Abortion rate highest ever - I'm sorry I just don't buy the reason suggested for this...

[CountessDracula]

"But pregnancy advice groups said the figures probably reflected poor access to contraceptive services"

What utter tosh

You can buy condoms in many loos in clubs and pubs. In any chemist or 24hour shop.

You have access to family planning clinics and doctors with free contraception

You can buy the morning after pill over the counter ffs

Shouldn't people take a bit more responsibility and get themselves to these places and get some bloody contraception?

Paula. I lost a full-term healtny baby during labour. And, Y'know what, there was a part of me that felt it was my punishment for a 6 week abortion I'd had in 1987.

I managed to shake that feeking fairly quickly. There is no comparison. I wanted my son. I didn't (and, more importantly) couldn't want the pregnancy that I'd aborted.

that is all i am saying sophable

yes i am glad we have that right and yes i would take it if necessary

however there are other and imo better,easier less impacting ways of dealing with this issue

People make mistakes that they have to live with all the time. Its called consequences.

I think some people take the view that if you make a mistake about sex and accidentally conceive, then you should be punished for this for the rest of your life by being forced to go through pregnancy and childbirth. I'm not sure this is an altogether positive view of the process!

paula not killing yourself or being on drugs is not a marker for mental health. many many people that are in absolute agony inside, seem to be very happy externally...you only have to trawl a few threads on mn to see that.

Of course I'm not suggesting that all adopted kids go through the hell this particular one did. Lots of them do very well and are very happy and good luck to them.

Just that it is extraordinarily naieve to imagine that it is a neat solution. It just seems very simplistic and childish to me, to suggest something as barbaric as forcing a woman to undergo a pregnancy and birth she doesn't want to, then hand her baby over to strangers, is a nice neat idea. It makes me livid when I hear grown adults expressing such idiotic views, tbh.

So, if you make a mistake and forget to get the roof fixed and there is a high wind and your roof is damaged so the rain comes through, the 'consequence' for this should be that you live there, in a wet house for the rest of your life? Or maybe you could get a roofer in and fix it?

you konw what....maybe on my side of the fence people have had abortions and are arguing from that side of it.

from the other...maybe people have had babies that they have deeply ambivalent feelings about and need to find a way of making that worthwhile.

we all argue from our own experiences don't we?

And just imagine going through life knowing you are someone's unfortunate consequence.

You nutter.

caligula. i share your rage about this.

And she could be happy to

If I was conceived today I probably would have been aborted, tbh. I was very unexpected and inconvenient, and though I was very, very much loved as a baby (have been going through photo albums of my dad's and crying my eyes out at the inscriptions) it did make life difficult for everyone with my parents trapped in a loveless relationship with lots of emotional violence and anger, and children in the middle of it.

You are right, I'm nuts because I think innocent children should have to die because their mommys made a mistake. I'm the one whos crazy.

aloha - but the alternative is a patched roof with scars

abortion does not just wipe the slate clean
many suffer depression,anxiety,guilt - relationships falter....

Paula, you do seem to see pregnancy and birth as a form of punishment here for the 'bad' behaviour of sexual carelessness. That's quite interesting I think.

I appreciate that the topic has strayed a bit, but I thought that I had read recently that one trend in recent years is the increase in the number of women who have more than one abortion. So the number of abortions increase, but the number of women having abortions isn't increasing as dramatically. Of course this would also point to a subset of women who were starting to use abortion as a form of very late contraception.

They aren't children though!
And it doesn't have to be a patched roof with 'scars'. It could be a new and better roof.

could be yes but unlikely

OK I shouldn't have called you a nutter, the rage took over.

But how terribly sad to regard a child as a "consequence" of someone's mistake.

What a joyless approach to life.

Well, you may think that, but lots of people even on here say that they think their life now is good partly because they were able to take a different path due to a termination, have no regrets and are glad.

Soph. Let's rage.

I often notice this with some anti-abortionists - they seem to regard a baby as a punishment, and that's really sad I think.

Yeah but Sally, as I said earlier on (my post got subsumed in the abortion/adoption debate), I don't think that adult women have any excuse (except under very unusual circumstances) for getting accidentally pregnant when contraception is so readily available. If they don't want a baby they need to make sure they're protected.

Agree Aloha. And that attitude led to so many children being treated so abusively in the past, because they were seen as a punishment.

It is a horrific attitude to children, imo.