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

I used to be pro choice until I had my own children.I do think 24 weeks is far too late apart for medical reasons. Lowering the limit might force people into making decisions sooner rather than later. Alot more needs to be done to educate teenagers both girls and boys, not just about pregnancy and abortion but safe sex in general. At the end of the day its not difficult to get birth control if you really dont want a baby.
What I really cant understand is how anyone (except people who have to for medical reasons) could abort their baby at 24 weeks, the kicks and movements are so so strong by then.I could feel DD2 move at 17 weeks. Oh it makes me feel so sad

Expat, with abortions because of gender, I still feel that it's up to the pregnant woman to decide. I don;t think it's up to anyone else to say that her reasons are not good enough. It's her body and her life.

Of course it's her decison - god forbid it were anyone elses!

thanks MT, how nice of you.

whafor? Making an exception for you my love?

"It's her body and her life"

Morning!
Not quite. It's her body and somebody else's and it's her life and somebody else's. A foetus is not a like a tumor that grows from the mother's cells. It's got its own cells with their own genetic info and although it grows inside your womb, it is not an organ of your body, it's not a part of you like your body organs or your arm or your leg are. It is physically connected to you because it needs your oxygen and nutrients to develop to be able to live outside your body. I think there is a substantial difference.

That's something I've thought about before actually too Fio. I've worked in Births and Deaths - after 24 weeks baby is registered separately as a Birth then Death if it breathes then dies; registered as a Stillbirth if born but doesn't breathe. I've registered babies delivered with an 'incompatible with life' condition presumably when mum has gone through labour but I don't know about late medical termination.

I am very pro-choice always have been and will remain so. I had an abortion at 19 and though I regret putting myself in that situation, I do not regret the decision I made. I have a little boy now and am pregant with my second. Whilst I am still pro-choice, I have been a lot more careful about contraception etc as if I'm put in that position again, I don't want it to be because of my carelesness as i would find it difficult to go through a termination again now that I've had children. And I am not casting dispersions on anyone who has had a termination because of those reasons - I am talking purely of myself. The reason I got pg at 19 was simply because I took a risk I shouldn't have done and I don't wish to do that again. I personally feel that the generic limit for abortions due to 'unwanted' pregancy should be 14 wks and abortions on terms of medical grounds should be no later than 21/22 wks as it has to be timed within the anolomy scan. I didn't realise you could have a termination above 14 wks for 'social' reasons I thought it was purely medical and I am quite shocked by that. I don't feel it's appropriate to abort after 14 wks for anything other than medical reasons - and that's hard enough for the women concerned. I think what annoys me the most sometimes about the abortion issue is that people seem to think its something women take lightly. It isn't and it's something that lives with you forever.

I know fetal stage starts at 8 weeks but I am not sure at which point it's considered a baby (according to the current law). I'd say in legal terms it is a fetus until it's born, but I am not a UK Law expert. Maybe anybody out there can tell us?

Fetus is the term used for the baby from 8 weeks until birth.

unborn child remains a foetus until it is born. has no legal autonomy or independent rights. the foetus is not deemed to have capacity the mother remains the patient and gives consent for the foetus, and any treatment/interventions.

i wasn't anti abortion until I had a child....I could not do now. Ido believe in choice, but think the limit should be dropped to about 12 - 13 weeks

FioFio all fetuses terminated are taken for last rights and are now treated respectfully. Usually this is the hospital chaplain that blesses them. They are then cremated in the same manner as a still born baby would be. They are certainly not incinerated along with other clinical waste (as previously happened.)

Hmm, it makes sense the law calls it fetus until birth, and not "baby". The law could never allow to destroy "babies", I suppose.

tori that is so sad, surely then, in the eyes of god, these fetuses should have the right to life. I have always been against abortion, although i would never judge a woman who has had one. But for me, its a no no.

When i was 19 i had an unplanned pregnancy, i was no longer with the father, i was originally told that i wasnt pregant (did pregnancy test at the doctors) however this was a mistake and i was pregnant, I did not discover this until i was about 17 weeks (i have very irregular periods) and told that whilst it was still legal it wasnt recommened. Well that was 17 years ago, i dont know what would have happened if as a frightened young single mum i had found out early what i would have done. I would have liked to have thought i would have still kept the baby. Now my DD is 17 and i love her so much, shes a real rebel but she makes me so proud. I thank God that i didnt really have a choice. Having my DD turned me from a waster into someone with focus, i went to college and university because of her, i now have another DD aged 2.3, she was another "accident" and i can tell you, that abortion wasnt even considered.

Both of my girls are my life, i shudder to think where i would be without them.

The right to 'life' doesn't guarantee a decent life. Maybe we should be framing it 'the right to a fucked up life', then people might get the point a bit more.

I know many people will respind with, well anything's better than nothing, but that is just wrong. A late term foetus insde the womb may feel some 'pain' - not as we know it though. It has no context to 'feel' this pain in. It is not a sentient being.

How do you know the foetus "is not a sentient being"?

I feel that no one should be forced to have an abortion. This was done in Nazi Germany along with all the other atrocities that we know about. Many women who have an abortion are doing so because they are put under pressure by those around them.

I think the best argument pro choice is that some women will commit suicide if not given the choice of abortion. That way both mother and baby die - the worst outcome. Also there would be a flourishing trade in illegal abortions - again, bad news.

On the other hand, I would never have an abortion myself, for social, medical or any other reason. Oh, except for something like ectopic pregnancy where continuing with it would mean certain death for both. I never had antenatal screening for that reason.

Bonitamia: the trouble with legally awarding a foetus the 'right to life' is that you can only do so by removing the rights of a pregnant woman and turning her into a walking incubator. The logical result of giving foetuses rights is that every MC or stillbirth would be investigated as a suspicious death, and the behaviour of all women of childbearing age would be restricted and controlled.. because they might be pregnant.

Becasue it isn't born walking, talking, understanding or even seeing the world around it.

It develops these things in the first year of life, it doens't need them to be born.

I am not against abortion at all, there are many good reasons why women choose to have them.

However I could never have one and really would like the limit to be lower for a number of reasons.

My first son was stillborn at 30 weeks. We were told he had many many things wrong with him and were given the choice to terminate the pregnancy. We did choose this given the facts - probable severe brain damage, heart problems, v. small...lots of other reasons but he died before they performed the termination. Even though they didn't actually terminate I still to this day feel as though I let him down, but I was 19 and put my trust in the health professionals caring for us. They said he was unlikely to survive and if he did he would be very ill. As it turned out the results of the post mortem showed he had none of the problems they had told us.

Anyway, that is one of the reasons I couldn't abort. Another is that I know quite a few people whose babies have survived at 23 weeks (my 16 yr old cousin being one of them)

I fully agree that termination for severe abnormalities should be kept as they are. It is not a choice anyone wants to make, but sadly sometimes some of us have to make them.

I would like to see it as low as 14 weeks as I do feel most people know by then whether they want the child or not and I do think it is totally wrong to abort after this time.

Have to add I also had pre eclampsia which was getting pretty serious by the time I had my baby so I didn't have a choice to wait and see what would have happened. He needed to be born at 30 weeks whatever the outcome.

I know quite a few people who have had abortions and every time I have felt they had them for the right reasons. I probably wouldn't if they were over 14 weeks, unless it was a medical reason.

However if someone has severe pregancy problems then surely it is sense for the baby to be delivered or born by cs and kept alive in neonatal intensive care. If the mother's life is in danger then it is better to get the baby out of the womb as soon as possible.

In life threatening circumstances a baby's chances in a neonatal intensive care unit are probably better than in the womb anyway. Prematurely ending a dangerous pregancy is not an abortion if all efforts are made to keep the baby alive.

Reallytired: that is a whole other set of ethical problems, frankly (and I am not trying to be offensive to anyone who has had very premature babies). Is it always right to fight to keep very prem babies alive, when their lives will be short and pain-filled? When they will never walk, talk or breathe unaided? When keeping them alive uses up resources that might be better used elsewhere?

yes - becuase its a human life.

if there is a lack of resources - it is not the life that should be questioned - but the LACK of resources.