Roe v Wade overturned

[yourhairiswinterfire]

Fucking devastating.

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

I think that actually says a lot about you.

If you were a man or a women who hadn’t born children then I would sympathise with you not really getting it, and just put your opinion down to naivety. I don’t consider these groups to have a valid opinion. You may disagree with that but they have no experience and so have no idea what they are really talking about.

If you believe these groups should have any say on forcing women through a pregnancy when they have never experienced it then I don’t know what to say to you really.

@placewherewebelong

At 40 weeks gestation giving a lethal injection to an otherwise healthy baby in utero doesn’t seem so different from giving a lethal injection to a baby post birth at 40 weeks. What is the difference in your opinion?

I am asking really about the philosophy here.

I am reasonably comfortable with our current legal situation in the UK, I wouldn’t want any more restrictions than we currently have. I would like it to be easier for women to get a medical abortion in the first 10 weeks.

I am questioning the position that a woman should be able to terminate her pregnancy for any reason up to term (the end of pregnancy).

My reason being that I suspect a compromise is needed between a complete ban which sacrifices the lives of women for an ideological position that life begins at conception and is sacred, more sacred than the life of a woman and no restrictions on abortion at all, in the latter case I wonder why does birth make the difference. The baby can survive without the mother.

I am opposed to traumatising mothers and babies through adoption/“care”. I do not believe any child should be born unwanted, nor that any woman should be forced into motherhood against her will.

However at what point in the development of a human being we draw a line seems significant.

Clearly there is a difference between an embryo at 8 weeks and a fœtus at 40 weeks gestation. Somewhere from conception to adulthood we must draw a line. As I said, I think the current UK law strikes a fairly reasonable balance but could be tweaked.

‘Clearly there is a difference between an embryo at 8 weeks and a fœtus at 40 weeks gestation. Somewhere from conception to adulthood we must draw a line. As I said, I think the current UK law strikes a fairly reasonable balance but could be tweaked.’

Broadly I think we have it right. Foetal viability should probably be the line.

I think @PomegranateOfPersephone your question becomes particularly relevant given the death is better for a baby than the care system rhetoric.

If this were really held to be true why would a lethal injection for a new born who is going straight into the care system not be justifiable?

Because ultimately pre birth it's the womans choice.

I would argue that the limit we have here is fair - it's the making the whole thing illegal that galls me.

Devastated

For anyone following this discussion, please look up Eva O'Connor "It shouldn't be this hard" on facebook. its breathtaking.

You don't appear to be vetting the sex and parental status of every one on the thread to see if their opinion has validity in your eyes @LemonSwan.

Just me? Because you disagreed with me.

So I'd have to conclude you accept the opinions of childless women and men if they concur with yours as you don't appear to need to check their status?

Yes of course men and childless women can support pro choice, because they aren’t taking away anything from anyone. And childless women have a valid stake in that position.

Tbh Malaga not sure if I do disagree with you or not because all you say is it complex. I have no idea what you actually think.

What do you think about them banning abortions in America?

They haven't banned abortion in America.

They've handed the decisions to the States and different states will make different decisions.

I think that's the way the legal decision should be made, by the electorate. As it is everywhere else in the world.

My personal view on where I stand is that I find it hard to weigh the competing ethical issue of women's right to bodily autonomy and the right to life of a baby and come to an uneasy compromise that early in a pregnancy the women's rights are absolute but that there is a point in a pregnancy when a baby's rights have to be considered and a point where it is clearly taking a human life and not justifiable.

Where that line should be I'm not sure. Maybe what we have now around viability in the UK. But I have seen some pictures and videos of what is involved in abortion at 20 weeks and aborted babies, and it haunts me, so I find it difficult.

I genuinely find the whole topic difficult and feel both sides have moral validity and I'm not sure really how we balance them.

Which is why I find the positions of the politicians in the USA so depressing as I feel noone is offering to try to balance the competing rights, which is what I think most people actually want, and there is such unecessary hatred being stoked.

This might already have been mentioned but one anti-surrogacy group has reported that 'reducing' the number of foetuses remains legal in US surrogacy cases - and the decision belongs to the purchasing parents.

Does anyone know if this true? If so the misogyny and power imbalance is even further off the scale than I had imagined. And what I'd imagined was pretty terrifying.

That brings me back to my suspicion that someone is going to be making money from using women as breeding stock. Mifepristone is cheap, not much profit there. The buying and selling of babies through adoption and surrogacy will be more profitable. If “reduction” facilitates business perhaps that will be seen as justifiable. The medical industry profits from an interventionist pregnancy and birth will also likely be a great deal more significant than the costs of mifepristone.

Thank you for explaining your view. Its much more conducive to discussion than painting everyone extremists. I agree the U.K. law strikes the right balance - most pro choicers do.

Why it works so well in the U.K. is that we trust medical professionals to be able to make decisions for each individual, without fear of risking their career, criminalisation or prosecution, . That is not the case now in America

I don’t agree that individual states should choose. I only base that off the legislation out of one state who specifically went to the lengths to note aborting ectopic pregnancies was also banned and only permitted if they transplant it back in the womb (impossible). They clearly don’t have the highest calibre of individuals. In U.K. equivalence it’s a bit like asking the parish council to legislate on abortion rights.

Individual geographical states shouldn’t be able to choose. Individual doctors and nurses should be free to conscientiously object to providing abortion if they so wish and then must go nowhere near women who need abortions. That is fair.

The default should be that women have a right to end pregnancies carrying fetuses. Not to end the lives of born babies, children or adults.

Birth, being independent from the woman, confers (for me) ethical personhood on the baby. You can’t IMO designate a person, as someone who is living literally enclosed and living inside the body of another person, completely physically dependent on the other’s body.

At 40 weeks gestation giving a lethal injection to an otherwise healthy baby in utero doesn’t seem so different from giving a lethal injection to a baby post birth at 40 weeks. What is the difference in your opinion?

The difference is the difference between abortion and infanticide. Abortion is not killing a baby. Infanticide is a murder like any other murder.
The justification for any abortion is the woman’s autonomy, including inextricably, her bodily autonomy.

Your answer is, in my opinion, feel free to disagree, one of the reasons this has come to pass.

The UK has , in my opinion, feel free to disagree, quietly fudged this point and it has worked. Even with the 24 time limit women in the UK are still able to get an abortion in the most serious life- threatening circumstances. They would not get a post 24 week termination where there were no health issues for mother or child.

Calling for a right to terminate to term for no reason is never going to be granted, and in my opinion, feel free to disagree, leads to entrenched positions, will never convince anyone and likely to be damaging to one's cause.

Thanks Lass but I’m not campaigning on this. I’ve posted on Mumsnet about my own personal opinions. I’m not Trump or a Supreme Court Judge.

Do you take everything so literally? The argument in your reply is one I have seen over and over and over on here and from campaigners.

It's an argument which , in my view, is flawed and fails to recognise the point made by the poster you replied to. It simply polarises opinions and takes the (sensible, pragmatic and workable) UK option off the table. It becomes all or nothing for both sides.

I've been called a "forced birther" on here for saying this

Piddock that cartoon from Liberation is all too accurate.

OK except nobody is taking current UK abortion rights off the table because of campaigners saying ‘as early as possible and as late as necessary’.
In fact it was those campaigners who have managed to decriminalise abortion in Northern Ireland where in strictly legal terms (but obviously not practically) abortion rights are ahead of those in the rest of Great Britain.

^ that was to Lass

ER, I didn't say they were??

My point is that the entrenched positions of "abortion to term, no need for a reason" and "life begins at conception" leave no position for compromise.

OK then. Happy to agree to disagree on that.

I’m not taking a position on this but the counterpoint is that there are huge dollars involved in abortion in the US.

Hang on.

You cant tell a childless person they have no opinion because they havent birthed a child. That is a disgusting viewpoint.