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General health

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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:

Monkeytrousers · 12/02/2007 11:48

"At the end of it is a child that will think one day."

But these are statistically the kinds of children who will suffer the most hardship in life. Surely the most humane thing to do with an unwanted potential child is to foreclose the possibility of it suffering at all - which means early abortion?

I know you feel this is instinctually wrong - but the alternative is much worse surely?

paulaplumpbottom · 12/02/2007 12:41

It would be a rare person who would be able to say they have suffered no hardship. I for instance had a childhood full of horrors. Hardship comes to us all in some form or another. It doesn't make our lives any less valuable or any less worth living.

Dinosaur · 12/02/2007 12:43

This has just gone round in circles, but full credit to monkeytrousers and others for persisting.

Monkeytrousers · 12/02/2007 13:32

Yes, life is hard - for some harder than others. We disagree. I personally can't imagine being in a position where I would choose to terminate; but I realise that my ignorance of such situations isn't enough for me to want to deny that facility to others. The potential for suffering is limitless and this issue has to be based on pragmacies and facts not emotions and opinions. In a perfect world there would be no need for abortion, but we don't live in a perfect world and that is the issue that has to be dealt with; not what ought to be but what is.

There is a debate to be had re late abortions, and actually, medical ethics is constantly debating the issue - it's not a neglected field and I trust the secular, objective people and organisations to be doing a good job in response to those of a more ideological bent.

I do think (based on evidence) that abortion, certainly in the first trimester, is the most moral and humane service available to people in such dilemmas and would support freer access to abortion in this period. I wish the world weren't so - but it is and it's the real world that we have to deal with, not ideals and certainly not based on personal limited experience.

paulaplumpbottom · 12/02/2007 14:20

I think its unfair to suggest that either side has an argument based on fact. Its an emotional subject for both sides.

Monkeytrousers · 12/02/2007 15:13

Yes it is an emotional subject - but emotions are no basis for policy - that way lies fundamentalism. The evidence for that is all around us. Facts and objectivity are what is needed in these situations. And that does not mean denying our essential humanity either.

paulaplumpbottom · 12/02/2007 16:07

The people who make policy are working with best guesses not necessarily facts.While I agree that policy should be made objectivly we aren't heartless people and its impossible to say that emotion can never be involved. If there wasn't emotion from anyone nothing would ever change for the better or the worse. I doubt very much that the people involved in making the policy didn't have any emotional stake in the matter. I think its emotional for everyone.

runkid · 12/02/2007 21:33

This thread wasnt started about whether we agree or disagree with abortion but they all end up this way. It is one of those debates that will just go round and round and the choice to abort or not is made by the individual and will never be easy and it isnt for us to judge or decide if it is right or wrong or if they should or should not be aloud.

DominiConnor · 12/02/2007 21:38

Bubble99 is flatly wrong that the Catholic church "allows" abortions on the grounds of rape. Their position is logically quite sound. The baby (or zygote or foetus or whatever) didn't rape anyone and thus does not deserve to die.
The mother may or may not suffer, but again, that does not equate to killing another human being.

DominiConnor · 12/02/2007 21:40

Although we disagree on much, no one is saying abortion is actually good.
So how to we cut the numbers without imposing widespread suffering ?

More education does not seem to be the way forward. Everyone gets the full service on this, and women with severe learning difficulties don't seem to be the source.

So what then ?

Muminfife · 12/02/2007 22:54

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn

Monkeytrousers · 13/02/2007 00:27

"So how to we cut the numbers without imposing widespread suffering ?"

I would predict that numbers are quite stable across time. Someone earlier in the thread mentioned the corrolation with 'legal' abortion vs 'illegal; abortion. I think numbers are a blind alley in this issue. No one goes out cocioulsy to seek getting pregnant and having an abortion and as populations grow so the numbers of abortions will grow, legal or otherwise.

I have to agree with Carl Sagan's position - Roe vs Wade got it right.

Monkeytrousers · 13/02/2007 00:30

Muminfife - I agree, to blame the apparent growth in abortion on loose women is simply wrong headed. There are statistics out there if anyone wanted to really understand this. The majority of women who have abortions are in relationships.

paulaplumpbottom · 13/02/2007 09:04

\link{http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/02/12/nbirth112.xml}

paulaplumpbottom · 13/02/2007 09:05

Sorry, I don't understand why these don't work for me.

Monkeytrousers · 13/02/2007 09:15

here

Monkeytrousers · 13/02/2007 09:24

I certainly don't see how the 'critics' can say it's a failure of sex education. Sex education is shown to be very effective in many societies. It's probably other correlating stuff that mixes the messages.

It sounds a bit conservative but I?m not advocating women should be stopped experimenting, but that the media has a responsibility to represent the differences in the sexes. Of course the media is under the control of its advertisers, and they aren?t interested in facts and balance.

paulaplumpbottom · 13/02/2007 09:35

I'd be interested that in our society young men and women approaching maturation are subject to the same cultural messages, and that there is confusion amongst women in the assertion that they can be just as sexually assertive as males without consequence, when obviously pregnancy is a consequence men do not have to face.
I completely agree with this MT. I think this is the case for a lot of young girls. The media does handle it badly. I loved Sex in the City but it doesn't send the best sorts of messages and so many programs treat sex this way.

Caligula · 13/02/2007 09:36

Interesting to note that so many women have abortions while in long-term relationships. Which once again begs the question of what men's role is in all this.

Monkeytrousers · 13/02/2007 09:43

Doesn't it answer it too - ie none. It is and always will be a woman's choice?

Caligula · 13/02/2007 10:03

Well no I don't agree MT. I think in some of those cases, a man's attitude to the pregancy may have a huge influence on whether a woman has an abortion or not.

All the women I know who had abortions while involved in a stable relationship (apart from one) told the men about it and found that he was not in favour of the pregnancy continuing. So they went and got abortions. Afterwards, all but one of them said that had he been in favour, they would have gone ahead with the pregancy.

So men have quite a big say, even if it's indirect. If a woman finds that the bloke's not in favour, in a society in which bringing up a child alone is extremely difficult, a man's approval of a pregnancy can be the deciding factor.

Monkeytrousers · 13/02/2007 10:09

No I agree with you that he can influence the decision. I just mean from the wider perspective of policy - that the buck stops with the woman and autonomy over her own body. No I agree with you that he can influence the decision. I just mean from the wider perspective of policy - that the buck stops with the woman and autonomy over her own body

DominiConnor · 14/02/2007 12:32

Yes, it is interesting to how (or if) men's views could be brought in.
I recall a case a few years back where a Catholic man tried using the courts to stop a women he'd impregnated having an abortion.
He failed.
Should he ?

Caligula · 14/02/2007 14:18

Oh yes definitely, of course he should fail. He has no right to have use of a woman's body as a convenient vessel for his child.

Monkeytrousers · 14/02/2007 14:56

Yes, he should have failed I think. Just as in the case with the fertilised embryos the man had a right to stop them being implanted. Tragic but outside of the female body and so a different ethical area completely.

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