Are you anti-abortion? why?

[HAPPYFACE]

Reading another thread has made me keep thinking this question. I don't understand how anyone can be totally one way.
For me I think it is up to each person and I wouldn't judge anyones decision.
I personally think that whether to keep a child is complex. It changes your life forever when you have children! I don't see how it is beneficial to mother or child if their lives will be miserable.
You only get ONE LIFE and need to make the most of it.

where the pregnancy is so advanced the baby is injected with a huge amount of salt to the heart. this effectivly kills the baby incredibly painfully imo and the mother is then required to 'give birth' to the dead baby.

its realy horrid

I'm not really anti-abortion, i do dont like the idea of it but then i have never been in a position where i have had to make that decision. I do think it is a decision that every woman has the right to make and she shouldnt be jdged what ever she decides.

I am pro-choice.
Everyone has the right to choose.
I am due to have an abortion on Wednesday, So I KNOW it is not necessarily the easy option that some people make it out to be.

I think abortions should be far rarer.

I don't think that 'termination' (or whatever is the current euphemism) should be give because it's an inconvenient time for the woman or she's not keen on the dad for example.

I think abortions are given out all too freely and too frequently. We've come to see it as an easy option and women, especially young women, can be led to believe it requires little or no thought.

I know loads of people who've had them and many still suffer, psychologically, in a way they didn't know they would. They were led to believe there'd be no psychological impact and, if you think about it, how could that possibly be the case.

In the 60's my mum carried out her own abortion, risking her life, while her mum slept upstairs. No woman should be put in this position.

However I also know several people who've deeply regretted their decision to abort and it has gone on to haunt them in subsequent pregnancies.

Culturally we've been so keen to be pro choice we've underplayed the possible psychological effects on women.

I get furious at pressure on young people to abort just because they're young and the pregnancy is unplanned. Some people in my family resisted that pressure and made great parents. My SIL was pg at 15. Her son is now 21 and she's 36 in a great job with a lovely well balanced son. Her only regret is not having another. She was determined not to make the same mistake (because everyone told her it was a mistake) again.

I agree about late terminations. I find this very upsetting.

Spidermama I think you expressed that very well, actually.

Late abortions are still carried out for a number of reasons - my sister was offered an abortion at 7 months when it was discovered her baby had Downs Syndrome and a heart problem.

They are also given to women who are deemed mentally unfit to care for a child. This decision is made by Social Services and doctors, the mother does not get a say in it as she is considered unfit to make such a decision.

Late abortions can also be carried out privately if the NHS have refused.

I'm anti-abortion in general and anti the language and rhetoric of choice because I don't believe that in a mysogynist society where women's choices are limited, abortion is usually a free choice. (When it is, then I'm not anti.) I dislike the language of choice, it trivialises what is often a painful decision and uses the same word we use to describe what colour knickers we choose, or what flavour ice-cream.

But I'm in favour of an individual being in full control of their own body. Abortion is an absolute political right for every woman because only she should have the right to control what happens to her body, not a doctor, not a politician, not a man she's conceived a child with. The issue for me isn't choice, it's control. (Call me a control freak.)

There was a very respected surgeon who gave up part of his job in abortion clinics because it conflicted so much with the other side of his work. He said that one day he would be performing delicate surgery on a 3 month old foetus in the womb to save it's life and another day he would be aborting a foetus of the same age. He had come to the conclusion that saving lives was so much better than taking them away and so he quit the abortion side.

I understand the predicament some women find themselves in, but I do think that prevention is far better and a lot of women take unnecessary risks because they know they a pregnancy does not mean they have to go through with it. They can even have the whole thing done in their lunch hour.

I think this thread may blow up at some point so I shall bow out now!

spidermama agree with you. and caligula. As for the partial birth termination - can't believe this actually happens. Can't believe it is legal.

Malorytowers - I know women who had what they thought were stable relationships until they got pregnant. Then they found that either the baby went, or the bloke did. So much for choice.

rhubarb, do agree about prevention but, as an example, both my ds's were conceieved against the odds (ie 2 weeks after coming off the pill having been on for 12 years! and 1 condom, which didn't burst or fall off but...!)
Accidents (whether welcome or totally devastating) do happen.

thats true Malory. if teeange abortions were so high we wouldnt have such an enormouse amount of teenage mothers would we.

People have this stereotype of teh sort of person that has an abortion. she is young and naive with little money, her boyfreind is either also young and naive or a complete waste of space.

in reality that isn't the case. I have had 3 terminations. 2 were caused by rape and the 3rd was for medical reasons (i was having treatment for cervicle cancer and that had casued the feotus to be eptopic)

I KNOW my decision was the best at the time but it doesn't stop the misery that follows.

Anti... because ive had one. Its just wrong.

But not all women regret having a termination. Blu, for one, has posted here about how she has terminated a pregnancy with no regrets at all.

I was always faintly squeamish about abortion for me until I became unexpectedly pregnant. And at that point, seeing the horrific inevitability of my life going down a certain track, I realised just how little my circumstances would have to be different for me to terminate. I didn't, and I love my daughter and I am often extremely happy with the track my life has gone down, and I chose to have another baby. But I was 37, solvent, and in a relationship with a man who wanted to stay with me. I was still bloody terrified, and nearly chose another option - in different circumstances I would definitely had done so. The whole experience made me much more pro-choice in practice as well as theory.

pro choice

fattymumma, I learnt what a partial brith termintaions were via MN many moons ago and it wasn't that, similar but not that.

It's far worse than you describe.

I cried when I read what it was.

Real partial birth abortions are not ever used in this country and are now illegal in most of America too.

The injection to the heart (potassium chloride) is used to stop the heart of a foetus in a late surgical abortion. It is not what is known as partial birth abortion.

87% of terminations happen in first 12 weeks - less than 2% after 20 weeks.

I had mine at 11 weeks... I presumed 12 was the cutoff.

coming from an irish perspective where it is illegal i'm pro choice, 10 women a day travel to the Uk for abortions and thats the figure given by the pro choice group of women who go via their connections. not the others that go themselves via back page magazine adverts.

i think the poster who implies that availibilty of abortions increases the pregnancy rate in a certain class (i think thats what they implied) would not be appropriate to ireland whrere there is a huge teenage pregnacy rate and no abortion.

plus lots of middle class women board the plane.

Like Caligula I dislike a lot of the way the rhetoric of 'choice' surrounding abortion is used, and it saddens me that sometimes it seems to a woman as if the support just isn't available. But the alternative to medically safe abortion being available is just so hideous that I would have to say I come down on the 'pro-choice' side.

Over here abortion is technically illegal, but permitted upto 14 weeks if the woman has counselling beforehand at a licensed advice centre - many are run by the big churches, but AFAIK they do not deal in putting pressure on the woman. I have been to one in the past - although not considering abortion, I was feeling rather overwhelmed at the pregnancy and a lot of the issues connected to it.