The Dorries amendment will be a free vote - keep the pressure on

[WilsonFrickett]

Lots of press today saying that the govt has decided to vote against ND's ridiculous amendment. While this is good news, it will still be a free vote, with individual MPs able to vote as they please. If you were thinking about emailing your MP on this issue please still do so - the result isn't a foregone conclusion.

From the Guardian article:

...a combination of the unpredictable intake of new Tory MPs, split between social conservatives and modernisers, the number of Roman Catholic Labour MPs, and the high degree of nuance of the amendment make it extremely unclear which way the vote will go.

www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/aug/31/downing-street-uturn-abortion-proposals

Oh dear.

And, can I just say now, I completely disagree with his take on the current system being the same as an 'adoption agency providing abortion counselling' thing. His analogy is flawed because the logical analogy would be an adoption agency providing counselling for a woman who was considering adoption.

I do not think I have read anything so sickening in a long while. Why did he not come out and say women should be slaves of the state for the greater good, because that is the implication. That the state should decide what happens to a woman's body regardless of whether she consents.

The suffering of the mother, i.e the fact that pregnancy can cause physical and mental health problems, and even kill women and is in fact much more dangerous in the UK than abortions, must be measured against the joy that the adoptive mother will feel according to him. So women should have to put their health and lives at risk to bring pleasure to another woman, who wants to adopt a baby rather than an older child.

He also says people would complain if adoption agencies made money. Well in the UK the person who decides that the state should remove a child is in fact a social worker paid by the state, the state also gives local authorities financial bonuses for adopting out children.

I notice you never hear anti-abortion fundemetalists complaining about the high maternal death rate, but I suppose the breeding cows have served their purpose by then.

he also fails to point out that abortion providers are not for profit charities i.e they have no financial interest in people having abortions. I also notice that those complaining abortion providers give out the counselling do not complain they also give out contraception despite this helping to stop abortions. Apparently these so called independent religious bodies care so much for peopel they will counsel those wanting to have abortions but not that much they would give a homosexual couple condoms.

He also thinks it is wrong that a pregnant woman is given privilage over her own feelings, and that this privilage should be given to those that want the baby from her body. So what next a woman is wrong to not have sex with a stranger as he wants sex more than she does not? Either a woman is a person like any other, and she has control over her own body, or she is a not a full person and her body is owned by the state and its use given to those that would get more pleasure from its use than horror she would feel at this non-consensual use.
It is disturbing to see a man writing an article that seems to argue that a woman has no right over her body if there is someone who would get more pleasure from it than she would suffering.

Oddly, their discomfort with the idea that eg BPAS might benefit from women having abortions (they don't) is never countered by having more on the NHS If it's all for the greater good, why not force infertile people to adopt older hard to place kids from care?

"His analogy is flawed because the logical analogy would be an adoption agency providing counselling for a woman who was considering adoption."

I think he was highlighting the conflict of interest - a company making money out of adoption and providing counselling for women considering abortion would be more inclined to promote the idea of adoption to her as an alternative option because they know they would make money out of the adoption. It is relevant to the idea that if an abortion clinic makes money out of abortions there may be a conflict of interest.

I didn't read it as him saying that 'women should be slaves of state' either. I think he was illustrating how, from a utilitarian prospective, the suffering of a woman keeping a child that she didn't want could be offset by the joy that baby's life could give two people (the adoptive parents). This is considering the 'bigger picture' rather than just looking at the individual. He does say at the end that that type of utilitarian reasoning would be impossible to implement and he recognises that it would be 'horrible for the natural mother'

BTW Kelly, people don't have to be religious to object to abortion. You seem to make a lot of generalisations.

Not much point. My MP is Nadine Dorries

She'd have the police on you Quenelle

Isn't it illegal to make money from adoption in the UK anyway? If so, I don't understand his analogy either because adoption agencies aren't making money and neither are the charities who provide abortions.

Is there any UK organisation that is allowed to profit from abortion? Genuine question.

The abortion clinics are not for profit charities, Bumbley.

The utilitarian argument for society is much discussed in philosophy. I remember reading an exam question along the lines of 'A man is in a car accident and in hospital. With surgery he would survive, but there are 5 other patients in hospital needing major organs, all these 5 could be saved by harvesting the organs of this man. Discuss' or something.

Fortunately I don't live in a utilitarian state, and the wishes of the individual are taken into account. Even when it comes to abortion.

Abortion providers in the UK do not make a profit, anyone who has claimed that is lying.
And he does say that the suffering of the woman should be overuled by the pleasure brought to the infertile woman, and that it is wrong that pregnant woman are giving the privilage over their own feelings when the feelings of the infertile should be more important. There is no other way to interpret this, but as saying womens bodies should belong to the state and the state should decide if someone has the right to get non-consensual use out of the woman dependent on the comparison of pleasure the user will get with the suffering of the woman. And considering the suffering of the pregnant woman means an increase risk of illness etc, it is pretty disgusting that he thinks this is not as important as bringing pleasure to an infertile woman. I wonder if he would feel the same if he thought it was middle class women being putting at risk to give working class women babies.
No of course you do not have to be religious to be an anti-abortionist, most christian people I know fully support abortion. But there a few fundementalists that give all religious people a bad name and do their best to force women to continue with pregnancy and all the intimate examinations, risks of illness and death that entails.

Not all of them are MyGoldfish. Many private hospitals offer abortion too. Wasn't there a bit of an uproar back in July about 'commercial abortion providers' being allowed to advertise?

limited,
In the UK all abortion providers are not-for profit charities.
I am not sure about anti-abortion groups as these may be funded by non-uk groups such as the catholic church and american far right christian groups which both have a lot of money.

Tht was marie stopes I belive, and private hospitals cannot profit from abortion. If you notice Dorries herself has focused on marie stopes, and abortion providers such as them which are all not for profit. She has not mentioned private hospitals.
There are no commercial abortion rpoviders allowed in the UK.

Here is an article about it.

"Until now, restrictions have meant abortion clinics can only advertise their services if they are not run for profit. Because of the rules, just one advert, by charity Marie Stopes International has ever been aired...

Last night Sally Taber from Independent Healthcare Advisory Services, which represents private healthcare organisations, said clinics offering terminations would welcome the change"

You mean the advert which talks about contraception & family planning advice (services they provide) and never once mentions abortion?

Yes, very objectionable.

Thanks Kelly2000.

Exactly Empusa, So now the antiabortionists are against contraception advertisment.
BPAS is a not for profit charity, but since when do anti-abortionists let facts get in their way.
And if abortion providers are not considered impartial even though they have no financial interest in people choose abortions, then it is comical that the body that represents professional counsellors can be considered impartial. Are they saying there counsellors will not get paid or is there a financial interest for creating more jobs? And this article is saying that the counsellors will help women come to terms with the mental health consequences of abortions, yet as thereis more mental health issues arising from pregnancy there is more need there. If helping women is the issue it is back to front to offer counselling to women seeking to terminate their pregnancy, and not to those who seek to continue it and are therefore at greater risk of ill health.

Ok, you are clearly missing the point. There are obviously non-'not for profit' organisations if they are now specifically talking about them being allowed to advertise. Otherwise, if they were all 'not for profit' then they would have all been allowed to advertise.

"restrictions have meant abortion clinics can only advertise their services if they are not run for profit"

Bum,
The rules are set like that to ensure this is the case, remember non-british companies can advertise here.
Abortion providers in the UK are not-for profit. can you name one that makes a profit. Nadine Dorries certainly cannot, yet the foundations of her claim are the make profit. One might think if that was her arguement she might be able to name some, instead of naming not-for-profit charities.

From the same article:
"Last night Sally Taber from Independent Healthcare Advisory Services, which represents private healthcare organisations, said clinics offering terminations would welcome the changeMore than 35 private hospitals in England currently offer abortion services, though many are better known for their maternity and fertility services.

She said: "We would definitely welcome this, clearly hospitals want to raise awareness of services they provide, but some might choose not to advertise because of the sensitivity of the service - we have seen the problems in other countries when abortion clinics come under attack. Each provider will need to think this through very carefully."

That doesn't sound like they are talking about non-British companies.

As a left-winger, I normally have no time for Tories, ever.
But in this case, she is quite correct. The truth is that some women will always support the destruction (murder) of viable babies right up to birth. There is no doubt that the abortion limit should have been cut to around 16 weeks many, many years ago.

Bum,
Ok name one abortion provider that makes a profit from abortion.

Why on earth would I know one? Maybe you should ask Sally Taber - she apparently knows 35 in England alone who would benefit from now being allowed to advertise presumably they must be working for profit because if they were not-for-profit then they would have been allowed to advertise their services already - like Marie Stopes were.