US Supreme Court has voted to overturn abortion rights,

[Delphinium20]

www.politico.com/news/2022/05/02/supreme-court-abortion-draft-opinion-00029473 This is a draft opinion, but it looks like it will pass.

I know most of this board is UK based, but just wanted to share how gutted I am about this. This is a result of the GOP stacking our courts w/conservative judges and will impact hundreds of thousands of women in my country. I'm just feeling really hopeless about feminism right now. The left calls us 'pregnant people' but the right has made us as breeders under law. I'm just utterly saddened by this news.

[NorthernBogbean]

The most irrational of the ‘women just shouldn’t have sex if they don’t want to get pregnant’ arguments is the version which also doesn’t want women to have access to contraception – this is a religious / superstitious way of thinking - and not one based on the material reality of human life and human bodies. But the idea that women need not have pregnancies because contraception is available is just not a real-world position either. Contraception is available only variably throughout the world. Access to it is controlled by whatever local, national, religious and medical governance exists in a particular place. It depends on contraception import and manufacture being undisrupted and affordable and even if all these conditions are met not all women’s bodies will respond to or tolerate all contraception, especially hormonal, and all contraception has a significant real-world failure rate. And by the way, in this very human and physical world, why would a man who doesn’t want unwanted pregnancies with women he has sex with not be happy to have his vas deferens cut to help avoid them? It’s a minor procedure.

It is naïve also to imagine the circumstances in which women, married, single, mothers or not, have sex which gets them pregnant are all about clear-cut choice.

If every human had free and immediate access to all contraception whenever wanted, women would still have unwanted pregnancies. Where states ban abortion, the women in those states will still seek and get abortions (because those women are desperate) and those abortions will be unregulated and dangerous. Drawing philosophical lines about foetal personhood will never prevent harm from happening to real bodies. To pretend otherwise is inhuman. The desire to decide on a foetus’s personhood can only humanely be framed by the realities of human bodies. The idea that anyone in power could decide that raped women could be forced to term (Jacob Rees-Mogg thinks they should) or that there could be any restriction on saving the woman’s health or life because she carries a foetus is inhumane. I agree that there is a point of a pregnancy – around the time a foetus might be viable outside the womb – that I and many others would not want to have terminations and wouldn’t see them as at all routine. I think that most women, however distressed, are unlikely to want to terminate outside of medical need at that point and I personally would hope to persuade them to keep the pregnancy going and would hope they have the courage to do that. I think that’s only human too and as a citizen I don’t think I would ever just accept no practical limits on abortions, I would argue about it. But I don’t think there is any human way the unborn foetus’s putative personhood could or should outweigh the mother’s, for the sake of all women, and I oppose anyone having the power to decide it does and to act on it.

It interests me that so many of those U.S. activists, voters and legislators calling for restrictions on women’s ability to be free of an unwanted pregnancy are men. It’s a situation which they can’t experience physically – how are they seeing it: from the position of imagining themselves to be the rejected foetus, or the impotent father of it? The rage at their lack of control seems clear though. Men are so utterly and permanently insulated from the experience of being impregnated, having a foetus grow inside their own body and having to birth it painfully and sometimes dangerously, can they fully imagine having this happen unwanted? Is that how they are well able to make abstract arguments about foetuses’ personhood? I suspect some men don’t want to believe that women can feel the need to reject a pregnancy because it disrupts their deep-rooted Mummy beliefs and forces them to hear very uncomfortable things about women’s real experiences. It’s much easier to argue about abstracts.

[endofthelinefinally]

Exactly. If you want to reduce the number of abortions you provide effective and adequate contraception for everyone.
If you want to reduce the number of late abortions you provide safe, accessible early care for all women. You provide good sex education and access to MAP.
If you just hate women and want to punish and control them you do exactly what the supreme court ruling has done/is doing.
It is a no-brainer and is glaringly obvious IMO.
As for even suggesting that re-implanting ectopic pregnancy is a possibility? Words fail me.

[MrsTerryPratchett]

@endofthelinefinally

Exactly. If you want to reduce the number of abortions you provide effective and adequate contraception for everyone.
If you want to reduce the number of late abortions you provide safe, accessible early care for all women. You provide good sex education and access to MAP.
If you just hate women and want to punish and control them you do exactly what the supreme court ruling has done/is doing.
It is a no-brainer and is glaringly obvious IMO.
As for even suggesting that re-implanting ectopic pregnancy is a possibility? Words fail me.

In a world where women were essentially tortured in Ireland to avoid c-sections limiting their ability to produce more and more children, of course weirdos will suggest reimplanting foetuses.

Don't read this if you are likely to be triggered: www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/dec/12/symphysiotomy-irelands-brutal-alternative-to-caesareans

When you start to think you control women's bodies, there really is no point at which any of these misogynists stop.

[MangyInseam]

It's really not surprising this was struck down and it doesn't require some sort of conspiracy theory. It was never a very robust judgement. It didn't really even enshrine any real status to abortion provision in itself.

Pro-choice people were ok with this partly because of the fear that what might be enshrined, should that work actually be pursued, would be like British or European laws, which place limits, and they didn't want that - even though it would likely be very popular with the majority of the population. Similarly the pro-life lobby wanted the real likelihood that the judgement would fall to remain in the cards, rather than the kind of legislative solution that would equally be not what they wanted.

[SpringCalling]

How is it best to fight this? Maybe campaigns aimed at young women in the states which will ban abortions urging them to go to university in a state that will respect their bodily autonomy? Backed up by funds to help them do this? It's only when men find there are too few potential mates around for them that this may hit home... they won't care otherwise

[Crumbler]

@MrsTerryPratchett

Is there any way you could condone killing a 2 day old baby? What if it would wreck the life chances of the mother? What if it would be unloved? Would you be okay with killing the child?

You won't answer my question, why would I answer yours? You've skated over the MAJORITY or women who suffer extreme pain and injury. You've not answered if you're a women and have given birth. And not about rape either.

My identity and experiences are completely irrelevant to the issue.

[Crumbler]

@NorthernBogbean

Your opinion is actually the same as mine. Regardless of the discomfort and/or inconvenience a baby poses for its mother, we don't condone the killing of another human being. the only difference is that you've made a decision about when to start calling the fetus a human being, namely from the point of viability outside of the womb.

And I don't disagree. Though, TBF, I'm not agreeing either. I just don't have an opinion on that question, as there isn't really any single powerful argument or proof to decide that question.

I'm going to go out on a limb and assume all posters here agree that it's wrong to kill a baby once it has been born. Regardless of how much the baby is an imposition on the mother (or father for that matter). Even if it severely hobbles the lifestyle and careers of its parents, we don't condone killing it.

The same is often said when the debate about fathers renouncing their rights and responsibilities. The position of most posters is that once the baby was conceived by the wilful actions of the father, he cannot abdicate his responsibility, and must pay child support. Having sex carries the known risk of a child being conceived, and if it happens, tough luck for the father. They should have put a rubber on it or had a snip.

It's exactly the same for the woman, only here we're talking about the actual life of the child. If the human being in question came about by the wilful actions of the mother (so rape wouldn't be included in this), she has no right to kill it. She is now obligated to keep it alive and support it.

Hence the only question is at what point to we look at the baby and call it a human being. It's as simple as that.

Some think it should be at the moment of conception, others when there's a detectable heartbeat. A PP thought it should happen at the point of viability. But regardless of anyone's personal opinion on the matter, this is the only relevant question.

Is this thing a human being?

If yes, we cannot kill it. If not, go ahead and abort.

[MangyInseam]

@Crumbler

In philosophy, it's usually discussed as when is it a person, rather than a human being, because it's actually a human being from the point of conception, from a scientific perspective. ( A human embryo is human, a cat embryo is a cat, etc.)

People who think that any human being is a person tend to be very conservative about abortion, that's basically the Catholic position for example. If you think that a human being is not always a person, and there are other things that need to be in place like a certain amount of brain development, or the ability to feel pain, etc, you might place it later. But then you can have the complication that whatever criteria you put in place it may apply outside the womb too, so it can impact things like assessment of mental capacity or ideas around euthanasia, and those are also serious ethical issues.

And yes, it's very relevant because if you are talking about a person, then the legal balancing act around rights is different than if we say that the fetus has no standing at all, or maybe we say it has standing to the same degree as a chicken, or dog, or a chimpanzee (which are protected as persons in some places if I recall correctly.) All of these would result in different legal considerations and potentially different outcomes.

The idea that we'd decide what the personhood status of any creature is based on how that would affect other people goes against most of what we accept about the nature of rights and could be a pretty scary precedent.

[Crumbler]

In philosophy, it's usually discussed as when is it a person, rather than a human being, because it's actually a human being from the point of conception, from a scientific perspective. ( A human embryo is human, a cat embryo is a cat, etc.)

In other posts I've used the terms person and personhood. My main point here is that this isn't a a question about women's rights.

Much of the rhetoric is about government keeping out of my uterus or not being forced to birth children etc etc. But this is disingenuous at best.

Nobody is forcibly impregnating women, and if they are, that's rape and they should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. Nor is anyone sane arguing to deny women the right to not get pregnant. There are a large range of contraception options and they're freely available. In fact, in the UK, it's free NHS prescription to anyone.

What is being debated is the exact point when a fetus is granted personhood. Because from that point onwards, it should be be protected by law from coming to any harm.

[Crumbler]

A thought exercise:

What if an evil monster were to stab a pregnant woman in the stomach and kill the fetus she was planning to carry to term, should they be prosecuted for manslaughter?

[MrsTerryPratchett]

@Crumbler

A thought exercise:

What if an evil monster were to stab a pregnant woman in the stomach and kill the fetus she was planning to carry to term, should they be prosecuted for manslaughter?

See 'thought experiments' are the Trojan Horses of forced-birthers. We aren't a philosophy text book, you can argue us to your POV. We are humans and entitled to live our lives. I can argue philosophy (I'd assume more effectively than you) about bodies without brains grown in a vat for organs and whether they are 'human' or 'people' and whether that's murder and therefore without human brain development there's not personhood. And on and on.

But the fact is that forcing women to carry and give birth to unwanted babies is barbaric, ugly and unthinkable to decent people. Regardless of your debating skills. As would terminating a wanted pregnancy either by violence or force with medication be. I don't support forced termination either. For the EXACT SAME REASON, women's autonomy and right to choose.

And your refusal to reply is actually important. You are debating other people's rights if you're a man. Fuck off and let the people who actually matter talk. You don't have skin in the game. You don't know the fear, understand the pain, go through the trauma. You don't even have to consider it.

Signed

A women and a mother.

[Gingernaut]

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unborn_Victims_of_Violence_Act

www.mprsolicitors.co.uk/site/blog/criminal-department-news/criminal-law-unborn-child-father-charged-assault-to-miscarriage

www.northamptonchron.co.uk/news/crime/full-of-hate-and-anger-how-a-northampton-man-subjected-pregnant-teenage-girlfriend-to-catalogue-of-abuse-3682343

Domestic abuse often manifests or worsens when women get pregnant.

Violence against pregnant women is not a 'thought experiment' it is a lived experience for hundreds of women every day.

[Littlepaws18]

@MrsTerryPratchett perfectly put. Turning this into a philosophical debate about a example that is by no means linked or related to what abortion is, how it's performed only heightens tensions and creates paranoia.

Abortion is an incredibly sensitive topic but it's also deeply personal and as it impacts women physically as well as emotionally it can only be decided by the woman effected.

Women don't take this decision lightly, it impacts them forever and to take away that choice, takes away our humanity, control of our own bodies, control of our futures, restricts our equality.

A woman has a right to make decisions about her body and a responsibility to ensure for her they are the right decisions. A truly democratic state has no right to take this away.

[Littlepaws18]

@Gingernaut completely agree.

It's disturbing and disgusting that there are people in power in supposedly the most democratic country in the world has judges who are chosen for their political beliefs, remain in post for life without any accountability to the public and have the power to erode 50 years of womens rights.

The whole political process needs radical reform.

[FriedTomatoe]

What upsets me about this conversation is that it's one of those issues that people can't relate to unless they've been in a position where they've needed one. It's not a philosophical debate, It's a personal experience that some people live through and it's not a nice experience to go through either way.

I don't agree with abortion completely but I recognise that we're not living in a perfect society where men respect women, where there's loads of support for single women and where all babies are healthy. If the pro-abortion group focused on resolving these issues I would back them but where are they when it comes to demonstrating for the other issues that should matter to them?

[youvegottenminuteslynn]

@FriedTomatoe

What upsets me about this conversation is that it's one of those issues that people can't relate to unless they've been in a position where they've needed one. It's not a philosophical debate, It's a personal experience that some people live through and it's not a nice experience to go through either way.

I don't agree with abortion completely but I recognise that we're not living in a perfect society where men respect women, where there's loads of support for single women and where all babies are healthy. If the pro-abortion group focused on resolving these issues I would back them but where are they when it comes to demonstrating for the other issues that should matter to them?

If the pro-abortion group focused on resolving these issues I would back them but where are they when it comes to demonstrating for the other issues that should matter to them?

Pro choice, not pro abortion.

Can you explain what you mean by this? I don't understand your point and would like to try to do so.

Everyone I've seen supporting pro choice thinking has also reiterated that part of the reason banning abortions would be so damaging is the huge lack of support for women in difficult circumstances who would be forced to give birth, and are also campaigning for better sex education, contraceptive choices and support for mums.

People aren't simply saying abortions are brilliant...

[NorthernBogbean]

I don't agree with you Crumbler, while I think women aborting foetuses above the point of possible viability is going to be distressing for all concerned, I don't consider the foetus to be a person until it is born and separate from the mother - she is a fully-sentient and independent human and the foetus is not, it is part of her. The reason I don't like the idea of late abortion is that the woman will be traumatised, the medical staff will have a difficult task emotionally and practically and the foetus may not immediately die outside the womb, and if that happened it will be impaired and may suffer. It's only right to be squeamish about this I think. This is why women should have access to early abortion and states should not try to limit their access to morning after or abortion pills.

Nevertheless I am fully supportive of terminations at any stage where there is any risk to the mother's life or serious risk to her health and certainly in the case of foetal abnormalities which warrant late terminations. We shouldn't bring to life beings who we think will just suffer. And before anyone asks what right we have to decide that - we are the only ones who can make that call, humans, there's just us and we will have to make the best decisions we can. I'm also in favour of assissted dying. Causing to live and forcing to live can also be inhumane.

In answer to your question about the knife-wielding foetus-killer: no he shouldn't be prosecuted for killing the foetus.

The thing that staggers me about this situation is that citizens and their elected representatives in the USA, with its revered written constitution, are unable to change the personnel on its one supreme court until they actually die.

[MrsTerryPratchett]

And late abortion is very very rare. Only 1% over 20 weeks, even fewer, very very few, over 24. And those tend to be really severe medical issues. My friend had one quite late and there would have been no birth of a baby. It was either medical abortion or still birth. Horribly traumatic either way.

Late abortions are always brought up but women are good at knowing what is OK by them. Which is why almost 90% are under 10 weeks. The the percentage over 20 weeks is decreasing.

[JustAnotherPoster00]

@MrsTerryPratchett

I think it is absolutely calculated and deliberate. What better way to subjugate and control women. They will take away maternity rights and pay next (which is already abysmal in the US anyway).

And don't forget that abstinence only sex ed is favoured in many of the anti-abortion states as well. Girls won't even be taught about IUDs and MAP, let alone the plethora of choices for birth control.

And rape is basically legal.

It gets worse and worse the more you think about it.

I think what gets overlooked at times is the racist element of the forced birthers 'debate', a lot of these evangelical right wing have a belief that all white people will eventually become the minority and eventually replaced, who could possibly think that old rich white men losing their privilege is a bad thing, the sooner the better as far as I'm concerned,

Can I also add that my view on abortion is any time for any reason, until the foetus is viable outside of the mothers body it's nothing more than a parasitic organ is some circumstances killing its host

Those worried about the forced birth movement coming here I think you're right to be worried, the UK since 2015 has seen a ramp up of right wing rhetoric pushed by the media and commentators and can I ask those of you that are GC here keep in mind that some of the people you walk along the same path would have no problems removing your bodily autonomy whilst being very clear that you are a woman

[GlasswareisOverated]

Going back to the Vasectomies. You don't even need to make them reversible. Just get the man to freeze some sperm. I am all for at 18 years old a male person (i.e a man) is made to undergo a vasectomy, with three samples of sperm frozen, which will lead to much greater freedom for both men and women and will totally take out of the equation the need for abortions.
But that's never going to happen, is it?
In which case provision for legal and safe abortions, needs to exist. And I trust women to make the decision that is right for them, at any stage of their pregnancy.

[Crumbler]

@MrsTerryPratchett

I'm not sure whether you actually don't get it or just pretending to. The question of humanity/personhood is not philosophical but the crux of the issue. I am full for all people, men and women, having rights. But nobody has the right to kill anyone else.

In this thread alone, in the last handful of posts, you have a poster who thinks a fetus isn't a person up until birth, while another poster thinks the threshold is viability outside of the womb.

Both are ardent feminists, but they both understand being a feminist doesn't grant women the right to murder babies.

If it's a baby from heartbeat, that's the point when 'abortion' becomes 'murder'. If it's only a baby from viability/third trimester, that's the cut-off point. And so on.

The right to chose not to get pregnant, and the right to control your body, doesn't give you the right to murder.

[MangyInseam]

It's a bit, let's say, uneven, to insist on "pro-choice" if you're also going to used terms like "forced-birthers".

It's not some kind of philosophical sleight of hand to talk about abortion in legal terms, in terms of rights, in terms of what the science is. That's how we grapple with social issues. This sort of claim that we can't try and dig down into these kinds of ethical and also very practical questions in a rational way, that it's only about the experiences of individuals, has caused so much damage, including to women's rights. Because that is not a principle that applies only on this issue, if we accept it.

And as far as it being an inherently racist or sexist discussion - that's no different than the attempt to shut down any other topic by implying people are bigots. RvW is an American legal issue, and in the US, women, and black Americans, are both more likely to lean pro-life than pro-choice than the population overall.

If you think a 34 week fetus is a parasite and not subject to the same legal protections of a person, or a dog, and that killing it is morally neutral, make that argument, and support it. But recognize that it is a position that is not self-evidently true and that if you want people to accept it, you are going to have to convince them. Because the vast majority of people of all sexes and races don't see that as anything like self-evident, and it's not because they are sexist bigots. (And I'd point out that telling them that's the reason they disagree is not at all likely to win them over.)

[MrsTerryPratchett]

It's a bit, let's say, uneven, to insist on "pro-choice" if you're also going to used terms like "forced-birthers".

Not really. I would go to the barricades for a woman who didn't want an abortion. I housed women in my home who were struggling and wanted to keep their pregnancies. Several of them. I'm literally pro-choice.

If someone is against abortion for themselves, they can refer to themselves as pro-life, all good. But as soon as you are forcing another women to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term, you are a forced-birther. Again, literally.

[youvegottenminuteslynn]

@MrsTerryPratchett

It's a bit, let's say, uneven, to insist on "pro-choice" if you're also going to used terms like "forced-birthers".

Not really. I would go to the barricades for a woman who didn't want an abortion. I housed women in my home who were struggling and wanted to keep their pregnancies. Several of them. I'm literally pro-choice.

If someone is against abortion for themselves, they can refer to themselves as pro-life, all good. But as soon as you are forcing another women to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term, you are a forced-birther. Again, literally.

Exactly this.

[SexyLittleNosferatu]

Both are ardent feminists, but they both understand being a feminist doesn't grant women the right to murder babies

Who's murdering babies hun? You should probably 'phone the police if you know of people murdering babies. It's against the law you know.