Supporting abortion to term.

[VegansTasteBetter]

Asking this question in feminism because, 1. I don't want a pro/against bunfight and 2 because I have only ever seen this comment made by feminists. *

I have seen the comment made that someone would support an abortion up until term for any reason (so in theory just because they changed their mind would be acceptable I guess).

If you take this stance is it because you feel to decide a cut off date for abortions would be to choose an arbitrary date in a pregnancy and that we need legally to have free access to abortions... but actually if your mate said, "just found out I am 37 weeks pregnant really don't want it, going for an abortion" you would be horrified and because you know it isn't likely to ever happen

or

if in the above scenario would you happily (assuming it were legal) take your friend down to the clinic to get an abortion because you belive the mother's choice trumps the fetus/babies right to life?

I'm prochoice but I have a real difficulty with people saying that it's acceptable for any reason up till term. And in the above scenario (if it were legal) I'd support my friend's right to demand to be induced early for her mental health and to give the baby up for adoption but not for an abortion.

• disclaimer: I am a feminist but don't support this view

It is simply not possible to debate this issue without feelings of revulsion and horror. The thread is about supporting abortion to term, not at 8 weeks, 10 weeks, 24 weeks or even 28 weeks. But at term. For all their innate intelligence, why are posters who support abortion to term purely on the grounds of the woman's preference unable to see that it is a deeply emotive issue that is unlikely to win the support of the general population? Why should anyone who objects be dismissed as woman-hating, whiney and idiotic? Please.

Emotion is kind of irrelevant, though, when it comes to formulating or changing laws that affect other people's autonomy. This thread was started for a general debate, it's not a case of being sensitive to an OP in a crisis situation.

And people who find the whole subject distressing do have the option of hiding the thread.

What about the rights of the father? And what about the situations where men put pressure on their wives or girlfriends to have an abortion? What about women who choose abortion because they don?t have supportive partners?
This is the ridiculousness of allowing this cult of fatherhood to spring up. You find some women including feminists saying how wonderfully equal their relationships are, how men should pay for their off spring and how men can parent children just as well as any mother. The end result is that women are further disempowered.

The truth is women conceive and carry children, women nurture children, if she chooses to do this with a man who she permit to father HER child, then fine but somehow we now have a situation where man as scientist, man as state and law maker and man as father now exert control over women and their children, born or unborn, through various means emotional, economic and medical, anything from availability and affordability of contraceptives to IVF and the legality of abortion and access to children through family court proceedings.

Then we have Xenia suggesting that in future men should be allowed to have a child implanted into a surrogate. And who might this surrogate be? A women of low social status desperate to pay the bills??????

The other point I would pick up on was made several pages back
so an abortion would be the only way of being able to break away from further contact with the father). Personally I'd favour offering women in those circs the chance to have the child adopted at birth (since a late abortion involves giving birth anyway)

Actually I would favour smashing this cult of fatherhood and allowing the mother to keep her baby and change the law to protect her. In fact if father's were not so heavily invested in "fatherhood" and in the control of conception and reproduction maybe less women would find themselves with unwanted pregnancies.

I think the wishes of the father are irrelevant when it comes to choosing whether or not to keep a pregnancy. It's not his body, so it's not his choice. If he didn't want a child, he should have had himself sterilised or avoided PIV.

However, I also think that men should be able to cut off their responsibilities WRT an unplanned pregnancy, because I think women should be able to earn their own living and that child benefit should be a lot closer to the minimum wage.

yy SGB absolutely, women need economic independence, men need to support women to make choices & to mother children or access abortion but it needs to be done at a societal level not just at the level of two individuals and an unplanned conception, that gives men and economic inequality far too much power to dictate.

I am sorry, I am coming back to this, because I have been reflecting on it overnight.

Lurking, in your circumstances, you were let down by your father, who raped you and abused his position, you were also let down by society for not acknowledging and dealing with rape and abuse but letting it continue, and then by the state/society you lived in for not giving you the means to understand you were pregnant and address the result of that (which was a pregnancy) earlier. I don't mean my comments to be personal to you, but your story has prompted my thoughts, if you see what I mean.

The issues which have been going round and round my head are how do we - as feminists and as part of society - deal with the issues before they get to the stage where a desperate child goes through the trauma of a late term abortion? That seems to me a really important question. It seems to me that the argument about late term abortion (and this thread has shown me it is an argument which needs to be had, and I totally absolutely admire and salute Lurking's openness on this thread) deals with the symptom of a deeper problem, and in some ways masks that problem because the results (an unwanted baby) are removed and the woman continues to carry the emotional burden alone. It seems really important to me to be able to address those issues and not just argue for a procedure which has such huge ramifications on a point of principle (woman's body, woman's choice - a slogan which to me seems to breathtakingly inadequate when the whole chain of events leading to that point is anything but woman's body, woman's choice).

Anyway, I appreciate that the debate has moved on, but I just wanted to say that this thread has challenged me to think about what I can do, in whatever small way, about some of these issues.

I'm busy with domestic stuff today, so won't have much chance to get back to this thread, but I guess I just wanted to re-iterate my support for you sharing your story and my absolute good wishes that you can, as best as possible, continue to heal, if that doesn't sound too trite.

As a feminist I have always believed and lobbied for fairness for both sexes including men and there are a good few areas where men are not treated fairly. That is why in a couple of my posts above I have posted about technology eventually allowing the father to take the foetus his partner wants to abort and place it in a surrogate.

I also think you should be able to agree binding arrangements before a child is born about involvement and contact (and of course instead of that being coupled with the solidbrass idea of higher state benefits I would couple it with compulsory workfare for the benefits - but is the same point - that the parent who before conception did not want later to be involved should be allowed to abrogate that responsibility although not if it were unplanned - in that case he should have spent the evening at the local art gallery not getting into the knickers of the woman when he was drunk with a baby as the result in which case they are both saddled with the financial responsiblity for life).

Lurking thankyou for bravely sharing your story. Am sorry you had to act without being able to access safe and legal care.

Topknob asked earlier whether those wanting term abortion had children themselves. I would suggest that they have both children and probably a more developed awareness of situations like lurkings.

No one wants to see late term terminations. I would just like to see women's needs met individually through their hcps without a contrived legal framework that discriminates against the disabled and can work against the girls and women with the most vulnerable pregnancies.

I have had an unwanted pregnancy and placed a child for adoption, but I recognise that this is an option associated with worse outcomes for mothers than abortion. Any mother considering either option in later pregnancy needs individual and sensitive care, I don't think one prescriptive model can give women the care they deserve.

The posters wanting babies delivered early are overly optimistic about the survival rates and incidence of disability. The children obviously disabled may never get adopted, the ones whose issues manifest later may be more at risk of adoption breakdown presuming these children aren't stuck in foster care whilst relatives are negotiating rights through the courts.

Work and volunteering has brought me into contact with girls and women in situations so grim that any easy uncertainties that I held about absolute rights and wrongs have long gone. I think it naive or cruel to look at girls and women in extreme situations and to look to long term social change without addressing issues like their access to abortion.

All evidence tells us women access abortion as soon as possible and the women who haven't been able to do this often have the most need of the service.

A legal system that enshrines women's rights over their own body is consistent with steps towards a culture where women have more rights and status.

Incidentally I find xenia's idea utterly bonkers, the UK had kept payment out of surrogacy and even were this possible medically and ethically then surely the only way it would work would be on a rentawomb basis. Reducing economically vulnerable women to a portable uterus. Agreeing rights in utero is not something to be done lightly and the potential for abuse and pressure in a woman not automatically autonomous is terrifying.

I just want to again thank everybody for their support and kindness. It means a great deal to me that such a horrible thing can bring women closer to a common goal, even if we all have different ideas of what the goal should be.

"Incidentally I find xenia's idea utterly bonkers, the UK had kept payment out of surrogacy and even were this possible medically and ethically then surely the only way it would work would be on a rentawomb basis. Reducing economically vulnerable women to a portable uterus. Agreeing rights in utero is not something to be done lightly and the potential for abuse and pressure in a woman not automatically autonomous is terrifying."

Maybe it would be the Pro-lifers who put themselves forward to offer this surrogacy service for free? Or perhaps in an 'ideal' world they could invent some way of getting men to carry the babies to term? If they did I wonder how many men would really be happy to do it? Crazy.

You wouldn't get many pro-lifers, particularly male ones, agreeing to do any of the work involved in gestation. Their agenda has nothing to do with the wellbeing of babies and everything to do with placing women under the control of men.

As to raising child benefit to at least the minimum wage, that would be a recognition of the fact that raising small children is work, a job that needs to be done, and that the person doing it needs an income. Couple that with affordable childcare, and women who want or have children would no longer need to be economically dependent on individual men, with all the unfairness and potential for abuse that this involves (and yeah, yeah, we know, not your Nigel etc - but abuse does go on when women are forced into this position of economic dependence).

does that mean you think it is fine in the scenario where a man "fathers" multiple children with different women and has no more contribution to them than as sperm donor?

No, I am just focusing on the reproductive rights of women. Some may choose to become prg & wish to pursue a long term relationship with a man who will be an active and responsible father. On the other hand she might just want to have a child because it is the right time for her, how many women wait for the right man, wait for that man to make a commitment and then find time is running out. How many women put career goals first because motherhood and career are difficult to manage when we all play the economic game according to the man made rules, rules that advantage men over women, both in feudal society and now under capitalism. How many women opt to have an abortion not just because of some binary ? I don?t want a child? it is often far more complex, ranging from the purely practical & economic to the emotional response to rape.

Patriarchy means rule of the father, men seek to control women?s bodies because they are heavily invested in fatherhood. Some might say men are naturally aggressive and predatory and dislike women but there is more historical evidence to suggest that they are more concerned with shaping society to further their goals, goals that were born out of competition between men for wealth and resources. Women and reproduction must be controlled my men, whether they be working class or capitalists seeking to mould the next generation of workers and consumers.

If rape is about controlling women, why rape? Why do men control women sexually, why sexual violence? Is it because there are no other ways in which to control women? Of course not, consider the holocaust and the way which the Jews were systematically reduced to lower social beings. I would put forward the rational idea that rape occurs because men seek to control not women?s bodies but their reproductive capacities.

In Russia (which wasn?t/isn?t a truly communist country) it was found that even party members preferred marriage and family but it could afford single women and women escaping or eschewing a less than perfect domestic situation. The idea of supporting women to raise children without recourse to an individual male is a sound idea. I agree with SGB?s last post about economic dependence and abuse.

Slightly off topic but because women can offer it and men cannot men prohibit by law commercial surrogacy, in a sense cheating feminist women of being able to use one of their advantages over men.

The banning of payment in the UK for commercial surrogacy (although it's dead easy to procure in India anyway so not really much of a bar) is a feminist issue and the law should be changed.

Because we would love a system like India's where women are often forced into surrogacy so others can benefit.

Not all. Plenty of them want to and it transforms lives.

Xenia your posts terrify me.

Why can't you receive payments for being a surrogate. You have to change your life for 9 solid months!!!

Yes interesting Xenia that men "cheat" women out of one income stream from preventing the commercialisation of surrogacy, where one women might carry and sell a baby to a another women, heaven forbid, and yet positively endorse prostitution. Hilarious isn't it and yet no one really wants to challenge it instead we all roll up our sleeves and trot back to work! or the kitchen sink. Maybe it's ok in Xenia land to exploit Indian women, is that because they are indian or because they are poor?

Lurking, I'm not sure if I'm terrified or amused perhaps both.

My dad is recently returned from working with a charity that aides Indian women and children. The women within the org are usually single mothers, rescued sex workers/ and/or rescued surrogates. The surrogate / sex worker roles often overlap and neither benefited the women but the men who pimped them.

Some indian prostitutes and surrogates may benefit but the cost to women is high. Currently it is a form of expoitation that trades on the low status of many Indian women. That the market is increasingly an export one is another layer if expoitation.

Some interesting points on here. Espec' to see the argument that access to termination can be see as patriarchal & lessening women's rights.

Just to turn that on it's head for a moment - during my last pregnancy I was being pressured to have a termination (a v.long story I won't go into here - not by the baby's father tho'). That pressure seemed to trump my feelings, my beliefs, my body, the baby's body - everything. No-one seemed willing to listen to me and I ended up giving up trying to access medical care because I knew no one would listen or care about what was happening.

My case was unusual. Baby was ill, but no-one could tell how ill until birth. An early delivery could have enabled treatment for his illness, but cons refused. And yes, I have met several children with his condition who have both survived, had treatment & had good quality of life. My cons was a bloody sadist who did everything he could to manipulate and put pressure on me. That is a wonderful example of a man trying to subjugate a woman. Knowing that it was likely baby would die, we needed to manage his birth and death in a way that reduced his suffering (which cons refused) yet enabled us to cope mentally.

Your Dad sounds ace Purple I don't know much about surrogacy in India apart from the fact that it is women of lower economic status that undertake this. I'd like to find out more about it though.

Xenia, if men were given rights over the unborn child, women would be forced to continue with the pregnancy whilst either the man or the courts were able to arrange for a surrogate to take over. In what way would this help a a women who was suffering mentally/emotionally. Also how could it be established without doubt that the child she was carrying actually was the his biological child? I think it quite likely that such a law, given a time when we have that technology will be extremely damaging to women. Can you imagine a women who has been raped, reports this and the man is charged but it takes several months to go to court, what will happen to her rights then and indeed his? Could a women later claim she had been raped to prevent the father enforcing his right to have the child implanted into a surrogate?

Mini a friend of his runs it, he was amazed by what it has achieved and terrified by some of the realities he discovered.

Karen, your experience sounds truly dreadful. I hope you have been able to find some healing. How awful that 'unusual' meant unsupported and isolated:(