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

Custy - you are a halloween name tart!

slaaaaaaaaaag i am a halloween name slaaaaaaaag

oh-er!

CusferaTUTU!

Agree with Custy about the fact that resources should be enough to guarantee the best treatment of seriously premature babies (without having to save money on something else and viceversa), but at the same time I really believe that the possibility of treating very premature babies raises some strong ethical dilemmas (there was a great documentary years ago on -believe it or not - discovery health, set at Bristol Children's hospital, has anyone seen it?).

Cassandra - the sentience or humanity of the foetus is the nub of the argument. Personally I feel that a person does not need to be walking, talking, understanding as much as I do or seeing to be sentient and to be a human being. But I think your view is a commonly held one, and is the reason why the abortion debate re-surfaces so often, and is so unlikely to be resolved any time soon.

And btw Cassandra, your is a good argument to decriminalise the killing of newborn babies, isn't it?

It's just the utilitarian approach, it's not my personal moral position. But it does help to understand facts like these before appying morals to the debate - though that is impossible for some, I know.

Infanticide is still very common in traditional societies, from the 'girl' problem in India to infants born with disabilities that would disable families and communities.

I am glad to live in a society that facilitates the end of such cruelty - but think it is also better (and more moral) to let a woman decide for herself and her family if she has enough resourses, both physical and emotional, to care for a child, and to end the pregnancy as early as possible, if that is the course she takes.

This thread shows that even though late term abortions are incredibly rare, people often make their minds up on that issue alone, where it is much more complex.

Wow, Cassandra, a lot of disabled people can't walk or talk, and a lot of people who develop an illness.

Shall we just get rid of them, too?

I am a mother of two, I am also pro choice
HOWEVER..... I do think that unless there are severe medical reasons or danger to the mother that 24 weeks is to high.

Crikey. A friend of ours was badly injured in a car crash several years ago. I don't think he is much more sentient than a newborn but I can't imagine doing away with him on those grounds.

For the record, I think the abortion limit should be reduced to maybe 20wks but with the current exceptions for later terminations. At the same time, maybe early terminations should be simplified so that the need for later abortions can be avoided as much as possible. I understand there is now some medication which could be used at home in the early weeks, which would avoid the need for clinics/hospitals.

Sorry, Cassandra, I am not quite with you. What facts should be understood before morals may be applied to the debate?

Infanticide may be common in India; does that make it morally or legally acceptable?

Expat, stop getting your knickers in a twist! I'm not saying what you think I'm saying. I'm making an abstract point.

but you are, Cassandra. when you say a human being isn't sentient, then that applies to all humans.

nothing 'abstract' about it.

It's called the naturalistic fallacy. It's quite complicated but once you get the grip of it, it takes you up to the next level of logical debate.

Expat, it's Monkeytrousers, hence the MT at the end.

'It's just the utilitarian approach, it's not my personal moral position. But it does help to understand facts like these before appying morals to the debate - though that is impossible for some, I know. '

I mean, if you state this 'approach', then it is yours otherwise you'd think it was bollocks, not 'utilitarian'.

Bizarro and doesn't seem very well-thought out or with any real principle behind it, so I'm going to give this a swere again.

There's a fundamental difference, for me, between disabled adults and children who actually exist and a foetus who, by definition, has no independent existence. I'm all in favour of providing whatever treatment or support is humane and necessary for a profoundly disabled human being. That doesn't affect my support for abortion. Completely different things.

Well, I'm not a debater, tbh, MT, so this concept seems a pile to me.

I'm not. To say that something isn't 'sentient' is not to say it shoudl therefore be murdered.

The sentience point is a fact, not a value. Our laws mostly prescribe what is and is not moral - and killing people is immoral, but it also prescribes that termiating a pregnancy before 24 weeks is moral, somthing I agree with. I'm a veggie, so I even bekieve killing moderatley sentient animals is immoral.

But people here are ascribing pre term foetuses and even full term babies with more senses than they actually have. I'm just pointing that out - you are making a massive jump to say that just becasue I am pointing out a fact abotu the sentience of infants, means I think they should be killed.

A foetus has no independent existence? Yet there are instances of a pregnant woman dying and the child being saved. There are also legal instances of people being charged with harming an unborn baby, I believe.

MT you haven't answered my question so I still don't know which facts you think need to be understood before the morals of this issue may be debated. I certainly agree that facts should underpin any argument. However, facts themselves may be disputed and people may come to different moral conclusions, as they have ever since abortion was anywhere near safe for the mother.

Oh, x post, MT. The sentience or otherwise of the foetus is a not something I accept as a fact, rather a moot point. There is more scientific evidence now that the foetus feels pain, but I'm not sure that all scientists in the field agree that there is conclusive proof. This is one reason why the whole debate has surfaced again.

I just don't know the answer to the abortion limit debate. It is so difficult.

I think the opinions of women who have had "late" abortions (for reasons other than medical reasons) should be sought. How did the woman feel 1 yr, 2yrs, 5 yrs, 10 yrs and 20 yrs afterwards? Does she regret the decision and how would she advise a woman who is in a similar position now?

I don't know, but I sometimes wonder if a woman who had an abortion at, say, 20 weeks (a horrendous ordeal) would have been more or less traumatised in the long term by either keeping the baby or putting him/her up for adoption? I don't know as I have not been in the position, but we need to ask the only people who do know - those who have actually gone through it. Although I appreciate this would be highly impractical and upsetting, perhaps it could be voluntary?

In answer to the OP, I think that since having a baby, I have been educated more about pregnancy - previously I did not know much about the stages of development of a foetus.

I think they probably can feel pain - but not feel it in any context. The foetus is enclosed in complete darkness, is undeveloped, can maybe hear muted sounds, but has no conception of what they are or signify. Those who say it is "cruel" to perform an abortion at this time, I really think that they are endowing the foetus with more sentience than it has. I'm not saying that this still isn't a thing to debate however. You can only be cruel to something if it has some capacity to feel things in context, and I really don't think that a foetus at 24 weeks still inside the womb can. Of course more 'suffering' is inevitavble the longer the pregnancy continues, hence the need for better women's services to facilitate this, to minimise suffering to everyone involved.

I have posted this link before on abortion threads, but don't think anyone has ever bothered to read it. It is however one of the most respected and authoritive texts on the abortion dilemma.

article about pre term survival rates

CassandraMT: "Our laws mostly prescribe what is and is not moral"

I don't think so: laws prescribe what is legal at one moment in time in one country, not moral. Well, at least my morals are not determined by what the law says.
On the other hand, humans have "inalienable" rights who nobody can usurp. Ie: human life is precious not because our current laws says it is but because IT JUST IS.
This means that, in the absence of any laws or (let's suppose a demented tyrant is in power like in Nazi Germany), if a law said that some human lives are not as precious or are inferior or second class, that wouldn't affect the absolute FACT that all human life is precious just for being "human".

Crokky, my aunt had a backstreet abortion around 1938. Gestation was enough to recognise that the foetus was male; I don't think it was an early abortion. She caught septicaemia and hovered between life and death for 6 months, witnessing many other women die in her hospital ward. She was still traumatised by that ordeal when she told me about it in the late 1970s, some 40 years later. The pressures upon her to have the abortion were all social, but she blamed herself. She wrote a moving, fictionalised account of it in 1957.