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

The insistence on bodily autonomy is really a false premise with abortion: it would only really work if you were being forced to have an abortion or any process was being forced on your body.

You are not being forced by the state to be pregnant. You just are, nothing to do with them. The state isn't responsible for your pregnant body. You are demanding intervention from the state to change something about your body.

Demanding an intervention to get the outcome you want for your body is not bodily autonomy or a right.

If the state chooses not to offer intervention it's not forcing something on you, it's not changing or doing anything, it's just not giving you something you want to change.

It's not a right to demand a medical intervention from the state.

For these pro choice extremist people I'm tempted to say: ok you go ahead with your I can do anything I want with my body ideology but the state doesn't have to support you.

So if you want contraception get it yourself, if you want an abortion even an early one, do it yourself, find and pay a doctor, or set up your own little dystopian community where you pay the only doctors prepared to do the gruesome killings of healthy 40 week babies.

Create your own morality where you can get anything you demand done to your body, you can demand people in your community pay for whatever grotesque thing you want to do with your body, including killing viable babies, but you pay and you arrange.

And then you don't get to demand from the rest of us a right to provide inhumane intervention at the altar of bodily autonomy as the only good.

We'll leave you to it, and just watch in horror.
Would that be a deal?

I think that bodily intervention on demand community might be quite small and fucked up.

Obviously as well as the pro life extremists the Trans community would be there as they seem to be the other group that believes the inconvenience of your natural body should be solved on demand as the highest of all principles.

Meanwhile the rest of us who collectively agree there are competing ethical issues beyond 24 weeks, and there has to be a line somewhere, can continue with our system of compromise around the mother's rights and the babies rights and our state) community will fund the collective compromise agreed.

Maybe it's the only resolution when the basis of morality for decisions seems to be so far apart?

Generally speaking, your argument about human rights not being absolute (bar torture) is true. The problems with an arbitrary cut-off point some time during pregnancy is a) that it forces a woman to stay pregnant after a particular point in pregnancy, which, as you've probably gathered by now, I consider to be incompatible with her basic human dignity and worth; and b) when is the cut-off? Because basing the cut-off on how well a NICU can support a preemie is basically making women's rights dependent on the current state of science and technology, which is contrary to the idea of rights being universal and independent of time and place.

I am a biological woman and was a girl at one stage in my life. I am talking about an issue that affects baby girls too actually who are disproportionately aborted.

So I have the right to give an opinion bestowed on me by nature, secondly as a british citizen interested in ethical issues affecting society and thirdly as a human being. It is not conferred by feminism. And frankly reading your comments I am reminded why I'm not hot to join up, despite seeing the very valid need for the protection of women's rights in many other respects.

But we still have laws to protect a variety of human rights that includes both bodily autonomy and the right to life. And pregnancy is a specific, maybe unique (although obviously very common) case where those two rights do have the potential to come into direct conflict.

I'm sure most women around at 26 weeks or earlier would indeed feel it's too late to back out - presumably because they see the difference between an abortion at that stage and one much earlier. Because as you acknowledge, there is an ethical dimension to that decision and while we don't have laws about every ethical issue, we do have them for a lot of issues and this is one of them because, again, it deals with human life. So we don't just say it's probably not ok really but it's a purely private matter.

The idea of being 'forced not to have one' is also a bit of rhetoric hiding the fact that abortion is a medical procedure so there are already other people involved who would have to be prepared to perform one, it's not like you press a button and hey presto - you're unpregnant. So already your magical bodily autonomy involves other people and a whole apparatus around them with its imperfections, limitations, delays.

It's very difficult and very emotive, especially if you suffer from tokophobia I completely understand having a very visceral reaction. It's nature red in tooth and claw, human life, ethical and legal issues, medical realities and just messy human bodies and anatomy we'd far rather not have anyone involved with other than chosen intimate partners. But I think the law we have is probably the one of the best out there in terms of allowing quite a 'generous' limit while not approaching horrific scenarios of destroying fully formed babies. FWIW I would criminalise the providers at that stage, not women who are likely acting from desperation.

only not to be forced not to have one.

There you go. You can't be forced not to have something that isn't available to you . That's not forcing something it's maintaining a status quo.

It's not 'bodily autonomy' to demand an external agency change something you don't like that is not their responsibility.

If I can't emigrate to the USA I'm not being forced to live in the UK, I just already do.

If I'm a woman I'm not forced to be a woman I just am even if I don't want to be and demand surgery.

If I'm pregnant I'm not being forced to be pregnant, if I don't have an abortion I just carry on being pregnant.

The Abortion Act 1967 doesn't compel the State or anyone else to offer an abortion. Removing time limits and decriminalising women who self-abort doesn't compel anyone to offer an abortion either. Way to misunderstand the issues.

What restrictive laws like sections 58 and 59 of the Offences Against The Person Act and AA67 do is to limit when doctors can offer care and stop women from self-aborting. The only compulsion is on the woman not to self-abort.

The argument that you have misused here is the argument for negative rights, that rights consist of freedoms from being harmed or restricted by another entity and that no right is legitimate if it requires another person to do something for you. My absolutist pro-choice stance is rooted in a genuine application of negative rights. For the baby to reside in utero, it relies on the mother providing life support. If a right must not depend upon another person for it to be a legitimate right, then how can the unborn baby have a right to life prior to birth?

If I'm pregnant I'm not being forced to be pregnant, if I don't have an abortion I just carry on being pregnant.

If the State criminalises you for self-aborting, then the State has forced you stay pregnant.

I think that bodily intervention on demand community might be quite small and fucked up.

Obviously as well as the pro life extremists the Trans community would be there as they seem to be the other group that believes the inconvenience of your natural body should be solved on demand as the highest of all principles.

Thinking more about this, it's Trans humanism that that the pro life extremists and the Trans community share. A belief that we should use any technology available to free ourselves from the constraints of our physical bodies, and there should be no limit to this.

This is how babies gete compared to parasites or squatters, pregnant women described as life support vessels, totally dehumanising language.

There is an idea that we should never have to acknowledge the reality of our bodies and utopia is when woman can be entirely free of the burden of supporting new life. Totally free without any constraint.

It's the same ideology as Trans - your body is merely a constraint on your expression of your true self which must be actualised at all costs.

Yes this is the feminist board but if you think these descriptions of women and babies, and the attitude to what pregnant women's bodies are and do is in any way good for women, or what most women want, or how most women feel about the reality of their bodies you are deluded.

It's not 'bodily autonomy' to demand an external agency change something you don't like that is not their responsibility.

There, you are correct. Luckily, decriminalising abortion doesn't force any external agency to do anything. Neither does relaxing the restrictions in AA67. AA67 enables doctors to provide an abortion, it doesn't compel them to.

Yeh you're totally missing my point that you crack on somewhere else with your whatever you want on demand dystopia, but take the rest of us out of it, don't demand it from us, it sounds like hell.

Great. Go and find somewhere where they think this is a good way to live.

It's abhorrent morality to most people so you might struggle to pay for it.

utopia is when woman can be entirely free of the burden of supporting new life

1. I'm in my forties and have no children. I personally have stayed free of supporting new life. 2) Every woman should have children if and only if she wants to. 3) Acknowledging the reality of our bodies is at the heart of (2).

It's the same ideology as Trans

It is so not. Only women get pregnant, only women are hurt by restrictive abortion laws.

whatever you want on demand

Is not even remotely what I've said.

At the moment.

If you believe any technology which relives woman from the reality of their bodies is excellent you must be excited about the prospect of technology where babies can be grown in incubators, or successful uterus transplants into men work, so freeing women up from their life support vessel slavery.

It would solve the issue for women and transwomen!! Yay!

It'll be great. No differences left then.

No oppressive woman's bodies, so no need to kill the babies.

Bring it on eh?

It is the same ideology you just haven't seen it.

Meanwhile, outside the MN bubble:

https://bpas-campaigns.org/campaigns/decriminalisation/

https://abortionrights.org.uk/sposition-statements/

I'm such an extremist that Abortion Rights literally share my views.

If you believe any technology which relives woman from the reality of their bodies is excellent

I take it that you've never had surgery, never taken medication, never had a vaccine, never used contraception? Because those things are all technologies that relieve women from the reality of their bodies too.

Realistically, development of an effective uterine incubator isn't possible. One, pregnancy isn't even fully understood yet, and two, there's no ethical way to test it on humans, for the same reason that there's no ethical way to test medication on pregnant women. So no, I don't support the impossible.

The thing is @VitoCorleoneOfMNMafia you could decriminalise it (I don't agree with that but you could) but that doesn't solve the issue of bodily autonomy because you'd still need to find someone willing to destroy a full-term foetus without medical cause.

You seem to be arguing on the basis of bodily autonomy but you've also said that's not the same as requiring the State, or medical professionals, to provide abortion up to term. So what do you envisage? Btw what do you mean by self-abort?

Do you really equate adultery with deliberately killing a near term baby? The woman had had children before, she has seen scans before, she could feel the baby moving and kicking, she knew it had arms, legs, a brain and everything required to be a real person, ready to be born and she deliberately killed it. This wasn't just morally awful it was criminal, if she had killed it a day after it was born rather than days before would you still say it was just a moral thing not worthy of prosecution?

I take it that you've never had surgery, never taken medication, never had a vaccine, never used contraception? Because those things are all technologies that relieve women from the reality of their bodies too.

Yes but there are limits. Killing healthy full term babies is not within the limits, contraception is, that's the point.
You have no limits. Woman get to have whatever intervention they want no limit.

Do you only not agree with incubation of babies in men because it's currently impossible?

Would you have any ethical objections in theory? If it were possible should it be legal? Do you think it would be good for women?
Men could bare the brunt of being life support to those inconvenient little parasites!

I'm curious if you have any limits, or see any downsides, and what they could be.

It gets to a point in pregnancy where there is no option in whether you give birth. Alive or dead, the baby has to come out.
This woman terminated the life of her baby. She still had to give birth.

She terminated the life of her baby to cover up her infidelity. It’s heinous.

I don't think anyone reading your posts would be surprised you have tokophobia Vito.

The way you talk about mother's and babies is really quite disturbing.

Some one earlier said they found your posts upsetting, and despite my engagement I have to admit I've found your view of young preterm babies, which many of us have experienced birthing, to be distressing.

You seem to think you are an advocate for women, but I think your position eradicates the unique and amazing role of women to nothing and if supported widely would damage women hugely.

Luckily I think you're an extremist minority whose views are abhorrent to most

Thought experiment: I am the sole survivor of the human race and there's only me and a police robot left on earth. The police robot will arrest me and lock me up only if I break a law.

I am 24 weeks and one day pregnant and don't want to be. I go to a hospital or pharmacy and get some abortive medications, these are now ownerless so not theft. I take the abortive medications, this is what I mean by "self-aborting". In Northern Ireland, the police robot would do nothing because abortion is decriminalised there. In England, it would arrest me and lock me up.

I'll grant that at 36 weeks, a reliable self-abortion is harder to accomplish because the baby is very likely to breathe after delivery. But the police robot still wouldn't arrest me for trying if I were in NI, as long as I didn't harm or neglect the child once born.

So a lot of the bodily autonomy argument stands for decriminalisation even if we remove any obligation on medical staff to assist (which, on reflection, is the correct stance to take, negative rights and all that) because we are permitting a woman to act on her own body.

If she'd been in Northern Ireland she wouldn't even have been arrested!

Can you not see that the difference between a preemie and a foetus is that one is born and no longer uses someone else's body as life support?

You have no limits. Woman get to have whatever intervention they want no limit.

In line with Abortion Rights. They are jut better at using pretty words than me.

Do you only not agree with incubation of babies in men because it's currently impossible?

It would never be possible, their hormones are all wrong. Tell me that you don't understand biology without telling me that you don't understand biology.

This is...quite strange.