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Original poster

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

875 replies

CountessDracula · 08/02/2007 11:39

"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?

OP posts:
sandcastles · 09/02/2007 11:56

"I really doubt there are women out there logically, calmly saying, oh, sod it, we won't bother with a condom, let's just go without, I'll just have an abortion if I get pregnant"

Lets take a woman & a man.

The woman isn't on contraception, he doesn't like condoms, they decide to go without. They try the withdrawal (sp) method on his insistence that he will pull out. He does, but she gets pregnant.

She has 4 children. He has none, but wants to keep this one. And she really can't face doing it all over again.
She is 45
He is 26
They are married.

So I do think that women say 'oh sod it'. Because my mother did & she continued to use the WM as her prefered method of contraception for a further 4 years, until he divorced her as he couldn't live with the fact that she aborted their child, behind his back.

sandcastles · 09/02/2007 12:05

paulaplumpbottom, I would just like to say that I am glad my mother had her abortion.

I am her youngest, she never wanted me, tried herself to abort me. Thankfully failed. But I lived with the legacy of being an unwanted child all my life.

I knew she never loved me the way she did my older siblings. Once, I told her I wished I was never born, her answer? "I wish you weren't born either, so at least we agree on that" I wasn't even 10 when she said this.

I was 16 when she told her 3rd dh that she tried a self abortion & said to him, the little bitch held on.

So, if her terminating her pregnancy meant that my potential brother or sister didn't have to live with the rejection & hate that I did, well then all is good. Because even now at 33, 13 odd years after last speaking to her, my heart breaks that my mother never loved me.

GrumpyOldHorsewoman · 09/02/2007 12:15

Sandcastles.

sandcastles · 09/02/2007 12:24

GrumpyOldHorsewoman, it is. But I can learn to live with it now. But that doesn't mean that opinions like paulas don't make me cry. It's just not THAT simple.

My mother wasn't on contraception when she had me, my dad wanted more & she 'went along' with him.

My dad loved the idea of a 4th. But he left before I was 6 & took all the love & warmth I had ever known.

I just need people like Paula to realise that it's not as easy to just 'live with the consequences' of their actions. Not for the child, anyway!

anniemac · 09/02/2007 12:24

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn

NotAnOtter · 09/02/2007 12:29

caligula - but i HAVE had an accident...it was MY FAULT

Caligula · 09/02/2007 12:37

NaO it may well have been your fault (although i'm a bit curious as to how it might not also have been partly the fault of the man you were with). But so what? We all make mistakes. It doesn't mean you're an idiot or irresponsible.

NotAnOtter · 09/02/2007 12:41

I did learn from that error and have used condoms effectively since.
Yes i have been drunk - pissed - rat arsed on occasion but still managed to sort contraception

paulaplumpbottom · 09/02/2007 12:42

I'm so sorry Sandcastles. What a sad way to grow up. Its not that I don't sympathise, I do. All situations are diffrrent and require diffrent solutions. I'm sorry though, I don't think that killing a baby is ever the answer.

I also want to say to those that say that I think these women deserve punishment that they are wrong. I don't think anyone deserves punishment. I just don't think its right to kill babies, it has nothing to do with punishment.

Dinosaur · 09/02/2007 12:43

paula - but a embryo of fewer than 12 weeks gestation is just not a baby. It has the poptential to develop into a baby, sure. Byut it's not a baby.

paulaplumpbottom · 09/02/2007 12:44

I disagree, It is a baby. Its alive isn't it?

Dinosaur · 09/02/2007 12:48

It's not capable of independent life outside the mother's body, though. It has the potential to become so, but it isn't yet.

sandcastles · 09/02/2007 12:51

Then paula, I suggest that you have no idea what I lived through, or how I feel when I cry, wondering why she never loved me. Or how I wish I was never born & envy people who have such good relationships with their mums. Or how I felt the day she walked passed me in a post office, before I left the UK for good & she looked right through me, as if she didn't know me. (just 7 months ago). I was the one who was punished...am still being punished. Just for being born.

I think you need to understand that if women go on to have a baby they don't want, there will be alot of unhappy souls on this earth.

Does a 'baby' deserve to live a life of misery instead of it's mother being big enough to say "I don't want this?"

paulaplumpbottom · 09/02/2007 12:57

A newborn can't survive without its mother, or someone to look after it either Dinosaur.

Dinosaur · 09/02/2007 12:57

paula you are being wilfully obtuse

I think

Aloha · 09/02/2007 12:58

Seems to me Paula that you do see it as punishment, hence all this stuff about 'having to take the consequences'. That doesn't sound very, um, joyful to me.

Just because something is alive doesn't make it a baby. Four cells in a petri dish is not a baby.

paulaplumpbottom · 09/02/2007 13:02

I'm not being difficult or obtuse. All I'm saying is that just because something can't fend for itself doesn't mean its not alive.

I disagree those 4 cells are a baby. A life has begun.

I think motherhood is a joyful experiance, and I understand its not that way for everyone. I do not think it is punishment. I do think people need to act responsibly.

sandcastles · 09/02/2007 13:04

Paula, I asked you

Does a 'baby' deserve to live a life of misery instead of it's mother being big enough to say "I don't want this?"

paulaplumpbottom · 09/02/2007 13:07

I don't believe that all children lead a life of misery. Again I'm sorry this was the case for you but I don't believe that happens to everyone. I also think if a mother doesn't want a baby it should be adopted not killed. I imagine that as a mother you wouldn't say that you wish you had been aborted. Your life has produced your children. We all have unhappiness of some sort in our lives, that doesn't mean that we wish it hadn't been given to us.

sandcastles · 09/02/2007 13:14

No, not all children are unhappy, but some are, I am. And for me, that's enough.

I would give up almost anything I had to have her love me...to have her think about my feelings for once. To hear her say I'm sorry I hurt you, but she doesn't think she did, the only person who suffered in her world, was her. From the moment I was concieved it was her her her.

I think you refering to 'killing' makes it sound like these women take a gun to their baby's head.....very over dramatic.

You know what, I can't do this anymore.

Dinosaur · 09/02/2007 13:15

sandcastles

paulaplumpbottom · 09/02/2007 13:22

She sounds awful and again I'm sorry it happened to you. You didn't deserve to be treated like that bu her.

They are killing it which is the reason I use that word. Why sanitise it?

sandcastles · 09/02/2007 13:23

Dinosaur, I just wish paula could see it's not that cut & dried.

So many babies await adoption, it's frustrating. My db & his gf are trying to adopt, but they keep finding fault with them. They do everything they are told to, but it isn't happening. They even used the fact that he had the snip against him at one point, sayng he obviously did it because he didn't want anymore children, where as he did because his then wife didn't want more.

If only all unwanted babies could be adopted, what a wonderful world!

foxinsocks · 09/02/2007 13:26

you think they are killing it paula - but lots of people don't think of cells as 'life' so we don't regard it as killing.

sandcastles

izzybiz · 09/02/2007 13:27

If i hadnt had an abortion it could have killed me, leaving my Dp with my teenage son and a newborn baby.

What other choice did i have Paula? Life isnt black and white.