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

she had urine tests, hospital tests and a scan. her dd was finally discovered cos the sonographer did an internal just to make sure.

It's an emotive issue and if you've had a termination it's pretty impossible not to relate your feelings about it to your own experience. And most womens' feelings about it are coloured by the fact they have their own children. The two can't be separated.

Yes I'd agree. These decisions have to be made from rational positions, backed up by facts not ignorance, prejudice or even emotion. Women would still be being stoned in the West if that little troika ruled.

I don't really get how, as a woman, you could have no personal involvement.

fair enough nappyaddict. as i said, i would think she would be an exception, and the law has to legislate for the norm.

Have seen babies born at 23 weeks in neonatal care....My child was born at 25 weeks and he died at 5 1/2 months. I saw him fight to stay alive and he very nearly succeeded. To have to make a decision to terminate at a late stage is not something I would ever want to have to consider.

Why? Women are rational.

'A womans wishes should always come above the rights of an unborn feotus imo'

If thats how people view it, what difference does the age limit make? If you're going to take a life, why does it matter if its at six weeks, twenty-four weeks or two days after the baby is born?

How is it okay to value one life above another?

I read the figures in an article this week, which of course I can't find now. I'll look again. It listed the number of post 24 week abortions (ie those carried out for disability). Most were around 25/26 weeks I think the latest was 37 weeks which made me feel physically ill. The listed reasons for the late abortions included things like talipes and cleft palate which seemed mad. It didn't say why the 37 week termination was carried out but personally I can't think of any reason not to induce and deal with the disability by that stage. (Presumably had the baby been premature then the termination couldn't have been carried out).

I agree in the main with mamazon (and I know someone who had a backstreet abortion before legalisation - so I could never be anything other than pro-choice whilst knowing I personally could never terminate except for anancephally). I think a lower limit for social reasons - and a tightening up of the disability legislation is needed. I probably wouldn't go as low as 14 weeks though, perhaps 22.

Rational yes, but how can you completely put aside the emotional part?

It's such an emotive subject but having seen babies survive who were born at 24 weeks, I would support a lowering of the age limit. After all it was some years ago when the 24 wk rule was applied because they didn't survive. Now babies are being born AND surviving at that age because of the advances in neo-natal medicine so we have to move the datelines accordingly.

I would also not inflict a late abortion on anyone having seen them carried out. Giving birth to a dead dismembered baby is not something you would forget whatever the reason.

I do NOT agree with peopple using termnination as contraception. Everyone is allowed ONE mistake, after that it's stupidity.

As Cod says with all the money & advice that's given about contraception there really is no excuse after that.

Just MHO.

Having my own baby has made me, if anything, more pro-choice. I can't imagine how hard it would be to go through pregnancy and childbirth if that child was a burden, not a blessing. And I hardly think the world needs more abandoned children.

The moral disapproval aimed at women who have abortions is depressing. The point is we all have ownership of our own bodies. That's the basic human right from which all others flow.

David Steel (architect of abortion law reform) made the point that before abortion was generally legalised, there was a massive divide between well-off, educated women - who could work through the system and terminate pregnancy if necessary - and poorer, not so well-connected women who ended up butchered by back street abortionists. Or killing themselves. Not a world we want to go back to, I would suggest.

btw, if you lowered the time limit, what would happen to women who discover major abnormalities at the 20 week scan?

I wonder if it might work in both directions.

I guess I am pro-life, anti-abortion or what you will, in that I would not consider an abortion myself, and I do have real concerns over the morality (old fashioned word) of terminating a pregnancy. Before I had children I might well have thought that no-one should be allowed a termination. Now I have children - well, they are a pretty huge thing...

I still have real problems with the idea of terminations. But I also have problems with the idea of unwanted children (I was unplanned myself, but not unwanted) and shudder at the thought of unsupervised or unqualified practitioner terminations.

So, I guess I'm saying that having children has moved me somewhat in the opposite direction along the pro-life/pro-choice dimension.

Oh - cross-posted with edam. Same direction as her then,although not quite so far along...

i think that is different, edam, to wanting an abortion due to social reasons

i think that is different, edam, to wanting an abortion due to social reasons

Sorry haven't read whole thread but most of the late abortions are presumably after abnormalities are picked up at 20 week scan. And by that, I don't just mean minor disabilities; some babies have condidions which are incompatible with life. They survive til term in the womb, but once born they will die soon afterwards. Is it not surely kinder to let a woman have an abortion, even a late one, than make her carry her baby to term, give birth and see it die?

As far as I'm aware the vast majority of abortions are very early ones. I think it is just rhetorical at which stage one marks the cut off point, quite frankly.

I do feel, personally, having had a baby that I could never have an abortion. But I have never been in that situation, and I know that we probably could manage, emotionally, financially etc at the stage of life we are. Not everyone is in that postion though.

Don't think there's anything wrong in two people having similar if not the same opinions, though!

Someone further down queried the stat about one abortion at 37 weeks - I imagine it may have been to do with a condition incompatible with life, sadly. Or an immediate danger to the woman. Or something equally distressing.

Why is it different to 'social reasons', though? Is it because we see women who terminate for medical reasons as 'good' and women who don't want to have a baby right now as 'bad'? Is it not enough for a woman to decide that she doesn't want this baby?

I find the social/medical reason thing very hard to get my head around. In fact, I often find that it is the one thing that strong pro-and anti-abotionists agree on. Is there really a moral difference between the two?

do you know, edam, i don;t know . and thinking about it, maybe subconcisouly, i htink that terminating due to massive health issues is different to terminating for any other reason

but i am not entirely sure!

sorry nappyaddict I misread your 17.22 post

It depends how far advanced the pregnancy is.

It's all very well saying it's within the legal limit but when babies are surviving at early gestation such as 23 weeks, I think we really need to think again.

And it needs it needs to be made clear over and over and over that sex=baby unless you use contraception. I don't think enough people understand this. Sounds daft but I really think that abortion rates could be cut dramatically through constant exposure to information. Abortion, regardless of your views is not desirable. And surely everyone wants to see the rates cut.

My views on abortion are pro choice but within a 14 weeks limit. And my views changed after having a baby and realising the stages of development in each week of pregnancy.

I think it would be nice if all abortions could be performed by 20 weeks, but it's probably not practical.

from the link that scareybee posted:
"A major reason for delay in the pathway to abortion was women not realising that they were pregnant. "

and

"Forty one per cent of women in the study said that they were unsure about having an abortion and therefore it took some time to make up their minds. Over half the teenage women said they were worried how their parents would react, while 23 per cent overall said that their relationship with their partners had broken down or changed. "

also abortions are often later than they should be because of delays at the hospital. It's really not that simple.

But I have to say I think the date that babies can survive is irrelevant. one day, they'll be able to grow babies in jars from 6 weeks or even possibly from conception. does that mean they'll have to ban abortion then?