Roe v Wade overturned

[yourhairiswinterfire]

Fucking devastating.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/world-us-canada-61709865

@LemonSwan I understand you think it's simple, but I don't, and lots of other people don't.

And I think people on both sides who claim it is simple are the extremists.

Are you a woman and have you bought children into this world?

I’m with you MalagaNights about nuance and complexity. There is a balance to be struck.

I think the balance is about right in the UK currently. As mentioned previously I would make tweaks to make access easier for women in the first 10 weeks but I would leave the rest in place.

Agreed. It’s not complex at all. Either you think women and girls have the right to decide for themselves if and whether to become mothers. Or you don’t.

As early as possible and as late as necessary and for whatever reason.

Yes.

Your assumption all women would agree with you illustrates incredible narrow experience and mind.

You consistently make similar assumptions, Malaga.

What similar assumptions to questioning an individual poster's sex, based on their opinion, have I made?

I was just asking Malaga to try to understand the type of person I was having a discussion with - you are just a set of black and white letters after all.

So whilst you have started throwing insults I can say that’s not something usually rational and nuanced people tend to do. It’s generally the extremists who don’t like dissenting opinions. That’s a type of entitlement.

So tbh I don’t really think you think this is complex. I think you are here to goad women. Because they haven’t tightened abortion rules have they - where a discussion about the extent may be useful. They have banned abortions full stop.

You can discuss away into a pointless void musing about the whataboutery. I won’t be joining you

I meant, Malaga, that you make very narrow assumptions about women and what we want based on your own experience and views - and not just in this thread.

For me, this plays into the 'women don't know what is best for themselves' trope. Vanishingly few women use abortion as a contraceptive. All the women I know who have gone through this process, me included, agonised, cried, and suffered psychological trauma (at the time and for years afterward). But we made the decision because there was no alternative - no nirvana if free childcare, state financial support, and in my case, permanent injunctions against violent, abusive and dangerous partners. For another friend, no nirvana that provided her with the resources to add a fourth child to her marriage; for another no nirvana that her 14 year old self could access. All of us suffered deeply. But, being forced to give birth would have been so much worse - mental health breakdown, poverty, abuse - the list goes on.

My heart goes out to the US women who are facing this, as it did, and still does, to our NI counterparts.

As a PP poster said - this will not stop abortion, it will stop safe abortions.

I do think it's deeply complex.

I think both sides who claim simplicity and superior morality are wrong.

That may rile you but doesn't mean I'm here to goad you.
I just have a different view and found being questioned on my sex revealed more about you than me.

@YetAnotherSpartacus you seem to have issues with me from other threads which I'm oblivious to.

PomegranateOfPersephone thank you for posting the stats. As you can imagine, that statistic of 1% of abortions in total happening above 20 weeks, is down to a tiny fraction way <1% by 23 weeks+ 6 days (possibly involving so few women that it would compromise their anonymity if they gave out the exact number? I haven’t found the link and checked..).

The number of abortions taking place above 20 weeks decreases sharply week on week because nobody wants to be having an abortion at a later stage unless they are in really desperate circumstances.

As you can see from this NHS info there isn’t fetal viability until 24 weeks and above www.nhs.uk/pregnancy/week-by-week/13-to-27/24-weeks/

Worth bearing in mind that as I have posted upthread that currently not all women in Northern Ireland and Scotland are able to access abortion within the legal limits of <24wks that the law already permits to them.

That is really worrying and points to a cultural resistance in healthcare in the UK against women having access to abortion at later stages. The law should be able to secure women’s rights. But it can’t seem to do that, or Westminster lawmakers don’t seem to want to make it actually work, to give women the opportunity to actually access their legal rights.

Stigmatisation just deters doctors and nurses from training and working and caring in that area, which denies the most vulnerable women the care that they need. Which (going back to yesterday’s Supreme Court Decision in the US) is why multiple state-wide bans are going to have such a decimating practical effect on women’s access to reproductive healthcare for years to come, even if the legal bans can be reversed in a few years. Which isn’t a given, anyway.

When it comes to arguments for allowing abortions, the philosopher Judith Jarvis Thomson's thought experiments in her 1971 essay A Defense of Abortion are still salient: eclass.uoa.gr/modules/document/file.php/PPP475/Thomson%20Judith%20Jarvis%2C%20A%20defense%20of%20abortion.pdf

Oops, I meant to include a link to Wikipedia's summary: en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Defense_of_Abortion

Here is the link Slothtoes

www.gov.uk/government/statistics/abortion-statistics-for-england-and-wales-2020/abortion-statistics-england-and-wales-2020

I really feel for our sisters in NI. I imagine that the root of the problem there is a mixture of the DUP being very anti and the proximity of the Republic of Ireland where tragically a woman died unnecessarily from an ectopic pregnancy before the change in the law. Seems like the Republic had a good process, was it citizens assemblies or something like that? I don’t fully grasp all the details of the situation in NI.

I am quite surprised and troubled about Scotland, I didn’t realise they had similar problems in accessing abortion.

It seems to me that stigmatisation in England at least is unlikely in the immediate future. In the circles I am moving anyway, I have a fair few friends and acquaintances who have had abortions and told me about it with no apparent sense of stigma.

I don’t think we will go the same way as the US, I hope not at least.

@MalagaNights "And I think people on both sides who claim it is simple are the extremists."

The decision about whether any woman should be an autonomous human being, on equal terms with men, and consequently have control over her own body via access to abortions is very simple; it is a Yes or No answer.

If the answer is Yes, that is when the debate arises about any necessary safeguards for the wellbeing of the woman and the embryo or foetus.

'I am quite surprised and troubled about Scotland, I didn’t realise they had similar problems in accessing abortion'

I didn't know this. But I not overly surprised as some parts of Scotland are still quite religious.

What does surprise me though is why Sturgeon has not done anything about it. Surely this is way more important to the worlds best feminist who will fight until her dying breath for women rights (who she can't define unless it's when criticising others - women are women today - picks and closes her language to suit), than dropping the word woman from everything (not men though) and brining in self ID.

I agree Pomegranate that there is no party-political support in UK for a total ban as things are now. However, I am always wary that it’s the ‘hard’ cases near the upper limit that would be chipped away at first and I can see that being attempted at some point.

I do agree that in general, social stigma around abortion is decreasing in some (typically, secular) communities. I think that’s a huge positive because abortion is such a common experience. However n my experience that increased openness tends to be around the most common experience ,which is of first trimester abortion/s only. I do think if people understood more about the complex and upsetting reasons of why girls and women might need a later abortion, they might be more inclined to see the specific humane need for that 1% of abortions.

I’d recommend this BPAS document to anyone, it’s a difficult but informative read about the situations of girls and women they see after 20 weeks (not all of whom could get the abortion that they needed): www.bpas.org/media/3301/_lates-report-why-do-women-need-abortions-after-20-weeks.pdf

I do wonder though if we accept feticide, abortion up to term, even when the baby could survive without relying on the mother’s body for life support, what about infanticide? Would it be okay for a woman to decide she reserves the right not to be a mother in the moments immediately post birth? Or up to a week or 6 weeks or the first year or maybe up to the point where the child can live independently? I believe that infanticide has been an acceptable practice in some human cultures. So this is not entirely left field.

I am not quite sure what the rationale would be in the case of a healthy term fœtus and a woman whose health is at no particular risk. Why is it ok to terminate the fœtus when if the woman carrying it wants the pregnancy to end and to have no further part in the baby’s life that could be achieved without feticide?

I am asking in order to understand the philosophy behind this stance, I acknowledge that it would be extremely rare to non existent that a scenario would happen like this. The vast majority of women terminate pregnancy as early as they are able to, that is generally the safest option and best overall for the woman’s physical and mental health. Late abortions have complicated medical reasons either due to the mother or the baby making it necessary or the most beneficial course of treatment available in a particular case.

I read the bpas document Slothtoes, pages 14-16 being the most significant for me as I had no issue with the scenarios presented in the first 13 pages.

How appalling that some women couldn’t have the procedure in time due lack of appointments! It ought to be pushed through as an emergency!

Just got back from a rally and other than reminding us that “abortion doesn’t only affect cis women” the word woman was not uttered once. We had people with uteruses, people who need abortions, pregnant people…

You're comparing apples and oranges here.

Killing a born child is murder, in the eyes of the law.

Having an abortion is not.

That aside, your post about how the person with no health risk and a healthy foetus is a very narrow minded one. What if the person didn't know? What if they were raped? What if they were abused? What if they were a young girl who stuck her head in the sand until the last minute?

I will never understand why someone thinks forcing a woman to have a child she doesn't want - presumably you think the child should then go into the care system or be adopted, or worst of all live with a parent who doesn't want them - is in any way a solution. You cannot claim to care about life and then do that to a child. It's a very naive viewpoint.

Ultimately, if a woman wants an abortion for whatever reason, she should be allowed to have one. It's her decision to make.

And banning it will only force women to have to come to other countries or worse still, have a back street abortion. The overturning is disgraceful.

A fascinating contribution to the debate

The Tragedy of the Unwanted Child: What Ancient Cultures Did Before Abortion

Horrendous reading, that gave me goosebumps.

Even though infanticide is less common now, our modern alternative is children being placed into care or abused by parents who didn't want them in the first place. Brilliant.

So much better than an incomplete foetus being let go.

We put animals down in this country. Worth thinking about.