Lilly Allen & Miquita on abortions

[Cloud987]

Sorry for the DM link - I know it's a rag.

I'm just completely disturbed having read this article and listened to their podcast episode of them talking about having 5 abortions each. This surely is not what the 1967 abortion act was designed for. It's not some preppy girl-power feminist statement to have so many abortions you can't even remember them. And to laugh and sing about it rather than take a somber view or think about how you would make better choices or advise women and girls listening to make other choices for themselves. Or to demand that contraceptive services post-abortion are better to prevent girls from having another one. Am I wrong for thinking this is messed up and completely tasteless? And antithetical to the well-being of women and girls? Am I being excessively prude and judgemental?

Sorry didn't know where else to put this & haven't made a thread before so if I have broken rules or if this just is inappropriate let me know. This has just really got under my skin.

Article link here

Their podcast is called "Miss Me" and is available on BBC sounds - it's on their episode from this week called "Listen Bitch" at the very start. I am not a regular listener to it.

Edit: sorry I meant to post this on feminism chat not S&G discussions

#whataboutery

I can actually. I think having 5 abortions just means you don’t give a shit about having abortions and I find that disgusting and not very feminist at all. It’s a disservice to woman and reinforcing women having abortions as a form of contraception which I don’t think is the case for most women.

Yep. Attention seeking talentless wannabes, desperate to be in the news headlines.

Pathetic. 🙄

I find it bizarre someone could say they don’t know. Women I’ve known who have had abortions remember. It’s not a flippant decision for most and not something you’d decide to go through again and again. When you can prevent it! Even if something fails a couple of times… but 5?!
Didn’t Lily Allen also write about miscarriages and an awful still birth plus having kids. I wonder if she was exaggerating.
Mikita I don’t know enough about but as someone else said if she’s done it 5 times maybe she lacks responsibility.

That’s your experience. I feel for you, but you cannot project your experiences on to other women. I felt nothing but relief after termination. Why should I feel any shame about it or ‘keep quiet’ so as not to offend?

Yes to this. I find it unfathomable that a few posters are trying to defend these 2 individuals. Actual WOW.

I’m appalled by the internalised misogyny on this thread. Surely to fuck it’s nobody else’s business what another woman chooses to do with her own body? Either you support that or you don’t. Who benefits from forcing women to have a baby they don’t want? Some women have lives that those judging from a position of middle class privilege on here couldn’t even imagine. I hate this world, when women tear each other down like this while giving the men involved a free pass we’re cooked, it’s so depressing and disgusting. Feminists my arse, you should all be ashamed.

Surely to FUCK if these 2 women don't want peoples opinions, they shouldn't have rushed to the news outlets and social media to advertise the fact they have had 5 or more abortions.

I mean, SURELY TO FUCK! 🙄

And you DO know Lily Allen is middle class right?! 😆

You have embarrassed yourself with that post. I'm cringing for you. 😬

There's a very interesting book by the philosopher Ronald Dworkin called Life's Dominion, about abortion and euthanasia. He makes the powerful argument that a foetus is not nothing, it has moral value. But the mother's body and choice is of higher moral value. She should be allowed to make that choice but it is still a decision to take seriously.

I think it is possible to say the law shouldn't stop someone having multiple abortions whilst at the same time thinking that morally it is a shame if someone has got themselves in the same position repeatedly because they chose not to use contraception, even though it was readily available to them.

Nobody here has claimed its their business though. Dumb and dumber did a podcast announcing their combined 10 or so abortions. Now the public is discussing it, as I'm sure they hoped for!

I think it’s kind of shit to be frank, abortion isn’t contraception. She’s fine to have as many as she wants but for gods sake just use contraception. I don’t like the minimising if I’m honest, we aren’t just holes, an abortion will have a physical effect on someone. It’s a bit of a “cool girl” thing to do imo. I’m pro choice absolutely but theres something dismissive about women's bodies and experiences I don’t like. Abortion isn’t pleasant, it’s not like you go “ooops pregnant, going to just nip out to have an abortion”.

I’ve listened to their podcast from the start and for the most part really like it. Like quite a few people here, I find myself in the awkward position of being pro-choice, but also unsettled by the giggling, blasé tone of the discussion. I’ve really questioned myself about why this is.

For me, whilst I believe that in theory that men are equally responsible for contraception (after all they’re fertile 100% of the time, whereas we’re only fertile a few days a month), we’re the ones who carry the risk of a potential unwanted pregnancy. As a younger woman, I saw it as a key part of looking after myself (mentally, emotionally and physically), to do my best to ensure I didn’t get pregnant and have to deal with an unwanted pregnancy. So I put myself in control and took care of my own contraception. I absolutely understand that contraception doesn’t always work, and I’ve been fortunate that mine always did and I’ve not needed abortions. But I’ve had miscarriages and they were physically painful, horrible, bloody experiences, which I imagine is very much how an abortion is. So the giggling, casual tone that suggests undertaking one is no big deal (plus the lack of selfcare that implies) really bothers me.

There’s something very dishonest and ‘cool girl’ in avoiding any discussion of the painful, messy reality of having an abortion. Not because I think it’s wrong or shameful, but because it is physically hard, and for many it’s also emotionally and mentally hard too, even if it’s 100% the right decision.

As a weekly listener to the show, I get their presenting style and how they like to position themselves. Lily has also lived in the States for many years. I do feel this ‘casualness’ was a very deliberate positioning of abortion in the US pro-choice context as an ‘access to reproductive healthcare’ issue, where any discussion of the physical or emotional experience of abortion is the preserve of the pro-life movement. I’d like to think in the U.K. we can have a more nuanced discussion, where we can understand abortion is a physically difficult/unpleasant thing - that in an ideal world you’d not want any woman to have to experience - whilst still being firmly pro-choice. Whereas it felt they were quite deliberately playing into pro-life, right wing tropes of callous-women-using-abortion-as-contraception in quite a goady way.

Yeah, I’d agree with this, it’s the way I see it too.

Exactly! They were desperate for the attention.

Why should you give a shit about having abortions though? Why is it any different to any other healthcare procedure? If we’re talking about early ToP’s which I suspect they were, it’s nothing but a clump of cells being flushed out of the uterus. Now if you attribute life and emotion to those cells then that’s your position, and in my pregnancies I absolutely did because they were wanted and loved from the moment the line went blue. But if it’s just a problem to be solved why should you care any more than you would about getting a tooth out or a birthmark lásered off.

You can’t assume every woman feels the same and say she is doing it wrong just because it is different to you. If you don’t want 5 abortions then don’t have them!

FFS 🙄

To be honest, I’ have had more than one termination in my life and I am in no way trying to be a ‘cool girl’ when I say that a medical abortion at 7/8 weeks gestation was not in the least bit traumatic for me.

I was relieved I had the option and absolutely fucking ecstatic that I didn’t have to go through with a pregnancy, birth and raising an unwanted child.

There seeks to be this rhetoric from some supposedly pro-choice women that abortion is ok if it only happens once, you gnash your teeth over the decision and feel a it is a huge moral dilemma, and then you are very very sorry and spend the rest of your life staying quiet about it, only commenting to say it was a deeply traumatic experience and warning young women to be careful 🤔

Fuck all that.

Yes I agree. For me it was the same as having a cancerous tumour removed. Any upset came from having the unwanted thing in my body in the first place. I had a surgical under general so I literally just went to sleep, woke up and was no longer pregnant, which was brilliant for me. Other people are allowed to feel differently about their own pregnancies but you can’t demand all women are traumatised by an abortion or don’t talk about it flippantly.

I totally agree. I also didn’t find it traumatic in the slightest. It was straightforward, quick, easy and not something I remotely ponder over with any melancholy.

I'm pro choice but i felt uncomfortable how they both seemed so casual and lighthearted about their abortions ,even amused by it .
Actually i don't think Lilly Allen is much of a role model in general ,i just hope she's a decent mother to her girls.

Me too. I just can’t get upset at having a clump of dividing cells removed from my body.

A friend of mine was a teacher at a very cool all girls school in North West London. Said all the girls bragged about their abortions... badge of honour.

She must be filling in those CPOMS all the time.

I have worked in healthcare for very many years. All of the women I have known to have 5+ terminations have had quite severe mental health problems.

The norm seems to be 1, maybe 2 accidents then really not want to ever go through that again.

We don't know under what circumstances she came to be pregnant. If we assume it's because of consenting sex between adults, could she not use birth control? She's been extremely unlucky if she was using it and it went wrong 5 times.