Abortion limit should stay at 24 weeks - do you feel different about abortion after having a baby?

[TheDullWitch]

It is the 40th anniversary of the abortion act and I do feel that there is a generation of 20-somethings who take this right for granted and are doing nothing whilst others seek to chip it away.
news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7059169.stm

Boniatmia, women have (or should have in any society which pretends to be civilised) the right of bodily autonomy, their bodies do not belong to anyone else and decisions about what happens to their bodies are theirs, not other people's. Foetuses are not yet people and therefore do not have rights, certainly not any kind of rights which supercede the rights of human beings to control their own lives and own bodies.

WOmen also have the right to sexual autonomy, to be able to engage in consensual sex rather than being judged for so doing and terrorised out of having sexual choices by the threat of being forced to continue an unwanted pregnancy. (remembering that no contraceptive is 100% effective)

I didn't get personal with you, expat, merely commented on some of the points you'd raised. That's what MN is for, surely?

It's a bit strange to accuse people of a lack of personal responsiblity or self-centredness and then get the huff when someone wants to discuss the thinking behind such harsh allegations.

When do foetuses 'become' people then so that they have the right of bodily autonomy?

At birth?
Or at 12, 18, 20 or 24 weeks?

That's what this debate comes down to really isn't it?

geordiemacmummy. I eventually did manage to get a coil fitted, after an extreme lecture about being tested for std.s ( I have only ever had one partner, who also has only ever been with me) and about my husband having a vasectomy instead ( when in fact a coil is just as effective) this nearly put me off at 26, never mind if I was any younger!

countingthegreyhairs yes, that's the heart of it, really. If that's not agreed upon, we're all talking at cross-purposes, really.

unborn child has no legal autonomy, it is not legally a person as such has no discernible rights

COuntinggreyhairs: When they're born. Of course, individual women think differently about their own pregnancies (a much-wanted pregnancy is a 'person' to the woman carrying it from the moment the little line turns blue, for instance) but objectively, personhood is aquired at birth. Anything else takes away women's humanity and turns them into incubators.

but how can it be only when the baby is born? That is only a change of the environment of the child. What changes does it go through whilst being born to make it into more of a person than a few minutes previous? Legally it may be this way, but logically how does this make any sense whatsoever?

Anything else takes away women's humanity and turns them into incubators.

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No, it doesn't. It simply takes into account that a pregnancy is a particularly tricky area when it comes to potentially competing rights.

I think it is wrong that you can have an abortion as late as 24 weeks.

There is time before hand if you wish to terminate due to a problem you don't wish to cope with/don't feel you can/etc.

And as for social abortions, ie didn't use any contraception, then they are just plain wrong.

I was quite balse before I had my children. Always thought I would terminate if I was pg due a rape or the child was disabled, then I was told I was probably going to loose my 7 week old pg and that was it. No tests, no nothing, I was having this baby whatever. When DS2 was thought to have problems we refused all tests again and was having him regardless.

Some problems are fatal, not just those one would not wish to cope with.

Saggarmakers... (blimey, that is a loooong nick) and madamez, purely from the point of view of logic, if we do not consider that a foetus is a human being until birth, and therefore only the rights of the woman are to be considered, what is the point in passing a law to set a time limit for abortion? 24 weeks? why not 23? or 32?.

You will agree that the fact that there is a law regulating abortion, and the fact that most people think it is -at the very least- not desirable, means that society somehow recognises that at some point between conception and birth the foetus acquires a status that makes him/her subject of human rights. This, to me, is at the heart of the debate. So far, society is unable to come to a joint decision (doctors, scientists, philosophers, people in general) on when exactly life begins, so other criteria like foetus viability had to be introduced. Now, as someone pointed out, viability out of the woman's womb is becoming possible earlier and earlier. This criteria is not good enough.

It seems to me that in the absence of real knowledge of where life begins, we should err on the side of caution.

Madamez: some severely disabled people have no control on their bodies and depend fully on other people to survive. Those people have human rights, just as anyone else, not less, not more, not of any different kind. You either have the right to live or not. I disagree with you because I think what makes you subject of human rights is your "human" condition not your ability to survive out of the womb. And I still struggle to accept that a woman should have the right to abort a life just because nature is organised in such a way that, as far as mammals are concerned, new lives need to be nurtured inside the bodies of female individuals.

I know. If my son had had what was predicted he would have died within a year. Our choice though to still carry on.

Given the rarity of late abortions, it's a bad idea to start insisting on foetal 'rights' because it always ends up with the concept of women being forced to endure unwanted pregnancy, labour and childbirth against their wills. That is barbaric.
People who campaign against abortion are really campaigning against female autonomy: the endless anecdotes about selfish wicked bitches who don't use contraception and have abortions all the time so as not to mess up their social lives bear this out. If such women exist at all they are in a tiny minoroty, and the anti-abortionists' lust to make them suffer is no justification for restricting women's rights.

Well, my son did have what was predicted and would have died before coming to term.

Do you know what I find really unsettling about it is the amount of women I have met who have had or were considering abortion, who have said the phrase 'I haven't got any choice, really'. That just can't be right.

Bonitamia, are you arguing that the disabled should be kept alive at all costs (even if they have asked for euthanasia?) That's a separate debate, I think. And those who have argued against late terminations even in the case of foetuses that will not survive birth or survive only a very short time out of the womb on the grounds that it's better to let nature take its course - this is not your decision to make for another person. It's not your womb so it's not your business.
ONce again, remember: prohibitin abortion doesn't stop it happening. It means women use risky methods, or kill themselves because they can't bear being forced to continue an unwanted pregnancy, or commit infanticide.

Suebaroo: that is very sad, and it's true that we need to raise the status of women and the status of motherhod (so it's no longer seen as something women jus get on with, because they are not important.) But it doesn't justify forcing women to continue unwanted pregnancies.

madamez, no indeed, the pro- or anti-abortion argument stands or falls on the 'personhood' of the baby, imo.

I think my only consistent position would have to be anti-abortion, because I do believe the baby is a person in utero. If someone doesn't believe that, then the argument has to be about something else, really, like viability and so on.

madamez, you say that is barbaric. I would say more barbaric is 'getting rid of' someone who doesn't even have the chance to stand up for him/herself, the most vulnerable members of society.
Not all those against abortion are 'lusting after the suffering of women'. I can see some extreme militants have given other pro lifers a bad name, and that is shameful. But pro lifers are precisely that - pro life. Not anti women, not desperate to cause suffering. Just wanting to give human beings what should surely be their basic right: To live.
(ducks)

But givemewine - that goes back to the point that Countingthegreyhairs made: when do you define the life as starting?

I would describe myslef as "pro-life" in that I am for life. I object to that term being commandeered by the anti-abortionists (a point someone else has already made earlier on this thread) I am also Pro-choice.

If you define life as starting whena negg is ferilsied, then moth the mini pill and the coil are "wrong" as they prevent the fertilsied egg from implanting.

Prettybird, that's why many pro-lifers (or those who are against abortion) also disagree with those forms of contraception.

k, then, if all women should have access to late term abortions for 'social' reasons (again, i'm not talking about earlier ones, but ones at say, 24 weeks), then is aborting your foetus because of its gender acceptable to those who feel that the term limit shouldn't be dropped?

is this not a social reason just as not wanting to have a baby is, because the reason you don't want the baby is because of its gender?

this is a practice that is commonplace in some areas, but which many Westerners find abhorrent.

and most people don't find out the gender till around 20 weeks, same as genetic abnormalities.

keep in mind that not all trusts even offer a 20-week scan. Lothian and Borders did not until as recently as last year (I don't know about now), but in 2006 you only got a 13 week and if you wanted a 20 week routine one you had to go private and pay for it (and it was about £150).

does not that unborn female have rights as well?

i'm honestly curious how people who believe that having an abortion at 24 weeks for social reasons is acceptable feel about abortion because of gender, and how they can say this is any less 'social' a reason than simply not wanting to have a baby.

What's really also needed is to stop scapegoating lone female parents, too, and start going after the partners who leave the kids they chose to sire to the whims of fate without so much as a second thought.