Impact of 2-child benefit cap on abortion decisions

[niceberg]

www.theguardian.com/society/2020/dec/03/two-child-limit-on-benefits-a-key-factor-in-many-abortion-decisions-says-charity

This was inevitable and as such must have been seen as an acceptable outcome by the government when it was introduced.

@jj1968

I know accidents happen but most are just careless

So what? Whilst I agree with all the points about abusive parents and the horrifying rape clause, what if someone just makes a mistake? What if they forget to take their pill, or go out and get pissed and have unprotected sex, or fall in love and have kids with someone then it all goes to shit? What if someone even just says fuck it, I like being a mum and I'm going to have loads of kids on benefits? Are you saying their children should be punished with hunger for a mistake made by the parents?

Those mother , and they are mothers in 95% of cases, are working. They are raising the next generation who will build and clean your houses. The ones who's low paid work props up your pension fund. The ones who even if they are surplus to requirement will place downward pressure on wages and keep profits and investment returns high. I can understand someone working minimum wage being a bit miffed at the parent next door who doesn't work and gets benefits for their kids, but not those who benefit so well from mass population, both at home and abroad. You have a good life because these mums, like the mums before them, are raising the next generation of workers. How dare you seek to emiserate and impoverish them even further by attacking their children of all people who are completely innocent in this scenario.

Oh the usual crap about all these wonderful children who are going to be building and cleaning houses!

I don't agree that 95% of woman have quite a few children are working. Not in my area they aren't. If they don't work how do you know their children will?

Also, as I said before, the planet is overpopulated. Even if you don't think it is the UK certainly is. There are far too many of us and every area suffers (and will get worse) because of it. Not enough housing which means ridiculously high house prices and rents, not enough jobs and this is going to get much worse because of covid, schools don't have enough money and can't cope, the NHS can't cope. The railways are packed to a dangerous level in rush hour as are the tubes. The roads are just a joke. A 10 minute journey so rarely takes 10 minutes unless you live in the middle of nowhere. More like half an hour at least.

We cannot just keep adding and adding to the population. Anyone with a brain would realise that.

No it's not fair that children suffer but they are going to suffer anyway in the future especially if we don't do something about the population numbers.

There are far too many of us and every area suffers (and will get worse) because of it. Not enough housing which means ridiculously high house prices and rents, not enough jobs and this is going to get much worse because of covid, schools don't have enough money and can't cope, the NHS can't cope. The railways are packed to a dangerous level in rush hour as are the tubes. The roads are just a joke. A 10 minute journey so rarely takes 10 minutes unless you live in the middle of nowhere. More like half an hour at least.

None of these problems are caused by over population, and none will be solved by punishing children with hunger and homelessness for the perceived sins of their parents.

Income protection Insurance is expensive. Very much.

The there's also the point that it only applies to people in work and who are then rendered unable to work through illness or injury, and who remain employed.

I'm not sure what this insurance argument is about. At all really. This is women's pregnancies and bodies. There is no payout related to that.

If she is in a relationship and the man has IP then it will pay if he is unable to work etc, according to the policy conditions. If he loses his job insurance ends unless he had bought redundancy cover which is even more pricey. You can't have an IP policy if you're not working full stop.

I fail to see how insurance helps much at all really.

According to the article a lot of women aborting have a partner in work. But can't afford it. So insurance has zero relevance.

@MsTSwift

I said my view was any family should ideally not have more than 2 children rich or poor and got accused of advocating forced abortion 🙄. Err no. I just think there are too many people on the planet as it is so financially incentivising people to have more seems odd.

Quite.

Personally I think encouraging family planning is a feminist issue. This thread has made me feel like the baby eating bishop of Bath and Wells!

@jj1968

There are far too many of us and every area suffers (and will get worse) because of it. Not enough housing which means ridiculously high house prices and rents, not enough jobs and this is going to get much worse because of covid, schools don't have enough money and can't cope, the NHS can't cope. The railways are packed to a dangerous level in rush hour as are the tubes. The roads are just a joke. A 10 minute journey so rarely takes 10 minutes unless you live in the middle of nowhere. More like half an hour at least.

None of these problems are caused by over population, and none will be solved by punishing children with hunger and homelessness for the perceived sins of their parents.

You seem to think that these hordes of women who can only afford to have children with the aid of benefits have no choice but to procreate. Contraception is widely available and accessible in this country - this policy is one of disincentivision, not punishment.

Agree with JJ

Infrastructure is the key. It's been run down.

6% of the UK is developed.

That means built on, just for clarity!

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-41901294

one extra person on the planet is a serious cost for everyone else.Any sensible policy in every country of the world must aim at reversing population increase, not encouraging, rewarding or enabling it, above all for those who have no alternative life but breeding, and for those who cannot adequately support and tend a child from their own resources

Also big housing developments greenlit by planning authorities without thought to how the existing, small infrastructure will cope. I know of a number of villages where this has caused chaos.

If you build 150 family homes in an area that has one school that is only set up for a small intake per year then you have a problem.

I really don't think some of these mothers are in a position to have life assurance or be likely to use contraception.

There's at least 3 downtrodden mums in my estate with psycho partners (fights, prison etc) who are on baby no.4, the younger kids born after the cap .I don't think they have much choice.

You really think the answer is more building more development more roads etc? I wish it wasn’t true either but there are too many of us it’s not sustainable. I spent a lot of time in rivers this summer they are so polluted barely any wildlife 🙁. A policy to encourage large families is madness.

No contraceptive is 100% effective. People talking about the morning after pill are overlooking the fact that a woman will only know a contraceptive failed when they realise they are pregnant - long after it's too late for that. We're talking regular families on modest incomes aborting accidental pregnancies because they will be denied child benefits, something previous generations have been paid in similar circumstances at various amounts going back to the seventies. Child benefits for all children bar the first child go back to the forties. In the Blair years income-related child tax credits were introduced to specifically tackle child poverty, a policy that proved to be very successful. Unfortunately the subsequent Tory governments have sought to effectively reverse this success by freezing the universal child benefit and reducing the value of child tax credits. Alongside the two child limit, a brutally blunt tool to save money (birth rates naturally fall as living standards rise, there's no need for this policy to reduce the birth rate, it was actually going down as benefits rose) and the benefit cap, the result has been to push an extra 1 million children into poverty since 2010.

I feel nothing but shame for a country that votes for and celebrates such widespread misery and deprivation. What happened to the country of Attlee, the welfare state and the NHS? What happened to "there but for the grace of God, go I"?t

@jj1968

There are far too many of us and every area suffers (and will get worse) because of it. Not enough housing which means ridiculously high house prices and rents, not enough jobs and this is going to get much worse because of covid, schools don't have enough money and can't cope, the NHS can't cope. The railways are packed to a dangerous level in rush hour as are the tubes. The roads are just a joke. A 10 minute journey so rarely takes 10 minutes unless you live in the middle of nowhere. More like half an hour at least.

None of these problems are caused by over population, and none will be solved by punishing children with hunger and homelessness for the perceived sins of their parents.

They certainly are as a result of far far too many people in the UK let alone in the world.

We are destroying everything. Animals have hardly any natural habitat left here which is why foxes etc are so common in built up areas.

No it's not fair that some children will suffer but we can't keep rewarding people for having children. I don't understand why we do. We should be rewarding people for choosing not to have children.

As I said before, it seems common now to have 3 children at least where 2 used to be the norm. Why?

@MsTSwift

You really think the answer is more building more development more roads etc? I wish it wasn’t true either but there are too many of us it’s not sustainable. I spent a lot of time in rivers this summer they are so polluted barely any wildlife 🙁. A policy to encourage large families is madness.

This is so true. Why can so many people not see it?

It's is frightening to think how the planet and, in particular, the UK are going to be in the future.

I am thankful every day that me and DH chose not to have children. The worry about their future would be unbearable

As I said before, it seems common now to have 3 children at least where 2 used to be the norm. Why?

Its not the fertility rate in the UK is 1.79. 3 kids or more is not the norm.

@NiceGerbil 6% of the uk is developed is a poor argument
You can't build on a river or a lake or a flood plain
Or somewhere like exmoor or the new forest or should all the animals just be killed off in favour of more humans
We are a very heavily populated country that is a facf .

@PodgeBod but that is because a lot of people choose to have no children or just one so they bring average down

@MsTSwift

You really think the answer is more building more development more roads etc? I wish it wasn’t true either but there are too many of us it’s not sustainable. I spent a lot of time in rivers this summer they are so polluted barely any wildlife 🙁. A policy to encourage large families is madness.

There was no more a policy to encourage large families than the existence of disability benefits encouraged people to become disabled. Even before the cap benefits were a pittance that only provided the most basic kind of life, and I don't care if you know someone on benefits with a playstation, I bet you don't know anyone on benefits who takes long haul flights, or drives a 4x4, or rents out poorly insulated slum housing and has shares in an oil company.

The environmental problems we face are not caused by poor people having too many babies, they are caused by the rich and the affuent middle classes, who of course would far rather fruitlessly punish the poor than curb their own lifestyles. And if you genunely believe overpopulation is the problem then perhaps it's time to stop incentivising the rich to have kids with their elite schools and trust funds and second homes and taxes that clearly aren't high enough to disincentivise the rich from having kids. Let's tax all inheritence over the cost of an average house at 100% and put the money into developing renewables and creating a sustainable infrastructure.

@Prestel contraceptives are pretty reliable yes they sometimes fail but if you use the pill and a condom you would be very unlucky.
Morning after pill is for when people know protection has failed etc
Of all my friends I do not know anyone who's contraception has failed, I know many who forgot to take a pill etc but most are like 98/99 % effective . So thats not that many people really its failing for .

@timeforanewstart that still means that its not the norm to have 3 or more children. We aren't even averaging 2 per women. We are below replacement level.

It is though. I don’t disagree with your ideas but I do hold firm that no one rich or poor should be having more than 2 children in this environment. I don’t really understand your analogy you can’t choose to be disabled but usually you can choose whether to have a child or continue a pregnancy. There are rare exceptions but in this country for the majority that is the case.

@jj1968 I don't know many working people who drive a 4x4 though either
I know plenty of working people who actually can't afford to buy there child a playstation as well
Benefits were introduced as a stop gap not a way of life
And if you actually think some people didn't do well on old system then I would say you don't know many people
I know people who were worse off when they went to work all things considered.
I know people on benefits who have gone abroad as well on old style system.
Have you ever actually claimed benefits?
The ones who take more than they should then means there is less for the geniune disabled person who is really struggling or the single guy who is entitled to hardly anything
Some people were getting £30000 in benefits , 2 people working full time min wage don't bring home that much

@PodgeBod well then if thats the case you could argue that the cap is in line ( infact just over ) what the average amount of children people have is

I think there's a bit of a "why don't you?" argument going on in this thread where it's easy to think of logical solutions to problems, but the logical solutions goes amiss when you're actually faced with this situation and the emotions accumulated in your own life.

I'm on a low income, I do what I can to avoid pregnancy but there's no way I would be able to make myself abort my child if I fell pregnant. I'm very much pro-choice, and I also very much believe in the rights to not make the choice to have an abortion. I would probably have a hellishly low income existence if I fell pregnant right now rather than have an abortion, which may cost the government more in other contexts.

There needs to be improved education and accessibility in relation to sexual health, and we need to work on building the economy back up. Saying "nobody should be having more than two kids" or anything along those lines is unrealistic.

@NiceGerbil

Agree with JJ

Infrastructure is the key. It's been run down.

6% of the UK is developed.

Quite large parts of Scotland isn't developed- it's not developed for a very good reason. It's nonsense to suggest that the fact there are remote parts of the UK that over- population isn't a problem.