for people to be murderers than not murderers, compared to abortion loads of people commit murder. I don't think comparing murder (which happens to a woman by her partner on average every 3 days in the UK) to the actually very instance of women having late term abortion for non medical reasons is a fair example.

I presume you are missing the point on purpose. PP said not many people commit a crime but ignored the fact that this may be because it is a crime. And then brought up something that isn’t a crime to say why we shouldn’t worry about the thing that is a crime.

I'm not sure why you think the entire thread should change just because you have a particular view on something. There are other threads to discuss the decriminalisation which are probably a better option, as you may have some valid points to offer on that one.

I don't think it does, but there are two active abortion threads and I got them mixed up. My sincere apologies to the thread police, I'll go now.

Nope just calling out you comparing two wildly different things. No idea what you thought I brought up that wasn't a crime. You're making no sense tbh.

Carla Foster killed her own child. She took pills causing the still birth of her daughter. She already had 3 sons and she robbed them of having their younger sister. Growing up, having fun and playing together. Yes she felt guilty about it, but that doesn't absolve her of her crimes. At least she was in prison for just over a month and has a criminal conviction on her record.

I know many people here hate their siblings and are NC, but some of us actually love and care for them. Even if we aren't super close we are grateful we have them.

You claimed hardly anyone aborts a child in third trimester apart from for medical reasons - it is a crime to abort a child in the third trimester if not for medical reasons! It is not a crime to abort a child in the first trimester so you were comparing something that isn’t a crime with something that is. You cannot say ‘but hardly anyone commits that crime so it is fine to decriminalise it’! There is a reason why the numbers aborted in the third trimester other than for medical reasons is so low - because it is a criminal offence!

Agreed. Bacteria is alive. A fetus is alive but that is different than being an autonomous person.

I very clearly compared it to late term abortion given the context of your post....
There is a reason why the numbers aborted in the third trimester other than for medical reasons is so low - because it is a criminal offence!

This is just blatantly wrong. Have countries like Ireland or NI had an uptick in late term abortions since decrim? No they haven't

You can do all this and still ban abortion. It worked very well in Chile. Maternal health improved and abortion related deaths fell.

I've just had a look at maternal death data (that's overall, not from abortion complications) and Chile does relatively well - but not as well as many western countries where abortion is safe and legal like the Netherlands, Norway.

And of course maternal death from illegal abortion is one thing, but maternal death from complications of pregnancy, especially where a woman is denied healthcare because clinicians are afraid to be accused of abortion, is another thing entirely. I say again: If there were no abortion bans, clinicians would not fea to act in such cases.

Abortion rules in Chile were relaxed in 2017, by the way - the total ban is gone, and moves are under way to loosen further. So the people of Chile clearly aren't that keen on a total ban.

Oh, and before the thread police come for me again for talking about something other than whether or not a foetus is alive: yes, a foetus is alive.

If there were no abortion bans completely healthy pregnancies would be terminated.

Chile's exceptions:

1. mother's risk
2. incompatible with life
3. rape

Seems sensible to me.

But a rape pregnancy could be completely healthy...

Meanwhile you haven't addressed my point about overall maternal death - including from complications in pregnancy. Because the data is clear: an early stage termination is less risky by an order of magnitude than carrying to term and giving birth.

https://sph.umd.edu/news/study-risk-maternal-death-during-pregnancy-greatly-exceeds-risk-death-abortion

So you're still OK with forcing women to risk birth injury of all kinds, post partum depression and psychosis and all those other fun things. You want women to be vessels. I call that slavery.

That's a deeply misleading apples-to-oranges comparison built on flawed U.S. data collection, not ironclad science.

U.S. maternal mortality data is inflated by known artifacts. The CDC's Pregnancy Mortality Surveillance System relies on the 2003 pregnancy checkbox on death certificates (fully implemented ~2018), which overcounts by including incidental deaths (e.g., accidents, unrelated cancers) misclassified as "pregnancy-related." The study itself admits using a "conservative" exclusion of nonspecific causes and COVID/miscarriage deaths to mitigate this—yet still produces the high 32.3/100k rate. CDC's own 2024 final data shows the rate has already fallen to 17.9/100k live births (649 deaths total), continuing a post-peak decline driven by better obstetric care, not abortion access.

Abortion mortality is chronically underreported. CDC abortion surveillance is voluntary, incomplete (not all states participate), and only counts direct procedural deaths within ~30 days—not indirect ones like suicide, overdose, or later complications.

High-quality record-linkage studies from countries with centralised data (Finland, Denmark, California Medicaid) show that women are at least 3 times more likely to die from any cause in the year after abortion than after childbirth. Suicide risk is 6–7x higher; violent death (homicide, accidents) 4–14x higher. Each additional abortion raises premature death risk ~50%. These studies control for confounders the UMD paper cannot.

Abortion has physical risks: 30–50% increased future preterm birth/ectopic pregnancy (per meta-analyses), hemorrhage/infection rates higher than acknowledged, and breast cancer link in some cohorts. The "order of magnitude" vanishes when comparing like-to-like: low-risk intended pregnancy vs. elective abortion.

Even granting a tiny statistical edge in direct procedural safety (which better data disputes), this does not license killing an innocent human being. The fetus is a distinct, living human organism from fertilisation. We do not euthanise born children, the disabled, or the elderly to spare caregivers "risk." We mitigate risks through medicine and support—not homicide. One preventable maternal death is a tragedy demanding better protocols, training, and exceptions for true life-threatening cases.

Pro-life policy does not "force" anything; it recognises that the right to life of the dependent human inside outweighs the temporary bodily burdens of pregnancy (which ~99% of healthy pregnancies survive without catastrophe in developed nations). Society already imposes analogous duties: parents cannot neglect or kill born infants to avoid "injuries" or depression. Pregnancy is not slavery—it's a natural, finite process our species evolved to handle.

Abortion increases risks of depression, anxiety, and psychosis-like outcomes.

Postpartum depression/psychosis (10–15% PPD rate) is real and treatable—yet abortion does not "prevent" it; it correlates with worse long-term outcomes for many, especially coerced or ambivalent cases. APA itself acknowledges risk factors like prior mental illness, pressure, or wanted pregnancy make abortion harmful.

We fix maternal health with better prenatal care, mental health screening, and clear life-saving exceptions—not by pretending the unborn's death is a "solution."

Why are you assuming that the study I posted was the only one available? There were pages. And pages. And pages - all saying the same thing.

You only quote US materials. I wonder why?

Forcing a woman to be a vessel to a child absolutely is force. It is slavery. You can justify it with pretty arguments about how pregnancy is 'natural', but that does not make it compulsory. Forcing a woman to carry and birth a child she does not want forcing her to risk birth injury up to and including lifelong damage is not the moral option. You are saying that the foetus always takes precedence over the woman who is already here.

ETA I have seen your strategy of distorting what studies are saying before from abti-abortionists. It relies on people believing that correlation = causation and it's the worst of bad science.

Temporary bodily burdens? You're having a laugh.

Most mothers have permanent body changes from pregnancy. It's usually mild and worth it for wanted children but I'd feel very resentful if a forced pregnancy for an unwanted baby left my body how it is now.

You realise that if you follow your post abortion mortality rates logic to its conclusion you are saying women shouldn't have abortions because men are more likely to kill them if they do?

Not to mention that it doesn't take into account any reasons for the abortion in the first place. Those probably exist before and after the event; as @pointythings says this claims causation with no evidence for it.

'Temporary bodily burdens' as a way to describe pregnancy would be hilarious if it weren't so chilling. Nothing about gestation and childbirth is temporary except that human life is temporary.