Terrifyingly anti-woman law passed in Oklahoma

[SethStarkaddersMum]

I am absolutely at this.

A law has been passed in Oklahoma to force women who want abortion to undergo vaginal ultrasound and listen to a detailed description of the fetus and view the ultrasound image before terminating a pregnancy.
Even if they are rape or incest victims.

words absolutely fail me.

It's totally sick, so a 13 yr old incest rape victim will be forced to have a doctor shove an instrument inside her and make her look at the baby on the screen.

Bloody monsters..

You know what though, people always use the '13 year old incest victim' to show the horrors of it. Let me tell you, I'm 26. If I found myself in a position of needing an abortion, even if it was just from carelessness, I would find the procedure just as humiliating and distressing. There is not one woman who will benefit from this. I am wondering just who does???

minipie- you don't. Maybe sometimes, but not always.

Ah but Leonie, pro lifers don't care what happens to that baby once it's born on the whole. Ime, it is a far better scenario for a woman to be able to abort an unwanted foetus. Imo, until viability, the mothers rights do come first. (mother of 2, no abortions but seriously considered it for one of them )

'I'm really not convinced about the idea of there being women who use abortion as birth control - how do you know this?'

Please stop asserting I wrote anything like this and then posting that I did, because I did not. You are mixing up my post with another member's and assigning claims to me that I never made.

I really don't appreciate that.

I also qualified with 'everyone I know', not 'Everyone has . . . '

It's not a baby Leonie, it's a foetus. It does not become a baby until it's born. Use of such emotive terms as "killing your baby" is what the anti women brigade use to deny women their rights to determine what happens within their own bodies.

leonie that legislation also allows doctors "to withhold test results showing fetal defects."

Leonie - everyone has their right to their own personal opinions. Laws shouldn't be based on them, however.

Fetus/Zygote are the correct medical terms. A five week fetus is not the same thing as newborn baby, it just isn't. You can see clearly it isn't, just as a child is not an adult. It isn't an entirely seperate life, its entirely reliant upon the mother, and could not survive independently.

I respect your opinion, I used to agree with you, however these are the facts.

That's lovely, Leonie. I'm glad you feel the need to share.

If it's just your opinion, we have no quarrel. But as soon as 'just' your opinion is used to threaten my bodily autonomy, we'll take it outside, okay?

Obviously if I had been aborted I wouldn't exist. But then if my parents had used condoms, I wouldn't exist either. And if they had never used condoms, all sorts of siblings of mine might exist, who have now been deprived of life- should we feel bad about that?

I think you have to concentrate on the suffering experienced by the foetus at the time of the abortion. And that, I admit, is a serious question and one that would worry me a lot.

But then again, if the mother kills herself or tries an illegal abortion, there is no reason to believe the foetus would not suffer from that.

If you speculate on the life they might have had, you are getting into very uncertain territory- for all you know, they might have died in infancy or had a really miserable life, particularly if born to a traumatised and unwilling parent. I think if we had statistics on how many of the children who get tortured and murdered by their parents were unwanted from the start, that might throw some new light on the whole abortion question.

'I'm really not convinced about the idea of there being women who use abortion as birth control - how do you know this?'

It doesn't threaten you at all, though.

It's in a foreign country you'd need to qualify for a visa to go live in, in a state where the majority of voters have chosen to elect very Conservative lawmakers who inact things like this.

I should probably namechange for this but I can't be arsed.

I had an abortion 4 years ago, and at my first appointment at the hosp I had to have a vaginal ultrasound to make sure the foetus was not in the fallopian tube. I am pretty sure that this is normal practice. I was about 6 weeks pregnant at the time.

I looked at the screen and could see (what I thought was) the foetus, but to be honest I am not a medical worker and could not make out anything shapewise etc. I could see what I imagined was a heartbeat.

Now, I am not a heartless cow and the procedure did upset me (I spent weeks crying) but seeing the image of the foetus was not the last straw. It did not tip me over the edge. I knew what I was doing - I was terminating a foetus which me and DP had created, which was a potential baby. I knew what foetuses of that age looked like. Seeing it on an ultrasound, and seeing its heartbeat, did not make me any more upset that I already was.

Vaginal ultrasounds in themselves are not painful, or invasive. At all. It is like having a smear.

Now, I know that if you are a victim of rape, this would be a horrible thing to undergo, but in the normal walk of life having a vaginal scan and seeing the foetus (and hearing it described, my doctor said what size it was, where it was in the uterus etc) should not make the abortion any worse than it already is. Women are adult enough to understand what abortion is, I don't think they need protecting from what the procedure entails.

The most heinous thing about this bill is the fact that the doctors can withold details of abnormalities. That is truly awful and is completely out of order. The rest, not so much. I think it is just enshrining in law what happens anyway.

What on Earth is going on with the USA, they are becoming quite a extreme lately... Have you seen the new Arizona Bill?

Unless it's going to have special needs, apparently.

So you are in fact arguing that we should have the choice whether to decide if a foetus should be allowed to develop into a baby. Based on "a founded and justified medical reason (like edwards or trisomy 18, or anencephaly or whatever) ..."

Sorry, wrong quotation:

'If it's just your opinion, we have no quarrel. But as soon as 'just' your opinion is used to threaten my bodily autonomy, we'll take it outside, okay?'

Again, this doesn't threaten you at all.

Sorry expat, i wasn't directing that bit at you - should have made it clearer. Also didn't mean to be snarky about saying that you don't need to have a scan - was just trying to clarify.

An unwanted foetus like a toenail?? Are you for real
WHat I am saying leonie is that an unwanted foetus eventually becomes an unwanted child. I know which scenario I find more damaging.

I grew up in a Conservative state. That's why I haven't lived there in many years.

I mean the abortion itself upset me, not the vaginal scan (to clarify).

Now, when they said I had to have a vaginal scan I groaned and say 'oh bloody hell really' because I have had them before and just thought a normal stomach scan would do. They just said 'yes we need to make sure where the foetus is and this is the best way'. I didn't think twice about it and didn't feel violated.

'What on Earth is going on with the USA, they are becoming quite a extreme lately...'

This is what happens when you get Conservative governments in.

Oh bugger seeing the way this thread is going I am going to be called a murderer. Shoulda namechanged.

What???