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

I agree with this summary. I think a complete disregard for the fetus is a view that few people will hold or be convinced by.

Also, yeah, life begins at conception. Anyone who aborts chooses to end a life, like it or not, but we accept that the woman's rights are the priority at that point.

But we've chosen based on evidence to stop elective abortion past 24 weeks. Terminating a 23 week is tragic and if she'd done it then, it would still be too late. Though now it's even worse because it's surpassed another 10 weeks beyond that point!

I agree with everything in this post. I appreciate your persistence in posting on this thread.

I imagine you would now agree it's disturbing and chilling to argue that a rape victim should not be allowed an abortion.

No, because I understand the reasoning underpinning that and know where the flaw is. Even back when I had that opinion, I recognised the cruelty to the woman but considered it the less of two evils.

most women would not even contemplate an abortion at 32 weeks

I trust them to continue not doing that. I trust women as a class to make responsible pregnancy decisions.

You are indulging in thought experiments, philosophising away

Abortion is one of the longest-running debates in moral philosophy. It is a matter of philosophy. You cannot have a consistent and fair legal approach if you don't examine the moral philosophy first. Thought experiments are a well-established method of dealing with philosophical questions. Didn't I mention Professor Judith Thomson at least twice already? Her essay about the ethics of abortion was based on several thought experiments, one of which is the idea of a violinist whose body is coupled to yours for life support. There is nothing wrong with using thought experiments.

You are criticising me for tackling a moral philosophy question as a moral philosophy question.

the simple fact that it is not, and never will be ok to kill a child.

That's not true though, is it? Ignoring abortion on demand, people on this thread have justified the late abortion of children who have Downs Syndrome. I believe that I was alone in dissenting on that being an exception to a late abortion ban. So previous posters are fine with the law killing children who could live after birth but less than perfect whilst the healthy child gets to live. That is disturbing and chilling. That is writing fatal discrimination against disabled children into law. People have talked about late abortions to allow women to start cancer treatment. So there is a consensus that sometimes it is OK to kill a child.

mean that balance of rights has to be recalibrated.

What you are saying is that a woman can only have an abortion if she's early enough, based on an arbitrarily-chosen stage of development. Texas has done the same. They chose foetal heartbeat at six weeks as the developmental stage. No matter what your reason is for a particular time limit, that reason can used to justify a different time limit.

Then you say that she might be allowed to have an abortion after that time limit if the baby has a disability because we hate disabled people so much that we will carve out legal exceptions in an otherwise strict law to enable their deaths or she is really really ill or if the baby wouldn't be likely to survive the birth, but we don't think that she's allowed to have an abortion for any other reason because she's a stupid selfish cow who we are sure could have done it sooner even though we don't know her full situation and she should be punished if she takes matters into her own hands because she's a vessel now for fourteen weeks and should just suck it up it's only fourteen weeks, it's hardly any time, and if she's unlucky enough to be an inpatient during that time and loses her job or has to pay out money that she doesn't have for weeks of child care, pet care, etc well that's just too bad

Translate: you want other women's abortions to be according to your morality, and for violating your morality to be a criminal offence punishable by law.

Have I understood it?

You are correct. It's a bad thing to kill a baby. It's worse to make a woman act as life support when she doesn't want to.

I've taken on board that doctors don't want to be involved in most late terminations. That doesn't mean we should criminalise the woman who will attempt what her doctor won't.

Did you even read where I mentioned the fifteen year old schoolgirl who was investigated and her laptop taken for having a stillbirth? She ended up self-harming. "Criminalised" doesn't mean "convicted", it means "subjected to criminal legal process". She was criminalised. For a stillbirth.

You are "sick in the head" if you think that's OK.

I'm going to have to stop because it's not good for my mental health.

I'm going to focus on writing to my MP to request decriminalisation and seeing if I can make Saturday's protest in London if there isn't another near me.

This doesn't give her the right to smother the baby on its way out or in any other way directly harm the child.

Ok, so you're saying the mother can kill that baby in a way that uses her body bit not a way that acts only on the child.

So a slow acting poison is fine that kills the baby but not her, even if the baby does after its born. Stabbing herself and severing the umbilical cord at the start of Labour is fine. But not if the knife connect direct with the baby. The age of the baby is irrelevant.

I strongly disagree with you, but it's logically consistent so we can probably rest at this point.

I haven't changed my opinion. I think it would have been far better if this woman had had the baby naturally and refused to take it home. Potentially that might have cost her two weeks further of being pregnant, and her relationship. (Which sounds shakey anyway.) Small price to pay. If she'd done that Lily would be a happy toddler right now playing with loving adopted parents. Instead of a corpse.

I also disagree that this wouldn't be a deterrent. I understand the pressure this woman was under but we know it was a calculated decision. If she'd known that killing a viable baby would lead to prison and (presumably) the end of the relationship she was trying to save she'd never have done this. So clearly it is a deterrent and in this case would have tipped the balance the other way.

@VitoCorleoneOfMNMafia you haven't read my posts properly if you're addressing comments about disability to me. I don't agree with that justification. And yes, I do want abortion limits to remain within 'my' morality, I have no problem with that characterisation. I'm happy with the law as it is, I believe it's right that the law recognises and protects the obvious humanity of the foetus and takes that into consideration when applying limits on abortion, specifically viability and sentience. I don't just 'trust' any particular class of people, whether it's women, men, doctors, priests, or anyone else, to make ethical decisions all the time and I believe there are times when legal sanctions and safeguards are the appropriate way for society to set out an ethical framework and protect the vulnerable.

No, because I understand the reasoning underpinning that and know where the flaw is. Even back when I had that opinion, I recognised the cruelty to the woman but considered it the less of two evils.

As long as you also recognise the cruelty inherent in your current stance, at least we agree that you have no fundamental problem with cruelty as long as it corresponds to your morality. I don't think I'll post anymore on this thread, I'll leave you to your moral philosophy at this point; thank goodness your views will remain an extreme outlier in this debate.

For those that are supporting "bodily autonomy" here, is it just on the abortion issue?

Or also things like you should be able to take any drug you like without interference from the government?

Or women should be able to consent to extreme BDSM acts that risk serious harm or death, without interference from the government?

Or consent to extreme body modification like removing a limb just because you feel like you shouldn't have it?

“because she's a vessel now for fourteen weeks and should just suck it up”

I think this is what I find puzzling about the abortion on demand up to birth argument. One of the most female things it’s possible to do - provide life support for another life - has now become dehumanised. A late-pregnant woman who hates being pregnant is no longer anything but a ‘vessel’ and the potential near-term life inside is a ‘stranger’ on life support instead of a relative about to be born.

But this dehumanising is liberating? What the heck are we being liberated from? Our messy, bleeding, confusing bodies? From any responsibility to anyone but ourselves? We should be able to do anything we like to our bodies and we should be able to do anything we like to the tiny relative kicking us to bits?

It’s like ‘We are all autonomous individuals’ has been taken up to eleven and the fact that all of us autonomous individuals started our lives as non-autonomous, as people needing life support to grow is … something so disturbing we’d prefer to call a pregnant woman a vessel and insist the foetus that’s so near its independent life is parasitic.

I was shocked at how long the sentence was initially, but then, reading more, it seems that this women caused the jail sentence herself. She would have got a suspended sentence, but wilfully persisted in denying everything until the last minute. Why? Looking at that social media post she made, she seems very focussed on herself. Surely most women who had gone through similar would be wracked with guilt, pleaded guilty, and accepted the suspended sentence.

One article said she was “embarrassed” at her pregnancy and that stopped her seeking help early on, but that makes little sense. Continuing with the pregnancy and having to seek out help later would have been more embarrassing not less. I can understand her waiting a few weeks, hoping she’d miscarry naturally maybe, but when that didn’t happen she should have got help.

To just continue with a pregnancy until the last few weeks, suggests…..well, I’m not going to write what it suggests, but it does… Presumably lockdown and the pills by post offered her an easy way out, and the fact that she took that way out when she was so close to giving birth is disgusting IMO. Her daughter could have been born alive but severely affected by the pills. Why do that? It’s callous when all she had to do was wait a very short time more and have the baby. She didn’t need to keep her after she was born. She could have walked away. She could even have given birth without medical support (bad, I know) and left the baby somewhere where she’d be found.

It has happened that grieving (but innocent) parents have been investigated when born concern have died in their care. I'm sure that's horrible and traumatic for them. Is it a reason why the laws against child murder should be repealed?

Born children, not concern.

She didn't 'wilfully persist in denying everything until the last minute'; the judge said she didn't plead guilty at the first opportunity, that's not the same thing. We don't know why she didn't, maybe she didn't understand the legal process, maybe she was badly advised by a solicitor with no experience in such a rare case, maybe she has no legal advice at all at that point, maybe she was burying her head in the sand, we don't know.

If I were her I wouldn't have been posting anything on social media, but that in itself isn't proof she isn't 'wracked with guilt', how many people's social media is all front? The judge referenced her remorse.

Her solicitor was the one who asked the judge to consider the lesser charge so I don't think she was badly advised by a solicitor with no experience, and she definitely had one

@VitoCorleoneOfMNMafia
Genuinely, your extremist views, as with all extremism views, don’t convince most people. They make people incredibly uncomfortable. The result of so doggedly arguing such an extreme view point will be to polarise the issue. Without grey area, you are asking people to choose between termination of life until birth (without medical need) or no abortions at all.
This will massively impact the pro-choice argument and support.

Or, considering you had such an extreme opposing view not so long ago, perhaps that’s your whole plan. I’m starting to believe your over egged performance on here, your callous lexis towards viable life, is a ploy. You want to make people uncomfortable about abortion.

I agree with your points. Abortion does not have to be criminalised. Women should be trusted to make their own decisions, even if the outcome is unpleasant to others. Legalising abortion enables women to seek the appropriate medical care without fear. It may result in less abortion anyway.

even if the outcome is unpleasant to others.
yes, I reckon it would be 'unpleasant' to the baby at a late stage like this. But let's not worry about that, shall we?

It is very difficult to get a baby adopted - we don't have the US system of buying babies from teenage mothers.

Exactly, plus having a child out in the world who you don't know and aren't parenting is a complex thing. 'Just give it up for adoption' isn't as simple as people who have no idea about adoption make out

Actually, legal abortions in England and Wales have increased since 2016, despite abortion being legal up to 24 weeks throughout that time. The last government stats in 2021 show that abortions in 2021 were the highest since the 1967 Act passed. 214, 256.

If you look at year by year stats, it start increasing after the generation who’ve had legal abortions all their lives come to adulthood. 2021 is more than double 1971, yet the population hasn’t doubled.

If you want to argue for abortions, don’t use ‘legalising reduces abortions’. The stats show it doesn’t.

Women should be trusted to make their own decisions, even if the outcome is unpleasant to others.

Why do we need to blindly trust people because they're female? No, I don't trust women to administer at-home late-term abortions.

So many issues including to the fetus, who may be born alive. Why the heck would we just allow that to happen???

Also, there are so few people who choose to wait til they're 34 weeks for non-medical reasons. We don't need to change the law to cater to this. Most people can figure out how to be responsible and sort any termination within the 5 month window given.

Biologically speaking, the foetus is a parasite: an organism that is dependent on its host for survival. This is an objective and neutral description although the word parasite is often used pejoratively.

When the baby takes its first breath after birth, it goes from receiving oxygen via the mother's blood through the umbilical cord to receiving oxygen from the air via breathing. This is how it becomes an independent living being. Of course it is still dependent on adults for feeding, shelter, development etc but it is no longer a parasite.

This is why birth is a major distinguisher between a late term abortion and infanticide.

In response to the dehumanisation aspect of the parasitical nature of pregnancy: this is a subjective view as some women would enjoy knowing that they are life-creating and life-sustaining and some would feel their body to be taken over by a leech-like organism. Both are true.

Additionally, with any state limit on abortion up until birth you deny a woman bodily autonomy. This act itself is dehumanising. You can't expect every woman to react positively to this and not feel reduced to a vessel just because some women enjoy the life-sustaining properties of the parasitical relationship that is pregnancy.