Jailing a mother of three - WTF

[Capitalismwantsyou]

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jun/12/woman-in-uk-jailed-for-28-months-over-taking-abortion-pills-after-legal-time-limit

That's not even comparable.
Nobody should be forced to give birth.

At that point the baby is coming out regardless. You're just arguing that the mother has a right to decide if it comes out dead or alive.

I can't just refuse to feed my children from this day forward because "motherhood is a gift and not a state-mandated obligation".

You can ask someone else to do it. I believe it's known as "putting your children in care" and "offering them for adoption".

Yep and if the POS in question had thought about that she wouldn't be in jail for killing her own baby right now....

This is a shocking and upsetting case😔

I'm just copy-pasting from an earlier post here:

[Suggesting an early induction] is a legitimate argument and easily the best challenge to late abortion. The only sticking point is that premature delivery can cause life-long harm to the baby and this harm has to be taken into consideration. With an abortion, because the baby won't survive, that's not a concern.

The end result of having to consider the harm to the baby caused by a pre-term delivery is the woman being told "we won't induce you yet". Which is just another way of saying "you have to carry on being life support, suck it up, baby vessel".

Oh give over with the excessive personal comments. It's not your view point and clearly it's one you find disturbing but there's no need for that kind of emotive comment.

I think I'm well within my rights to express my thoughts and feelings. Thanks.

What about it disturbs you? The bit where I believe that women aren't reproductive vessels to be regulated by the State?

Re the devil being alive and well: I believe that the Church of Satan (a parody religion) have tried to use "religious practice" to provision abortions in "foetal heartbeat" states.

I don't suppose your cousin was tempted to have her cat euthanised to save the bother and expense? Well it's a bit like that with babies. Yes it can be a thankless task, expensive and stressful at times. But pregnant women can and do bond with their unborn child, they don't generally see themselves as mere vessels, they have an important job to do.

Actually I have found your posts quite upsetting.

But pregnant women can and do bond with their unborn child, they don't generally see themselves as mere vessels, they have an important job to do
Yes, but we're talking about the state seeing women as mere vessels as they're pregnant, not women seeing themselves that way.

Which is just another way of saying "you have to carry on being life support, suck it up, baby vessel".

But what is your argument that she should automatically have the right to abort? That a medical professional should have to do it? That the state should pay for it? Etc.

Men don't have periods, right, and I absolutely loathe them. I can't take hormonal contraceptive, but nor can I walk into a hospital and demand they give me a hysterectomy. Same with my breasts, they're a 28H and I've had back pain since I was about 15 years old. But I can't just walk in and demand they give me a breast reduction. There has to be an actual pressing medical need that's not just "I don't want this anymore".

If anything that's actually worse than the state refusing to terminate my 34 week old baby, because at least with the pregnancy I did have a choice at some point. With the other two "bodily autonomy" issues I was just born as the sex that menstruates and has breasts. I do genuinely just have to suck it up. I'm not being forced into having periods or breasts, that's just how I currently am. That's how we evolved.

@TeaAndStrumpets that's not a great argument seeing as many people do put pets down that are a nuisance.

You seemed to have missed the point being made which was that pregnancy even for those women that want to have a baby can be difficult and deeply unpleasant. To force that onto women who don't want to do it and don't want to have a child is the point to consider.

You seemed to have missed the point being made which was that pregnancy even for those women that want to have a baby can be difficult and deeply unpleasant. To force that onto women who don't want to do it and don't want to have a child is the point to consider.
Exactly

@awimbawaaay but it's not illegal for you to have a hysterectomy, and indeed you can have one on the NHS. It is too strictly gate kept imo for younger women but it is possible. It's probably possible to get it done privately too. Ditto for a breast reduction. Not illegal and private plastic surgeons will do it for you.

I haven’t rtft but are you arguing that a woman should be able to use pills at any stage to end the life of the baby for example at 39 weeks

Or do you think it should be decriminalised with regulation in place to stop it happening past a certain date?

No I haven't missed the point. If women were breeding machines for the state then every troublesome pregnancy would be aborted to save money.

I agree. Online consultations were brought in due to covid and there was debate about whether this should continue once the covid restrictions were relaxed.
It is fraught with problems.

Here is another case from last year.

Apparently either scans were done erroneously or not at all. I'd have thought the inquest should have ascertained whether a scan was done or not, quite easily established via medical records. It simply isn't possible to erroneously mistake a 30 week pregnancy for a ten week one in scan (and not very likely on physical examination/palpating either). Any sonographer making this mistake would be extremely incompetent

www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/baby-born-toilet-dies-mum-26692076

The covid trial was not fraught with problems at all. It was a successful trial that improved the situation for women. That one or two outlier extreme cases would result in claims that the whole trial was problematic is a symptom of how women are more harshly judged than men.

So, about the "should a doctor have to do what you say?" question.

IANAL but I think that Northern Ireland already has decriminalisation of abortion whilst at the same time having regulations that stop a doctor from carrying out late-term terminations.

Back in 2019, https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2019/22/section/9 repealed https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/Vict/24-25/100/crossheading/attempts-to-procure-abortion

https://www.legislation.gov.uk/apni/1945/15/section/25 explicitly exempts the pregnant woman from the offence of child destruction, as does https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2020/503/regulation/11/made If you look at section three of that last linked law, you'll see that doctors aren't allowed to carry out late-term abortions even though the woman can legally give it a go herself.

So had the woman from Stoke been from Strangford instead, she would not even have been prosecuted, never mind be in jail.

More importantly for those who are worried about traumatising medics, we can stop jailing women without forcing doctors to carry about late abortions on demand.

“You seemed to have missed the point being made which was that pregnancy even for those women that want to have a baby can be difficult and deeply unpleasant. To force that onto women who don't want to do it and don't want to have a child is the point to consider.”

I agree, wholeheartedly, because I am a mother, that no woman should be forced into motherhood.

However we have responsibilities as adults, to live with the consequences of our decisions.

The rights of people need to be balanced. We should not be giving one group more rights to life than others. After viability there is an arguable point that morally as a society and culture we regard this human life as worthy of respect, that we value the life of a baby about to be born. We don’t accord the unborn child any legal rights in the UK which I agree that we shouldn’t. The main legal rights must remain with the woman who is experiencing the pregnancy. Our abortion laws are a good compromise in my opinion.

In the UK

women have access to free contraception from their GP or from sexual health services.

we have access to free emergency contraception (morning after pill) we can also buy it over the counter at most chemists.

we have access to free abortion, which although subject to legal restrictions is in practice pretty much available on demand up to 24 weeks.

At some point when a woman has missed all these opportunities to not be a “vessel” she just has to face the music. She had choices. As others have argued, how far do we take this? Should mothers have complete ownership of their children to decide if they live or die, to abuse or mistreat them, to sell their labour or sell them full stop? Until what age?

Other posters have also asked would you put doctors and nurses through this? On one ward desperately trying to keep babies alive on another actively killing them, because late term abortion would involve actively killing the baby and then the mother going through labour and birth. Doing this in the case of a baby having a medical condition incompatible with life ex utero is one thing but to do it to a healthy baby goes against the reason most become health professionals in the first place. As a society we must make this decision about balancing the rights of mothers and babies and how much we value the vulnerable and value human life in general.

I do not think we should alter the laws we currently have in UK around abortion. They work well for most women most of the time.

Spot the person who didn't read Engels. The State relies on exploiting women's reproductive labour to create new citizens. No new citizens, no country.

I think that women should have on demand, free, as early as possible and as late as necessary access to medically-assisted abortion throughout pregnancy.

I will accept as a bare minimum compromise an arrangement like (if my reading of the legislation is correct) the Northern Irish have, where early term abortion is on-demand, later abortion is regulated, and, crucially, women taking matters into their own hands have committed no offence.

Sorry for my lack of education. The urge to reproduce is innate in a society, however much you want to blame it on government.

What we need to do is treat women (and men) with compassion, help the needy, educate our children so they are rational productive members of society.

We are only human but we muddle on.