When abortion is banned

[MsAmerica]

Poland shows the risks for women when abortion is banned
By Katrin Bennhold and Monika Pronczuk

She knew that there was a short window to induce birth or surgically remove the fetus to avert infection and potentially fatal sepsis. But even as she developed a fever, vomited and convulsed on the floor, it seemed to be the baby’s heartbeat that the doctors were most concerned about.

“My life is in danger,” she wrote in a string of distressed text messages to her mother and husband that was shared with The New York Times by her family’s lawyer. “They cannot help as long as the fetus is alive thanks to the anti-abortion law,” she wrote only hours before she died. “A woman is like an incubator.”

www.nytimes.com/2022/06/12/world/europe/poland-abortion-ban.html

worldnewsera.com/news/europe/poland-shows-the-risks-for-women-when-abortion-is-banned/

www.ekathimerini.com/nytimes/1186635/poland-shows-the-risks-for-women-when-abortion-is-banned/

If only it were the same in the UK; not just Great Britain.

While the battle over abortion rights rages in the US the problem of access to abortion services is yet to be fully resolved in part of the UK.

www.theguardian.com/world/2022/may/04/abortion-services-in-northern-ireland-almost-nonexistent-despite-legalisation

Malta is not one of the Channel Islands

100 hundred MPs, mainly Conservative and DUP, voted not to allow abortions in Northern Ireland. It is logistically still impossible it appears to get an abortion in Northern Ireland.

Now they are going after Federal statue that allows contraception and same sex marriage. One senator wants to open the decision to outlaw race segregation on schools even!

Most TDs who voted against it did so because it was unconstitutional and wouldn't have passed. The bill itself was essentially a stunt to raise awareness, even if 100% of TDs had voted for it, it couldn't have passed without a referendum to remove the 8th.

It's the same as when people criticise Leo Varadkar for voting against SSM. He did so because the presented bill would never have passed into law. The furthest it could have gotten would have had it immediately challenged in the Supreme Court where there clear precedent is to uphold the constitution in the spirit in which it was written. TD's not voting for bills that can't ever become legal due to their unconstitutional position is a TD doing their job properly within the law, regardless of how we feel about how things should be.

In the case of both SSM and the 8th, things were set in motion to bring about constitutional referendums that changed the constitution and most of those same TDs then immediately voted to change the law. As angry as I feel that the 8th amendment ever happened in Ireland, it really, really doesn't help to criticise TDs who acted as they had to under the supreme law of the country. Especially if within 3 years, they played a part in changing that supreme law and followed up by introducing even more liberal laws than those they initially couldn't ratify.

As outrageous as it sounds, this isn't even an isolated proposal.

I have really been set off this past weekend by several posts advising that we just listen to what the other side has to say. I live in the US and have been listening to this kind of insanity over and over. There is a concerted effort here to twist and repackage any kind of medical or scientific fact to support their position that abortions are not health care.

I have listened and really paid attention to what they have been saying for decades and the enormity of it is too difficult to fully relate on a SM site it's far beyond some people just thinking you shouldn't be able to randomly abort a seventeen week fetus.
It's well into the fertilized egg worship stage. So much so that you are going to see this expand into birth control and elective sterilization (already a problem).

I also want to note that I've seen some carryover of right wing arguments from the US into recent mumsnet posts. Not just posters with pro life leanings ( I can respect that POV) but also certain lines of arguments or even turns of phrase that definitely came from the US.

This is just so absolutely horrific and vile that I can't even find the right words!

And I'm saying this as a woman who has had an abortion - one of so-called "convenience", as the forced-birthers would term it: I was young and healthy, so was my then husband, nothing was medically wrong with that embryo (not even a foetus yet at 9 weeks) to the best of our knowledge.

We were just young, poor, both still studying, and having a hard time making ends meet with student loans and our part-time jobs. My family didn't have the funds to support us and his (from a developing country) relied upon us to feed them rather than vice versa.

Not carrying this pregnancy to term has allowed for both of us to have graduated, for me to become a senior executive at a global corporation who will never be as desperate financially as I was then (and: during my childhood) ever again, and for my now ex to have a slightly less high-powered job that still allows him to feed both the two children he has since had, his parents, various aunts and uncles and have a very good standard of living. Having that child would have meant that, at best, one of us would have graduated. We arguably wouldn't have gone on to take the MScs and PhD we have today. I am not sorry!

I am 40 now, no children, TTC. It might not happen. This pregnancy might have been the only shot I ever had at being a mum. But even if it was: I am not sorry! The mere fact that ex's two wonderful little girls get to grow up "not poor - not like their dad and I did" alone would make me not regret it. Never mind all of the other good things that have happened to us because we did not have a baby we neither wanted nor could afford at a very young age!

And, again: this is the story of an abortion for "mere convenience" and the impact it has had on many people's lives. We weren't even in a "particularly difficult" situation, in comparison. Just young, broke, and unlucky with a broken condom.

My heart truly breaks for women in much more dire circumstances. At least, if I had been forced to give birth, arguably both my child and I would still be alive and healthy.

When abortion is banned and prominent "feminists" are silent (brave brave JKR)- or only see it as an opportunity to attack trans people- then you are welcoming fascism.

@antifascist what on earth are you on about? If you want to criticise someone could you do it directly and clearly, perhaps?

Oh look, it's another trans activist whose only contribution to the fight for women's rights is complaining about whether another woman has said something or not.

If you have something worth saying about abortion access, say it yourself, instead of making vague comments about how someone hasn't said it for you.

What on earth is anti on about?

Oh bless you. What a beautiful post x

It's just another agitator whose only thought in this crisis for women is how he or she can use this to sow dissension amongst women.

Look how he or she can't even bother to use specific words to describe who this will impact (women) and why (misogyny and weak arguments from the supposedly pro-choice side). It's just the all-purpose "fascism" because they don't dare admit that women are specifically oppressed. And that deliberate wearing of blinkers on the part of the so-called progressives is exactly why the attempt to overturn Roe v. Wade succeeded.

Bet our friend here doesn't describe Malta as a fascist state though, and they have the most oppressive legislation in Europe.

I cant even make sense of the post

@Wanderingowl , I see from the debate that is what Varadkar stated he didn't support it because it was unconstitutional. Maybe it is why he wouldn't support it , and maybe not. LV said I consider myself to be pro-life, as I accept that the unborn is a human life with rights and I do not support abortion on request or on demand .

They could have still voted for the bill. Or abstained. It needed to go through more stages in any case. And, referred to the president. It was precisely to force this issue into the light.

At this juncture, I am sure Deputies who support this proposal will question why I am not advocating the need for a referendum, if I truly believe that the eighth amendment is too restrictive. As I said in December, the current Government has no electoral mandate to hold a referendum .

Holding a referendum and acting on the outcome is a direct mandate on an issue.

As Catherine Murphy pointed out (mind you Catherine said she was pro-choice, unlike Leo) on the debate. The Minister spoke about not having a mandate. I wonder when he will get a mandate. Will it be in the Fine Gael election manifesto seeking a repeal of the eighth amendment through a referendum? Other matters have been dealt with without a mandate. For example, the introduction of a property tax was expressly in the manifestoes of the two Government parties but they said the opposite of what happened. It strikes me that this is a means of avoiding taking a decision that needs to be taken.

I have to have a look to see if I can find the electoral mandate for the introduction of the gender recognition act, and the form in which it was passed.
Knowing how terribly fussy the (overwhelmingly male, with some women) TD's are about ensuring they have a public mandate. Or, maybe that is only used as an excuse in some circumstances.

www.oireachtas.ie/en/debates/debate/dail/2015-02-06/2/

Mind you, I suppose Irish women were incredibly lucky that a question which had been put to the electorate (by a previous government) in an earlier referendum was not passed. The question about whether women were free to travel abroad for an abortion.

This is NOTHING to do with trans people. Sometimes there are issues that affect women, that have fuck all to do with transwomen. Horrifying, and probably literally violent, but true.

Roe vs Wade was not overturned because of weak arguments or progressives wearing blinkers. It has been systematically attacked over and over again by bills introduced at the state level, upheld by multiple federal judges appointed by Republicans, this is the result of a cohesive, coordinated, multi prong attack that has been going on for years. Why do you think multiple conservative states had trigger laws already in place?
This would have happened even we didn't have a single trans individual in the US.

I don't think it's accurate to blame this current state of affairs on trans activism. It's a little troubling to me to see feminists like WOLF align themselves with anti abortionist organizations. I'm gender critical myself but my priories will always be women's reproductive freedom first and foremost.

I do not disagree that this has been in the works for years, and that states have been prepared for the case law being overturned. I am referring to the last ditch attempts to defend women in the courts.

EXTRACT

I think the effort to replace biological sex with gender made the advocates for Roe/Casey incompetent to argue for women’s rights. Men are not women and the difference matters on a lot of levels. The left & Biden marched forward with a brief that ignored women and their history.

The refused to make historical arguments women could make—they insisted on making the due process argument, the same one essentially made in Obergefell, but relying on modern changes in how we think about women.

Thread from Professor Carter

She is not the only one who felt that the advocates' need not to compromise their allegiance to gender identity theory weakened their arguments.

We will never get to find out what would have happened in another world - perhaps it would always have been overturned, no matter how weak the case the pro-lifers made, on account of who the judges were. But we can look at the arguments each team of advocates made in this world, and decide whether they truly did a decent job of it.

The fight for women's autonomy is being made more difficult than it naturally is, by language that dewomanises the issue. Look at these two polls in the screenshot. Very similarly phrased questions, but one mentions women and thoe other doesn't. If you don't mention women, fewer people support the right to legal and safe abortions.

Roe vs Wade was based on right to privacy and due precise arguments in 1973. But not because of transgenderism They could hardly have shown up for Dobbs and said oh no, we really meant all of these other points.

Anti abortion legislation has been introduced at the state level every single year, whether based on heartbeat activity, clinic regulations, tax payer funding, waiting periods, whatever. A constant chipping away and multi lateral approach supported by institutions devoted to returning women to their natural place in the home nurturing children as God intended.

Every. Single. Year.

They could have included the phrase adult human female in every sentence and the stacked court would have done what it did, just as it will do what Clarence Thomas has suggested they do for birth control and gay marriage. And when they do it will not be because anyone has forgotten what women are or what they think we are here for.

When they do it, it will be with the assistance of GC activists because some of you are in alignment with their conservative values. But I don't think you can lay this at the floor of transactivism, the republicans are fully responsible for this. It has always been their number one priority.

Excellent points by boxowine. This has nothing whatsoever to do with trans activists- Those of you who are using. the reversal of Roe v Wade and the denial of abortion rights as an opportunity to attack trans people and trans activists (sometimes in alliance with the very same groups who have worked so hard to take the rights of women away) are deeply deluded.

That Ditum, Sodha and Turner have all used the overturning of Roe v Wade by the Supreme Court to blame trans people is very troubling.

The fact that Rowling has had nothing to say about the judgment at all to her 13 million twitter followers suggests that she's more concerned about her US sales than she is about the rights of women in the US.

antifascist
Pray put a sock in it. You are the one diverting this thread to trans people and your beef with women who do not share your beliefs in gender identity theory.

As you clearly care nothing for women who need safe legal and accessible terminations, go away.

Actually on topic with this thread, I agree that local abortion legislation should be mentioned in Foreign Office advice.

Women should not be paying to go to holiday destinations that will let us die.

When it comes to the Women’s Liberation Front (WoLF), as Helen Joyce writes in her excellent book Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality:

It was left to the Women’s Liberation Front (WoLF), a small radical-feminist network, to argue that Stephens’s demand to be allowed to dress as a woman made sense in the context of sex-separated dress codes only if you define manhood and womanhood as the performance of masculinity and femininity.

WoLF’s positions are those of feminism’s second wave, and had Stephens argued instead that neither men nor women should be required to follow sex-stereotyped dress codes, it would have agreed wholeheartedly. But filing an amicus brief to the Supreme Court in support of a conservative employer represented by the Alliance Defending Freedom meant that both it and its arguments were dismissed by pretty much every other left-wing group. It is a catch-22 that Natasha Chart, chair of its board until mid-2021, is very familiar with: speak up against gender self-ID and get called a shill for the Right; or stay silent and see other left-wingers claim that only the Right is opposed.

In 2015, Chart had been sacked from her job with a reproductive-rights campaign group for writing about her opposition to legalised prostitution and gender self-ID. None of the allies from her long history of feminist and environmental activism supported her; instead they ‘unfriended me, denounced me, described me as a physical threat to trans people, said I was genocidal’. Then, as one left-wing group after another adopted the self-ID cause, she watched those former allies campaign for male rapists and murderers to be allowed to transfer to women’s prisons on demand.

‘I did not come to politics to work with people who gave this little of a fuck about women prisoners, who everybody knows have overwhelmingly been victims of child-abuse, domestic violence and commercial sex exploitation,’ she says. ‘These women have no political representation, cannot vote, cannot talk to the press. And the people who should be speaking up for them have abandoned them. If my two options are talk to the ADF, or talk to somebody on the Left who calls me a fascist KKK bleep bleep bleep and hopes I die in a fire, is it even a choice?’

Asking for clarification here. s it appropriate to mention trans people and trans rights when commenting on the overturning of Roe v Wade by the Supreme Court.

Those who object to this will I'm sure be criticising Sarah Ditum, Sonia Sodha and Janice Turner, all of whom chose to comment on the decision by attacking and activists and their supporters, and suggesting it was in some way their fault.

Turner chose to express her opinion in a newspaper which supported the overturning of Roe v Wade

Is the fa f that every single time you've posted, numerous posters have told you to put a sock In it not a clue?

FWIW, I'm vehemently pro trans and have had murders on the feminist board but this is not the place or time and you are out of line.

Youve yet to explain what trans has to do with anything.

So the answer to my question

"Is it appropriate to mention trans people when discussing the overturning of Roe v Wade ?"

is "yes if you are a prominent journalist using your platform to hit out at trans activists"

Otherwise you should "put a sock in it".

Thanks