Oh My GOD! Channel 4, tue 11.05pm. Why

[charlieplus3]

Everyone has there reasons for abortion but OMG why show it on TV.

I feel really shocked at this!

oh no thanks charlie...am in tears, thought you'd never speak to me again...god i'm such a donut, why am i always so bloody honest, is crap...always saying inappropriate things in wrong places...

Sophable, bless you, you are so like me its untrue

I started this thread as shocked was on Tv, not because im against abortion. Every woman has the right to choose and there are so many different situations on why women to choose to abort. There is no right and wrong in this situation.

Sophable, hang on in there. Of course MN is the kind of place where you should be able to 'divulge' - or even just 'say' that you, like many other MN-ers, have had a termination.

This thread is about whether to show it on TV or not. I am, in principle, in favour. I think Naomi Woolf does make good points, but showing it to provoke debate is not the only possible outcome. By showing a termination alongside all the other 'their mitts on your bits' medical programmes we are priviledged to, it could become more de-mystified as a procedure. the the moral and ethical debate can continue without recourse to the practicalities of the operation itself. We do not debate the moral aspects of transplant (one way or the other) by demonstrating graphic pictures of the procedure itself.

My sister doesn't and hasn't ever wanted children, she in on the Pill and fell pregnant about 6 years ago when she was 30. When she went to the clinic for an abortion, she had to run the gauntlet of lots of shouting idiots with placards telling her she was a murderer. She was about 6 weeks pregnant. I have never asked her how she feels or if she thinks of the child she would now have, not sure if I would be opening a can of worms or whether she doesn't really think about it. Being pregnant I wouldn't want to watch this programme, but equally it would be just as distressing to watch if you have had an abortion. I also don't think women treat having an abortion like going to the dentist, as just another form of contraception, surely not? I think this has been mentioned in another article about this programme.

sophable, please don't feel shit. nobody in their right mind would find this kind of programme entertaining. perhaps then, we all need to see the bigger picture of what the company who has made this, is trying to achieve, if anything. as for trusting mn's with the information you shared, that is what mn is all about. the whole point of mn is surely about sharing and trusting all us complete strangers with what can be really sensitive stuff. i have no personal experience of termination, but am pro choice, after supporting my best friend through this trauma 15 years ago. 15 years later we speak about, turned out to probably be her only experience of conceiving. i am sincerely sorry if my previous posting added to your distress.

OO - I think perhaps some women don't really have an idea of what it involves..... not that they take the decision to terminate lightly, but perhaps they don't think about the reality of the procedure and just how greatly it will effect them both physically and mentally.

Bit cautious about joining in here. Don't wish to cause any offence.

They say that if everyone had to butcher their own meat, we'd all be vegetarians. Perhaps if people see the reality of an abortion, they might take contraception a bit more seriously at an earlier stage. Abortion was never meant to be a last-resort method of contraception. The producer of the programme said that one woman had had 13 abortions, which says something about her attitude towards contraception generally. Utterly stupid really. All that trouble when she could have used a condom at the right time. I'm not suggestion that anyone here who has had an abortion had one for this reason, but I suspect that a lot of women use it in this way.

Abortion seems to be very easy to arrange. The law states that 2 doctors have to certify that either the baby or the mother would be medically affected if the pregnancy continues (or words to that effect), but it seems to me that abortion is virtually available on demand these days. As a result, I think it is perhaps seen in an abstract light and people don't really think about what is actually involved. Perhaps this is what this programme is designed to address.

I'm not saying this as a pro- or anti-abortion stance; just trying to rationalise the reason for the programme.

thanks people...got really down about confiding, but feel it was ok now...should think before opening my mouth (using my keyboard). fwiw blu and oliveoil i think you have a point, perhaps graphic depiction is not the way forward. thanks charlie and lmb, i feel better. undoubtedly, i'll say more things i regret on mn (this is my way in rl as well as here) in a spirit of openess...but hopefully next time i'll think long and hard about what i'll feel like if no one replies to my post

They are NOT showing a 21 week abortion. It shows a 6 week abortion according to the Indie last week.

I'm pro-choice (for others not for myself iyswim), but I can't see a problem with shwoing reality providing it isn't voyeuristic. I'm more suspicious really of the idea of pretending these things don't exist, or they happen but we'd rather not think about them.

It's not that ling ago that it would have been considered outrageous to see a birth on TV.

BTW- the Indie article last week also said that both the pro choice and pro life groups are keen on the programme being shown- obviously both groups feel it can help their "cause". The INdie writer said that it won't help either group as this is an issue that people have already made thier minds up about. I suspect that's true.

The attitude to abortions is very cultural. When I lived in Japan a friend became pregnant- unmarried and decided to keep the baby. I remember a friend of hers was furious and was telling her it was very wrong. Babies needed fathers and she should get an abortion- keeping the baby was wrong. NOT a view I subscribe to of course, but it was that I realised how cultural values towards things like abortion and sex outside marriage are.

In the spirit of openess - and to make Sophable feel better - I too had a termination while I was at Uni. Had taken precautions but...

Anyway, I can see what the programme makre is trying to get at - and what Naomi Wolf talks aobut in her article in the ST BUT it is all personal. I disagree with Naomi Wolf in her assumption that all women are traumatised by having a termination. I wasn't. It honestly meant nothing to me at the time, and even when I went on a "Women as Leaders" course some years after and they tried to get me to idenfy with my "guilt" and the child that I had terminated, I couldn't.

It was the right thing for me at the time. The support of my mum at the time helped - hwo had said to me "You don't NEED to feel guilty if you don't want to".

HOWEVER, now that I have had a child and want another one, I have different feelings. Not about what happened then, (and I still feel no guilt or sadness about that) but about me now. Some of you will remember that last year I had an unplanned but much wanted (by me) and NOT wanted (by dh) pregnancy, which unfortuantely ended in a miscarriage. I was NOT prepared to consider a termination then of a healthy child - but would have if I had had a bad CVS result (given my age, a distinct possibility). I WOULD then have been deeply upset - part of the reason why I wanted to go down the quicker CVS route as opposed to waiting for an amnio (as it was, it was during the pre-CVS scan that we found out about my miscarriage).

Things aren't always black and white.

I am not going to watch the programme - but will support its right to be shown.

I haven't had a termination, but that's because I only became accidentally pregnant at an age and in circumstances where I decided to continue the pregnancy.

I don't think it's quite fair to say that 'young girls should watch this to take more responsibility for their actions', Smurfs. The UK's staggeringly high rate of unwanted pregnancies (especially in very young women) is part of a wider social phenomenon - not much sex education and/or education about contraception.

I'm also unsure about the idea of moving the cut-off point for abortions to 12 weeks solely on the basis of viability. One of these days scientists will be able to treat a foetus as 'viable' pretty well from the moment of conception. Are we/you saying that termination will be out of the question then?

don't really want to bump this thread up, but have to say, thanks janz , i think all the posts on this thread have been reasonable and thoughtful, which warms my heart...and makes me feel v good about mn.

An opinion - not necessarily mine
In the future terminations would involve the foetus being safely removed from the mother and implanted into a woman who desparatly wants a child

• throws up lots of ethical questions doesn't it?

I doubt that showing this programme will have any real benefit. What we need to tackle is the number of unplanned / unwanted pregnancies, particularly in the young. If this programme proves to be high in the gore and horror factor, then all it may do it increase the number of babies born to women who had not planned on the pregnancy and felt unable to terminate because of what they have seen on this programme.

As MI points out, lack of sex education contributes to the number of unplanned pg, esp in the young, but also, I think, the general culture we have towards sex and relationships in general in the UK compared to other European countries - at the risk of making mumsnet implode, it would be interesting to compare these attitudes with attitudes to breastfeeding, in light of a recent thread!!!

Never had a termination myself (I'm so pleased I never faced that dilemma and I can recall circumstances in which having a baby would have been an utter disaster for me and a termination would have been my choice) but friends have and I totally support their decision. I'm glad it is there for women.

Agree with Lisa.
Surgery is gory and horrific ? if you had to watch heart or orthpaedic surgery before having your own operation it would make it very difficult to go ahead. But should we really be deciding what other people can and can't do with their bodies based on the yuck factor?
Worth remembering one reason why abortions are carried out after 12 weeks is because NHS access to abortions is shamefully low in some areas. Doctors who have strong views make it very difficult for women to receive the healthcare they need. And no-one is manning the barricades when the NHS saves money on the quiet by forcing women to go private ? in circumstances very often where it's a real struggle, on top of everything else the woman is dealing with.

i dont think i could watch it having had a abortion myself but i no i will proberlly end up watching it and beeing in floods of tears all night just like thousands of other ladies accross the contry who have had to face the terrible ordeal of a termination, i dont think it should be shown its too uppsetting (used to be shireensmom)