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.

I am sitting here with my beautiful 6 month baby on my lap. He is kicking and gurgling and playing with his toes and listening to me type. He is a person.
Once he was just a tiny fertilised egg. That egg was not a person. Some time between fertilisation and birth something happened which made him into a fully-fledged person instead of a ball of cells with a life-force and the potential to be a person.
We don't know when or what that was, whether it was when his heart started beating or he became viable or when he had developed a nervous system that could hear and feel. BUT to say he is not now more of a person than he was when he was a ball of cells is absurd.
That difference is far, far greater than the difference between baby and toddler or toddler and teenager. That's why we don't have the right to hurt him.

The problem with this Bill is that it is crossing the line between church and state and using doctors and nurses to do it.

If a woman wants a legal abortion, then she will have to see an image on screen, and have an internal exam? All because she wants an abortion? That's shocking.

I can't see how this is constitutional.

Springy the main difference is that I believe in the autonomy of the life in the womb. I know, I know it cannot sustain itself autonomously, but following that line of argument, a newborn baby is not autonomous. It is dependent on its parents care. A foetus is dependent on its mother's body, but it is a separate entity, and this is at the heart of the pro-life argument. Not that women have no rights, but that so do children.

So whilst pro-choice would say you can abort or not abort, I would say the pro-life argument still offers choice after pregnancy. You don't have to keep your baby. But you do owe it your womb for 9 months. It is a separate person and not merely an extension of the mother.

I am sitting here with my lovely and much wanted 18 month old@Seth. I have also had a miscarriage, which was devastating.

I am still vehemently pro-choice.

I apologise, I misunderstood. The point is still valid though.

Leonie - if that young teenager did change her mind, how is that helping her life? She originally would have made the decision to have an abortion, now that she has changed her mind her problems and originally reasons for terminating have not miraculously been solved have they? She did not want the baby, so what is she to do? Carry it to term and raise it, not wanting to, or give it up for adoption, which is going to cause more trauma and heartache for her than the termination in the first place.

Why is it that the baby is considered more impoirtant than the mother by pro lifers? A baby which would not be able to live outside its mother is considered more important than a living, breathing, developled and rational woman?

I'd better 'own it' then since APassionateWoman is poking her pitchfork at me.

My mum did her own abortion before having me. Very dangerous, obviously. My sister has had two abortions. Lots of my friends have had at least one. I am lucky it has never come up for me.

I'm not really religious, I don't ally myself with any group, I am just me and I feel real distress and shock at the sheer number of abortions which are carried out. An individual human is created when sperm and egg meet.

We treat the issue far too casually and far too often women are encouraged to have abortions they don't want. Perhaps it's because they're young or didn't mean to get pregnant.

If abortions were harder to come by, only given to people who'd been raped or who could be proved that their mental or physical health would be badly damaged by the baby then I would understand that abortion is a fairer option.

But this isn't the case. People have them so freely now because it's not quite the right time or they would rather get more money first etc etc. These are NOT good enough reasons to terminate a life. I do believe abortion for many has become another form of contraception.

Abortions are given out far too freely. We are encouraged to think of them as routine procedures with NO moral comeback. Our society paints this as the easy option. The message sent out by our society to young people who accidentally get pregnant is that they should abort.

I have close friends who are seriously fucked up by past abortions. One was encouraged by her mother to have one and has never forgiven herself.

These women have to live with their decision for life. Whilst for some it's a cross worth bearing, others find it very difficult. I'm not sure the doctors and medics really give the emotional, spiritual and moral aspects much consideration at all.

I hate the polarisation of the issue. Either you're a loony, religious, misogynistic nutter, or an intelligent, liberal, reasonable feminist.

I remember watching a discussion on newsnight or something and a British aid worker was very pissed off that American Christian Right aid-workers were preaching abstinence in Africa.
He said that it was beginning to undo all the good work already achieved in that area in educating people about AIDS and contraception. The Christian aid-workers weren't giving people access or info about contraception because they thought their abstinence preaching would be enough! God he was so angry at their stupidity. YOu don't piss about with silly abstinence teaching in an area rife with AIDS. You give practical information and free contraception. Idiots.

The christian right don't understand that people will have sex, as Posie said, we are designed by nature to have sex, and no amount of preaching is going to change that.

Leonie- are you saying that if I got raped, you think I should go through the ordeal of going through pregnancy and giving birth?

Seriously?

The baby is not considered more important but of equal importance. So a mother may be traumatised by giving up a child she has carried to term for adoption, but she will be alive. The entire pro-life argument hinges on the belief that a foetus is human. If you do not believe that none of it makes sense and the argument seems spurious. I do believe that a foetus is human. Not just potentially human, but human. So trauma is not a comparable outcome to death.

'but following that line of argument, a newborn baby is not autonomous. It is dependent on its parents care'

Yes, but you can put a newborn baby down in its crib and cry into a pillow in another room for 5 minutes if it gets too much for you. When you return, the baby will be absolutely fine. There is not that possibility of momentary separation during pregnancy.

I was terribly sick until week 30 of my pregnancy, then on bedrest from week 33. I would have given anything to be able to switch the pregnancy off for a few minutes every now & then, then go back to it. That was with a baby I very much wanted, who is now a year old. I can't imagine what mental state I would have been in if I'd not wanted that baby in the first place.

I think that is the crux of the matter

Your belief: the unborn baby/foetus is a seperate entity to the mother. The mother is a slave to the womb.

My belief: the unbo of trn baby/foetus is part of the mother and cannot live without her. The mother has a right to control her womb.

You won't change your mind on this, I won't change mine. Doesn't mean I am right and you are wrong, or vice versa. It is however fortunate for me and mine that my opinion is enshrined in law.

Vile bill. Vile thing to put women through. I am always going to be pro-choice - I can't be doing with the rampant pro-life stuff that goes on in the USA (doesn't seem to happen so much in the UK and I have no idea what it's like here in Australia)

Spider - whether or not you think that abortion is too easy to get at the moment, this Bill is such a threat to legal, safe abortion.

Of course a human foetus is human. Just as a dog foetus is canine and a cat foetus is feline. I can't help but find this repeated assertion to be a strange one. I haven't seen any pro-choice argument here try to claim anything different.

My argument, at least, is that until a foetus is viable, it is not a life. It is a potential life. & as such, it should not have equal rights to its mother.

'We treat the issue far too casually and far too often women are encouraged to have abortions they don't want.'

Actually, I think abortion 9early abortion) should be made much easier. All this 'two doctors' nonsense is demeaning.

Most women that I know who have had abortions did not take it lightly. The ones who do are probably the ones who are most in need of it. If you treat your own body ad sexuality so shabbily, you are probably not going to make a very responsible mother...

In countries where abortion is 'harder to come by' or illegal, the abortion rates are not necessarily any lower. Women resort to dangerous back street abortions or 'abortion tourism' (how many Irish women have had terminations in the UK, for example?)

I am amazed at the assumption that because something sits uncomfortably with some people, it should be removed as a valid choice for all.

No way for rape and incest victims, thats fucking awful

Leonie: I don't think I am making sweeping assumptions at all. i am just trying to address the differences in our beliefs. I have not criticised your argument at all Leonie or made comments about how you construct your argument whatsoever. Please extend the same courtesy to me otherwise there is little point in this discourse.

I don't own a pitchfork. I'm assuming there are a fair few in Oklahoma, though.

LEONIE , i see and recognise your argument, it is obviously well conscidered.
But ultimatly do you not think it better that someone who would be abusive,neglectful, or completly incompetent not become a mother?
A Scan would not suddenly make a woman who id determind to abort change her mind.
It would cause untold distress to a woman who has to abort because of medical reasons or rape. How would you feel if you were a 13 yr old insest victim that became pregnant that was needing help ?

OK toddlerama, equal right over the mother as opposed to more rights, thanks for clarifying that.

I would be very interested by in hearing from people who have strong prolife opinions what they think should be done about the fathers of the unborn babies they wish to see protected.

Surely it is only fair to have draconian laws in place by which fathers are obliged to support the mothers of their children. It would seem logical to me that if a women is pressured to keep an unplanned baby then the father must be obliged to give her a certain amount of money in support and face criminal charges if he fails to do so?

Otherwise laws like this are just antiwomen they are not prolife.