Late term abortion, high court

[Anycrispsleft]

I saw this on the BBC this morning - it's High Court review of the rules on late term abortions. The campaigners are seeking to remove the exception to the ban on post 24 week abortion that allows it in the case of "non-lethal" disabilities. The woman who is asking for the review wants the law to be changed on the grounds that it's discrimination against disabled people.

Apologies if this case has been covered before, I'm a newcomer to FWR having been radicalised by you people on Twitter. I just wanted to express this thought that occurred to me: the trans debate has shown me that whatever good-thinking progressives think, rights are sometimes like pie, in that giving one person more rights can mean less rights for someone else. And this is also like that, isn't it? There's a balancing of the rights of the foetus (not that a foetus has legal rights, at least not yet) and the rights of the mother. Until now I used to sort of shy away from this bit of the ethics of abortion. I am very strongly pro choice, but I always wanted to be able to justify that stance in a sort of objective way, considering the cases of the foetus and the mother as though I had no skin in the game. And I realised I can't actually do that, because I do have skin in the game, because I am a woman, I have two girls, and I want all of us to have control over our own bodies. It's not that I think I am objectively right. I want to win this. I don't care about the rights and wrongs from an academic point of view. I don't want my children to have to carry a child they don't want to term. Full stop. I'm sure others would be able to put this in a much more eloquent way but I feel like I've reached a new point in my feminism and I wanted to share it. I'm not neutral. I'm team woman.

I wish there was an edit function - I meant raise for as long as the baby survived, which might not be long at all.

@whitewave There's a post on another thread by a woman who has had to go through this procedure, twice. I think it might help if you read her words.

www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/4684994-to-be-glad-that-the-down-syndrome-abortion-appeal-was-defeated?page=12&reply=121799475

Going through IVF and seeing a lot of early stage scans has changed my view - I used to be very strongly pro choice. I want to be pro choice. But after seeing a 20 week scan I must admit that the thought of abortion, especially a later term (D&E) makes me feel very uneasy. My mother feels quite differently - she is entirely pro choice. But then her generation didn't have ultrasound scans as they weren't available. I do think that makes a difference.

IVF throws up a similar set of ethical dilemmas. Eg, what to do if you are lucky enough to have been successful and you feel that you've completed your family, but you still have potentially viable blastocysts in the freezer. Can you just destroy them?
In a way, the more we know the harder it gets.

Thank you for posting that link. It has confirmed really what in my heart and brain I know.

I would personally see it as the more we know the more it lets the woman make the choice that is right for her and her family at that point.

likewise if your have had ivf and decide enough is enough while you still have the chance to try for more that is the choice of the individual and nothing for anyone else to judge. My friend has had two by ivf and her family is complete. I know nothing about if she had more embryos available but that’s nothing to do with me

Both of my babies were born early term, at 37 weeks. Normal term is about 40 weeks. My babies were fine. Absent severe, life limiting medical conditions which were previously undetected, I don't understand how anyone could support abortion at 37 weeks.

^^I agree

Q2C4

During my time in Special Ed, I was convinced that some of those children whose quality of life was utterly abysmal must have been assisted to survive at birth. I always felt that was so very wrong. Pain, was their every day existence.

My goodness this is a difficult subject.

@Q2C4 - there will be people who feel "uneasy" about IVF. Luckily for you they didn't get a say in whether you could go through IVF and become pregnant. Just like no one should have a say in whether a woman chooses to have a medical procedure to end a pregnancy for whatever reason.

I think having opinions about other peoples medical choices (whether that be abortion, IVF etc) really is a slippery slope and whilst debate is encourage in a free society - we have to ask ourselves whether that really should extend to others medical procedures?

Sorry the point I'm trying to make is you don't get to decide what happens to other peoples bodies because one day, someone might make a decision (ban IVF for example) because of their opinions/belief that has a profound effect on your life.

Absent severe, life limiting medical conditions which were previously undetected, I don't understand how anyone could support abortion at 37 weeks.

1. 37 week abortion is illegal absent severe, life limiting conditions
2. women don't choose to abort 37 week health foetuses for shits and giggles

Except that one of these procedures terminates a life, the other potentially creates it.

But the stats show that most women abort pre 10 weeks. The law doesn't not allow a non- medical abortion post 24 weeks.

So your hypothetical woman who suddenly just "changes her mind" at 37 weeks doesn't exist

The data demonstrates this.

Just as a bit of context, overwhelmingly D&E doesn't happen in TFMR. You are induced and give birth to your precious baby. Hold them, love them, weep for them. I saw every inch of my DS & DD during their numerous and lengthy scans.

I can't even tell you the horror of having to endure fetal medicine scans and hearing how ill your baby is, their diagnosis, their prognosis.

Think back to your 20w scan and the joy and relief you felt afterwards, now put yourself in the position of hearing "there's quite a serious problem with your baby...".

Please read my post on the linked above thread to find out about the reality of late term loss.

@Q2C4 but that doesn't matter. It doesn't matter that one cause is "creating life" and the other not. It's the fact that one person has an opinion and that person seeks to impose that opinion on other. Who knows what it will be next. Next time it might be IVF, it might be something else. Some do not like IVF, unnaturally creating life outside the will of god or whatever. That's the danger with allowing others opinions to govern others choices. No telling what they might not like and come after

We don't know if any babies have been aborted at40 weeks for DS. In 2021 240 late term abortions were performed.

Pro Life groups like to list the conditions and will dance about pointing at 'cleft palate' not being a serious disability, but the fact is cleft palate can be half the skull missing,

And having said that it can be cleft palate along with other medical conditions eg organs on the outside of the body.

What no one has explained to Heidi Crowter is that there may have been no abortions, past 24 weeks of someone with DS and no other condition.

So Heidi wants to change the law because she is sad that it is possible for someone to abort at that stage for DS.

And there are some circumstances where late term abortions are the only abortion option.

There was a refugee woman in Ireland who was raped on her journey from her war torn corner of Africa. She wanted an abortion when she found out she was pregnant, but she was in Ireland.

She tried to get to England but didn't have a visa or the correct passport.

She decided to stop eating because that would kill the foetus, even if it killed her, so she was sent to a psychiatric ward.

Eventually she was allowed a caesarian at, I think, I'm recalling this from memory at 24 weeks with her never seeing her child which would go to NICU.

If she had managed to get to England at 24 weeks it is probable she would have qualified for a late term abortion on grounds of danger to the mother's life.

Indeed, late term abortions in the absence of a severe medical condition is not legal anywhere in Europe, I believe.

I do remember some article about the suffering of women in the Balkan wars. Some were detained and systematically raped in camps, and those falling pregnant during this ordeal sometimes got freed only very late in pregnancy. (Some had to give birth in captivity, obviously).

In such cases very late terminations occurred, and I believe, if memory serves me right, this was also done in some Western European countries the women fled to, not only directly in the war torn countries.

The (in my eyes valid) argument for that was the woman’s mental health, even if that may have stretched the legal framework.

If IVF were not the will of god, god wouldn't have created IVF clinics, surely!

People impose their opinions on others all the time. Some people don't think it's wrong to steal, the law courts generally disagree.

It's obviously wrong to kill a baby born at 37 weeks at 1 week old. How is this different to a late term abortion at 38 weeks?

Thankfully the law courts also take this view in the vast majority of cases.

If IVF were not the will of god, god wouldn't have created IVF clinics, surely!

Well, we could turn that round and say 'if abortion were not the will of god, then god would not have allowed man to develop safe methods of carrying out abortions'.

And the god argument should be kept out of law in any case. It is wrong to impose the diktats of any religion on people who do not share that religion.

I’m not sure that the concern for the life and welfare of a child is all that great once it is born Q2C4, particularly among pro- lifers.

Totally agree @deepwatersolo . Are all these forced birthers passionate advocates for higher taxes to support care and support for single mothers and families with a disabled child? In my experience, they’re generally the economic libertarians, who baulk at any sort of welfare at all.

I'm not trying to make this a decision about god etc. which should definitely be kept out of medical decisions etc.

The point I'm trying to say is that peoples opinions should be kept out of other people's bodies (however those opinions have been reached - whether it religion etc). Because whilst you may not be effected by that persons opinion now (don't have an abortion if you don't want one) it only takes a quirk and they those peoples opinions will come after something you hold dear (IVF maybe or something else)

I'm glad the case lost.
The only people who should have a say in a late term abortion are the mother and her doctors.

I feel very sad for Heidi- it's unethical for others to use her like this.

Thank God those using her lost the case, though. Although I think another way to 'solve' the issue would be to make termination legal (if the mother wants it, and a doctor agrees on health grounds, as up to 24 weeks) to term. I don't think this would change the abortion numbers/stats at all. No woman gets to 36 weeks, and goes 'yeah, can you kill my otherwise healthy baby, I want to give birth to a dead one!" and a doctor agree. Not a thing that would happen. But it would be 'equal', and stop this farce again.

These are very difficult ethical decisions and it's natural that we would struggle and wrestle with them.

I do consider that the foetus is a person, but I don't think that we are obligated to let another person live inside us, and we have a right to remove that person, even if the result is that they will die. This is uncomplicated before viability, as death is always an unintended consequence of removal of the foetus from the woman's body.

Termination after the point of viability gets thorny though. Set aside the cases that are incompatible with life.

DS is not incompatible with life. What is the moral difference between killing a viable foetus with DS inside the uterus, or outside the uterus, at the same gestation?