Abortion Limit in the UK up to Six Months?

[JuniperWoolf]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7409696.stm

I'm really trying to figure out what I feel about this. By six months, the foetus isn't just a little conglomeration of cells like it is at less than three (the law in Canada). It's shaped like a baby with little fingers, it's almost fully developed. It even has dreams when it sleeps. It's one thing to abort a six month old foetus if there are life-threatening complications to the mother, but this law includes all women (although, most of them do get abortions within the first three months). Some women just don't know that they're pregnant, and if that's the situation, they're legally allowed to abort the foetus at up to the very end of their second term. Babies can survive if they're born that early, very often with the aid of an incubator. If you're a doctor and you abort a six month old foetus, you're not supposed to put it in an incubator because it's not "technically" a baby.

What do you guys think?

[The Atheist]

I'm really trying to figure out what I feel about this. By six months, the foetus isn't just a little conglomeration of cells like it is at less than three (the law in Canada). It's shaped like a baby with little fingers, it's almost fully developed. It even has dreams when it sleeps. It's one thing to abort a six month old foetus if there are life-threatening complications to the mother, but this law includes all women (although, most of them do get abortions within the first three months). Some women just don't know that they're pregnant, and if that's the situation, they're legally allowed to abort the foetus at up to the very end of their second term. Babies can survive if they're born that early, very often with the aid of an incubator. If you're a doctor and you abort a six month old foetus, you're not supposed to put it in an incubator because it's not "technically" a baby.

What do you guys think?

Is abortion at 26 weeks reasonable? My only answer to that can be that as 26 weeks is a perfectly viable baby and therefore no, it is not reasonable. The business of "the mother didn't know" should not be a valid defence. Ignorance is no defence in law, so why should stupid women get a free pass?

I don't how much authority this place has, but they seem to quote actual statistics in saying that 80% of 26-week babies survive. That sounds about right.

Given the very high percentage of birth defects in that group, the survival rate is astonishing and there is no doubt that a competent hospital will save almost all 26-week babies if they were born by inducing rather than self-abortion, which is what a 26-week prem baby really is.

The option should clearly be that if a woman is too stupid to get checked for pregnancy until 26 weeks, then she will have the pregnancy terminated by caesarian birth and ultimate placement of the baby for adoption.

The mire around abortion isn't straightforward in any way, but allowing women to abort viable babies on a whim must not be allowed.

[Delta40]

The option should clearly be that if a woman is too stupid to get checked for pregnancy until 26 weeks, then she will have the pregnancy terminated by caesarian birth and ultimate placement of the baby for adoption.

The mire around abortion isn't straightforward in any way, but allowing women to abort viable babies on a whim must not be allowed.

Please provide us with the statistics on stupid women will you? What constitutes stupidity and at what point should men step in and make decisions over her reproductive rights?

Daddies, grandaddies, uncles, brothers are renowned throughout history for screwing anything that moves - including family members, animals and inanimate objects all for the thrill of an orgasm. They rape, beat and murder women and little girls. Please provide us with the statistics on stupid men will you?

Should such men who commit these acts be allowed to legislate laws? History tells us over and over - yes.

Abortion offends you. So what? Abortion also happens to be the end result of any amount of depraved acts comitted against women, by men, who succumbed to their own lust (which I have been told is natural).

Diminishing and generalising the position of women who seek abortion (most do it on a whim!) is a mere ploy to boost one's moral outrage. Nothing more

[OrphanPip]

Late term abortions are legal in the USA, and I imagine the UK would end up with the same problem people seeking late term abortions in the USA would have: it's next to impossible to find a doctor willing to perform one.

Ethically the problem for me isn't whether the woman should have the right to remove the baby at 26 weeks, it seems odd that she would have a right to withhold medical treatment from the baby once it is removed from her. If the baby is viable I think her right to terminate its life is forfeit.

[The Atheist]

Please provide us with the statistics on stupid women will you? What constitutes stupidity and at what point should men step in and make decisions over her reproductive rights?

I haven't asked that men make the decision, so don't go making stuff up, please. To me, a woman who is six months pregnant and doesn't know it is suffering from terminal stupidity. There are rare medical reasons why it may not be apparent, but the overwhelming majority of women who don't realise they're pregnant until late in the second trimester are just ignorant to the point of deserving no support for their plight whatsoever.

Don't want the kid? As I said, that's fine, but since it makes no difference to the woman, she can have it induced and adopted. End of problem all round.

You seem to have read things into my post that aren't there, so most of the rest of your post is irrelevant to what I did say.

Diminishing and generalising the position of women who seek abortion (most do it on a whim!) is a mere ploy to boost one's moral outrage. Nothing more

If a woman has let six months of pregnancy pass unnoticed, I see it very much as "on a whim" if she decides to terminate at that time.

Note that my comments apply solely to women seeking late term abortions through ignorance. That is actually clear from my post which mentions "26-week pregnancy/foetus" five times.

[JuniperWoolf]

I would just like to add for the sake of the discussion that there are many cases in which a woman can be pregnant and not know it that aren't able to be attributed to stupidity. There are birth control products which prevent women from menstruating altogether (eg. "the shot"), and yet the defence against pregnancy during the initial stages of contraception is not 100%. In many cases, women become pregnant just as they begin the contraception methods which are supposed to stop them from having a period, so when they miss their next flow cycle they attribute it to the shot. They're pregnant and believe that getting pregnant is impossible for them, so they don't bother getting a pregnancy test if they gain a little weight or start throwing up in the morning. This happens quite often. A chance occurrence, not stupidity.

There's also a psychosis which happens sometimes when a woman is so desperate not to get pregnant that her brain will perform some mental gymnastics and convince her that she's not, even if the signs are there. It's rare, but not too uncommon (I've seen it in my hometown). Mental illness, not stupidity.

Maybe they think that they're a virgin, but they were raped in their sleep - the idea of pregnancy wouldn't even occur to them, they'd just think that they were gaining a bit of weight and having a weird period (which happens very often, especially during the first couple of years of puberty when your body is still getting used to the process - you have a period, then you could go months before you see your next one).

There are more explanations. If you think about it, it's easy to see how a person can get to the sixth month of pregnancy without knowing that they're pregnant, but that isn't the issue: the question is, is it worse to force a woman to keep the baby inside her until it's done growing and then have her go through labour or is it worse to prematurely remove the baby and potentially kill it or, if it survives, to cause it to be mentally or physically disabled due to lack of incubation time?

Calling the woman stupid is like indicating that she "deserves" to give birth to an unwanted baby, which is irrelevant. There are bigger issues here. Is it more beneficial to have an unwanted baby which the mother may want to abort because of evidence of abnormalities during examinations or to "terminate" the baby before it is born to a life of potential pain in the foster care system? What if it looks like the baby is so deformed that it will very likely not survive anyway? Does it still deserve at least a chance at life, even if it looks grim?

I was wondering about that myself, Pip. If you're a doctor, and you just "aborted" this five and a half month old "foetus" that's lying there wriggling around trying to breathe, what the hell are you supposed to do, just not treat it? The girls that I was talking to said that it "wasn't a baby, so they don't treat it like a baby," but I couldn't see anyone being able to do that.

[Delta40]

Stupidity, however framed is not a basis to remove a persons right of access to a medical procedure which is available to all. If it is accessible at 26 weeks, then it should be exlusive to people considered 'not stupid'.

[BienvenuJDC]

Daddies, grandaddies, uncles, brothers are renowned throughout history for screwing anything that moves - including family members, animals and inanimate objects all for the thrill of an orgasm. They rape, beat and murder women and little girls.

I think that this statement is an absurd generalization. The statement may even be classified as being stupid.

[Gladys]

I think that this statement is an absurd generalization.

Isn't Delta40's statement a corrective to the collective veneer that we are all pillars of society, a corrective Henrik Ibsen would appreciate?

[JuniperWoolf]

Stupidity, however framed is not a basis to remove a persons right of access to a medical procedure which is available to all. If it is accessible at 26 weeks, then it should be exlusive to people considered 'not stupid'.

But the question is, should abortion be accessible at 26 weeks or should the legal limit be reduced to 12 (for everyone, life-or-death situations excluded)?

[The Atheist]

Stupidity, however framed is not a basis to remove a persons right of access to a medical procedure which is available to all.

That it's available to all is a national disgrace.

If it is accessible at 26 weeks, then it should be exlusive to people considered 'not stupid'.

I just can't agree. As I said before, there is no justification, except in medical emergencies, for babies to be aborted once they reach viable baby stage.

[sixsmith]

That it's available to all is a national disgrace.



I just can't agree. As I said before, there is no justification, except in medical emergencies, for babies to be aborted once they reach viable baby stage.

Yes, but apart from expressing your indignation, you've offered no reason as to why abortion should not be allowed at 26 weeks. Your objection cannot be based solely on the fact that a foetus is at that stage 'viable' because that, without more, is mere question begging.

[Gladys]

You're objection cannot be based solely on the fact that a foetus is at that stage 'viable' because that, without more, is mere question begging.

Yes, why argue that viability rather than, say, self-awareness is the prime reason for refusing abortion?

[kiki1982]

Oo, I find that a little bit late yes... I am for the right to have an abortion, but at six months... That's a baby that is able to live but which is not attended to (though possibly with brain damage)... I wouldn't want to do that though. Thing is, how do you deal with people who are genuinely ignorant of the fact they are pregnant until quite late and who really do not want to be pregnant? I guess just support them, although that's not really ideal, is it?

@Atheist:

You are a man, right? Obviously you do not know about all the women who are pregnant and still have a kind of period? Yes, that happens more than you think. Thus, I can imagine that a woman like that doesn't know about her pregnancy for at least as long she becomes really big (and that can last longer than three months; my mother was only just showing at 8 months, she only stopped wearing her jeans (!) at seven months) or until she feels it move (which can also be a substancially long time if it is your first time and you do not know what it feels like).

And then there are still psychological factors of denial which will enable a woman to deny she is pregnant although she feels it move distinctively, or should feel it.

Please do not confuse that with stupidity.

[MarkBastable]

I'm not sure I'd be comfortable with any medical procedure - of any kind - being offered or withheld on the basis of the assumed intelligence of the patient.

"Doctor, I'm having a heart attack."

"I'd love to help, but you seem a bit dim."

I think that ethical point needs to be worked out before the ethics surrounding any specific medical procedure.