Abortion is a very thorny issue and a potential minefield for anyone venturing into it. Indeed to many feminist groups the fact that I’m male would mean any opinion I had was not valid at all, though again to many feminist groups my opinion wouldn’t matter on any subject…
Essentially there are three groups, pro, anti and indifferent with the indifferents in very much a minority as pretty much everyone I know has some sort of opinion one way or another.
THE abortion limit should be lowered from 24 weeks to 20 weeks, claims David Cameron’s new Women’s Minister. Maria Miller, a mother-of-three who describes herself as a modern feminist, said: “I looked at it from the really important stance of the impact on women and children.
“What we’re trying to do is not to put obstacles in people’s way but to reflect the way medical science has moved.”
Strongly An aide to Mrs Miller said she was not calling for a change in the law but was stating her “strongly held view”.
Mrs Miller had backed Tory MP Nadine Dorries when she put forward a backbench Bill for a law change in 2008.
But the move has caused alarm to pro-choice groups, who are already concerned about Jeremy Hunt’s appointment as Health Secretary.
In 2008, he voted in favour of halving the limit to 12 weeks.
In the end, if we are going to allow abortion it has to be balanced against the unborn child’s chances of survival, medical technology has moved on in such a way that there now is a reasonable chance that if a woman went into labour at 24 weeks then there is a slightly better than 50/50 chance the child will live.
That I believe is the only criteria that should count in meddling with abortion laws other than a yes/no vote on the subject. Not that very many women tend to go to 24 weeks, or indeed 20, but if the chances are that a child could survive at 24 weeks then clearly the limit is currently too high. Yes I know it’s all down to statistics and possibly a post code lottery as to whether or not a hospital has the means to aid such a survival, but overall if the chances are now over 50/50 then in my opinion the law needs to change to reflect this.
Yes, I know all about it being a woman’s choice and I’m pretty much of the opinion of her body, her rules, yet that has to be offset by the improvements in technology to the point that if survival is a reasonable possibility, then the child has rights too.
However I’m not expecting common sense on this issue…
“Essentially there are three groups, pro, anti and indifferent with the indifferents in very much a minority as pretty much everyone I know has some sort of opinion one way or another.”
It may be the circles I move in, but I’ve rarely come across people with very strong views one way or the other. I would say there are small groups of extremists on both sides of the arguments, but a large majority of people would say it should be allowed in some circumstances but we are probably a bit too lenient with it at the moment.
If we’re only debating the timescale, then we’ve already accepted the basic legality issue. I suspect only a minority, the fervent antis, would ever want to go back to the ‘wholly illegal’, pre-1967 state, so that’s a done deal.
The problem with the timescale issue is that it risks a continuing parallel reduction with advances in medical science. Currently it may be the case that a 24-week foetus has a 50:50 survival chance, so that is accepted as a feasible break-point. But what if, 10 years from now, that break-point has moved to 20 weeks, then sometime later, to 15 weeks ? Should the abortion law always chase that number downwards ? On that path, we could even end up with a limit of 2 weeks, so what price a woman’s choice then ? By the time she has the first hint of her situation, it’s too late to do anything about it.
It is always better to avoid an unwanted conception in the first place, but they will always happen. Setting the benchmarks for addressing those cases will never be easy.
Abortion always seems to argued for on the basis of selected individual cases and no doubt there always will be cases that can be fully justified BUT the total number of abortions carried out in the UK each year is ridiculously large, it has clearly become a form of contraception.
The vast majority of these abortions were surely avoidable. It ought to be a priority to avoid these unnecessary, expensive medical interventions that are a charge on the common purse.
That’s a whole different subject, my point is on when the shut off should be, not the why we’re doing this, or should we be doing this.
BEGIN:
AND, no-one ever mentions the other abortions, the “natural” ones.
This is where any religious argument on abortion falls down completely.
IF:
you claim (as the lying evil corrupt murdering RCC does) that “life begins at conception”
THEN:
What about the vast numbers – it has always exceeded the number of live births – where fertilisation takes place, but either the zygote does not implant (“abortion” in 0-2 days approx) or the zygote implats, but then drops out within the next week or so (“abortion” in 3-20 days approx).
This is very caerfully never mention by the (usually religious) anti-abortion campaigners.
ELSE:
The proper answer is better education, and better birth control measures, to avoid unwanted conceptions.
[ But of course the RCC & the extreme evangelicals are against tah as well, are they not, the evil hypocrites? ]
RESULT:
I must admit, I’m not sure I’m entitled to speak on this subject at all, since I’m male …..
END:
You’re referring to “Spontaneous Abortion” whereby the female body automatically rejects the zygote and for any number of reasons.
Never mentioned perhaps due to the fact that such is entirely involuntary as opposed to third-party medical intervention.
Not that, as a female, I feel I have any right to decide for another woman what she does with her own body…though I reserve the right to express an opinion on it…I’m just responding to your point.