Abortion Debate

[taffboy gwyrdd]

That's easy to say, but how many people would be comfortable raising a severely disabled kid? Some would, naturally, but many wouldn´t. And if we don't countenance abortion because of disability in the foetus, lots of people would find themselves having to do exactly that.

As with so much of this, the line just aint easy to draw. But there is a danger that abortions take place on the basis of fairly minor disablements being considered "inconvinient".

We are in an era where a whole load of GM freakery is taking place, few people are speaking out about day-glo rabits either. That doesnt make it right. The cold materialistic values of "modernity" are dehumanising - as surely are some of the selective factors in choosing which foetuses we choose are ok to live and die.

IMO Just because it is pragmatic that abortion should be available in law, that doesnt mean we should evade some of the difficult philiosophical issues it brings up - or that we should be complacent about our attitudes to the unborn, or indeed all life forms with the sentient capacity for suffering.

 

[ViolentPanda]

As with so much of this, the line just aint easy to draw. But there is a danger that abortions take place on the basis of fairly minor disablements being considered "inconvinient".

I suppose a lot depends on how you gauge "inconvenience". Often nowadays the ability to (to use a rather inadequate word) "manage" a disabled child is related to ability to "pay" for services, either in terms of finance (whether personal or supplied by local social services) or in terms of labour-hours. A lack or shortage of either of these can make the degree of "inconvenience" near-insurmountable, even with a "minor disablement" such as a malformed bowel.

 

[mikeinworthing]

Tone down the personal abuse please.

By a considerable margin, if you please.

It does seem the psychiatric professor dwyer is ‘on one’ again, with his cross-thread trolling.

But, heck, what would you expect from someone that posts comments like this:

Originally Posted by phildwyer
On threads like this, I like to open a book on who will finish with the most posts. It is actually a game of skill, because you can manipulate your favorite into posting more. <snip crap>

 

[taffboy gwyrdd]

I suppose a lot depends on how you gauge "inconvenience". Often nowadays the ability to (to use a rather inadequate word) "manage" a disabled child is related to ability to "pay" for services, either in terms of finance (whether personal or supplied by local social services) or in terms of labour-hours. A lack or shortage of either of these can make the degree of "inconvenience" near-insurmountable, even with a "minor disablement" such as a malformed bowel.

Then I think we need more honesty about how much we are willing to pay before a foetus is considered "financially inviable" even if the child could have something like a productive and enjoyable life. Such honesty should make us reflect on our attitude to humanity and our spending priorities.

I wonder how many malformed bowel patients could be properly sustained if ID cards and Trident were scrapped.

 

[mikeinworthing]

Looks like a very big victory for the pro-choice option.

At the end of the day, who can judge this, apart from the person (woman) concerned?

Backed-up with as much information and support as possible to make that choice.

What right has anyone else to interfere with that choice?

 

[Pigeon]

Over the years, I've encountered quite a few idiots on these boards. People whose own stupidity prevents them from engaging constuctively with anyone else, whose lack of social skills has rendered them bitter, who have been twisted out of shape by their inability to understand what is going on around them. But I have to say that you, Pigeon, are by a comfortable distance the most inadequate, pathetic, pitiful, miserable, hopeless, depressed, depressing and generally wretched creature I have *ever* come across. You are entirely worthless and without any redeeming features whatsoever. Except of course for the outlet you provide for others to vent their scorn. Go away, you are not welcome here.

Fuck off, dwyer.

 

[Pigeon]

You just can't help yourself, can you? I don`t want to see you on these boards again. Get lost, moron.

You trying to bully me off the boards, mate? You picked the wrong bloke.

Fucking bring it!

 

[mikeinworthing]

You trying to bully me off the boards, mate? You picked the wrong bloke.

Fucking bring it!

He does it all time, you just happen to be his latest ‘victim’.

Welcome to the club.

 

[Pigeon]

He does it all time, you just happen to be his latest ‘victim’.

Fucking quaking, me!

 

[pk]

It's hysterical really, the projection ...

 

[Gmart]

The moral case doesn't really affect this debate. If Abortion wasn't legal there would be thousands of illegal abortions done by the black market!! Thus we HAVE to legalise it to meet the prime directive of the government to protect the safety of the population.

It's the same with the drugs debate and the quality issue leading to INFORMED usage if the individual chooses (with warnings)

It's the same with the prostitution debate with legalisation empowering the workers and enabling them to dictate the usage of a condom, and empowering the worker, rather than throwing them to the mercy of some bloke in his own car (the black market).

My personal opinion is that in life one has to accept that people might make a different decision to you. In this case the line is a matter of personal choice by the individual concerned.

I might add that contraception is the prevention of life and could thus be called murder too.

 

[taffboy gwyrdd]

I might add that contraception is the prevention of life and could thus be called murder too.

You can only "murder" something that is living. Contraception prevents the life in the first place, so no it aint the same thing - not that you think it is anyway. Further "murder" is a legal definition. "kill" is the more objective description.

 

[toggle]

The moral case doesn't really affect this debate. If Abortion wasn't legal there would be thousands of illegal abortions done by the black market!! Thus we HAVE to legalise it to meet the prime directive of the government to protect the safety of the population.

That is an important point to make. We didin't legalise abortion so women could have an abortion in thes country, we legalised them so the abortions they were already having were done under safe conditions by trained medical practitioners instead of being done with unsterilised knitting needles or coathangers, sometimes failing and causing damage to the foetus, often causing damage to the woman.

As for the inconvenience of a disabled child, I'm probabaly one of the few that has talked openly about being offered abortion, at as late a stage as 26 weeks (2 weeks past the usual legal limit), because of the possibility of very severe abnormalities. The idea of financial cost wasn't a personal factor. It was more that i knew that I wouldn't be able to cope with the emotional and time demands and still be capable of being a good parent to my son. I decided that if the scans showed abnormalities, I would abort, because my duty as a mother towards my son, the existing life I was responsible for, overrode my duty towards the potential life in my belly.

if someone else can do that, be that parent to both kids, good for them, but I'm not that person and I will never apologise for that, and the decision I made. i'm also never going to tell the childred that, because the scans came out that she was fine and i'm lucky to have 2 relatively normal kids. but i still remember making that decision. and I think my experiences of making that decision are of value here.

 

[shagnasty]

my grandson was born with a cleft pallette and an clesp lip.i am fucking glad that he was born ,two ops and a little hard to understand his talking but getting more able to understand him ,hes a smashing boy love him to bits

 

[Pigeon]

For the record around 185000 abortions take place each year in the UK.

Meanwhile, around 900 million animals here are killed annually.

Speaking about the implicit suffering in both cases is often considered taboo, the preseve of loons or the self selecting sanctimonious and moralising. None of that changes the existence of the suffering.

Well, sorry and all that. But you do come across as sanctimonious and moralising on this thread. IMHO.

More to the point, the claim that vegetarians shouldn't *logically* be pro-choice and "pro-lifers" rolleyes: ) shouldn't *logically* eat meat is just plain wrong.

I don't eat meat purely because I believe the overconsumption of animal protein in the global north contributes massively to the poverty endured by millions in the global south. It has nothing whatsoever to do with any viewpoint that the taking of life or of potential life can never be morally justified.

 

[urbanrevolt]

Abortion on demand should be a fundamental right because a woman should be free to determine her own fertility.

The foetus is a potential life not an actual life- it may have some kind of sentience but it is not in any sense a person- that only begins to happen at birth.

A foetus is a potential person so certainly it's right to advise people to be careful about what they take in the way of drugs such as alcohol or tobacco or may be food stuffs- though obviously this can only be advice.

Even if though someone beleives the foetus is a person- something I do not accept and think is illogical- but let's say for sake of argument you do think that then surely if you have a person inside you entirely dependent for life on you then your decisions about what to do should take priority anyway.

Any attempt to dictate to women what to do with their own fertility is wrong.

It is alarming that the right to abortion is under threat.

 

[scifisam]

It is a very vexing issue. I have seen video footage of aborted foetuses who were quite clearly attempting to evade the machinery before 24 weeks.

I would think it is closer to say that suffering can take place in context of a well structured central nervous system which would again appear to be earlier.
[snip]

But coral also flinches when something comes near it. It is not a proof of a fully-functioning nervous system.

The spine is connected to the thalamus at an earlier stage, but it's not connected to the cortex, the thinking, sentient part of the brain, until around 28 weeks. That's one of the reasons premature babies born earlier than that have such difficulty surviving.

(There are other reasons, of course - the main ones being an immune system which is not ready to face the outside world, and a pulmonary system which isn't fully developed by any means, before, on average, 24 weeks).

So if you want to talk about suffering, then you have to consider cortical responses as well as responses from lower parts of the brain.

This is what is taken into account when deciding whether or not to turn life support off for a coma patient; there has to be some objective method of determining when suffering occurs, and this is the best we have yet.


Poot - it's terrible that your HA doesn't offer earlier scans - most do, so your HA has little excuse! However, even when scanning technology advances, there are quite a few serious conditions that cannot be picked up until after 18 weeks (sometimes a few weeks later), because the foetus just isn't developed enough to show those problems yet. So abortions after 20 weeks will always be a legal necessity.

(I don't count hare lips as serious conditions, btw; if any woman in the UK wants to abort because her unborn baby has a harelip, I'd hazard a guess that there are underlying reasons for wishing not to continue with the pregnancy).