Abortion Age Limit - Your Views...

[Salamander]

This news story has broken in the past 24hrs.

What are everyone's views?

Abortion is a fact of life. Legal or not, abortions will continue as they have done for millenia.

We can either return to a time when late abortions are carried out by untrained, unskilled people in dirty conditions and women die in the process. Or we can continue to carry out late abortions on women in safe and sterile surroundings.

No woman chooses a late abortion casually. A fetus, baby, call it what you will is moving and kicking at this point.

I have direct, professional experience in this field and I know it is never a 'casual' decision.

Terminations of pregnancy because of abnormality should not, imo, only be allowed up to 20 weeks. What about the women/parents who do not have a scan til 20 weeks, then have to have amnio/CVS and/or further detailed scanning? This process can take an additional 2-6 weeks or more. Should those women/parents be told we have found X, Y, Z with your baby but you have to decide what to do today without all the facts? (That was to whoever suggested 20 weeks maximum btw!)

I also think it slightly preposterous to suggest that women should only be allowed one termination. Some women do make mistakes when they are very young, then do have accidents when theya re more knowledgeable/responsible and could even then have an abnormal pregnancy.

you cant compare yesteryear with today - we have better information, techniques contraception prevention. and i dont think most people are saying ban abortion completely

i mean what happens now - if you dont want the baby after the legal limit?

is there a backs treet person with a knitting needle ready to do the job at 26 weeks or 28 weeks?

why 24 weeks.

why not 12?

There will and would be though, custardo.

Also, a lot of the women who want late abortions often 'slip through the net' of organised, formalised family planning services. And, in the case of the many 12 and 13 year olds, have concealed their pregnancies from their families.

so are there people who do abortions back alley stylee if you want one at 26 weeks?

of course there are going to always be exceptional circumstances - but a concerted effort should be made to abort before 12 weeks

I'd like to see chemical abortions (the one where you can take a pill at home) become more easily available and the time limit on abortion reduced drastically to around 10-12 weeks except for medical reasons (but not pathetic excuses such as cleft lip or webbed fingers, if Daily Mail is to be believed)
most West European countries have quite early abortion time limits don't they? they seem to manage ok without back street abortionists flourishing (open to correction on that)

Not at the moment, custy. But I'm sure there would be.

Women from Ireland wanting an abortion have 'weekend trips' to London at the moment Demand is always met with supply.

How do you feel about a woman who finds out at her 20 week scan that her child will either not survive after birth, or will be dependant on her for the rest of it's life?

Would you say that she should give birth anyway?

I think that the basic facts though are the same - the fact is that booking in is not done in time for people who simply do not want their pregnancy to get a pre 12 week appointment and with gp surgeries running at around 2 weeks delays to get an appointment then getting two appointments for gps who agree is verging on ridiculous. (and not all gps will sign off anyway - I know my entire practice refuse to sign off so you may need 3 or 4 appointments).

Therefore it is not practical - at this time to expect things to change - even from an elective point of view.

All that said then it is even more unrealistic to expect things to change from a medical front. WHilst it may be possible for things to be detected earlier, lets face it it is not going to change for the majority of us for a while yet.

But then again - I do find it hard to reconsile the idea of abortions at 20 weeks when a baby is considered viable at 24.....

DC, I'm falling over backwards because this is, I'm sure, the first time I've ever agreed with you. The idea of O'Connor, given his behaviour, pretending he has any right to stop women choosing what to do with their own bodies is stomach-churning.

Custy, you can compare to yesteryear because whatever the medical advances (and they are frankly often oversold) human nature is stil the same. People will still have sex because it feels good, will have sex on impulse without necessarily being all sensible and middle-aged about it, will get stomach upsets or be prescribed antibiotics by thick docs who 'forget' to mention you need additional contraception, condoms will split, rapists will rape...

And once you do have an unwanted pregnancy, you may get the sort of doctor who will lecture you and try to prevent you accessing the healthcare that is your legal right, the NHS will fail to fund abortions properly because no-one is going to the barricades over those budget cuts, are they, will fail to ensure everyone has abnormality scans when they need them, your friends and family might harass or obstruct you, and so it goes on.

If you believe that women are full human beings who are in charge of their own bodies, then you believe in the right to choose. The argument about time limits is just a trojan horse for the anti-abortionists.

I don't have a link for this, but there is an excellent book called Policing Pregnancy by IIRC Sheena Meredith that demonstrates the danger of giving in to anti-abortionists. Once we let their construct of pregnancy as some kind of battle between evil mother and vulnerable unborn child get prominence, it's a short step away from forced caesareans....

Also - I think that the back street abortionist is a thing of the past now. In their day people did not have the ability to fly to a different country with different laws to get what they needed/wanted etc. Peoples options are different now and so therefore the black market solutions that present themselves will also be different. I would expect that there would be some black market availability of the pill type abortion but not of a surgical option.

edam - tbh all I can say to that is huh?

(espec. forced cs, how on earth do they link in to a term limted abortion?) don't answer that actually I can feel it would just be a frank exchange of pointlessly different views!

Read the book. It's to do with seeing pregnancy as a battle between woman and child and the punitive attitudes that creates in the medical and legal systems. It is perfectly possible for a doctor to apply for a court order to force you to have a caesarean against your wishes, and he (it is usually) will get it with little trouble. You won't even be told until it's all over, much less offered legal representation. And judges in these situations don't seem bothered about obtaining independent medical evidence. This has happened in the UK and happens far more in the US. Although fortunately in most cases events have intervened and they haven't got to the point of forcibly holding a woman down while they slice her open. Not for want of trying, though.

Edam. In what kind of case would a forced CS be called/legally applied for?

Sorry. Gave you a capital 'E' there. Not that you don't deserve it.

No one undergoes an abortion lightly. The insinuations by some posters that abortion is used as birth control is crass and insensitive in the extreme. Nobody would actively seek an abortion at 24 weeks as an easy way out. There are reasons, please, please don't judge when you have never found yourself in the situation- you can only imagine.

TBH I think you are talking about some quite extreme situations and end results which are not particularly helpful to the actual conversation that is going on.

If it helps though - I am talking about abortion and I do not see pregnancy as a battle between woman and child.

Also as I understand it there have been a very limited number of cases where a forced CS has been applied for in the UK and then under very extreme circumstances.

its not a trojan horse - the trojan horse argument for anti abortionists analogy is for militant pro choice. Like this country would stomach a blanket ban of abortion - never so there is no slippery slope. this - along with the rape and the disabled analogy - with a little of brain dead baby - you would force full term wouldnt you....

er
no.

i am neither btw.

is there not a middle ground - where exceptional circumstances aside. the "norm" - the standard, the recomended practice the literature - the information the advertising - all tell us and the NHS and the BMC that abortions should usually be done before 12 weeks.

or is this considered anti abortion now becuase i dare to suggest anything else?

someone has already pointed out the realism in this situation - that the nhs simply isn't geared up to make this happen. this is where the change needs to be made.

Secur. I'm genuinely interested, What kind of circumstances could result in a forced CS?

Not at all, custy. Of course abortion should ideally be carried out before 12-14 weeks. And I agree that if GP's had the funding/organisation this would happen. It is so upsetting for women who make a responsible choice at 6 weeks pregnant to have an abortion , to be kept waiting until they are in the second trimester to have the operation.

In one case, a UK court ordered a forced caesarean because the baby was 40+6 and transverse lie position. This was in '92 and has since been discredited but the reasoning behind it has been used since in other cases.

In two cases women who refused caesareans were held to be incapable of making rational decisions because they were in labour. And so the court felt free to order them to have caesareans.

Policing Pregnancy, Sheena Meredith (doctor and lawyer), pub. Ashgate, 2005 ISBN 07546 4412X.

In two other cases, women who were sectioned under the Mental Health Act were ordered to have caesareans against their expressed wishes.

In another, a woman with a breech baby was held to be legally incompetent to refuse a caesarean because she had a needle phobia.

The only cases I have any awareness of have been where the mother has decided to go through with a VB and the doctors have felt that this would result in death of both the child and mother. Basically it is when they think that the mother is not making decisions that reflect a sane state of mind and that these decisions would result inloss of life.

And the reason the mother is not usually present is because she is in/about to go into labour and the mother does have representation - as it is a court of law situation and both sides have to be represented.

Cormac Murphy O'Connor admitted it was a trojan horse on the Today programme this morning. Said clearly that reducing the time limit was the first step to banning abortion.

Abortion would only be legally banned. And instead of surving safe abortions, women will die.

hmm, yes I am sure that is perfectly in context - and - just out of interest are they the only people who make decisions about the age limits of abortions?

Anyway - off to bed now sleep well everyone.

Read the book Securmummy. In none of the cases that have so far come before the courts has the woman been legally represented. And if you actually look at the detail and the results of these cases, you'll see the doctors didn't actually have firm grounds for their opinions. It was just the opinions of those individuals, which other doctors may well not have shared, presented with the same facts.

Doctors in these cases wil present them as life or death, we have to get this baby out now, this woman is irrational and her legal right to ownership of her own body has to be discarded. Doesn't mean that is, in fact, objectively true. But does mean the judge tends to roll over backwards.