Can I be pro-choice, but still really dislike some reasons and timing?

[CuntyBunty]

Can I?
I really dislike celeb culture and try not to expose myself to it, if at all possible.
I think we all know who I am talking about here, but didn't want to go on the other AIBU as it was "too too" and I wouldn't get much out of a piley-in to put the boot in.
In this case, can my contempt transcend gender? I had to Google who JC was the other day and we have very different values, but I do know that I am more privileged; better start in life, higher expectations etc.
I in no way think she should have the baby if she doesn't want it, no good could come of an enforced pregnancy, but I don't think my feelings really come from a concern for her welfare.
I have been honest here in an attempt to be better educated by the FWR posse, but I'm a bit of a mediocre feminist, aren't I?

[GeraldineFangedVagine]

It seems to me, from that BPAS report, that services for women requiring late terminations need to be vastly improved. It seems unacceptable that due to lack of services, appointments or properly informed doctors women have to continue with a pregnancy due to the current law. Terrible that someone should visit a GP (in a position of power) to be told its too late or not possible and even worse to then find services to assist but run out of time.

[TheDoctrineOfSnatch]

The other things we get "on demand" are usually entertainment, like movies. It also has connotations of immediate - press a button and get it.

[almondcakes]

Buffy, I don't think you are being confrontational at all, particularly given that at the core of what I'm saying is a position usually argued by people who don't care very much about women's rights at all.

I think there are very many decisions made all the time in medicine that force people to do things with their bodies that they don't want to do. There are treatments denied to people based on the financial cost, which force people to die or become disabled when they don't want to do that with their body at all. There are people who suffer in pain for months or years because they are denied treatment for avoidable reasons - waiting lists, conditions of being allowed treatment, prioritising some patients and conditions over others. There are lots of situations in birth where women are made to have treatments or give birth in ways they do not want.

One that sticks in my mind from a few years ago was a woman with mouth cancer, where HCPs diagnosed her not as having cancer and instead of having some kind of mental health problem where she was inventing or imagining illnesses. She was eventually diagnosed, but not after a long period of counselling for a mental health condition that she didn't actually have because she wasn't imagining the symptoms at all.

All these issues would still be applied (and in a sexist manner) to abortion.

The difference of course is in the principle and the way that gets discussed, which is that many people don't want women to have abortions because they don't think those people matter specifically because they are women, and so apply a set of principles to abortion that wouldn't be applied in making ethical decisions about the law for anyone else. And that's why (I assume) so many people will come back to defending the principle that women should have equal rights to bodily autonomy, because it is under attack. And it is under attack in so many ways, from the most smallest forms of boundary crossing to the biggest human rights abuses, that feeling that we don't have bodily autonomy is a common experience (I certainly feel that way), and women not having the right to a late abortion has an impact on specific people in the circumstances, but it also reinforces the feelings many of us have about our own experiences of harassment, lack of safety, sex, birth and even things like food.

[TheDoctrineOfSnatch]

Yy creeping.

[Creeping]

As a total side issue, I think the words "abortion on demand" are poorly chosen. Instead "the right to abortion to term" would be better. I associate the words "on demand" with a fictitious woman who just changes her mind about wanting a baby for perceived superficial reasons and goes on to demand an abortion, suggesting that this is a regular occurance. It gives the wrong idea about the reasons that women in reality have about wanting/needing an abortion at a late stage.

[almondcakes]

Buffy, I'm not assuming the law would be made by in our society. I'm just thinking through what would happen in the situation Basil wrote about, where society is as it is now, but late abortion on demand was legal.

My earlier posts where I first brought up this whole issue (which is contentious, and I understand why, given the reasons people who argue against late abortion usually use) were based on the following:

I do not know of any cases where a woman has basic human rights and would think that an abortion at 35 weeks for social (perhaps I would have better worded that as psychological) reasons was in her best interests.

There are many cases where women don't have basic human rights and it is in their best interests to have a very late abortion. In Basil's case, would we even say that the woman in question does have basic human rights?

And I don't know what the solution to that is. Do we work towards abortion as the poor solution to human rights breaches but better than no solution (I'm certainly not arguing for removing existing late abortion rights in cases globally where someone will kill the newborn anyway or leave the mother and child and existing siblings to starve), or to improving human rights, or is it best to work for both? And if we're not fighting for it as a poor solution to human rights abuses, in what other situations is it of practical use?

The workable solution in Basil's example would be that the woman within that society was given an abortion, no ethical questions asked, but then she would be given an exceptional level of bodily autonomy, not given to other patients and certainly not given to women giving birth at term. I'm not against that on the basis that I do think sometimes particular groups need more rights, but then that is no longer an argument for equality of bodily autonomy.

The thing so far on this thread that has most swayed me to thinking we need to change the UK law and allow more late abortions is the women who simply don't realise they are pregnant or don't realise how many months pregnant they are. That must happen quite frequently.

I don't actually have any answers here (so sorry for long posts), but I do think this can't just be about a principle. It has to be (for me) about how we can improve women's right to make a choice, and that has to be just as much about changing the context that women get to make those choices in, and I don't think the principle and the context can be separated in practice.

[AskBasil]

I think the issue of abortion is bound up with that issue of controlling women via their children. It's all related.

[AskBasil]

Actually in my example I think if we lived in a non patriarchal society she would not need an abortion, because that abusive man would not be given the right to control her via her child.

Apart from physical violence, using their children to control women has always been patriarchy's most successful technique and it's not surprising that it's being employed very successfully by abusive men as actual physical violence is becoming unacceptable.

[almondcakes]

Basil, I can think of lots of reasons in theory why a woman might want to have an abortion at 35 weeks. And like yours, they're often created by the sexist reality of life. But we then have to look at what would happen in theory in those cases if abortion on demand was legal.

People who are going through any kind of major medical event involving HCPs do not have complete bodily autonomy. The HCPs are involved in making decisions in (supposedly) the best interests of the patient.

In the case of the woman 30 weeks pregnant about to travel to an arranged marriage, a real case (who we don't know much about), what would happen if she turned up at 30 weeks because she had gone into early labour, or even at 40 weeks and went into labour and then had a still born baby? If she then expressed to HCPs that she was leaving hospital immediately so that she could go home, hide the fact she had ever been pregnant and get on a plane to another country where she also would not tell anyone, potentially to a rural setting with no health care, where she may not be allowed to leave the home or village (as frequently happens), to marry someone who she barely knows and is going to pretend to be a virgin to, the HCP would not go, okay fine. There would be a team of social workers involved, women from charities for British Asian women or a government department dealing with marriages like this, to try and get her to stay in the UK, move to a place of safety and continue receiving post natal care. It may be the case that if she refused post natal care that they felt she required, she could be sectioned and forced to receive it.

So if that woman turns up at 30 weeks and wants an abortion on the basis of this whole keep it a secret and fly to another continent plan, are HCPs going to, within any kind of ethical guidelines, agree to induce an abortion at that point, and be able to ethically decide that letting someone have a late abortion (when the woman has informed HCPs of their plan afterwards) that the woman is not at risk of death, disability and long term health problems if she undergoes such a major procedure under such circumstances.

The same would apply if she was from a religious family who didn't agree with transplants. Would a HCP agree to move a transplant forward by 10 weeks so that somebody could go home after major surgery and tell nobody about it then get on a plane. Surely there would be major ethical reasons to refuse the treatment at that point?

In your theoretical situation, the woman must have some conversation with the HCP about why she is having the abortion. If she gives the reasons you have said, what are HCPs going to do about it? They may do something vastly inappropriate (as you have outlined other government agencies are likely to do in response to the situation), she may get sectioned under some diagnosis because they think she is making stuff up or simply vindictive (according to them), she may be adequately treated by agencies actually dealing with the abusive man (unlikely, but possible). Whatever happens, there would be some process of counselling and consultation which would delay the process, also then putting her at risk of having the abusive man use the abortion request as reason for getting more control of the child if she does go on to have it. Whatever happens, it is not going to be as simple as the HCP just going, you want an abortion, go ahead, I'm not considering the ethics of what will physically or psychologically happen to you despite the fact that I have to do so in every other medical procedure.

Abortion on demand in principle would put late abortions on the same level as other medical procedures ethically. It would in theory give pregnant women the same level of autonomy as men having surgery. In reality it would probably put women seeking abortions at the same level of autonomy as pregnant women not seeking abortions but under NHS treatment for being pregnant. In theory it would involve reasonable ethical decision making by HCPS and in reality it would probably involve misogynistic and paternalistic ethical decision making by HCPS to the same extent that decisions about wanted pregnancies are made. Either way, abortion on demand in law does not actually mean the woman would be granted the abortion.

The theoretical case you mentioned is one where government agencies treat a woman inappropriately, and by legalising late abortion on demand, suddenly the NHS, another government agency, will agree to the abortion on the basis that it is going to behave appropriately despite operating in an inappropriate society and itself making inappropriate ethical decisions about birth all the time. I cannot see that she would be allowed an abortion, even if the legal framework allowed women to have one for their psychological well being, because the whole context of your example is that society does not recognise that her psychological wellbeing is at risk due to a DV situation. Another woman may get a late abortion under such a law, but I very much doubt this DV victim would.

[evertonmint]

I'm 33 weeks pregnant with DC3. I could not abort this baby. But I have a good DH, a supportive family, more than enough money for a good life, good physical and mental health, and the list goes on. It doesn't mean everyone is in this sort of good place to be having a child.

Realistically, there are likely to be very few women indeed who would want an abortion at this late stage. But that doesn't mean we should deny them that right. Otherwise we are forcing them to become a mother, for the rest of their life, against their wishes, which is putting the foetus's rights way ahead of the mother. Hence I am pro abortion to term, despite personally hoping nobody ever does abort so late.

I think in my own heart, personally, I take a gradualist approach to when a foetus acquires rights - I don't believe it is human and has rights from the moment of conception. I had a mc at 7 weeks: I emotionally lost the idea of a baby, but the actual physical loss was a bunch of cells that were not capable of becoming human hence my body rejecting them. It was not a baby. But nor do I personally think it has no rights until it's independent from me. But I can't easily define when the foetus physically becomes human or starts acquiring rights, and everybody sets their limits differently, so it makes much more sense to me that abortion be available to term rather than not at all or at some arbitrary date.

Interestingly, the 24 week cut off could have been a huge problem for me in my first pregnancy through no fault of my own. Due to an incredibly busy baby boom at my hospital, I didn't have my anomaly scan until 23+1 - that would have given us 5 days to decide upon and arrange an abortion if there were anomalies which meant we didn't want to proceed with the pregnancy. I know you can get an abortion after 24 weeks for severe anomalies, but I suspect that would be made much harder to obtain. I was very very conscious of the deadline in the run up to my scan, and I think it is what has made me more inclined to support abortion to term as it made it clear that an arbitrary cut off does not work for every woman for all sorts of reasons.

[OrangeMochaFrappucino]

Penguins and Buffy thanks for explaining what I think more clearly than I could! You both articulated it much better than me.

[OrangeMochaFrappucino]

No, not that I would have terminated for that reason or would think anyone else would. Just that I guess at that stage I couldn't think of it as less than a newborn baby with the same rights as a newborn even though he wasn't born for a few more hours. I realise I phrased it badly and it does sound like a strange scenario which was not what I meant. I think I just struggle with the concept of abortion on demand to term and was thinking of when my baby was term and I was making decisions about his wellbeing. But it's obviously a very complex debate and thinking of my own planned and wanted pregnancy isn't really relevant - fortunately, I've never had to consider what it would be like to not want to proceed with a pregnancy.

I think that what I really meant to say was that I'm sure plenty of people who consider themselves feminists might find the concept of abortion on demand to term quite difficult. I really don't think I'm qualified to discuss it anyway.

[PenguinsLoveFishFingers]

That's not how I read Jelly's comment Creeping. I read it as meaning that she saw a foetus of that gestation having a right to be protected from harm. In her case, the comparatively low risk associated with not inducing, but with wider applications for the 'right to protection' in general.

[Creeping]

What a strange hypothetical scenario, Jelly. Do you really think there would be women who would terminate a wanted baby at 37 weeks because it won't be a homebirth, if there was a right to terminate at any point in the pregnancy? Or why did you post your own situation to illustrate?

I'm with you on that I don't feel comfortable with the termination of healthy viable babies, but I am with Buffy that that goes for my choices, with my own body. Not for others'.

[OrangeMochaFrappucino]

I cross posted with that scenario. I don't know what the right answer is in that case.

[OrangeMochaFrappucino]

I can't imagine that women would be asking for abortions in the third trimester unless in very extreme circumstances. Obviously in the case that a baby will be born only to suffer and die, the best thing for the mother and foetus may well be a late term abortion. I very much doubt women would ask for an abortion at this stage because they changed their mind about pregnancy - and if they did, how many doctors would agree to do this?

Even though I don't think it would happen, I still can't agree with the theoretical concept of abortion on demand, to term, for any reason whatsoever. Eighteen days ago, my waters broke at 37 weeks. The hospital wanted to induce me as labour didn't get going within 24 hours and although I had my heart set on a home birth, I eventually agreed to induction because I weighed up the needs of my baby along with my own and felt that it wasn't fair of me to risk the baby's health for my own wishes. I honestly don't believe that at that moment I would have had the right to terminate that baby's life; I don't believe my right to bodily autonomy outweighed the baby's right to life at that point. I understand that it's difficult to set limits and pinpoint specific dates and that all cases are different... but I cannot agree with the theoretical idea that a woman could end a healthy full-term baby's life. My newborn has a right to his life and I don't think that right was only granted to him the moment his head emerged from my body. I don't know the exact moment he got this right, but I definitely didn't have the right to deny him this up to birth.

In the case of babies with conditions incompatible with life, I hold the same views that I do wrt euthanasia - that no one should have to suffer unnecessarily. And it's up to the mother to make decisions in the best interest of her baby, so if that is a late term abortion then she should be allowed one. But I can't feel the same about healthy and viable babies, I just can't. And I still consider myself a feminist.

[AskBasil]

So I've just thought of a social situation where an abortion at 35 weeks may become essential for non medical reasons.

A woman who has been subjected to Domestic Violence who has just come out of her denial. Relationship busts up, abuser realises he is going to lose control of her and tells her that he will control her through her child. He's going to fight her for care and control, there is no record of DV (because most victims don't report until they've experienced 30+ physical attacks), there's a good chance a judge will look sympathetically on his application for joint care and control as he has flexible hours and a supportive family. This violent abusive man is going to have sole contact with her child and use that contact to abuse his child and control her for the next 18 years, with an ongoing threat of court cases for sole care and control every time she steps out of line. She will never be able to move to improve her career chances, she'll never be able to move to where she has a better support network. She's utterly trapped.

I can imagine a woman making a rational, sane, humane decision that the best outcome is an abortion in those circumstances.